Thanks to everyone for their kind words. Don’t worry, its not a crisis just got to be a busy, busy bee. Already getting withdrawal symptoms. Must. Stop. EFTing.

With the cruiser lottery completed I finally have all my affairs in New Eden in good order. It seems like an appropriate time to tell you all that I have un-installed Eve.

Don’t worry, this is by no means the final chapter in Wensley’s tale. Its just that I have a lot of pressing stuff to deal with in real life and I need to focus down on it. Roaming and chatting to my friends and corp mates is just too much of a distraction from all that so I’ve bitten the bullet and put myself on an enforced hiatus for the next month or thereabouts.

Fly reckless, guys, and I’ll see you all in the summer.

Wensley out.

Today’s post is a guest piece from Xola Zuni. He’s been researching the mechanics of overheating and asked me if I’d share his results with you. So, here they are.

Greetings Space Warriors, Xola Zuni speaking. First of all, many thanks to Wensley to give me the opportunity to publish this article on his blog!

I did some research on Overheating, especially on how you can prolong it’s duration. The
short and simple result: You can overload your modules longer at no costs if your ship is properly fitted!

This article will explain how you can do it and how the result should look like.
A Minmatar assault frigate, the Wolf, was mainly used for these studies. 4 different high slot
fittings were use, each of those setups were tested 6 times, equaling in 24 runs total. The
200 mm ACs were overloaded and then activated untill they burnt out. As soon as the guns
went offline the rounds fired per each gun were counted and then compared with the other
results:

Shown in the graph below is the average of rounds shot per gun after 6 runs with each
setup.

The green and the yellow setups do a lot better than the other two. The best fit (yellow;
33,5 rounds avg) allows to get a bit more than 4 more shots out compared to the worst
(blue; 29,33 rounds avg) before the ACs die. That’s an improvement of almost 15
percentage.

The best fit has a offlined salvager in the fifth slot and in 5 out of 6 runs produced the
same result (33 rounds shot per gun). It also produced the best single result with 36
rounds fired.

The results of the two fits with an empty fifth slot (green & red) fluctuated a lot more than
those with a fitted fifth slot.

Although the big difference is not made by the fact that the fifth slot is fitted or not, it depends
upon how the ACs are arranged. The fits where the ACs are separated by the fifth slot
are both superior to the conventional “all guns to one side”-fittings.

Explain these fittings again…

The Wolf has 5 high slots and you can fit them differently. Mostly it is fitted:

AC; AC; AC; AC; (somethingelse or empty)

Thats the red/blue fitting in the graph: 4xAC+Salvager and 4xAC/empty

To get the improved results, the Wolf has been fitted:

AC;AC;(empty/smt else) AC; AC

Represented in the graph as 2AC+Salvager+2AC (yellow) and 2AC+empty+2AC (green).

Important sidenote: You can still group all 4 ACs together, grouping does not have impact
on the results.

Wish or Witchcraft? How does that work?

As I did not make the game nor did I check what the code looks like, I only can assume
how it works. But this assumption should be sound.
The first thing to know is that not only the overheated module takes damage, it also spreads
heat emissions onto the neighbouring modules. The closer they are, the more damage will
be applied. The next module in line gets the most emissions, the second in line the second most etc.

Now let´s have a close look how the heat is spread on a 4AC+ and on a 2AC+2AC Wolf

On the 4AC+ setup the heat sink slot only has to deal with one major heat source. This is
good for the heat sink slot but not so good for your guns, they will burn out faster as they do
have to buffer more heat emissions. Compared to the 2AC+2AC fit, the heat sink slot has
to buffer two major heat emissions. It will burn out faster, but the guns won´t. The same
rule applies also to the second, third and fourth in line heat emission.

So on the 2AC+2AC Wolf, the heat emissions are spread more equally on your guns and
the heat sink slot can function as a proper heat buffer.

Conclusion:

The further away the overloaded modules are, the longer they will last.

Footnotes:

This rule does/should also apply on your mid and low slots and also on other shiptypes. I
did some tests on a Hurricane (highs and mids) and the first results were promising and
confirming the results I have got with my Wolf. Unfortunately, the repair costs stopped that
project from being finalised.

If you have some spare ISKies laying around, send me some and note as reason “Xola
should last longer”. I will just buy one space tonic out of your isk. The rest will be spent on
my research projects. Promise!

Here are my skills regarding RoF and thermodynamics as they havea major impact on the results I have received:

• Gunnery 5
• Rapid Firing 4
• Thermodynamics 4

The wolf was fitted with 4 x 200 mm ACs and 1 x Gyrostabilizer.

So, thats it, thanks for your attention and kudos to Wensley to let me share my research
results on his blog!

Xola Zuni

Thanks Xola for taking the time to do this. I had been meaning to write about overheating for a little while. There is a thread on Failheap Challenge (the phoenix that rose from the ashes of the now defunct Scrapheap Challenge) that discusses this exact topic. The use of heat sink modules has been well known for a long while but it was always assumed that heat wrapped around the rack. Xola’s experiments and the ones detailed on FHC both show that this is not the case and you should arrange your modules accordingly.

Congratulations to the winners of my pirate cruiser lottery.

• Ticket 95, Xola Zuni, won the pirate cruiser collection.
• Ticket 265, Thorvik, won the frigate squadron.

Well done to both winners and thank you to everyone who took part. Your prizes are on contract in Jita. You can see the winning dice rolls and the full list of tickets.

Thanks again to everyone who took part.

You are most likely to have heard of Matari Exodus through Miriam Sasko’s excellent series of videos which include Serious Business, an absolute favourite of mine. Recently I’ve started hanging out in their public channel and have flown in a few gangs with them. They’re great guys and really good PvPers so flying in gang with them is a pleasure. As nice as the guys are, the best thing is some of the fights that they get into. I thought I’d just take a post to highlight a few of them.

I’d tagged along on a couple of low security space roams with them in the past but for one reason or another had to leave before the action got going. The first real fight I got into with them we’d started in Aurohunen and gone into Tribute looking for a fight. We were moving back towards M-OEE8 when we ran into a gang in 15W-GC. Early on in the fight Miriam got himself into trouble and we lost his Drake leaving just three of us facing off against 22 hostiles including three T3s and a Nightmare. As always in nano fights we started off by removing any fast tackle coming for us, switching to anything that got itself seperated from the main gang. In the inital tussle we killed a Zealot, Muninn, Curse, Hookbill, Jaguar, and Stiletto in exchange for Miriam’s Drake. After regrouping and repairing our overheated modules we went back for round two but this time I got myself webbed and we lost my Drake without getting any more kills. Still, an excellent fight and top notch FCing from
Jaster.

The next fight was closer to home. This time I was in a nano Harbinger with Jaster, Miriam, and Catheron in Hurricanes. We were roaming into Great Wildlands when we found a Corporation of Noble Sentiments (fellow Egbinger residents) gang on our out gate in B-VIP9. Despite being outnumbered we went in and began to work on the TORAH gang. As usual the lighter targets were picked off but, chased by a Hurricane and Myrmidon, I ended up getting separated from the rest of the gang. The Hurricane was being pulled away and I began to work on him. Things went badly, though, when the Myrmidon landed a scram on me with the rest of the gang still too far away to help. Thankfully my lasers were doing their job against the Hurricane’s shield tank and I was able to chase him off. By now my shields were very low and I was dipping into armour. I dropped my ECM drones and, despite a Falcon causing me problems, they got a jam off and allowed me to warp to safety. We continued to skirmish and, after a momentary shield recharge, I came back into the fray to get tackle on a Drake. Aligning away and burning for life I held point while the rest of the gang got close. As soon as point was called I hit the warp command but it turned out I wasn’t fully aligned and, as my ship turned, a final volley from the Drake hit me, finishing my Harbinger’s noble run. The final battle report is a bit messed up due to the Matari Exodus guys going back for another round while I ran to go join in a corp operation and then a third battle in the system with Eve University but here it is.

The fight that lead me to write this post occurred last night, just before the Black Rifter Down roam. We formed up with four Drakes and went to investigate what appeared to be a 21 man fleet in 7Q-8Z2. Upon our arrival our scout reported a gang with multiple Rapiers set up on our in gate. This was unlikely to end well for us and we decided to try and go round and come in through SUR-F7 instead. Unfortunately for us they had eyes in there too and moved their gang in response to our manoeuvres. After a bit of posturing they jumped in to us and the fight was on. We burnt away from the gate and went to work on their Rapiers, removing the ships that posed the biggest threat to us. With their tackle down we were able to kill a Vagabond before they withdrew to regroup. A Broadsword had got itself a long way off the gate and soon found itself pointed as we began to loot the field. Unable to get back to the gate the heavy interdictor eventually fell to our missiles. As he went down the gang came back for another round but all we were able to kill before they de-aggressed was a single Sabre. A third round began but this time they were looking close to getting tackle on us and we managed to chase a couple of them away before warping to safety. This time we got an excellent kill tally for no losses. Nice work, lads.

The roam continued into Curse where we began to be tailed by a handful of covert ops frigates. Wary of being hot dropped we kept moving but in 8G-MQV one of them managed to get a point on my Drake. I burnt like crazy and released my drones and missiles onto the webbed frigate. Local spiked and a HAC gang began to appear on grid. I was sure I was doomed only to see the Helios go down. I hit warp like crazy but nothing was happening. Ah, I was desynced and my overview was lagging behind. Drones and missiles on the next tackle ship as I overheated my microwarp drive. This time I was luckier and got away as not a single one of their heavy tackle ships had landed a point on me. Victory!

Now we had the problem of being camped in and we played it carefully, waiting to see what would happen. Eventually the Initiative gang moved to our out gate leaving us free to burn back the way we had come and loop through 0SHT-A and into Catch from there. Catch itself was very quiet and we moved to HED-GP where we had a short skirmish with the locals that resulted in the loss of a Manticore. At this point I had to jump into Empire space and get my ship to Agil so I could clone jump home and join my corp for the roam we had planned.

Yes, I’ve been flying Drakes a lot lately. What of it? I’ve had kind of mixed results when soloing but this little beauty makes up for all the losses I’ve suffered and lessons learnt.

These little four man gangs have been a lot of fun and I hope to take part in more of them. It does leave me wondering if my Wednesday roams are a little too heavy sometimes and if I might be better roaming with a much smaller number of people by my side instead of the small armada we end up with. Sure, in the general scheme of things 16 might not be many but it feels like a lot to me. Maybe there’ll be fewer scheduled roams and more “who wants to grab a BC and go look for some fights” roams.

The other thing that I’ve taken from both the Matari Exodus roams and my own gangs is what a difference it makes having a T3 scout that can give bonuses. Wensley is working his way towards flying a Claymore but it doesn’t have quite the same utility. A bit of me wonders if I should train my bomber alt into a T3 but it seems like such a long train that I’m not sure it would be worth it. Maybe I should look at starting one of my other characters along that road in the near future. While they are overpowered the utility they add to small gangs like these is just two good to turn down. We only have two suitable alts in corporation too so there is a definite shortage in RANSM.

My good friend, wingman, and all round Rifter jockey buddy, Miura Bull has crashed behind enemy lines. While out on a reconnaissance mission he lost contact with Gunpoint Diplomacy Command and we have been unable get him back on the line. Our systems have locked onto his Rifter’s distress beacon, though, and the news is not good. He seems to be trapped deep behind enemy lines in the territory of Blackwater USA, part of the Against All Authorities alliance. As head of the RANSM Special Ops Taskforce it is my job to go and retrieve our man. This operation has been codenamed Black Rifter Down.

A rescue fleet formed up in Egbinger consisting of Hurricanes, Drakes, and a couple of Scimitars. We set out on the long journey through bandit country to the borders of Against All Authorities’ empire with trepidation in our hearts.

The run through Great Wildlands was uneventful. It was almost as if someone had already rolled through here and cleaned all the targets out… Our scout did manage to locate a Harbinger in 7Q-8Z2 and, after sending zombiedeadhead in as bait (which wasn’t taken) we got a probe hit on his safe spot and warped Vanderie, interdictor pilot to the stars, onto him. Bubble went up and the gang jumped in for our first kill of the night.

We continued our roam towards Angel country and our scout/dictor combination did another excellent job grabbing us a Drake kill. Excellent work from our Scimitar pilots saw Vanderie’s shields brought back from the brink mere moments after we landed. Good work, gents.

There was nothing else to be seen along the pipe and we moved into Curse. In CL-85V our scout reported a few hostiles buzzing around and myself and Vanderie jumped in to see what we could grab. Everything on the gate fled and we reapproached while probes were dropped for a Rupture that was on scan. With the Rupture located I warped in and began to shoot him, hoping to spring a response from his friends. No such response turned up and I bagged a solo Rupture kill. The Art of War gang that had been shooting him were all cloaked up and showed no signs of decloaking so we began to move again.

It was here that things took a turn for the worse. I was away of a large Initiative gang in the Catch area and it seemed that they had decided to come back through Curse at this moment. Our local count began to climb and we quickly assembled the gang in one place while getting eyes in the next system. The way seemed to be clear and we began to burn for freedom, which went well until we encountered the bulk of their gang in RMOC-W. We safed up and began to bounce around once probes appeared on scan. The main hostile fleet was behind us with a few advanced elements on the Hemin gate. The Hemin gate was a constellation gate and, after a slightly confused bit of leadership, I gave the command to warp to the gate and make a run for it. Unfortunately as we hit warp our scout reported the hostile gang beginning to land on the gate. This was going to be tight. We jumped and I gave the order to scatter to the most convenient celestials. Unfortunately their vastly heavier gang managed to grab 3 of our Hurricanes while we destroyed their Sabre.

Mine was one of the Hurricanes to go down leaving me unable to command the fleet. Vanderie promptly took control and got the gang to the safety of low security space where they regrouped and decided to come back to Molden Heath to reship and go roaming. I waited a while in a station then decided to try and get my pod back to safety. I’d jumped into my Hurricane clone and was quite keen to get my fairly expensive implants to safety. Unfortunately luck was not on my side and I jumped into a small gang of artillery Thrashers who promptly removed me of my Reaper and then sent me to the clone bay. Thanks guys.

So, our operation to recover Miura was not successful. Our agents are reporting worrying intelligence that he might be being indoctrinated and I worry that it might already be too late to recover him. We will try further reconnaissance missions in the future and hopefully not run into the massed ranks of The Initiative. I have high hopes that next time we will actually make it into AAA territory.

In all seriousness, though, good luck in your new adventure, Miura. If you ever want to come blow stuff up in low sec I know the guys would jump at the chance of having you in gang and if you want to come do small gangs in null you know where to find me…

You might have noticed lately that my hosting has been a bit sketchy. This is obviously not a good thing and makes life frustrating for both you and me. Because a large number of you have your own blogs I wanted to ask you for any hosting recommendations you might have. Ideally I want a UK-based provider but European or even American isn’t the end of the world.

Just to give an idea of what I need here’s my usage statistics for the last few months.

So, yes, I get quite a lot of traffic and need about 10 GB a month bandwidth to cope with peak usage. My current data footprint is 150 MB.

All suggestions and ideas gratefully received.

Okay, actually, I am fully in support of CCP’s planned change to jump bridges and am looking forward to seeing more of the same but the post title was just too good not to use.

Back in early April when the CSM campaigns were starting to pick up I began to write a post about the issues in Eve that I think need looking at and the kind of solutions I’d like to see. For one reason or another I never actually finished the post but here’s an excerpt from the draft I still have saved:

Jump Bridges

Kirith Kodachi posted a defence of jump bridges yesterday that read to me like he was actually calling for them to be boosted. I disagree with pretty much every word that he wrote. When I lived in Catch we had a jump bridge network that spanned three regions and allowed ships to move from one end of our empire to another in about 7 jumps with almost complete invulnerability thanks to death star POSes. There is no way that this can be considered a fair and balanced thing.

While I have no out-and-out objection to jump bridges being used to provide a home advantage for sov-holders I don’t think they should provide day to day invulnerability. AAA’s jump bridge network was pretty minimal but when you look at the NC’s infrastructure you can clearly see how there is a problem with jump bridges as they stand. There are plenty of people out there who would like to seem them nerfed into the ground with one suggestion I read being that only three are allowed per region and others asking for them to become phenomenally expensive.

For me jump bridges and titan portals have taken all the risk out of moving a fleet around. In AAA we could take the jump bridges to the staging system, form up in a POS, and then titan bridge right into the fight. We could even use Atlas’s network to get all the way from Catch to critical fights in their eventually doomed defence of C-J6MT. However, when we had to move fleets through open space there was an element of risk. We had to co-ordinate, stick together, and use intelligence. Cloaky camps could interfere with our movements and pick of stragglers and it was… excellent. So, to add some risk to using jump bridges without completely nerfing them into the ground I would like to see CCP change it so that only one bridge may be anchored per system. Doing this forces people to continue to use stargates and allows small gangs to interfere with hostile logistics and hence gives home defence gangs something to do. Small gang combat wins.

Since CCP announced the changes there has been a lot of anger on the forums. Most of it seems to come from members of the Northern Coalition (including the Deklein Coalition). The main argument seems to be that this change will hurt the individual’s ability to make money in null security space while not having any appreciable effect on fleet movement. This just isn’t true. In fact it is so untrue that even The Mittani has come out in general favour of the change being made.

Any null security (or in fact just any) corporation, alliance, or coalition worth its salt has at least one intelligence channel monitoring hostile movements in local space. When a threat is perceived, a gang is formed and the threat is dealt with. By monitoring intelligence channels and actively reporting hostile movements life in null security space is very safe. Couple this with pockets where the inbound gate is covered in anchored bubbles and the systems accessible via jump-bridge and you have almost complete safety. Eve isn’t supposed to be safe. Heck, even high security space isn’t safe so why should player-held null sec be so?

This change does not in any major way break jump bridges. You can still have a network that spans eleven regions and allows fast movement. You can still protect important pockets. What you can no longer do is have an invulnerable chain of bridges from one end of Eve to the other. Someone on Twitter posted that travelling through bridges was already difficult enough because “sure, I can go from KU5R-W to LS-JEP with only 4 gate activations, but I use up about 2-3m in LO.” That’s nothing! Considering the time it would take to do manually using Grismar’s navigator then in a HAC the same journey would take half an hour assuming you just warped gate to gate. Realistically you can probably add another 15 minutes for the time taken to use pounce spots on each gate. Now if we assume that ratting brings in 20 million ISK an hour (a low estimate) then the time saved using the jump bridge network more than pays for the LO costs. So no, the cost of using jump bridges does not mitigate their advantages.

The question you have to ask yourself is “what are jump bridges for?” Their current prevalence makes people treat them like superhighways through space. The Eve universe has shrunk to the point where deep null sec regions are now just a few bridge jumps away. CCP have already stated that they want different regions of space to have different values and this is why they have changed the way that anomalies work such that true security influences the quality of anomalies generated (personally I would prefer to see a sliding scale on NPC bounties but that is outside the scope of this post). One thing that jump bridges do is make deep-lying regions as accessible as empire border regions. This is contrary to CCP’s vision so some way of limiting that was inevitable and the superhighways had to go.

The way I see jump bridges is that they provide a tactical advantage. The bridge into the bubbled ratting system is a good example. It allows the defenders to move fleets around hostiles and gives them a tactical advantage. Short range bridges on pipes allow defenders to trap hostile fleets and prevent them from wreaking havoc in their space. This is the way I would like to see them used. Not to move vast fleets across space. So, on top of the current nerf, I would also like to see their range reduced as well.

Now the other argument that has been floating around is that this change is effectively inconsequential because the range of titans and supercarriers means that their ability to project power is untouched and the use of jump drives that we see at the moment. This is in many ways true but I am hoping that in a couple of weeks we will see another post announcing a reduction in the range of these ships making them much more localised in their use and renewing the roles of dreadnoughts and carriers in long-distance logistics.

There is a lot of talk of the people who support this change just wanting cheap ganks. In some quarters this is true but from my own point of view I used interdiction of stations and gates as a way of provoking fights. Sure, I gank one or two people, but the idea is to force a response and that is where the good fight comes from. I honestly believe that everyone will benefit from this change once the initial shock has died down and people accept the new status quo. Defenders still have the tactical advantage but the ability of hostiles to force fights has been increased. If your corporation, alliance, or coalition does not come to defend you from hostile gangs then maybe you should reconsider your allegiance to them.

My own personal vision for the future of sovereignty space is that an alliance’s ability to hold sovereignty should be directly tied to how actively they use that space. Outlying regions should be far easier to take than core systems. Bandit country can be established by small groups and it is up to the local powers to police their space. If they don’t then their grip on it will drop and someone else will come along and take it. If you don’t actively control your space then the timers on your sovereignty modules will fluctuate more wildly, reducing defensive advantage, but core systems will be harder to take. In effect we’d see something like the distinction between high and low security space with the alliances deciding how actively they want to police various areas of space. That’s enough of that for now, there’s a whole post in there somewhere.

In summary of this rambling post, the changes to jump bridges are not the end of the world. They are not even close to that. I know plenty of people who would like to see them removed completely. Also, I am not talking out of my backside. I have been part of an alliance and enjoyed the use of their bridges and I have been a hostile raider thwarted by well-planned bridge networks. I have travelled across multiple regions in almost complete safety to take part in wars. Changing bridge mechanics isn’t going to solve all of Eve’s problems but its a step in the right direction. In fact, its better than that, its an iteration. This is a small change being made now not a big, buggy feature in a future expansion. Let’s hope CCP keep moving this way.

It seems to be a pretty slow week in the blogosphere never mind Eve itself. The weather is good here at least and I’ve not been on as much except for losing a string of Thrashers and cursing Dramiels everywhere for obsoleting one of my former favourite set-ups.

In more positive news, tickets are selling well for my pirate cruiser lottery and there are five very attractive ships sitting in my hangar in Jita at the moment. I have the frigates too but they’re a bit more spread out and I need to move them all to one place.

These sexy and valuable ships could be yours if you buy one of the 101 lottery tickets that remain at the time of writing. To enter the lottery all that you have to do is send Wensley 5 million ISK per ticket with the reason “Pirate Cruiser Lottery”. Somer’s excellent lottery site will monitor my API and automatically list your tickets. Once all the tickets are sold the dice will be unlocked and the winners of the cruisers and frigates will receive their new gifts. Simples.

I have plans afoot at actually do something in game this week so a proper post should be coming your way some time on Thursday.

Well, its time for my third lottery. This time I am doing two prizes, one for the winner and a second, runner’s up prize.

• First Prize: One of every pirate faction cruiser.
• Second Prize: One of every pirate faction frigate.

Yes, that’s an Ashimmu, Cynabal, Gila, Phantasm, and Vigilant for the winner and Cruor, Daredevil, Dramiel, Succubus, and Worm for the runner up. A total prize pool worth 1.3 billion ISK.

Tickets cost just 5,000,000 ISK and you may buy as many as you would like. To purchase your tickets send your ISK to Wensley with the reason Pirate Cruiser Lottery. If you don’t use the right code then the software won’t pick up your ticket purchase. If this happens send me an e-mail and I’ll sort it out for you as soon as I can.

Once all the tickets have been sold I will unlock the dice and the first drawn number will win the cruisers and the second number the frigates.

As always you can see the ticket sales so far at my page on the SOMER Lotteries site.

Buy a ticket, tell your friends, and good luck!