Exactly what the title says!
Let the problems of 2010 plague you no more, for the problems of 2011 are upon us!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
I Got Butchered Again
And this time, it's serious.
See, this game is like Runescape in progression. It's not that hard until about halfway through.
For instance, in my 2 weeks of playing, I worked my way past the Frigate class, the Destroyer class and the Cruiser class. My corporation delivered to me my first Battlecruiser, the Drake. At this point, the only practical ship a player can expect to fly is Battleship or one of the Strategic Cruisers/Advanced Mining Vessels. Up from that are Capitals, which are mostly pipe dreams.
The Drake is a ship type which kinda has a love/hate following. Like Torag's armour. It's dirt cheap, all the new kids run for it as soon as possible, it's freakishly tough. I have minimum skills (yes, even EVE Online has skills) and I was able to use the Drake to take on over a dozen other Battlecruisers at the same time and win on my own. It's that kind of vessel.
The ship's main strength is its shield. The Drake can fit an obscenely powerful passive shield tank, which basically means your shields are so outrageously tough that they can shrug off most damage and recharge so quickly on their own that you never have to worry about that particular bar. The Runescape equivalent would be your character's health naturally regenerating so quickly that multiple enemies constantly damaging you can't keep up. The Drake has more defensive bonuses than many battleships and can still mount a good amount of damage alongside that.
So yesterday (or today, it's the 25th here already), I learned two things;
1. Fighting a powerful passive shield tank is hard. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to every unfortunate NPC crewman, pilot or captain and their next of kin/families. Today, I went one-on-one with my first battleship. I'm in a shield-tanked Drake, so I'm pretty much unstoppable one-on-one. Thing is, I learned how obnoxious it was to fight someone just like me.
I was putting 7 Heavy Missiles into that stupid thing per salvo. One salvo every 13 seconds. That's over 28 gigantic missiles per minute into a single target. The bastard's shields kept recharging. Every time I pulled a piece off the shield bar, it recharged in the time I took to launch another salvo. I even dropped 8 million (the ship itself cost me 26 million) on upgrading the missile launchers and a control system and this bastard still didn't go down.
In the end, I gave up and lost the launchers, equipped salvagers and looted the battlefield. The battleship had lots of escorts, but I murdered them all before moving and failing against it, so I looted everyone whilst waiting for a corpmate to bail me out.
2. Losing a ship sucks. It's EVE Online, you expect death wherever you are, but somehow, my death was one of the most humiliating ever. Thing about the Drake is, I have 11k effective HP on me. That's 11k damage someone has to do to me to kill me in a single blow (excluding recharge/repairs). Approximately 5k of that was armour and hull, which were the second and third layers of defence. If I lost my shield, I still had enough of a window to run away.
So the only way to effectively kill me was to prevent my escape. Now, the most common way of escape is a Warp. When you go into Warp, it's over. They've lost, they can't possibly catch you. Problem is, warp requires that you be aligned to a destination AND be at 75% of your top speed. This can be troublesome for a slow ship with low acceleration, but they can usually take damage long enough to survive. Warp Scramblers prevent warp at all, thus preventing escape. Simple.
Problem is, I never got warp scrambled. The bastards who got me did so because when I aligned to my destination and started accelerating, I accelerated into a piece of the environment (a small station array and a floating warehouse). So I couldn't get speed and I was trapped between these two, while taking a pounding. The crappy AI tried to keep lining up but it's crappy, so my ship spun around on the spot hopelessly for several seconds before exploding. I lost most of my equipped modules and cargo contents (including the expensive upgrades).
Howsabout some perspective;
When I got my Drake, I had 60 million. I dropped 26 million into it (saved 2 million because the corp made it for me and didn't need much profit). I drained another 16 million to buy the fittings and kit it out for battle.
So I'm down to 28 million in my wallet. I dropped half of my entire cash pool one one vessel. Thankfully, I made a fair portion of it back. It was yesterday that I hit 32 million odd again, even after many, many expensive spare parts and upgrades. I was left at 26 million after selling some stuff and buying ship upgrades against that bastard Battleship.
Then it exploded. The stuff I salvaged was worth all of 5 million.
However, I insured the ship and the insurance payout was a solid 22 million and after corpmates killed everything at the mission, I looted the wrecks and made some cash. The corp leader generously handed everyone 10 million (Christmas gift <3).
In the end, I was left with 65 million.
Short version? These last 2 days of work have been worth exactly nothing. I'm back to the Cruiser I abandoned in my hangar. I'm back to leeching offa my corp mates in missions for income (missions are divided into levels. Higher levels = more payment and more difficulty. My Drake could perform most level 3's without much trouble. Level 4 is the highest). So for the first time ever, I was effectively independent and could make a steady, reasonable income without asking the corp for help every 10 minutes.
Then it blew up. Really. EVE Online is generous to the dedicated, strong player but it sucks ass when you lose.
There's my Christmas Eve (when typing that, I nearly typed 'Christmas EVE'. Signs I need a break). I wonder what joys Christmas day will bring me.
Regards, IVIilitarus
See, this game is like Runescape in progression. It's not that hard until about halfway through.
For instance, in my 2 weeks of playing, I worked my way past the Frigate class, the Destroyer class and the Cruiser class. My corporation delivered to me my first Battlecruiser, the Drake. At this point, the only practical ship a player can expect to fly is Battleship or one of the Strategic Cruisers/Advanced Mining Vessels. Up from that are Capitals, which are mostly pipe dreams.
The Drake is a ship type which kinda has a love/hate following. Like Torag's armour. It's dirt cheap, all the new kids run for it as soon as possible, it's freakishly tough. I have minimum skills (yes, even EVE Online has skills) and I was able to use the Drake to take on over a dozen other Battlecruisers at the same time and win on my own. It's that kind of vessel.
The ship's main strength is its shield. The Drake can fit an obscenely powerful passive shield tank, which basically means your shields are so outrageously tough that they can shrug off most damage and recharge so quickly on their own that you never have to worry about that particular bar. The Runescape equivalent would be your character's health naturally regenerating so quickly that multiple enemies constantly damaging you can't keep up. The Drake has more defensive bonuses than many battleships and can still mount a good amount of damage alongside that.
So yesterday (or today, it's the 25th here already), I learned two things;
1. Fighting a powerful passive shield tank is hard. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to every unfortunate NPC crewman, pilot or captain and their next of kin/families. Today, I went one-on-one with my first battleship. I'm in a shield-tanked Drake, so I'm pretty much unstoppable one-on-one. Thing is, I learned how obnoxious it was to fight someone just like me.
I was putting 7 Heavy Missiles into that stupid thing per salvo. One salvo every 13 seconds. That's over 28 gigantic missiles per minute into a single target. The bastard's shields kept recharging. Every time I pulled a piece off the shield bar, it recharged in the time I took to launch another salvo. I even dropped 8 million (the ship itself cost me 26 million) on upgrading the missile launchers and a control system and this bastard still didn't go down.
In the end, I gave up and lost the launchers, equipped salvagers and looted the battlefield. The battleship had lots of escorts, but I murdered them all before moving and failing against it, so I looted everyone whilst waiting for a corpmate to bail me out.
2. Losing a ship sucks. It's EVE Online, you expect death wherever you are, but somehow, my death was one of the most humiliating ever. Thing about the Drake is, I have 11k effective HP on me. That's 11k damage someone has to do to me to kill me in a single blow (excluding recharge/repairs). Approximately 5k of that was armour and hull, which were the second and third layers of defence. If I lost my shield, I still had enough of a window to run away.
So the only way to effectively kill me was to prevent my escape. Now, the most common way of escape is a Warp. When you go into Warp, it's over. They've lost, they can't possibly catch you. Problem is, warp requires that you be aligned to a destination AND be at 75% of your top speed. This can be troublesome for a slow ship with low acceleration, but they can usually take damage long enough to survive. Warp Scramblers prevent warp at all, thus preventing escape. Simple.
Problem is, I never got warp scrambled. The bastards who got me did so because when I aligned to my destination and started accelerating, I accelerated into a piece of the environment (a small station array and a floating warehouse). So I couldn't get speed and I was trapped between these two, while taking a pounding. The crappy AI tried to keep lining up but it's crappy, so my ship spun around on the spot hopelessly for several seconds before exploding. I lost most of my equipped modules and cargo contents (including the expensive upgrades).
Howsabout some perspective;
When I got my Drake, I had 60 million. I dropped 26 million into it (saved 2 million because the corp made it for me and didn't need much profit). I drained another 16 million to buy the fittings and kit it out for battle.
So I'm down to 28 million in my wallet. I dropped half of my entire cash pool one one vessel. Thankfully, I made a fair portion of it back. It was yesterday that I hit 32 million odd again, even after many, many expensive spare parts and upgrades. I was left at 26 million after selling some stuff and buying ship upgrades against that bastard Battleship.
Then it exploded. The stuff I salvaged was worth all of 5 million.
However, I insured the ship and the insurance payout was a solid 22 million and after corpmates killed everything at the mission, I looted the wrecks and made some cash. The corp leader generously handed everyone 10 million (Christmas gift <3).
In the end, I was left with 65 million.
Short version? These last 2 days of work have been worth exactly nothing. I'm back to the Cruiser I abandoned in my hangar. I'm back to leeching offa my corp mates in missions for income (missions are divided into levels. Higher levels = more payment and more difficulty. My Drake could perform most level 3's without much trouble. Level 4 is the highest). So for the first time ever, I was effectively independent and could make a steady, reasonable income without asking the corp for help every 10 minutes.
Then it blew up. Really. EVE Online is generous to the dedicated, strong player but it sucks ass when you lose.
There's my Christmas Eve (when typing that, I nearly typed 'Christmas EVE'. Signs I need a break). I wonder what joys Christmas day will bring me.
Regards, IVIilitarus
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Ultramarines Review
Fans of Warhammer 40000 be rejoicin' last year when news of a Warhammer 40000 film based on the Ultramarines would be released. 40k's a gritty sort of thing, lots of grimdark and deep fluff, so it's hard to turn it into something that translates well onscreen.
I like to think this movie isn't an introduction to the universe, but rather for established fans. It only introduces 2 out of 8 factions and plays out on exactly 1 planet and its orbit. Fans of the universe will most likely enjoy the action and grimdark the movie helps to convey through (flawed) CGI.
Characterisation and portrayals of tech are fully intact, thanks to Dan Abnett as writer. The film stays so true the tabletop game that the characters and equipment were modeled to tabletop specs, to the point where the Land Speeder's weaponry is as comically oversized here as on the tabletop.
Writing and character interactions are solid, conveying the holy duties of the Marines in a way which isn't particularly cheesy. The prayers, warcries and manner of speech stays true to the tone of the fluff, without turning into a hammy mess.
There's plenty of violence and a few thrills along the way, to flesh out the battles. Some people might have expected more action, sooner and others might like less of the grit and violence present; I sit in the middle, there's enough action along the way to the big twist and climax (yes, there is one) to keep viewers satisfied without hampering the story and turning it into a cheap action flick. Ultramarines is a sci-fi thriller at heart.
My only real beef with the film is the CGI, and that seems to be what everyone else is grinding on, too. Facial expressions and facial modeling are far from what I've come to expect in today's CGI films. Everything that wasn't a face was rendered rather well and meshed well with the environment. A few of the bloodier scenes are hampered by the flawed CGI and closeups of characters aren't quite what they could be.
The entire film itself feels like a game of Warhammer 40000 played out in CGI with fleshed out characters. The story of a squad of Space Marines led by 2 veterans who go to secure an ancient relic in the hands of Chaos and must then return it to the ship sounds like something that would be done on the tabletop by a pair of creative gamers.
I'd hand it 7/10, just for keeping true to the universe, good writing, gritty action and flawed CGI. It really does feel like those nerdy toys on your table came to life and started kicking ass.
Regards, IVIilitarus
I like to think this movie isn't an introduction to the universe, but rather for established fans. It only introduces 2 out of 8 factions and plays out on exactly 1 planet and its orbit. Fans of the universe will most likely enjoy the action and grimdark the movie helps to convey through (flawed) CGI.
Characterisation and portrayals of tech are fully intact, thanks to Dan Abnett as writer. The film stays so true the tabletop game that the characters and equipment were modeled to tabletop specs, to the point where the Land Speeder's weaponry is as comically oversized here as on the tabletop.
Writing and character interactions are solid, conveying the holy duties of the Marines in a way which isn't particularly cheesy. The prayers, warcries and manner of speech stays true to the tone of the fluff, without turning into a hammy mess.
There's plenty of violence and a few thrills along the way, to flesh out the battles. Some people might have expected more action, sooner and others might like less of the grit and violence present; I sit in the middle, there's enough action along the way to the big twist and climax (yes, there is one) to keep viewers satisfied without hampering the story and turning it into a cheap action flick. Ultramarines is a sci-fi thriller at heart.
My only real beef with the film is the CGI, and that seems to be what everyone else is grinding on, too. Facial expressions and facial modeling are far from what I've come to expect in today's CGI films. Everything that wasn't a face was rendered rather well and meshed well with the environment. A few of the bloodier scenes are hampered by the flawed CGI and closeups of characters aren't quite what they could be.
The entire film itself feels like a game of Warhammer 40000 played out in CGI with fleshed out characters. The story of a squad of Space Marines led by 2 veterans who go to secure an ancient relic in the hands of Chaos and must then return it to the ship sounds like something that would be done on the tabletop by a pair of creative gamers.
I'd hand it 7/10, just for keeping true to the universe, good writing, gritty action and flawed CGI. It really does feel like those nerdy toys on your table came to life and started kicking ass.
Regards, IVIilitarus
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