Welcome to the sixth article in an ongoing series on EN24 where we will be looking at the ‘small things’ that might not make a full EN24 article but are either funny or interesting enough to share anyway!
We here at EN24 will be running one of these articles once a week after scouring the intel channels and other intel outlets for information to share with you, our readers.
Extended downtime hits AUTZ hard.
Over the last week planned, as well as unplanned, down times for the Tranquility server have hit the AU time zone hard. On Monday and Tuesday of last week the Tranquility server was down from the normal 1100 eve time through to 1300 (1330 on Tuesday), meaning that the AU timezone lost a total of four and a half hours game time, instead of the normal hour or so. The server was taken down over those few hours to perform essential maintenance on the Tranquility server.
Then on Wednesday the 25th February the server did not come back up from it’s normal downtime until around 1545 Eve time, which meant that another three hours and 45 minutes were lost to those who normally play at those times for instance those who inhabit countries like Australia, New Zealand or Japan.
The unscheduled downtime was due to an issue with the Tranquility server and it had to be kept down for so long to do some short-notice hardware changes.
Then on Thursday the 26th February, CCP announced that once again the server would have to go into extended downtime to perform more essential maintenance to the server making this the 4th consecutive one in just 4 days.
In total the server was down for 9 hours and 15 minutes over the four days and a lot of the AU TZ players were vocal in calling for rolling down times, so that other time zones also get affected by these issues rather than it being something that is constantly affecting just them.
While this may be a fair way of doing it, if you actually look at the daily server numbers, AU timezone is the quietest of them with prime EU and then prime US having twice or sometimes as many as 3 times the amount of player online than the average AUTZ. CCP know that hitting the smallest timezone is the most effective way of doing their changes. CCP also know that if there are some issues with a new patch or upgrade, they have most of the working day to fix it (Eve time equates to Icelandic time so they push their server updates at 1100 their time).
Download on Demand is coming! (To Singularity).
So what is download on demand? Well at the moment, when playing as a new player, re-installing due to coming back to he game or because of a hardware upgrade, you have to download around 7GB of data, which then expands to the 12GB set of files once installed, once you have these you can play the game. What CCP are trying to get the Eve client to do is only download the core game code without any of the resources, like models for ships/drones/stations or their textures and audio etc. This means that you will only have to download around 250MB of data, which then expands to around 350MB when installed, to start playing the game. The client will then download and install the models and other resources as you require it. Once it is downloaded and you have encountered it, you will not need to do so again and it will cache locally.
In a dev blog on the 25th February CCP Maxwell, part of team RnB, announced that the DOD client was going live on the singularity server on the 26th February and was looking forward to finding out how people got on with it.
The DOD idea could change the way we look at and play Eve Online. This change would mean that down times could be a thing of the past as CCP would be able to stream changes to all of us and let our client download it as we encounter it, it will also make CCP able to do some amazing in game events, where they will be able to stream changes to the in game landscape in the Eve Universe to each of us in real time.
Of course if you’re like me, on a pretty bad provider with potato speeds…
If you prefer, we will of course also have the option of downloading all resources beforehand. The EVE client will then behave exactly as it does today, loading all resources from disk.
Thank god…
You can read more about download on demand here.
Northern Coalition Redeploy to Low-sec and Black Legion. plan a light Deployment.
Northern Coalition. recently redeployed their forces out from the Querious region of null-sec into the Aridia low-sec system of Esubara. This redeployment shows that the Northern Coalition. alliance may be thinking of staging attacks on the CFC held region of Fountain which is just 7 jumps away from their new staging system. Is this the beginnings of a push to take CFC space or are NC. just looking for content by threatening the Fountain fortress?
In related news Black Legion. will be doing a light deployment away from Venal from the 7th March 2015.
DEPLOYMENT: MARCH 7TH
LIGHT SUITCASE DEPLOYMENT WILL BE HAPPENING
YOU HAVE UNTIL THEN 2 MAKE ISK
ON MARCH 7TH WE’LL QUICK DEPLOY THEN HAVE MASS PVP, NOBODY LEFT IN VENAL OR ANYWHERE ELSE
JOIN OR KICK
Where will they deploy to? Is there a chance they will move to reinforce an NC. attack on Fountain? We will have to wait and see.
My Picks for CSM X.
CSM X has been a record breaking event, with around 20,000 votes cast in just under a week it is the best turn out that the elections have ever had, of course the Tranquility server being down for unscheduled maintenance on the opening day of the elections may of helped kick the numbers into overdrive.
However there also seems to have been a much larger push, not only by CCP both on their forums and in their own news articles, but also by third party websites like ourselves here at Evenews24. Reddit/r/eve also had some interesting posts and other outlets like the Capstable podcast, who were interviewing candidates on the run up to the elections and also doing a series of analysis shows.
No other CSM elections has had so much attention in my opinion, and the amount of votes being cast does support my view.
Now on to my flame-inducing picks. I am not going to try and justify them, I am just going to sit back and enjoy the comments.
My issues with the CCP Rise’s Ship Use Graph.
If you haven’t seen this graph then here it is, it tries to show the damage done by each class of ships in Eve Online.
My issue with the above graph is the lack of information that has been given by CCP about what it means. Sure you can see more damage is being done by battleships than Strategic cruisers, but over what time scale? And in what security of space?
What do the colors mean for each class? I tried to pin that down with the help of the other writers here at EN24, and the working hypothesis is that the colors equate to different weapon types being used (IE Artillery, Blasters, Drones, Rails etc). However when you look more closely, especially at super carriers, this would not work as it would mean only two weapon systems are being used by the super capital class. And if the colors are the same for all the classes then the grey being used by the super-capitals then the same weapon system is being used by bombers. This doesn’t work so we shelved that idea.
And then we came up blank. It can’t be security status, because there would only be four colors right? Null, Low, High and Wormhole.
The issue I have is CCP have given this graph as a ‘Battleships are fine, we aren’t going to touch them’ but have not given us enough information to draw the same conclusions. In my opinion, battleships work in low-sec absolutely fine, in fact I have been in battleship fleets in low-sec since the changes, while in Shadow Cartel, and while slow as hell they do still function as a PVP ship.
Null is where there are problems. Whether these problems are with battleships themselves, or with bombers, is up for debate. In my opinion though, battleships work as intended, they are slow and give out good DPS, but bombers are broken and they are too good a counter against battleship fleets.
Until bombers are changed, we won’t see many battleship doctrines in null-sec because signature radius tanking is key to protecting a fleet from bombers and the best ships for doing that? Cruisers.
Eve Online Dumb Ways To Die Parody
Rixx Javix is well know for his blog, Eveoganda and his piratical way of playing Eve Online with his corporation Stay Frosty. He teamed up with Sindel Pellion, member of Pandemic Legion corporation Sniggerdly famous for having a rather amazing voice, and they came up with an Eve Online parody called ‘Dumb Ways to Die’. They are now at nearly 300,000 views on YouTube and it would be nice if we can get them over that milestone!
It is really catchy and well-worth a listen, and if you haven’t done at least one of these then your probably playing the game wrong! (I know I’ve done a couple of them!)
Not Eve Online: Rest in peace Leonard Nemoy.
While EN24 prides itself on being a Eve and Eve only news related website, I feel that I should add this in here.
Leonard Nimoy, most famous for his role as Spock on the original series of StarTrek as well as the follow-on movies and cross-overs, was a legend in the sci-fi genre and his passing at the age of 83 in the early hours of the 27th February is a sad day for us all.
His last on-screen role came in a brief cameo in the 2013 sequal to J.J Abrams’ StarTrek, StarTrek: Into Darkness.
Leonard Nimoy sent a last tweet to his followers on the 22nd February 2015 and it rather poetically said;
StarTrek was the beginning of my love for spaceships and sci-fi in general and while, at only 28, I grew up watching StarTrek: The Next Generation, Deepspace Nine and Voyager, I also watched the original series from time to time. From my love of StarTrek came the love for other sci-fi shows, like Firefly and of course the Star Wars movies and then sci-fi games like Homeworld and of course, Eve Online.
I am sure a whole generation owes their love of anything nerdy to Mr Nimoy and for that we have him to thank.
Live long and prosper.
Well that’s it for this weeks issue of ‘The Small Things’ and I hope you enjoyed it and we shall see you next week for another edition!
If you have anything that you think should be reported on EN24, please contact me at @mail_lite on Twitter, email at [email protected] or Eve Mail me in game.
