Packing and preparations mean not much time to play, so my pc time has been limited to skill training and searching for things related to the move. I mentioned last time that there are skills that I’d need to be useful in any sort of pvp situation and the last couple weeks I’ve put together a plan to get a few of them trained.

First is gunnery skills. Because I was a level 4 Ishtar soloer primarily (and still am I guess) I neglected gunnery in favor of training Drones, culminating in Sentry Drone Interfacing V. In pvp drone dps isn’t enough, because many ships aren’t dedicated drone platforms and the ones that are benefit greatly from being able to fit other guns as well as the drones. Plus having assault ships and heavy assault trained without being able to take advantage of the hybrid weapons buff is sort of sad. I’m working my way toward Medium Blaster Specialization IV first to open up the possibility of using a Deimos or blaster proteus, then after that possibly artillery as that works well with passive tanking (projectile weapons use no capacitor)

Second are a couple important support skills, Thermodynamics and Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing. Thermodynamics you may know allows overheating of most modules you can activate, greatly enhancing their benefits or rate of fire for a short amount of time. Overheating is a common tactic to tip the scales in a one on one pvp fight, and is something I had never trained. ECM drones are another common pvp staple, allowing a warp disrupted ship to have a chance to run if the drones can jam the assailant. Since I am gallente and likely to be flying ships with a good drone bay it’s a no brainer.

Third is Hull Upgrades IV. Another thing that was back burnered when I moved to passive shield tanking, this is required for fitting a Damage Control II module. There are no faction versions of damage controls (anyone know why not?) and the tech 2 version gives 60% to all resists to your hull when active. Fitting one to gallente ships that have high structure hp is highly recommended.

Forth is one that isn’t pvp related, but pve. Told you I wouldn’t show you my current Proteus fit and one reason for that is it is fit for pve, something the Proteus does very poorly. I have Caldari Cruiser V, as mentioned before and from there to flying a Tengu is only a couple weeks. The Tengu does pve work much much better, and in wormholes or incursion fleets are very common. The problem is my missile skills would need some work too, but one step at a time. Speaking of that, do any readers have reasoning why they prefer one of Heavy or Heavy Assault missiles? I tend to lean toward training for Heavy Missiles to give range flexibility but don’t know if Heavy Assault is common in pve work.

That’s what I have in my plan for the next six weeks or so. If you have suggestions, please leave a comment.

Bible Black: The Infection is a PC eroge published first in Japan in 2008 by Active Soft and released with an english translation by Kitty Media in June of 2011. This is meant as a direct sequel to the events of the first game, with recurring characters and a continuing storyline.

A word about Kitty Media first, that sets the theme for this game’s release in the US. Kitty as you may recall is an arm of Media Blasters, which translates and releases anime and manga in English. The anime business in the US has suffered a few shocks recently, with Bandai Entertainment shuttering in a corporate restructuring and Media Blasters cutting 60% of its staff earlier this month. It stands to reason that when the business is not doing well or is in need of cash then a good direction to go is with releasing something that uses one of your key brands. Something that will sell on strength of title alone.

Bible Black: The Infection was released as Bible Black II in the US. The package is a two dvd set, including the game and the first disc of a new hentai anime called Bible Black: New Testament. The game reuses many assets from the first game, including all of the menu structure, character portraits and room background cg. There is a new voice cast and new cg for the included sex scenes, but if you are expecting a new game experience from the first, you won’t find it here.

The story begins shortly after the events of Bible Black. As the DVD case explains it: “Minase is living happily with Imari, wanting nothing more than to put his evil past with the Bible Black behind him. But when he wakes up screaming from a dream of blood and sex, he knows that dark magic will never leave his life for good.Then he notices that Mika Ito, the first victim of the Bible Black, has taken on a new power and is up to no good…” The story is just that, life continues after the events of the first game and hey, wow… here’s Ito back in school again. The story in this game is incongruous and muddled, a real shame given the depth of the first game.

The story path is similarly stunted in this game. In the first there were multiple decision points leading to one of twelve different endings, and a  total of 25 different sex scenes to find along the way. Bible Black II has five endings and ten sex scenes, with a mere two decision points that seem to matter. The sex is decidedly vanilla here as well, missing many of the harder bondage and submission themes of the original. The endings themselves are unsatisfying, due mainly to the story making very little sense and therefore the ending explaining nothing. A fan of the first game will be sorely disappointed with the experience as I was.

It is a shame that a franchise that started so well has suffered from poor work put into the followup. As I said in my review of the first game,  Bible Black is one of the classics of the genre and uses its roots in the occult to set the stage for a game that is well worth experiencing. Bible Black II falls far short of that, feeling more like a rushed product with the amount of effort you’d see in a terrible game adaptation of a popular movie franchise. Telling is the absence of original creator Sei Shoujo, who had left ActiveSoft  prior to this game’s release. If you are looking for an eroge in English then my advice is to pass this one by. Look into the first game if you fancy the occult, or if not keep watching this space as I plan to write reviews of some of my favorites in the coming months.

Back on subject, I was musing about where I’ve been in EVE and what might be the next step. We’d come to current times, the last few things I’d trained and purchased.

When I last came back to the game I had no goal and a bit of excess isk from built up datacores and PI material sales. I looked at skill training and decided I would buy a tech 3 cruiser. The total outlay for that I estimate was 1/5 of my total net worth, and after a few weeks I had a shiny new proteus. No, I’m not going to show you my current fit. You would laugh. I’m working on that.

Crucible came after that, and with it a severe cut in PI profit in empire. I’ve scaled back production to just the alt account and gone back to level 4 missions and invention to make some money. The time is ripe for finding a new corp. But what are the options?

The way I see it, there are three places that would be good for me. The first is to try to join a group doing high-sec Incursions. Incursions are the newest PvE option in game and an excellent money maker. There are public channels set up for people looking to join pick up fleets to run them, but I don’t know how much fun that would be. It would be better to try to find a corp dedicated to running them, get into a fleet that was trustworthy.

The second is null-sec, specifically NPC null. I’ve said before and reiterate that I’m not interested in the “grand game” of soverignty and blob warfare that is most of null space. In NPC regions though there are corps that scratch out areas for themselves through PvP skill and alliance with neighbors. There are also missions and epic arcs for the pirate factions that would be interesting to see.

The third is w-space, the realm of the sleepers. I’m honestly leaning in this direction, as rule 1 of wormhole living is that everything begins with scanning. Exploration is a big part of what I enjoy about EVE and the idea of being able to use those skills in a corp is encouraging. It is a hard life though, with no stations and limited access to the markets and amenities.

There are positives and negatives to all of these. The big issue is that the latter two would require some PvP skill, which I don’t have. Prior to committing to anything there are a few things I’d need to train to be useful in that situation. It’s something I’ve been thinking about.

I would love to hear feedback on this from anyone out there. What would I need, what have you enjoyed, etc. Part of why I’m writing all this out is so it’s not just in my head self-reinforcing after all.

Fly safe, everyone.

I started EVE in May of ’09. My main is a Gallente Intaki, one of the Reborn. Not a whole lot to say about the first few months of the game really. Back then it was still recommended a new player learn all the Learning skills and as I had isk to buy them I did. I followed the tutorial and did the mission path in the beginning, starting in atron and tristan and training for drones. My first cruiser was given to me by Tipa and was a Vexor, I named it “Gift from Above”. There were several vexors named that, bought with insurance money when I would lose one.

I spent lots of sp on Drones, eventually being able to use Tech II medium drones. Around that time I joined the corp Tipa was in, Otakudyne. While there we worked together on industrial skills, with me eventually learning Electronics Engineering and Gallente Starship Engineering. I trained for Covert Ops and Tipa built my first Helios. I continued on through Battlecruisers and the drone skills and worked on my Duvolle standing in a Myrmidon doing level three missions.

When it came time to train for level four missions I had a choice to make. I could train for battleships and get into a Dominix or I could work toward heavy assault ships and buy an Ishtar. I ended up doing the latter, avoiding needing to train for large hybrid weapons and instead doing shield tanking and sentry drones. I learned Sentry Drone Interfacing V at some point, either before or shortly after my extended hiatus from the game.

In March of 2010 I came back to the game and joined Genovian Holdings, a corp held by our friend Petter. At the time several bloggers joined including Stargrace. I played continuing where I left off, training Astrometrics for exploration and continuing to boost my skill with the Ishtar. We did mining ops and I trained to fly Exhumers. I also went toward being able to fly blockade runners, training Gallente Industrial V and Transport Ships and eventually buying both a Viator and Occator. When Dominion was released I made an alt and trained both him and my main to do Planetary Interaction.

It was around this time my first and only experience with pvp was had, when friends in Otakudyne had their unguarded highsec tower reinforced by a corp who wanted the space. I went to help in a Hyperion fit with large shield transfers thinking I could help rep the tower but learned a valuable lesson about effective range. I still repped the ravens of the otaku guys and we had a good fight trying to save it. The experience had me train Logistics and crosstrain Caldari Cruiser V so I could fly a Basilisk. Shortly after that the corp stagnated again, with only Stargrace and I logging in regularly and our plans for our own PoS in a 0.5 or 0.6 system falling out of reach.

That brings me to a time close to the present, which I think will be a topic for another post.

Something from EVE today, the new Ishtar. As good as the new paint job looks I’m kind of sad that it no longer smiles at you. C’mon, you know you loved the smiling Ishtar, admit it.

In case you forget what the Ishtar used to look like:

I haven’t been playing any MMOs lately but I have been paying for one. EVE has been going through big changes since the meltdown over last summer. A refocusing of development assets on the core game is starting to pay big dividends. My Gallente ships are seeing love too, with the hybrid weapon fix and in a couple weeks an assault ship buff. It’s odd how things pull at the edges of your mind sometimes, and EVE has been yanking on mine. The lure of internet spaceships is strong.

I’ve been spending time on EVE blogs learning more about parts of the game I haven’t seen before. That is arguably most of the game… I’ve been a ‘carebear’ my entire career. I wrote my Primae anti-gank guide from that point of view. There is more to the universe than empire space though, than tech II manufacturing and level 4 missions for Federation Intelligence. Much more. So I’m resolved to find a corp to see some of it in.

It’s a bad time to do that now. I currently work evenings, and when I find a new job that will most likely change. The next few weeks I need to spend my free time packing, not playing. But that’s ok, because it means that I’m not rushing into something. EVE is a game of planning, where patience is rewarded. For now reading the blogs and the recruitment posts on the forums is enough, and the information I gather will be useful when the time comes.

I do know one thing, I don’t want to play the game. Joining a pet corp to one of the huge SOV alliances and being just a bit in the blob isn’t what I want. The experiences of Tipa and Wilhelm have shown me that, and it doesn’t interest me beyond making for entertaining eve news 24 headlines.

So that’s where I am, what I’ve been thinking about. Have a comment, or another place I should be looking? Let me know. I’ll try not to be gone so long this time.

Something from the old days today. I have a ton of old screenshots, some of them that are more meaningful than others… but an old school dragon run was always something to be treasured. This one was a pickup group, and I honestly don’t remember if we were successful or not. Some neat things in this shot though. RoK days, check out my Jaundiced Bone Bracer (Winter’s Roar clicky, a DD spell) and Jaundiced Bone Boots (Nimble, an AGI buff) hotkeys ^.^ Not entirely sure why it seems like I have no spells loaded, maybe I didn’t or maybe they were on cooldown and the capture just caught them while blank. I was casting Malisement you can see before the dispell hit me.

Good times. This was before the Luclin days, before the new models and everything. I miss those days sometimes. Don’t forget to stand under her belly to cast on her!

Sub Search is a game for two players that is described on the box as a “3 level strategy game.” The design of the board has that feel of classic Battleship (released as a board game by Milton Bradley in 1967) complete with pegs to mark ‘hits’ and ‘misses’ on a pegboard. The actual gameplay of the game differs quite a bit from Battleship in what looks to me like a fun way.

At the beginning of the game, each player has a three dimensional grid facing them where they place their submarines. The grid is 6X6X3, with each grid space numbered and the depth denoted by 100, 200 and 300(feet). Once placed your subs do not move from their positions, they remain hidden as you search for the hidden locations of your opponent’s subs.

The top of the game structure represents the water’s surface, where your sub hunting patrol boats are. Each player gets three, which have 4 holes, 3 holes and 2 holes respectively; these holes hold white pegs that represent how many depth charges that sub is allowed to use before needing to resupply by moving back to ‘home base’, the blue plastic structure above bordering spaces 18 and 24.

The objective is to win the game in one of two ways; locate and destroy the enemy’s three submarines with depth charges or destroy the opponent’s surface fleet using a combination of torpedoes from your subs and a ‘mine’ you are allowed to hide on the opponent’s surface grid at the beginning of the game.

Torpedoes are fired from your hidden subs and can only be fired in the same column your sub is hidden in. The chance of hitting with a torpedo is quite low, spinning this spinner I was lucky to make a hit in 10 attempts. The manual for the game suggests torpedo firing only when your sub is about to be found because of the information it gives your opponent. Only one torpedo hit is needed to sink a surface ship.

To hunt and destroy submarines you fire depth charges, indicating a depth beneath your sub for it to sink to. A depth charge explodes affecting an area like the pattern shown here (though I screwed it up): the square it explodes on, the four surrounding it and the square directly above and below in depth if applicable. Just imagine I actually put the 100 and 300 pegs on 23 and not 17, heh. A sub on the square it explodes on (number and depth) is destroyed, and replaced with a flag to mark a destroyed sub on your pegboard. A sub in any of the other affected squares is called a near miss, and you are given the information that the hidden sub lies within this area. Other shots are called a miss and you would mark your pegboard with white pegs rather than red ones as shown.

I have not played this yet… convincing people that games like this could be fun is harder than you might expect and our normal gaming group is three meaning two player games are normally out. The grid size and rules seem to make it a pretty quick play, and the strategic aspect of playing battleship on a three dimensional board is a really interesting one. It’s one of my better thrift store finds recently, that’s a certainty. Look forward to a gameplay update when I do find someone willing to play.

New photo for you all, since I’ve been slacking on posts again. New board game review up tomorrow, so be looking forward to that!

I work in a lab at a chemical company, and the research chemists here make small laboratory batches in round bottomed flasks such as this one. Occasionally their experiment will advance too quickly and gel in the flask, forming a solid mass such as this. Part of doing everything at lab scale first is to prevent a similar reaction happening in the production area, which would require days of work to chisel out by hand.

Failed reactions like this were what kept people from being able to manufacture plastics that weren’t based on natural resins for years, until the plastic known as Bakelite was developed in 1909 as the first synthetic. One series of products the company I work for are modern derivatives of that early work, still being used today.

Today I want to talk about a recent purchase of mine, a game published in the US in 2011 by Nexus called Letters from Whitechapel. This is a strategy/cooperative game for 2-6 players set in the Whitechapel neighborhood of London during the tense search for Jack the Ripper. The mechanics of the game will be familiar to people who have played Scotland Yard, in which the criminal player uses hidden movement while the investigators collaborate to block their escape.

The game board is the centerpiece of this game, styled as if it were an old map once carried by the Vigilance Committee as they patrolled the streets. On it, 195 numbered circles represent alcoves and nooks where a criminal or victim might hide while the black squares in between them mark road intersections that are used by the police to patrol the area. The game is broken into four phases that represent consecutive nights on which Jack commits murders, and in turn each night is divided into a number of steps meant to set up the board, allow the patrols some chance to move from their locations from the previous night and widen their search, and give the Jack player time to choose a victim. On each of the first two and the fourth night Jack kills one victim and on the third Jack commits a double murder killing two.

The current night of play is represented by the numbered spaces in the lower right corner of the board  (with all the blood spots). Jack’s hidden movement is represented by the long numbered line along the bottom edge, which during gameplay a Jack pawn is moved along. Once a murder has been committed the object of the game is for the Jack player to return to his secret hideout (a numbered circle chosen before the game begins that does not change) and the investigators must either track him and arrest him along the way, or move in such a way as to block him into not being able to move (since Jack cannot cross over a patrol pawn unless using a special move token. There are five patrol pawns, which are divided among the investigators if there are less than that number playing. Investigators can move up to two intersections per turn (two black squares) while Jack can either move to an adjacent numbered circle or use a limited special move token. Jack has two special moves, a carriage move that allows him to move two adjacent circles in one turn and allows him to move past patrol pawns unseen or an alley move that allows him to use a hidden path to move to any circle on the same city block. A night is up to 15 turns, plus a few if Jack decides to delay taking a victim at the beginning of the round and if the jack player hasn’t made it home by this he automatically loses.

The game suffers a bit in my experience from an imbalance toward the Jack player. If by the second night you don’t know where Jack’s hideout is then barring poor play by them you will lose as the investigator. I’m not entirely sure why this is, whether it is the mechanics of play or because it is balanced more to a two player experience where only one person controls all five investigator pawns. My play group is three, so we’ve not had the chance to play with more or less. Playing as Jack is quite entertaining as you see much more of what is actually happening in the game than the investigators get from their limited clues. It is also a long game, listed as 90-150 minutes on the box and taking consistently over two hours to finish with three people. The art of the board and player markers is top notch, as is the quality of the manual and pawns included with the game. Unfortunately the problems with the mechanics make this one hard to recommend, and I’ve spent time looking on the Board Game Geek boards to see if anyone there has come up with a work-around to create a more balanced experience.