For the past week I have dabbled with a new character in EVE Online. I wanted to see just how much I could do in the game without paying a penny or by using my already established, yet dormant, wealth within the game.
I have to say I am pleasantly surprised by how much a new Alpha character can do and how much fun I have had playing one. To make things a little sweeter, each day over the course of 3 days a player logs in this weekend, they are given 25,000 skill points to use. This, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t a lot considering my highest skilled character has over 66 million skill points, accrued over the course of 3 years or more. For a new character however, it’s huge.
With my Algos (a standard and cheap destroyer class ship pictured above) I have been able to breeze though level 1 and 2 security missions and complete combat sites, some of which I have used probes to pinpoint the location. All very simple, easy content while I wait for skills to train in order to purchase better ships and complete harder yet more rewarding content.If you’re interested in how I fit my basic Algos:
Low slots
Drone Damage Amplifier I x3 – The Algos is primarily a drone combat ship, these are to boost the damage output of your drones as much as possible.
Mid slots
5MN Microwarpdrive I – This will give massive jolts of speed in order to get away from enemies and kite while your drones take them out. You can also use it to zone in on loot quickly but be careful to not use all of your capacitor.
Medium Shield Extender I x2 – Very basic, but two of these will help you tank some damage should you run into any trouble.
High slots
Core Probe Launcher I – To scan down cosmic signatures in order to find combat sites suitable for your Algos. If you take a mobile depot it is also possible to swap out a mid slot shield extender for a data or relic analyser should you scan down data or relic sites.
Rigs
Small Ancillary Current Router I – You may not need this but with low skills the Algos power grid would not fully support all of the above fittings without this boost of power.
Drones
Hobgoblin I x12 – These deal thermal damage which is good against Serpentis and rogue drone targets. Consider swapping all or some of these out for other light scout drones depending on the enemies you will be engaging.
Charges
Core Scanner Probe I x16 – You could swap these out for 16 Sisters Core Scanner Probe for a boost in scan strength but would cost more than 3 times the value of the entire ship with above fittings.
The ship complete with the fitting will cost less than 2 million ISK (interstellar kredits, the main currency within the EVE universe). I simply kite the enemy NPC’s (Non player characters (known within EVE as rats)) and let my drones do all of the work. Players new to the game can have one of these within hours and in my view can get a lot done with it.
I do not know when or if I will ever start playing EVE Online fully again, but in the meantime, sitting back and chilling while playing this new Alpha character and watching it grow could be a lot of fun.
A new gameplay video has been released and I encourage anyone who is interested in EVE Online to watch it.
If after watching that you are still interested. Download the game and play it for free. You have nothing to lose.
Week 26 of Snooker Nation has been particularly fruitful for me.
Jason and I played a best of 9 which is always a bad sign for Jason as for some reason, he never seems to win a best of 9 match. I won 5 frames to 2 and managed to bag 3 century breaks. 119 points in the first frame, 129 in the second frame and 117 in the 6th frame.
Interestingly in the 3rd frame both Jason and I scored 53 points which meant the black was re spotted. I had the advantage and was able to take the first shot but missed, giving Jason a relatively easy shot to claim the frame.
I played incredibly well this week, it’s odd how one week you can play really badly and miss a bunch of easy shots, but the next you play incredibly well and miss hardly anything.
Last week I mentioned my favourite snooker player, Ronnie O’Sullivan, and that he had reached the final of the Tour Championship in Llandudno, Wales. Happily he managed to beat Neil Robertson 13 frames to 10 and won the tournament. This makes Ronnie O’Sullivan the world number one snooker player for the first time since 2010.
While playing Kerbal Space Program (KSP) this weekend, I managed to land on Mun which is the nearest moon to Kerbin (Earth). Although, not everything went according to plan, it was more of a successful crash landing actually.
Despite the… unfortunate circumstances I found myself in. I did manage to perform experiments and collect samples before successfully returning to Kerbin. After planting a flag, making an EVA (Extravehicular activity) report and collecting samples, I managed to get back inside the rocket and open the doors to the service bay, containing equipment for other experiments. This action jolted my rocket upward to a semi upright position allowing me to ignite my engine and leave.
With that I had just enough fuel to escape the gravitational pull of Mun and get myself on a return trajectory to the surface of Kerbin.
To say I am chuffed is an understatement, the scientific data collected is going to allow me to unlock a lot of cool stuff which will hopefully mean I can go further than Mun and perhaps land on Minmus or even a different planet.
It’s super cliche, but when you plant a flag in KSP you are able to write something on a plaque. On Mun I wrote “That’s one small step for kerbal, one giant leap for kerbalkind”. Almost 50 years since Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon… I take his line and use it in KSP.
Another week playing my favourite snooker game with my friend of almost 18 years, Jason.
After 3 straight weeks of losing, I am happy to report that I managed to claim victory 4 frames to 3. At first Jason played really well and I was at one point 3 frames down and thought that Jason would be able to win 4 frames to 0 for the third time since we started playing. Thankfully Jason got a little over confident and I managed to settle down and play like I had nothing to lose after getting my first frame. There were however no century breaks, the best we could manage was a couple breaks in the 80’s somewhere.
While it is not related to gaming and is a little off topic for my blog, I have learned that my favourite snooker player, Ronnie O’Sullivan, has managed to reach the final of the Tour Championship in Llandudno today by beating Judd Trump 10 frames to 9. If he manages to win the tournament by beating Neil Robertson in the final, he will once again be considered the world number one snooker player. Best of luck to him, I for one will be watching the match which starts later today.
This weekend I have spent more time playing Kerbal Space Program (KSP) and I have made some decent progress.
Somehow I have managed to get a satellite of sorts in orbit of Kerbin (Earth). The mission to get it there was rather sloppy and not much went to plan, but it’s there in an awkward but stable orbit. This was not one of the career mode milestone contracts to keep tabs on my progress, but I am pleased with it all the same. Maybe I can try again and get one in a neater orbit around Kerbin or perhaps even Mun (Moon).
Last week I managed to do a fly-by of Mun but this week I managed to achieve orbit and do an EVA (Extravehicular activity) in order to complete a milestone contract.
I was about break orbit of Mun and return home to Kerbin but I noticed that I still had a lot of fuel left which meant as the title of this post suggests, I managed to go a little further and do a fly-by of Minmus which I learned is a second moon orbiting Kerbin and is much smaller than Mun. It was harder to intercept but as you can see, I managed quite nicely.
I am not sure how much longer I will be playing KSP, but if I continue to play, perhaps I will try and land on one of these moons or even orbit another planet. I am sure these achievements are simple to many veteran KSP players, but I am really pleased with the progress I am making.
Once again Jason has beaten me in Snooker Nation, this time 4 frames to 2 in a best of 7 which increases his win streak to 3 in a row.
There were no shortages of century breaks. Jason scored 104 in the second frame and 103 in the 6th frame. I managed to get the highest break of 106 in the 5th frame which is a small consolation prize. Considering my losing streak, I will take what I can get!
Jason played incredibly well, of the shots he missed I believe he only missed 1 or 2 when it mattered. While as always I enjoyed playing the game with my friend, I really need to dig deep and win next time. I do not mind losing to Jason, especially when he is playing so well, but losing 3 times in a row is a little sad.
This weekend I have had a lot of fun playing Kerbal Space Program (KSP). For those of you that don’t know, KSP is a space flight orientated sandbox game which was developed and published by indie game company Squad.
While the official release of KSP was in April 2015, like with many indie games there was the option of purchasing the game during the Alpha or Beta phase in order to support the few developers involved in creating the game and to assist with testing and community building. In return players would obtain a large part of the game early, with the promise of having the final product on completion. Players can also potentially influence the direction the game is going and get involved with the games overall development. As such I purchased the game during Alpha in 2012 after a work colleague showed me what it can do on his laptop.
Like with other sandbox games, there really is no limit to what you can achieve. Initially you are encouraged to use parts to construct rockets to see if you can escape the atmosphere of Kerbin (Earth) and return your crew still alive which is quite easy.
I prefer playing the career option, which allows you to unlock parts a few at a time and encourages you to take small steps to help you with the games steep learning curve. First you will be asked to test individual parts in different conditions and various milestone contracts will help you keep track of your progress. After I managed to escape the atmosphere of Kerbin I was encouraged to take the next step and achieve a stable orbit around Kerbin, which I did. I then worked towards returning to Kerbin after achieving orbit, perform an EVA (Extravehicular activity) in space and was encouraged to do a fly-by of the mun (moon). As I completed tasks I was given resources to unlock parts and abilities which enabled me to more easily complete the next set of tasks which got progressively complex, requiring some creative thinking.
Finally, after several hours, I managed to complete a series of contracts and tests to allow me to fly-by the mun. This is where my career has stopped, at least for the time being.
I am rather proud of my weekends achievements in KSP because of the steep rocket science and engineering learning curve the physics of this game demands. As I have already mentioned however, there is no limit to what can be achieved in this game. I seen players visiting and landing on distant planets in the solar system, conduct interesting experiments in space, transport rovers and other vehicles around the solar system, and even create huge space stations in orbit of other planets.
This weeks Snooker Nation game was an amusing one, to say the least.
Jason managed to once again win 4 frames to 2 in a best of 7. Actually, at one point I was up 2-0 but Jason managed to win 4 in a row to claim victory. There was just one century break of 129 this week which belonged to Jason in the 3rd frame.
The amusing part was on the 5th frame where Jason had run out of position and snookered himself while on a colour. He somehow managed to hit the black, which then flicked off a red and potted in a middle pocket. Pure fluke but Jason being Jason he said he played for it.
I feel like I have been rather unlucky this week. I somehow managed to glitch a red in a middle pocket in the first frame but from that moment on not much went my way.
Once again I have played very little games lately so it was good to play a game with my Friend Jason and give me a some content to write about for my much loved blog.
I recently bought Deathwatch, a Warhammer 40,000 turn based strategy game for the Playstation 4 and I have to say, so far, I am not particularly impressed.
Turn based strategy games have been a favourite of mine since playing Front Mission 3 back in 2000/2001 and I have been recently spoilt by XCOM2, both of which are frankly amazing games. Front Mission 3 in particular will be with me forever because of the incredible soundtrack and story.
Deathwatch seems slow and the turns do not flow well, navigating the map is a chore and the ability to customize the space marines is non-existent. You can, to some extent, select which weapon and load out the marines use but beyond that it does not seem like you can do anything. While playing, you obtain cards which unlock marines and items to be used. I would have much preferred to have won points and given a way to spend them on whatever I wanted, recruit my own marines and equipment to better customize my experience.
So far the missions are really easy and boring. I do not see how I could ever lose a mission, also, while it has not happened to me yet, I believe if one my marines were to be killed on a mission, I do not think I would lose it. Instead I would only lose some of the experience that marine has accrued. I see no way to actually lose the campaign or suffer significant consequences which really takes the excitement out of the game.
The game is really quiet and the soundtrack is nearly non-existent which I suppose might be fitting for the space marine Warhammer 40,000 universe, but not something I particularly enjoy.
In fairness, anyone who really likes Warhammer 40,000 will probably like this game for how accurate it is trying to be to fit in the Warhammer universe, but for me, who is not especially a Warhammer fan, I just find the game lacking in features.
I have not completely given up on the game and will persevere to see if my experience of the game will get any better. I hope at the very least the game will offer some challenge and allow more ways to customize my experience.
Yet another game of Snooker Nation with my friend Jason. This time Jason won 4 frames to 2 in a best of 7 which must have felt good after his heavy defeat two weeks ago.
We both played well considering we both achieved century breaks, the first time one of us scored a century since the first week of January. I managed to score 126 in the first frame while Jason managed to get a break of 120 in the 4th frame. Unfortunately Jason missed the final black which would have given him 127, I doubt he cared much, considering how hard he worked for it and that this is his first century break this year.
Uncharacteristically I have not been gaming very much recently, it felt particularly good to play a game last night and it feels good to have a little bit of content to write about for my much loved blog.