Hmmm...shippy shippy shippy ship...

I'm kicking the tires on a couple of boats.  Before my brief break from EVE I was considering the Proteus - the T3 cruiser which could be a pretty awesome project to spend the summer working on.  My other option is begin the long slog towards the Kronos.  The Kronos is made for stomping through solo missions without having to go grab the Noctis when you salvage.  The downside to the Kronos is I'm a drone monkey and would be better served by a Dominix.  A downside is the Domi...well, she's kind of fugly and lumpy (in-game nickname is "The Boot").  Not chopped down the ugly tree with her face fugly (*cough* Gila) but she's not exactly my cup of tea.

The primary drawback(s) to getting the Proteus, besides cost, is the simple fact I love my Ishtar.  Now that my skills have begun to do the boat justice I've noticed marked improvements in performance.  There are still some core areas that need major work - putting weeks of time into Drone skills have left me on the back foot in others (new EVE players - take the time to sit down and plan what you want to do in the long run before skilling willy nilly).  From glancing at the forums I noticed that the Proteus isn't comparable to the Ishtar as a PvE droneboat (I'll spend some more time reading because I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there who disagree).  I also have n00b level skills for blasters so fitting it as a blaster boat isn't a current option.  On the other hand it would take me a very short time to get into a Proteus, though I have made the mistake of jumping into a boat with substandard skills and paid the price.  Additionally there's the maxim, "Never fly more than you're willing to lose."  At this juncture my pride would take a stronger hit than my pocketbook if I lost my Ishtar.

The Kronos is not only over a billion isk (vs 240mil for the Proteus) but would take me roughly seventy-eight days to get into.  Well, that solves that problem.

The Dominix is 85mil and would take me an hour to get in (Battleship 1) - this doesn't include Large Hybrid Weapon skills though.  I could slap mid and low T2 gear on her from the get go.  Looking at her attributes for the first time I'm kind of impressed.  As far an armor tank/drone boat, well that's what she was made for.  With a 6/5/7 fitting (high/med/low) I could damn near slap everything and a kitchen sink on her.  Plus with a 375m3/125 bandwidth I'd be up to my ass in drones of every shape, size, color, and possible use (even that deep fryer drone I picked up).

Downsides, besides aesthetics, are mainly based on a couple of practical worries and some less practical. First, it would mean a shift in the way I PvE, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Right now I can dictate the flow of combat primarily through speed and range (the "they can't hit what they can't catch" principle) and judicious use of drones and rails.  I feel that the depressing speed of the Domi (base 109km/s combined with 420 signature radius and 0.1254 inertia modifier) would be akin to pushing a turd up a hill with chopsticks in regards to handling (opposed to an Ishtar's base 191km/s, 145 sig radius, and 0.560025 inertia mod).  The drastic change in these elements would potentially mean being at the mercy of enemy frigates and cruisers (and their ewar).  I suppose I could put my trust in blasters, though in truth I prefer to have the foe dealt with before they get into blaster range (hence my preference in railguns).  I have seen the Domi in action and she proves to be tough nut to crack.  Hell, she's built like a brick shithouse and can just soak up abuse.

I guess for the time being I'll keep on keepin on with the Ishtar and make some long term plans for getting into a Domi.  Still, I miss that new ship smell.
    

What to do in EVE flowchart

Not exactly what I was looking for but pretty cool nonetheless.

After a year of EVE...

"If you look long enough into the Quafe, the Quafe begins to look back through you."

I had my first in-game birthday about a week ago.  Nothing really special happened, I blew up some up some Serps and completed a few more certificates.  I've been finishing off my drone skills (which has been taking for-fucking-ever) and getting back my sea-legs on L3 milk runs.  There was a new expansion,  Inferno, which had a bunch of shiny updates (missles and rockets for what they are worth - I don't use them anymore) and a new Unified Inventory which I can't tell if I like or not.  It seems like a change to something that didn't really need to be changed.  However, EVE's inventory control is magically delicious when compared to SWTOR, WoW, or The Secret World, so I'll just have to get used to it or integrate it to the in station menu and get used to that (even though having it integrated makes me feel like I'm wearing my underwear backwards).

I've reached a strange point in my EVE career.  I'm not really sure what to do.  I still have a small mountain of skills I can put time into in order to make me really effective at soloing L4's and dodgier areas, at least in a cruiser class or below boat.  I'm not a miner.  The corp I'm currently in is pretty small and it's rare if any of us are online at the same time.  In a game that is very much a sandbox and your fun is dependent upon you sometimes it's kind of easy to be at a loss for what to do - especially when you've completed a set of self imposed goals and have to think about what the next set of goals you want to set for yourself are.  I don't need stacks of credits simply because I currently don't need to buy anything and everything I'm salvaging and looting is gravy.  I don't particularly want to risk my current clone (yeah I can get a jump clone) or my current boat in some kooky jaunt across the dark places of Eden.

I'm curious what other EVE players do when they find themselves at a loss for things to do.  Is it time for me to start thinking of going to nullsec?  Is it time to start thinking about getting into a battleship (not that I really want one)?  Time to join another corp?  Should I, gasp, learn to PvP?  Ideas and comments are welcome.

Fly safe, capsuleers.

Chronicle (2012) & Contraband (2012): mini reviews

Chronicle (2012) Y'know I kind of liked it.  The trailer pretty much shows almost all the movie and I spent most of the movie thinking, "Man, they could really make a live action Akira and do it justice."  The main character is actually kind of sympathetic and not just some mall-goth.  I'm not a fan of the first person camera angle thing that makes up most of movie but at least it wasn't found footage (because fuck found footage movies) or Cloverfield douches and waving iCameras.  Saturday afternoon or sick day watching.

Contraband (2012) A remake of Reykjavik-Rotterdam (2008) with Mark Wahlberg being all Mark Wahlberg-y.  I'll watch pretty much anything with him in it.  I don't care.  Other than that the movie was pretty solid action/crime thriller.  Beat the fuck out of Drive.  Another Saturday afternoon feature. 

Steampunk is dead, long live Cowpunk.

Steampunk lost its appeal for me a few years ago when it simply turned into brown goth (swap out ankhs for gears).  While I was glad to see the renewed interest in Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, dirigibles, and British Imperialism I rapidly became disgusted with this kind of mentality:

My own relationship with steampunk began in 1988 when I read about Frank Chadwick's Space: 1889 (GDW: 1988) in Dragon magazine.  Not long after I got hooked on Philip Jose Farmer's Dungeon series.  This series remains one of my favorite "fantasy" series and after rereading them a few years ago - probably not something I should have read when I read it for the first time (see also George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails).  I had forgotten about steampunk, for the most part, save for a manga here or there, Otomo's Steamboy (2004), and to a certain extent Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the graphic novel not the shite movie).  In the late 00s the steampunk subculture went mainstream and for a brief period of time I thought it was pretty cool.  Then the subculture seemed to blow up and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a top hat with shit on it.  I think DragonCon 2010 was the final nail in the coffin for me (though there were some slammin hot cosplayers in steampunk gear but then again those men and women would look attractive in damn near anything).  It wasn't even a scene I was "into" or directly involved with (apart from living with a borderline steampunk-former goth-super crafter-ubergeek) so I my disinterest did not stem from my "scene" being taken over by n00bs and kindergoths.  No, I just got over-saturated and that resulted in me turning into a crankasaurus.

Recently a dear friend, fellow Havenite, and longtime fan of steampunk declared that she was done with the subculture and was ready to move on.  In the ensuing snark we batted around other ---punk genres that could be gotten into.  Personally I'm tired of 99% of (insert term)punk including but not limited to dieselpunk, atomicpunk, cuttlepunk (enough with the god damn Cthulu stuff people.  Lovecraft's best works didn't even involve Elder Gods), and coalpunk.  My money is still on the Weird Western; that brilliant genre that ranges (in my experience) from the classic show The Wild, Wild West (1965-1969), horror folk tales I grew up with (some with historical roots - the Donner Party - and a lot of Native American things that go bump in the night) to some of the works of Joe R. Lansdale to Ravenous (1999), The Missing (2003) and The Burrowers (2008) to a great deal of bizzaro sci-fi and horror that shared the same bottle as splatterpunk (I can't forget Red Dead Redemption either).  A number of excellent (now out-of-print) graphic novels appeared in the early 00s that did the Weird Western bloody justice.  Hell, I might even call Preacher a Weird Western at it's heart.  I was recently skimming through the brilliant Too Much Horror Fiction blog (seriously, if you're a horror fan you'd do well to check it out) and found a brief write-up of Razored Saddles, a Weird Western anthology edited by Joe R Lansdale and Pat Lobrutto.  I found it on amazon and bought a couple of copies (don't give me that look).  I haven't started it yet but the list of authors is fucking impressive.  Besides Lansdale, it features Robert R McCammon, Richard Matheson (yes that Richard Matheson), Richard Laymon, and F. Paul Wilson.  There are quite a few authors I don't recognize off the topic of my head but their names look familiar from other anthologies (e.g. Chet Williamson).

What brought on the whole ---punk blog was when I was shelving the extra copies I noticed that Avon had categorized the anthology as "Cowpunk/Horror".  "Cowpunk"?  Nani?  So I took a look at wikipedia and found out that a good number of bands I am very, very familiar with bore the cowpunk moniker (including The Violent Femmes, Meat Puppets, The Cramps, The Mekons, and a number of bands I just thought were psychobilly -e.g. Nashville Pussy and Reverend Horton Heat).  Well, I'll be shipped in dit.  I didn't see any authors or mention of Weird Westerns on the wiki though.  I'm kind of curious how Avon came to slap cowpunk on the book and if there are other books drifting around in the sub-subgenre.  Mr. Lansdale and Mr. LoBrutto explain in the introduction:

But, the term Cowpunk is a joke, nothing more.  It is not the beginning of a movement.  No secret handshakes or code rings here.  It is a playful poke at such "movements" as Cyberpunk and Splatterpunk as it is anything. - xii

This makes me fucking happier than listening to Deadwood dialogue.  It's been a long time since I was genuinely "fat kid dancing with cotton candy" happy to read something.  Razored Saddles is also a little nostalgic for me.  This book reminds me of anthologies and assorted horror I cut my teeth on, starting around age 12 (most of which I should not have read until I was old enough to buy smokes).

I'll be making a follow-up/review post soon but in the meantime I'm gonna crack open a Lone Star and fresh pack of Pall Malls and get to reading.