The Farstrider Scout

Fight night down at Wizard’s Keep was fun, despite yet another loss, this time against Imperial Guard.  Not enough anti-armor on my part, though I did manage to immobilize one Vendetta and wreck a Chimera, as well as wipe out two infantry squads.  Mike was extremely helpful and pointed out that it took him a long time to win a battle too…  So, I’m learning, and tweaking.  The higher points value armies that we’ve been playing with seem to have helped me out as well.

I did, however, purchase a Gun Drone squad, one of the few Tau items available at the shop, and today spent about 3.5-4 hours painting one up.  I forgot to add sept markings for identification until after I took the first round of photos, so I had to go back and add them, but I’m happy with the overall result.  For the sept markings, I ended up deciding on the Tau equivelant of TFS, for The Farstrider Scout.

That’s my current record with the Tau.  Not off to a good start…  But what I should NOT say is that I’m doing everything “right” and that I’m not learning anything;  I’m not, and I am.  I’m sure a large part of my frustration lies in the fact that I still don’t know the rules (big thanks to the people I played with today for all their patience and help), nor do I know all the little ins and outs of each army, much less my own.  I’m still forgetting specific rules that apply to me (such as Orks as Preferred Enemy when playing with Farsight), and it’s hurting me.  That particular one, had I remembered it, could have bought me some valuable hits/wounds against my opponent’s command squad in the last match we played tonight.  Anyway, down to the meat of the matter – what exactly happened today?  I really need to start taking notes and pictures, but I always feel that it would some how be intruding, though for the last match we were definitely strapped for time (only got to turn three) and couldn’t have afforded it.  So, I’ll try to go from memory.

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I pulled a rather costly mistake in EVE recently; a combination of allowing myself to be distracted by the ongoing Alliance tournament, flying in low-sec with my freighter, not paying attention to the people in the system and gambling at their benevolence, picking the wrong place to jump to, and then attempting to log out as my ship was being blown to pieces.  Ultimate cost to me – 700 million ISK for the freighter, and another 100 million in implants for my clone.  Fortunately I was running on an empty hold, having just delivered some cargo (to a member of the corporation who’s corp/alliance mates blew up my ship, oddly enough) and had been on my way to a different station in the same system to pick up a load for somewhere else, so no loss there.

About an hour later I was back in the system, moving my cargo the slow way – in a cargo ship with a hold 1/29th the size of the late Kismet, and I was chatting with the same people who killed me.  I think I was being pretty good natured about the whole thing – I know when I made a mistake, and a stupid one at that.  But as far as stupidity goes, what followed tops even that…

One of the players – we’ll call him “Max”, because I don’t recall their names – puts out an offer:  Join our corp so we don’t kill you anymore.  I counter with a joking remark that now they’ve stooped to extortion.  He asks me how that is, and I point out that he’s effectively said “Join our corp, or we’ll kill you.”  He is still at a loss and replies that that wasn’t what he said at all.  Riiiiight.  I leave with a “I’ll consider it”, and let the matter drop.

The next day though, I get an in-game mail from their recruitment officer.  It’s obviously a canned message, but I’ll put it here because I really don’t think I can convey the stupidity inherant in the message…

Hey, would you be interested in joining a new corp? I only try to recruit people we kill. It usually gets us better recruits, because if they can overcome their loss, reason with their killers, realize their folly and grow a pair, they can become a very decent player when it comes to EVE

So, here’s what I can tell you about the worst alliance in EVE. General Tso’s is a large mass of idiotic assholes that take nothing seriously. They play the game, and they really don’t care what happens. Usually when they fight, they get owned, because not only are they noobs and can’t form any decent mass, but they always pick off more they can chew. General Tso’s are some of the biggest griefers around, but don’t fear them because they are nothing but the dirt on the ground. They like harassing people, and no one, not even members of their own family are free from the agony. When it comes down to it, however, General Tso’s are nothing but a band of interweb dorks with no real social life and try to compensate their small phallus’s by making other people rage in game.

Here’s the serious note. There is nothing serious… this is a game. If you can take getting your balls busted, like to joke about poo, sex and other naughty stuffs, then you should fit in. If you can hold your own, and you don’t get offended by topics such as religion, gore, sexual behaviour mainly composed of the homosexual nature, racism, politics and anything else close to being offensive, you’re already a member and don’t realize it yet. So get your loser ass into our corp, or get your loser ass corp in our alliance. Or war us. We’ll fight provided the tactics are right, until our little bums are red with rashes from getting pounded, and then we’ll run and hide until it all blows over. And then the game goes on…

Toss Jade Elaira a convo. He’s a rather interesting male/female hybrid. Or maybe you’ve already heard of him… Or maybe you know him, you just don’t know it. After all, Jade is sending you this because he’s had some contact, major or minor, with you before.

So basically, you’re a bunch of idiots and losers, and telling me this is going to make me want to join your corp…  Why?  How?  I don’t know, this one is beyond me.

This weekend I had the opportunity to borrow someone’s Tau army and play in a Warhammer 40k (40,000) tournament.  My first two opponents were very understanding and helpful in trying to teach me how to play, so big kudos to them.  It actually ended up being very interesting and very enlightening, dispite the fact that I got my ass kicked all over the table, as it were.  By the third and final match though, I had learned to keep moving – the Tau’s strengths are their mobility and their high ranged damage output.  Any melee combat that I found myself locked into was typically lost.

There were a few defining and hilarious moments in each match, however, such as the one to the left.  In that particular one, I had moved my command squad into a building for height purposes and also because that position was actually behind the rear/right flank of my opponent’s line.  My two battlesuits were enough to cause my opponent, who was playing Tyranids, to divert several of his troops;  they proceded to climb the wall and slaughter my command squad.  Everything after that was pretty much hopeless as I watched my first tank crash and burn, my second one explode from a rear ambush, both Devilfish APCs get disabled, and my infantry get overrun by foes that had superior arms/armor and far outnumbered me.  Of the four objectives on the map, I was able to contest ONE – with a wrecked APC – for a loss.

The second match, against Orks, proved to be slightly better.  The objective this time was simple annihalation, and I managed to destroy the command vehicle within my first turn, forcing the squad to continue on foot, so I was off to a good start.  Unfortunately, that’s about as good as it got.  I didn’t move my tanks fast enough, and so with in a short time the Orks caught up to them and proceded to tear chunks out of their hulls.  The only upside to this meant that my vehicle-mounted anti-personnel flechettes that were mounted on the tanks were able to whittle down their numbers considerably, and then the ensuing explosion from one of the tanks all but wiped out what was left of one squad.  That’s about where things ended, as once again I lost both APC’s, and both tanks, and my infantry squads were down to two troops when the judge called time and the game ended.

The third and final match was against Space Marines, and was also another objective match.  While I didn’t come out quite as bad as far as units went, I was not able to contest either of the two objectives.  It didn’t help that I had placed mine in a tight corner where my units wouldn’t be able to fight well.  The defining moment of this game was bringing my two Piranhas – high speed scout skimmers (Think “snow speeder” from Star Wars and you’ll have a close picture) in from reserves in an out flank maneuver.  This placed them well behind enemy lines, and as things had it, right by the building that the enemy commander was in…  So I blew it up.  Unfortunately, vehicle and building explosions don’t neccessarily destroy their occupants, so all I really did was piss him off.  My first Piranha was quickly turned into a flaming wreck, and as the second tried to escape, moving flat out for its full available movement value, the commander shot it in the rear, penetrating the armor and causing that one to wreck as well.  The match ended shortly after that, for my third loss.

Overall, what mattered to me was that A) I had fun, and B) I met people.  The person who so kindly offered to lend me his army has said the offer remains open for the future, provided I give him a heads up, so I’m likely to be doing more of this soon.

The great land rush is on, and has been for several hours now.  I actually managed to arrange my sleep cycle so that I would be able to get up in time to stake a claim before most of the population of EVE was in on it.  Still, the population drove up drastically after 8 am EST, when the servers come back up from maintenance.  On my first pass through the Old Man Star system, enroute to pick up my planetary command centers, there was one person besides myself.  On the way back, however, there were 14 – and Old Man Star is lowsec.  My only mistake at first was bringing a ship with not enough cargo space to hold the command centers – knowing I was going through lowsec, I started out with a cruiser, but eventually ended up coming back with my blockade runner, which I think made much swifter time between jumps.

I’m quickly learning that the Planetary Interaction (PI) system will be a long term investment for those that want to stick with it.  I imagine that the prices for certain resources and supplies that used to be provided by NPCs will fall now that these things are provided by the players.  Given a few months though, there will be those that get bored with it and go back to their usual lifestyle, and the prices will rise again, though probably not nearly to what they were before.  In the meantime, it has become easy to exploit the laziness of others, since there were only about ten or twelve systems that the command centers were seeded in (at least in the Essence region – I can’t speak for elsewhere), and so it’s easy enough to buy a bunch up, take them to a system that they haven’t been seeded in, and re-sell them at a greater price.  There are some people charging double what they originally sold for – and they’re being bought.  I imagine that eventually these too will become player-created, though whether it is a planet-side construction, or made from a blueprint at a station, I can’t say.  Personally I find the planet-side creation of commodities to be a lot more enjoyable than trying to build something space-side.

Honestly, there’s one huge, fatal flaw in the current system.  As it stands right now, other players cannot destroy or interfere with your planetary infrastructure…  but that ability to destroy what others create is one of the great wonders that makes the EVE universe turn, and evolve!  Imagine, if you will, if all of the player owned stations (POS) could never be destroyed or taken over?  The universe would stagnate, people would lose interest, and game population would drop.

There is one other game that exists, that the PaleStardevelopers hate to have compared to EVE because they are so vastly different that there is very little comparison.  With the release of Tyrannis, that gap grew a little smaller.  This game is called DarkSpace, and it can, and will be said, that they did planetary interaction FIRST, and in my opinion, they did it RIGHT too.  In their static universe – metaverse, as they call it – planets may be built up as industrial, technological, or just pure “battlestars” where every available build spot that is not required for power or personnel, has some sort of weapons platform on it.  The opposing team has the option of bombing it into oblivion, and then capturing it, or simply landing enough troops on the surface to overwhelm the garrisoned forces and capture it with (most of) the infrastructure intact, or any varying level of the two.  If the planet is built up in the correct manner by an experienced player (“skill points” have no role in this – it is all up to player knowledge and skill), it takes a large and coordinated fleet to overwhelm planetary defenses and capture it.

I am not saying that CCP should copy Palestar exactly (in fact I’m wondering if they’ll take issue over simply the planetary interaction system being a copyright infringement of some sort to begin with), but change is definitely needed in that area.  How to implement such a change in a way that is fair to even the casual player who wishes to stick with PI however, is beyond me, and will likely take until the arrival of Dust 514 to come about.

For those that aren’t in the know, EVE Online released their latest expansion, Tyrannis, last week, along with their new social portal, the EVE Gate.  With this new expansion, the face of EVE undergoes a massive transformation as they take their next steps into bringing about their console MMOFPS (which I sincerely hope they release for PC as well), Dust 514.  Players will now be able to interact with the planets themselves, instead of just mining the numerous moons around the EVE universe, placing structures and gathering resources in what is supposed to be a step to phase out the remaining NPC driven portions of the economy and put it entirely in the players’ hands.  The full portion of this doesn’t go into effect until 6 days from now, and at the moment all people can do is train the neccessary skills required to make the most out of the expansion, and I made sure that I’ll have next Tuesday off so that I can try and get my grubby fingers into what is promising to be a massive land grab.  But at what cost does this come?

The first, most visible cost already, has been the planets themselves.  They’ve changed considerably.  One of  my “home” systems is Ommare, a second-to-dead end system in the Essence Region, held by the Gallente Federation, and this is where I first noticed the changes.  The first planet you see, or used to see, I should say, when coming into the system from Cat, the “opening” to our dead end road, is Ommare X.  Originally, it was a beautiful reddish brown desert, or “arid” planet, with a few sparse weather patterns swirling in the atmosphere.  A brief side note here – kudos to the art teams that did the planet surfaces, because with few exceptions, they’re beautiful.  Now, no longer an “arid” class, this planet, the outermost one in the solar system, has become an “ocean” class planet – pure water, sparse weather systems, and a hurricane/typhoon at each pole.  Science, I would think, would dictate that due to the distance from this solar system’s star, it should be an “ice” class planet.  Sadly, I do not have any screenshots showing the planet prior to it’s sudden change.

It’s nearly 4 am as I’m writing this, so one could argue that I’m not entirely awake…  We came in earlier than usual, as today is the last day, and we’ll be launching jets out for home in a few hours.  There wasn’t breakfast for us at the hotel due to the early hour, so I hiked down to the shoppette to grab something, and ended up getting a Krispy Kreme doughnut.  But it was as I was hiking back, savoring the taste of that doughnut that I realized something…  It’s hard for me to have a Krispy Kreme without thinking of the guys from the Wingless Cafe.

I discovered the stories of Toad and the Wingless back in high school, and was thrilled with every single one of them, and this is where I heard of Krispy Kreme even before I had ever seen an actual store that sold them.  They originally started out on the alt.games.warbirds site, but have since moved to http://agw.bombs-away.net.  I took some part in them under the name Iceman, as those days I was pretty young and impressionable, images of Top Gun fresh in my mind, and I’m afraid to say that a lot of what I wrote could be considered godmoding.  A few years later, having matured quite a bit, I relinquished the name out of respect for one of the developers of Warbirds, but by that time I had drifted away.  Sadly, these days the interest in the Wingless has died, and there hasn’t really been a post since 2008, and I honestly think that it started dying a slow death when one of the core members, Carrot, succumbed to cancer several years before that.

But I know that, like myself, the Wingless will always hold a place in the hearts of those that visited it, and as such will never truly die…  So here’s to all you guys – may your guns never jam, your engines never fail, and your bullets always find their mark.

 - “Serrus”

One can argue that much of we are able to do is fueled, at least in some portion, by our belief and faith in a thing.  Whether belief in a religion, particular action, or ability, the more of that belief you have, the more “real” it seems, despite the fact that it may not appear the same way to someone else.

There is one question that arises when the something that we profess to have belief in is a tangible thing, but that thing is accessible to most people, but not neccessarily all, such as color.  Is it real?  It certainly may be to you and me, and so, it must be…  But how do you describe that color blue to a blind man?  Or using the same analogy, even worse, how does one deal with someone who was not born blind, but by some unfortunate circumstance, has become so?  They know what “blue” is, but they cannot percieve it any longer.  Then, continuing on this vein, suppose that person is able to undergo an operation to restore, or in the first case, give them, their sight?  How will they handle this new sensory input?  Will it be the same as everyone else, or will their sky be purple (a little extreme, I know). 

Now apply this same question to something that is not normally tangible, such as something in religion, i.e. the power of God, or simply faith..  Not everyone perceives this, and those that do each feel it in a different way, but people do perceive it, so it must be real, right?  Now, imagine someone who has never had, or has lost that faith.  There is no medical operation that will give them that, so how do they get it? 

And for the person who has had that faith, and lost it, one can imagine that the loss of feeling can be as frustrating as someone losing their sight!  They know it is there, they know it is real, but they can’t touch it anymore.   Very possibly, over the passage of time, that sense of “real” fades, until someone else comes along and says “Look at this!  It is real!”, and they remember, that yes, it was…  But yet they still cannot touch it, and are conflicted.  How do they deal with this?  Will they ever be able to “receive their sight” again?  For the latter question, there are many that would say that the answer is a definitive “yes”.

Lastly, even rarer, imagine that the faith they lost can have an effects on the world around them.  The person must now not only deal with the conundrum of how to regain their “sight”, but also the moral/ethical/ecological complications involved with invoking that “sight” again…

For I am lost and cannot see,
I have not got my specs with me…

So, have I mentioned that I want to get stationed here?  Yeah, so anyway, Sunday was AWESOME, despite some of the setbacks.  I took over 80 photos, though a few I had to delete due to poor focus/exposure.  Far too many to upload here, but they are available on my Picasa page here.  There are a couple photos that I plan on putting together to form panoramas, including a 360 degree panorama that I shot.  I also put together a Google Maps layout of the different routes that I travelled, available here.  I suggest switching to ”Terrain” or “Satellite” view for a better idea of what things look like.  I’ll try to reference both as I go along.  I did take some video footage as well, using my cell phone, but that’ll have to wait until I can get home so that I can edit and save it in a better format.

On Friday afternoon, I drove out part of the way that I had initally planned on taking: a route through Farmington Creek Canyon, situated between Francis Peak and Bountiful Peak; one which would have had me following Skyline Drive (blue path on the map) all the way up to Francis Peak Road (green path on the map).  I got as far as the Sunset campground before deciding that it was getting a little late for driving on those roads and heading back.  Skyline Drive is a dirt road, most of the time only one lane wide, that hugs the mountain side, and it’s a long drop off if you go over the edge, at least until you get up closer to te top of the ridge.  Even then, it’s probably a good 10-15 foot drop, and I know from experience that your car probably won’t survive that drop.

I ended up spending about four and a half hours out in the Farmington Creek Canyon, stopping again at the Sunset campground to hike around and take pictures.  There was one path that passed above the campground to a rocky outcropping overlooking the creek (yellow path on the map).  I spent about twenty minutes there, taking photos and one video clip, and trying to hunt down the small lizards that I heard rustling around in the underbrush.  I only saw one though, and it scooted before I could get the camera up.

After that, I headed back down and into the campground, where I discovered the trail head for the Farmington Creek trail (red path on the map.  I threw caution to the wind and headed down.  It didn’t take all that long to reach the creek itself, and I passed several people with their dogs on the way down.  The trail split at the bottom, one path heading upstream, one heading downstream, so I took the upstream route, which ended up not going very far.  I found a spot that I could get right down by the creek at, and spent a few minutes playing around with shutter speeds and aperature settings, plus another video.  The water was ice cold from the snow runoff and was so loud that it sounded like a train.  After coming to a dead end, I headed back up, spotting one spider on the way.  Also of note:  “This hill is kicking my ass!”

After getting back to the car, I took a brief break to eat lunch, then continued on up the road.  I was pretty dissapointed when I got to the “intersection” as it was, only to find that all the roads going farther up into the mountains were closed.  I imagine that later in the year the roads are open, but I won’t be here then, plus I was there for the SNOW!  In retrospect, it was kind of a “Mount Hyjal” moment (had a picture for that, but it’s missing – I’ll find it later).  Still, there was quite a bit of snow at the turnaround point, so I spent a few minutes stomping around and taking photos.  There were a few spots where it was piled up six feet deep, but I managed to stay on top for the most part, though I did fall down once and got snow down the back of my pants.  Cold!

Finally, I headed back down, but it was still pretty early, so I didn’t want to leave quite yet.  There was a split close to the base that followed the western face of Bountiful Peak (orange path), so I followed that for a short way before finding a place to park and walk around.  I found lots of interesting things – a concrete structure with several lizards in it that I managed to get pictures of; several types of flowers; several black and white birds that I’m having trouble identifiying. 

The prize of this little side trip, however, was discovering a humming bird flying around.  It was very elusive, but every few minutes would land to rest, and eventually let me get close enough to take a few photos of it.  It was very facinating to watch, as it kept dive bombing through the brush tops, presumably catching small insects.  It had a very distinct sound; a warbling, staccato whistle as it dove, then a chitter as it climbed for altitude.  I took a video clip with the phone, but it failed to capture the motions or the sound of the hummingbird, and it was moving so fast that neither I, nor auto-focus, could lock onto it with one lucky exception as it reached the top of its climb.

Decidedly satisfied by the results, and feeling better than I have in a long time, I headed home, sunburnt and exhausted.

I spent a very wonderful and entertaining morning out at the Blue Table Painting studio today.  The owner, Shawn Gately – awesome guy, by the way -  was very welcoming, and showed me around and explained quite a bit about his business.  Out of respect for them, I only took one photo – more of a “pics or it didn’t happen” statement.  If you want to take a look at their work, you can find tons of photos on their main website, most of them in the gallery.  Honestly though, the pictures don’t do the quality of their work justice…  Simply AWESOME.  I didn’t ask all the questions that I initially had, but simply contacting BTP about visiting was a big step for me, I think…  Pushing my bubble, so to speak.

After that and lunch, I headed out through the mountains to Wasatch Mountain State Park.  Unfortunately, about five minutes after I arrived, it started pouring, so after checking at the visitor center for trail maps that would cover the area closer to where we’re staying (there were none), I headed out to find a road that would theoretically take me up and over the mountains via a more scenic route.  Alas, it was closed, so back to the hotel I headed.

All in all, a very enjoyable day.  Tomorrow – more hiking, or at least more SCENIC driving – not that it was any less beautiful, but it’s hard to take photos when you’re driving at 65 mph on a highway – and LOTS more photos.