Keeping your accounts safe

I’ve been reading ont the Eve forum that people have had their accounts hacked. There are several reasons for this. Usually the most common one is that players are buying isk. Not only is this considered cheating, it is very risky. Most isk sellers are hackers, and attempt to upload malicious software designed to steal your Eve username and password.

So how do you protect your Eve accounts?

DO NOT BUY ISK! As stated above, this is considered cheating and is the preferred way for hackers to gain access to usernames and passwords. Once the hackers have your username and password, they log into your account(s) and steal your items to sell on the market and your isk. If you do buy isk and your account(s) do get hacked, there’s not much you can do as CCP will probably take a close look at your account. If they see you have been buying isk, you might get lucky and just have the isk removed and be given a warning. Worst case scenario: that character you’ve been working on for a year and a half is no longer accessible because you’re account is banned, permanently (known as a perma-ban)

Change your password every so often. Usually once a month is good. If you have multiple Eve accounts, use multiple passwords.

Do not give out your username and password to ANYONE! Not even your partner. I trust my girlfriend with my life, but when it comes to my characters, forget it. I’ve spent close to 3 years developing one account alone, so if she thinks she’s logging on to that account and deleting it (don’t laugh, I’ve read about it happening), she can think again.

Make sure your firewall and anti-virus are up to date. Firewalls block suspicious packets of data, such as those associated with port sniffers (programs designed to detect open ports on your computer). Anti-virus programs, if they run in the background like mine does, will detect and stop malicious programs before they can be installed on your computer.

Don’t respond to emails asking for your username and password. CCP don’t need to know your username and password. They have access to your account(s) without needing your username and password. And I can only think of two reasons why CCP would need access to your account: you’ve been reported as an isk buyer, or you’ve send a petition requesting your username/password because you can’t remember them (done that before).

Following the above rules for your eve online accounts will ensure that you never have to suffer the embarrassment of having all your isk, ships and items stolen. And the same could be said for all your usernames and passwords. After all, many of us keep our usernames and passwords to financial institutions and credit card companies secret, even from our partners, so why not do the same with our Eve Online username and passwords?

Until next time

Lord Yu

Downtime

Eve Online has one hour a day where the server is taken offline for server maintenance, small patches and other maintenance that has to be performed. This is done between 11am and 12pm GMT, as the server is in Britian. In the case of an expansion, this is usually a few hours to make sure everything works as intended

And most players hate it.

Personally, I don’t mind it

It’s one hour a day out of 24. The most I mine is about 4-5 hours, and that’s generally during the day anyway. So it really doesn’t affect me. After downtime, I mine about 2 hours. Living in Australia, I usually get to bed around 12:30am, maybe 1am, after letting my brain settle a little.

Also, downtime is necessary to maintain and defrag the database. The Eve Online database performs millions of transactions a day. It tracks who traded what to who, who put what on the market, where it was put up for sale, who bought items on the market, how many they bought, the item(s) bought, I could go on, but you get the general idea. Eventually, the database is going to become so fragmented that something will mess up somewhere. I would rather have a 1 hour downtime a day where maintenance is performed than an entire 1 day a week.

And, I’m assuming, so would the rest of the Eve community

Until next time

Lord Yu

Why girls/women don’t play EvE

An interesting post on the forum this last week or so on the Eve forum

It went something like “Any hot girls play Eve?”

And it gave me one of the many answers to the quesion why girls don’t play Eve

1. None of the females who do play Eve want to be hassled by immature players asking stupid questions

2. The one who do play don’t admit that they are for the same reason

3. I’ve finally understood why the Hellcats (greetings to you, fair ladies *tips hat*) won’t allow males in the corp. They just want to play Eve, not get hassled.

Of all the players I have met and flown alongside, two have admitted to being actual females. And I am proud to say I didn’t ask stupid questions, act immature or any way, shape or form hassle them. I did speak my mind to one who I thought was being a bit mean to some of the players who were renting alliance space, but that’s hardly hassling.  I didn’t really like that alliance anyway, 99% of them were idiots.

Until next time

Lord Yu

So a funny thing happened…

My hauler alt has just gotten into an Orca, and I am enjoying it immensely.

Not for that fact that it can hold around 51,000 m3 of ore, although that is a nice feature. Not for the fact that it can run 3 gang links simultaneously (I run 2 plus a small tractor beam), although that too is a nice feature. And it’s not the fact that if a mining crystal breaks, my miner can grab a new one out of the corp hangars, but yes, that too is a nice feature

It’s the fact I can dump ore from my miner’s cargo hold into the corp hold of the Orca.

This feature came in very handy on Monday when, for the first time in a long time, someone tried to steal ore from the jetcan I had floating nearby. It was just blind luck I spotted the guy approaching, and switched from my miner to my hauler. I managed to grab around 21,000 m3 of ore and put into one of the corp hangars before transferring into the cargo hold of the Orca. Not getting the hint that I didn’t need to drop a can to mine, the one-sided conversation went like this:

***************: ha ha you lose

***************: oh and don’t bother hanging around because I can mine right into the corp hangar of that orca there

***************: so bye bye

After that, the would-be ore thief left the system.

Oh, and I blanked out my miner’s name because I don’t want every tom, dick and harry convoing me asking what system I mine in so I can fleet them. I don’t fleet non-corp pilots.

Until next time

Lord Yu

Happenings in Eve as of late

Not much going on in Eve at the moment. I’ve been mining away in my hulk which I my mining alt got a week or 2 ago. Must admint it’s a nice, relaxing change from the frenetic activity of combat. The mineral prices aren’t too bad at the moment, so I’ve made quite a bit if isk. Haven’t moved down with the alliance yet, going to do that tomorrow. That’s going to be fun, moving a hulk AND a badger II 40 odd jumps ro the alliance base. I don’t really see the point to me being down there though, fair enough the minerals are better but I need to mine more ore per m3 to get the good stuff, Not to mention the fact that I don’t have the skills to mine anything other than veldspar, plagiocalse, pyroxeres and scordite. Still, it will be worth it I guess. I’m closer to my corpmates, I can attend corp/alliance mining ops and once I get my combat toon back online he can help out if any neutrals decide they want to fight.

So apart from mining, my eve life as been fairly quiet. Which is good thing, for a change.

Anyway, fly safe, and may your enemies tremble in fear at the very mention of your name

General Qatar

PS Thanks to watlankor for his comments in “How to be a competent fleet commander”. After a lot of thought, Ive decided to ditch the drake as a PVP boat and am currently training recons. I did play around a little bit with EW when I first started playing Eve, and found it to be quite fun. Plus the bonuses to EW on recons is just nuts.

Trust amd thieves

A number of times while playing Eve, someone has blatanly warped into the belt I have been mining in, approached my can and stolen the ore I have mined. Now, I understand that they generally do this to get other players to fight, what I don’t understand is why do it to a miner? It’s not like I’m going to drop what I’m doing just so some griefer can get his jollies. Also, just for those who may not play Eve Online, if someone steals from a jettisoned can. they start to flash red on the overview. This means you are allowed to shoot them in empire space (any solar system with a security rating of 0.5 to 1.0). But here’s the catch; as soon as you start shooting them, they, and any one in their gang, are also allowed to shoot you.

The other problem I have is a lot of ore thieves tend to work in gangs. As soon as you shoot the person who stole from you (generally acting as bait), the gang will warp in and you can have an entire fleet of ships shooting at you, with no escape as they have usually watp scrambled and webified your ship. The largest gang I have come up against in empire was 3 ships.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for pvp. But these players obviously can’t cut it in low sec, and they definately wouldn’t get away with stealing ore in 0.0. So really, there’s no where for these players to pvp except in empire, and empire players generally don’t want to pvp. As a result, their pvp is severely limited and the fights they get are few and far between, in theory.

The other type of thief in Eve is the corp thief. These players are very cunning, usually waiting months to gain the trust of the CEO and directors of a corp to get access to corp and POS hangars. There was one such heist where a gang of thieves infiltrated a corp, was granted access to hangars containing billions of isk worth of BPO’s and equipment, and either stole or destroyed most of the corp’s assets and “assassinated” the CEO. This was not a small corp either. It had taken years for the CEO to build up his corp to that point, only to have it all taken away from him.

So, the moral to the story? Do not trust anyone in Eve. Just because someone is willing to help you, doesn’t mean they won’t turn and stab in the back at the first opporunity. Or at the very least, be very careful who you do trust, especially with equipment and blueprints.

Until next time

General Qatar

PS. Before I forget. Over the next few weeks I probably won’t be blogging about Eve. I’ve managed to get Sins of A Solar Empire, and have been playing that. Also, the life of a miner in Eve is quite boring. The occassional ral and ore thief annoying me are about as exciting as Eve gets right now.

Mining and some other issues

With Breytac going off-line due to the fact that a) I’m bored with missions and b) Breytac doesn’t have a lot of gunnery skills, I’ve started mining. So far this week, I’ve made an estimated 50 mil. 50 mil in 3 days.

I’ve been in the wrong bloody profession all this time, why didn’t anyone tell me mining was so profitable?

Anyway, apart from being profitable, it’s also boring. I can see why there are not a lot players who do it, except maybe for macro miners, but most of those are isk farmers, and we all know I how feel about isk farmers. To do it right, you also need a separate character who can fly at least a small industrial, or someone willing to haul for you. Once you train the skills, mining can be very, very profitable. A player with perfect mining skills, as far as mining goes, not refining, can fill 1 jetcan (27,500 m3 of ore) in around 20 minutes. So just for siitng in front of a computer monitor for 2 hours, you have managed to pull in 20-30 mil of minerals, depending on mineral prices. Mining isn’t without its risks. You will need some (but not a lot) of drone skills if your just mining in empire. Mining in empire requires a whole different skillset, as well as the mining skills required for empire mining.

One other thing. Someone anonymously posted that my drake has t1 missiles. While I am quite aware of this, I feel the drake isn’t worth having t2 missile launchers. It’s more of a shield tanker, not a damage dealer. I’m slowly learning about ships, and being caldari, I prefer caldari ships. Just before Breytac goes inactive, I’m going to start training cruisers to level 5 so when I bring him back online, he’ll be closer to recons and HAC’s.

There is another issue I would like to address as well. There are certain people in a certain alliance that have been spreading rumours that I am a corp thief. I’m going to ask them nicely to stop as I have never stolen a thing from any corp that Breytac has been in (a total of 5: Replicatorz, Asguard Security Services, XTR, Darkside and Chaos Coalition). And as I recall, I only removed things from the corp hangar when I was asked or when I asked for permission. I admit, Darkside was a bad call, as the CEO turned to be an isk buyer, and I don’t think I need to repeat myself on how I feel about isk buyers. I had reasons for leaving each of the corps I was in, they are my own reasons, and not for discussion with anyone but the CEO’s of those corps. So please don’t ask. Except for Darkside, as when I reactivated Breytac, the CEO had been banned and the corp was dead.

Anyway, until next time

General Qatar

How to be a competent Fleet Commander

So, the alliance Breytac is in had to evacuate from 0.0, after losing a war againsr another alliance. I won’t go into details, but the alliance we lost to gave us 48 hours to move our ships and equipment out. Again, I won’t go into details, suffice to say that the alliance needed a defense fleet in the destination system in case someone thought it might be fun to attack one of our carriers. While waiting for the carriers, we were attacked by a battleship, which was destroyed. Now, I don’t know about you, but when a Fleet Commander warps after such an encounter, I would think he would warp the entire fleet, not just himself, and THEN tell the rest of the fleet to warp to a planet and to him.

But that’s exactly what he did, leaving me behind get warp scrambled and attacked by two battleships. I lost my t2 fitted drake, and to add insult to injury, was pod killed as well. That was when I thought I am not wasting any more isk to set up a ship so it can blown up again, especially not a t2 fitted drake. so I decided to set up a caracal instead. Around 20 mil buy and set up, and by mining, I can recover that in a week.

Now to my point. If you ever find yourself in the situation where you are commanding a fleet (a fleet can be any size, but smaller “fleets” are called gangs), DO NOT LEAVE ANYONE BEHIND! Before you even think of destroying anything, make a safe spot, somewhere in space out of scanning range of all planets, moons and stations. Once you have destroyed a ship, warp the entire fleet to the safe spot, not just yourself.

so next time your facing down that battleship and your gang/fleet manages to make it go bang, make sure your entire gang is safe. Otherwise, you might find your pilots not willing to join in any more gang/fleet ops because they think your an incompetent nincompoop who’s only loyalty is to himself.

Until next time

General Qatar

Pirates

Lately on the Eve forums there have been players who play as pirates complaining about the lack of targers in low sec. They want CCP, the company who runs Eve Online, to “force” players into low sec. Basically pirates in Eve want easy kills, not targets who can fight back and win. Well I’m sorry to say that CCP is not going to give into these demands. I know how hard it was as a new player travelling through low sec only to be ganked by some idiot pirate corp and lose my ship and fittings I had worked so hard for.

And just for anyone who doesn’t understand. In Eve, you have security status. Working for one of the four empires in eve raises your security standing. Working against one of the empires (for example, running combat missions for an NPC pirate corp) or targeting another player lowers your security status. It’s not a huge hit, but do it enough, and eventually you will not be allowed into any of the empire’s space. Pod killing (or podding, as it is known) will earn you a bigger loss in security status (security status is rated from -10 to +10, obviously -10 being the worst). I won’t cover how faction standings work, as that is different to security status, but suffice to say that attacking a race enemy in a mission won’t alter your overall security status.

So fi you’re thinking of becoming a pirate in Eve, just remember: you chose your profession, you live with the consequences. Don’t go whinging on the forums that you can’t get into systems with a security rating of 0.5 and higher, and don’t go trying to force CCP to change the game so you can play it the way you want to play it.

I think I’ve made my point.

Until next time

General Qatar

Breytac’s back!

I was playing my General Qatar character the other day when I thought how great it would be get my Breytac character back, So I decided to send in a petition, after reading what information might be required to find a lost user name. Quite frankly, I wasn’t all that confident about getting Breytac active again. So  first of all, I logged in to Eve to make sure Breytac still existed. To my suprise, he did. I sent in the petition, quietly hopeful Breytac’s login information would still be somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of usernames. So about a day later, I login to find the petition has gone from “Open” to “Active”. Give it a few days, I thought, it might take them some time to get to my petition. I’ve heard of playing waiting weeks for their petition to be looked at. I can’t remember exactly when it was, but I checked on the Eve web site as to whether they had looked at my petition. To my surprise, they had. Even better, they had found the user name for Breytac! I immediately logged in, changed the temporary password to a more permanent one, and started playing. I spent most of the 95 million isk buying equipment, plus I lost the tech 2 fitted drake to a level 4 mission as I didn’t check the mission info on Eve survival (note to self: when doing level 4’s, check to see if there are any “triggers” (ships which, when attacked, will trigger a respawn) for that mission)).

It just goes to show, if you ask, you jusr might receive

Until next time

General Qatar/Breytac/whatever 🙂

PS Happy 5th birthday Eve, still going strong after all this time. May you have many more birthdays to come