The Eve Online Thread

[scsiborg]

Eve Online

I had absolutely no idea that this forum existed - untill about 10 minutes ago. Frontier Elite for me was probably the best game i have ever played. to be honest i thought that the Frontier elite dream died a long time ago and for me it was quite sad. I have searched far and wide to find a game that could come close - and nothing, Frontier elite had a free and open world - the jump drive system was a complete masterpiece and even now - there isnt a space sim game that allows you to land on planets like elite did. the closest i have seen is Eve online - which lets face it is good - but not a patch on Frontier Elite.

Its great to know the frontier team are still working on this - there is no alternative - i for one am a massive fan and will definatley be purchasing the new game when it comes out.

i would be more than happy to help out during testing if needed - FOC of course

Jb

 

[Steve O B Have]

Welcome!

Never got stuck into EVE - just not keen on paying an ongoing fee to play it.

Hope you enjoy your stay

 

[Darkman]

Eve Online

I played Eve for 1 month only and I had to pay for it, no trial. Although I found it to be a fine on-line game I was disappointed that I could not land on planets and mine materials etc - it's just very unrealistic not to be able to do those things. Another big one for me was a realistic galaxy set-up like in Frontier/First Encounters but they had a realistic solar system set up so I'll give them that. Hated the idea of jump gates since they have been overused in this genre, you can't beat a jump drive IMHO. I have thought about playing again, but to be honest I don't want to pay the fee they charge each month.

To conclude:

It's a good start from what they have done already but I always assumed that they would include planetary landings and a realistic galaxy set up in an expansion pack by now. However, they could do those things later on. The main thing for Frontier is that they have already done this in Frontier/First Encounters so they already have the know-how of how to implement these features.

 

[djbully]

Hi,
I played Eve for 2-3 months but in the end I just got annoyed with turn based combat and not being able to control your ship properly. its just a point and click affair. No really dexterity involved just down to what skills you character has. Before that I was playing Star wars Galaxies which was being labelled as a kind of Star wars elite, at least to start with but Sony just ended up ruining that game Was reading about another game called Infinity, there was a link in this forum somewhere, that looks like it could be interesting. We'll just have to see.

Bully

 

[scsiborg]

eves alright

in my opinion Eve wouldnt exist if they had released more elite games - people talk about their favorite games and how the latest are the greatest. but they arent - i find most games lack depth and thought - elite was inovative and different - it worked very well for me, it had a feeling of adventure and discovery. the galaxy was massive, i still dont know how they managed to fit so much on such a small disk. id like to know why really, frontier dropped elite for so long - im pleased about elite 4 still being in the pipeline, but why has it taken so long???

its like inventing something special and never doing anything with it

 

[Steve O B Have]

I think part of it was having a vision and not having the tools or the resources to make that vision a reality.

To be fair, we wouldn't be aware of there being an Elite 4 in development if it weren't for the initial dev news a long while ago. It's kinda like watching paint dry.

In my opinion, Frontier have presented us with something of an opportunity to contribute to a community with an outside possibility of indirectly contributing something to the final product. The fact that David is active within these forums and reads our posts could well lend itself towards our ideas being taken note of.

I don't think that as individuals we can honestly ask or expect much more than that.

 

[scsiborg]

The Failings of the Competition.

Here is a none-exhaustive list of problems with eve online; hopefully this will be of interest to someone.

This list was collated by me and friends, for the purposes of this forum. These issues really annoy us and are not considered problems by CCP.

It’s important to remember however that ccp have done a lot of things very well with eve and it would be a total injustice not to recognise this.

Eve Online: The failings of the competition

No Planet landings - Why would they miss this out? Planets and moons should be more than scenery - we should be able to build and interact with them. Eve doesn’t allow you do even get close – so much potential is wasted.

Ships fly through each other and planets - No clipping at all - all ships glide through things as if they weren’t there.

Star gates – A restrictive annoyance that cause bottlenecks, travelling around the galaxy takes far too long – some of us have had to wait for 500 other people to jump before we could and then been kicked to the back of the queue again. You can only travel by a factor of 1 jump (except in massive carriers/dreadnaughts and titans). Bring back the jump drives and fuel! (oh and fuel scoops )

Unhelpful and rude Support staff – This really is a problem – everyone I have ever known to launch a petition or report a fault have been shunned with “prove it” or something on the lines of being unwilling to help, after waiting weeks for a response in the first place. This is really annoying.

Progress – Eve Works on a basis of skill and skill points in order to gain access to game contents and improve your abilities – which is fantastic – except for the totally unreasonable amount of time it takes for some skills – up to 60 real days to gain 1 extra level within 1 given skill – it all seems geared towards keeping people paying for longer, obviously most play per play games are set up for that reason – but, why do it so prominently and unreservedly – they could make more skills and reduce their training times to give a better feeling of progress. We wouldn’t want newbie’s coming along and kicking the vets asses though.

Control – The ships fly themselves and you do nothing except say where you want to go – it’s more like you’re a commander than a pilot and its rubbish. Within elite – it was necessary to find the target before you could lock on to it and blow it out of space – eve employs a system in which everything is listed on the right hand side – so that all you do is click – target – fire – watch.

Carriers – what is the point of getting a carrier or other capital ship – with docking facilities, and not be able to let your allies dock inside – so so annoying – it would be so cool to have a functioning “mother ship”

Stations – Messed this up completely – they have something called a POS (player owned structures) its like a bubble in space with lots of buildings inside it – its extremely expensive and a fantastic waste of time. Although these structures are formidable and difficult to kill it seems to make no sense that you can only build in space – why not build on a moon or planet – perhaps defend that with a station or planetary gun. As far as stations go – you need to be part of a corporation with enough POS’s within 1 system to gain sovereignty, once your corporation (alliance) has enough sovereignty you can than attack a station (within the same sector) until its health drops below 0 – when it does, its yours! – who the hell thought that up? The person to land the final blow gets control.

Freedom – once you have spent years gaining skills and abilities to fly something massive – you are then met with an issue of freedom – your now too big to use star gates – you need you smaller friends to drop a beacon (within range) in a nearby system, you can then jump to that sector – but only is it’s a low security one, if you try and jump into a safe area, concord (the police) blow the poop out of you. So you spend all that time only to lose freedom.

Mining – I spent 6 months learning mining skills and got a mining barge – I spent a day at it and took my haul to market – it really isn’t worth it – you could make much more doing other thing – however the lower the security the better the minerals – we still don’t think its worth it.

I hope this helps in some way

Jb

 

[scsiborg]

""Unhelpful and rude Support staff – This really is a problem – everyone I have ever known to launch a petition or report a fault have been shunned with “prove it” or something on the lines of being unwilling to help, after waiting weeks for a response in the first place. This is really annoying.""

at the time of this writing - there is a message on the login screen "loggins are being throttled" we cant login - we dont know why.

its like paying for a cinema ticket, sitting down and being asked to leave.... with no reason given - the seats are being throttled - bye

 

[Darkman]

Eve Online

I remember another on-line game, Mankind, that I once played. I had set my mining site to defend itself when off-line and when I came back on I had an abusive message left for me from another user calling me the B word and such. Basically he had come in peace and ignored the fact that I was off-line, which was why my facility was attacking him. In a rage he blew my facility to pieces and sent the message. I did report this to support since it was in the rules that you're are not allowed to swear etc and all they replied was, "It's just a game" and to keep my cool. After that I thought they could shove their on-line game (servers and all) up where the sun don't shine and cancelled my subscription. If they can't abide by their own rules then that tells me a lot about what they think of their customers. It could be that they were just too lazy to do anything about it.

Luckily though, I never had any problems with EVE myself but not being able to login without reason is pathetic.

 

[Flash]

Here is a link to EVE Online in Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_online

Personally I love EVE. As you'll see if you read the Wiki entry, most of the issue raised here about EVE are planned to be addressed as (being an on-line game) EVE is an ongoing development.

Take time to read the entry and you get a fair idea of the incredible depth and complexity that EVE has to offer.


Flash

 

[VictorT]

EVE Online for Linux, officially?

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=574782

yay! not that that couldn't possibly ratchet it up any more for E4 [for linux ] but, an EVE client, X2 and X3, and maybe vendetta (but does Vendetta count?) all for linux, two at least in active development.. Not to mention fresh new madeover vegastrike in view.. my god, it almost sounds like a marketplace..

but what a response they got from random developers in the community! haha, can't wait to see if this one happens..

cheers ^_^

 

[JohannStrauss]

Eve-Offline?

No, I still refused to play it.
Yes - I feel some sort of tickle in my brain to do so.
The universe is massive and SOME of my ideas of starting up a galactic company, organization or even a small empire seem to be included there.
I spend the last 7 days reading blogs, forums and some sort of inside information and I came to the conclusion that this game isn't that complicated at all. N00bish? perhaps - but as a real-life stock analyst and a NYSE trader I think I could handle quiet a lot of complexity. But then again... there are the WRONG-DOers. And I think there are a lot of them out there...
Pirates, pirates, HiHO pirates Arrrrrgh!
Not only the one-man-shows but huge Russian devisions of pirates (not to mention all those Germans)...
That really could ruin the fun.
And what about this escrow system?
Selling goods without docking?
Being ripped off?
I guess I'll take that step and move into it.
Founding my own multi-planetary conglomerate of sector dominating industries seems to be fun.
IF that would be possible.

Any experiences, yo ol' mostly harmless pirates?

(there is an Empire in Eve calling themselves "mostly harmless")

Is it worth paying a buck?

 

[Steve O B Have]

I played it for about 3 or 4 months and discovered that I was able to make more money 'Ratting' (hunting and killing non player pirates) and then salvaging than I ever could hauling goods.

Not a bad game by any stretch and it can certainly get addictive but I eventually discovered that I just didn't have the time to properly invest in it. Graphically it's very pretty and the multiplayer structure with high security and low security zones absolutely has its advantages but the constant need to be part of a corporation to actually have a chance of surviving in Low Sec put me off completely. Also the dull repetitiveness of the missions and the lack of background story depth also eventually put me off.

Worth a look for sure and being a stock trader it may well be just the thing you're looking for.

 

[JohannStrauss]

What Eve does fatally wrong...

Thank you for your opinion on Eve.
Since I absorbed any information about that game the last 14 days (I even found a PERFECT podcast dealing with all issues a noob needs to know - http://www.virginworlds.com/podcast.php?show=17&ep=3)
I do know that this game has some very strong disadvantages.
The Elite 4 dev.team should notice that very carefully!
For example:

1. Every pro states, that it is 100% impossible to play solo and on your own.
You won't get far. No independence - you HAVE to hang out with a corp. Which means, that you have to work as a slave for some guy having more skillpoints.
I am not a hierarchy type of player - in fact, I am not in real life. That is not an option - so this game IS nothing for solo-players in a massive online game.

2. Exploring (not in the Eve - way here where exploring is something like finding a hidden pirates-nest and exploit it) is no option. As soon as you leave the max. sec. space you will be shot sooner or later. Sooner, as far as I know since the goonswarm is applying the Jihad-tactics into this game - even in max.sec sectors. This is the most disappointing issue for me: no endless space, unlimited possibilities.

3. The universe is maybe big - but it is massively overcrowded: You won't find a single moon out there where you could harvest minerals secure - be sure, you will be tracked down in no time. That means, that you WILL NEVER EVER be able to start your own, secure and profitable business hidden in space - you will have to join a nerdy corp AND an alliance.

4. Due to the malprogramming the whole game suffers a massive deflation - now comes the point I DO KNOW something about.
Since first quarter 2008 the prices for most of the goods - no matter if it is raw materials, consumer goods or even ships are down about 80%.
Why? Because this game ISN'T a real market regulated by market powers: Any gamer want to make money - fast, into the billions. Overproduction, no demand. Profit rates are down to 10% for the professional producers. The 40.000 real gamers have now (most of them) highly skilled chars which are able to produce anything without any effort. But who should buy it?

5. This game pushes you into fights - no chance to live a free traders life the save and interesting way by exploring new systems.

6. Is a game worth playing, where it takes you at least 2 years to gain a skill to drive large ships? By the way: is that REALLY realistic?
I mean: you have 20 billion credits but you have to drive your ship on your own and need to have all patents for flying? Come on...an Arab Sheik does not need an A+ license to fly his own Airbus 380 - he has his pilot - perhaps an autopilot. So: you want a titan? play Eve for 4 years every day...or just gain a Ph.D. on physics in EXACTLY the same time - no kidding...

7. As far as I can see, the so often praised "economic system" isn't as good and complex as they say. You don't have nearly no margins between the systems because all the pro's are swarming around at every system without pause. What else can you expect when alliances control the whole universe?
Where are the unknown lands?
The big trade deals?


8. The only chance of making money in the beginning is mining. Mining - and get ripped. Perhaps a little salvaging... run missions...but really: For a player being really interested in industry development, building factories (forget about that due to deflation and the 3 years of skillpoints to work profitable. You don't have the Blueprint? You want to invent? Forget it...) there is No way to do so. You will never ever find a hidden place to fill a space in the supply chain.
Missions, mining. But again: Only in corps - remember...

9. Science and invention: forget about it: you only can "invent" known objects. If you are VERY lucky (you have a success rate). And remember the deflation problem?
Go into the blogs and read about those problems. So what is left then? Mining. Killing. Or slave yourself to a corp.

So: Where is the fun?

For players from the early days in 2003-2004 it IS fun - with 40 mio. skillpoints.

Sorry, guys...Eve WILL be offline soon. They know it, we know it.

I am SICK of hearing millions and millions of issues about corps, corps, alliances, and corps. This is all the pro's are talking about.

Hello? Find a corp I fit in?
Find a corp that I can adopt to?

This is the thing massive online games are suffering from: It is much easier to become an self-made billionaire with unlimited power in real life than in some crappy online game like Eve. And THAT is the truth as far as I can interpret the online information.

PS: I will still move into Eve sooner or later. I am prepared, I have the calculations, the scripts and the view. But will it be fun? At least I will learn how Elite 4 should not be.

 

[JohannStrauss]

One good review seems to be this:

-------------------

Posted by ze Kranky Kraut on March 7, 2006.

I’ve been getting into EVE Online lately, thanks to the free 14-day trial. At this point I am not even sure if EVE Online should be classified as a game. It’s a glorified spreadsheet. As a game, it sucks and I am not sure why 100k people would pay a monthly subscription fee to run a bunch of numbers in a graphical spreadsheet.

Gameplay mainly consists of, well, doing nothing. You hit the autopilot or the mining laser and then wait for a few minutes. Rinse, repeat. Sometimes a bunch of feisty pirates try to murder you. You pick your target from the overview list, lock on your weapons, pick an orbit range from a context menue and switch on your laser. Then you watch. A few minutes later, either you or the pirate is dead. The only form of interactivity in combat I have found so far is occasionally hitting your shield booster to partially replenish your shields. It’s “auto-attack” combat in its most simplicistic form. Maybe combat gets more interactive once you acquire more sophisticated equipment but I somehow doubt it would change much.

Missions work the same. You set your destination, hit the autopilot and wait. Sometimes you even get to do the combat thingy while running a mission. Excitement abound. Mining in EVE has been one of the dullest gaming experiences in my life. Collecting ressources has been boring in every single game ever made but EVE takes the cake. You autopilot to an asteroid field, you switch on the mining laser and wait until your cargo hold is full and then you head back to base to sell or you dump the ressources into a container which you can later haul back to the base. If you’re mining in more dangerous area, you get to do more “combat”, either PvE or PvP.

Whether you win or lose in combat seems to be entirely dependent on your equipment and your character’s skill. Skills are developed automatically. You select a skill and then you wait. Like the rest of the game, you actually don’t have to DO anything. You don’t even have to be online. Offline skill developement certainly solves the problems of catassers outclassing everyone else but instead of rewarding those who play the most, the system rewards those who have been paying subsciption fees for the longest. Can’t say I am particularly fond of the idea.

I called EVE Online a glorified spreadsheet. I’m not exaggerating. The graphics are just window-dressing, they don’t provide any information. You don’t even have to look at what’s happening. I’ve stopped paying attention after a few minutes. All you do is pick stuff from lists and context menus. The game would work every bit as well without any graphics. Just slap together a standard Windows UI with all the options, have some text feedback and a progress bar and you’d have a fully functional non-graphical version of EVE Online.

There must be at least something that keeps 100k people playing and paying. Beats me, but it’s probably related to the whole PvP and corporations (the EVE equivalent of guilds) thing. From what I’ve gleaned from various forums, EVE seems to have a fairly intriguing guild politics and warfare aspect. So we have this really shoddily designed, mind-numbingly boring sandbox that does at least one thing well: it provides the players with sufficient tools to entertain each other.

I’ve never been much of a fan of sandbox-type gameplay in MMOs but there are a lot of people out there who prefer it to grinding through static content. Not matter how much EVE Online sucks as a game, the game has a surprisingly large number of fans. 100k subscribers is an amazing number for a game developed by a tiny Icelandic game developer, especially considering that EVE Online isn’t high fantasy mainstream.

----

And:

I’ve tried the trial too and frankly this game is just to get ISK (in game credits) to make your character better, buy stuffs and buy ships. The only fun comes from you going into battles with your friends online. I can get that fun from any game at my local cybercafe or even from my Freelancer game.

There’s no space anomaly to discover or mystery to unravel. Heck, there’s no aliens either and this is a space game! We are ALONE.
-----


Any other opinions?

 

[Steve O B Have]

There’s no space anomaly to discover or mystery to unravel. Heck, there’s no aliens either and this is a space game! We are ALONE.
-----


Any other opinions?

Not that I disagree with you on your comments but fundamentally that is what space trading games have been about - Make money - get better weapons - get a better ship. I think that you are correct - in this day and age there is a need for something a bit deeper and I think the this is the thing that the casual EVE player misses. There is nothing there to really hook you in story wise and it take playing an awful lot to get truly involved. The depth of the game is developed through the social interaction with other players over time. I imagine that enjoying that experience comes down to your individual desire for the social involvement.

Like you I'd like to be able to potter around and not have to deal with having my chuff blown off by pirates sitting on the hisec/losec boarder waiting for noobs like myself in extremely expensive (170isk) battleships clearly not equipped properly. Still I think I would like some level of optional social interaction and the opportunity to go exploring with some of you chaps/etts would be a rather nice possibility.

There was something kinda cool with EVE when you get yourself into deep water on a mission and were able to call on some mates to help you tackle it, doing something similar with E4 would certainly have its draw.

 

[Darth Beli]

First of all i want to say that this is not meant to be rude or offensive (especially no.6, it's just the best way i can describe what would happen), i'm simply trying to share my expirience for playing this game for a long time.

1. Of course you can but it would become boring very very fast, seeing as the game itself is MMORPG and the point of the game is not to be alone i don't understand how you can call that a disadvantage.
2. You can see some nice things in eve galaxy if you look for them, i have to admit that there are not a lot of em but you would need a lot of time to reach a couple. (about goonswarm jihad and stuff - read further)
3. Moons are not to be taken lightly, you want to mount a moon mining POS and be left alone to grab a lot of money not doing anything ? No way in a pvp game, of course someone else will be interested in the same moon, someone who has military power.
4. 99% of the stuff in the game is made/mined/invented/found ONLY by players (there is no NPC's seeding this stuff) : ships, equipment, weapons, minerals... things that are seeded into npc stations : blueprints for production, some goods used in several ways, skillbooks... Prices are falling and rising due to the demand/production all the time. The whole markets can be manipulated by even a single person sometimes for a lot of people to lose while other benefit from it. It happens all the time and i wouldn't cal that a malprogramming, it's actually a great feature in the game to make you think hard and smart before you venture into that kind of bussiness and while you are into it.
5. Again, it's a PVP game, you can't expect to play without fights, you want to explore new systems safe ? Get a covert ops and dodge gate camps, you will still get killed sometime but it's better then getting killed all the time.
6. You want big ships from the start ? No can do. Oh you got 20 billion credits ? Buy a older character for credits (which is legal) and fly whatever you like altought you will die a lot and lose those expensive ships cos you don't know how to fly them properly. You want a titan that early ? I'm sure you like being laughted at by 20k pvp'ers for losing it the day you bought it.
7. There are a lot of trading secrets in eve and it's prolly the most profitable thing in the whole game unless you have really a lot of time to search for officer spawns which will give you some expensive loot. I can't tell you any of them but it's all about information what is happening the the eve world and who is going where to do what.
8. It's kinda similiar to point 7., if you had informations and what is needed where, go there and make it for a lot of profit. If you want to be a industrial type of character you can, but remember it's a pvp game, pvp is active in industry as well so play smart and defeat your enemy/s in that field too.
9. Yes, you only invent known objects, it's the way it works, deal with it or don't do it. Deflation again ? Again, take a look at point 7. or 8.

Slave yourself to a corp ? It's all about being in the corp, if you really think that's enslavery or you had similiar expirience i feel sorry for you but it's not the way it works. You can always go to another corps freely until you find a corp you like people in.

So where is the fun ?
In battles between players, talking to your internet friends, trying different tactics in different ships which are differently fitted, doing stupid stuff once in a while....... etc etc

All aspects of the game are much much deeper then i tried to describe here answering your questions but one thing is for sure :
It's a pvp game and it's main objective is to have people fight each other either in small scale gangs like 10-20 ships or great fleet battles going from like 50 to 1000, yes 1000, i personally had the chance to be in a battle where we had more then 1000 people in the same gang going against 1000 people on the other side, it was laggy as hell tho and i died in the first wave after not being able to do anything like 10 secs after we jumped into the system, i would normally be ed off (especially since i was flying a expensive ship) or something but i was happy to participate in such a event, there is your fun.

If you are looking for a space game where you can safely trade/produce/explore then eve is not for you at all but if you want to do the same thing and by knowing that you can be killed anytime and doing everything you can to prevent it makes you thrilled then it sure as hell is for you.
Or if you like pvp, there are endless tactics going on, people making strategies for fleets, all players getting better at what they do.... etc etc it's awesome.
You don't have to wait 2 years to be active in any of this, older players depend on younger players a lot actually.
Have a look at this simple situation :
5 older players which are flying battleships (the ship which newer players can't fly yet for example) want to go out and kill something, they find a enemy and want to kill him but he escapes (warps out) cos they didn't lock him in time. Now, if they had one newer player in a smaller ship which has faster locking time and a simple device called warp disruptor he could catch that target and those 5 battleships would kill it. There you go, a new person made a kill possible for the older person, all happy. Of course one of the older persons can fly the smaller ship himself but that would mean less firepower in the whole gang.

So : It's a multiplayer pvp game which gives you a option not to join a corporation if you like, but you will miss a lot of stuff that are the most fun in the game.

Again, don't think i want to argue or to offend you, i'm trying to help.

 

[Ril]

Wow stumbled on this forum cant believe that people still play Elite, what a classic

Anyways on the subject of Eve i have to agree with the chap above, Eve is fatally flawed and as a player of two years the game has gone rapidly down hill since i started playing in spring 06.

I always got the feeling that i had missed the golden age and that EVE was less flawed in 03-06 but IMO it has progressively lost its way over the last two years.

The overall premise is good and at first their is a wow factor. But once you have grinded missions or mined for a bit you have to join a corp and this is when some of Eves flaws rear their head

The main problems are:

Manufacturing is dead, the market is saturated and you cannot make money unless you mine your own minerals, as players that mine and then build can afford to undercut you. A look on the EVE forums will reveal the level of fustration at this, to the point where some players have suggested that real life market mechanisms should be introduced

the Soverignity system is poorly implemented, it favours large coalitions and long establised alliances and it is impossible for smaller corps/alliances to break in to zero space without been a slave to an alliance

Connected to above, despite space been implemented, EVE has become more crowded. 100s of systems are worthless and the few that you can make money from are guarded by alliances

Eve prides it self of PVP, but this has got progressively worse, there are no 1 on 1s anymore, blob warfare is more comman as no one wants to lose their ships. Most tatics take advantage of server lag or stability and less on skill/prowess (log off traps etc)

Despite this, i stayed for two years

So why did i stay for two years? The answer is trading, it is quite simply the best trading game i have ever played. Market manipulation, supply and demand, carrying billions worth of goods between distant systems, its all there and you can have a lot of fun undercutting people and investing in the market.

But alas eventually the flaws grind you down and that is why i finally closed my account.

This is only my humble opinion but until these flaws are rectified i wouldnt recommend it

p.s if anyone plays and wants to get into trading, a tip is to look at the named mods market. It is suprising what people will pay for an extra 5% percent, and a lot of mission runners will sell their loot on masse, not realising the potential re sale value

 

[DraQ]

Wow stumbled on this forum cant believe that people still play Elite, what a classic

I don't - it's sequels (FE2, FFE) are much better.

 

[Steve O B Have]

@Ril - I entirely agree, the game has a really good initial impression and a decent bit of wow factor but it gets tired quickly.

welcome to the forums as well Ril.