Typical...

Seems I've just spent the past few days (though not really days, just small bunches of time training the early, quick skills whilst I've been online) training up Energy Grid Upgrades for eventually moving into my Covert Ops skill book and training into the Covert Ops Ships.

Except the skill required is Electronics Upgrades.

Oh well, at least it wasn't days wasted, rather hours, but still, its an annoyance.

And I suppose I eventually need Energy Grid Upgrades either way for my Tech 2 Power Diagnostic Units I have planned for my Raven, so its not all bad.

I am allowed to change my mind... aren't I?

Since my last post was all about my goals, and where I want to go with my character, I've decided to change my mind - I want to continue to work on my combat skills.

Still working towards the Exhumer and Covert ops goal, but I've come up with a skill plan for a perfect missioning Raven after getting back into doing Level 4 missions again and remembering how profitable they are.

Therefore using optimum training time (which I'm not, im still jumping around doing small duration skills whilst I'm online and letting longer ones run) I'm looking at the following:

Covert Ops - 22 Days
Exhumers - 51 Days
Missioning Raven - 63 Days

Though on one hand, the Raven mission setup gets me into Tech 2 cruise launchers, which would be handy for the Covops build as well if I want to set my mind towards Stealth Bombers... so in it's own little way, all my training wraps up together in a nice little package.

I still need to train my gunnery skills, as missiles are fairly poor for PVP combat, so I can imagine a PVP fittings plan coming together soon... maybe.

Goals - or how I learned to appreciate the idea of not running blindly...

I always like to set myself at least some sort of long term goal in a MMORPG, gives me something to focus towards, even if I get sidetracked, I always know where to head to next.

Because long term in Eve can mean literally years worth of training, its a bit unrealistic, so im setting myself some medium term (roughly 3-6 months aims)

Currently:

Level 4 Missions - Im quite confident on my ability to run these solo, though there are a few skills I can boost to assist (mainly achieving Tech 2 shield hardeners and Cruise missiles for my Raven) This is my main source of income.

Stealth Bombers / Covert Ops - One of my 'plaything' aims - I want to be able to pilot ships that can use cloaking devices well. My other aim before I left was to be able to pilot Interceptors and I managed that, though I didn't use them much because of their associated costs - now the prices for tech 2 equipment have dropped a bit, they are a bit more affordable to lose. Eventually I want to be able to take part in the exploration sub-game and the stealth ships seem to be the best suited for those.

Exhumers - One of my early aims was to be able to pilot a mining barge type ship well enough to be able to withstand belt rat damages, so the only real point of focus was the Exhumer (tech 2) class - The Mackinaw particularly seems to be very suited to this task with its bonus to Ice mining (only possible with a strip miner I believe) and also its bonus to shield resists, which compliment my Caldari focused shield training.

At the moment, its looking to be around 27 days for the Stealth Bomber training to level 4, and around 60-odd days for the Exhumer training to level 4, which is the minimum i'll be confident with.

The numbers when you look at them aren't too bad, but then you realise that theres 4 months of training there with next to no bonus to my combat effectiveness on my Raven, its a worry if anything gets any tougher than it currently is.

Back with a bump... and a fwoosh

Lets say that I had an interesting first few days back.

Continued where I left off mission wise - Running some level 3's from around the Gulfinoodi area, spent a few days searching out traces of my old Corporation, re-joined them and spent a day or two learning the new faces who had joined (and mourning the loss of a few who had left) since my last foray into space.

Getting back into the swing of things was hard, trying to re-learn skills long forgotten, but thankfully my one stable factor was my passively tanked Drake - because of that ship, I was fairly confident that I could go out and not worry too much about blowing up, just pop in, earn some cheap, easy money, and get back into the swing of things.

Anyway, long story short, I had spent the best part of about 4 hours missioning, having just re-insured my ship earlier in the day. Doing some nice basic 'Kill these Angel mobs and collect their waiting loot to fill the coffers' style missions I got my first mission that sent me into Lowsec space once again.

Of course, I had completely forgotten that I could just simply abandon a mission and as long as I don't do it too frequently, theres no hit to my faction status. Hindsight is a wonderful thing...

I took the risk, and dived into the system, heedless to the dangers. Expecting to meet with a gate camp in a classically very contested area (Bosena gate) I was pleasently suprised to find zero ships, and only 1 corpse. I disappeared to the mission, thinking everyone had abandoned the area and whatever had happened was done with for the moment.

I spent the best part of an hour tidying up the mission, killing every last one but 2 rats and thanking the various Eve gods that I was left alone, when disaster struck.

A nice heavy interdictor flew in to me (these had not been added since I left it seems) and locked me down with its anti-warp sphere. Pinging away at my shields (which were dropping really rather slowly I must say) we spent a few minutes trading blows, and him repeatedly asking for a chat request. Seems that my missiles were never going to penetrate his shields, but he managed to get me down to armour after about 5 minutes of dogfighting.

In the end I sensed that the end was near, so I accepted the chat request just to see what his demands were - normally I would have said it was fairly reasonable - 25 million but theres always the risk of paying up then getting blown away anyway afterwards - add to that the cost of refitting my ship due to insurance was only about 20 million (I wasnt carrying any implants) I just let him have his glory and kill me, at least he could recover what he could from my loot and save face.

With no shields, my Drake ripped apart like paper, the pod was unable to get away because of the warp sphere effect, so in the end I found a nice relocation back to base and a mail from the insurance company paying me out for my troubles... I wonder if they thought it was insurance fraud since it was such a quick turnaround that I claimed.


So first few days back, I'm a little wiser (seems scanning down deadspace pockets is a lot easier now than when I left) but not particularly any worse off, though the 1.0 faction hit was never nice when it takes several missions to gain 0.1 faction increase above 9.0.

Welcome aboard

Hi all... just thought i'd do the intro post to welcome you to a new project of mine - blogging about my experiences in EVE Online.

This is the second time I've attempted to get into the game, after leaving over a year ago because of commitments I had with World of Warcraft basically meaning that I couldnt spend any more of my spare time doing much else, I got really nostalgic for EVE when I heard about the newest expansion, The Empyrian Age (especially since World of Warcraft is a distant blip on the horizon of life now)

I moved from WoW to Guild Wars, and had a bit of fun in that for a fair while, spent a bit of time playing on my Xbox 360 as well, but something always drew me back to 'proper' MMORPGS and the one that had caught my eye as something that little bit different was EVE Online.

So a week or so since I re-subscribed... this is my ongoing story...