Girls and Guys and Games

Theres been a little something ticking over in my head for a while, after the mention by Mynxee that she is starting up a female only pirate corporation, and thats of cross-genered characters.

I don't think theres a single man out there who hasnt made a female alt in some way or another in any game where you have the option of genders (not necessarily in Eve since all your are is a portrait, but maybe Ambulation will change that) with the argument that 'If im going to be staring at a character for hours at a time, I'd rather stare at something pleasing to the eye than a man's backside' - does the same apply to females?

I know in my more juvenile moments, I've made female characters in games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies because some of the secondary requirements in those games are getting a character that looked good, and typically the female characters had better wardrobes than the men. I've picked female characters in fighting games because their 'ready stance' was frequently rather, ahem... bouncy and all the other reasons why someone picks a female avatar over a male one - but does the same apply for Females - do they go for the big buff male characters (or the gangly thin ones if thats their thing) because they like the look of em... or do they exclusively go for female characters ?

All of the women I knew who played World of Warcraft all went for female characters exclusively, and it seems that none of them wanted to play male characters at all. As with all games though, my sample size of people I was in regular contact with was only in the half dozen figure, so I can't say that its a decent sample to get a good idea, so im hoping the global pull of the Eve Blog pack can get me some more answers (even though it seems that theres even a lower female population playing Eve than WoW)

In a change to our irregularly scheduled posting...

... Something for the new guys out there.

There has been a few 'new to eve' guys join our corp recently, and whilst most of them joined slap-bang in the middle of the Criminal Element war (I know, dont take on unknown newbies during wars as they are probably spies, but these were friends of existing members), they couldn't do too much except fly frigates and tackle during excursions, so they spent a lot of time training skills when we were preparing to jump out of station, and flying when they could.

Most of them fall into the new player trap of 'bigger is better' and 'I have the skill to fly this ship, so I'll get in it' only to find that what they actually posess, if they dont have the correct support skills, is a few million tonnes of scrap metal.

I've made reference to a post originally by F'nog on the Eve Online Forums which details some very useful skills that all pilots should see about investing in, which will help fit tech 2 equipment, and bolster their basic skills at flying their prized buckets of scrap metal so hopefully they dont turn to scrap quite as quick.

Take a look and see if theres any other skills you would reccomend to looking into training.


Firstly - Basic 'all ship' skills:

Electronics (more CPU)
Engineering (more Powergrid)
Energy Management (more Cap)
Energy Systems Operation (Higher cap regen)
Long Range Targeting (target farther)
Signature Analysis (target quicker)
Targeting (target more things)
Energy Grid Upgrades (some very useful modules such as cap rechargers)
Repair Systems (don't have to pay to repair ships)

Defensive skills (priority on the specific type you tank with, but should invest in all due to the benefits if you lose your primary means of defence)

Shield Management (more shields)
Shield Operations (regenerate shield quicker)
Mechanic (more structure)
Hull Upgrades (more armor)

Movement skills - Not particularly important for a mission runner if they know what they are doing (and keep aligned, so do you dont have to turn from combat) but very useful in PVP

Navigation (fly faster)
Evasive Maneuvering (turn quicker)
Spaceship Command (turn quicker)
Warp Drive Ops (warp farther) - This is more useful for general day to day, not really combat-critical.
Acceleration Control (go faster w/AB/MWD)
Afterburner (go faster)
Fuel Conservation (use less cap)
High Speed Maneuvering (use MWDs) - currently almost a necessity in any form of PVP, not useful as much for the mission runners due to deadspace issues preventing use of MWD's

Drones Skills - Most ships can use drones to a greater or lesser extent, the ability to deploy 5 drones is always a bonus.

Drones (use drones)
Scout Drone Ops (use combat drones)

Combat skills (depending on your choice of weapon)

Gunnery/Missile Launcher Ops
All Support Gunnery/Missile skills (this is a catch all, theres a LOT of support skills, some are more useful than others early in the game)
Weapons Upgrades (improved CPU use)
Advanced Weapons Upgrades (improved powergrid use) - Not a priority for me, I've yet to find a ship which struggles with powergrid after Engineering 5, as long as you're fitting ship specific modules.


Add to that, your ship skill of choice to at least level 3 that the skill requires (i.e. so you get 3/5 of the bonus that your ship gets from its mother skill, levels 4 and 5 are where the training time starts to get fairly large) and you should have plenty to be getting on with.

The end of the war post

The end of the war caught us by suprise more than anything - it was 3-4 days before the renewal date that it was formally cancelled by Criminal Element.

Soon after, they seemed to join back up with Blackguard Coalition (where some of their members came from, and which they had links to, and who we suspected were funding the operation overall, because theres no way a 14 man corp could generate enough cash to fund the ship kills we had made when they spent all their time station camping us) and were gone just as quick as they had appeared.

I have to congratulate them in a way, they were civil during their losses, and they didnt mind to lose some very expensive ships (one, that wasnt our kill, but went to friends of ours who they wardecced as well was rated at around 2 billion isk, a very well fitted Machariel battleship) but we as a corp were always prepared for the long haul, having been in many wars of attrition in our time meaning we tire the opponents out by having them station camp us all day, strike fast when the opportunity arises, and do what we can to keep normal operations up at all times when we can.

As for me, it gave me a chance to bring the Navy Raven out of its dock, and continue to use it on missions, instead of a cheaper, more replaceable battleship or battlecruiser, and the added speed in completing the missions has been a refreshing change over the last few days. I've been spending the majority of the time getting my blueprints researched, training up the 'Research project management' skill to allow me to get more datacores for future invention use, and now 'all' I need to do is work on my production skills, as well as improve the science skills to high enough degree where I would be happy to use them - which is looking to be around 75 days of training or thereabouts - which is a long time to train when you aren't getting any more combat skill improvements.

As I've said before, the Eve universe is definately not for the short-term gain minded, it takes weeks of planning to get anything off the ground, at least anything thats worth putting the time in.

The building blocks of manufacturing - minerals

One question that I've been wondering about for a few days now i'm looking into manufacturing as an income stream - where do people get their minerals from ?

As far as I see it, theres 4 main ways of getting them:

1) Mining for yourself
2) Placing speculative buy orders at lower than sellers rates
3) Buying at sellers rates
4) Reprocessing item drops from missions

At the moment, i'm mainly doing 4) at the moment, I've been stockpiling minerals for a while, but as I'm trying to get away from doing missions as my main form of income, thats going to dry up if this goes well. 1) is a very slow option, and I can't imagine it will get enough solo to be able to cope with demand for materials in a high volume manufacturing setup - but when starting up, it's a great way of getting minerals, but I'd be wanting to work towards a Hulk ASAP, which is now a bit lower on my plans.

At the moment, I am doing number 2) - I have placed orders for about 80 million isk worth of materials at a major mission hub, hoping to get some of the unwanted minerals that mission runners get - problem is after getting about 0.1% of the materials in after a day, I realised a critical flaw in my plan - anyone who has bothered to train up refining enough to make it worth more than selling the mods themselves directly is probably stockpiling the materials themselves for their own use, and as such won't be selling the ground down items.

I may have to begin instead to place buy orders for the parts that are common mission drops instead and then reprocess them myself - problem with this of course is that because of the large number of individual items, I'm going to need a lot more training in my trade disciplines to be able to get enough orders out there to make it work - and then its a matter of managing all those orders to ensure that I'm competitive with the market rate so people will actually sell to me as well.

Ultimately, it seems the easiest way is to just buy minerals at the sellers rates, which are usually around 10% higher than the buyers rates, which directly relates to a 10% loss in potential profits. Is there anyone out there who does a lot of manufacture who uses this approach ? It seems self-defeating, especially with Tech 1 manufacture, where the profit margins are already razor thin in the first place.

Moving into production - continued

My industrial side has been well and truly let loose over the last few days. I'm going hell for leather to see about getting production started before the new year. I know its only August, but I worked out my training schedule, and uninterrupted (i.e. no more combat side of me gains) would be going until early November, and then theres things such as fitting in the time to actually research BPs and copy them, carrying out the invention on them etc as well as actually gathering the datacores needed and such, that all adds to the time that isnt exclusively waiting for that good old 'skill training completed' announcement.

I have identified 4 types of datacores I will need, with my chosen R&D corp (Core Complexion Inc) being able to supply 2 of the types - thankfully both the expensive ones I need, therefore I hope to get my Research Project management skill (still require to train Research V) up to at least level 3 so I can simultaneously use 4 R&D agents, selling off the excess datacores to fund the ones I need to buy features heavily in my plans - unless theres a major market blip and the expensive ones become the cheap ones of course, and well, that could be a bit of an issue.

I have bought the Data Interfaces I need (thankfully they are just the module data interfaces, so they set me back less than 10 million each) and I have trained level 1 in all of the appropriate skills needed, working from now on the higher level 3's and 4's i've got planned - I dont want to start researching and inventing until at least level 4 encryption and level 3 of the research skill (since level 3 is needed for manufacturing anyway)

I still need to rustle up the cash for the research project management skill (40 million isk - eep) as well as the blueprint for the cloaking device prototype (think that could be around 100 million, but haven't looked in too great a deal, cant afford it anyway at the moment, and its far enough back on my plans that it gives me some time to get the cash together)

I'm hoping that this eventually gives me a diferent income stream than what I've currently got, as missioning becomes very boring very quickly when everything becomes a walk in the park, and I don't have time to spend with all of the waiting around and baiting targets to move away from docking distance that is involved in PVP. I hope that a simple 'log in, set things away, come back in a few days, sell on the market' approach could be great to get income in so I can spend what time I do have enjoying myself and not letting the worry about how I'm going to fund my next ship loss be the overriding factor in the combat I take part in.

Getting into production

I've just spent 100 million Isk or thereabouts buying all of the appropriate research and production books for my future plans for Tech 2 production - currently looking at Drones and Cloaking devices as my main focus of tech 2 production.

Now I'm staring at weeks (perhaps months if I want to get the most out of the skills) of skill training ahead of me to get the the skills needed, and millions of Isk worth of saving up for a good mineral stockpile to make everything I need, get the blueprints needed, and buy things that I cant get easily (i.e. moon minerals etc) just so I can dabble in something to see if it provides a new insight into the game, as simply running missions all the time is boring.

At the moment, theres no solid plans within the corp to move into 0.0 space, though discussions are ongoing with alliances to see about getting involved with what they do to give us the much sought after 0.0 access we have craved for so long.

You can say what you want about Eve, but one things for certain, its the sort of system where you can easily chop and change from task to task in... that in itself makes it different to the rest, but it's incredibly frustrating to see a skill plan in front of you for weeks at a time until you think 'yes, I'm now ready to give this a go and be competitive'

Ship of choice

Question for all of those pilots out there in outerspace land - what type of ship do you prefer to fly ?

I'm not necessarily asking about a specific model, but more specifically, a category of ships - now I know each of the 4 races has a significantly different method of piloting their ships, so it may not be as easy a question as 'I like interceptors' for instance, but anyway, unless you want to be very specific, theres no need to be.

Personally, i'm a fan of small, fast ships - my PVP ships of choice would be anything frigate sized, either tech 1 or tech 2 varient, but at the moment I'm the most competent with the Caldari side of things, able to access all tech 2 frigates from their fleet, with Gallente frigates on the horizon, and Minmatar lagging behind (but on the other hand, I love the Rifter, though it doesnt seem to love me much based on the number I've lost)

I've recently been playing up to my drone combat strengths and started using a Vexor in the corp war, but thats only because there isn't a suitable drone frigate available at Tech 1. I do want to start working eventually on the Tech 2 cruisers and battlecruisers side of things, but I want to ensure I can properly field Tech 2 frigates for at least 2 races (including relevant Tech 2 weapon systems) before I move on and get bogged down in 'alternative routes' once more.

I am annoyed at just how easy it is to lose a tech 1 frigate in combat, and if the tech 2 varients are just as paper-thin then there could be a large cost to hit me even with the cheap individual price of each ship, if they die much faster than tech 2 cruisers and battlecruisers, it can mean a greater price overall.

The War - Week 3

Yesterday, we found that the war is again going to continue for another week. Our friendship with a local anti pirate corporation has not managed to diminish Criminal Element's resolve, even though we have achieved exceptional success in kills vs losses value.

Our simple 'hit and run' tactics are working well - gathering up a few systems out and then rushing in to engage as they bring their pilots to bear against our ships - of course this is counteracted by our opponents who almost blankly refuse to leave docking distance of a station, so as soon as they are attacked, they run with their tails between their legs - so much for the mighty wardeccing group who hoped for an easy few kills against a missionrunning corporation.

I must thank our associates however who have brought some much needed PVP experience to the table (faction warfare made us lose a significant number of our PVP minded members) as whilst we have 4-5 members who have a lot of experience fighting the various wars we have been a part of, the majority are simply mission runners caught up in game of politics that they would prefer to have no part of, instead training their skills and running missions until they get a few more months of piloting experience under their collective belts to allow them to participate more actively in the wars.

EEE Pc 901 Continued

Work up early to ensure I didn't miss the delivery guy so I could give my new toy a go as soon as I got it... but as per usual, I had to wait because he took forever to get here (ok... it was just after 10am, but when you wake up at 7.30 on a Saturday because the delivery is anytime between 8am and 6pm every minute seems to take forever)

Unpacked the EEE from its box and went ahead and carried out the installation tasks required, spent the next hour removing all of the dross thats installed by default, and then go around to Eve.

Im happy to say, that Eve works, I wouldnt say it was brilliant (the smaller screen makes everything very cramped, and when youre out in space, theres a noticable framerate drop) but it does mean that if push comes to shove, I've now got a fully mobile eve client that I can hold in the palm of my hand, so I can log in, change skills, maybe do some missions (not tried yet) but definately do travelling around, trading and mining.

Theres a photo comparison above of my main laptop (HP dv9000) vs the EEE 901 so you can see just how small it is... that tiny 10" screen has almost the same resoultion as my office laptop from work (1024x600 vs 1024x768) and although its small and cramped, everything is very visible.

10 Million skill points

Just a quick note for anyone whos interested, I've passed a milestone today, as of a few minutes ago, I broached the 10 million skillpoint marker.

It pales in comparison to some of my corpmates (35 and 64 million skillpoints they announced yesterday) but I'm happy enough as I am, even though I do occasionally kick myself that I didn't keep on training skills during my break, as I worked out that with my current skill training rate, I would have gained around 15 million additional skillpoints in my year out.

As you can see, my skillpoints are fairly clumped up to one end - drones as main offence with missiles as secondary, as well as shields and utility skills in the engineering/electronics category being high value skills for me, this betrays my joint Caldari / Gallante training background, with both a Raven and a Dominix being my weapon of choice for level 4 missions.

Considering that we are primary an industrial based corp (though its expanded to missions most of the time, with occasional PVP) it goes to show just how much my industrial side is lacking in skills as well, something I need to work on over the coming year.

Hope this has proved a usedul insight into the pilot side of me, and feel free to ask any questions, otherwise, fly safe and look after yourselves out there.

EEEPc 701 vs 901

Not sure how many people have heard of these little wonder machines from Asus, but I've been a proud owner of a 4gb EEEPc 701 now for a few months (i'm actually writing this post on it now) but try as I might, even though some people have managed to get eve running on one, i've been unable to manage it (think the in built processor on the linux model, which is hard to overclock, isnt up to scratch, it always crashed on the character select screen) whereas those who installed Windows on their machine, which had an option to do software based overclocking, worked well enough)

So I decided to splash out today on a 901 model with larger resolution, a faster processor (1.6ghz vs 900mhz) and windows pre-installed with a hope to get eve working on a truly mobile system (I've got a big HP laptop i'm using with a 19" screen which is sort of mobile, but I wouldn't want to try and cart it around with me too far)

With luck it will be here tomorrow, so i'll write about it if it works - or if it doesn't.

Just for anyone interested too, the war is still ongoing, but we have secured assistance from a PVP focused anti-pirate corporation who have counter wardecced Criminal Element, there haven't been many skirmishes yet (their war only activated yesterday) but we are all hopeful that with a fair bit of pvp experience on our side, we can bring the pirates to their knees.

War - An Update

Just finished from a pitched battle of our corp vs Criminal Element, where we emerged victorius - so far today we have killed 3 Tech 2 cruisters - 1 HAC and 2 Recons.

Kills vs Losses as follows to date:

Kills (Us vs Criminal Element)

Huginn
Lachesis
Vagabond

Losses (Criminal Element vs Us)

3x Rifter
Blackbird
Atron
Hurricane
Scythe
Megathron
Retriever
Falcon

Seems their highest success rate seems to be ganking our mining craft, but since the majority of our losses were recoverable through insurance, we arent particularly down cash wise, whereas killing 3 Tech 2 ships of theirs puts a significant dent in their wallet.

Our greatest loss was the above mentioned falcon, which was a shame, it was sacrificed to give a few more seconds to get the people in so we could get enough scrambling and webbing on their 2 Recons to prevent them getting away.

I dont think that we have lost any pods yet, could be wrong, but we have definately podded one of their pilots, so hopefully a major loss of Isk in implants too, but we will never know.

War - The First Night

The first night of the war was fairly uneventful - no one was willing to trade the first blows.

Unfortunately, me in my wonderous sense forgot to set my clone skills away early enough so I had to wait around 30 minutes from the start of the war to get my next clone available (so as to protect my implants during these war-times) which meant that I couldn't take part in any of the events of the first night.

It was typical things - 1 of their ships sitting around outside base acting as bait with 2-3 others on scan in a safespot (probably aligned for immediate warp in) along with possibly another 2-3 stealthers either at the base or at the safespot. The bait ship was unwilling to engage even when we had pilots buzzing around it - so much for the big bad corp who declared war only to sit there inactive when we presented targets.

Anyway - in the end we got bored and sprung their trap - we only had time for 1 major skirmish for the evening, so we gathered at our own safespot, and engaged their bait. Immediately we were engaged by a Typhoon, as well as a Falcon, and 2 stealth bombers, and 1-2 other ships I can't remember at the moment.

The Megathron who attacked the bait ship was immediately locked, and as our other pilots headed in, they found themselves Jammed by the Falcon and unable to assist. The falcon pilot was smart, they were over 150km from the main combat, so we did not have the time to catch up with him to do any serious damage before our pilots were jammed and unable to target anyway.

In the end, we lost the Megathron, no major loss due to insurance, but it provided us a wonderous amount of intel on the pilots and their combat methods, which can only help to serve us in the future.

As for the reason for the war - it seems to be purely financial, probably extortion in the end. They refused to tell us the reason for the wardec unless we paid for it. Ultimately, whilst we can very likely lose a fair few ships to this war, we are only fitting inexpensive modules, and recovering the majority of the cost of the ships from insurance, so our enemies will soon learn that it costs a lot of money to keep a war active, with the hope that it costs them a lot more than they make - every PVP victory for us will be a major blow to their finances as they are using some very expensive fitted ships, whereas we will lose next to nothing, and their loot from any of our deaths will not pay much towards their costs of maintaining the war never mind recovering the costs of any lost ships.

Should be interesting to see how the next few days pan out.

War !

Woke up today to see a nice message waiting for me on the internal corp mail : Criminal Element [ATLAR] has declared war, hostilties can begin around 10pm Eve time.

This should be interesting - we always seem to attract the attention of war dec corps, not sure if they see our 'we run missions and are industrialsts' type bio and think we are easy pickings, but we've sent many a pirate corp scurrying back to home base with their tails between their legs.

Been spending the last hour or so buying some disposable ships for corp mates and generally getting prepared for the combat... should be an interesting week, definately spice things up more than blindly running missions again and again for the Republic Fleet.

No doubt you will hear more as it happens.

Time to begin some research

Just a quick post to let anyone know who is interested - managed to get the appropriate standing and skills for research via Core Complexion Inc. and now I'm currently sitting back letting my lackey... erm research team leader compile me stacks of information on Quantum Physics.

Ultimately I want to go into production of Cloaking devices since I dont believe theres anyone in my current corp who can produce the Tech 2 varients of those, but in the meantime, I'm happy to stockpile the research to give me a nice head start whilst I try and get the appropriate skills and the equipment needed to look into the invention system.

Trying to make my way back to 0.0 (slowly)

Back before I left, the corporation I am in was part of an Alliance (Electus Matari) which had links to U'K alliance (Ursha Khan I think, I'm going off memory here) who had an outpost by the name of Unity in 9UY system in Providence.

Since I came back to Eve I've since found that we left the alliance, and Unity station was captured by CVA alliance, now called Deliverance Reclaimed, and with it, my access to 0.0 was removed as we are no longer under the flag of any local alliances in the region.

Now I'm busy checking around trying to find the local alliances in the various regions around where we live and seeing if I would be welcome to roam around their space and get back into the swing of things. I'm having trouble of course finding out this information - once I get through the lowsec dangers of Molden Heath, I wouldn't want to end up in the Great Wildlands and podded by the first Foundation pilot I ran into.

The strategic maps are proving to be quite useful for this, but of course, the sovereignty of the various regions around the Minmatar space border leading into the drone space is a bit varied at times (look at the big wars list on the map, everyone seems to be fighting everyone around that area trying to claim dominance) so at the moment it seems to be more 'every man for himself' around there, though I'm sure experience will say otherwise.

Now the problem of course is that I could quite easily apply to a local alliance subcorp and presuming that I'm accepted, would have at least some access to 0.0 but I don't want to do that - I've been with my current corp since I first joined Eve, its from a set of both RL and Online friends who I have known for years through various games and whilst we do expeditions into lowsec, we don't particularly have any alliance contacts in 0.0 that I know of.

Is there anyone out there who has any experience about personal affiliations with 0.0 Alliances, what seems to be the best course of action to prove the 'I'm not a spy, just wanting to look around and fit in with the crowd' without leaving a long standing group who may not share the same point of focus as you do at this time.

When I left, I was just beginning to explore my 0.0 career, learning the fun intricacies of PVP and being more active in an Alliance, and now, its all been taken away again and I've got to start from scratch learning the ropes once more.

The Eve Online Blog Pack

I've recent poking my nose around other blog sites in Eve to try and garner what other people feel about the game, and came across a project which seems to be headed by CrazyKinux (of 'The Drone Bay' podcast fame) who is trying to get a lot of Eve bloggers together into some sort of semi-coherent community.

I couldn't help but jump at the chance to be featured, so got in contact and managed to get my name added to the list.

I'm going to poke around this blogging stuff and try and sort out what I need to do to get up to date feeds from the other blogs on the list, but in the meantime, I'll refer you back to the original post on CK's blog which lists all the current members.

I'm sure you will find something on there to tickle your literary tastebuds no matter what your preferred activity in Eve.

You can access the original Blog Pack post at the following address:

http://www.crazykinux.com/2008/06/eve-online-blog-pack.html

Brainstorming Names for ships

I always struggle to think of really good names for ships - I used to name a lot of them from old references to old games I played (I even have some ships named after the Ultima Online dungeons from 5 years or more back) but I'm trying to focus more on generic naming in the future.

I was suddenly hit with a moment of inspiration - I'm going to call my Covert Ops frigate 'Cognito'

That way, when im cruising around space cloaked up looking for interesting things to spot I can be flying 'in-cognito'

The Permatanked Raven (Hybrid Passive a go-go)

I've been playing around with an interesting new setup where I honestly can't remember where I first saw it, but made me realise that I was not doing something really obvious, and you know... it might just work.

That little thing was offsetting the cap recharge of my Raven battleship by using Capacitor Power Relays (the one that reduces the boost amount to provide a large capacitor recharge) to allow me to permanently run my shield booster.

I was obviously a bit perturbed about reducing the effectiveness of my main form of damage mitigation (my XL shield booster further reinforced by a shield boost amplifier) but by taking a 20% approx cut in shield booster effectiveness I could run the booster permanently, thereby allowing a much more resiliant overall setup (I previously used capacitor booster charges to offset the capacitor drain for high damage missions where I needed to run the booster a lot, which meant that a lot of my cargo hold was dedicated to cap booster charges, and even then I only had about 20 minutes of sustained shield boosting, this is usually enough to see the mission through, but the price soon began to mount up at around 3,000 isk per cap booster charge.)

First tests were a bit disapponinting, I arranged for a corpmate to come along and go full fire on me, with a Navy Raven of their own, 7 missiles going against my weakest resist (EM, which even though I was using invulnerability fields, were only providing around 48% resist) stripped my shield bare in about 1 and a half minutes. Definately resigned this to the 'not for PVP' school of thought - add in the possible ways that capacitor can be drained in PVP and the very delicate balance of regen vs cap use is skewed in the wrong direction.

However, this setup absolutely shines in a few level 4 missions I have tried - I never dipped below 95% shields at all during the 2 missions I have had a go with - 'Massive Attack' vs Serpentis (using racial shield hardeners) and 'Silence the Informant' using a generic hardener setup.

I did have to go out and invest in a Caldari Navy Shield Boost Amplifier which greatly improved my shield boost rate to offset the reduction from the Cap Power Relays, but that was 'only' 77 million, which should be possible to make back in less than 5 missions, and saved me the equivalent of 15 days training to be able to use the advanced tech 2 shield boost amp which I was sorely lacking in my setup.

The Caldari Navy Raven has been a significant investment, but it has been well worth it to date, with luck this stalwart of battle will serve me well in the future.

I'm like a kid at Christmas

As you can probably gather, my training in Advanced Electronic upgrades has now been completed, so I'm looking into what I need to know to begin piloting the Covert Ops classes of ships - I always love getting a new toy to play with - not quite as fun as my brand sparkly new Interceptor I got a few weeks back (1 careful owner... erm... me) but I'm sure it will become a very useful ship for my various trips in and around the more disreputable parts of space.

As well as this, I decided to splash the cash and look into a whole new plaything - a Navy Issue Raven. Now... even though I am Caldari by birth, my reputation with my former bretheren is a little... strained lets say. I fly with the Gallente and the Minmatar as a rule, and that in the eyes of the Caldari is a bit of a no-no.

My relationship isn't strained as far as they would shoot me on sight, I try and remain civil enough to be able to fly around in their space without getting a Navy entourage following me around, but working for the Navy itself and getting to be known well enough that they would sell me a Navy Raven is a little unrealistic given my reputation.

So instead, I need to buy one from the various privateers who work on behalf of the Navy and sell on their spoils to the highest bidder.

Thankfully I found one not too far from Minmatar space (around 25 jumps or so) for a very reasonable price - 420 million Isk. Quite a large chunk of change for a single ship, and my single largest expense to date, but worth it, I hoped.

I flew out and via a middle man, arranged to view the ship, and arrange ownership transfer. Thankfully my time spent at the Republic fleet had earned me a pretty penny, after all, the Minmatar were always under threat from the Serpentis and Archangel corporations, and I was paid hansomely to pit my skills against their better pilots, so whilst purchase of the ship cleaned out my reserves, it was finally mine, and I was relishing a good chance to take it out and see what it could do.

Unfortunately, the 25 jumps back to home back scuppered any chance of doing anything too productive on the evening of collecting the ship, so instead I took her back to my home hangar, and reviewed the needs for fitting her to the best of my abilities. Spent the rest of the evening finding the right modules and fittings from the various markets around Heimatar and Molden Heath so she's sitting there in my hangar, all brand new and sparkly with a camouflage finish which dictates her Navy background.

In the coming days I will test to see just how she handles in a firefight.

Phew...

Less than 1 day until Electronic Upgrades 5 has been finished training, and I've already penned down my shopping list of the next skill books im going to get, currently sitting at 10.

I know theres always room to better yourself, but theres just way too much choice in the different skills you can look into.

Fly safe, and hopefully if i'm in my covops, you wont see me soon.

Please tell me i'm not the only one...

No... its not a cheesy line from the chorus of a romantic song... its Eve... and specifically, skills within Eve.

I'm sitting here with 7 days (and 7 hours) on the clock for Electronics Upgrades so I can get my CovOps ship skill trained, and I'm just running that number over in my head... thats 1 week, 1 whole week of not gaining any more skills, sitting static and unable to progress.


I dunno... maybe im just impatient (ok... no maybe about it, theres a lot of skills I want to try and the timing of them is a constant irritation) but now i'm into the stage where i'm training levels 4 and 5 on the rank 2-3 skills as pre-requisites for others, the timers just keep on adding up - 5 days for level 5 on a rank 1 skill is bad enough... but 10... 15... 20... it's driving me mad.

Going to expand my repertoire a little

Anyone who knows me for more than a few hours will soon find out just how... I dunno... variable I can be with my interests.

I find it hard to stay focused on one main goal, and want to experience a bit of everything.

Unfortunately, Eve isn't really a game designed around that (specialisation is the key) but I've never let that be a good excuse to stop me.

So at the moment, as well as my listed goals earlier (a decent mission running Raven, Covert Ops ships, and an Exhumer) I've also decided to train up industrial skills to manufacture, and train up the required skills for R&D agent use, with a view to getting in on the act with the invention system.

Its a long slow grind getting these bits (manufacture is almost pointless without the production efficiency skill to level 5 to remain competetive, and working up access to a worthwhile R&D agent requires running missions for the parent corp as with getting access to any decent level 4 agent requires) but it's all intended to bring my main income stream away from doing purely missions, as that gets old very quickly.

Watch this space, i'm sure I'll change my mind again tomorrow.

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...