f13.net

It seems like a large part of the challenge in Eve is setting yourself a goal and then enjoying the challenge of getting there. So my general tastes run towards shooting and looting things with the hope some of the skills might transition into PvP. Of course the game mechanics means a ship has to be at least somewhat disposable and my progression focused so it doesn't take 12 months of training before the fun can even start.

I've done a fair bit of reading and just want to check my understanding is vaguely correct. It looks like the T2 ships and capital ships violate the cost and time metrics by a sufficiently large amount I can write them off until far into the future. You can quickly train as a frigate tackler but it's a PvP only role. The other roles that look approachable and have a nice progression are long range DPS / E-war which scales well (more the better, cumulative) whereas tanking and a lot of the other specialised roles need a small number of really good and specialised ships (eg. stealth scouting, Interdictors, capital tanks and logistics). As PvP gets larger scale the flight time of missiles becomes a negative factor opposed to the instant flight time of direct fire weapons, though missiles are strong in PvE. And no-one likes T1 destroyers for what seam like good reasons.

So it looks like a good goal is a T1 cruiser, focusing on some direct fire weapon with a long range for PvP / PvE kiting.... Maybe a Moa with rail-guns for sniping / kiting and a blaster fit for doing missions? Shame it's so ugly though.

(Edit)

I guess the real question is where is the sweet spot between having a ship that is fun to fly, is considered useful by others you might be flying with, can be flown productively while all those long and high level skills are training and can generate the isk to fund its replacement. So even if someone offered me a titan for 10 isk its only real value would be to sell it. As I understand it is the definition of not that fun to fly, very role specialised, not something I could fly for many many months and useless for generating isk compared to its replacement cost.

Yup getting the skills you need to fly and do PVE with a T1 cruiser is a sensible first goal. That'll require you to train basic skills that will translate directly to PVP. Someone else can give you more specific Caldari advice. I'm space-French myself.

At some point you're going to need to devote several weeks to maxing out the learning skills. This is a really painful thing because the learning skills don't do anything but make the training of other skills go faster. So while you're maxing them you aren't making any visible character progress.  Some people have been successful just sitting in the station and training up their learning skills right off the bat. I find that far too boring. I think it's worthwhile getting enough ship flying and shooting skills that I could at least do something halfway entertaining while training them.

I'm not neccesarily Caldari centered. I'm currently doing the Minmatar tutorial so they'll give me free ships to play with. The slasher they gave me is very sweet looking. And I'll definitely learn the skills for a rifter tackler.

Being able to fly something while the skills train also means I can start generating isk which is the other half of the equation. The pain of losing a ship is directly tied to whether and how many hours of PvE you need to replace it. I could see myself actually stopping at cruiser until much much later in the game. It's a huge jump in costs from cruiser to battlecruiser or anything T2. And I can imagine a cruiser could handle level 1,2 (and maybe 3?) missions to generate isk at a faster rate relative to its replacement cost.

I trained enough to fly a minimally skilled battleship to do level 3 missions before devoting time to the learning skill grind. A battleship for a level 3 is huge overkill but it has the advantage of being safe. So you aren't likely to lose that expensive ship.  Later on you'll find that you can do level 3s in a battlecruiser or even a cruiser but until you have all the related skills maxed out you're likely to lose a lot of ships.

Level 3 missions are way more profitable than lower level missions as well. So they're better for isk grinding.

I would think about a battlecruiser if I were you. It's pretty quick to skill for and they're noticably better than cruisers. Also if you play with serious players most will accept you more in a battlecruiser, even the rather disliked Drake, than a T1 cruiser.

Your battlecruiser will be able to solo level 3 missions.

I've trained three characters to be able to use battlecruisers - Drake which is wonderful, Harbinger which was rather iffy in level 3s until I had a full T2 tank and a Hurricane. You can do level 3s with a basic fit Drake as it's so over-powered with the passive shield tank. Plus it's one of the best afk-friendly ships in the game.

They're around 25 million which is a lot more than a cruiser but you'll earn a lot more in one. If 25 mill seems a lot you can do the starting tutorials multiple times for a stack of skill books and other loot which will help early game cash flow. Here's the list, you can do the five missions at as many of the systems as you like
http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Tutorial_Agents

It's very useful to be able to sell your loot. Take time out from training your main to get an alt up to about 25 order slots (Trade 2, Retail 2, should only take a couple of hours). Then park the guy at Jita to sell your stuff. Cart your loot with your main character to Jita for him to sell for you. (You can transfer it to him with a contract). It's quite fun to log on each day and sell stuff for 10 minutes and this will keep you from getting bad prices. I actually got myself a dedicated Jita alt because I liked trading so much.

The skills from a Moa should translate directly into a Ferox (plus it looks better). Once I've got a revenue stream and lost a few cruisers in PvP that sounds like a good goal. And it's still a lot cheaper than even T2 frigates and battleships. And thanks for the suggestion on the Jita alt.... not that I have that much to sell yet.

I can almost see myself keeping a set of ships:

Tackling Fit Rifter: I expect to lose this but at least you can participate and it's fun to fly.
Sniper Fit Moa: I might lose this, so fly what I can afford.
Training Ferox : I'm doing missions and hope I don't lose it.

And then one day when I've mastered generating isk, the needed skills and game experience start using the battlecruiser more. That'll be quite a while off though.

I'll probably do the combat tutorials for all the races, maybe the other ones too. It seems to earn decent isk and standing plus gives me new ships to get a feel for / sell. Of course at this point pretty much all that money is going into skill and learning books.

Nobody uses feroxes.  I think feroxes are lovely and I haven't used one in about three and a half years.  The moa is also a joke ship for all but a tiny niumber of novelty applications.

If you're going Caldari it would be a shame not to learn to fly a Drake. They're very strong and you don't need great missile skills, level 2 or 3 is enough.

(Stabs) I mostly picked Caldari because it sounded good and I had to start somewhere. Part of the reason I'm asking is because at this point I'm not too advanced in starship command and could change.

Aren't missiles considered to be limited in large scale PvP? That seemed to be what my reading suggested with rockets considered "broken", cruise missiles way too slow and missiles also spending too much time in flight? Whereas several threads suggested that long range DPS (admittedly from Rokh and apocalypse ships) was desirable.
 

Missiles are not perfect in large scale PvP, but feroxes and moas are even less desirable in that context.  The good Caldari railgun platforms are the T2-fitted rokh (awesome), vulture (awesome) and eagle (edge case).  That is it (the falcon happens to be bonused for rails but that's immaterial).  Those are long trains.  There are other good caldari ships but they are not railgun platforms.

If you are keen on caldari then train the drake first.  If you are open to all then train minmatar, which contains great ships all the way up the train: rifter/vigil (frigates), stabber (cruiser), hurricane (battlecruiser), maelstrom (battleship, though all three are good), not to mention the vagabond, rapier, muninn, huginn, interceptors, scimitar, claymore, sabre etc etc.  Amarr has some really good ships but they tend to appear later.  Gallente have two really top-line subcaps (taranis, ishtar).  And a few more decent ones if you are really liberal and count the gimped lachesis and arazu, the hictor and stealth bomber (which are not terrible, though other races are better).

Drakes are over-powered which mitigates the missile disadvantage. A drake can solo just about any other T1 battlecruiser or below without years of skills to support it. Missile specialisation skills (unlike guns) do not require the lower level skills to train.

For a while they were utterly reviled by serious pvpers but that attitude seems to have gone now. In an alliance I was in not so long ago someone pretty much insisted I cross-train to Minmatar when with hindsight I should have ignored him and stuck with my Drakes.

The other point is that while a Drake is arguably worse than a more offensive Battlecruiser such as Hurricane it's tons better to mission in. Not only is it easier to do level 3s but it's a much lazier playstyle which most people prefer. Instead of having to monitor your ship's health, capacitor level and decide when to use the booster you just passively tank. With the low shields alarm you can literally mission while doing something else like hoovering, wandering back to the computer occasionally to press one button (or to warp out if the alarm starts wailing).

A subtle pvp advantage (and I've always thought part of the reason serious pvpers dislike Drakes) is that if you are in a ship with a reputation for being hard to kill you get primaried last. So Mr Serious loses his tech 2 uber ship before they pick on you while if you were in something more pvp effective but fragile you'd get popped first. Not dying so often is one hell of a pvp perk.

More reading... which backs up what Endie said. The problem with the Moa is that while it has a nice range it does poor DPS with rail-guns. I'm assuming the same is true of the Ferox.  On paper the Moa looks superior to the Stabber but the latter has +DPS bonuses and uses projectiles. It looks to me like rail-guns are roughly equal to artillery so I guess the ship bonus just makes that much difference, though artillery will have a much better alpha as well. I guess the Rokh makes up the difference by having more hardpoints.

So looks like the drake wins the utility award in terms of not PvP embarassing and very PvE capable. I assume this is also true of Caracal versus Moa as stepping stone ships. Though I'll keep the dream of one day flying (and being able to afford to lose) T-2 fitted Rokhs and Vultures :)

Once again, thanks. I want to focus both isk and sp so realising the Moa is sub-par before buying or training towards it is good stuff. I'll also look at the other ships mentioned.

While a Drake won't win you medals in the long run it will mean you will be isk rich and pvp competent in under 3 months which isn't really true of most other routes.

With my Amarr character I really struggled in level 3 missions until I could fit a full T2 tank which meant training up several support skills to 4 or 5 while mapped to Perception and Willpower.

As for Caracals I liked them a lot. With an afterburner and a nice long range you can do some level 2 missions without even getting damaged.

Ferox isn't as bad as people make out and the skills lead you to flying a sniper Rokh, but it means you've kinda cross trained Gallente. Bear in mind a lot of people who train Caldari end up cross training to Minmatar or Amarr for PvP. It would be worth looking at interceptors as an early goal, I've noticed T2 insurance payouts have been raised and T1 lowered, so there's a good argument for flying T2 these days.

If you check out the Goonswarm Newbie Guide, as created by a certain talented, attractive and modest Goonswarm director and his willing helpers, then you'll find a skill plan in there to take you to a drake, plus good pvp and utility skills in blackbirds, ospreys etc, in about a month.

It's the speed bonuses and inherent agility that make the stabber attractive. Mobility is key to survival in a lot of PvP scrapes, DPS on gallente type ships comes with the disadvantage of having to engage up close and personal. Moas suck don't even consider them, if you want to be useful and a jack of all trades follow Endies plan, if you want to go straight for the PvP jugular train minmatar.

(Amarr) An interceptor is still 3-6 times the cost of a caracal and I doubt it's PvE competitive. And if I was doing tackling the sheer disposability of a rifter is impressive. I saw some interesting builds for blaster Moa's in my reading, or people mounting lasers on them, but as observed it's mostly trying to find a use for the ship rather than it being a ship with a clear value.

(Endie) It's on my desktop and I've read it many times, though it's packing a lot of information (and odd illustrations) into a small space. A fair bit also assumes you are in goonland. But I do see you have the sequence caracal -> drake.

Don't trust SHC for fittings  :grin:

If you are a more PvP oriented player then you should put the extra time into Minmatar or Amarr, if you are a PvE player who just likes to dabble in PvP then Drakes and Caldari all the way.

And don't trust the Evemon (Battleclinic) builds either. There's a lot of chaff in there.

With the right skills you can run a Caracel in L3s with a range/speed tank. BUT... with less skills you can use a Drake and clear a room in less time.

If I were to make one suggestion, train the weapons system before the hull. Tank is very important, but killing things fast is a key tanking feature.

Downloading and playing with EFT was fairly illuminating. The reason the Rokh is good and the Ferox / Moa are not seems to be because it has so many more mount points and can handle the power draw from railguns much better than both of those, which means it can actually use the ships range bonus. And that range bonus will actually allow it to be out of range of some return fire whereas the range on the smaller rail guns is less impressive when other people have bigger guns to start with. The Caldari blaster demands way too much power for the damage they do so doesn't seem like a great alternative.

The Minmatar auto-cannons are much better than the blasters in terms of power, and the ships have a DPS enhancing modifier, which explains the difference in efficiency. The artillery has similar problems to the rail guns in that they demand a lot of resources and you can't mount / support enough of them to compete with auto-cannons close or missiles at close or range. As mentioned the Minmatar ships have smaller signatures and higher speed. The Caldari missile boats really are in a sweet spot though since they can actually support enough launchers in terms of slots and power to do good DPS at good range while having a massive shield tank and the ability to control their damage type.

In all cases it was eye-opening to see how much difference the cumulative effect of stacked skills made. So I've taken the long way around to come to the default of caracal -> drake being the easiest progression while you play disposable tacklers and later sniping drakes or minmatar gunboats (while dreaming of flying a sniping rokh if it's a large scale action) in PvP.

(Edit)

Actually the Ferox can handle the power demands much better and actually compete with a drake... though the hurricane does even better out of it. So the best progression is probably more like Caracal -> Drake / Hurricane -> Rokh with the latter two more for large scale PvP. Basically the only good long range option for a cruiser is drones or missiles and my expectation that they'd scale (so if a Rokh is awesome a Moa is a small slice of awesome) doesn't hold at all.

Sounds like you'll be teaching us soon :-)

Yep, good analysis.  And you're right about the rokh: I ignore reimbursement fits (because I'll never lose them in a fleet fight unless I'm dumb enough to jump into half-hour-not-loading lag) and instead fit for a bit more range and tracking.  That means I can lock and hit with spike to 250, and there simply won't be enough people able to hit me back at that range to break my tank even if I'm primaried, 70km behind the fleet.  It also means that I can load caldari navy ammo and track smaller stuff a couple of hundred km away.

Rokh particularly excels at range, but for sniping you would actually be slightly better off in an Apoc for a few reasons that EFT won't tell you. No ammo reloading, instant ammo switching and cheap ammo, unless of course you use faction. Look at Amarr ships aswell they are all the rage these days.

Maelstroms are, apparently, the new fashion, but every time I've flown one we black-screened and I either died or logged off and flew back later.

Is it possible to play this game as a crafter/manufacturer in solo fashion? 

It must be. I entertain myself by looking at ships and pilots corporations. I'm in "starter" space and do see a fair few "we are a mining and manufacturing corp" descriptions. And the manufacturing skills, system and PvE support like invention hunting (as much as I understand it) would give you a fair few things to do.

Yes it is but it is possible other players may find ways to victimise you.

For example if you travel with expensive blueprints someone might scan your ship and decide to kill you then grab whatever loot survives with an alt (see Slayer's suicide ganking memoirs thread). Or if you put up a space station people might declare war on you to force you to either defend it or dismantle it. (Usually this is done to extort money).

But there are certainly plenty of players who sit in the busiest system and just buy materials and craft. Or simply sit there buying cheap and selling high.

Eve is a good game for the crafting-inclined because like early SWG stuff gets destroyed. This means your customers always need replacements.

That's pretty much the same for everyone though, and I suspect the solution is the same. Be wary, carry a big stick and try to find people you can trust to work with. Especially because I imagine the trading corps share knowledge and resources.

I usually ran stuff like BPOs in the corp hangar of my orca, while putting low-value stuff like trit or similar in the main hold.

That's my big thing with this game:  I love the ambience and the setting.  The idea that you might be picked off by someone to get your stuff adds in a bit of intrigue.  However, the combat just isn't my thing-  getting together in a big swarm to run around and gank people isn't that fun to me.  It's possible that I just need to get involved with a good corporation, but I never have made the effort, really.  I'm more of a solo oriented MMOer.  Corps probably need people that are interested in crafting.

If you're going to try playing Eve solo, you need to be careful that you don't have the Yahtzee experience. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online)  Make sure that, if nothing else, you're hanging out in a chat channel like ours where you can ask questions and get help figuring out the game.

I used to be exactly like you here in EVE, until I joined up with the goons.

But what Phildo says is true, even if you're going to play "solo", make sure you have a vibrant corp chat to hang out in. Going completely solo in this game will make you cut yourself. The corp you're in (both in what it does, and the people in it) matters so much it's not really funny.

Ahhhh, got ya, I'm going to start killing more orcas hauling just a stack of trit.

I can see that a good guild is mandatory. For a degree of security, to allow you to have a stake in 0.0 but mostly because you spend so much time just tooling around in your ship you need the chat and sense of direction.

I did read one piece of advice I liked which was "Don't move to 0.0 before you can support yourself there"... so about what point should a character start looking for a good 0.0 corp?

Are you talking about stable NPC ability? 

If so you are probably looking at being able to handle a cruiser/battlecruiser well.  With proper skills you can take out most npcs in frig classes but that training takes time and dedication (it also takes longer to kill them).  A small portion depends on the npc types vs the race you fly.  Some cruisers are far far better than others. 

If you are talking pvp you are best off learning in a frigate.  They are cheap, easy to fit and you are in a better position to learn volumes about 0.0 quirks.

So you can get level 1 and 2 missions in 0.0 space?

Yes.


You read wrong. You should get to 0.0 immediately once you inject as many skillbooks as you can in a school station, as many have done before. We know how hard it is to find stuff to do as a newbie, so you get a little ISK to blow on tackling frigates in the meanwhile and a whole lot more when you actually do show up on killmails flying them. The idea is to encourage fun stuff. If you find yourself playing this game and not being able to enjoy it, you're playing with the wrong people.

PvE is not the only way to make a living in Eve. It requires skillpoints and a decent fit. Trading on the other hand requires market knowledge and startup capital. Scamming requires a lack of video game ethics, etc. Here's a handy list of things you can aspire to do compared to another type of MMO: http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/7762/evevswow.jpg

Bought myself a Caracal for 2.2 million. Just can't argue with that price and the skills required to be productive in it are far less demanding than the other alternatives. Gives me a reasonably capable / expendable ship to explore the game with and shoot stuff while training. Seamless transition into a drake as well and then I can use that to fund my dreams of gunboats.

Thanks for the patience and answers.

We will be recruiting again very soon. If you are the sort of spy who invests 1100+ posts in your infiltration methods then I don't think any of us will mind that much.

If I was a spy I'd be asking questions on how to do it better and discussing my thoughts :)

Gaming with F13 in Eve would be good, your last recruitment drive was somewhat curtailed by goon Delve imploding.

Just in case it has not actually been said yet.
(Endie saying IF does not count)


SPY

I'm a spy. 

I can't find the Espionage Skillbook. Do you really need that to be a spy?

Since I used to be in Quam I've given up even trying to join you all. Maybe when you're not at war with a corp I was a member of 2 years ago I won't be considered a spy.

Join us. I makes it rain isk and rarely ever really play.

Funny thing, I joined just before then and it was one of the most fun things I've ever been part of.

Kind of drove that "there are consequences in this game" thing home.

I don't even want to count how many ships I've lost. Good thing there isn't a /shipslost command in-game.

Finding a corp with normal people can be.........interesting

Here's a protip if you only stick to cruiser class ships.

Train for pirate Faction ships especially if your goal is to get HACs, Assault ships, electronic attack frigs and interceptors . The skill requirements simply aren't as steep and the ship pool is far more varied than trying to cross train ships like HACs. More importantly the sell price for cruiser and frigate faction is hardly more expensive than tech 2 frigates and cruisers. (Battleships otoh are hideously expensive)


The most important thing you need to do is to determine which set of tech 2 weapons you want because that is too time consuming specializing into every weapon class.

If your plans are to get more specialized ships like logistics, covert ops or fleet command then ignore me.

CCP has made a more professional career guide. http://www.eveonline.com/careerguide/ (http://www.eveonline.com/careerguide/)

Last recruitment drive I was also into Fallen Earth, /sigh... so much wasted potential.

Thanks for that document. Some of the entries are really reaching a bit far but it's also an interesting overview. For a starter T1 cruisers are just such a sweet spot and I like the fact they transition into all the specialist roles and advanced ships although I need more experience to determine if those roles are fun / useful. And can also explore PvE and generate some income. It also won't hurt if I lose a couple of them to rats or PvP while learning some lessons about what not to do.

I can't easily imagine the amount of dedication required to pilot a capital ship in PvP. But then you'd only be piloting those because your corporation needs it, it's not really a personal ship I imagine.

Are there any particular noob corp scams I should be aware of?  As in, drag you out to some worm hole and steal all your stuff and leave you for dead type scams? 

I am sure there are plenty.  Do not join gangs with people you do not know.  Do not accept blind trades etc. Always read contract details and not just what the link says.  Always check item quantity and price per unit when buying items.  Do not give out your login credentials of any kind.  I would not even give out API really.  Never ever pay recruitment 'fees'.  Never accept non contract courier jobs.  If you must click links in local and elsewhere I would copy link location and paste it into wordpad or something similar first.  Always inspect items you are purchasing.  Always check whatever 'fee' is involved in any window (like mail).  Always keep local open to watch what is going on (big fights may not apply).  Never warp to some random idiots bookmarks.  Never let same random idiots gangwarp you.  Never help a guy by scooping his can for him.  Never have someone haul things for you unless you absolutely trust them.  Never put your stuff in a hanger you do not have take access from. 

In general it cannot hurt to be paranoid.  Once you get the feel for things general common sense should kick in and you can trust people here and there.

I trust 97 percent of the people on this forum. But only 3 percent of the 97 percent while they are logged into EVE.


Alright I am joking I would trust most people in bat country with pretty sensitive information.

Seems like most corps want your API.

I actually thought you flew with us for a bit in Bat Country when we did the original reboot, with Empire war shanigans?  I always used to get you mixed up with Bhodi, anyway.

In any case, we're not really at war with Quam: we're just in the area causing trouble for everyone.  We'd certainly take a look at your app.

Giving a limited API is safe. Giving a full API is probably safe.

The main purpose is for counter-espionage. Usually they check your alts (eg no trying to join Goons with a Bob alt) and your player donations (eg no trying to join Goons with a 500m isk player donation from the leader of Bob).

After you're accepted into the corp change your API.

If a primary defense against spies and thefts is checking ALTS with API keys and the like the game is doing something wrong.

Defence against spies varies from corp to corp. At its lowest there is no counter-espionage, not even an API check. At its highest, well I don't know all the details but technical measures like IP matching and social engineering measures will get used as well as intense API data scrutiny.

Failing to detect a spy can be really harsh. I'm not sure what you feel the game should be doing. Spying is a comparatively rare profession that really interests some people and makes the game richer for everyone else. I think it's working fine the way it is now.

If we suspect someone we use Vio Geraci, who fucks goons.  They have some decent tools.

It seems as if someone is willing to go so far as "spy" in this game that it would be really easy and relatively cheap to just set up a new account.

Which is probably the reason characters with less than X million skill points are looked at askance, though I believe CCP allows the sale of characters.

Yes they do this but there's still quite a lot that can be done. You may have posted on a rival's forum, possibly in an entirely different game but with a recognisable identity (eg the WoW "Stabs" is the same "Stabs" that is a Bob director). The IP address when I posted on their boards taunting them after my WoW guild beat them to a server first is the same IP address that "JoeBloggs938" who wants to join their corp has.

Or you fail to demonstrate certain qualities. Traditionally it has been hard for enemies to spy on the powerful Russian speaking corps of Eve because everyone joining was expected to be a native speaker. With smaller nationalities it gets even harder (for example Finfleet or Hun Reloaded). This, according to a talk I listened to from The Mittani, helps protect goons because goons have a set of memes and in-jokes that can be hard for people who don't read the Something Awful fora to emulate. Do you speak Goon?

So yes, of course competent spies come in with fresh accounts but they still get caught. It's actually quite fascinating. I'd quite like to get into the counter-espionage side of the game. And play John Le Carre games of releasing information to a small subset of trusted players then monitoring whether it gets picked up by opposing intelligence agencies.

Tutorial missions x 4 all done. 2.5 million isk to buy and equip my Caracal which laughs at level 1 missions, 20-30 million isk on skillbooks and starting to see lots of training times in days on skills I want. At least I can shoot, loot, explore and get faction while those skills are ticking over in the background.

Saw some interesting comments on ship selection on the SA forums,

"The game is a loving miserable [snip] station simulator when you follow the skill path of Frig - Cruiser -> Battleship -> Dreadnought. The game's true fun has always been in it's small skirmish poo poo. This is where CCP has balanced the game to. If you want good advice? Train this skill path. Frigate -> Cruiser -> Battlecruiser (Get T2 Cruiser guns for ratting) -> Interceptor -> Assault Frigates -> Heavy Assault Cruiser/Recon -> Interdictor -> Heavy Interdictor. From there just start maxing out every racial cruiser skill set."

I guess this might play out quite differently if you were a major space holding alliance facing large fleet battles but apparently the lag and state of the game means that isn't happening so much. This path certainly sounds more fun optimized since flying around a badger gave me a feel for what battleship speed is like. I suspect in both cases though you're going to spend a lot of time at the cruiser -> battlecruiser step generating Isk and learning skills before you move up.

That SA post holds a lot of water.

It's very good advice.

There are also several extra paths you can build on top of cruiser/frigate mastery. Covert ops are great for sneaking around and if you can scan down players you feed your fleet kills. Stealth bombers sound like fun. Strategic cruisers are the only Tech 3 ships currently in the game and are approximately as tough as a battleship for pve but much more versatile. T3 Frigates are on the CCP to do list and may come this winter or next summer.

You could spend years just playing frigates and cruisers and never miss out.

Now that we do very little strategic stuff I am having immense fun in Eve playing with rapiers and cruiser-hull stuff.  It makes you a better player.

Also, I have been doing a tour of the unfashionable hulls like Electronic Attack Ships (hyenas, keres, kitsune done, only the sentinel to try), the Eos (turns out it is pretty bad), vexors, cerbs and so on.  I'm having a great time.  The only ships I have lost recently are battleships, which are too unwieldy to get out.  By contrast, I've flown electronic attack ships nine or ten times and not lost one, maybe because FCs don't know what they are or people don't even have them on their overviews.

One fun thing is that anyone can have a great time popping hostile support with a hurricane alongside the best of them inside a few weeks of starting, and you won't get primaried the way you will as a lone blackbird against a remote-rep gang, for instance.  Similarly, you can train up a decent drake inside your first month in the game and take part in some of the most effective fleets in the gang (drake/scimitar gangs).  Of course, I'll be in a nighthawk but it's cool. :smug:

Before you accept a courier contract be sure you can access the stations for pickup and delivery.  Some stations are private and will not let you in to finish the contract.   Also be aware some contracts/good deals/etc. in low sec and null sec are lures to get you caught in a gate camp.

Lessons learnt today:

1. Read the mission carefully, it will contain hints on things that will kill you.
2. A Fully spawned "recon" mission, level 2, phase 1, will kill you very quickly even though they are frigates... albeit 12 with 4 elites.
3. It takes a long time for a cruiser to use an acceleration gate, whereas structure vanishes surprisingly quickly.
4. Insurance is a good thing.
5. Bookmarking your wreck, cancel mission, come back and loot yourself.. time for reflection.

So if I had waited for downtime the mission would have reset?

They also jammed me and I was getting a message as if my maximum number of targets was 0. Is this targeting disruption?

In "Recon", the best bet is to burn out as far as you can before the frigates agress/tackle you. Fit a 10mn afterburner for the mission (not  mwd). Burn out and set your orbit to 30kms and orbit the pack, not letting them get closer than 24 km. Toss missiles at them but only at the ones that are flashing - that way you don't take on the whole room at once. A target painter might help against frigs but if you have low SP, stick with shield mods. Look for what is using EWAR against you. Kill them first.

It could be worse, I run a speed/active shield tanked cruiser on the Level 4 version. First time in the new ship the first pack to agress me went scram and web followed by a different mission that neuted me at 30km out - fortunately I learned my lesson and hit them from 60 km out.

Once the room had fully popped they seemed to all be in aggro range and pretty close. If I'd just burned for the gate while they were spawning I think I would have made it, or just brought a speedship and rushed it no problem, but once the room was full no chance. Alternatively work out how to counter the jamming and whittle them down would have probably worked and got me some loot.

Running the level 4 version in a cruiser sounds pretty courageous though :)

I run level 4 recons 1-2 in a shuttle, you can hit the warp gates before most of the spawns can even target you.  Recon (3 of 3) requires something with a tank, though.

I tried that too... shuttles are cheap and fast so fun to test one out. It can't make the acceleration gate in a fully popped room though. It might do better on the level 4 one if the ships are using heavier weapons.
 

Well yeah, you're not supposed to wait for the room to spawn.  Just blitz it.

Not really - it's a Tengu (Tech 3 cruiser). I know you are supposed to blitz it, but I make decent cash killing everything and there's decent sec status boost to boot.

I never flew a battleship, although I had BS5 on two characters (for capitals) and maxed Artillery skills on one (again, for dreadnought guns).  If I wasn't flying capitals, I was flying 2 or 3 CovOps, or a Fenrir (this was before jump freighters and the blockade-runner freighters, when it took brass balls suitable for dread ammo to fly a freighter in 0.0 outside of a Titan convoy).  Might be the only guy who ever ran a gatecamp in a T1 freighter (with a bunch of sacrificial industrials for chaff).

--Dave

Did you keep the industrials on out gates in each direction on the basis that gank squads would be unable to resist killing them before looking for what else was on scan?

No, I had some buddies jump into a bunch of empty industrials I had left over from the days when I brought in T2 modules for resale (there was no point in flying them back out), while I flew the Fenrir, they jumped through first, about 10 seconds ahead of me (no dictor on the camp).  Between Minmatar bonuses (Fenrir's warp better than most battleships), implants (full high-grade Nomad), and the confusion, I was in warp before they could figure out what was going on and lock me down.

--Dave

I can see the fun of missioning and building business empires in hi-sec space. It's sort of like Elite and the old space 4x games, though wow they are half-arsed about mission content. Likewise I can see the idea of being part of a 0.0 empire defending their turf or planning to take someone else's space (or just deny them use of it) would be great fun. But a lot of the levels in-between I don't really get. Random gankage at gates, hoping to not get ganked and even faction warfare (they really needed another layer of PvP conflict rather than fixing the one they had?) just don't seem that much fun. The first two because by definition the fights will never be remotely balanced especially in a game with lots of bored, wealthy and high SP players.

Really, a lot of what makes Eve interesting is random complexity in their gaming systems and luck that enough people found that a challenge. They could really use something like the treaty system I see mentioned to ease the massive gap between the uber corporations who can hold blocks of space and have strong in-game identities and the newer players who could usefully contribute as militia. That would give some sort of progression up the corporate ladder, but at the moment most of the nooby chat alternates between "never leave empire", "solo random gankage!" and "just let your character train for 6-8 months". Faction warfare being sort of like the PvP wading pool seems to compete with 0.0 rather than contribute / feed into it.

Course I'm just a noob, what do I know.

In any case almost finished with buying learning skill-books (I would have rather had the raven that isk would have bought) with only the easily delayable advanced charisma one to get. Doing level 2 missions (and reading the mission text more carefully!) and realising that the other advantage of doing level 2 and 3 missions is the possibility of cruiser sized loot dropping. And shooting and looting is quite fun.

For a new combat oriented player I assume I can just ignore Planetary Interaction (space farmville?) as a pointless ISK sink. I didn't even realise it was actually in the game. Nor do I really understand Dust because if a bunch of Xbox360 players took over my planetary resources, and I was sitting out in space in a ship bristling with weaponry, I'd make damn sure any victory they achieved was pyrrhic. I don't even need to ask about the value of spacebook and incarna looks about as useful as any social space with no gameplay value.

Eve accommodates both the war style of pvp and the sport style of pvp.

Pvping in Eve can be seen as a strategy game. In classic military theory balanced fights only happen by mistake. The Von Clausewitz thing to do is to avoid engagement unless you are at least 2:1.


Sport pvp is about balanced sides. That does happen in Eve for strategic reasons because of participation. If it were a real war then an even fight where most of your men get killed would be a fight to avoid. However in Eve avoiding winnable fights leads to bored players not logging on. So fleet commanders who read too much military theory can make the mistake of boring their minions into not playing. And of course some FCs like fair pvp. Eve Uni for instance regularly takes large gangs of T1 frigates out into low sec that usually end up killing a few expensive ships then getting wiped out.

Gate camps appeal to some people and can be profitable. You get a lot of easy kills and moments of high danger. You get a steady flow of wreckage and salvage and ransom money. Also gate camps play a key role in securing nullsec space so some of your alliance can rat and mine and run complexes in peace while you camp the way in.

Faction warfare isn't very good. Generally speaking joining a militia makes you a target without giving you access to fair fights. The missions are also borked, most are 30+ jumps away from the station you pick them up in. Exceptional fleet commanders can make it fun I believe, I just haven't managed to find one yet.

PI and spacebook you can simply not worry about. If you like ganking it's good to understand PI as it's designed to feed soft targets to pirates.

It's really cool to see that cruisers have become valuable... so what is the counter to the first tactic? Your own fleet of cruisers / HAC / Command ships that can hit something with that small a signature radius I guess.

It's all good to me though, just going to ignore all large weapon / battleship skills and focus on piloting a cruiser / BC well knowing those skills will have continuing value.

Target painters to bring their effective radius up to something the BS can rip apart (they're slow, so the usual problems with target painters don't come up).  But since they're not part of the normal loadout or skillset, getting enough of them in play to make an effective counter might be an issue.

--Dave

The elegantly simple solution is to damp the guardians.  Init. drove off PL and killed 13 HACS last night using drakes with damps.  With three unbonused damps on it a guardian takes about 14 seconds to lock a sig-tanking zealot.

The celestis shall rise again.

The sickening crunch as the noobie bonus (2x training to 1.6 million skill points) drops away and all the training times, which seemed substantial enough, suddenly double.

Meanwhile playing around with a rupture (artillery is a lot more effort but also more satisfying then missiles), tried some L2 missions, finished the tutorial x 4 and almost finished the L1 epic arc ("The blood stained stars") with just the boss missions to go. Then I guess it's grinding L2 missions to save up for a drake, +3 implants, specialisation skill books from LP and faction so I can have an empire jump-clone.

Talking in the f13 channel, at Australian times admittedly, has generally served to remind people they still have their alts in that channel and them leaving it. But the noobie corp chat is fascinating. Someone asking when they can pilot a titan, someone else planning to form an anti-pirate corp in 234 days ("that's when my HAC will be ready") and taking on PL because they got ganked. Likewise some new player in a caracal taking a mission into a dead-end .4 system and getting insta-ganked by a Hurricane and T3 cruiser sitting at the gate. Also really surprised how many people go towards mining.

The main thing Eve has over something like Fallen Earth is that space is the best canvas. It's "epic" in scope without them doing a whole lot of work. Fallen Earth had to have relatively complex missions, environments and models to fill up their world. CCP can just re-use a very small number of models, incredibly basic PvE and mechanics and it still feels right. The other decision was allowing territorial possession as a driver of game activity rather than Fallen Earths tentative model of the same and their foolish dream they could generate enough PvE content to keep people busy. Though once again this is partly because CCP has a lot more "space" to allow people to carve out their own section of. Other than that their PvE content is laughable (6 year old game and you only have 40'ish fairly basic missions in total once duplicates are removed?), space is ultimately just a bunch of empty boxes, and low-sec is CCP sponsored gankville (since it is not protected but not capturable). There's still so much they could do with it though, as long as the foundation is good (which it probably isn't) and they don't get distracted (which they seem to be).

Oh, and the skill training model is near perfect from an addiction point of view. You can keep progressing with extremely low barriers of entry (just log on and set your skill), always have something you can be training towards and / or have such a pool of amassed skill points (eg. invested time) it's very hard to let it drop. Probably means alt and paying but inactive accounts are common.

They're reaching the limits of the foundation, because a lot of things are single-threaded, and nowadays processors are going for multiple cores rather than more GHz.

No one should grind for their first Battlecruiser, ugh. Just ask someone to give you a 50mil ISK loan which you can then pay back in days once you're actually in that BC, either shooting rats in 0.0 or L3s in high-sec. Also, an easier way to get a jump clone is just joining any corp that can dock at an outpost. I bought my first jump clone from some Rorqual pilot in low-sec.

/shrug.

Or buy a PLEX which is what I ended up doing. Spending time grinding for a set of plus four implants and a BC + fittings is time you should be using both of those things to be more productive.

In any case you have to grind faction before an agent will give you L3's.

You just need to focus on one NPC corp that has good L3s, like Caldary Navy or Kaalakiota if you want R&D agents for passive datacore income. Faction standing isn't that important until it gets low enough that the NPC start shooting you in their regions (-5.0).

Free jump clone corp:

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=939710

(train a level or two in Info Psychology then join them for a few minutes. It's free).


Datacores

Do NOT run Caldari Navy missions for datacores. They are only available from a handful of specific corporations.

http://www.eve-ivy.com/wiki/index.php?title=Datacore_Farming

You can use this list, ignoring type = EventMission Agent, to find the best ones.
http://eve-agents.com/index.dxd?AgentName=&System=&Region=-&Corporation=-&Faction=-&Division=18&Level=-&Skill=-&Locator=-&Storyline=0&FWAgent=0&Sort=7&Direction=1

I'm running only Caldari Navy and Federation Navy missions (to balance out faction loss, old EQ habit) for something to do / Isk generation while the skills tick over (should be learning skills 4/4 in a couple of days, and can pilot Drake & Hurricane... but lots of fitting and fighting skills to work on). The level 1 missions gave pretty small faction hits and while the L2 are more generous it still takes quite a few to get up to L3 (faction ~ 4). I've already rescued the "Damsel in distress" 3-4 times. Though it does add to my collection of "Exotic dancers".

Thanks for the link on the jumpclones and research... I might check my Lai Dai faction.

I ran Lai Dai because it's the least amount of effort for datacores, because they have six level 4 r&d agents, though they're not the most lucrative.

I mentioned Caldari Navy not because of datacores, but because of zero tax and perfect refines in Jita 4-4. I see no other reason to stay in high-sec other than this or datacore grind.

I need more Lai Dai standing on my R&D alt. Effort.

I am having a good time mentoring my first newbies with bitter vet wisdom and into more sensible skillpaths. Seeing honest enthusiasm towards internet spaceships seems to give energy to login to the game for me. For the same reason I've found it enjoyable to visit Dreddit Mumble from time to time to escape people who only go on about tanks.

Yup, didn't mean to come off so snarky Gets. Just that the way you typed it was ambiguous.

First L3 missions. They're not really harder just a bit slower in that you start meeting elite ships which resist a lot of damage (especially frigates since your weapons start to be sub-optimal for small ships) and cruisers / battlecruisers which have chunky tanks. The bounties and loot are a huge step up however.

I joined the Estel Arador corp and it worked exactly as it said on the tin. Apply, invite without questions and an insane amount of places you can now create jump clones at. Very convenient service. Placed two and will do one more before I leave it.

Be careful, I think L3 missions are where you first start seeing things like Recon, Worlds Collide and The Blockade.  These are missions you should research before you run, because they are trickier than the ones you're probably used to.

Already lost a Caracal (as mentioned above) to Recon (L2 & L4) so I always check missions in advance. Loved farming the L2 version of Blockade and look forward to trying the L3 version and Worlds Collide is L1 and L4. Also did the L3 "Cut-throat competition" which is fairly silly with enemy fleets of 9 cruisers and huge waves until I got bored of killing things that don't drop interesting loot or have bounties.

You certainly can't accuse CCP of trying too hard to hide the repetition in their "PvE content"  :awesome_for_real: and their challenge balance is all over the place. Looking at the L1 version of worlds collide it's a monster compared to regular L1 missions. Not sure whether I'm happy or sad I never got it.

Also seeing fleets of destroyers in L3 missions has driven home why you don't really want to be piloting one in PvP. Heavy missiles hit them like they are cruisers while they have weak frigate-level armor. I almost feel embarrassed for them.

Destroyers do have a nice little niche in PvP where they're excellent at killing frigates in 1-2 volleys.  The Cormorant in particular can snipe frigates at ridiculous ranges, and the Thrasher can get silly DPS for such a tiny t1 hull.  But yes, they die the minute anything cruiser-sized or above as much as locks them.

The first level 2 mission I was given was the Blockade. I thought they had given me a level 3 by mistake.

I remember a good line I heard when I started Eve. Destroyers combine the sise, speed and maneuverability of a cruiser with the survivability of a frigate.

But yeah, the challenge rating of missions is all over the place. Some level 4s could easily be level 3s, and others I could not do solo in a BS with max armour tanking skills. Its one of the reasons I do/did them in a command ship, the sise difference is such that 40 BS firing at you don't do QUITE as much raw damage. And then the ones that spawn frigate the moment you launch drones to shoot out your drones, and the ones that spawn more waves of 10 BS + escorts when you blow up the specific target so you very quickly have half the Serpentis fleet on your ass (and randomly targeting and shooting up your drones before you... I hate the Eos sometimes...)

Hull upgrades IV means I could fit T2 damage control on the Hurricane and Drake for a nice gain in effective hit points without being too expensive. Not that a L3 mission has actually got the drake lower than 50% shields (those defence turrets can hit at stupidly long range).. I'm thinking T2 damage mods (Ballistic Control / Gyrostabilizer) and T2 weaponry (long train though) are probably the next  things that will boost my power without costing insane amounts of Isk. Weaponry especially since the top level named weapons are pretty pricey. Can even store some T2 ammo for special occasions though it looks too expensive to use for missioning. The T2 shields aren't much better than the top named and they're reasonably affordable.

What is considered a decent armor for a cruiser level ship... 800mm? It seems odd that armor takes so much power to fit when you generally think of armor as being fairly passive. I just couldn't make a 1600mm plate work without cutting into my DPS.

I can also see the Allure of the Zealot, that's a really nicely balanced ship. The eagle would make a very nice rail sniper (it has better rail mods than the vulture) but it's still doing pretty piddly DPS. Easier and cheaper to just fly the drake or Hurricane.

If you're PvE'ing upping your resistances is better than adding buffer. Same goes for mission/rat specific tank over omnitank mods, unless it's something like a rogue drones mission.

Yeah, that's what I figure. Just as core defence purger rigs are more useful than core defence extender rigs. I'm not worried about the total tank so much because the alpha damage isn't that bad but I do want it to be durable over time while I whittle down all the enemy cruisers / BC's. I imagine in fleet / large gang PvP the balance changes towards favoring a decent chunk of EHP so you can take an alpha for long enough to get support or run.

PvP fits (should) attempt to maximize the product of survival(time till death/leaving the field when under enemy fire) and effectiveness(for each individual ship, subject to some caveats)

Different gangs and different ships will have different definitions of survival and effectiveness which mesh with the various "run/fight" decisions that correspond to various opposing gang types and sizes.

Resistance is generally preferred to more points, simply because damage you don't take doesn't have to be repaired, and in the case of armor tanks resistance doesn't slow you down.  If the "effective HP" of two builds are anywhere near equal, you're going to want the one with fewer points and more resists.

In some cases, especially for Capitals, the over-riding concern is to soak up as much firepower as possible for as long as possible, and how long it takes to repair (or what it does to your maneuverability) doesn't matter.  Pulsed attrition versus endurance models of fleet combat, as the dominant form of dishing out damage changes, so does the fitting philosophy.  But Eve has been in an endurance model for a while (the days of "Long Lance" sniper duels, or the grid-clearing DD, are now reflected only in mass bomber runs).  With spider-tanks and Logistics squads so much a part of normal fleet ops, not taking damage is better than more buffer in all but very narrow circumstances.

--Dave

It's a balancing act though. There comes a point where adding more resistance mods wont benefit you much. You always need a decent padding. I am a serious believer in at least one plate on your ship to give you that level of survivability. And I've had this argument in game and I've always won by the simple expedient of having people fly the ship fitted out like I say, and they can see how better it tanks.

Here's my Eos mission setup, for example.

5 250mm II railguns, tractor beam, salvager
10MN AB 2 Cap recharger, Webber
800mm plare. DC II, EANM II, MAR II, and 2 mission specific hardeners.

Granted this is a command ship but you get the idea. I've heard people say "oh why not another hardener/ resistance plate/repper/etc. but the truth is the extra health gives me plenty of time to evaluate if the situation is over my head, kill any warp scramming frigates and get out if I need to. A resistance tank does not give you that luxury. If you are dying, you die fast.

It's because hardeners are stacking-penalized and plates aren't, so at some point adding more resistance modules stops giving you more resists.

Plates are stacking penalized, they are just not stacking penalized in the same method as other things.

Please explain.

Well, if you have X EHP and a plate adds X, you double your EHP. But your fifth plate would only add 20%.

However, if resistance mods weren't stacking penalized, they would work the other way around. If you had 50% resists, and added a 10% resist mod, your EHP would go up by 20%. However, adding the fourth would increase EHP by 100%, and adding a fifth would make you immune.

So, without stacking penalities, you would get increasing marginal value for each resistance module, but decreasing marginal value for each plate. Since they add a static number of HP, the value marginal value of each can be said to decrease naturally, i.e. a sort of natural stacking penalty.

So you're saying that a mod that adds the exact same benefit each time it's used is stacking penalized?  I see.

Whereas resistance mods have two separate penalties, in the form of the actual stacking penalty and the fact that they only effect the percentage of the remaining difference between resists and damage done.

Well, calling it a "stacking penalty" is perhaps odd, I agree. But the marginal value of adding a plate arguably decrease with each plate naturally.

To achieve such a decreasing marginal value with resistance mods, you do need some kind of stacking penalty mechanism, although of course the dual mechanism gurantees that adding a second resistance mod of the same type will always give you less extra EHP (in absolute terms) than the first one. You can very well argue that this is overdoing it. I guess the reason is to balance out that adding EHP via resistance mods increase the effective repair rates of reppers, while plates do not provide this benefit.

Whereas shields stack nicely because you can use the total shield HP via their innate or boosted regeneration.

Did the level 3 version of "The Blockade". That's a mission with a pretty awesome number of opponents especially if you can't tell which is the trigger and pop it early. Rather lucrative though at about 4.5 million in isk in bounties alone.

The game giving you lots of random drops and unlimited storage space has given complete freedom to my pack-rat nature. So I have a "base" with some station containers full of salvage, ammo and random ship gear. But at the same time most of it's probably never going to get used. I'm tempted to keep everything that's an immediate upgrade or current gear, reprocess everything meta 0 (and maybe manufacture consumables like ammo?) but am not sure if it's generally better to sell or reprocess named items... I guess it varies a lot. I'll store salvage though, making your own rigs is a decent saving. I think it's the first game where every item can be turned back into resources which can make more items.

You'll be amazed of how many people sell ammo below mineral value because ~their time is free~

Rule of thumb is to keep or sell meta 3 items and recycle the rest and sell the ore. Your mileage may vary. I would certainly suggest junking meta 1 and 0.

  When I made my own ammo I usually just parked an industrial in a high sec belt and watched movies.
As watching the pirated movies on my computer was much more amusing  than even ever got I guess the minerals were essentially free. :)

Here is a chance to hook up with us: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19714.0