f13.net

Thanks to Morfiend and lack of respect for my own well being, I have chosen to wade into these waters to see if there is a game in there for me.

My current gaming habits allow for limited time twice a week to pop into my games of choice and enjoy but the briefest moments of escape.
I've heard Eve has some gameplay that can be engaging while online and offline, is this true? I'm interested even if it only means hoping on to maintain mining sites or production or god knows what. I like numbers and stats.

see you there?

Edit: It's a free trial account so I'll be trying to maximize my fun within the time

Planetary Production. You can do it from the other side of the galaxy, and can set it up to pick up the goo once a week. Or stay in system and pick it up once a day.

I've never done it, but people make money from it. If you want to make a lot of money, scam people is the easiest way though.

Or join Bat Country and scan systems for rare dungeon's. Then sell the location to a high skilled player for 50% of the profit and he does all the actual work.

YMMV.

all of that sounds awesome

Later on you can run mining towers for moogoo, but that takes a lot of investment. Helps if there's been a recent war to free up the slots. Late on you can do Tech II production, though everyone does that in Empire. Tech 1 production is open to anyone, though hard to make money these days. But there is always small places in the market for someone.

Then there's trading, which you can do with little effort, though its hard to know how to make money, and easy to lose it. It is the logical thing if you like that sort of thing of spreadsheets and calculating 0.1 changes in profit/loss.

Nearly all of this IS PVP, you're competing against other humans doing the same thing.

Way more info than you need right now. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12594.0)

Grab a good beer and pull up your ipad and skim that PDF, isktheguide.com. It really is amazing and should be required reading for anyone starting the game.

Obvious spy is obvious.

I wager they will keep him at arms length and then they eventually accept him. Then he will go native like evey other spy that joins.

Welcome to Eve Online, a game about spaceships.

There's also always a chance that you'll log on and there will be a fleet (as in, let's PvP and die horribly) either forming or already doing something not far away. You can usually just jump in and then bugger off when you need to. It's not like leaving a group when they are half way through a dungeon in other games.

There are spaceships in this game now? Holy fuck where have I been?! I thought it was a math/reading/logic game?!  :why_so_serious:

I thought you just walked around stations!

I just signed in for the first time in months using my 5 free days.  Why am I, a multi-billionaire industrialist, wearing this appalling shirt?

I hear you can fix that with Aurum.

Not a chance. I'd pay big bucks to customize my freighter but I'll be damned if I'll spend isk on a shirt nobody but me can even see.

As of now I feel that I would have to invest a lot of time playing to get to a point where I didn't have to spend a lot of time playing. If that makes sense?

I love the genre, I love the treatment, I love the gameplay. I can see where the fun is, I just don't think I can make it happen with my current gaming habits. 4 hours a week aint enough. Don't get me wrong, I wish I could get into it. I just can;t afford the amount of time it would take for me to play it the way I want to.

Maybe if it went free to play I would see it through?

I picked up some planetary production based skillbooks yesterday -- I happened to be in a hub area -- is that a 0.0 only thing?

Planetary interaction can be done anywhere, but highsec planets have zilch and crap on them usually.  So effectively PI is done in nullsec/wormholes where the planets are rich.

So if I wanted to toy with it I could in high-sec, just to get a feel for it?

Yes, you can mess around with it in high sec. Do a search for "command center" in the market - this should find all the different command centers for you. Take the relevant command center to the relevant planet type (eg ice, gas etc) and off you go.

Certainly.  I do PI in high sec with Ky.

I found a few crap planets (two) and setup two refining hub thingies. (I still have like a million skill points banked. After getting the last of what I needed for stealth bombers, black ops, jump gates, and heavy interdictors. And like 4/5 on the basic planet stuff. It's crazy!).

Anyways, here's my question -- I picked planets where I could put together an advanced product -- chaining four basic things into two basic products then them into a final product. (I think like personal microcontrollers and oxides? I don't remember.).

What I'm confused with is the "program times" on the extractors. I saw -- and set -- two heads to mine two different things. I set up the links, but just drug the program time to max. (I figure that's probably wrong, but I can always go reset it -- like 14 day cycles). Once started, it mines ONE of the two things (I guess it'll switch to the other head in 14 days?)...so I can only seem to route ONE resource to a processing plant.

Is there anyway to setup a route for the next resource in the cycle? Would I be better off running a seperate extractor for each resource, rather than using two extractors (each with two mining thingies?). What's the best cycle time on those? Or should I just run one extractor with four heads (one for each resource) on a shorter cycle time, routing them to a storage bin? And then from there through the factories?

I'm confused as to what's 'optimal' or even 'not stupid' on that. :) Finding a planet, putting down a base, linking things up, setting up schematics, all that was pretty easy. They're shit planets, for the most part, but I'm after experience here not massive money.

You need one extractor control unit per resource you want to simultaneously mine. And since the control unit has a large upfront cost there's an advantage to having as few as possible. Especially for low-sec installations where just two extraction points will generate very little in terms of resources.

The time slider is meant to balance extraction rate against resource depletion. In practice depletion seems fairly relentless but I still use three days in the hope it will recover somewhat. That and clicking more recently would drive me mad.

I do 3 days, 13 hours.  Gives me time to ignore it so I don't have to be constantly checking, but a better extraction rate than a longer period.

The best set-up I have found is to make a Launch Platform the center of my complex.  Everything connects to it.
 - Control Center of course
 - Two extractors; one for each needed resource
 - Two basic factories; one to convert each resource
 - One advanced factory; takes the converted resources and makes a finished product

The extractors dump into the platform for storage.  The factories pull from the storage as materials are available and dump the finished products back in.  In high sec you're not going to overburden the supply lines, but in low or nullsec it might be necessary to build more complicated structures.  So far though, the hub idea has been the most efficient I could come up with because you get weird supply routes over time if you have an extractor dump directly to a factory.

The products are used to fuel POSes, maybe other stuff, so it's best to check prices if you're not going to use the materials.  It may be more worthwhile to sell raw materials than refine it.  (We use ours, so I haven't priced anything.)

Dangit, I'm going to have to go on today and totally redo things. Oh well. That's why I did it now, in high-sec, when I'm sitting on tons of cash. (Well, by 'casual player' standards. Not the billions upon billions most people seem to have, but 800 mill does me fine, and I've got that passive income from three L4 research guys).

I checked prices -- it seemed about half a dozen of one, six of the other on finished goods versus materials. I figured I'd do the more complex stuff just to get a feel for it.

Took me 20 minutes to realize I could upgrade my command center though!

For goons, there is a bug guide on the wiki and more info in the PVE/W/P forum.  Also newbies get a PI kit when they start.  That said, the timings and approaches ar a bit different because you're dealing with massively more productive planets in deep 0.0.

Yes, but I have to join goonswarm first. :) Which requires...something. In any case, I'm actually happier making my mistakes in high-sec as I remember how to load guns and stuff. I lost a handful of drones due to stupidity yesterday, and almost got podded on an L4 because I forgot to turn on my hardeners.

NPCs pod you now?

I have no idea. I warped out when I was down to the hull. Got out with about 15% or so left.

NPCs don't pod you.

They will, however, blow up my expensive battleship filled with expensive toys? I mean it's just a Dominux (Dominus?) but still -- I've got good stuff in there, rigs and all. Though those have probably come down a lot in price. :)

I DID hear about the awesome salvage boat, which I bought last night -- but didn't pick up yet. Had all the skills for it already. can't wait to try it out. The tractor and salvager bonuses look awesome.

Didn't think to check out the cargo bay.

Oh yeah, they'll make a lawn ornament out of your Dominix if you give them the chance.  They just won't shoot your pod.

How to join -BAT-

Where's my newbie kit then!?

You have to request the kit in chat to get it.  Last I knew, the chat channel they were using was the same as the free frigate channel, just go into it and ask for the PI newbie kit.

Everyone makes a lawn ornament out of that damn thing. Stupid drones.

Out of curiousity, who else does armor-tanking besides Gallente? Anyone with missiles? I might cross-train for something more...missile-y.

Probably be a week or two before I rejoin Bat Country. Want to have a few days free to move around and get situated, instead of my current "an hour here, an hour there" sort of schedule. Looking forward to it, though.

I might just play in tackling frigs for awhile. Overskilled for it, but they're so disposable.

Amarr does big time armor tank, but they hardly use missiles. Caldari are the missile-y ships, but they are mostly shield tank I believe.

What do Amarr use? (Can't see Eve wikis here at work). I might work on shield tanking, I suppose. I've pretty much hit the limits on non-capital ships in armor tanking, hybrid turrets, and drones. Once I finish up the ORE 4/5 I want for my salvager, I can either go back to Gallente Drone Specialization 5 (my basic "fuck if I know what I want to train") or pick a new goal. Maybe some more missile skills, if I want to do stealth bombers. That's just torpedos, right?

Amarr uses lasers and armour. E-war is tracking disruption.

I've got basic e-war stuff -- plenty for a tackling frigate. My scanning/probing stuff is up to snuff as well, just rusty from disuse. If nothing else, when I get out there I can play with planets and learn to probe for those...plexes?

And volunteer to play scout. I love my Helios. Probably more than is healthy. The idea of something invisible that can fire fuck-you torpedoes is even better, though.

Cloaking is finicky in eve, it doesn't make you the invisible assassin that a WoW rogue is, for instance.  A lone stealth bomber is essentially just a nuisance to anything cruiser sized or up, and while you can bomb smaller ships to death, you'll probably spend more on bombs than they spent on the ship you blew up.  Stealth bombers shine in organized packs that saturate an area in coordinated bomb strikes.  Most big alliances have such bomber fleets, of course, so if that's what floats your boat you shouldn't have a hard time finding a crew to fly with.  Just don't expect to be the solo knife in the back.

Yeah, I know that much. :) I enjoyed solo scouting for frig gangs in a cov-ops -- of course the "Warp in and dance around while they try to get close enough to decloak you" dance was...exciting.

And nerve wracking. :)

Well, 4 PI's setup. One that will need a bit more work later to go another stage in production.

The one command center per planet is weird -- can you move it? Does distance from the command center affect things? Or do you  just blow it up and buy another one when you want to move to other spawns?

Also fitted out my Noctis. :) Do salvage rigs actually do any good?

Command centers are stuck where you placed them short of blowing them up and setting down a new one.  You don't need to actually have them connected to the rest of your stuff on the planet, though, so no, their position won't ruin anything.  The only thing is that when you first view a planet it always moves to the location of your command center so if all of your stuff is on the other side of the planet from it, it's somewhat of a hassle.

Salvage rigs are good if your salvaging skill is low.  Some wrecks have a minimum salvage skill requirement, like some Sleeper ships needing salvaging V, and salvage rigs can let you salvage ships that would otherwise be off-limits.  But if you have salvage V, they stop being of much use.

Hey, I wanna run my Mission Domi (drone) fit past everyone to make sure I'm not being idiotic:

Highs:
3xDual 250mm Scout guns (Tungsten/Antimatter rounds). I only use them to annoy things.
1xHeavy Ghoul Siphon
2xDrone Link Augmenter 1

Meds:
3xCap Recharger II
1xLif Afterburner
1xOmni Tracking Link. (Need a sensor booster, really. I can only lock on at 87k)

Lows:
2xEnergized Adaptive Membrane IIs
1xDamage Control II
1xLarge Armor Rep II
3xN-type Mission Specific Hardener.

Rigs:
1xDrone Range Augmentor
1xDrone Speed Augmentor
1xCap Control Circuit.

Active tanking setup, obviously...but I burn out in like 3.5 minutes and the rats in oner of my missions (Smash the something -- Amarr navy) blew through my tank like it was paper.