f13.net

Thanks, guys... NOT.
Everytime I lurk in any EVE related forum I end up resubbing, only to forget that I'm playing two weeks later. I must have one of the oldest and less skilled characters in the galaxy.
As the corp I was in last time probably doesn't exist anymore, i'll try applying for this one after I pick up whatever scraps I owned last time I forgot about EVE.
Maybe if I stay away from any mining I'll find the will to keep playing this time.

Join the F13 chat channel. I'm pretty sure they still have a few offices scattered around the galaxy.

Haha I'm in the same boat.  The game's slow enough without choosing a slow role.  Combat here I come.

Yeah, lurking here has gotten me to at least play the trial... and I'm enjoying it a lot.  Of course, I detected the sleep-inducing nature of mining in the tutorial and decided against it immediately.  Been doing combat stuff, mainly missions for agents, and enjoying myself.

Alkiera

Bought a Condor last night and a bunch of stuff to put on it.  Too bad it's going to take the rest of the week to learn the skills I'll need to use all teh shiney.

The Condor is at least 2x the Ibis in every stat so the 20k ISK it cost seems like a worthwhile expenditure while I wait for the skills and cash for a Merlin and while I learn the in's and out's of the game.

I made about 150k ISK in one two hour mission monday night (in the Ibis) so the cash doesn't really seem to be to much of an issue.

The way costs increase by orders of magnitude in this game is pretty daunting though.

I also had a Condor.  Loved it.  The best thing about it is the speed.  And missions are definately where the money is at for combat chars.  Level one mission that grants a 20-40k reward(depending on skills), double that if you're fast, and then 30k+ in bounties from the rats inside?  I'll take it!  Beats randomly checking asteroid belts for rats.

I'm now in a Kestrel, and I think I'm liking it.  Spent 200k on it, and another 200k outfitting it..  Should be interesting to see how a pure missile boat plays.  Won't get to actually running missions in it until tonight.  And I still need to train Shield Upgrade skill so I can get an amplifier on my shields, which should help my overall ability vs. NPCs quite a bit.... Tho my Condor was pretty able vs. the stuff in level 1 agent missions.

Alkiera

That kestrel will easily be able to take any level 1 mission.

What sec. rating is your agents system?  Going to .6 or .5 can see a huge increase in mission payouts.

The one I did was in 1.0 space - Level 1 rank 14?  I think.  Anyway the mission was 40k the bonus was 50k and then there were about 13 - 15 rats at 3 to 3.5k plus a big rat that was almost 7 k.

It was actually fun doing it in the Ibis, I had to warp in - string em out, pick one off, warp out and if I got holed a little too bad go back to the station and repair.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Condor (once it's fully tricked out) could just wade in and lay the smack down on the same mission with out all the finesse stuff.

Right now I'm setting up:

1x 75mm Railgun 1 (Iron for GP and Antimatter if I need big hits like station destroying)
2x Standard Missle Launcher (Sabertooth's I got for free from a cargo container)
1x Small Shield Booster
1x Basic Damage Control
1x Afterburner

Once I get everything else trained up I will probably go up to a 125mm railgun.

How are you getting all that in the ship?  I'm not sure it'll all fit within the grid/CPU limits, unless your skills are better than mine.

Alkiera

Good question.  I'm a newb and don't have the skills to mount everything yet.  I should know tonight if I can actually fit it in.  I was just assuming basic crap = basic crap and should fit on a basic crap ship :)

Hehe, you know what happens when you assume.  I'd like to put a fourth weapon on my Tristan but my powergrid is tapped.  I have to go with 2-3 50mm armor plating units instead of that juicy 100mm I have in storage, and still only fit two guns and a launcher.  I am not willing to ditch the shield and armor repair units, and that damn thing simply needs an AB.  I need more power.

It's actually more complex than that.  It's kinda interesting.

I ran:

1x 75mm Gatling Rail I
1x Standard Launcher(Sabertooths)
1x Rocket Launcher(Phalanx) or 1x Small Proton Smartbomb(for building destruction.  No ammo 4tw!)

1x Small Shield Booster
1x Afterburner

1x Power Diagnostic Unit I

The PDU gave me enough power to do what I needed, along from having a decent Engineering skill(5% to powergrid per level) & Weapons Upgrade skill (5% off weapon CPU needs) helps too

The Condor is a fantastic ship for a tech1 frigate; I still have mine (termed 'the yacht') and I use it when I want to make insta-warp bookmarks or penetrate zerosec for some reason. With a MWD, a capacitor expander and an overdrive, it flies fast enough to warp-in at 15km, hit the MWD and warp out before a pursuer in a cruiser or BS with instas can shoot at me.

Also, your income can and will increase by the appropriate order of magnitude once you're able to fit the appropriate size ship. A kestrel can rat in 0.5 or do L1 missions for meh-level frigate money; a cruiser can rat in 0.1 (!) for big cruiser money (low millions/hour, plus occasional rare drops for huge money); a battleship can rat in 0.0 for ginormous battleship money (high millions/hour if you're lucky, plus rare drops for amazing money).

FWIW, a couple of frigs can rat down to .2 if they are careful- have one set up to tank and the other to damage ASAP. Might need to warp out and back occasionally, but it can be done. Avid Hawk and I took down 2 cruisers last night with a pair of Rifters, and we could have taken two BCs if I hadn't forgotten to fit my armor repairer (I discovered I can fit it and keep it offline, then turn my AB offline when I needs me some armor- useful!).

My current Rifter setup-

2x 250mm light arty guns
2x Standard Missile Launchers
1 AB, 1 small shield extender
1 small armor repairer (see above), two PDUs (1 named).

I am not far from fitting a MAPC; that might allow me to dump one of the PDUs and add a CPU upgrade to allow me to fill my 3rd medium slot.

My Kestrel setup has the 4th high slot with an inactive smartbomb in it for taking out buildings... don't have near the CPU/power to put another missile rack there.  Maybe if I get up to EngV/Weappon Upgrades V.  yeah, right.  But this way if I get a building destroy mission, I can drop my AB, shield booster, etc, and just bomb the heck out of the thing once it's clear of enemies.

The power/CPU on the top t1 frigates are a little on the low side, imo.

Alkiera

Heh, what do you want - they're Frigates.

Get one of the ship fitting utilities that's out there. (QuickFit is the most common, but uses Java so it makes some people twitchy.)  They use your character's actual skills to modify the ship stats and include a listing of all available modules in the game.  That'll let you see what you can actually fit, and what you might want to train so you can fit what you want to fit.

I prefer running missions for cash, because 90% of the time it's so much safer than lowsec ratting it's not even worth comparing.  Plus, almost all the mission mobs have bounties on them, so as Alk mentioned you're kind of double-dipping.

I just wish there was a little more variety in the missions- all the level 1 combat missions are pretty close to identical. With ratting, at least there is a chance of a big cruiser or bc spawn, which is both challenging and profitable. I also wish there were a few more level 1 agents near Neesher- I need to grind out some faction with Caldari and Amarr (since I blew up a decent number of their ships, which makes them angry for some reason).

It gets better than just having them get angry at you.  Some missions give you dogtags which are contraband in Amarr space so they'll fine you too. (though they reprocess nicely)

Not just dogtags, but also drugs or freed slaves or any other number of contraband items.

I prefer lowsec ratting because it's more dangerous. That little bit of risk keeps me on edge and more focused/interested on doing the task at hand. But then, I also like 'trespassing' into 0.0 in a tech1 frigate, so maybe I'm just insane.  :-D

The fact that the margins are larger are also quite nice.

Well I specificaly was referring to the Min. missions that Way was doing to get the Amarr mad at him... but yeah, it's a little frustrating to get a nice bit of loot then realize it's contraband drugs or slaves (in matari space) or somesuch.  I should pick-up some smuggling skills sometime.

The problem with fitting a MWD to a condor is it negates the condors small signature - if someone did get a lock on you they are going to smack the crap out of you if you have a MWD fitted (since the Condor is fragile due to it being a low end T1 Frigate)

Personally I'd go with a big afterburner instead

You could always swap out the standard missiles for rocket launchers - Been a while since I've used rockets but I seem to remember they have a higher DPS than missiles because of the faster rate of fire (over compensates for them doing less damage than missiles). Obviously that reduces your range a bit but then the Condor should have little problem closing quickly with targets (which can also be advantageous to get inside the range of their weapons)

The only problem I can see with ratting in a Condor is when you come up against a multiple Kestrel spawn (or a multiple Merlin spawn possibly) at long range because they will be able to pound the hell out of you before you even get close - I have this problem when I fly my Destroyer, but obviously the Destroyer cant close the gap as quickly as the Condor

Speaking of Rockets....do the plethora of missile support skills also benefit rockets? If not, that's a pretty good reason to not use them.

Nice... after waking up in a pod deep in some godforsaken region, I'm back in a Punisher bristling with lasers. Time to relearn everything about the game.

BTW. I go by "Lucius Viperinus" in game... funny how similar sounds to "Lucius Vorenus" even if I created him way before Rome hit the screens

I had no idea what I was doing when I created my character and so I ended up with lots of engineering skills.  As such I can mount everything I listed above but I can only have either the AB or the Damage control active at one time (or disable one of the missle launchers and keep them both).

I wanted to check out ratting so when I was in .7 space (for a mission) I warped over to some asteroids and found a nice little 9k bounty rat.  The lewts he dropped were worth about another 40k once I reproccessed them.  ~50k isk 1.5 minutes worth of work?  Nice.

Oh and the missle launchers dropped the rat in about 5 rounds.  Compared to the hell I had with a 6.5k ISK rat the day (long fight lots of warping away, hulled and on fire at the end) before in the Ibis I am pretty happy with the ship change.

I've seen this asked on the Eve forums a few times and the general concensus is that they dont (although I've never seen any official comment either way). This does, unfortunately, make rockets a kind of 'dead end' skill since I'm not aware of any higher missile skills using it as a req'd. skill (unlike standard missile), having said that you do only need to get it to level 1 to use them.....

Rockets are however a useful option to the starting pilot in that they tend to be cheaper and easier to fit, likewise it wouldnt suprise me to see starting interceptor pilots returning to rockets when they first get their inty (although there is an argument for them staying out of the inty until they have the skills to equip it 'properly')

For being stupid in 0.0, you really need to be able to hit 1500m/s in a single pulse of your speed-boost device. I'll have to see if I can squeeze a 10MN AB on the condor and, if so, how fast it goes. I mean, hey, more survivability while doing dumb things - I'm all over that.

Ok I think I need some advice.  I'm in a lull.

I'm in a well equipped Kestrel and able to do any Tier1 missions, even some Tier2 with pauses.  But all I'm doing are fedex and kill-rats missions.  I've been cultivating a Rank1 Quality 0 agent in a 0.4 system to get about a 4.0 Loyalty (?).  I presume the missions get more interesting the more you do stuff for an agent?

Basically, what else is there to?  I got 1.6M ISK and am 2-3M off from getting a cruiser.  Do I have to grind that last money or is there some quest arc I can do?.... thx

I'm sure we can help you with the Cruiser purchase, if you have the skills but just need the money.

I just got down to Kor-Azor where everyone else is, so I dont know how often or what we're working towards with any mining ops but I would hope we can find a way for you to "earn" a cruiser.

It seems like from the chat we always need another hauler, mind training the indy skill?   :-D  But seriously talk to the actual miners, for my part the best I can do is go do some ratting, then give you the best drops and let you find the right places to sell them, which is more leg work then I'm willing to do.  Hell perhaps I can send you to fetch some modules I've decided I might want.

Train up your Social skills- Connections and Negotiations and the like. You will get more bang for your buck from the agents,  and qualify to use higher quality agents as well.

Plenty of money to be made just ratting and running the occasional mission in Neesher area. Mining is also a good way to make a bunch of ISK. 

Right now I'm near the Forge I think.  I'm pretty close to having all the needed Cruiser skills, maybe only 2-3 days more of training.

Where is everyone playing?   Also, give me a list of skills the corp needs and I'll join up.  I'm only able to play casually, so a crafter-like skillset is fine with me.  Thx.

Is that 1.6 mil straight from mission payouts?  If you haven't been selling the loot drops, you may have that 2-3 mill sitting in your hangar. 
And don't be like me:  Remember to have enough to pay for INSURANCE as well as the cruiser+fittings cost.

And if the loot is just normal items, reprocess, then sell the minerals.  You're likely to make more that way.  If it's named or somewhat uncommon stuff, check the price first.

Alkiera

We don't have any specific skill requirements, feel free to join up and just hang out with us. We typically go ratting or mining together. We are pretty much all in Neesher or nearby.

We can certainly help you get the minerals needed to build a cruiser, and we might have a BPC depending on what you want to fly. Otherwise, ratting in groups and assisting in mining (like Hoax said) - we can always use a hauler - will get you money or minerals or both. We also need help keeping the rats off us while we mine, so you can help that way .. though not in the lower security systems when just in a frigate.

We also have a lot of modules and things available in the corp hangar you can use to outfit your new ship.

Missions are probably the best way to go to earn cash. And as mentioned, upping your Social skills will increase your payouts and give you access to better agents. When you can start doing Level 2's you'll be making a lot more money if you can do them quickly (usually requires a cruiser though).

If you come to Neesher you can rat with us and help with mining, otherwise you can still join the corp and hang out where you are doing missions until you can afford a cruiser.

Thanks.  I will head over to Neesher sometime tomorrow.   I've been selling and reprocessing everything -- nothing is going to waste.  Most money goes into ammo and skills it seems. 

We have several ammo blueprints too, so we can run off several thousand of whatever type you like in most cases. Just hang onto some extra minerals and voila! Instant ammo =)

I haven't joined the corp yet, still in my lil frig.  I'd come haul for you, I have the reqs to get an indy, aside from the actual skill, which is apparently restricted from trial accounts.  D'oh.

Alkiera

Sounds like it's time to subscribe.  8-)

Heck, you could even help with ratting/gank squads. Us slow cruisers don't like to pick up our loot, especially people like myself and Yaeru, who fly slow-ass missile boats.

Flying 30km+ for a single loot can is teh suck.

Agreed I'm definately going to need small ships to:

a) kill any small ships that get under my guns
b) pick up everything
c) entertain me by setting themselves on orbit around my ship whenever they aren't needed for any of the above mentioned tasks

I haven't looted anything since I got the prophecy its just too fucking slow for me to bother.

Pfft...I loot everything. I mean EVERYTHING.

I was on the chat channel one night, talking about how it took me the better part of an hour to loot all the cans that dropped in a single mission encounter....

Granted, that encounter consisted of about 30 frigates, but still.


Also, if you're having a huge problem with small ships getting inside the minimum firing range of your laser batteries, you might want to consider mounting one or two smaller turrets to deal with the problem, because it's not going to go away.

Or an assault launcher or 2 (warning: not a particularly useful suggestion if you fly Amar, which you probably do if you use lasers)

I echo this, having gotten my shiny new cruiser 99% set up.  Luckily I had a named cruiser-grade AB sitting in a hangar, but it really throws me out of my groove if I have break off my mining cycle to go loot cans, and it clutters up my hold, too.  I don't want to fit a tractor beam, and I don't know of any "gopher" drones.

People can attest to how slow my Proph moves, eventually I just gave up and would put the ship on stop after the rats were cleared.

I dont think there are loot drones, but that is a damn good idea.  Tractor beams require scienceV which means that is not going to happen any time soon.

I do about 160m/s without AB, what about you?

That would drive me crazy. I was getting about 225 in my Caracal w/out AB and it was making me nuts. Perhaps i am destined for smaller faster ships. I've read about people getting 1300+ - is that inty's or assault frigs?

My Slasher hit over 1000 m/s with an AB- with maxed Nav and AB skills, I could probably get close to that. Add a MWD and it would be easy.

I had a MWD on my rifter and could hit 1500 with no problem.

Those 1300+ numbers are all about the MicroWarpDrives.  Like an afterburner on crack.

Alkiera

There are guys with tons of skills and the speed-booster implants that can hit 7kmps in interceptors.  They can orbit at 15KM out and still be traversing too fast to track with cruiser guns, and hard for the slower Frigate guns.  Shooting missles at them is a waste of ammo: Not only are they faster than the missle, they are faster than the explosion blast.  You won't see them often, they hunt ratkiller battleships in 0.0 space.  Definitely the elite of Eve pirates.

--Dave

God I love this game...

Just tried out a mwd on my executioner, got to juuuust under 3k m/s.  So I may have been wrong when I said I got to 3.5 on my Rifter.  too lazy to test it out atm. 

You *might* be able to in a Caldari missile tub with maxed ship skill and missile projection (plus a spendy little implant).  That's *if* shit stacks up to 100%+ velocity or not.  I dunno.  The maths in thees game, they are confoozling me.

Regardless, one wouldn't be doing it in a Ferox which is where I plan to go after I get back in; I think I'm only a couple days skill training plus a few million ISK from that.  I like missiles (the lazy man's weapon), so I thought I'd go 5 launchers/2 "other."  Since I've almost totally neglected learning anything about projectile weapons, what would be a pair of good close-in hybrids for shooting speedy little fuckers?

You want Light Neutron Blasters if your only concern is doing damage to frigates.  But that is comming from someone who hasn't do any real work with Hybrids.

Eh, they don't *have* to be hybrids; the Ferox just gets a range bonus on those--but since the guns are only intended for pesky swarming midges, they don't need it.

For smalls you want Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I (300k a pop) and for medium you want Limited Ion Blaster I (500k a pop).

But what are the ranges on those weapons?

Blasters typically suck for range. 3-5k optimal with about 3k fall off (this is mediums btw)

That said the tracking (as fa as I understand it) is very good (higher number = better I believe for tracking) and the damage is very good.

I've spent the day mission running (level 2) and have noticed big problems hitting Frigs with my rails (both 250mil and dual 150mil) under about 20/25k and keep thinking about swapping one or both out for a blaster to see if it helps......

Do we have a names list?  I can find the /f13 corp name, but not sure who is on :)  Got to Neesher, but need handles for punch&pie. 

We have a channel that everyone usually hangs out on. Join channel 'F13' from the channels & mailing lists screen.

Ya, were different in that the corp chat is usually empty, the f13 channel is where its at as we have friends in other corps etc. And this was superbowl sunday so its dead every where, well come back be a little patient.

I've been impressed with the f13 chat.  There is usually 9 or 10 people in there when I have been on.  Usually an f13 channel has maybe 1 person in it going, "Hello?  Anyone there?"

Yeah, but we are all AFK.

Subbed, spent most of the morning re-acquainting myself with the game.

Got killed almost immediately ratting in a lousy little .4 system, by a player whom I almost destroyed before his buddy in the HAC warped in on top of me.  On the bright side, I almost immediately after looted about 8mil worth of modules which (with insurance) is enough to move up to a Ferox instead of just replacing my Caracal :)

I'm gonna tool around in safe space for a couple more days to build up some wallet pad, but them I'm off on the long warp over to your backwoods end of the galaxy.

There's plenty of safe space around us, just so you know. If you come down you don't have to jump into .4 or .2 systems right away! :)

Look forward to seeing you in the chat, make sure you let us know which one is you!

It was some large number of jumps to get there; I'll poke around in my own backyard while I get a handle on my new boat and then jump over when I can take time to AFK-travel.

Consider training up Guided Missle Precision and Warhead Upgrades.  Then go with this setup:

Ship:  Ferox
Highs:
          5x Heavy launcher
          2x Medium Nos
Mids:
          1x Medium or Large shield booster (dependent on what your CPU/PG is after skills)
          2x Active hardener of "main" damage type of NPC you are ratting.
          1x Active hardener of "secondary" damage type of NPC you are ratting.
          1x 10mn AB or 1x Shield Booster Amplifier (dependent on whether you want your tank stronger, or want to go faster than 175m/s)
Lows:
          2x PDS (get the skills to run PDS IIs asap)
          2x BCS (the BCS II is retardedly expensive)

Align to a convenient warp spot the instant you hit the mission, then just kite everything.  With the BCS and 2-3 points each in Heavy Missle, Guided Missle Precision, and Warhead Upgrades you should be able to do 160-180 damage to cruiser or better, and 30-70 damage (on a "bad" hit where they out-maneuver your missle's explosion velocity, kiting them will tend to make it so that they are headed in a straight line toward you which increases the likelyhood of doing a full damage hit to even the fastest frigate) to frigates while hitting from near 60km away.

With that you can sometimes pop Level III inties and afs in 1 volley, rarely more than 3.  The Ferox with no MWD has obscene cap, enough to run the hardeners near indefinitely.  You'll want to micro-manage the booster.  The two Nos are there to turn the couple frigates who will inevitably get w/in 10km of you into mobile cap batteries.  This means you'll have more cap to run the booster, which you'll probably need for the few seconds that you are getting orbited by extra damage dealers.

This kit does pretty well against all but the most notorious Level III kill missions, and is obscenely unbalanced against the 4/10 "monastery" complexes that litter the low-sec zones between Amarr and Minmatar space.  The monasteries are filled primarily with smart-bomb swarms, so start kiting, turn off the hardeners, and kick on an AB.  You can solo both levels of the complex and might never even take a single point of damage because even 40+ smartbombing cruisers never get close enough to you to fire.  1.9m Isk in bounties without ever seeing a bar of red on your shields.

I personally would go with a shield extender instead of 3(!) hardeners. Also allows you to equip some other things if you like....such as target painters...or anything else.

I've lost 4 feroxes that way.  There are two problems with shield extenders in a ratting Ferox:

1.  They increase singal radius.  That means that guns can track you better, and missles can hit you harder.  So you get more shield hp but you take more damage.

This ties directly into,

2.  They are purely passive tanking with no resists, influenced only by your shield recharge rate via PDSs.  For ratting this can be bad because rats have infinite ammo and (i think) infinite cap.  I've lost a Ferox with over 11k shield hp in a Level III because I got warp scrambled, and the dps of the rats was better than my dps and shield recharge rate combined (and that was with 4x PDS IIs, 12-14 million worth of shield recharge gear all by themselves).


Get a list of the damage types of NPCs, kit out the active hardeners, and go test it.  When running the hardener tank a Guristas Heavy Missle battery launching Scourges at me does 10-20 damage per hit.  Even with "only" 4.7k shield hp the damage-to-total ratio is much, much lower than having 11k shield hp but taking 75-150 damage per heavy missle hit.

I spent the better part of 5 months avoiding the above setup (it was suggested to me by others) because I was convinced it was a bad idea.  I was dead wrong, and it cost me tens if not hundreds of millions of top shelf ratting gear to learn that lesson.

Well...maybe it was something to do with me refusing to look up rat damage types....

I've tried using hardeners before and hated them....they leeched the hell out of my cap.

Though I can see their viability with the addition of the 2 large NOSs.

So far I've been using:

5 Heavies (Mix of EM/Kin/Kin/Thermal/Exp)
2 150 autocannons for the little guys(forget the exact type, but good ones)

1 AB
1 Med Shield Booster--I should probably try to fit a large; I've usually got cap to burn even with perma-AB going.
2 Large Extenders
1 Passive EM hardener

1 PDU
2 BCS
1 Warp Stabilizer

This is obviously not the most efficient NPC setup, but it's worked well for me so far (well, except for that Level III Black Market mission where you warp in onto a pair of sentry guns in the second half of the mission--those little fuckers hurt).  My problem is I'm trying to find a workable middle-ground between being totally gimped vs either PCs or NPCs.  It may not exist :P

I use hardeners on my Proph's armor tank, there is something satisfying about taking 20-30 damage from other BC's...  Now I just need to get my hands on a techII medium armor repairer *evil grin*

They do leech cap, true.  Anything smaller than a BC and you'll want cap batteries or rechargers which makes for a much tighter fit.  On a BC fitted with PDSs though, you can run those hardeners a loooong time even without the Nos.

Easiest way to check rat damage is http://eve.grismar.net/rats/index.php  All you really need to do is open up your in-game notepad and make a list like:

Guristas - kin/therm

Then just update it as you get missions for various NPC types; no reason to do them all at once.  It's also worth noting that NPCs tend to be weak against the type of damage they do.  So if you are fighting Guristas kit ballistic hardeners and pack scourge heavies, for example.  Since the Ferox specifically gets boosts to shield resistances per level of BC skill, a mix of hardeners flown by a pilot with BC 3 or BC 4 can hit 85% resistance for a specific damage type even with the stacking penalty.  That combined with the fact that using the right damage type heavy can mean the difference between hitting for 200 per vs. 175 per makes it really worth doing the little bit of research.

Hardeners do take you further into micro-management territory, so I can understand the reluctance.  You'll wind up stocking 2-3 of each damage type in the hangar you're basing missions out of.  But the benefit is pretty substantial.

I should be ingame in about another 2-3 hours, I'm happy to join the F13 channel and c/p the list I already have for the benefit of whoever might want it.