f13.net

I haven't played in a very long time. In the past I would just war dec empire corps with my one man corp and have some fun. I had a wealthy benefactor then who wasn't into pvp but enjoyed watching me mess with folks in empire. Unortunately the gravy train ended when he sold all his accounts.

As a solo player is it possible for me to fund two accounts with PLEX as well as any empire wars I want to declare? If so will I be stuck mining and mission running for hours and hours?

I'm not sure what the economy is like now since it has been so long. Thanks for the advice.

The economy:

- PLEXes cost 550 million.  Trit is at 5, Pyerite at 13, and so on.  Frigates are 500k, cruisers 10-15m, battleships 100-150m.  Tech 2 gear is through the roof (base T2 resist module price is 2 million), higher meta T1 can still be found at old prices here and there.  "Average" wealth is probably 20 billion in the wallet (I feel poor at 4b).

- Mision rewards have not been upgraded to keep up with the costs of things and player wealth.  The belts in high-sec are mined out daily; you'll barely find enough ore per roid to do 1-2 cycles on a barge's 3-minute-cycle strip miner.  Trade opportunities aren't obvious at a first glance (not that they ever were).

Money-making activities:

- On the other hand, you can get really lucky, even in high sec, with loot drops from exploration sites, if you manage to beat everyone else to the overseer loot container.  Any officer drop can be sold at super-inflated prices.  Or, if you can find a pick-up group to do Sansha Incursions with (they'll take you if you're shield logistics / Basilisk in a heartbeat), they reward pretty well (but are quite tough).  Or, FW has been re-designed to be more about PVP than about PVE, and the LP's can be raked in and changed to ISK (though the average exchange rate is 1 LP : 500 ISK or lower).

- Lowsec exploration sites are quite profitable (by high-sec standards), but will likely require a solid tanked ship.  People are flying T3 cruisers; you may be able to do with a HAC, well tanked.  Pirate attacks are a given in lowsec, though; the higher rewards attract carebears who then attract pirates.  I haven't heard "lowsec is empty, make the carebears come, CCP" in a while.

- Null moneymaking is probably still about DED complexes, which are a group activity.

- In addition to all these, wormholes can be found all over the place, leading to w-space; 2500 solar systems that can be exploited either by grinding the Sleepers (for rewards comparable to null complexes, and this is typically a group activity), or by PVP roams to kill the grinders for their juicy ships (often T3 fitted with officer modules, this is also a group activity).

I've played, pretty casually, solo Exploration sites in high-sec.  I'm spending my time answering questions in the newbie forums, really.  In any case, without really trying, I was able to make 500 mil per month using a T2 fitted Vexor and a probing frigate (no fancy stuff).  But, given how much time I have, and the fact that I have a RL job, I'm actually going the opposite way:  I'll buy PLEXes to inject ISK into my account.  It's not worth it for me to grind for ISK.

Anyway, hope this gives you an idea of what you can do.

Is that number from the peers your play with or an "average eve online player"?

Like Mr. Wall I have resubbed too after an 1 1/2 year long hiatus and feel quite out of the loop, economical and social.  :|

Here (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66491) are some actual numbers from last year.

I'm solo (no peers); the 20 bil number above was pulled out of my ass, sorry about that.  It's what I would aim for, currently (was feeling comfortable with 4b when I quit the game 2 years ago), based on what some of the ships that I can theoretically fly would cost.

Don't play Eve solo. Unless you're female. Then people will throw money at you if you let them. If you own a pair of testies though, then...

Don't play Eve solo. The only way to play Eve solo and not pay real money is to bot up the wazoo or be really good at convincing people to transfer you their ISK. That's speaking generally, of course, since maybe there's a group that needs a programmer/artist/web-designer to spice up their Eve Online blogroll and is willing to pay you spacebucks for actual talent. Really, I bet there's someone out there willing to pay you in PLEXes to pretend your his Eve girlfriend that totally doesn't sound like a voice enhancer on TeamSpeak. If that rubs against your sensibilities too wrongly, then...

Don't play Eve solo. Unless you're willing to cut the power cable on some unsuspecting spacenerd during a fleet battle in exchange for video game subscriptions there is nothing interesting in playing Eve Online alone. It's more worthwhile to become a truck driver.

I think the most amount of money I ever had in Eve was about 3-4 billion, and that was due to one lucky drop. Aside from one, the cap ships I owned I got via real cash. Really, after 6 years of trying, I have to say don't play eve solo. Its designed to make self sufficiency impossible, and to force you to hand over money.

I played EVE solo for years and became ridiculously rich just building and selling ships in Dodixie.  Getting rich was pretty much the entire object of the game for me though and when I finally got tired of the grind I quit.  Unless, you're weird like me I recommend you take everyone elses advice and join up with Bat Country.

Haven't played for a long time but a year ago you could fund plexes plus some walking around money with Planetary Interaction on one account.  Took a few weeks training all told and the setup was a clicky nightmare but then you'd just have to fiddle around a few minutes every few days and haul now and then.  This was long after the market had matured so I imagine there is still money to be made.  Don't have any guides handy but I'm sure you can search some out - Eve Uni lets anyone see their great wiki, or Goons if you have access.  Nice thing about PI was you could min-max the hell out of it and fiddle+haul very often or just eh whatever and have much less busywork for less profits.

I agree with don't play EVE solo though.  It's a shit game that only becomes interesting when you're participating in the big stories.  TEST or Goons are piss easy to get into.

All the boys think I'm easy.

Planet money took a hard hit when CCP put a hefty tax rate on the exporting of the material to orbit.  It's still possible to turn profits, but making enough to pay for an account more or less mandates nullsec or wormhole planets.

Hah, I think you scared off everyone who reads this and never tried EVE before.

Edit: I do agree with your point that the people you are with is what is most important. But that's true for pretty much everything in life.

(http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250x250/33564142.jpg)

You don't have to be 'good at getting people to transfer risk' to scam. You can be terrible and you will still succeed.

But there is no point doing so unless someone is interested in your logs of tears. Join bat country.

All the real solo money is in market speculation. You need people to discuss trends with even to do that well.


If you have any interest at all in MMOGs and multiplayer community based gaming you need to play eve just to see what a successful sand box actually looks like. But doing so solo makes absolutely no sense.

Just to illustrate my point about market speculation, I just looked up the price of guidance systems. If I resub it turns out I'm 30 billion richer than when I left because of goon advice to sink cash into Guidance Systems.

I don't know how many bots you have to run to pull in that cash.

A lot of people are looking for advice on how to pay for EVE with in-game ISK.  My advice would be:  you can play EVE if you want (even solo), just don't try that.  They have discounts on PLEX very often; $15-$20 gets you 500 million ISK, and 500 million is more than a newbie needs.

I'm currently not in Bat Country because I don't have time to play, really.  The account is active so I can get some skillpoints, but I can't play more than super-casually.

I played the game more or less solo the first year I played.  I joined a wormhole corp and made more ISK in two hours than I had made the entire previous year.  Problem is you need to have a decent set of skills before a good wormhole corp will want you. 

So you can play solo and get your skills up, but if you want the real money you need to join a decent corp.

The ways to make the best money hinge on having a posse.  Exploiting wormholes requires a pile of players for handling the logistics of it.  Farming faction warfare is much faster with a FW corp.  Ditto incursions.  Even something that can be done solo with sufficient skills like nullsec ratting is unfeasible for a truly solo player as the owners of the system will come out to shoot you if you aren't allied to them.  With 24/7 botting you could ice mine for money, I guess, but that's not exactly an exciting use of one's time.

I guess I've had bad experiences grouping. I either run around all night and find no one to fight, or we find a lone person to destroy which is unsatisfying, or we get entirely destroyed. Every scenario resulted in a tiny amount of PvP for the time invested. But when I struck out on my own I was able to find PvP in empire so much quicker. Creating my own 1 man corp made for tons of fun with empire war decs. Or I would do the flag myself thing and try to get people mad enough to declare me. I only fly and fit tech 1 on my cruiser so my losses never cost more than what I take in. Its not enough income to pay for the war decs on my own though. Maybe I'll try the 90 day deal and buy some risk with the plex thing.

Eve is a tough game.  No matter where you go you will find organized groups of people who want to kill you.  If for no other reason than making their killboard look good.

You can be one of the sharks or one of the guppies, its up to you.

Oh...since we are talking about ISK already:

How many billions a month is it to rent a system?

I always wanted my own little deadend system, name an alliance so it shows as 'Cala's Secret Garden' on the sov map. Maybe put  a nice looking Gallente station there. Be blue to everyone and sell ammo & mods to local ratters at self-cost.


Oh, well. One can dream... :oops:

Pay me 10bil and I'll let you do it on the test server.

Only if you accept test server ISK.  :grin:

If I am ever wealthy enough to say '10bn, sure why not?' I'll get back to you. As of now, that's pretty much my wallet balance.

I can't get you a coloured dot on the sov map, but I can let you pick a name for our station in S-D for as many times as you want. You can sell as much ammo there as you want for free.

Oooh, make it a mood station; change the name of it every time your mood changes.   :awesome_for_real:

The new flagging system has certainly made what I do more dangerous. I think I like that though.

 No one shoots at me. I don't understand it. I made a new account with the power of two thing and just started fresh. I didn't activate any of my old accounts so I'm completely noob with just tutorial money. So far I've robbed every mission runner I have scanned out. I just fly around and take everything they have. None of them shoot at me. I'm starting to think only bots actually play the game now. I really figured with the new flagging system that I'd be in a lot of danger doing this. Perhaps they consider it too much risk to shoot at a noob frigate in their maurader.

I'm not sure how the mechanic works, exactly, but you probably look like obvious bait.  Like every time a command ship or heavy interdictor is sitting on a gate by itself in lowsec or 0.0.

It is, considering the cost of their ship, and the possibility of you being a bait ship for whatever elite team of griefer PVP people.  It's because of misunderstood flagging rules, corp leaders who don't explain things, and an interest in PVE only.  And bots of course.

Some miner/industrialist corps advise all their members never to undock or shoot; they believe that actual PVP will cause PVP'ers to be interested in targetting their corp with a never-ending succession of wars.  As if they gain a reputation for putting out.

EDIT:  Also, pointless to attack you if they don't have a warp scrambler, because you'll just warp away.  And most of them don't have a scram fitted for missions.

The new mechanic is if you steal you are flagged to be shot by anyone in the game. Its no longer just the victim and their corp. That being said even if they shot at my frigate and I was baiting them what could I do? Attack them with my frigate? I suppose I could tackle them forever assuming I don't get alpha nuked by their insane DPS and they don't call in a buddy to clear me out.

I think maybe ajax34i is right about the pve corp thing. Still, I would think they would want to protect their assets. Especially in a level 4 mission.

Then again I've been away for a while. Maybe that crap just isn't valuable enough to someone who has been playing a long time.

Yes, but if they shoot you aren't they also flagged?  e.g. You steal their stuff, they shoot you, your fleet warps in at 0 and can blow them away without Concord getting involved.

You figure it out I'm not leaving 0.0 no goddamn way! (http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/63443/1/logo2_flags2consequences.png)

Kitsune no. Only I can respond to being attacked. Anyone fleet or corp who helps me by shooting would be concorded. If they remote repair me then my helper would be flagged attackable by everyone as well. There is no way to really bait trap someone in concord space unless you can get into a ship that can kill them after they attack you. And that's assuming they are dumb enough to wait around for that.

Yeah, I just did the research.  Apparently anyone shooting a suspect is only flagged in a manner that allows the suspect to shoot back.  And I learned during that same research that kill rights allow anyone and everyone to shoot the person when they're activated, which is very interesting.  I'd only figured that they allowed the person holding the kill right to attack, or maybe them and their fleetmates, but everybody can jump the person when the owner activates the kill right.

Even more fun: "If the kill right activation does not result in a kill, then the kill right will not be spent, and will continue to be available for activation. "   :drill:

It's enough to make it tempting to head into highsec and gank the various flagged people I've seen wandering around now that I know that their ten buddies can't jump me the moment I aggress.

I don't recall someone actually losing a ship because of killrights off the top of my head and I've been playing this game way over the recommended dosage.

I've been trying out Factional Warfare and I feel invincible in my destroyer since nothing can catch me on gates and in plexes I'm only threatened by other destroyers thanks to ship restrictions. Even my T3 has not turned into a hilarious lossmail, because I cloak whenever I want to.

The way it works is this

Person runs around stealing from mission runners cans

Victim shoots at bait

Victim is now regflagged to the other members of the gang.

Other alt warps in with a Amarr Logistics ship and Nosferatus the victim to death while repping the bait, both guys scramming the victim.

I triggered it once the last time I played to see the trap. Jackass was practically begging me to shoot him so I decided to see the trap for myself. Plus I was pretty much bored out of my skull and it was the third last time I ever logged into the shitty game, so what did I care.

Then there fallowed this convo (paraphrased)

"300 million. now.

"you have 10 seconds"


Me "This ship can be replaced for 100 mill with everything on it."

".!.."

Kitsune it used to be that only the person you stole from got kill rights on you. Now its the entire universe.

Sir T attacking a flagged person does not give their corp or gang rights to attack you. If they attack you in any way they will be killed by concord. The only way they get kill rights is if you attack or steal from them. They can repair their buddy but they can't warp scramble or nos you unless you attack them first. You have complete concord protection while you deal with the person who stole from you.

I used to warp in on missions and try and force respawns to overwhelm the ratter.  It never worked.

You're suspect.  Anyone can attack you.

If the mission guy shoots you, he gets:

- weapons flag for 1 minute (cannot dock or jump through gates)
- engagement flag with you (15 minutes) - you and he can fight it out without concord

Because he doesn't have a scram, he cannot keep you in the area to kill you, so you CAN warp out, dock, change ship to something that will kill him, and come back. 

His ship is expensive, so he has to leave the mission area and change ships to a PVP one, BUT he has a 1 minute weapons lock that prevents him from docking as fast as you, and, being a PVE guy, probably does NOT have a PVP ship in a station in the system, or safespots to wait out the 1 minute weapons flag timer.  Basically, he's fighting on YOUR terms because he doesn't have the logistics there, and you possibly do.

If the guy is not in the final stage of the mission or exploration area, it's unlikely he will attack you.  He won't want to abort his mission to possibly kill a frigate.  If you go for the final overseer container or whatever completes the mission, he may attack.

I'll try that.  :grin:

Its possible he was just using the logistics ship to rep himself and using the Nosferatus from the bait ship, but that's the way I remember it happening. The bait ship definatly scrammed me, and he was using the log ship to rep himself and I was getting Nosed or Neuted. I could have tanked him forever without the Nossing, and I doubt he could have been able to mount enough nos to shut me down and guns to kill me on a t1 cruiser.

This may be the key. If you play as a mission runner in Empire, your long-term goal may well be to make your ship as effective at PVE as possible so you can complete those missions faster and faster. That means fitting faction mods and, if and when you can afford it, officer mods (which are obtained by people in 0.0 who would never dream of actually using them in 0.0 - they sell them in Jita).

So the mission runner's ship can be worth billions. If the player doesn't have billions, it may still be worth a very large proportion of whatever capital they have.

So they may be unlikely to put their ship in even the tiniest bit of danger just to stop you looting their wrecks.

In that situation I'd go afk for an hour. The mission will not reset till downtime so why bother fighting you?

Mission runners and miners are used to people fucking with their cans and shit, it's just a 'cost' of doing those activities sometimes. Unless you are constantly harassing the same person, no one is going to have a counter-gank group just hanging around in case someone maybe scans out their mission or whatever.

Like for every mission someone fucks with you in, you can do another 100 without seeing another soul.

Damn it.  Y'all are making me miss my Rifter.

Because ~my ISK/hour~

That didn't take long.

I'm surprised it actually took people that long to realize how that shit worked. I saw that writing on the wall (and called CCP out on it, to deafening silence on their part) months before it was even on the test server. vOv

If CCP wanted this shit done and dusted they could have done it easilly by simply making it impossible to steal from other peoples cans. There, done and dusted, no killrights shit. But they actually want griefing so you have this idiot system that no-one actually knows the rules for and just cases nothing but smashed monitors.

Eh? The rules are simple. You steal something, everyone can shoot you. You shoot someone in hisec or a pod in lowsec (shoot, not kill, mind you), everyone can shoot you and you've generated a killright which can be transferred to specific people/corps or set as a publically available killright, and activating it makes it so everyone can shoot you.

vOv

And how does that apply to gangs, corps, retaliation, etc?

And did you know that if you take from the wreck of your corpmate who died to a grief-er you are immediately redflagged to the griefer as the wreck is considered his property despite being white to you? And dont think about shooting up his wreck to stop the griefer getting the loot, as you will be concordokkened.

And what happens when someone steals ore from your mining operation? Is your hulk supposed to take on the rest of the enemy gang that will appear to blow you up if you so much as blink at him?

Its these fuzzy little details that make empire dwelling an absolute pain in the ass.

Actually, last I checked the instant someone goes suspect their shit is wide open for everyone, including shooting the wreck of the ship he blew up. And "when someone steals ore from your mining operation", well, they're stealing something from someone, and is now a suspect.

If you rep someone who's a suspect, iirc you're made into a suspect yourself. Etc etc etc.

That's your idea of simple???  :ye_gods:

"do anything mischievous or aid anyone doing anything mischievous and everyone else can shoot at you" is the general gist. I'd call that a lot simpler than back when you were playing.

Took me a bit to figure out I had to put my safety on yellow before I could loot someone else's wreck. I'm guessing I have to move it to red if I want to outright suicide gank someone.

I am trying Factional Warfare to see how this "Shoot bitches, get LP" thing works as a way to have fun for profit, and it's boring as hell. So far I've sat on beacons refreshing my directional scanner _begging_ for someone to come stop me.

If you have a game mechanic where the only change of pace is your screensaver you should throw it in the trash.

That's weird, my FW experience involved having to watch dscan like a hawk because people were only too happy to try to warp in and shoot the fuck out of my mostly helpless industrial alt.  Maybe you need to find a more active system.

That's the thing. You already spent time capturing that plex, so leaving seems like a waste, especially since you don't want the system to fall (why? I don't even know). I did manage to get a solo fight eventually as I finally found some other dudes staring at a dumb timer and got into a fleet fight later on. The competency of FW players seems pretty low, but since fights center around frigates and sometimes cruisers it's not that relevant.

When I returned to the staging station I had a cargo hold full of loot that was worth more than my destroyer. Thanks, bomber who didn't warp out even though you burned out of my point range. Stack that with the LP you get I could say that a good PvPer can make money and profit doing FW, double so if in a group. If you add the fact that FW missions are exploitable a person intimidated by 0.0 can probably be self sufficient barring losing ships left and right.

Personally I was bored out of my mind most of the time though. Yet I wouldn't mind seeing the FW mechanic used in 0.0, maybe in NPC space using pirate factions as militia.

I agree it might give the 0.0 crowd something to do other than stare at POS's all day. But the alliances would probably blob whatever Faction warfare uses with Titans or something.

Most of the plexes have ship restrictions.

Nulli Secunda did FW for a while, apparently they got pistolwhipped back out of FW within a few months.

Yeah, one of BOB's corps tried Faction warfare and got thrashed back in the day.

Basically you have to theorycraft fleet comp from scratch again; and unless you are genuinely motivated by lolrpfactionpride it would be tough to keep anyone paying attention long enough.


I'm sure the FW guys are no worse than the 0.0 guys. But they are certainly more motivated.

You're ambiguous. No worse in what way? Motivated towards what?

All I see Fweddit fly is destroyers and frigates, always in a small gang capacity. Someone once in a while tells a tall tale of people flying battleships during US timezone. Someone might mention a titan-fund, which realistically won't even make it into the potential theft stage.

How much are you giving up when you do a level 4 mission and ignore the loot and salvage? I keep finding people who are just giving this stuff away. Does the bounty and mission reward pay out so well that it's better money to just chain missions back to back?

Probably.  Risking their lovely little ship that can handle T4 to smack a pirating frigate probably is another reason.  I know I'd be loathe to risk the battleship I was given doing so.

A lot of the time is actually more profitable to just recycle the loot into minerals and sell them. That's a major source of minerals in empire, particularly the higher end stuff. On its own most of the loot has very little intrinsic value as a result of several nerfs to the quality of mission loot due to people in 0.0 whining.

It was pretty stupid when named mods refined into double the amount of minerals as unnamed.

Not that mining is ever worth spending time on unless you're botting or there's a high risk of getting beaten by your Chinese prison guards.

Eh? I dunno where you got that from but that was never the case from what I remember.

And I had some great times mining. There's nothing like mining to have fun chatting and socializing. Plus its like setting up a complex in X3, there's a weird sense of accomplishment.

I know this is old, but thought I'd give some new info. FWEDDIT has a tonne of cash, and recently joined the CFC (Goons and others, of which Bat Country is a signatory) in the holy war against the MRA/Paedophiles of TEST Alliance. FWEDDIT can actually field pretty mean fleets, they just didn't have to in FW.

Oh, and hi F13. It's been a long time. I've missed you, you little scamp.

Low sec exploration will net you an absurd amount of isk (especially so because it doesn't require a massive upfront investment in isk/sp). Get a probing ship and a tengu, head to lowsec guristas space and keep an eye out for any of the rated DED plexes. The 6/10 can be completed solo. in about 20-30 mins and has the potential to drop 2b. All of the Pithum a-b-c type mods drop there. The 4/10 also spawns in high sec and can drop around 500m it can also be done easily in a AF or cruiser (gate wont allow t3 inside it any more). Guristas have the easiest plexes (EW is almost nonexistent and there is not a single ship that scrambles) that have the highest potential for huge isk. Plexes in null (barring very few outliers) produce less isk.

But with the most recent update to probing has brought a lot of competition. Good thing is beyond probing/exploring you only have to pay total attention for small periods of time.

Wow, I have been gone too long. If a good probing ship and a Tengu are considered low isk/SP investment, things are wildly different then when I left.

enough SP to sit in a tengu and use t2 hams with a 300-400hp/s tank is the ideal from an isk/hr standpoint.  You can get away with much less, just requires more than 1 plexing ship. 2 drakes can run up to 6/10 just fine. Lowsec guristas plexing is almost broken in how much isk it produces the investment/risk.  Everything that will remotely approach it requires infrastructure (null anoms,WH's) and or several other accounts. Probing ship can also be your plexing tengu if one only has one account. Just resub once you find something worthwhile.

Hmm, I might fire up eve to play around with this and FW. Does CCP still reactivate a single account for a couple of days if you want to come back to let you buy plexes and junk to bring other accounts back online? I have enough ISK to subscribe my accounts via plex for a significant amount of time.

They give you a 3-4 hour window, you can activate it from your account page.

It's 4 hours, and worth knowing that PLEXes go for 550M+ these days.

It's more of a pain in the ass than it used to be since rats switch aggro to drones now, but an Ishtar with a passive shield tank can basically handle all but the 10/10 Gurista plexes.  It just takes longer.

What made plexes appreciate in value?

Isk inflation, there's a lot more money sloshing around the Eve economy these days.  In 2007, I was one of the richest players in the game with a net worth approaching 100B, these days that wouldn't amount to much (still rich, but not "How much for just the station?" plutocrat rich).

--Dave

Multiple new isk fountains that are easily accessible. When FW LP was being abused and ones profit was limited only by how many alt accounts they could have afk orbiting 23/7 plex value increased significantly. Anoms in null was also a huge flood of isk that anyone with a script and a carrier could cash in on... Lived in Gem at the time and there was barely a system without an afk Russian in a carrier. WH's, incursions (dont know much about them) also new streams of isk.

Moral of the story is, if you win eve, convert your isk to inflation resistant commodities in case you ever stop winning in future.

When the TEST war brought me back, I was up 40% thanks to guidance systems and mineral prices.

It's more systematic than that, you can make isk those ways, but it's trading hands, not being created.  The biggest single source of isk is default insurance, the 40% of nominal value you get just for losing a ship.  The only real drains are clones (trivial) plus NPC space office rents and market fees.

--Dave

Edit: Also 'NPC fuels', another factor in the inflation was removing ice-based fuels from the NPC market.

Is there any way I can easily just buy RMT all the ISK I want? 

Yes. You buy all the plex for real money that you want. Then you sell the plex in game for isk. No reason to bother with third party rmt companies.

NPC bounties is creating isk. Not sure how much EVE wide it produces but a single null system could produce 10-20b a day.It has to be a significant figure. The new sec increase system and mission offers also remove isk.

There is a fairly large drain in the form of people winning eve. Also the LP stores all absorb isk.