I seriously wish I could mail the developers a punch in the balls.

[Kitsune]

I was eyeballing cruisers with an eye towards something to accelerate mission speeds, and since some of the cruisers had drone bays, I went to look at the drones.  Curious about the function of logistics drones, I clicked to pull up a description of a Heavy Armor Maintenance Bot.  Here's what the description said:

Armor Maintenance Drone.

Well, holy shit, that just puts everything in perspective!  There's no room left for doubt in my mind about how they work, how to use them, how to judge which ones are a good price to performance ratio, or anything else.

It's called a fucking Armor Maintenance Bot, I think I already figured out that it does armor maintenance.  Would it have killed those jackasses to add a sentence to actually describe the damn thing?

For a solid 2/3rds of the things in the game, I have to paste the item's name into the search box on the EvE forums and read the 'What the fuck is a samoflange?' thread about it to learn what it does, because someone in the development team couldn't be arsed to populate the description field with an actual description.  No wonder so many people flee in terror from the first ten minutes of the game with shit like that all over the place.

[Reg]

I was pissed off when I discovered it wouldn't repair my own ship's armor too. It doesn't even make any sense.

[Kamen]

For a solid 2/3rds of the things in the game, I have to paste the item's name into the search box on the EvE forums and read the 'What the fuck is a samoflange?' thread about it to learn what it does, because someone in the development team couldn't be arsed to populate the description field with an actual description.  No wonder so many people flee in terror from the first ten minutes of the game with shit like that all over the place.

Agreed, many of the description fields are sadly lacking.  Most are pretty intuitive, but I'd still like to see a little effort by CCP on the description fields.  There's no acceptable excuse for it IMO.

[JoeTF]

You read  description field?
I admire you.

For me it's the "ship bonuses field" and honestly - screw it. If only CCP would fix the attrubite field, so you don't have to go to OOG item databases just to see what damn thing does, that would be cool.

[ajax34i]

You have to learn to read the stats, unfortunately.

It repairs 60 armor points / 5 seconds, and you must activate it at a target that you have locked, so no self-repair, just your team mates.  The size of it seems to be 25 m3, which is pretty large (cruiser drone bay sizes are 50-75 m3, so you'd fit 2 or 3, they seem designed for battleships or larger vessels).

[bhodi]

How about questions my friends who are new to the game ask me? There aren't any clear and forward answers to these questions:

How do you get more powergrid?
How do you get more CPU?
How do you get more capacitor?
What modules let you trade one for another? Just add to it?
What's my range on my rocket launchers?

The powergrid and CPU issue is especially annoying, you have to basically learn unrelated terminology. Calculating missile flight time is a PITA too. This shit is critical to the game and should be listed in big bold letters.

[Slayerik]

How about questions my friends who are new to the game ask me? There aren't any clear and forward answers to these questions:

1 - How do you get more powergrid?
2 -How do you get more CPU?
3 - How do you get more capacitor?
4 - What modules let you trade one for another? Just add to it?
5 - What's my range on my rocket launchers?

The powergrid and CPU issue is especially annoying, you have to basically learn unrelated terminology. Calculating missile flight time is a PITA too. This shit is critical to the game and should be listed in big bold letters.

1. Engineering skill, 5% per level. Power Diagnostic Systems give you around 5% more grid, as well as shields and recharge rate bonuses. Reactor Control Unit gives 10% more grid. Both are low slots. Also there is a powergrid rig.

2. Electronics Skill, 5% per. CPU modules are a low slot item that will increase it.

3. Energy Management skill, 5% per. Cap batteries will give you more cap, but I usually run cap boosters in PVP.

4. See above

5. Its 5km i think, use eve fitting tool.

[Hakeldaima]

Well, this "no repping yourself" thing is news to me, but then I've never used repper drones. Is it because of how the drones/targeting is coded? You can't target yourself, hence CCP can't let you rep yourself without a huge headachey recode?

[ajax34i]

More grid and cpu: get a bigger ship, basically.  Grid and CPU are the 2 things that CCP uses to "balance" ships, and there are very few skills and modules that increase those two.  Engineering, Electronics, Co-Processor modules, Reactor Control Units, Auxiliary Power Cores, that's about it.  The trick to fitting everything is often in getting "named" versions of your guns and modules, so that each module takes slightly less grid / cpu (it all adds up, though, this is why things that only give you a 2% bonus sell for millions...  that 2% is exactly enough to be able to put that last gun in that last slot).

Capacitor is like mana, everything requires it, and there are Engineering skills that increase it or its recharge rate, as well as several modules that increase it at the expense of shields, or of grid, or increase its recharge rate.

Yeah, the range calculations suck, unfortunately; the market lists the items at their base value, but as soon as you purchase/install them, your skill modifiers get calculated into the item's spec sheet, so the values change.

[ajax34i]

Well, this "no repping yourself" thing is news to me, but then I've never used repper drones. Is it because of how the drones/targeting is coded? You can't target yourself, hence CCP can't let you rep yourself without a huge headachey recode?

Yup.  Drones only work on others, because you have to target something to use them, so no self-repair, and they (well, you) are also vulnerable to target lock jamming etc.

[bhodi]

No really, thanks for your answers but you don't have to jump out and answer them. I've already discovered them after a week's playing and I'm not a complete noob myself.

My point is that there are no clear answers to this in the game itself, you end up having to fiddle with EFT/quickfit and just pick random modules.

"Power Diagnostic Systems" and "Reactor Controls" are COMPLETELY ambiguous. That was my point. The fact your explanations include things like "named" should be a good indication of a few of the bricks in the giant fucking ice-coated learning curve wall. There's no way a noob trying to fit his first non-ibis is going to figure out what he can and can't use in the game itself, I basically had to get him to download a 3rd party tool to play the game. There's still no obvious listing of what skills affect what -- just a gigantic list of hundreds of skills that you can click the info button on.

That is an epic FAIL.

I walked him through EFT, importing his character, creating a ship template, and adding modules that he could fit, going to the eve forums for basical caracal setups -- and even I didn't have a good answer for "What do you fit in the low slot?" -- I had to look it up -- apparently you use missile control units or some such.

[ajax34i]

I agree with you that EVE is bad as far as UI and learning curve.

In WoW, you can't tell what "Bandit's Gloves of the Bear" or "Aurora Sash" does just from the name, you still have to read the stats.  And you still have to go to external sites to understand whether you need +int or +spi, +crit or +atk power, and so on.  But WoW throws items at you as you level up, and they match what you should be getting for your class, so you learn that way.

EvE doesn't throw ships and modules at you, and worse, it can't guess what skills you have and what your plans for your character are, so the missions can't reward you with gear that's appropriate for your character.  But yes, the user interface and the way the game is presented is horrible (I hate right-click), and often they display useless information (who cares, for example, what the internal capacity of combat drones is?  Yes they are a ship-like object and the database requires that that attribute isn't null, but they won't ever loot anything, so from my point of view it's just clutter!)

Anyway.

[Kamen]

Hold on a second there bohdi.

As I stated in my post above, I totally agree that the description fields need a lot of work. I seriously doubt anybody would disagree with that.

However, at the risk of being called masochistic by you guys, I actually enjoy coming up with good ship fittings by reading guides others have written, talking to friends, and by just futzing around on my own.  I've never used any of the third party ship fitting tools, and don't see where I have to in order to play the game decently.

[ajax34i]

It's not just ship fittings, though, in my opinion.  It's the fact that a newbie doesn't have a clear picture of the end-game.  If you've just purchased the game, you're faced with the task of designing your own "class" (do you want to be a battleship pilot?  interceptor?  miner?  trader?  there are so many options) so that you can specialize and catch up with the old timers fast, but all you have to work with is a pile of skill descriptions, a pile of ships, a huge pile of gear, and a complete lack of understanding about how the game works.  And you're supposed to plan your career for the next half a year or so.

[bhodi]

I've never used any of the third party ship fitting tools, and don't see where I have to in order to play the game decently.

You don't? Really? The only way I could tell whether to use capacitor batteries, recharger, or boosters on my blackbird was to fit my entire ship into EFT and figure out with all my modules running which gave me a longer running time. (it was batteries). If you can do that kind of math in your head, I bow down to you.

I have no idea how you'd be able to fit a setup without running some sort of 3rd party test program to fit in the most modules I could. I suppose you could fit your ship if 'decently' means 'half-assed' and by physically using the right click menu and mentally adding up the CPU and powergrid.

I've never played a game where 3rd party programs are all but required -- evemon, eft, that sensor help program, and the forum ship fittings thread  -- they all point to deficiencies in the game by filling the voids. For the modules, at least, a "suggested fitting" based on skills and cash would go a long way.

Ajax is right -- this kind of mentality extends to ships, skills, solar systems, the starmap, scanners, pretty much every item in eve in general. If you're a quick learner or aren't worried about making mistakes (and have a good corp or friend who will give you a few millions to fall on), it's not a big deal. For everyone else, well, they don't make it past the 14 days.

Maybe they like it like that, who knows. They are already having growing pains and jita is inaccessible for 1/3 of the day.

[Slayerik]

This is like my 3rd time playing Eve, and its the first time I used a third party fitting app.

Before I would just buy shit...and go ...DAMN that doesnt fit!

I imagine I have saved hundreds of millions by using EFT now :)

[bhodi]

If the devs seriously want to see what's wrong with the game, all they need to do is sit in rookie help for two days like I did. (note: I still can't figure out how to NOT have the window come up every time I log in!)

The same questions come up over and over and over and over and over and over again. They are pretty much the ones I listed up top, asked by confused and angry people that just want to pew pew.

[Viin]

I agree it'd be nice if noobs are given a 'career' to start out with - they can pick it (manufacturing, market mogul, pirate killer, whatever) and then are given missions for awhile that lead them along that path along with upgrades and getting into BCs.

They are doing that a little now (like giving afterburners and stasis webifiers and having missions that require them for example) but it doesn't go far enough.

..

I think a lot of established games have a hard time going back and improving the noob experience, but CCP has actually made some improvements there from previous days!

[dwindlehop]

You're forced to be in rookie help for the first 30 days.

All you guys forgot Weapon Upgrades (reduces CPU need of launchers/guns) and Advanced Weapon Upgrades (reduces powergrid need of launchers/guns) and Shield Power Upgrades (reduces grid need of shields). You noobs. 

/tinfoil on
CCP increases the transparency of the NPE in stages rather than all at once because the servers couldn't handle the additional load if it was truly easy to understand.
/tinfoil off

[Slayerik]

I answered his questions literally. He never asked how he could reduce the CPU and grid need of mods.... ;)

[dwindlehop]

And hell, Energy Systems Operation (increases recharge rate of cap). That's ten kinds of useful right there.

[Kamen]

I've never used any of the third party ship fitting tools, and don't see where I have to in order to play the game decently.

You don't? Really? The only way I could tell whether to use capacitor batteries, recharger, or boosters on my blackbird was to fit my entire ship into EFT and figure out with all my modules running which gave me a longer running time. (it was batteries). If you can do that kind of math in your head, I bow down to you.

I have no idea how you'd be able to fit a setup without running some sort of 3rd party test program to fit in the most modules I could. I suppose you could fit your ship if 'decently' means 'half-assed' and by physically using the right click menu and mentally adding up the CPU and powergrid.

I've never played a game where 3rd party programs are all but required -- evemon, eft, that sensor help program, and the forum ship fittings thread  -- they all point to deficiencies in the game by filling the voids. For the modules, at least, a "suggested fitting" based on skills and cash would go a long way.

Ajax is right -- this kind of mentality extends to ships, skills, solar systems, the starmap, scanners, pretty much every item in eve in general. If you're a quick learner or aren't worried about making mistakes (and have a good corp or friend who will give you a few millions to fall on), it's not a big deal. For everyone else, well, they don't make it past the 14 days.

Maybe they like it like that, who knows. They are already having growing pains and jita is inaccessible for 1/3 of the day.

Sounds like you're under the misconception that based on your skills every ship has a "best" setup, with any other setup being half-assed.  That's totally untrue for PvP, and partially untrue for PvE.

Take a look at the ship fittings suggestions thread over on Eve-o and you will see a page after page of different approaches and debates to fitting out ships.  Sure, you're usually wise to incorporate fittings that capitalize on some of the inherent bonuses of the ship (which kind of are suggestions to fit certain modules) but even not doing that isn't a 100% guarantee that the guy hasn't come up with something interesting, and potentially lethal.  Also, just because you come up with a fitting that utilizes almost all of your CPU and powergrid doesn't mean it's a better fitting.

BTW, I also don't use evemon either.  

[Morat20]

And hell, Energy Systems Operation (increases recharge rate of cap). That's ten kinds of useful right there.

It only took me six months to notice that little fucking skill. Made my life a lot better. :)

[bhodi]

I've pretty much lived on the goonfleet wiki. Their suggested skills is awesome. If CCP had something like that, it would go a loooong way. The only thing it really didn't explain clearly was missions, and I found this one that explains it all very well: http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Guide:Agents#Agent_Levels_and_Quality

All they REALLY needed to say was "Search for caldari navy, select agents tab, find the highest agent you can talk to, do missions for them until your eyes bleed, check every once in a while to see if a new agent opened up." but even that was totally absent from the eve-online game docs.

RE: Kamen -- Yes there are lots of fittings, yes some are better than others, but my specific example, I was trying to fit as much cap as I could, there were 3 ways of doing it -- I had no way of telling which one was the better way -- I needed a 3rd party program.

[Viin]

Btw, if you hover over modules with your fitting window open it'll show you the changes to your ship setup based on if you fit that module.

[Kitsune]

I'd check the goon wiki, but the bastards passworded just about ninety percent of its content and I'm low on desire to join a corp that'll get me KOS to a large portion of the playerbase.  At least, a large portion of the playerbase with the biggest guns.

[bhodi]

I don't have access to non-public, their public pages are pretty good enough: http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Category:Publicly_Viewable

[Simond]

I'm low on desire to join a corp that'll get me KOS to a large portion of the playerbase.  At least, a large portion of the playerbase with the biggest guns.

Somebody needs to go look at the latest maps. 

[Gets]

4th trial here, Trinity this time. So far the best since the Linux client came, even though the game melts in my Windows machine faster than ever. I don't use the third party programs either. Tried to use the Mobile Skill Planner, but it doesn't install on my cell phone.

I'm not that much against the current learning curve. It has been pretty much the same stuff from day one. Trinity has a little bit more interesting starter missions and I guess the removal of consumer trade items as mission bonuses is a game design improvement. I wasn't against hauling those things while searching for a good price though. I like how the player is free to look around oblivious to everything else that's going on. Takes me back to the early years, since you get that newbie feeling. Everyone seems bigger and better while you don't have much of a clue. Developers try to yellow-brick-road the new player more and more these days and for me it takes away that openness, Sure, the lack of in-game info isn't helpful, but all that looking and learning feels like it's part of the gameplay.

Anyhow, server is up ->

[Kitsune]

I'd check the wiki, but the bastards passworded just about ninety percent of its content

Psst.  That was a hint for someone to PM me some under the table access info.

[Endie]

I'd check the goon wiki, but the bastards passworded just about ninety percent of its content and I'm low on desire to join a corp that'll get me KOS to a large portion of the playerbase.  At least, a large portion of the playerbase with the biggest guns.

If you change your mind I can get you in for the standard 300m fee.  Contract your carriers and stuff to me and I'll deliver them to GF space for you.

PS Times have changed on the "KOS to everyone who matters" thing.  For now at least.
PPS We don't want you anyway 

[Hakeldaima]

If you change your mind I can get you in for the standard 300m fee.  Contract your carriers and stuff to me and I'll deliver them to GF space for you.

Don't be a pussy, this guy seems legit.