Some medium term direction (noob)

[Phildo]

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

[Kageru]

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

[Phildo]

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

[Setanta]

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

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

[MahrinSkel]

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

--Dave

[Endie]

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

[MahrinSkel]

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

--Dave

[Kageru]

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

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

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

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

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

[Stabs]

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

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

The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."
- Karl von Clausewitz

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

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

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

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

[Kageru]

Armor HACs ('Brofists'): These first turned up on the Sons of Tangra forums and leaked to PL and the NC, who have been tearing shit up with them. They rely on heavily plated HACs with afterburners and Halo implants (which are pretty cheap, oddly), Guardians for reps, a Damnation for massive armor bonuses, and the completely insane bonuses to signature radius/skirmish from a mindlinked Loki. This gets you a fleet of high-EHP ships with signature radiuses below 70m, meaning that if a battleship may be lucky to do 20 damage per shot. These are slow fleets and have trouble escaping from a fight, but since the strategy is to drop them on the enemy at facefuck range, that doesn't matter so much as long as the reps keep flowing. An example video of Imperian's brofists can be found here. Note that his HACs appear to provide remote ECCM help for their Logi pilots with a spare midslot.

Drake/Scimitars: It's one thing to take some Drakes and some Scimitars and giggle as your cheap, tough ships alpha strike everything. It's quite another thing when you do what Darkside has done, which this thread is cribbed from. You layer the Drake/Scimitar gang with command bonuses from the vulture and a mix of Lachesis and Huginns for tackling and antisupport. It's less effective than an Armor HAC gang, but it can still murder just about everything else on the battlefield that doesn't have a 'tight' composition.

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

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

[MahrinSkel]

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

--Dave

[Endie]

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

The celestis shall rise again.

[Kageru]

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

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

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

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

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

[ajax34i]

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

[Gets]

Then I guess it's grinding L2 missions to save up for a drake, +3 implants, specialisation skill books from LP and faction so I can have an empire jump-clone.

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

[Kageru]

/shrug.

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

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

[Gets]

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

[Stabs]

Free jump clone corp:

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

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


Datacores

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

   *  Gallente Federation: CreoDron, Roden Shipyards, Duvolle Laboratories (a mix of research corps is needed to access all level four agents, unfortunately)
    * Caldari State: Kaalakiota Corporation, Ishukone Corporation, Lai Dai Corporation (best)
    * Minmatar Republic: Core Complexion Inc. (best), Boundless Creation
    * Amarr Empire: Carthum Conglomerate, Viziam

There are also some non-Empire faction corporations with a few R&D agents:

    * Thukker Tribe: Thukker Mix
    * Khanid Kingdom: Khanid Innovation
    * Ammatar Mandate: Nefantar Miner Association

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

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

[Kageru]

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

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

[Phildo]

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

[Gets]

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

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

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

[Stabs]

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

[Kageru]

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

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

[Phildo]

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

[Kageru]

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

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

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

[Phildo]

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

[Amarr HM]

and their challenge balance is all over the place.

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

[Sir T]

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

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

[Kageru]

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

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

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

[Gets]

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

[Kageru]

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

[Goumindong]

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

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

[MahrinSkel]

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

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

--Dave

[Sir T]

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

Here's my Eos mission setup, for example.

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

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

[ajax34i]

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