new to EVE: thoughts, questions

[Mr_PeaCH]

I have to say it's good to be back with the f13 krew in a MMO setting again.  More to the point, I have nothing but good things to say about EVE after my first four days in.

First of all, it's an absolutely refreshing change of pace to not have all the traditional RPG trappings of an avatar and NPCs and towns and shops that you can walk in and around.  I was not under any misconceptions that EVE was any kind of "Everquest in Space" or anything like that but I didn't know that I would like the difference so much.  And with that the creators and designers of EVE were right to make such a comprehensive tutorial to give first timers (even those with prior MMO experience) a thorough walk through.  And I'm absolutely thrilled with how BIG the game is from the sprawl of all the interconnected systems and regions in space to the complexity of the economy.

But just because I'm new and because it's big I could use a little more information or explanation.

About stats and training skills.  I thought I understood about getting Instant Recall and Analytical Mind and Learning under my belt and quickly trained up to 3 or 4 each or so.  But then the guide says to get the skills that correspond to your other stats as well and train those up too with the idea being that the first ones mentioned will help speed the training of everything else after.  Was that EVERYTHING ELSE or just speed up the skills that coorespond to your base stats?  And as far as EVERYTHING ELSE (skills that relate to actual skills like gunnery or mining or electronics, etc.) are there some generally accepted principles about what sorts of things the newbies should gravitate toward (or stay away from) in the early going? 

Or to turn that question around on it's head somewhat; are there categories of items that are recommended "must haves" (specific gun types or shield/armor enhancements) which would then dicate where to aquire some new skills.  I don't expect to be able to use everything that I loot from pirates but it seems like there's a lot of low-level crap out there that I'm missing some or all of the skills from and there are so many... ah, but I have to remember I like this part of the game; the complexity.   

I think I'm doing pretty well with earning ISK; I started out doing a little mining and then somewhere along the line I took a pirate hunting mission which opened up my eyes to all of that.  Now I mostly take it upon myself to hunt pirates with or without a mission/plotline for the insta-bounty plus attempt to sell or refine and sell whatever drops.  I'm doing great in 0.7 sec ABs but took one or two looks at pirates in 0.6 and ran with shields and armor toasted.  I think this means I need to get a better ship, better shields, etc. with better guns... and that means a lot of skills and time.  So in the meantime I'm mapping a path to the Neesher system; shopping in the heavily populated 1.0 and 0.9 systems and hunting in the 0.7 ones and enjoying the ride.

One thing I have yet to wrap my head around is grouping or 'gangs' of ships in EVE.  Is this fairly common as you progress and fight (PvE/PvP) and does it at last boil back down into stereotypical RPG roles like tanking/nuking/healing?  Went into low sec space just once; there was a good deal on something I wanted, it was close by but in a 0.4 system.  Probably was listed as bait for this very reason but I let my curiousity get the best of me and immediately upon jumping into the system all I saw was RED names of some very bad people and I was destroyed and podded in a new york minute.  Ah well, if nothing else it gave me a chance to reaquaint myself with Aura.   

[Murgos]

As a fellow noob (only a few days more than you) let me say this; with a little bit of effort you can do 0.6 Ratting in even the cheapest of Frigates (except the newb frig I guess).

So far I've gone down to 0.6 in an Executioner (Amarr 20kish frig) and 0.5 in a Merlin (Caldari 200k frig) with really no fear from the rats there.   I think the money to be had dropping down in security is well worth the time and effort equiping your frig and skilling your clone.

My Executioner is outfitted as follow: (So far has been fine for multiple 8kish rats a solo 11k nearly pwned me though)
2x Dual Light Beam Laser (I prefer the extra range over pulse, being able to hit accurately out to 10 and 12 k means A LOT)
1x Civ Shield Booster (Purely for after combat shield regen)
1x Small Armor Rep

I still have a mid and a low slot free - will probably add some armor (Or a hardener) to the low and an AB to the mid


The Merlin is (This setup handled 2 13k rats and a 65k rat all at once):
High:
2x S Launcher (mix and match ammo, whatever drops from the rats)
1 125 mm Railgun (the damage output with AM ammo is pretty impressive leading me to think my first cruiser will be a Moa)
1 empty

Med:
1 AB
1 Sheild Extender
1 Small Shield Booster I
1 Cap Recharger

Low:
2 PDS

I'm considering trying .4 in my Merlin once I train a few more skills.

At a potential 100k ISK per fight (plus drops) you can see that ratting is pretty lucrative in a relatively cheap frig.  I've tried mining and it just not for me.

[Viin]

For skills, I would start with your races skills. For example, if you are Caldari you typically start out with Hybrid turrets and Missile launchers, so train those up. Learn the Frigate skill to level 3 or 4 so you can fly the better Frigates.

As for the learning skills... instant recall and analytical mind will affect all of your skill training times (for the most part). If you look at a skill (show info) it'll show you what two stats it uses. The higher those two stats are, the faster your training will go.

On combat roles, there *can* be tank/nuke/heal roles, but hardly anyone does heal roles except when in large battles and you are trying to keep a big ship from dying (ie: transferring shields to it, or remotely repairing it's armor). You have other roles such as the tackler (webber - keeps them from moving fast; scrambler - keeps them from warping away), ECM (to shutdown their radar/targetting systems), etc etc. Most of these are used in a group/gang during PvP and aren't real useful in PvE (that I've seen).

Feel free to ask questions in the F13 channel as they come up, might be easier than waiting for someone to respond here!

[Alkiera]

As to the stat/skill question...

Your stats only determine how fast you learn skills.  Having a high Perception doesn't improve your to-hit, it just lets you learn skills related to hitting faster.  They recommend raiding int and memory first because there are lots of skills that are based on those, and the other stat-raising skills are often based on int and memory.  Learning applies to helping learn all skills, and is thus a pretty good deal up to 3 or so early on, and taking to 5 somewhat later.

As for what skills to learn, find out, or ask, what your race's ships are good at.  If you're Caldari, you'll prolly want to learn skills for shields, and missiles, unless you really like guns, or want to fly a Destroyer/Interceptor.  Other races may mostly use armor for tanking, or be focused on different guns, or even drones(Trust the space-French to come up with a way to fight while running away).  Learn skills that work to your race's strengths.  Or if you decide some other race's ships work the way you'd like, find their frigate skill book, and learn it.

Hope that helps.

Alkiera

[Polysorbate80]

My n00bish advice (take with a grain of salt, since I ain't no expert):

There's two trains of thought on the learning skills.  One is (I think) to train them all up to level 4, then get the advanced ones to 4.  That takes a buttload of time--it'll pay off a year down the line but I personally think it's a terrible idea for new players; you'll be handicapped in the short run in your chosen profession (mining, combat, whatever).

The other is to train them up as needed.  You'll have fewer skill points in the long run than the first type of player, but you'll have a much more entertaining start.  I like this option better (especially since who knows if I'll still be playing in a year?)

With about 3 1/2 weeks under my belt I'm in a battlecruiser running level III missions for fun and profit, and I've just started training my initial learning skills to 3.  Siince I'm at the point most of my skills now take 6+ hours (or 1day+) to improve, and I also need a few level 4 skills as pre-requisites for some advanced combat skills, it's worth the time to take 6 hours per learning skill to run them all to 3.  I'll wait to train level 4 learning skills until everything I need is 1day+ to train.

[dwindlehop]

On combat roles, there *can* be tank/nuke/heal roles, but hardly anyone does heal roles except when in large battles and you are trying to keep a big ship from dying (ie: transferring shields to it, or remotely repairing it's armor).

Is there any reason why hardly anyone does heal roles? I'm a noob looking over the remote repair drones and shield transfer array stats. They seem worthwhile enough for me to try to make a healer frig just to help a gang out with rats and PvP.

[Viin]

You can certainly do that, it's just usually kinda a boring role and you can kill the rats better by ganging up on them. If just one guy was lobbing missiles while the other healed the sheilds it would take a long time to go through rats. For plowing through rats faster it's better to have everyone attack the targets together.

That doesn't mean you can't have an armor repairer, but in a frigate especially, there doesn't leave much room for weapons.

[penfold]

I installed it a few weekends ago. By the second courier mission (day 2 of play i think) I found myself setting destination, autopiloting and playing in windowed mode so i could do something else outside of the game and havent been bothered to play again since. Shame really, as on paper it should be my ideal game, but reading a book/forum/IRC/afk whilst in the tutorial stage shows no way will i ever have the patience to get to the "good stuff".

I didnt really like the GUI either as i havent memorised hotkeys and it is awful using point n click. Maybe i'll try Eve again when my weekends are free.

Ive since re-installed Freespace 2, the open source exe and updated graphics and have been loving it all over again.

[Alkiera]

I installed it a few weekends ago. By the second courier mission (day 2 of play i think) I found myself setting destination, autopiloting and playing in windowed mode so i could do something else outside of the game and havent been bothered to play again since. Shame really, as on paper it should be my ideal game, but reading a book/forum/IRC/afk whilst in the tutorial stage shows no way will i ever have the patience to get to the "good stuff".

I didnt really like the GUI either as i havent memorised hotkeys and it is awful using point n click. Maybe i'll try Eve again when my weekends are free.

Ive since re-installed Freespace 2, the open source exe and updated graphics and have been loving it all over again.

2 things:  Courier missions and mining are teh suck.  Find a security agent, blowing stuff up is more interactive.

There are very very very few default hotkeys.  You need to set them up, it'll help alot.

Alkiera

[Hoax]

Also playing without some people to chat with is a bad idea, I feel the same as you do.  This should be the ideal game but I just couldn't get into it, having played for 1-2 month stints twice but then quit after getting bored.

The f13 channel/corp saved me and lets me just futz around and play while still having some people to chat with which for me makes all the difference.  Toss in something like Eve-radio, or whatever music you like and stay the hell away from anything non combat if you aren't the non-combat type and you may find it is actually quite enjoyable.

Bear in mind, this is most certainly not a game for everyone, and if it isn't for you it just isn't.  But I am actually looking forward to playing EvE when I get home from work, which is a nice change of pace from how I've been feeling about games since I stopped playing Gunz because I had done everything.

[Silus Fromme]

About stats and training skills.  I thought I understood about getting Instant Recall and Analytical Mind and Learning under my belt and quickly trained up to 3 or 4 each or so.  But then the guide says to get the skills that correspond to your other stats as well and train those up too with the idea being that the first ones mentioned will help speed the training of everything else after.  Was that EVERYTHING ELSE or just speed up the skills that coorespond to your base stats?  And as far as EVERYTHING ELSE (skills that relate to actual skills like gunnery or mining or electronics, etc.) are there some generally accepted principles about what sorts of things the newbies should gravitate toward (or stay away from) in the early going? 

All skills in the learning tree are Int/Mem reliant skills, so having a higher Int/Mem will make those skills train faster.  So, getting that +1 to Instant Recall first will make the +1 you want for Focus (or whatever the first tier perception skill is) train slightly faster.  Having myself trained Learning to V, all first tier learning to V, and all second tier learning to IV I can tell you that it will take about 1 1/2 months solid to get it all done.

The value of it is dynamic.  The sooner you get it done, the more skills will benefit from it (because you won't have trained them yet).  But the gains for each individual point are pretty tiny.  By way of example, someone once told me that the math involved in just moving from Learning IV to Learning V is such that you would need to keep 1 character in constant training for 18 months before the amount of time you "save" for each point of skill trained adds up to the amount of time you spent just training Learning that one point.

My advice is to bang out Learning and the first tier learning skills to 3, then train what you want from there, and keep the rest of the first tier and all of the second tier skills as downtime skills for when you are asleep or at work.  You'll be best served to get all the learning skills out of the way before you start focusing on AFs or Barges or what have you, because those tend to require multiple skills at level V, and those are where you'll see the biggest impact from higher stats.

Or to turn that question around on it's head somewhat; are there categories of items that are recommended "must haves" (specific gun types or shield/armor enhancements) which would then dicate where to aquire some new skills.  I don't expect to be able to use everything that I loot from pirates but it seems like there's a lot of low-level crap out there that I'm missing some or all of the skills from and there are so many... ah, but I have to remember I like this part of the game; the complexity.   

There are a few items that most people will say are useless, but not too many that are "must haves".  Maybe afterburner and MWD, but just because everybody hates travel time.  I find that often the best way to chart a skill goal for myself is to just browse the market, reading descriptions of things.  There are some skills though that are basically must haves, to wit:

Engineering V
Electronics V
Mechanic V
Racial Frigate V


Eng and Elec cover power grid and CPU, respectively.  Until you get those both to V you are underutilizing every ship you fly.  Mechanic V and Racial Frig V show up in the requirement list for damn near every Tech II ship out there, so you're going to have to train them eventually.

I think I'm doing pretty well with earning ISK; I started out doing a little mining and then somewhere along the line I took a pirate hunting mission which opened up my eyes to all of that.  Now I mostly take it upon myself to hunt pirates with or without a mission/plotline for the insta-bounty plus attempt to sell or refine and sell whatever drops.  I'm doing great in 0.7 sec ABs but took one or two looks at pirates in 0.6 and ran with shields and armor toasted.  I think this means I need to get a better ship, better shields, etc. with better guns... and that means a lot of skills and time.  So in the meantime I'm mapping a path to the Neesher system; shopping in the heavily populated 1.0 and 0.9 systems and hunting in the 0.7 ones and enjoying the ride.

I'm a bit biased because of how long I've been playing, but I can't imagine a frigate would be much fun for anything other than Level I missions and very high sec ratting.  Goonfleet uses frigs to zerg rush folks in PvP, but that's with an expectation that every single frig pilot will get popped multiple times during the course of a single engagement.  Since you, all by yourself, are not 180+ simultaneously logged in with a near infinite supply of pre-fitted frigates at your disposal that's not going to work for you.  Best to either group up, or go mining, or start scamming, or grind level Is until you get that cruiser cash.

One thing I have yet to wrap my head around is grouping or 'gangs' of ships in EVE.  Is this fairly common as you progress and fight (PvE/PvP) and does it at last boil back down into stereotypical RPG roles like tanking/nuking/healing?  Went into low sec space just once; there was a good deal on something I wanted, it was close by but in a 0.4 system.  Probably was listed as bait for this very reason but I let my curiousity get the best of me and immediately upon jumping into the system all I saw was RED names of some very bad people and I was destroyed and podded in a new york minute.  Ah well, if nothing else it gave me a chance to reaquaint myself with Aura.   

In PvE, gang roles tend to break down into tank/nuke/haul, but tank really just means aggro management.  For example, the way groups tend to run 10/10 complexes is by getting one guy in the tiniest, hardest to hit ship as possible (say an AF or Inty) warp into the complex first and aggro everything then start running, then everyone else warps in and blows stuff apart.  Most things in the 10/10 complex simply cannot land a decent hit on an AF pilot with decent skills, so it's the same thing as tanking.  Usually hauling is handled by one person, just floating along behind after the fight is done and picking everything up.

In PvP, gang roles break down more along the lines of scout/tackler/nuke.  Whenever possible gangs will use a covops pilot to find the enemy in a system and get as close to them as possible without getting detected.  Then either everyone warps to the covops pilot, or the covops drops a bookmark then jumps back to the rest of the gang and gives that bookmark to the flagship for the gang, so they can warp in and everyone follow them.  Tackling is mostly webbing and scrambling, although target jamming would also qualify.  The few fleet battles I've flown have proceeded like this:

1. Covops flags location.
2. Flagship warps to location.
3. Rest of fleet warps to flagship.
4. Flagship calls "primary" enemy target, usually by pilot name.
5. All tacklers dump every point of web and scramble they have on primary, announcing back to fleet when they get lock.
6. Flagship decides primary is sufficiently locked, and gives all-fire order.
7. Goto 4, and repeat as needed.


As for healing, it's iffy.  A good flagship captain will call primary on anyone they see in a support role and, since those tend to be smaller/weaker ships, they go down fast.  Also anyone you field as support is someone you aren't fielding as combat or tackling.  Since most PvP actually isn't fleet battles but rather gank squads or gate camps, you are often trying to assign roles to 3-4 people rather than 30-40.  So each tackler and nuker really counts.

That being said, when the big alliance PvP tourney went down a couple months ago armor repair drones made a HUGE difference in a couple fights I listened to.  I think that's partially because they are (were?) really, really broken at the time since they'd just been implemented.  IIRC, there were some pretty tight rules applied to the tourney such as: "You can only use remote armor drones on ships OTHER than your own".

[Raging Turtle]

lots and lots

Don't many people just take racial frig to IV and then go cruiser/battleship/bigship0992?

[Silus Fromme]

Yeah, the general progression is frig->cruiser->BC->battleship.

Battleships are real moneymakers.  You can solo level III and some level IV missions with it with minimal risk.  The thing about battleships, though, is that they are very slow and very expensive.  Very slow means that if something goes wrong it is more likely to go catastrophically wrong.  Very expensive means you don't want to be replacing them often.

Because of that, taking BSs into high level complexes or 0.0 PvPing gives a lot of people pause.  AFs, Intys, and covops tend to be much more common sights in 0.0 then BSs.  They are fast, very hard to hit, and cheaper to replace when they pop.  Additonally, a good AF pilot can commonly solo dual-spawn faction BS rats at belts.  I know folks who regularly take teams of 3-5 AFs and Intys into complexes that groups of 10 BSs lose ships to.

The BS, most notably the Raven, is the king of Empire mission runners.  Tempests (I think that's the name of the Minmatar BS) are favored by low sec gate snipers because they can be set up to out-distance gate sentry guns.  Pirates and folks who live in 0.0 full time rely heavily on tech II.

[Yegolev]

I don't fly combat but I can still give some advice on the newbie frig experience.  When you get enough cash to buy the most expensive frigate twice, get one and stick with it until you can afford to do the same with a cruiser.  Ideally you will be working your skills the whole time so that you don't move into a ship that you barely have the skills for.  Be sure to check not only the skill requirements just to fly a ship, but what bonuses you get as you gain skill levels.

I am finding that I can hold my own in .5 belts with my cheap cruiser (Exequror) and only four scout drones.  I am confident I could hunt them in my Tristan frigate as well.  However, I am Space French and I do run from combat when in my cruiser and I have to.  I have my four high slots filled with mining lasers and let the drones fight for me; they seem able to take on four 9k rats with no trouble.  I recently bought a medium shield booster and already have a small armor repair unit, which I feel are good investments not just for keeping you alive, but also for avoiding repair costs back at the station.  Repairing my armor myself just costs me capacitor and time, and if need be I can just fire two or three mining lasers instead of all four.  At the very least you will avoid giving hard-earned ISK to the station.

Finally, ask dumb questions in F13 chat.  I do, and it works.

[Murgos]

You can hold your own in .5 belts with a Cruiser?  Are the Gallente that gimped?

As I posted above my Merlin (total cost equipped < 400k ISK) yawns through .5 belts.

Anyway, I got a nice drop last night and now I am a multi-millionaire.  Decided to check out a 1/10 complex (Sansha) in my Executioner (Yours for the low, low price of 23k ISK) and one of the 'boss' rats dropped a True Sansha Kinetic Armor Hardener, purchase price is around 27 mil but they were going for 5 mil on escrow so I sold it to an NPC corp for 8 mil.  Maybe I could have delayed my gratification and escrowed it for 20 mil (history showed some going that high in the last week or so) but my id won that battle.


So, combat seems to me to be the fun and easy path to profits.

[Yegolev]

You can hold your own in .5 belts with a Cruiser?  Are the Gallente that gimped?

As I posted above my Merlin (total cost equipped < 400k ISK) yawns through .5 belts.

I was using my incompetence in combat as an illustration, but that might not have been clear.  You have to remember that I don't have any guns fitted in my cruiser, and until I buy and train the basic shield skill, I will be using a civ shield booster.  I bought a med last night because four 9k rats chewed my shield down to zero, and I will see about buying the skill to use it next time I log in.  I can't say if the French are gimped for combat, but I am.  As Henny Youngman said, I am not a total loss: I can always be a horrible example.  The lesson is that anyone that spends some time learning combat skills should just come on down to Neesher (.5) and join the crew.

I'd expect much better results from my Tristan, which would compare to your Merlin if I were to equip it properly.

[Furiously]

If you can manage your range sucessfully you should have no issues with belt ratting down to .1's with a missile cruiser. Just don't let them get into range. Otherwise they will tear you apart and warp scramble you.

[Yegolev]

Actually this does remind me that there is one must-have in EVE: missile capability.

[Strazos]

My cruiser can kill Amarr Battleships. It takes awhile, but I can do it, assuming I don't get into their range.

[Murgos]

Actually this does remind me that there is one must-have in EVE: missile capability.

Which means there needs to be the option for better anti-missle capability.  Point Defense or tweak defenders to be more useful or sommat.  A Point Defense Module could be something as simple as a frigate sized gun that autolocks and fires on incoming missles.  You have to give up a high and offensive capability and one gun shouldn't be able to clear a whole spread of missles at a reasonable range.  If done right it's mostly just a missle dps mitigation at the trade off of attack power/options.

From what I have read fleet encounters tend to be gun dominated because of the missle time-to-target delay so the devs probably either see missles as essentially balanced (good solo - small gang, inefficient large gang/fleet) or there will need to be some fancy juggling to improve missle viability at the fleet level while reducing it at the solo/small group level.

[Furiously]

From what I have read fleet encounters tend to be gun dominated because of the missle time-to-target delay so the devs probably either see missles as essentially balanced (good solo - small gang, inefficient large gang/fleet) or there will need to be some fancy juggling to improve missle viability at the fleet level while reducing it at the solo/small group level.

No wrecking shots with missiles. Also get ships that can outrun missiles in PVP.

[Polysorbate80]

No wrecking shots with missiles. Also get ships that can outrun missiles in PVP.

Also no whiffs with missiles, and ships/pilots that can outrun a +100% velocity missile (7500mps) can't be a dime-a-dozen.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's likely more a problem with the lower dps of missiles and the inability to maintain the safe range needed to make that lower dps effective.

But, I've done no fleet battles, so wtf do I know anyways? heh.

[Polysorbate80]

I don't fly combat but I can still give some advice on the newbie frig experience.  When you get enough cash to buy the most expensive frigate twice, get one and stick with it until you can afford to do the same with a cruiser.  Ideally you will be working your skills the whole time so that you don't move into a ship that you barely have the skills for.  Be sure to check not only the skill requirements just to fly a ship, but what bonuses you get as you gain skill levels.

If you're stayin in high-sec, you can do it slightly differently (although training your skills up is always a good thing, neh?)

As soon as you have the ISK to buy a high-end frigate (or a cruiser if you're making the jump) and either have the cash on hand or can insure it for enough to at least replace your *current* ship, you might want to make the jump up.  You'll make money faster, and still be able to fall back to where you were before you bought the bigger boat if you do something foolish.  There's an element of risk, but you can also speed things up a lot--just don't let visions of grandeur go to your head and do something foolish, you'll quickly find out that bigger tub isn't invulnerable :)

[Mr_PeaCH]

As a fellow noob (only a few days more than you) let me say this; with a little bit of effort you can do 0.6 Ratting in even the cheapest of Frigates (except the newb frig I guess).

So far I've gone down to 0.6 in an Executioner (Amarr 20kish frig) and 0.5 in a Merlin (Caldari 200k frig) with really no fear from the rats there.   I think the money to be had dropping down in security is well worth the time and effort equiping your frig and skilling your clone.

Last night I learned you are right... well, I suspect you are right anyways.  I was reading the eve player guide on Tracking (http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g26.asp) and started understanding what I'd been doing wrong.  My Minmatar background gave me projectile turrets to start with and those are strictly short-range.  I knew that but still I wasn't being as efficient as I could be.  I had been using "keep in range = 1km" or so but that dynamic tends to result in a lot of twisting and turning once two small ships get in close.  I switched to the simple "approach" command and just bulldogged them head on which either results in a gunslinging showdown or them running and either way the transversal velocity reduces toward zero making me much more accurate and deadly.

But what I am lacking still is a medium or long range (for small vessel anyway) punch to start working on their shields so I can switch to my armor and hull damaging attacks in close.  I purchased and trained (1 ea.) the Hybrid and Energy Turret skills last night and my 3rd train of Min. Frigs will be complete by the time I get home so I'll be ready to upgrade from my "Burst" ship (modest armaments, good cargo) to the "Rifter" (good armament, modest cargo).

Looking forward to finding some 0.6 and giving that a go shortly after that.

My advice is to bang out Learning and the first tier learning skills to 3, then train what you want from there, and keep the rest of the first tier and all of the second tier skills as downtime skills for when you are asleep or at work.  You'll be best served to get all the learning skills out of the way before you start focusing on AFs or Barges or what have you, because those tend to require multiple skills at level V, and those are where you'll see the biggest impact from higher stats.

Yep; I'm taking a break from my Learning having gotten the Int and Mem and Learning all to 3.  Next up will be Will/Perception to 3 before I take any more gunnery stuff any farther.  I do mean to take to heart your advice about Engineering, Electronics and Mechanics as well but first I'm going to have fun in my Frig.   

I am finding that I can hold my own in .5 belts with my cheap cruiser (Exequror) and only four scout drones.  I am confident I could hunt them in my Tristan frigate as well.  However, I am Space French and I do run from combat when in my cruiser and I have to.  I have my four high slots filled with mining lasers and let the drones fight for me; they seem able to take on four 9k rats with no trouble.  I recently bought a medium shield booster and already have a small armor repair unit, which I feel are good investments not just for keeping you alive, but also for avoiding repair costs back at the station.  Repairing my armor myself just costs me capacitor and time, and if need be I can just fire two or three mining lasers instead of all four.  At the very least you will avoid giving hard-earned ISK to the station.

Do you consider drones a must for mining or just for mining solo... or are all miners soloists?  Because I'm not at all adverse to mining in the long run if there is money to be made or a corporate need to be filled; In fact when I tailored my character I had mining in mind with combat second.  But having gotten a taste of the easy money and the fun of blowing stuff up I'm going harder on the combat now that the mining.  I'm very keen to let my Bartle's Explorer run wild in EVE so whatever feeds that jones; rat hunting, mining, both, other; will be of interest to me.


ASIDE - What's the skinny on the Archeology skill under Science... looks like it needs Science V + Survey V (+ Electronics I).  I would guess that such finds would be BPs or valuable/useful equipment?  I kind of like the sound of it but I have no idea how practical it might be and taking Sci and Survey to V would be pretty daunting alone.  But basically does it come into play when mining or fighting or where does surveying fit in (and would surveying be something akin to scouting new systems and feed that Explorer jones I mentioned)?

OOH! (edited to add:) What does it take to find rat hunting missions or agents... do I just need to check in on NPC and Player base stations and start conversations.  Right now I have one guy who is keeping me pretty busy and I'm accumulating these 'copper tags' from the local brand of pirates including one 'true' tag.  Early on in a region far, far from here I was given a mission to return 5 such tags and the reward was a nifty turret that I'm still using.  So I'm thinking that I want to hang on to these for the next time such a turn-in mission comes around.


Thanks to all for your help and insight both here and in-game; I have been mostly quiet on the F13 channel and sometimes am AFK for long times so don't read too much into it.  When I do have a question though I greatly appreciate the help being provided.

[Murgos]

Actually the theory behind no missles in fleet battles is that they tend to happen at ranges of around 100km+.  100km/7.5kps = 13 seconds of flight time (optimally).  Your target has had three, four or more volleys of massed heavy gun fire by then and probably doesn't exist anymore making the missile volley pointless.

[Polysorbate80]

That's very surprising to me; I would have thought they would be much more close-range than that.  Good to know.

(edit) what's the accuracy on the big guns at that kind of range?  Even a battleship has to be a damn small profile at that kind of distance.

[Hoax]

It can be, there are tactics on top of tactics under tactics.

For example if you have a gang of blaster mega's with a covert ship and you can get the covert in nice and close then the mega's warp to him...   that should work in theory and would allow you to just vaporize Amarr Bships armed with Mega Beams as long as you could keep them scram'd.

[Murgos]

(edit) what's the accuracy on the big guns at that kind of range?  Even a battleship has to be a damn small profile at that kind of distance.

No first hand experience but pretty high I bet.  Specialized sniper builds are getting out to 250km+.

[Polysorbate80]

Do you consider drones a must for mining or just for mining solo... or are all miners soloists?  Because I'm not at all adverse to mining in the long run if there is money to be made or a corporate need to be filled; In fact when I tailored my character I had mining in mind with combat second.  But having gotten a taste of the easy money and the fun of blowing stuff up I'm going harder on the combat now that the mining.  I'm very keen to let my Bartle's Explorer run wild in EVE so whatever feeds that jones; rat hunting, mining, both, other; will be of interest to me.

If you're into combat at all and you've got a drone bay, by all means load it with something.  I just use whatever light drones I happen to loot, and it's easy to keep stocked.  They're quite handy for small speedy ships (when you're in something larger that has trouble hitting them), or extra dps on an enemy whose tank is sucking your ammo magazine dry, or to edge out a close fight, or for buildings in missions so you can blow them up without wasting so much ammo.

[Strazos]

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's likely more a problem with the lower dps of missiles and the inability to maintain the safe range needed to make that lower dps effective.

At least in my experience, missile DPS is just fine, as is the range. Cruise missiles have a base max range of 75km+ - that's not far enough?

[Murgos]

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's likely more a problem with the lower dps of missiles and the inability to maintain the safe range needed to make that lower dps effective.

At least in my experience, missile DPS is just fine, as is the range. Cruise missiles have a base max range of 75km+ - that's not far enough?

There was a thread that went into detail on this (mathematically I mean) and pretty much showed that missle DPS and range were withing a few tenth's/hundredths of equivelent gun ranges/dps with similar skill backgrounds.  This comes back to that old topic of impulse vs steady DPS.  Which is better?  Lots of damage in disctrete bursts at predictable time intervals or continuous damage over that same period of time.  The answer is always, it depends.

Because the damage from a missle volley is packetized there is now way to hit the moving window of a dropping tank with any accuracy.

For example if the opponent has a 30000 hit point tank and your missle volley does 20k damage every 20 seconds then in 40 seconds you will have killed it.  If you do damage at the rate of 1000 per second though you have killed the target in 30 seconds and shifted to a new target for 10 seconds.  Now the second target needs 20 more seconds to kill with the steady DPS and the packetized DPS needs a full 40.

In computer terms this is called pipelining.

[Silus Fromme]

ASIDE - What's the skinny on the Archeology skill under Science... looks like it needs Science V + Survey V (+ Electronics I).  I would guess that such finds would be BPs or valuable/useful equipment?  I kind of like the sound of it but I have no idea how practical it might be and taking Sci and Survey to V would be pretty daunting alone.  But basically does it come into play when mining or fighting or where does surveying fit in (and would surveying be something akin to scouting new systems and feed that Explorer jones I mentioned)?

Archaeology and Hacking are for the COSMOS mission sets.  I haven't run them but my understanding is they are one-time-only mission arcs.  There are restrictions on what size ship can be flown on them I think.  Archaeology and Hacking aren't required to run them, but I believe some of the high end faction and tech II loot that can be gained from them are only accessible if you have those skills.

Your best bet is to hit the official forums and read up on COSMOS, because I'm sure my explanation is faulty.

[Polysorbate80]

At least in my experience, missile DPS is just fine, as is the range. Cruise missiles have a base max range of 75km+ - that's not far enough?

I don't mean the maximum range of the missiles, I meant the need to keep your enemy at that range to eliminate or minimize the danger of their shorter-range return fire.  Obviously, I hadn't looked at the range on large guns yet :P

And yes, "overkill" tends to waste a portion of missile damage output, even if you ride tight herd on your launchers.

I still like missiles though, and since the probability of me engaging in fleet action approaches zero, I'll be fine with my launchers :)

[Yegolev]

Do you consider drones a must for mining or just for mining solo... or are all miners soloists?  Because I'm not at all adverse to mining in the long run if there is money to be made or a corporate need to be filled; In fact when I tailored my character I had mining in mind with combat second.  But having gotten a taste of the easy money and the fun of blowing stuff up I'm going harder on the combat now that the mining.  I'm very keen to let my Bartle's Explorer run wild in EVE so whatever feeds that jones; rat hunting, mining, both, other; will be of interest to me.

If you're into combat at all and you've got a drone bay, by all means load it with something.  I just use whatever light drones I happen to loot, and it's easy to keep stocked.  They're quite handy for small speedy ships (when you're in something larger that has trouble hitting them), or extra dps on an enemy whose tank is sucking your ammo magazine dry, or to edge out a close fight, or for buildings in missions so you can blow them up without wasting so much ammo.

The flip side of that advice is that what you really want when you don't have any guns on your boat is someone or anyone to defend you.  In addition to being more DPS and fast, there isn't any reason to avoid drones if you can float them.

Solo mining is what you do when you can't group mine, and while they are somewhat different in practice you still need someone flying escort.  Before I had the cruiser with the 40m³ drone bay, I basically had to warp to station, get my Tristan, warp to the belt, blast the fuckers, warp back to station, get my mining frig, warp back to the belt, resume mining.  It helps a lot when you can just send your drones instead of doing all of that, or fitting a shitty gun in place of a mining laser.

[Polysorbate80]

This is certainly true, although if you're mining you'd want to put some more thought into what drones you load than my "whatever crap I have laying around" stocking method.