EVE Online - Catch All & new meat check-in

LtWarhound wrote:

Have to disagree, Elycion. Too many missions have too many small ships. Its really annoying taking down hordes of frigates and cruisers with large guns or cruise missiles.

You're overlooking these things called "drones". They take down the frigates while your guns or missiles take down the bigger ships.

The Nighthawk may be fun to fly, and hey by all means in EVE people should do whatever makes them happy. The simple fact is that I can take a standard issue T2 fit Raven and complete 3-4 missions for every two that can be run in a Nighthawk.

I myself fly a Myrmidon while I skill up for the Dominix. I happened to get my hands on my girlfriend's character for a few months, and managed to mission next to a Nighthawk, in a Cerberus. My co-pilot was in no way a stranger to his vessel, but even though a lot of the missions were made shorter range a few patches ago he still managed to have to midboat to certain places, where I was already firing at 40km longer ranges, and got there a lot faster.
I never tried a Nighthawk myself, but seeing it fly alongside my cerberus, and flying a tengu for a month in missions, which only had a hit range of maybe 80km, I noticed the range does annoy me a lot. Certainly, this is 100% my preference, and I do love the Nighthawk's performance, but 2nd-hand experience left an opinion.

Now, here's an idea. The Tengu is a rather great performer in missions, and is not very skill intensive. Its downside is the cost, but I most certainly would not advise newcomers to overlook T3 just cause Tech 3 seems more scary, than Tech 2. T3, in my opinion, is a lot less hassle to train for, than Heavy Assault Ships, or Commandships. If a newcomer feels comfortable with his, or her wallet a mission Tengu is definitely somethign to look into. More damage, and the resists of a Nighthawk. Smaller size, and higher speed, than a Cerberus. And, on top of that, it's an active tanker. It really is like a miniature Golem. Same goes for the other races' t3, if you look at Battleclinic.

EvE is a sandbox in so many ways, and an out of the box thinking, and fittings are always welcomed with thumbs up.

Denny wrote:

I never tried a Nighthawk myself, but seeing it fly alongside my cerberus, and flying a tengu for a month in missions, which only had a hit range of maybe 80km, I noticed the range does annoy me a lot. Certainly, this is 100% my preference, and I do love the Nighthawk's performance, but 2nd-hand experience left an opinion.

I'll point out that if maximum range is that important to your enjoyment of mission running, that you may want to strongly reconsider using a drone boat like the Dominix. While the maximum range on drones is very long with proper skills and fitting, you really don't want to let them get more than 40km away as a general rule. Drones that drift beyond a few seconds recall time have a bad habit of dying to successive waves of mission spawn. You can limit yourself to Sentry Drones to avoid this to some extent, but that means missing out on the joy that is Ogre II's chewing through enemy ships.

Elycion wrote:
LtWarhound wrote:

Have to disagree, Elycion. Too many missions have too many small ships. Its really annoying taking down hordes of frigates and cruisers with large guns or cruise missiles.

You're overlooking these things called "drones". They take down the frigates while your guns or missiles take down the bigger ships.

The Nighthawk may be fun to fly, and hey by all means in EVE people should do whatever makes them happy. The simple fact is that I can take a standard issue T2 fit Raven and complete 3-4 missions for every two that can be run in a Nighthawk.

You are overlooking those things called 'heavy missiles'. They take down the.... well, everything. Due to the explosion velocity bonus of the Nighthawk, they take down frigates as fast or faster than my T2 scout drones. They take out destroyers in a single salvo, consistantly. They take down battlecruisers as fast as the CNR. And not much slower against battleships.

Sorry, but I have to call shenanigans on that 'simple fact'. When was the last time you flew a Nighthawk? You mentioned L4s being rather 2006 to you, has it been 3+ years? I currently fly missions with either a CNR or a Nighthawk. My drone skills are top notch, T2 in all races and types except sentries. I match the correct damage type, drones/missiles/resists, and there is no way my CNR can do twice the damage the Nighthawk does. And there is no way that a 'standard issue T2 fit Raven' will be doing 1.75 to 2x the damage of the Nighthawk. And that doesn't even touch the speed advantage of the Nighthawk, which cuts down the time needed for travel in missions.

I owned a Tengu, good tank but I just found it dull to fly. Because most L3/4s are easy, and money isn't really an issue for me, I fly whatever I enjoy rather than to burn through missions as fast as possible.

I tried the Golem, just found it too similar to CNR which I already owned, so sold it on. At the moment I am enjoying flying my Nightmare (with modulated Tach Beams, hence it's name 'Help Me I'm Melting') and my Rattler, despite it becoming a Dominix with camouflage. Got a CNR, NavyPoc, NavyMeg, Blasterion as well as the two above, and a Pally in Dodixie waiting for me to learn Amarr BS 5 or sell it, whichever appeals to me first. I also enjoy the passive Nighthawk, as well as the passive Gila, so ship choice is more a case of 'what do I fancy' as opposed to 'what will burn through quickest'.

Still, I'll be selling a few to fund my JF...wish they'd stop going up.

So I resubbed recently, if my end goal is to fly recons/ explore WH space what is the best way to skill towards that and make money to support it? Can hacking/arch pay off, or should I still get a fatty battlecruiser to run missions in to fund my smaller ships?

I started a trial account with a Calderi named Bravo Walker. Friend me up!

Yeah, EvE doesn't have a "friend network" as such, so there's no friending. It's called something in the lines of an "online list", and is mostly filled with names of pilots, who are possible targets, or perform a certain role, like "R&K's titan pilot just logged in"

Just join the "GWJ" channel, passworded gwjeve.

Yeah, the "friends list" is the chat channel. That's how you'll know who's on.

Seeing the list of channel participants is pretty handy, yes. I added some people with cool info in their bio to my online list, too, to have it handy. I plan to go covert ops and elec warfare eventually, if anyone has a PvP or exploration need for that later on.

Petriefied wrote:

So I resubbed recently, if my end goal is to fly recons/ explore WH space what is the best way to skill towards that and make money to support it? Can hacking/arch pay off, or should I still get a fatty battlecruiser to run missions in to fund my smaller ships?

Hacking/Archaelogy would be the quickest payoffs. 300mil a pop on class 3s ain't a bad way to make isk.

*loads a small fleet of rigged rifters into the Orca, and flys the gear off to class* oh, this is painful. Even the battleships are nimble compared to this.

*waves* Hi there! After playing Jumpgate on and off for 10 years, I thought I'd give this EVE thing a try, and so far, a few days in, I'm liking it. Already joined a small corp and am making some money helping mine stuff. Hope to see y'all in the game.

LtWarhound wrote:

*loads a small fleet of rigged rifters into the Orca, and flys the gear off to class* oh, this is painful. Even the battleships are nimble compared to this.

Wait til you start flying Freighters with their 0.8AU speed on 50 jump round trips

Still, at least you never had to face the horror that was the travel system before they introduced warp to 0km....each warp across a system landed you 15km from a gate, in a ship with a max speed of 88 m/s. You almost lost the will to live at that point.

If your looking for a friendly relaxed corp you can't go far wrong with http://www.northstar-alliance.net. I joined them a few months ago and really enjoying it, there is both Carebear and PvP sub corps and you can freely move between them.

We also have a POS in WH space where I am currently living and raking in the ISK.

davet010 wrote:

Still, at least you never had to face the horror that was the travel system before they introduced warp to 0km....each warp across a system landed you 15km from a gate, in a ship with a max speed of 88 m/s. You almost lost the will to live at that point.

Those were the good old days, I had a thriving business selling Warp-to-zero bookmarks before CCP went and messed it all up!

Thats been the best change they made while I was out the game :p

Thanks for that info Waltz. I may well app. I've been looking to expand my horizons from just mission running.

davet010 wrote:
LtWarhound wrote:

*loads a small fleet of rigged rifters into the Orca, and flys the gear off to class* oh, this is painful. Even the battleships are nimble compared to this.

Wait til you start flying Freighters with their 0.8AU speed on 50 jump round trips

Still, at least you never had to face the horror that was the travel system before they introduced warp to 0km....each warp across a system landed you 15km from a gate, in a ship with a max speed of 88 m/s. You almost lost the will to live at that point.

Actually, I did. I started playing Eve in beta. Played retail for a few months at start, back when there were only a handful of ship classes in the game. Then off and on again since then, more off than on. Haven't missed much.

A token of my past, a bit of the first killmail I was on...as the victim.

2003.05.28 23:20:00
Involved parties:

EzE
Jay Yamato
Atari
Lord Zap
Ywev

Thankfully the Badger was empty.

I do not miss the sets of regional bookmarks. They were so evil. I had a sickening amount. Our alliance moved from north to south at one point and It was just not fun dealing with a dozen regions worth of bookmarks.

4 of us copying bookmarks in the same station was cause enough to lag the whole system, Nuean. Ah, good times when I was new to the game.

yeah I like how we had to break up regions into multiple cans to make them copy. CCP were cursing us the 2 weeks before that move south lol!

Does anyone follow any of the Eve in and out of game blogs? I started with http://www.crazykinux.com/ and have been reading various PvP blogs. Mostly just looking for tips on how to stay alive and avoid PvP until I get some safety skills up.

I find most of the EVE blogs to be pretty boring, but if you've found Crazy Kinux then you have the link to the EVE Blog Pack which pretty much has them all. There are some good ones here and there but overall the signal to noise ratio is pretty poor. If you have an iPhone, the Capsuleer app is a fun way to keep up with the blogs and official news releases.

It's worth having a listen to the 'Podded' podcast as well.

Mixolyde wrote:

Does anyone follow any of the Eve in and out of game blogs? I started with http://www.crazykinux.com/ and have been reading various PvP blogs. Mostly just looking for tips on how to stay alive and avoid PvP until I get some safety skills up.

SHC forums is both terrible and awesome. http://scrapheap-challenge.com The War and Politics forum is great for getting battlereports for 0.0 and even some of the larger low sec battles. The PVP and PVE Setup forums are good as well. The users are all dicks, though.

Ya, SHC has a lousy signal/noise ratio. But, like Elitist Jerks, there is a lot of good info there, just have to dig it out.

Oh, I kinda remember the "Warp to 15km" times. made autopiloting the same as manual. AT one point, before warp to 0 was introduced CCP changed the sizes of gates, and stations, so all the bookmarks were way off from the required location.

And as they introduced the random undock direction all insta undock bookmarks became pretty much useless as well.

From what I hear SHC is like EvE-O, and CAOD, but actually moderated, not dickfaced like CCP does it.

Denny wrote:

From what I hear SHC is like EvE-O, and CAOD, but actually moderated, not dickfaced like CCP does it.

Ha

Haha

hahahahahahahaha

Sorry, had to get that out of my system. The only thing on SHC that's moderated is the battle reports forum. Every other aspect of that site is completely out of control. There's a ton of good information there, and many knowledgeable people, but you need a thick skin and good sorting skills to get much out of it.

Oh, they have _some_ moderation. Sorta. Just not what reasonable sane people would think of as 'moderation'.