EVE Online - Catch All & new meat check-in

Elycion wrote:
Copingsaw wrote:
Zaque wrote:

Why don't you move around your attributes a bit to get your training times down some. I don't think having a memory that high and a willpower that low is going to help you much if your targeting drone/gunnery/ship skills. Maybe you could take 2 points from memory and 2 points from charisma to help out those training times a bit.

Good point. I know they've implemented a system that allows me to do that now, I just haven't taken the time to try it out. Will do.

Use EVEMon to do this. Build up a skill plan that includes everything you think you'd like to train for the next year in EVEMon and then use the built in attribute calculator to see what's optimal. You can save months of training time this way now.

Beat me too the punch on both cases. I'm still bringing your character up, but ZZ's one of the folks who got me started on my way. If you're shooting for a combat focus over the next year or so, you're looking for a higher willpower/perception. My best recommendation is to tank your Charisma into willpower if possible, and break int/mem into the other two as you can.

Once that's done, if you're really, really looking to streamline training and on the long haul, learning skills are next. Pushing Learning to V, and your others to IV are the best bang for your buck IMO; getting your basic learning skills to V are nice as a filler when you're not sure what else to train.

For mission running, here's my suggestions for immediate focus, as they're good all around skills that will serve you well:

Mechanic skills: Your tank is your life; if you're armor tanking, doubly so. Shields become a buffer only, and while everyone knows that Real Men Hull Tank, they also are fully aware that Hull Tanking is really stupid(check the elite hull tanking certificate if you don't get that :)).

Drone Skills: If Domi is your goal, you need these, no questions asked. It's a droneboat, through and through. Short term though, you might want to look into T2 drones(~3 levels of at least Gallente Drone spec; you can worry about the others later IMO, since I find they are more than adequate for most applications). Sentry Drones are another one you'll definitely want to look into. They're essentially your long range artillery.

Spaceship Command: You're pretty solid here. I'd put at least one, probably two more levels into Battlecruisers while you're running L3s and getting the flow of handling drones and aggro. Definitely don't worry about spending some time on them; they can be really good for ya.

Overall, your priority should be getting the following things done:

1. T2 tank, all modules available. This means Large Armor Reppers, Plates, Resistance Modules, the whole nine. Make sure you're mixing in the engineering skills to keep the tank up; you really should be able to fit T2 modules(Cap Power Relays, etc) before you're stepping into your first Domi.
2. T2 Drones and IV/V in your drone support skills. This is what gets missions done fast. Fast = More Money w/ a side of wicked sick fun. Seriously, running missions with a Domi pilot while I was in a Raven, Navy Issue was some of the most fun I had carebearing it up in EVE.
3. Skills that make you do what you're trying to do faster. This is pretty much a catch-all for getting skills to V which you didn't need to meet forgone priorities; things like Battleship V, or perhaps polishing off your basic learning skills before pressing on to other race's ships/equipment, or some of the more specialized T2 ships. The Ishtar in particular can be kitted out to solo L5 missions fairly handily. Yes, a HAC can and has solo'd L5s. I've seen it done.

Oh, and Elycion is absolutely right about EVEMon. It's a fantastic program that will help you get your training plan streamlined via learning skills; you might not get suggestions as you're already pretty well decked there, though. Another suggestion I'd make is to invest in a set of +3 implants. They're reasonably inexpensive(I bought my current set a year or so ago for ~6mil per implant, so 24 mil total), and are hands down the easiest thing you can do to cut down on training times.

Lastly, here is my main; She's pretty much a nearly fully vetted Caldari combat pilot, more capable with Railguns, but almost as good with Missiles. L4s solo in a Navy Raven were fantastic cash with her

Thanks Anime, great tips. I've actually spent much of the last few weeks training up my learning to where it is now and feel like I need to actually invest in something that will help me instead of wasting another few weeks.

I seem to have the L3 missions down pat. Most missions they barely break into armor and when they do my tank keeps us splendidly. I use T2 medium drones and they simply rip things apart. The Domi guide you posted earlier sets out a nice progression for me to improve my drone and tank skills so I will be following that. I actually qualify for a number of L4 agents at this point but have been putting it off until I skill up a bit more.

On the downside, I lost my Myrmidon earlier today. $35 mil ISK down the drain. I ran a mission in low sec and, having never been mission ganked, went in without a worry in the world. Just as I finished the mission three -10 security Yarr's warped in literally right on top of me, locked me down and blew me up. I was lucky to get out with my pod. Nothing I could have done. I guess we all need to learn the lesson at some point. From now on I will check local prior to running missions in low sec and will equip a warp stab or two.

Having said that, it seems to me something is very wrong with the role low sec plays in the game. Every time I have been in a low sec system, they are virtually empty. While I am no expert, it doesn't take one to put two and two together. I like the lawlessness of low sec but the risk must equal the reward and currently there is little reward and much risk to venturing there. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to fix that.

Edit: Hey, I've actually got more skill points into learning skills than you do Anime so back off!

Copingsaw wrote:

Edit: Hey, I've actually got more skill points into learning skills than you do Anime so back off!

Ah, but how many of those are in Charisma skills? I have only Empathy II, but Learning V and everything else to IV/IV

On Lowsec, you're pretty much right. It's a pirates paradise, a land where they prey on newbies. There's an endless battle on the EVE-O forums about it; Pirates want Highsec missions to give less reward so people go to Lowsec for the risk and they can hang out around high quality lowsec agents, or just watch for traffic and go gank mission runners for easy payout, thus giving them much reward for little/no risk, as PvE fits tend to get destroyed by PvP fits. Ultimately, it's better just to avoid lowsec missions; easiest way to do that is pick a mission hub no closer than ~3 jumps from lowsec in all directions.

AnimeJ wrote:

On Lowsec, you're pretty much right. It's a pirates paradise, a land where they prey on newbies. There's an endless battle on the EVE-O forums about it; Pirates want Highsec missions to give less reward so people go to Lowsec for the risk and they can hang out around high quality lowsec agents, or just watch for traffic and go gank mission runners for easy payout, thus giving them much reward for little/no risk, as PvE fits tend to get destroyed by PvP fits. Ultimately, it's better just to avoid lowsec missions; easiest way to do that is pick a mission hub no closer than ~3 jumps from lowsec in all directions.

Yah, I agree, but it was a storyline mission and I was on mission 9 of 10. Kinda hard to back off at that point and let all your hard work go to waste. Worst part is the next mission sends me back to the same system.

What CCP needs to do is find a way to make it worthwhile to enter low-sec in groups. If I am going to risk losing my ship, I want 1) a fighting chance, and 2) a greater reward than usual. On the other hand, I bet the pirates would welcome both more activity and more challenge. Maybe ruining somebody's day is just that fun but I gotta believe it had to be somewhat boring for three skilled pirates to jump in on top of a lone mission runner.

Question: If your cloaked do you show up on local? In other words, I jump into a lowsec system and there are five people in local. I info them all and no pirates. Could there still be a group of pirates all cloaked just waiting to probe me down and jump me?

Cloaked, you still show up in local. The pirates will either be a system or two over (spread out and coordinating when they need to cluster in one place) or offline (again, coordinating when to log off their alt and log in to jump you). If they are any good, they know how Local works, and how not to get noticed. That said, monitor local at all times when in low-sec, and if you see a spike - safespot. Dock. Gate out.

"I like the lawlessness of low sec but the risk must equal the reward and currently there is little reward and much risk to venturing there. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to fix that."

Just as soon as you figure out that fix, let CCP know. This is the way low-sec has been since day one. Lost my first ship to M00 in low-sec waaaaaaay back in the day (maybe two weeks after the game went retail), and nothing has really changed since then.

You could make low-sec 10x as rewarding as it is now, make L4s only as good as L3s are now, and 'carebears' would still stick to high-sec and avoid low-sec. Why?

Because they are convinced they will die if they go into low-sec. And they aren't exactly wrong. As long as a PvE fit is so radically different from a PvP fit, the PvE fit ships will die, constantly, without much of a chance.

Copingsaw wrote:

I guess we all need to learn the lesson at some point. From now on I will check local prior to running missions in low sec and will equip a warp stab or two.

Repeat after me: "I will not run missions in lowsec."

Seriously, that's the lesson you need to learn here. Taking a PvE fitted ship into lowsec turns you into the EVE equivalent of a whole roast pig with an apple in its mouth that's sitting in the middle of the banquet table. Fitting stabs won't do anything other than gimp your fit for both PvE and PvP.

It is one of EVE's great flaws that lowsec is pretty much useless for anything except pirates or low-grade PoS operations. How to fix lowsec has been a topic on the eve forums for as long as I've been playing, and I've yet to see a good solution. In the long run, if you're not a pirate, lowsec is somewhere you go to hunt pirates or just pass through on your way to 0.0 space.

And never use warp core stabilizers in a mission as they screw with your lock range and time. If you have to run a mission in lowsec, try and use a smaller ship than normal, pay attention to local, or best yet, get a friend to pay attention to local for you. You do this by looking for scanning probes on your ship scanner, as that is how they tracked you down so well. Cloaks are pretty much worthless for mission running. As you aren't really affiliated with anyone, you could probably talk to one of the pirate hunting groups around and setup some traps for them, if your into that kind of stuff.

I'd just like to add a suggestion to getting Weapons Upgrade to 5 and Advanced Weapons Upgrade to at least 3 as soon as it's convenient for you. AWU will give you enough fitting room for much much better fits, both for PVE and PVP.

Of course, my PVP bias may very well be showing clearly here, but I've found it to be something I constantly remind my raw recruits to train.

I don't know if its that important for him fstarta, as he's running drone boats, so he's much more dependent on his drone skills. I'd suggest getting a few levels in the remote repping skills instead so he can sit with one or two sentry drones and keep them alive as a way to spread around the tanking, as the low sig radius of drones really lowers the damage they take from the larger ships which makes it feasible. But yes, if he wants to fit guns on a drone boat, or if he wants to try another type of setup that is definately useful. The only other thing I would suggest is looking around for some cheap implants that incease tanking/damage, this includes capacitor implants, 3% might not be much but it could be the difference in some of the harder missions, and for only a few lp's and some isk its quite easy.

Its surprising how often a 1% or 3% grid implant or CPU implant can help. A good set of hardwires isn't that expensive, and worth considering. And AWU 3 is worth getting, in the long run. Good fitting skills are worth it for any character, with the exception of a trader/researcher that just sits in station.

Thanks for all the tips. Good information from all.

Actually, I have been having troubles fitting out my myrmidon with rails. With my current fit, I can only run five railguns. Training up Weapons Upgrades is definitively on my list, although it may take a back seat to a few drone skills first.

I don't have any implants past the first five slots. Been thinking about blowing some of my LP's on a few. Guess I will definitely do so prior to running L4's.

Oddly enough for a Gallente boat, rails aren't the way to go with a Myrm. If you are missioning, I'd go with something like blasters or autocannons, it's your drone skills you want to be powering up as the myrm is a drone boat, though it doesn't have the bandwidth for 5 ogre 2's, which is a shame.

Yeah it was so lame when they changed that out. I really wish they would put in a high slot mod to up your bandwidth, and a low slot to increase your drone bay, and/or maybe rigs to do the same.

Hey, I just started a trial account. I'll jump on to the GWJ channel when I get in, hopefully some time tonight.

Woah, didn't see this coming...

http://kotaku.com/5339695/eve-comes-...

CCP have today taken the wraps off Dust 514, a "hybrid MMO/FPS" that not only brings the world of EVE Online to consoles, but somehow ties the game to the PC MMO as well.

Apparently the game will "interact directly" with the PC title, allowing console gamers to manually fight out the battles for planets that are part of the larger MMO conflict.

It will do this by combining FPS and RTS mechanics. The game is being worked on by CCP Shanghai, and there'll be more details (including which platforms this is actually for) announced during CCP's big fan get-together in Reykjavik, Iceland in October.

Looks like more to be announced at Fan Fest.

Yeah, that looks pretty neat. Although, what are the chances that you can make isk killing people in an fps and then link that isk to your MMO account? I'd like to see lots of integration between the two games, but I doubt that will happen.

Rock Paper Shotgun wrote:

So PC gamers get to be the space-bound commanders of the console foot-soldiers… That isn’t going to help our elitism complex, is it?

I'm trying not to overreact until all the facts are in, but this new Dust 514 announcement has me rather cranky so far. A console-only title that will interact with and strongly affect a PC MMO is sheer stupidity to me. The concept that sovereignty in EVE will be at least partially controlled by how many Ritalin-deprived twits you can get to play an FPS on your behalf is just insane.

Elycion wrote:

I'm trying not to overreact until all the facts are in, but this new Dust 514 announcement has me rather cranky so far. A console-only title that will interact with and strongly affect a PC MMO is sheer stupidity to me. The concept that sovereignty in EVE will be at least partially controlled by how many Ritalin-deprived twits you can get to play an FPS on your behalf is just insane.

Again, I'm highly doubtful this will fly. Not necessarily because I think it will be Ritalin-deprived twits, but because it will feel like an obligatory thing for the PC MMO players to participate in. Any time you add a sense of "burden" to your player base, that can't be good.

Well they could just use it to interact with the factional warfare component of EVE, which wouldn't screw at all with the more major dynamics of 0.0 space. One can hope at least, right.

Running level 5 missions in low-sec is extremely profitable, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you know what you're doing. Plexes can give you very nice rewards too. Low-sec isn't that dangerous once you come to know it, but I suppose that takes getting blown up a few times. Carebears get blown up because they have no concept of how to PvP or even how to avoid it.

Also, I disagree that low-sec is good for pirates. Gate guns and no bubbles makes it hard to catch anything that knows what it's doing, and the sec status hits and gcc get very annoying.

Easy way to not get blown up if you mission in lowsec:
1. Move away from the deadspace beacon / acceleration gate warpin point
2. Align somewhere
3. Scan for probes at the proper range
4. Watch local

You will see people coming for you and even if you don't you should be able to get away

Zaque wrote:

Well they could just use it to interact with the factional warfare component of EVE, which wouldn't screw at all with the more major dynamics of 0.0 space. One can hope at least, right.

Just sounds like falling between two stools for me. A lot of EVE players won't go near it because it's a completely different genre...I hate FPSs, so it won't appeal much to me, and a lot of console gamers won't be aware or interested in the backstory and mythos and it will be competing for space with a lot of other seemingly-similar titles.

CCP are also making a bit of a rod for their own backs with this as well. Any delay in the review or restructuing of existing problems, such as the crappy contract system, or in implenting promised features (such as ambulation, about which I personally couldn't care less, but which some people seem to think would be good) will be blamed upon this thing draining time and attention away from the core product, whether rightly or wrongly.

Every now and then I come around this thread to see how things are going in the game and I get the itch to go back in.

Maybe after November when the degree is complete (touch wood) I'll have Zula Jamari back in the GWJ channel.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Every now and then I come around this thread to see how things are going in the game and I get the itch to go back in.

Maybe after November when the degree is complete (touch wood) I'll have Zula Jamari back in the GWJ channel.

Labour day weekend is going to be a non-stop Eve fest I fear....

stupid vacation in asia...

This is what keeps me playing Eve:

http://www.ituroncavalry.com/killboa...
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3...

Summary: 14 man gang takes on a 100+ mostly-battleship fleet.

fstarta wrote:

This is what keeps me playing Eve:

http://www.ituroncavalry.com/killboa...
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3...

Summary: 14 man gang takes on a 100+ mostly-battleship fleet.

Well that definately shows that CCP has figured out how to make all shiptypes viable options for combat. Much better than it was back in '03-'04.

I just wish I had the 2 hour chunks of time needed to actually find good pvp.

fstarta wrote:

This is what keeps me playing Eve:

http://www.ituroncavalry.com/killboa...
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3...

Summary: 14 man gang takes on a 100+ mostly-battleship fleet.

O.O

Awesome! Although I'm a wuss for PvP.

I just purchased a Dominix and am fitting it out for my first run at a L4 mission. I'm still a ways away from having all the necessary skills. I can't use large guns, I can't use L2 sentry or heavy drones. I can't use some other L2 equipment. I can't even use rigs.

I do have reasonable tanking skills and plan on loading up on two L2 larger armor reppers and a bunch of L2 cap chargers. As long as I maintain range, it sounds like I should be able to widdle away at everything mostly with sentries and L2 medium drones.

Well that will depend on the mission, but you should be able to take on most of them, although I think you'll make better money doing lvl 3's till you get large guns at least as you might not be able to break the tank of some of the bigger guys with just 5 sentries and a low bs skill rank. Once you get that upto 4 and/or get L2 senties it will make things much easier. Good luck with it anyway.

BTW, which system do you usually run your missions near?

Zaque wrote:

BTW, which system do you usually run your missions near?

It's a trap!