Battle Stance

EVE’s Forsaken Fortress update from May 26 made unfueled structures go abandoned after a week, and more importantly also drop their contents when shot. And you can shoot them in one not very long sitting.

r/EVE and the greater EVE community is divided. Some find it awesome and some say it’s a bad idea because returning players might ragequit instantly when their stuff which they had deemed safe is gone.

I’m torn on this. Yes, of course it sucks if your stuff is gone. I also think CCP should’ve provided a longer warning period and not just a few weeks between the announcement and the patch going live. But I also think that’s no reason to have the other people have all the juicy loot and so I’ve been in a fleet of 40-70 people for the second night in a row the moment I stopped working. I don’t have a tally, but we’ve popped quite a few structures and between some duds we also had some awesome loot. Let’s see how many days this will continue and how much it will yield. You can probably beat the ISK/hour (been at this for ~16h now) but it’s fun. It’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime event to just go from structure to structure, shoot it, loot it, and continue. Big thanks to our scouts and main organizer.

Did some industry stuff today and produced 15 T1 Cruisers on demand, made a bit of ISK with a few clicks. Still couldn’t play for real, so I tried ratting in a Vexor, semi-afk. 20 million ISK in 80 minutes. Not great, not bad, definitely thinking about stepping it up a notch to an Ishtar, Gila, or Dominix – but that means a 300m investment and “just” twice the returns, so would have to rat for 10h to make the ship back, and not lose it in that time. Hmm.

Also the 1 week wardec timer was finally up and I could rejoin the corp and undock a few minutes for Planetary Interaction. Running with 6 chars now and only having to spend a few minutes every few days is good.

Also actually properly played for a short while last night and went on a stratop in the Eagle I bought this week. It’s not much (400m incl refits) but it’s the most expensive ship I’ve ever used in all the time I was active in EVE since summer 2013. It survived, and we didn’t get a fight because the other fleet we were chasing (after grabbing that one ihub) ran away.

Due not being able to properly play at the moment and being bored at home I decided to do a little sightseeing tour. Hopped into an Interceptor, set destination and waypoints and just had to click and not use my left hand. (Spoiler: It’s a bit boring.)

I stuck to blue space but I managed to see a few things and made a few screenshots.

So I actually followed on the plan I hatched last week, which means I now have 2 Omega accounts for the time being

• Account A, Omega
  • Main, 53m SP, going for a few Level V Gunnery Skills
  • Ex-Hauler alt, 5.3mSP, doing PI, using MCT to get into an Interceptor for the next 2 weeks
  • just started a new alt for PI and not much more, 350k of skill injectors I still have should be enough
• Account B, Omega
  • my old NullSec main, 15m SP, going for Interdictors and then Cyno Force Recon
  • my general purpose ex-Alpha 6.5m char, doing PI, going for an Interceptor as well
  • a fresh alt just for PI, 1 o r6 days left on the skill plan
• Account C, Alpha
  • an older Combat Alpha char, still had just enough SP left for our Alpha Corp skill plan, so this has taken over the ship and skillplan from the “ex-Alpha” char.
  • One last alt in HighSec/Jita, in possession of all my HighSec assets
  • training up the Magic 14 on one more, just because it’s free.

Sounds very complicated but it’s actually just about these things:

• dual-boxing ratting
• having a scout alt
• 4 chars are just for PI for now, I need ISK really badly

Also paying attention when reading helps. You only get the 15d of Omega from Recruit-a-friend (or 2nd account) if you buy Omega AT THE EVE WEBSITE, not any “pack”. But it’s fine, I half expected this and I wanted that pack, but it means I am kind of committed to 2 months of dual-accounting now.

So overall, again EVE it decidedly different than other MMOs, but I mean I knew what I signed up for and right now it’s absolutely the most fun per hour I can get. Going on fun fleets, doing some stratop things and trying to get better at Exploration. So far I’m failing too many mini games and taking too long to scan, but my skills aren’t great either. But I like the Buzzard, it’s a very nice ship for this.

People sometimes say you spend more time in spreadsheets than actually playing the game and it might be true.

A few days ago I was a little unsure how to continue with my journey in New Eden and so I actually wrote down some plans and played around with EVEMon to plan out skills.

So my current subscription runs into July and I have Multi-Character training for another month from now on. So my plan is, if nothing changes in a month, to transfer my NullSec alt (14.6m SP) to my Alpha account (which is on a referral from my main) and buy a month of Omega (or three) as soon as the MCT runs out. This will give me 15d of Omega on my main account and I can try multiboxing, or at least scouting in an Interceptor/Recon. I also started another alt on that Alpha account where I have 1 month now to train some basic stuff, mostly PI and Frigs I guess. The third character on the second account is actually in our Alpha Corp right now, with Omega it might make sense to move him to NullSec for PI. Also there will be a spot open on the main account, so maybe it’s time for another PI toon there, I won’t be training anything else I guess.

So much for accounts and the major changes, I think 2 accounts isn’t outrageous, especially as I can let the second one lapse to Alpha any time because it’s not worse than it is now.

Regarding ingame plans: On my main I can already fly a lot of our Doctrine ships, so I’m filling up the blank spaces now, mostly getting some of the T2 weapon prerequisite skills to Level V (Rockets, Energy Pulse Weapons, Medium Energy Turret, etc.) and then some of the “general” skills to V, like Surgical Strike, Trajectory Analysis, Thermodynamics, all 10+ day trains. The next step is still a little unclear. But what I just mentioned will keep me busy for 1-3 months.

If I had too much ingame money I’d try Black Ops, but that’s roughly 68 days, so maybe I’ll go for a month to sit in a Links Drake instead. There’s also the possibility to go to Capitals, but again I don’t really have the money and a quick estimation to sit in a Dread… 130 days, not fun. The ISK topic comes up again, I can actually fly all the T1 Battleships but I’ve never owned one, so maybe I should try to focus on Battlecruiser and smaller, with the exception of a Dominix for ratting, I’d love to try that.

With my alt going to the second account (or even if that plan falls through) I can fly an Interdictor in a week, then I’ll go for Light Missiles V and a few supporting skills (another week) to be able to sit in a Jackdaw and then it’s a few skills to Level V for some prerequisites, that’s another 2 weeks. Then I could either go in the direction of a Heavy Interdiction Cruiser (25d) or a Cyno Falcon (35d) and that’s 2 months with concrete goals planned out. This char is specialized into Frigates and Destroyers, so maybe some Racial Cruiser skills to V wouldn’t hurt then. Definitely no plans right now to be able to fly Battlecruisers and bigger, so that’s also a good scope.