EVE Online

EVE is a little weird right now, this is the first time I’m on a “deployment” (even if our staging is only 10 jumps from home, often camped though) and so I have my main mostly sitting in station and waiting for important stratop pings, but that’s what alts are for, right?

He’s on 31 killmails this month from those fleets and last night I actually managed to go on a fun fleet with one of my favorite FCs and we also got a few kills, but I’ve been surprisingly active on the alt that had originally joined Brave Newbies in 2014 and that has lived in NullSec ever since (with like a one week break). I’m active in our standing fleet and got quite a few nice fights of our kitchen sink fleet of a few people versus roaming small gangs. Still waiting for my first solo kill, because despite trying badly to roam for an hour here or there I never find any engagable content (Unless I’m in a ship that’s not actually looking for a fight, then it kinda works and I die…). Either it’s a blob or no one (neutral or red) to be found. Maybe the Blue Donut really is too big right now?

Anyway, the skill plans are coming along nicely, my main is brushing up on Large weapons and then it’s time for JDC to finally unlock Black Ops Battleships, still undecided if I want to spend 2-3m SP on Links/Bursts. My alt is at 20m SP already and on the way to be able to fly everything smaller and including Cruisers to a passable degree. Another alt is going Amarr Frigates/Destroyers/Cruisers and coming along quite well. That leaves one alt still training in the direction of a Dreadnought but I might veer off into Blockade Runner for a bit. And that’s 4 of them, another 2 are extracted for money on a regular basis as long as I have dual train running and the remaining 3 are simply used for PI and have no further skills worth mentioning.

Finally, last night our sister corp Brave Nubs had the Corp HQ on a hull timer and despite it being a 1 am formup for most of EUTZ we went and defended it against a LAWN Ferox fleet with a very nice ISK ratio. Well worth staying up till 2 am. The structure is safe, for now.

r/eve on Reddit is pretty entertaining although there’s a bit too much propaganda and shitposting going on. I find it very funny that The Mittani in his latest propaganda piece told the world that they were coming for BRAVE next because apparently a bunch of noobs is more dangerous than they had imagined. Of course you never know what he really thinks but it’s very different to the first announcement where we didn’t matter. Oh well.

As I wrote I’m not a big fan of the war, I much prefer laid back fun small 20-50 man fleets than 200 people with busy comms.

But yesterday the stars aligned and I was available that minute and in the mood, so I bought a Hawk (new doctrine, as if I already didn’t have enough doctrine ships), eager to see how it handled.

We undocked, took an Ansiblex, took 2 gates… and waited on a Fortizar. Then we got called back to staging and reshipped into Muninns. Had to insure mine as I think I hadn’t flown it before. So we undocked again, took the same Ansibles, took the same two gates, took some more, took a Titan bridge… and landed in Querious. On a POS. For several people (including me) this was the first POS we’ve seen deployed (or I forgot if I saw one between 2014 and 2017). There we sat, waiting. We apparently were some sort of backup. We only saw a single red Karmafleet pilot in system, and it was Anna niedostepny, of all people.
While I was in Brave Newbies in April 2015 I wasn’t actively playing and missed this thing, but I remember some names. Also no idea if the linked post is in any form correct in the details, but whatever.

Well, back to my part of the story. No one else showed up, but I heard that the Imperium dropped caps on some fleet. We bridged home and I didn’t like the outcome. Doesn’t really motivate me to join another fleet this week. Just bad luck and I guess that’s what you get for being part of a NullSec bloc and I know not every stratop can be meaningful, or fun, or see action. But right now I’m not having a lot of fun, and I’m pretty the side wouldn’t matter.

There are some things I really like about EVE, for example how some little things can become an adventure on its own.
If you’re playing WoW and want to get a good deal you go to the Auction House and then you look for things and buy low and resell higher. Of course you can do that in your local market as well (although we have a rule against buying and relisting which I wholeheartedly support), but there are also contracts.

Contracts can be for single or multiple items and when you accept them the items are just there where they where. And then you need either pay someone to haul them to you or fly there and grab them for yourself. Also sometimes there are some real bargains to be had, often so-called firesales by people leaving the game or that station, or leaving their corp/alliance and not wanting to haul all the stuff. Browsing through the contracts is like visiting a flea market, or maybe eBay these days. 50% people selling stuff at normal value, 45% bad deals or uninteresting stuff and 5% where you get a really good deal.

Today I saw one of our Doctrine ships on a contract for like 2/3 of the price, the problem was that it was located in Stain (NPC NullSec), not in Catch, and we have some people that we aren’t on stellar terms with who live exactly there. But I saw that as content and not as a nuisance and so I set out with my alt in an Interceptor, burning through gates and making bookmarks and safes. Then I followed with my main, boarded my new ship and scouted the way home. Arrived safely, saved 100m, got a blog post out of it.

EVE seems to have an even bigger influence on min/maxing on me than other games have (regarding real life things like payment). I mean, I have absolutely let an MMO subscription lapse a week before a 2 week vacation to resume it after that in order to not pay those 2 weeks if the dates align correctly, but…

Long story short, CCP has a sale, 49 EUR for 3 months Omega + 3 months of Multi Character Training (so exactly 10 EUR for that MCT), and I absolutely went for that. We have a war incoming and I took the chance to start training a cap alt. And on the other account… there are always a million things to train, even on alts or “just PI”. Anyway, the more skill queues the better, right? I had planned to pay the 2 accounts until the end of the year anyway, so it’s just a few EUR, and if I think I made a mistake there’s always the possibility to extract a few skills and PLEX an account to save on a month of sub later. We all know that this will not happen…

Also I’ve did some respeccing and redoing PI, trying to make money without having to resort to ratting. Actually I haven’t “played” daily for a few days now, but after exactly 3 months of giving 100% a week of lower activity won’t hurt. Still need to login daily and shuttle around some PI mats every 2-3 days, I’m busy enough.

The only toon without a real solid plan for the next months is still my main. I can already fly a lot of our Doctrine ships, so for now I’m simply patching holes where I can’t. Need to find something more meaningful though…

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.