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.
I didn’t write as many posts about EVE as I had imagined, but it’s a lot harder to write about an MMO that I have actively played for only a few months, compared to one that I played actively for over 10 years, hardly surprising.
As I wrote at the start of the month I joined Brave Newbies in NullSec again and so far it was a very good decision. People are nice and helpful, I’m learning a lot and having a ton of fun. They’re not annoyed by my noob questions that don’t sound like a 50m SP player, but I did play the offline skilling game for quite a few months of my ~2 paid years. And the rest of the time I was a poster child casual in highsec…
Anywyay, it’s been a great month and I went on a ton of fleets, often a few days in a row and sometimes with 2 things on the same day. I dove into PI (again) and tried to sell of all my remaining stuff in HighSec.
Now here’s a list of ships I have lost. As I’ve been flying a lot of Logi I don’t think my killmail ratio is painting such a realistic picture, but then again with BRAVE mostly flying cheap ships with a little bigger numbers, what kind of picture *does* it actually paint?
3 Osprey
1 Caracal
1 Crucifier
1 Catalyst
1 Scythe
2 Velator
2 Thrasher
2 Dragoon
1 Atron
1 Epithal
4 Pods
Also while it could’ve been more posts, there at least were some:
Yesterday I finally managed to have a stratop fleet available in my timezone, while not at work, and with a doctrine where I could join!
Slowboating
Of course I had no idea what was going on, but we jumped through a lot of gates and ansiblexes, finally arriving where a handful of Titans were waiting for jump bridges. One purple and 2 blue ones, plus a few extras.
That’s a lot of drones…
The battle lasted quite a while and apart from the massive TiDi (yay 1600 people on grid) it was actually fun to logi in an Osprey. I somehow managed to be the last man standing (from the 2 cap chains) after we lost all Basilisks and then all other Ospreys, not sure if we had Scythes and/or Scimitars left.
And I nearly made it out alive!
As I heard later it was about a TEST Astrahus. We didn’t manage to defend it but I was told we won the ISK war. Even got a battle report this time. 12ob is quite number. Also I managed to take some screenshots this time, I’m absolutely happy with this day.
No new posts for 3 days? Something must have happened. Yeah, something happened.
As I had written I originally went to NullSec in a new char because I was still occupied with Mining and playing with friends in HighSec at the time, and I had a few bigger ships and didn’t really want to move away or sell my stuff. So I made a new char and tried to avoid some of my beginner mistakes of speccing all over, but just focus on combat. So a few days ago I actually sat down and compared the skills I had acquired on these 2 characters and how different they were. And apparently they weren’t very different at all. The ~15m SP char had only like 2m of skills that the 47m SP char didn’t have, basically 2x Racial Frigate 5 instead of 4 and like 3 other skills with 1 level more – for the rest the other char had a complete superset and could do the same things, just better in most ways. So maybe I should actually move him to NullSec and change mains? But wouldn’t my remaining 2.5 months of dual training be wasted then? Well first of all I kinda got them for free by subscribing for 3 months at the correct time and second, I remembered that Skill Extractors existed.
The game can be pretty if there aren’t any spreadsheets visible
Maybe it’s clear now where this is going. Skill Injectors have diminishing returns, you always extract 500k SP from one char, but you only get 500k if you inject below 5m SP, or 400k below 50m SP – and as I wrote, I was sitting at 47.5m SP, basically the last chance to use them with a non-newbie character without wasting too much money (you only get 300k below 80m and after that only 150k). So I hatched a plan to actually spend those 45 EUR to buy 10 skill injectors and boost my main. I could reasonably justify that to myself by having saved up a full month of restaurant/takeaway lunch money by working from home. Gladly I asked around and got told that a key point is that while you can extract SP from an Alpha char (if it has more then 5.5m SP), it only works if you spent those SP in Omega-only skills. For some reason the Alpha chars on my second account have over 6m SP (I guess mostly from shooting rats in events) but it had never been paid to be Omega, so those were out. Fortunately my hauler alt also had more than 6m and actually had a few useless SP. So in the end I bought 7 skill injectors for 36 EUR combined, used 2 on my Hauler alt und 5 on my original NullSec char. This got me 2.8m SP for my main and he’s now at 50.2m and I got him into the Alliance today and managed to fly safely to our staging system, with all expensive training implants intact. And I have a taxi Interceptor now, which wasn’t needed because I didn’t see a single non-blue on the way.
Now I just to get everything I didn’t contract to my Hauler for storage/selling shipped to our station, which will probably take a few days and cost me ~20m, but I think it’s worth it. But I guess I’m now fully a NullSec dweller in a fighting Alliance. And I can fly stuff bigger than a Destroyer. Fitting them is still kinda costly for my wallet, so I guess I’ll stick to Cruisers for now, but the official doctrine ships I can fly has now doubled I guess, just not sure yet how many I want to lose.
Wilhelm has often posted milestones and now from 50 on I’ll try to do that as well, because I find these kind of lists really interesting, and I would’ve reached this milestone in roughly a month or two anyway.
Today I saw a pre-ping for 19:00 EVE time that sounded interesting. A FUN fleet (which means nothing else than “not for complete beginners” and not “totally important strategical op”, so the majority of fleets. So I came on and was pleasantly surprised they were handing out ships (I got a Dragoon for ~8m ISK, I guess the Talwars were a little more each) and we were already around 50 people and were about to undock when shit got real really quick and everyone was told to get to the Coalition comms and in an important fleet. We all? kinda did and then some other newbros and I noticed we had no idea what to *exactly* do. And of course the other Mumble server hadn’t remembered my password, so I had to fiddle with the Password manager on one screen, with the route planner tool on the other and I’m kinda surprised I arrived in time…
At least I wasn’t the one being told to shut up in comms, but as I sat there at the staging undock, probably in a wrong ship (it’s cool that they announce “X fleet” but if you’ve never been on one of those because you can’t fly it you probably don’t know which Logi and Tackle are ok to bring) I missed the Titan jump bridge (actually no idea how you’d activate it, or if you need to be near the Titan and I didn’t even see the any Titan in the overview… as I said it was very hectic). So I just stayed on comms and listened and flew back to our staging in hopes that our original fleet would be reformed.
It seemed I was lucky because just 30mins later it indeed reformed and we undocked and went hunting for… something. Oh, of course I got lost before something big happened (I blame some people talking over the FC and I jumped a gate I shouldn’t have) and was killed, so I bought a second Dragoon, minus 2-3 fits that weren’t available and try to catch up to the fleet. That took a while, I avoided a few neutrals and actually managed to find them again. Not sure if there was a real plan but after a lot of jumping (definitely more than usual) we actually got into a fight and maybe we even won the ISK battle. I got on 5 kill mails as a Neut, and only spent like 7m of my own money, yay.
But there’s definitely some things I need to relearn:
Listen closely and get to know the damn NullSec system names in Catch
Not overlook broadcast for reps, and actually get into Logi again
Sort overview “better” so I can lock/align/jump quicker
Anyway, it’s 1 am and I was busy for roundabout 3h and had a lot of fun. As I write this some stratop ping goes out, I think I’d be kept more busy in USTZ or AUTZ, but such is life.
Phew, getting back into EVE isn’t as easy as getting back into a fantasy MMO where you run around and mash buttons, but it’s fun.
Last night we did another small fleet with a few Arty Thrashers and actually managed to get 2 good kills in before most of us died. (80m + 70m versus our combined ~20m). Yeah, I know, this is kinda ridiculous but it’s nice for total beginners and people who feel like total beginners. Today I wanted to get rid of some Ore I had mined back in 2018 (I guess?) and as my main reprocessing contact doesn’t play right now and my HighSec alt only gets a ~68% yield out of 87% I was advised to not reprocess myself. I had totally forgotten how tedious hauling is though and so I first noticed that I didn’t even have a Miasmos handy (with the Ore hold) and that it would take like 30 trips to Jita, which is kinda ridiculous. So today I learnt about compressing ore, no idea how long it has been ingame, but I had never heard of it because I had always gotten my ore reprocessed directly in the system I reside in. So the only problem was that there was only 1 POS in the next system where I could do it, but 30x 1 system is a lot better than 30x a few into Jita. Fortunately I had to do some work-related reading to do today so I could (maybe for the first time in my life) do a few clicks in a game while reading on the second monitor, with a clear conscience. Awesome. Also I spent my lunch break doing just this. Oh, and did I mention that I found several tutorials that told you how compressing should work, but not how to do it?
Intermission: How to compress ore in EVE Online
Go to Utilities -> Structure Finder, uncheck Stations, see which POS are close, fly there, unload your Ore into the Item Hangar and then RIGHT CLICK the Ore and choose “Compress” and don’t try to use the “Reprocessing Plant” icon on the right side menu. Not all POS that have the “recycling” Reprocessing Icon in the Structure Finder allow you to compress, so if there’s no menu point when right clicking, load your ore and find another POS.
OK, back to the story:
Then I only had to take 3 trips to Jita. My old rule of thumb was only packing ~75m worth of goods in a badly tanked Industrial but I was told a better formula was 3k or 5k ISK per EHP, so with a 10k EHP ship that would be 50m worth of stuff. As I didn’t have the fits handy and didn’t waste any more time I just packed 70m worth of stuff, flew to Jita (it worked), and then bought some better stuff for my Nereus (compressing is awesome, didn’t need to use neither the Miasmos nor the Extended Cargoholds), so that it had 20k EHP. In the end I actually made ~250m but that’s about it now, no more old stuff and resources just idly sitting in a station that I can sell. Now I have roughly 1b to spend on NullSec fun and then I’m completely out of money as I don’t have any income except one (probably badly setup) PI thing. Might get a second one
