150

I hit 150M Skill Points on my main at 2am local time tomorrow morning. That seems a milestone worth acknowledging, although I won’t bother staying up to see it tick over…

For those interested in comparisons:

I have 382 skills, split across the following ranks:

Skills at Level 0 – 0
Skills at Level 1 – 0
Skills at Level 2 – 0
Skills at Level 3 – 21
Skills at Level 4 – 218
Skills at Level 5 – 143

And divided up across the following categories (just shy of 150M SP below)

Armor – 5,894,353
Corporation Management – 1,220,549
Drones – 9,355,768
Electronic Systems – 4,858,058
Engineering – 6,446,589
Gunnery – 12,648,946
Leadership – 1,627,845
Missiles – 7,412,943
Navigation – 7,577,333
Neural Enhancement – 1,782,825
Planet Management – 769,335
Production – 2,738,705
Resource Processing – 6,450,594
Rigging – 1,312,395
Scanning – 7,168,000
Science – 9,365,113
Shields – 6,446,588
Social – 1,115,845
Spaceship Command – 49,224,552
Subsystems – 1,537,335
Targeting – 3,207,765
Trade – 1,824,395

Jack of all trades, master of few.

I haven’t remarked much on his training for a while. It has not been exciting – I spent almost two months getting all his Science skill ranks up to IV or V (aside the non-functional Astronautic Engineering). I am now working through getting more SP into the Production skills. This was done in response to the Crius update, to give me maximum flexibility in trying out most of its options.

Foibles

Generally I don’t use the EVE launcher – instead I run the client executable directly.

The exception is when there was a patch. Since the launcher was introduced I found the direct client patching to be a bit unreliable, so when it advised me there was a patch to download I would cancel the session and run the launcher instead.

I noticed in the Crius patch notes this little comment:

“In-client patching system phased out. Game client no longer tries to use the legacy patch system and popups, players are rather directed to use the launcher to update their client.”

And this is what my client reports any time there is a patch to be applied:

Must be Icelandic for “Run the Launcher”.

I also noticed this in the patch notes:

“The guests station list count will now update when guests dock and undock.”

I’ve found since Crius that the Station Guest list is not accurate / doesn’t seem to update. I presume the Guest number though works.

What’s EVE without its quirks and foibles.

On a more positive note, CCP Seagull mentioned a couple times in her recent flurry of media interviews and the Reddit Ask Me Anything session that shareable overviews are in development and coming soon.

I did a little mental jump for joy.

 

Sting like a non-goon bee

Unfortunately my usual Saturday and Sunday morning EVE Gaming sessions were lost this weekend. The first due to a half day trip to catch up with my parents, the second due to a 30 minute work task taking most of the day.

I have however been logging in nightly to continue my BPO research, running up to 28 jobs across three of my characters. I’m working through my 779 BPO, getting them to ME 10 / TE 10 where practical. (I found a lot of cheaper BPO were at ME 9 and TE 9 after the change-over.)

There are another 553 donated BPO which I will turn my attention to later.

I will say again, the new Industry interface is much improved, and it is quicker and easier to submit research jobs. New players should be able to research their cheap BPO cost effectively, even with 10% Tax and a heavy job index in their system.

However, the performance is clunky and seems to be unnecessarily slow. I thought it might have just related to my BPO Library, but it is still apparent when interacting with my POS when it had less than 40 BPO in it. It can take too long to display a BPO in the top half of the industry screen when you click on it, it can take too long when you click between ME and TE research options, it takes too long to refresh the BPO list when you deliver jobs, move BPO in or out of displayed containers, or submit new jobs.

Again – the whole thing is improved, better, and I don’t want to go back. It just doesn’t seem to be working optimally.

I also spent some time arming my medium POS. It is now a scary and formidable foe with 16 small batteries, 8 sensor dampeners, and a couple each of Warp disrupters and Scramblers. I might put up more once I finish experimenting with the Reprocessing Array and remove it. Ok – when I said formidable I was only joking, it won’t stop any group of consequence, but it amuses me.

I did practice controlling them and shooting an Alt. They do a surprising amount of damage.

I did have one strange occurrence to remark on. While launching batteries from the cargo hold, one seemed to bounce off the POS and slowly move away. It would then rubber-band back before moving away again. I tried to anchor it, and while it followed the little green box, it gave some odd message about being out of sync. I had to scoop it up and jettison it again before it would work.

Researching Research

Time is POS fuel, so I made the effort this evening to start looking at the new Industry interface.

I began with something I’ve had plenty of experience with – researching BPO.

I opened up the Industry window and clicked on the Material Efficiency icon. I then selected the Blueprint tab and displayed those owned by the Corp, in the current station, and restricted to Originals. I then sorted on the Material Efficiency to see what lost out in the Crius conversion and would need some research to get up to the perfect ME 10.

So far so good – the process was logical and there were interesting tool tips everywhere. I was mindful however that I understood this concept already, having previously researched 1,000 odd BPO. I could see it might be useful to have a help button or a link to a tutorial to explain the overall process to a new player, and why they would want to do it.

The other thing was those BPO without ME research had that field greyed out. I had initially thought this reflected that they gained no benefit from having a ME rank (which was why I had not researched them originally). In clicking and playing around you can actually research these. The field will turn blue I expect once they reach ME 1. I’ll have to see if these BPO are different now and need to be researched.

I arbitrarily selected 10 BPO to move to the cargo hold of my ship. I looked for a way to right click / move them through the interface, but it looked like I would have to separately grab them from the Inventory window. Later with some experimenting I found I just had to drag and drop their icons.

Each BPO I moved however would kick off a refresh of the Blueprint lists, which took a while as I had 1,000 or more in the current station. On one hand I’m impressed it is as quick as it is with the number of BP’s I have, on the other I wonder why it has to do a full refresh of the list after each individual move.

The other area where performance was an issue was between selecting BPO or activity type, and having that update reflected in the interface. There were some long delays, or you’d suddenly get 2 or 3 quick updates reflecting a couple button presses you made while wondering if it was going to respond or not.

I undocked and flew to my POS, dropping the 10 BPO into the Research Lab.

I opened up the industry tab again, selected blueprints, the research lab, selected a BPO, and put in whatever job runs were required to get the BPO to ME 10. For this batch it was mostly 5 each. The timings seemed about what I would have expected, and the cost was minimal.

9 ME research jobs kicked off (the most my main can do), and I am pretty happy overall with this single aspect of the game.  I expect I will make an effort while the POS is still running to get as many of my BPO as possible to ME 10 / TE 10.

I will say however – be extremely careful about the job cost. I experimented with cheap BPO and the cost was minimal. Later I was looking at Time Efficiency research costs and on some fairly innocuous BPO the price was staggering. To get my Amarr Control Tower Small BPO from TE 8 to TE 10 it would cost 2.28B ISK. Yes – Billion. That would be an expensive miss-click.

 

* EDIT – after the patches on 23.07 and 24.07.2014, the job cost field is now blank unless you move the BPO into a facility with the appropriate activity available, and fixes were made to the research cost calculations.  (Confirmed in patch notes.) To get my small Amarr Control Tower TE from 8 to 10 is now showing 2.03M ISK (and 128 days).  Much, much cheaper!  Getting ME from 0 to 10 is 155 days and 16.7M.  Again, more reasonable.  I don’t want to fly the capital related BPO about to check their prices, but I suspect they should all be more reasonable.

Moon rush, or not

I got the heads up on when the Crius update file was available on Twitter, so I was patched and ready to log in when the servers returned.

I can’t say I was feeling any particular excitement about Crius, but I wanted to grab a moon in a 0.9 system which happened to be rather close to a Trade Hub. I figured I might have some competition. With that in mind I had already scouted out a couple moons and placing book marks around them. My main alt was logged off nearby in a Blockade Runner with a small POS. I figured that ship would allow me to move around quickly, and scout out other moons cloaked if required. My main was also nearby in a Deep Space Transport holding fuel for the POS.

I logged in during the early minutes of Crius and had the system to myself. I warped down to the moon and tried to anchor the POS. It wouldn’t allow me because my alt did not have Charters in the hold. That will teach me for separating the POS and fuel into different hulls. A quick scramble and that was rectified, and the POS started to online.

I still had the system to myself.

I then sat down to throw a few modules on the POS, and realised within minutes that I couldn’t do what I wanted with it. I hadn’t really done my preparations for this.

Some research, checking of prices, a purchase off the market, and a run to and from the Trade Hub had a shiny new (or I guess it could have been well worn) Medium POS.

I checked my backup moon and it was still available. Actually – I still had the system to myself.

I got the second POS anchored and online, and dropped the modules I needed for my playing – a compression array, a reprocessing array, a design laboratory and a research laboratory. I updated my overview (the Compression Array is a new object, and so not selected by default), looked at the new Industry interface, took a couple screen shots, and then I was done for the night.

I still had the system to myself.

(Two more POS were anchored overnight – so people made use of the changes, but not quite as many as I had expected. I’ll decide later on if I end up with a Small or Medium POS. I’ve left both online for at least a month.)

Snippets from undocking

Putting my PI on ice has had one side benefit – I’ve been able to move one of my Alts to Jita again for Price checking. I know there are web sites that provide reasonable approximations of current prices, but they are not as good as having a Toon there.

I tested my Rattlesnake fit with the Gecko, as was suggested by some readers. It is indeed better than the heavy drones, but I still found it nowhere near as effective as using the sentries. They hit quicker, don’t have delays in reaching targets or returning, and, assuming you are orbiting, are much easier to scoop up and redeploy when they start taking damage. Now that’s settled in my mind, hopefully I won’t need to run missions again for a while.

This weekend I scanned down my low and high sec pockets but found no useful wormholes back to main Empire space. Both areas were pretty busy so I stayed around my home system.

I went through my various containers and refined anything I didn’t need and wouldn’t be worth selling – to get in before the refining nerf hits with Crius.

I purchased a refining array for the POS for experiments after Crius.

I also purchased a medium intensive refining array, which should turn into a compression array after the update, again for experiments.

I purchased and fitted out a couple of Prospects to try out.  I did some mining.  I put them away.

I refit my main roaming Orca with reinforced bulkheads, splashing out on the T2 versions.

I moved a bit of POS fuel around.

I looked at fits for the Machariel, Nestor, Bhaalgorn, Orthrus and Garmur. I felt the need for another hanger ornament, but nothing jumped out as a must have.

Distraction and downtime achieved.

Be what we want

Something this blog has taught me is that I should not make assumptions about what people enjoy doing in EVE.

I can remark on some pretty mundane things, the process of neatening and organising assets, hauling, undocking to earn unremarkable ISK, and people pipe up in comments to confess that they too like that aspect of EVE.

People find their EVE joy in so many different nooks and crannies that I couldn’t begin to guess at half of them.

I really like that. To me it is one of the attributes that holds EVE up as a sandbox game. It is important.

The discussion about the new player experience is popular again. I tend to find it a touch disheartening. Despite the best of intentions, the ideas often seem to end up trying to direct players into specific play styles.

Force people into Player Corps – they will be happier and stay longer.

Force players to lose lots of ships during the tutorials so that they become less risk adverse.

Force players into Low Sec, or Null Sec, or Wormhole space, and the game will suddenly be much better for them.

Of course they don’t use the word “force”, but they might as well do. I can’t argue that some of the suggestions might well come with a measure of success, but they also weaken the sandpit and marginalise the people who might want something different out of the game.

I’d prefer that the new player experience start with a common basic tutorial of standard game mechanics, and then ask the pilot what they would like to try or learn about?

Gathering resources
Building
Trading
Hauling
Exploring
PVE
PVP

.. and so on. Describe the categories based on the sort of favourite Sci-Fi characters people might start off thinking they could emulate in EVE. A deep space trader, a smuggler, a Pirate, a Naval officer.

Each category would then be divided up into logical sub sections, such as ore or gas mining, blueprints, manufacturing, invention, pirating, faction war fare, war declarations, kiting ships, brawling ships, sniping and so on. Cover the skills, ship options and basic fits, and walk them through actually doing it in game.  Flesh these out so that in the end there are 60+ individual tutorials that you can run covering most accessible mechanics in the game.

I started EVE 7 years and 10 months ago.  If some of the suggestions I have read were in place back then, I’d have quit after a day or two because I’d have assumed the game was obviously not for me.  It is a confronting thought.

Have the best damn possible PVP tutorial possible – but don’t push the player through it if they don’t want to.  As I started out saying above – don’t assume you know what the new player is here for.  Open their eyes to the possibilities, but then let them explore it for themselves.

Unfortunately I don’t think that is what we will end up with.

Winning at EVE

Consider the idea of EVE suddenly being switched off and never being accessible again. Your ISK balance, your skill points, the ships in your hanger, how much space you owned – all gone forever.

What tangible value then did you get from all those hours you spent on the game? How do you define if you came out winning EVE or not?

You can’t use in game measurements – they no longer exist. I think at its most basic level, and common to almost every player, EVE is a game that is meant to entertain. You can define the value of the hours spent in game, and your success at it, on if it provided you amusement and enjoyment.

I had that thought some time ago, and ever since I have defined people who were being entertained by their time in EVE as winning it. It doesn’t matter where they lived in game, what they were doing, how well or not they were doing it, or even if no one else would find it entertaining. It wasn’t tied to ISK, or skill points, or ships owned, lost, or killed. It is instead shown in enthusiasm, curiosity, pleasure, satisfaction, and even contentment.

Maybe if you want to win at EVE, you should worry less about what others are doing or saying, and focus more on what pleases you.

No, that’s not right

After some interesting feedback and further reading, it is apparent my naïve view on Sov Null Sec renting was wrong.

Corporations will of course want to rent from the largest and most powerful landlords – those that can defend their holdings, provide region wide Intel channels and reasonable access to Hi-Sec. Renters don’t want lots of tiny fiefdoms to choose between.

Despite them being an income source, Renters will still be looked at with derision by those who feel they are weak and don’t deserve to be there. I’ve lived in Null Sec, I know the divide between PVPer and Carebear, and I should have thought that through more. There could be synergy, there should be synergy, but there isn’t and probably will never be.

So I need to refine my thoughts.

First – I like that there is an option to rent Sov Null Sec. That was reinforced by the pragmatic view of some renters, who make their decision to hire out parts of null sec based on logic, economics, and the fun factor. They are there because they want to be. I don’t want to see that option removed. Frankly, I want that option to remain open for myself.

Second – I don’t think the current status quo is a good thing – where the only viable option for most is to rent, and the options of who you rent from are limited. I know it is (again) naïve, but it would be nice if a group was still able to gather resources and strike out to own a small piece of space land for themselves.

Under, off, over the Radar

My wife has started her new job. She leaves the house before the kids get up, and gets home after they have had tea. I find myself the full time stay at home parent, who also happens to have a busy paying job. I’m not sure EVE will get much of a look in during the week.

I scheduled for a long session in game on Saturday, and actually managed to achieve it. I started by logging in my Low Sec Scout, but the system I am basing out of was once again awash with Pirates. It has been the same since Kronos – far more pirate gate camps, far more pirates out hunting. It is just not feasible to do any carebearing, so I move my focus elsewhere.

Next I log in my Island Scout and go looking for access to Hi-Sec. There are only 4 wormholes in the constellation, but luckily one is to Hi-Sec. It is some 20+ odd jumps from where I base my supplies, but I make use of it anyway. I ferry in one of my Gila, a Gas guzzling Venture, and a PVE Stabber Fleet Issue I wanted to test out. While there I picked up a contract purchase and brought back a Pilgrim I wasn’t using.

I had one stumbling block – I couldn’t work out how to get a bookmark from my out of Corp Alt to my main that didn’t involve a Contract. I ended up moving the Alt into my main Corp and putting it in a Corporation bookmark folder.

The moving of ships took quite some time, so while manually flying 100+ combined jumps I looked at my PI Alts. I remarked the other day about two pilots at war, one in a station, the other outside trying to goad them into undocking. It turned out the war was against the Corporation I have blue standings with in my old home system. I had originally witnessed an Ally to the defending Corp goading one of the aggressors. Later, I witnessed an Ally to the aggressors trying to goad the defenders to undock. The irony was not lost on me.

We had both remarked that we could call on each other for help if our POCO were in danger – but they didn’t send me a message. That was probably lucky for me as I am not really in a position to log in.

Coinciding with them losing their POCO someone offered to buy my four. I expect, unless unusually fortuitous, it is probably from the person behind the takeover of my blue’s POCO. Given I don’t use them, can’t defend them, and they generate very little income; it’s prompted me to sell them. I’ve spoken to the blue and offered it to them first. They will look at it after their war is finished. If the wars move to me I’ll lose them for no ISK, but that’s a minor price for doing the right thing by another player. (I am really not suited to this game!)

I emptied my planets and cleared the installations so, if I ever felt inclined I could set up new planets closer to my new home. I think I have remarked before, my dabbling in POCO would last simply as long as it took for someone else to notice I had them and take them off me. Once I sell (or lose) them, any further PI I do is at the mercy of finding planets with reasonable tax rates. It’s the price of solo play. I finished off my session with yet more hauling, moving my PI supplies to my new home and closing the old corporate hanger.

Paying the rent

The topic of fixing Sov Null Sec seems to have had another flurry of activity lately. I haven’t paid it much attention because it is not an area of the game I am likely to have much involvement in.

In amongst the complex and often heated debates, there was one specific topic that piqued my interest.

I expect most of people reading this blog would be aware of the one man funded crusade against the Goons and their status quo that Gevlon is on. For all the bluster, derision and denials sent his way, I don’t doubt that he is inconveniencing a lot of players.

A part of his campaign has been to focus on the Goon’s renters. I read a related post on Blastrad Tales which suggested renters would still likely be happy with their choice to rent from the Goons. There was another post from Wilhelm Arcturus which also pointed out that rental agreements had seen a lot of corporations move to Null who might not have otherwise been able to.

So against my better judgment, this trio of bloggers got me thinking a bit about Sov Null, or more specifically the singular question – is the availability of renting a good or bad thing?

 

[Insert dramatic pause]

 

Frankly, I had never really considered it before. I know it can be maligned, but is that directed at the idea itself, or at those few coalitions that monopolise the service?

The basic premise of renting seems like it adds something positive to the game. It gives the ability of people to access Sov Null where they might otherwise not have been able to claim or hold it for themselves. It increases the population of those regions. In gives income to those who want to focus more on strategic combat and related assets, and a reason for them to claim and defend space. I guess it actually provides a workable synergy between PVP and Carebear pilot.

It is probably positive enough that it would pay for CCP to make it a little easier with in-game tools to manage bills and taxation.

So what is the problem? I think it comes back to what I said above. The majority of rental systems are controlled by just 3 massive coalitions. If you want to dabble in Sov Null Sec, you either have to be a member of these slumlords, or rent from them. Outside of maybe Providence, the option to claim a system for your self is just highly unlikely.

It is not a situation you would want in your real life.

So if my thinking is right, renting would be accepted in game if there were many more groups you could look to rent from. It’s an interesting thought.

 

Notes:

. I have occasionally researched the cost of renting a system for a few months, to try out various mechanics of the game I haven’t been able to do yet. The reason I haven’t comes back to feeling like I’d have to work too hard to justify the expense.  It is however a viable option for solo or small groups.

. I feel respect should be given to those who managed to create and run these coalitions. I don’t like the idea of just arbitrarily changing the rules to dismantle all their efforts.

. While I can’t envision a new superpower rising up out of Hi-Sec to crush these groups, I do expect over time that they will self-implode or fail. Without some rule changes however they would just be replaced by something similar.

. I specifically used the term Sov Null Sec. I consider NPC Null Sec a different kettle of fish.

Rattlesnake

I find myself running yet more L4 missions. No – I haven’t suddenly decided mission running is fun after years of disinterest – I am just testing the adjustments I have made to my Rattlesnake fit.

While I own a Rattlesnake, I don’t actually use it. It was a hull I lusted over in my earlier playing days that felt unreachable, so it pleases me to have it sitting around as an ornament. It is fitted however, so after it had a rebalancing going over by CCP Fozzie, I had to review it.

Like the Gila I looked at the other day, the Rattlesnake has an unusual drone role bonus, a 275% increase to Sentry and Heavy drone damage and hit points, and the bandwidth to use two of them. Unlike the Gila however, this didn’t feel particularly super.

I think it comes down to the heavy drones being too slow – particularly when you have to recall them over and over again due to rat agro. I settled on the tactic of deploying 2 Sentry drones and orbiting them at 500 meters. I cleared everything from a distance, and then swapped to a flight of lights to clear anything small that had got in close. The Sentries made particular short work of Cruisers and Battlecruisers – taking some variations out in one shot.

Again the fit is over tanked, so there is room to find more DPS. It worked – it felt safe enough to fly, and was relatively quick at clearing rats. It was just no Gila.

 

 

 

 

 

[Rattlesnake, PVE]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Pithum A-Type Thermic Dissipation Amplifier
Gistum B-Type EM Ward Amplifier
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Domination 100MN Afterburner

Cruise Missile Launcher II, Inferno Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Inferno Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Inferno Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Inferno Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Inferno Cruise Missile
Drone Link Augmentor II

Large Core Defense Field Purger II
Large Core Defense Field Purger II
Large Core Defense Field Purger II

Curator II x2
Ogre II x2
Hobgoblin II x5
Hobgoblin II x5

(I cannot overstate how important it is to test your fits in space. EFT shows numbers – but those notoriously don’t always relate to effectiveness or fun.)

 

* EDIT – I have since tried this fit with a Gecko.  While the Gecko is better to use than two heavies, I still felt the Sentries worked better.  You lose too much time waiting for the heavy drones to reach and return from the NPCs, so overall DPS worked out to be better with sentries.  Plus they are much quicker to swap in and out when you orbit them at 500m.

The Alliance of one

Sugar Kyle asked the interesting question on her blog – why are so many things tied to alliances?

http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/rambling-why-alliances.html

I still have my Alliance that I duly pay the fee for each month. I find value in it even from a Solo play point of view, but the justification can be a little hazy.

 

So I spent a little time thinking about what an Alliance means for the solo and small group players – and what it could mean. Keeping in mind my input is very lightweight…

. First and foremost, it amuses me to have an Alliance. While the functionality is not designed for my sort of play, it is nice that I am not excluded from the mechanic.

. By far the most useful gain from having an Alliance is being able to keep contacts up-to-date across my Corporations in the one place. This is particularly nice when you spend time living out of Hi-Sec and use Scouts in different corporations.

. It costs effort and ISK to create an Alliance. It was a long skill train, 1B ISK to create, and 2M per corporation per month to maintain. These are not however out of the scope of my play style. I would be disappointed if the cost was increased to exclude the likes of me.

. You get an Alliance Chat Channel and the ability to send Alliance EVEMails and bulletins. From a solo point of view these have no value. If you share your Alliance with a small group of friends and family who run their own corporations, you might use this – but it could easily enough be replaced in game with a shared chat channel and a mailing list.

. There are different rules around War-Decs – which from memory make it a little more costly for a war declaration to be made against you, and a little more fiddly for you to declare war against someone else.

. You get an Alliance War History

. A bounty can be placed on your Alliance

. There are some Alliance related settings on POS, although functionally they are very limited and not worth discussing until the impact of Crius are fully explained.

. You can arguably get involved in Sovereignty related activities, but for all intents and purposes you are excluded from anything meaningful.

 

So where or how might it improve?

. I can see it would be useful to have an Alliance Wallet and ability to set taxes, bills or pay dividends to member corporations. It would just make it a little easier to manually or automate pushing ISK between my Corporations.

. I would absolutely love shared Alliance bookmarks. It would make my scouting and wormhole travels much easier. I expect most Alliances could see value in that.

. I would love the idea of an Alliance Hanger (in station or on a POS). Again it would be of value to both small and large Alliances, depending on how the access permissions worked.

. I would like to see a mechanism where you can set an Alliance to a certain management style, and not have to be concerned about being voted out / losing control of it.

. Frankly I would like to see some of the sovereignty requirements brought to Corporation level, so you don’t specifically have to create an Alliance for them.

 

In reality, and unoriginally, most of that basically comes down to making an Alliance more like a Corporation, to allow easier sharing of resources and efforts between member corporations.

So – in answer to Sugar’s original question – for solo and small group play there is minimal tied into being in or out of an Alliance. Having an alliance however is achievable and has benefits. Changes to allow easier sharing of resources between member corporations would make having an Alliance even more beneficial.

I don’t however have thoughts on all the tools required to run proper, large scale Alliances, and of course their coalitions.  But that is not what you would be reading my blog for…

Run for the docks

I was logged in on one of my alts and noticed the chatter in local between two pilots with an active war. One was docked, and the other was outside the station trying to goad them into undocking.

There have been many times in my EVE career where my Corporation or Alliance has ordered its pilots to dock up and starve aggressive pilots of their fun. It is a valid tactic – and I’ve certainly left my pilots cloaked or docked in system and walked away for hours, just to waste the time of people who have been hunting me.

There is just one small, niggling issue with this tactic. You don’t do it if you feel you can reliably beat your opponent.

How many times have you heard a scout in null warn – “Don’t undock, there is a 2 week old pilot in a Rifter parked on the undock. I can see they have rail guns fitted. Let’s starve him of any fun.” It is a similar story with Intel channels – a PL gang of HAC’s is spotted moving through the region and calls are made for people to X up. The channel is suspiciously quiet. Twenty minutes later a 4 month old pilot in a NPC corporation is noticed flying a Ferox, and 37 pilots x up for the defense fleet.

Staying docked is a valid tactic, but it is probably best not to kid yourself on what it actually means.

To the Gills

For the first time in many weeks I managed to log in and play a couple reasonable EVE sessions. The game seemed to be waiting right where I left it.

I started with a spot of exploration which yielded nothing much of value. I did find two Wormholes from Hi-Sec to Hi-Sec in the same system, which is a little unusual. I always look through these to see what opportunities they might provide. In this case they lead to systems 2 and 5 jumps away. Hopes for something interesting were dashed.

I haven’t had a chance to sit down and really look at the Industry changes – but I plan to anchor a small POS for a while to enable me to experiment with them. To that end I purchased fuel to run two small POS for a year.

Last of all, I spent my remaining EVE time looking at the fits of my two Gila Cruisers. They now have a 500% role bonus to medium combat drone damage and hit points, and the bandwidth to use two of them. I tend to find drone usage in PVE to be more hassle than it is worth, with far too much time lost recalling them over and over again. I didn’t hold a great deal of hope that 2 super medium drones would make that much of an improvement.

I ran some exploration sites, then a level 2 mission, then a level 3, and finally I ran the first level 4 mission I’ve done for quite some time. What a meaty little PVE ship. Turns out 2 super medium drones are, well, super.

Here’s the fit I ended up with. A bit of relatively cheap bling on it – and tanked for better half and kid interruptions.  A fun little ship with easy fitting options and changes.

 

 

 

 

[Gila, PVE]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Beta Reactor Control: Shield Power Relay I
Beta Reactor Control: Shield Power Relay I
Beta Reactor Control: Shield Power Relay I

Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Pith B-Type EM Ward Field
Pithum A-Type Thermic Dissipation Amplifier

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Heavy Missile
Small Tractor Beam II

Medium Core Defense Field Purger II
Medium Core Defense Field Purger II
Medium Core Defense Field Purger II

Hammerhead II x2