EVE Online

[Cthulhu]

You should've asked me, I would've given you a 21-day invite and you would've given me a free month of play or 500+ million if you subscribed, .

As for cruisers, let me know if you need money, . I have a Rupture atm (Minmatar), but I've been flying Minmatar for as long as I've been playing this game, so I wouldn't know about the other races. I don't think there's much difference in the end, depends on your preferred playstyle, and even then there's plenty of choice.

Wouldn't try to upgrade ship classes too quickly; the next step is a Battlecruiser, which, in terms of the boost in DPS and armor and whatnot, isn't actually that big of a step-up from cruisers. I've got all T2 equipment on my cruisers (T2 shields, weapons, weapon upgrades, prop mods) and it can do most L3 missions comfortably (and faster than BC's too), probably even betterer with more skills (can get some more DPS, some better shield, cap, etc).

Currently training for T2 ships for kicks. I kinda want to get into Incursions too, but that'll take a heavy investment, and since my corp is at war with half a dozen other corps atm, I'm kinda iffy about spending the half billion and flying 25+ jumps with it to whatever incursion is going on. But, I should give it a go anyway this saturday or something, I need a better / faster way of making money, .

 

[Joe]

I actually bypassed Cruisers all together and jumped out of my Destroyer and into a Battlecruiser. It wasn't long after that a good friend on EVE bought me my first Battleship (I miss my Megathron) and I was dominating!

 

[Russell]

You should've asked me, I would've given you a 21-day invite and you would've given me a free month of play or 500+ million if you subscribed, .

Huh, how does that work?

So whats a good career path for a newbie?
I'm going to be at a lose at what to do after this epic arc is finished...

 

[Joe]

The first thing I did while learning to not be a noob at EVE was low level security missions. I'd take my Destroyer out for levels 1 security missions and then jump up to level 2s when I was comfortable with how to warp in and out of a space pocket quick enough.

If you're going along that route then it'd suit you to find a corp. That way you can happily run level 4s with them, netting a fair bit of money (more than you're used to) with each run with practically no risk.

 

[Cthulhu]

I want to like battleships, I really do; the one I have has decent pve damage, but at high range (artillery fit), and, worse, it's fucking slow as fuck. And I'm afraid to fit it with stuff like nanofibers, it'll go soft and die when shot at, . Plus there's the constant threat of war targets.

As for newbie career paths, I spent quite some time on mining; getting up to mining barges / strip miners shouldn't be that big of a time investment (although I forgot how long it'll take), and once you can fly one of those you can net ~20 million an hour just selling ore.

However, it's boring as fuck. On a similar note is Planetary Interaction, which is more of a fire-and-forget deal that'll net you a couple million every couple of days. Actually I started out on that, but got bored with it and haven't actually looked at my PI thingies in a while.

Security missions are moar funner, particularly in a group; they can end up being a bit of a grind though. But, they can make a lot of money, also when soloing them; I've done L3's a whole lot, you get money for the mission reward, bounties, salvaging, and the LP you earn (which can be converted to items that can be converted to moneyz). Mission rewards are actually the lowest source of income when doing missions, .

Whereabouts are you, what times do you play, and what's your username?

 

[Russell]

Whereabouts are you, what times do you play, and what's your username?

I'm where ever the first epic arc is.
I don't have a set pattern as to when I play, a few hours one night, only 5 minutes to check my skill training another night..... I'll be online this weekend.
And I'm called 'Ru55ell', imaginative I know.

What are you guys called and how often do you log in?

 

[Cthulhu]

I could help out with the first epic arc - it's all over the universe, you'll do a lot of travelling (15+ jumps from location to location). I think I just got Assault Ships, the epic arc should be doable in that one, . I'll add you, should get a notification whenever you're online. Feel free to ask for help or info if / when we're on at the same time.

I usually log in in the evenings (approx. 17:00 - 21:00 eve time frame) and the weekends, .

 

[Cthulhu]

zoink.

I just spent all of my money on an Incursion BS fit (already had the hull). That's a 270.000.000 investment or thereabouts. I now have about 4 million and change in my wallet. That's less than I had when I started out again... half a year ago. Wait, wtf, did I play this damn game for half a year already?

 

[Joe]

So I am going to jump back into this universe. I've been itching for space after being away from it for months. In that time I've been trying other MMOs but really nothing compares to EVE. It's freedom and community are things you don't find elsewhere. Until these kinds of things are born in other genres of MMOs (and games in general) I don't think I'll ever be properly satisfied!

I think I'm going to primarily launch a new character on my existing account. That way if I need to switch to my old one for something I have that option, even if I'll be leaving them well enough alone.

That said I'm not entirely sure what I want to do! I have a craving for EVE in general but the specifics of what I want it for are all up in the air. Suggestions for my new life?

 

[Cthulhu]

* Join the to-be-formed The Lifestream corporation
* Work your ass off
* Make me rich
* ?????
* PROFIT!

I dunno myself, I'm getting kinda bored with stuff. Feeling like leaving the uni (they don't organize as much stuff as they did a couple of months ago) and going wild. I ran Incursions the other day, they're a decent source of income, but they take some planning and a decent group of people to do. Would not mind being a pirate and pwning in pvp either, but, I'm no good at pvp, .

 

[Joe]

I think I'm gonna train an alt to handle decent combat ships and give PVP a try. I've never really tried serious PVP other than the occasional scouting party for war targets but that was barely anything.

If you (and Russell) wanted we could actually form a corp between us and then start building up from there. I have all the intermediate corporation management stuff on my alt which I could happily dedicate to that.

 

[Cthulhu]

I'm training an alt to fly my battleships from one location to another safely, . Instead of relying on Red Frog Freight. But then, I'll need to subscribe / plex it to get it to fly battleships. Maybe when I make enough moniez.

I'm down for creating a corp, however, I dunno when everyone's online, and a corp of 3 is a bit underwhelming, . I guess we'd have to try and recruit people in some way, preferably the kind that won't get top tier access and raep us.

 

[Joe]

Aye that was my thinking, just a standard corp that recruits like all the others but at its base is us lot. It all depends whether Russell intends to keep on with EVE or ditch it after the trial.

 

[Cthulhu]

I'll spam him with more trial links, for kicks . Starting a corp with the intent of making money so that all the members can play for free would be neat. We could do nullsec exploration (I hear that can bring in 100 million an hour too), or train up to battleships and join public incursion running groups (there's a few channels out there). The latter is pretty skill-intensive though; the former can be done with a T1 frigate. And nullsec is generally safe, if you know what you're doing and know how to avoid gate / bubble camps, which should be a matter of setting good bookmarks around gates.

Alternatively, suicide ganking .

 

[Joe]

Ooooo I like the idea of Nullsec exploration. I've not set foot there at all yet but now I know a bunch of people that live there permanently.

 

[Cthulhu]

I've been there a couple of times, mostly in a major fleet, . And once I was the +1 / scout, so I and a couple others went off ahead. To be honest, it was rather dead player-wise; only really ran into trouble when we were actively looking for it (roaming fleets), and I lost a ship on my (early) way back because I was jumping straight from one gate to another. The regulars there know the main travel routes back to highsec, so, particularly on the gates right before low/highsec, they'll put a warp bubble up some distance (few hundred K) from the gate in the path a ship would take if it warps from an incoming gate; when someone (like me) passes there and doesn't take precautions, he'll fly right into the bubble, drop out of warp, and die.

...now I want to do a bubble camp, .

 

[Joe]

I want to become the person on EVE that is responsible for the kind of misery I had to deal with in that game as a noobie with wartime and all that.

Also having a goal of making money with the entire corp to keep a sub up is a really good one, so long as we know what we're doing.

 

[Joe]

Double.

So I'm looking at joining this corp right now that's based in Null sec. They're pretty happy training people, have about 50 members and are part of a pretty huge alliance. This is where I want to be in EVE now, Null sec. I'm going to join up and learn everything I can. From there either you guys can come join in the fun or not. We could also try hitting out on our own later down the line if we feel competent.

 

[Cthulhu]

Let us know how things went, . I'm gonna try and make shittons of money on incursions so I have expendable income.

 

[Russell]

I want to Solo for a while until I know what I'm doing and until I know I'm gonna stick it out long term.

 

[Cthulhu]

That's fine too, . Get yourself a nice pirate faction frigate and be a pirate, yarr!

I actually only just bought my first faction ship, a Firetail. It's pretty neat, can run highsec Angel / pirate sites. Slowly due to relatively low damage, but still.

Also, I was doing incursions last night, and they kinda paused for an hour because there were war targets around. I decided, sort of on a whim, to drop from E-Uni, at least temporarily so I can do incursions and fly fancier ships without having to stress out.

To be fair, pvp isn't my thing, it stresses me out. Of course, this is what others would call 'exciting', . I'm not confident enough / lack the skills / am too much of a 'victim' / have too much (=money) to lose for proper pvp though. I intend on running incursions for a while, get myself a nice juicy pirate BS (Machariel or something), make more money until I get bored, then become a pirate or some other kind of bastard everyone will despise and / or be jealous of.

 

[Joe]

I should get a skill plan for an Incursion fit. Incursions are pretty profitable, how much do you usually rack in /hour when doing so?

 

[Cthulhu]

The usually named figures are 60-100 million per hour, but it depends on the professionality and composition of the fleet. You get a fixed amount of income for clearing a site, which depends on the size of your fleet; the income drops sharply after 10, so you rarely see incursion fleets bigger than that. Doesn't need to be bigger imho. Most incursion fleets have strict rules about accepted fits (or, minimum fits), I'm sort of at the minimum, .

But yeah. The better the fleet (or, the shinier the ships), the faster they can shoot shit and clear a site, and can move on to the next. It can get quite hectic. Generally, you have a scout that flies to the next site and checks if any other fleets are running it yet; if not, when the fleet is almost done clearing the site, they align their fat ships to the new site, pull in their drones, and warp off to the next as soon as the first site is cleared. It's quite well-oiled, I'd say.

Still, in order to be able to do incursions, you probably need a couple of months of training (how long does your plan take?) and a ~500 million investment for your first ship. Probably less, the fit I have (Maelstrom Vanguard fit) has some very expensive faction webifiers (~70 million each). They're worth it though; base range is 14 km, with boosts it's 20-21 km, and it just so happens that the rats in incursion sites will orbit you / your fat/slow fleet at about 20K. And yes, they're hard to hit with large autocannons at their speed, .

srsly, in Vanguard sites, it's mostly frigate- and cruiser-sized ships you shoot, the same size you get in L3 sites. They're a billion times tougher though. Which is why you have 9-10 damge dealing battleships in an incursion fleet.

...I'm ranting about internet spaceships, aren't I?

 

[Cthulhu]

FYI, I've streamed me doing some missions just now / am streaming. To sate people's curiosity. And fill them with WHOA DUDE space musics: http://www.twitch.tv/cthulhuufhtagn

 

[Cthulhu]

New winter (november) expansion announced: Rubicon.

* High-sec player-owned customs offices
* 'temporary, player-owned mobile structures' for industry and wartime operations. Not sure what this'll involve, but then, POSes are a big unknown for me still.
* SoE faction ships 'designed to support extended, discreet travel in hostile areas of deep space.'
* Marauder, Interceptor and Interdictor rebalancings
* Direct Twitch.tv integration into the client
* stuff:

Guerilla-style Warfare Support - Tactics to chip away at the behemoths have surfaced, allowing small fleets of mercenaries, saboteurs and troublemakers to become cause for concern for even the most reinforced of alliance strongholds.

Interbus Ship Identification System - A long and treacherous path lies ahead, and Interbus is here to help pilots, new and seasoned, plan the ships and skills they will need with an intuitive guide and a redesign of the EVE certificate system.

There's a section / letter thing from the senior producer about the future vision of the game, talking / hinting mostly at more control / influence in the universe from players; sounds like they're playing with the idea of replacing NPC corps with player-owned / run corporations or something. We'll see; I still don't feel like I, as just this one guy, have much influence in the game as a whole. yet. I'm not hardcore enough anyway, .