EVE Online

[Cthulhu]

Whee, we're internet famous! sort of.

(skip to 2:13 to watch us get pwned; I'm Fietspomp in the Scythe)

We took a doctrine fleet consisting mostly of Caracals out to nullsec to look for a fight. I couldn't fly a Caracal yet, so I flew logi for the first time, liek, evar. Which went pretty well. We ended up in a fight with a bunch of... Prophecies, I think it was, and we got 'em pretty good (ended up shooting their leftover drones, too). They bawwed and came back with a fleet of fucking 50+ Tengus though. As a comparison, our ships were generally about 20-30 million; those Tengus go for at least a billion fully fitted, iirc. We warped off to the sun (we should've scattered, imho), but were caught, bubbled, and pwned rather quickly as you can see in the video. But at least I've got a killmail where I have like 50 people shooting at me in shiny ships, which is pretty epic. And they didn't alpha me either, .

We made best speed home, most people got caught in bubble camps. I self-destructed (or had someone self-destruct me for kicks) and took the quick way home. 'twas pretty valid.

 

[Joe]

Pshhhh EVE University has been famous for ages.

Thinking of getting back into this (again) now that I have a gaming rig.

 

[Joe]

Okay Yop this is the bit where you try to convince me to come and play EVE online again. My mouse has been hovering over the 'renew subscription' button for a while until I went to a different page. Should I come back?

 

[Cthulhu]

Yes.

Join e-uni, we have fun stuff. Also, I have a wad of incursion monies I can send you if you need help.

 

[Joe]

I was hoping for like ten paragraphs of a well-structured essay detailing what amazing new features are in place since I left and what awaits me in space. This is fine though.

If and when I get bored of FFXIV this will be the first place I go but don't expect it to be soon lol, love that game to bits.

 

[Cthulhu]

lewl, . Did you get the Odyssey changes, at least? Exploration has much improved / become much more accessible (and as a result, prices of explo items have taken a nose dive), and you now get a fancy animation when you jump through a gate.

The winter expansion, Rubicon, will get a seriously game-changing feature though: changes to warp speed acceleration. Right now all ships have an equal acceleration rate to reach their maximum warp speed (which, iirc, is 3 or 6 AU/s depending on your ship). In Rubicon, they want to change it so that smaller ships accelerate faster, and big ships slower - which will massively change warp speeds and warp dynamics. Interceptors in particular will become insanely quick in warp.

This will have massive implications for pvp, where fleets of small ships will seriously out-race anything else - you can pass ships warping off and be waiting for them as they land on the other side, for example. Space travel will also be a lot faster for small ships. Possibly even up to a point where some guy jokingly said it'd be faster to haul goods in a frigate than a freighter, taking a few more (nippy) round trips.

 

[Cthulhu]

Oh, also other things in Rubicon:

* Switching to a DirectX 11 render (the current client is still on DX 9). They're not going to add any new graphical features just yet, first they want to get things stable and performant.

* Redo of the character creation screen: http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/2459/22hb.png (not sure if that one's legit, but here's a dev that seems to confirm it. Also new sounds in there, and possible voice (which it seems they removed from a previous incarnation of the character creation screen). Oh there's a video:

Another thing they've added in Odyssey was multi character training, i.e. have more than one character's training queue active on the same account. Costs a plex (of course), and they're extending it to up to three active characters at once. I'm not gonna do it (and if I do ever get to a point where I want more than one character I'll have it on a separate account for multiboxing goodness), but, neat, I guess.

Edit: luls I keep forgetting stuff. Rubicon will also add player-owned high-sec customs offices. All (I think it's all, anyway) highsec customs offices will be transferred ownership to Interbus, and can be freely attacked by players, to be replaced by their own customs office. Attacking them is possible if you are at war with the owning player's corp or alliance. This will make wars and strategy and ownership of stuff in highsec quite interesting, I think.

Edit: Also, "Bastion" mode for Marauders, or, transforming battleships <3. This will transform them into stationary gunnery platforms with increased resistances and blapping prowess. The downside is, of course, that they're static and probably some other downsides. They've worked on the animations for two Marauders so far:

tbh, I'd be reluctant to fly those, fully fitted they're probably well over a billion, and gankers will be on the lookout for those. Same reason why I wouldn't fly my Mach in missions. Definitely not while I'm still in e-uni and we're at war, lol . I haven't flown missions in a long time either, they get kinda tedious.

Edit: Oh also, new ships w/ design, Sisters of Eve faction ships., a frigate and a cruiser which seem mostly aimed at exploration. Wonder how they hold up against covert ops.

Edit: Oh also, they're shuffling some models around for command ships to make them stand out better: linky and video.

 

[Joe]

Wow I can't wait to see what happens when Jita is player owned. I bet big corps are already making plans for claiming that place.

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, well it will only be the customs offices, so it'll only be relevant if there's a lot of PI going on there. But it does seem like they want to give the players more and more power / influence over time, though. The Rubicon page has a letter from the game designer (the new one, I think; the other guy that had been in that position for 5 years moved on) outlining that much.

 

[Cthulhu]

Bump,

This weekend we destroyed two player-owned structures (starbases? thingies) and will soonish add a couple of customs offices in wormhole space with a 230+ dude fleet.

It's basically a revenge operation. Some dude stole a lot of stuff from our corporation, then joined another corporation who then went and declared war on us (not sure how that went btw). Some of our guys then found a wormhole system where they had some starbase thingies, and a seeecret fleet was formed to go after them (as in we weren't told the purpose, to not tip them off). I think they got hit pretty badly. A few of the opponents spent a couple hours self-destructing their ships, including pirate battleships, Tengus, andsoforth. And we looted their stuff, Tengu blueprints, T2 / T3 parts, and a lot of Stuff. They lost many billions. Fhtagn. It's just boring as fuck though,

 

[Cthulhu]

lulz

 

[Cthulhu]

I'll just keep bumping this thread until you lot are converted,

There was an event where players were called up to support pirates or empire factions somewhere in null, lots of people followed the call. The uni formed a fleet too, I was able to catch up to them because there was a lot of tidi during the trip (time reduced to 10% of its original so the server can manage it all; the game is very slow in that case). There was like 130 of us. That fleet, plus another fleet of neutrals, gives pictures like this:

Spoiler: large

Anyway. We were too late, the target station was destroyed before we made it (we were a couple of jumps out still) and people were leaving again. We warped into the target system though, nice and deep in nullsec... and since we were there, might as well start shooting stuff! First up were a couple of battleships, then... all the things. All of them. Someone mentioned we shot over 4 billion worth of ships tonight in our kitchen sink fleet, but I'll have to read the after-action report for that. I ended up on 23 kill mails, at least the first ones worth up to 300 million <3. Not anywhere near top damage though, I was in a frigate. I did end up being a rolling safe after Brave Newbies came in with some bombers and we had to scatter though. I think most of us (or at least half) made it out fine.

 

[Cthulhu]

Oh also, I found out a trick; you can use the assets thing and search for 'ship' to get a list of all your ships everywhere. Cock size comparison time:

 

[Russell]

That list is more impressive when you consider that almost all of those ships will have a full load out of weapons/equipment.

I think I have about 6 ships, the ones you get from the tutorial missions.
How & why do you have that many?

 

[Joe]

You don't have enough Battleships.

 

[Cthulhu]

One tends to gather lots of ships over time, it is known . I do need moar battleships, but they don't come cheap and the corporation I'm in atm will not reimburse me if I lose one. I do want to fly battlecruisers and shit moar often though. Maybe I should go to null, for kicks.

 

[Russell]

Still mission running right now, also I noticed that you can now pay for your Eve subscription via Steam. It bills you monthly, that's handy.

I sold my beginner ships, all I have now is my Navy Issue Vexor.
(Which is a cruiser class ship?)
What skills should I learn to make flying a armor tank/drone boat Cruiser more effective?

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, a Vexor's a cruiser, and the Navy Issue would be pretty sweet, . L3's I take it?

Skills-wise, get a T2 tank if you don't have it already (and tbh you probably shouldn't be flying a navy issue if you don't, ), and T2 guns.

As for skillz, here's a good guide: Hull Upgrades V for T2 tank, Mechanic V for armor repper efficiency (if you're actively tanked) and extra structure HP (for dat total HP yo), the various Armor Compensation skills, Repair Systems for obvious reasons, Armor Layering for less weight penalty (because a slow ship is easy to hit), etc.

Drones: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Drones_101#Drone_Support_Skills. Definitely Drone Interfacing and Durability, then go for T2 drones. Pretty sure T2 drones are easier to train to than Drone Interfacing / Durability V.

Disclaimer: I dunno shit about armor tanking or drones, .

Also, Rubicon expansion out next week (already, zomg time flies). New racial exploration ships, exploration sites, and as was unveiled yesterday, a new system that seems to replace certificates; a 'ship tree' of sorts, and for each individual ship a 'Mastery', which contains the certificates. Your (Russel's) question of "How to make it moar effective" would (probably) be answered even better by looking at the Mastery of that particular ship.

I'm training up for interceptors and will probably abuse them as shuttles, given how Rubicon also makes a big change in warp speed; before, all ships had equal warp accelleration rate, and given how you'd never be able to get up to the max warp speed anyway (<10 AU jumps, I reckon) and spend most speed accelerating / decelerating, a ship with a high warp speed (shuttles, interceptors etc) usually didn't have that big of an advantage. And now they will. I'm pretty sure space will seem a bit smaller after Rubicon. Unless you fly a big ship, off course,

 

[Russell]

Spoiler

I'm still only on level 2 missions so it suits me fine at the moment. I purchased a couple of Plex and sold them in game so I could afford the tech 2 version of everything. Still only have tech 1 weapons, but I'm using Hammerhead mark 2 drones.

I really should name my ship, but I can't think of anything decent, does anyone here name there ships?
And what ship are you currently flying and what's it's load-out? I'm curious.

a new system that seems to replace certificates; a 'ship tree' of sorts, and for each individual ship a 'Mastery', which contains the certificates. Your (Russel's) question of "How to make it moar effective" would (probably) be answered even better by looking at the Mastery of that particular ship.

That'll be pretty useful, I don't think the certificates have any been much use to people.

 

[Cthulhu]

o_O you plexed for a cruiser? you could've just asked me for some help. Level 2's shouldn't be a problem for even non-faction cruisers, etc. DPS and tank look good to me, you could probably try a few L3's. Let me know if you'd like me to help out or back you up at one point, I'll bring something neat (or an armor repping logi)

I name my ships, usually with a number if it's the second or higher time I bought a similar ship. At the moment I'm docked up somewhere with my incursion runner, which... is probably the best ship you can fly (or one of the best) with the best equipment for high-sec PvE content. Oh and also the best and most expensive ship I have, it's probably worth 2.5 billion or thereabouts. Took me about... half a year or so to get into, give or take a couple of months. It's possible to fit an incursion-ready ship in three months of training (and they'd cost about 300-400M, so that plex would be plenty to get it), and with that (and a group / running) you can earn 60 - 100 million isk / hour. Anyway, screenshot:

Spoiler: spoiler tag'd for size

I flew it outside to activate the shield hardeners, else it'd look like it has only twice the tank of your Vexor, . In a fleet (with fleet bonusses) it has over 70K HP, and I have a travel fit that gives it close to 100K HP (so it has a chance to survive the odd suicide gank, if any, or at least make it unattractive to gank). For most other purposes one would fit (large / x-large) shield extenders to bump the HP over 100K. Or armor tank it, I dunno lol. The Mach is known to be agile and fast though (for a battleship), so slowing it down doesn't make much sense. I heard it can be fit to hit over 2000m/s, luls.

The most expensive thingies are the Federation Navy webs (required for incursions, the enemies move too fast to hit with large guns, and you need large guns to dish out enough damage, the enemies are tough little buggers. They clock in at about 70 million apiece, and will be the most expensive ones on your first incursion ship (they were for me anyway). They're shiny because of the range, but they were nerfed for the last update, range went from 21km to 18... and the incursion enemies orbit at around 20. Meh.

The shiniest thing is a Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field, which adds 41% shield resistance to all damage types. That one's 470 million at the moment, much more than my complete first incursion ship, .

The Machariel hull itself is close to 900 million, with another 200 million worth of T2 rigs (EM resist, shield capacity and tracking speed).

Finally, four Republic Fleet gyrostabilizers, 1.125x damage and 10.5% rate bonus. Not exactly times four (due to diminishing returns), but still. Those are 60 million apiece.

so,

900M - ship hull
200M - rigs
500M - Pithum C-type invuln
2x70M - RF webs
4x60M - RF stabs
7x2.7M - 800mm Repeating Artillery II's
Loose change - tracking enhancers, regular invuln (not sure why that's on there / the fit recommends it, lolo - probably too shiny)
--------
2ish billion

Given incursions earn about 9.5 million per cleared site, and one clears a site on average every 6-8 minutes when running, that's about 20ish hours of running incursions. Or iirc, twenty times as much mining Veldspar, .

okay I'll stop now. It's pretty sweet. But I wouldn't use it in any other context than running incursion sites with a fleet. I may buy another or refit this one to blaze through L4's at one point, if I can be arsed with those. I should also almost be able to fly T3 cruisers, those should be pretty sweet (if expensive) all-purpose ships.

 

[Russell]

That's an impressive looking ship.

o_O you plexed for a cruiser? you could've just asked me for some help.

I also purchased a set of brain implants to raise my stats by by 4, they were about 125 million each and I got all 5.

The shiniest thing is a Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field, which adds 41% shield resistance to all damage types. That one's 470 million at the moment, much more than my complete first incursion ship

470 million for a single part? That's for the elite players.

 

[Cthulhu]

CCP currently streaming Rubicon announcement and stuff: http://www.twitch.tv/ccp

Rubicon webpage: http://www.eveonline.com/rubicon

Oh, the implants are valid, . Just... don't wear those if you ever find yourself in low, null or wormhole space. Back in the day (2009), you had to train 'learning' skills to increase your learning speed, lulz .

Also yes, yes it is. And the rich ones.

 

[Cthulhu]

Aannnnnd Rubicon Trailer! Machariels <3

 

[Joe]

Just remembered a story, related to the mach. I was missioning with a friend (salvaging, mostly) while our corp was in a war. It had been more than a week since any enemy sightings had happened so we'd grown a bit too comfortable. She was missioning in her Mach because she loved flying it.

To cut a long story short we got ambushed at the gate going back to the station by three battleships. I actually got my Noctis out of it because I wasn't on Autopilot and hit the gate right away. Emily wasn't so lucky 0_0. Her Mach was obliterated and shortly after she left the game for a couple months. Was grim stuff. Our corp even got an apology from the mercs who said they felt bad for it but obviously have to keep kills up for their credit as hired mercs. Madness.

 

[Cthulhu]

She autopiloted her Mach? o_O. But yeah, ragequitting after that... I might do the same. Actually I think I would've back when I first got it, but now I know I can earn the monies back.

Also, yesterday I went to nullsec for great justice; we went to an ore site for epic mining, something I haven't done since early this year, lollerskates. This morning there was a combat site (or two) nearby and I led a small fleet (two cruisers and a BC) to go and pwn stuff. It was pretty neat. Not very profitable, but hey, . At least we didn't get shot. That is a good thing.

So far it feels a bit like lowsec, just less busy and everyone can (and probably will) kill you on sight if they think they can take you. Hasn't happened yet.