EVE Online general

Coolness.

So we decided to do some mining, looking for a particular resource. Wife suggests we venture out into a 0.4-sec system and see what's out there. Paydirt, the stuff she's looking for. Lalala, minding our own business, HOLY CRAP WHO'S SHOOTING AT US RUNRUNRUNRUN

Well, I'm out a ship (yay, insurance) and she got pod-killed. I managed to vacate the area in my pod after the player switched attention to her. Guess he only had the ability to warp-snare one of us at a time, picked her.

So much for that. Glad we learned that particular lesson (players can be colossal griefers) early on, losing only starter stuff, as opposed to losing stuff we actually sweated over.

We ended up finding better asteroids deeper in the core anyway. We'll stay in the cozy comforts of the core for awhile still. Still a bit too noobish to venture out.

Yeah, a .4 sec system means one can shoot at other players without Concord intervening. Don't go into <.5 systems unless you've got a capable ship and the skills to back it up or know how to evade others. If you're just starting out, don't go into low-sec period. That'll just get you blown up and/or podded. Insured ships are mostly chumpchange but getting podded hurts when you've got several 100 million worth of implants in your head. Either way: do not undock a ship you can't afford to replace.

Don't rely on the kindness of others to not mess with you. Don't call it griefing either, it sure looks like it is, but it's gameplay as intended.

(hmm, there ended up being a lot of "don'ts" in one post... They're intended as advice, though)

edited 9th Jan '12 11:24:09 AM by GreatLich

Lessons taken. We're going to stay in the core for a good while, get some experience under our belts, and have fun being industrial. So much to learn...

I'd suggest getting hooked up with eve uni if you're looking to learn. Some great teachers there and they can normally point you to a good corp once you figure out what you want to do.

Bumping thread in light of some recent ones.

We have word that among other things we'll finally get animated missile launchers with the next update. On top of that, DUST trailers are showing that orbital bombardments are in the works.

Not sure how they'll balance planetary combat with planetary production, unless they restrict it to undeveloped NPC held worlds. Still, I'm kinda hoping for the chance to grab a sniper rifle and terrorize a war target's PI .

Also, any pirates out there noticed an increase in freighter pilot bravery? Lately several potential marks have been hauling oodles of isk worth of goodies in mere badgers. With the artillery Tornadoes, suicide squads are making short work of them.

edited 27th Mar '12 9:23:43 PM by carbon-mantis

wow, this thread is pretty quiet.

How did everyone take the loss of drone minerals and the changes to mining barges?

Heh, personally I didn't take the drone mineral loss too well. The tier-3 battleships are prohibitively expensive now, and in many larger fleets they've been replaced with more disposable tier-3 battlecruisers. The changes in mining barges will help in the long run, but I don't think they'll completely curb the price hikes. I was lucky to get a load of barge blueprints before the changes were made, so the return on them now is nearly three times what it was before the update.

Goons also seem to be driving up the price of Drake battlecruisers with their new campaign. Their losses are nearing a hundred or so per day now, thanks to their We Have Reserves tactics against their opponent's smaller-but-better-equipped cruiser squads.

you mean battlecruisers and cruisers, respectively, There are no T3 battleships

I mean the sort of "levels" within each ship category like Cyclone—>Hurricane—>Tornado, I've just always referred to them as tier 1,2,3 etc etc. Though, probably better that I don't since it conflicts with the specialist ships and strategic cruiser classes. . .

I think starbase changes will be coming soon, one of the devs was trying to completely redo the way starbases work. including possibilities of large, interlinked structures that can be built anywhere, hav the ability to be cloaked (with the right modules) and can even use jump drives to move the starbase.

Obviously, this is all super hypothetical, but damn would that be cool

Thinking about getting back into Internet Spaceships in light of the changes to mining that have been going around. Unfortunately I sold all my old ships in favor of getting a Hulk (Yeah I broke Rule 1; I was young and needed the big ships).

I also want to try branching out into some other stuff in order to alleviate the boredom of mining all the time - any suggestions for alternate careers (I've got ice mining trained up as well)? I can only really think of manufacturing at the moment.

edited 28th Aug '12 2:41:30 AM by HouraiRabbit

You could kill people. That was always good for a laugh.

The hulk was nerfed pretty badly with the update, so you'll want to switch to the Mackinaw if you're planning on continuing mining.

I'm more partial to exploration and pvp personally. Exploration relies on chance quite a bit, but even high security complexes can easily net you 50-100 million if you happen upon some faction loot. If you're feeling really malicious and you have a stable corp to back you, camping gates and suicide bombing juicy freighters can net a hefty return, but it's as mind numbing as mining until you actually get a confirmed target.

If you're looking at moon mining and manufacturing, Goonswarm's campaign in the Caldari sectors is putting a chokehold on materials coming from the region (I suspect that this is how they're handling their enormous losses with their war). IIRC moon mining was nerfed or will be nerfed (need to find the info when I get the chance) so they're hoping to cut production to keep prices inflated, but that means their operations are also helping neutral manufacturers that are outside the conflict zone bring in more profits for the time being.

edited 28th Aug '12 8:25:52 AM by carbon-mantis

Heh. Been there, done that, didn't really like it (cause I kept being on the wrong side of my fights). I was a bit of a masochist back in the day. Really, I was looking to branch out just a little, not do a wholesale retraining, on my mining toon.

Try branching into exploration (scan probes, etc) and either seek out hidden asteroid deadspaces or consider wormhole travel.

wormholes are rather dangerous though. so be careful :P

So I finally cracked and re-subbed, and to my pleasant surprise I still have a Mackinaw. Joy! So after some superficial research, I understand that exploration involves sending out probes to find stuff (in my case, gravimetric sites). Once I have the location, I go back, hop in my barge and mine while avoiding the rats that will inevitably come. Right so far?

So are there any dedicated "probing" ships in the same way you have drone boats, mining boats and so on? Is Exploration one of those things where you don't get anything cool until you venture out into low/nullsec?

For dedicated exploration ship on the cheap at least one low-tier frigate per race has been respected to specialize in it (The Imcus for Gallente, I don't remember what for the other races). Tech 2 exploration means covops and possibly recon cruisers. But you can fit the basic scan probe launcher on any ship, though they might have rejiggered things since I last played and I don't clearly remember the difference between them.

You will get better finds in lowsec and they are less likely to have been previously picked over, but you should be able to at least get your feet wet in a quiet highsec system. It will take longer for hostile people in lowsec to find you because you aren't at a warpable landmark, but you need to keep an eye on local and an eye your ship scanners for people using ship probes. I don't know what the low-tier mining barges go for these days but you may want to exploit lowsec sites in something that can warp out more quickly, like a safespot-aligned cruiser.

edited 30th Aug '12 9:49:29 AM by Elle

So, a typical day at the office in lowsec then? Sounds cool. I can understand using a cruiser for hacking sites and stuff but won't the cargohold size be a hindrance in gravimetrics?

you scan it down, bookmark it, come back in the mack.

you'll notice you lost most of your Ice mining ability with the mackinaw, and instead gained a fucking huge ore bay, something like 40k m3 IIRC with max skills.

Personally, I like "anchor a can in a safespot with a password, run back and forth between it and the site with the small cargo hold, pull everything in with a big ship when done". This is still not foolproof as the can can be discovered with ship probes, but the average passer by isn't going to have the right scanning gear to break your safespot on a random trip through.

that sounds so slow though :C

with crystals I can pull 2k m3 of ore a cycle.

Well then consider a mining battleship or battlecruiser. I'm really not a fan of mining in Eve, so all my suggestions are going to be tailored to ninja mining in ways least likely to get caught by pirates. Moving a mining barge in lowsec without buddies to defend you is almost automatically a bad idea and practically screams "Gank me!" to any passing opportunist.

Depending on how paranoid they are. Either they'll think "What an idiot, this is too easy." or "Too easy, must be a trap."

Living in lowsec should be a requirement for CIA agents and defensive driving courses. Nothing makes you more aware of your surroundings then the fact that everyone is out to kill you and take your stuff.

The drake makes a decent exploration ship with it's mid-slots and spare high slot. With some basic probing skills and faction probes you can scan down all of the available highsec sites in minutes.