And now, I make a fool of myself.
Perfunctory preface: I am a noob at EVE Online. I have been playing since January 2012. My account is barely three months old, and my total play time (according to Steam) is about 110 hours. I have not played the game very long.
I have never flown a Titan (obviously). I have never seen a Titan in game. I have never talked to someone who has flown a Titan, nor someone who has seen a Titan. I can’t tell you the exact stats of every Titan, or really any stats at all relating to the Titan, but that each one is something like 15-18 km long, which is preposterously awesome. I couldn’t tell you how many targets they lock, nor what the resolution or tracking is on their guns or their ammo. I am not qualified in any way to comment on the nitty-gritty mathematics behind why Titans are OP and need to be nerfed.
But, and this is important, this ignorance as to the mechanics and data behind the Titan ship class does not mean I cannot identify and comment on a fundamental design problem inherent in the class. So that’s what I intend to do. You’ll find no math here. Only large scale design-based thinking, informed by an amateur understanding of game design.
So let’s get into it, shall we?
One of the big hot-button topics in EVE right now (aside from Mittani-gate and all that jazz), is the Titan ship class and whether or not it needs to be nerfed. According to other bloggers, the most reliable of EVE sources, the Titan class is simply too good at blowing stuff up. The statistics seems to bear this out: according to CCP Diagoras most of the top ten ratting player characters last week were ratting in Titans, and Ripard Teg has published several well-supported posts detailing how the Titan just shoots too damn well. I mirror his opinion that a city-sized monstrosity probably shouldn’t be able to insta-pop a frigate at 100 km, but as I said above, I’m not going to address the mathematics.
From where I’m standing, as someone who is an EVE noob but has some understanding of game design, and as someone who has no dog in the Titan hunt as it were, there is a single fundamental flaw in the Titan’s design and implementation.
The Titan has no core design philosophy.
Ask yourself the following three questions, and try to answer quickly with your gut reaction.
1. What is the purpose of the Stiletto?
2. What is the purpose of the Guardian?
3. What is the purpose of the Erebus?
Now, I’m not Miss Cleo, but I’m pretty sure I can guess the gist of your answers. The Stiletto’s purpose is tackling and running down enemy ships. The Guardian’s purpose is to remote repair friendly ships. The Erebus’s purpose is to........ shoot things? Bridge fleets? Support? Attack? Odds are there are as many answers to question 3 as there are readers of this post.
See, no design philosophy.
One of the most important elements of game design, and in fact design in general, is that every component needs a philosophy behind it, so that the philosophy can guide the design process and make sure the component, whatever it is, stays on track and fulfills its purpose. This is also important because a strong design philosophy will allow designers and developers to easily pin down the component’s strengths and weaknesses.
Looking at other games, one of the best examples of this is the color wheel in the card game Magic: The Gathering. In that game, there are five colors, corresponding to the five resources needed to cast spells, and over the years the colors have developed very strong and identifiable design philosophies. Blue is the color of invention and research, White is the color of balance and community, and so on and so forth. (To those of you who play Magic and know a lot about the color wheel, forgive me for the gross simplification. I’m trying to keep things basic here.) These philosophies directly inform the relative strengths and weaknesses of the colors, and individual cards in new sets are always based around the card’s color and that color’s philosophy.
Turning to a real world example that has a closer parallel to EVE, military vehicles have their own design philosophies. Fighter jets engage enemy fighters and establish air superiority. Bombers deliver massive damage payloads to important ground targets. Destroyers escort larger ships and defend them from smaller ships. Aircraft Carriers transport hangars of airplanes and act as mobile platforms for launching air assaults.
Now, as you may have noticed, all of these real life examples come with trade-offs, weaknesses that arise due to the very nature of the craft’s design philosophy. Fighters can’t drop 500 bombs onto a ground target. Bombers can’t engage in dogfights with fighters. Destroyers can’t go toe-to-toe with battleships. Aircraft Carriers sacrifice all built-in weapons or defense systems in order to better fit their role as transports and logistics platforms. Real life military crafts are not designed as “catch-all” machines that can do everything. Broad design leads to weak design. Jacks-of-all-trades are never as useful as focused single-trade specialists.
This is the fundamental problem with the Titan class in EVE. It has no design philosophy; and lacking a philosophy, CCP just slapped everything they could think of onto the ship and called it “awesome.” Clone bays? Those are cool, throw them in there. Hangars and maintenance arrays? Gotta have those. Oversized guns? Hells yes. Immunity to ECM? Oh yeah, that’s awesome. Doomsday weapons? Jump portals and bridging? Fleet-wide bonuses? A horn that plays Eye of the Tiger? A bitchin’ paint-job with flames along the side of the hull? Fuzzy pink dice on the rear view mirror?
I ask you, what is a Titan’s purpose? If it’s logistics and fleet support, why does it have a doomsday weapon and ridiculously good guns? If it’s a front-line damage dealing platform, why does it have hangars and maintenance arrays and bridging capabilities? It simply does too many things well. It has no major flaws or weaknesses, save perhaps that it’s really slow and will always get people’s attention when it lands on grid.
So how do we fix this? Can we salvage the poor Titan? Well, for starters, CCP can go ahead and apply whatever hot-fixes it thinks are necessary right now. None of them will eventually matter, so they might as well just do what they think is necessary to band-aid the problem in the short term.
Looking to the long term, CCP needs to call a spaceship staff meeting, get everyone together in a big room with a big table, order some pizza or whatever Icelanders like to eat in lieu of pizza, and hash out just what the hell the Titan’s role is supposed to be. But for this session to work, the team needs to be ready and willing to slaughter sacred cows. Nothing should be off limits just because it’s “what Titans do.” We’ve established that “what Titans do” is “everything,” and “how well they do it” is “too well.” CCP really needs to just throw out everything, pretend Titans don’t currently exist in game, and start from scratch, beginning of course with the all-important question of “What role are Titans going to fill?” Are they going to be mobile stations to provide large scale logistics for invasion fleets? Are they going to be high DPS damage platforms? Battleship killers? Frigate killers? Whatever the answer, this question must be addressed first, because all of the design flows from this. If Titans are logistics stations, they obviously don’t need high tracking mega-guns. If they’re DPS platforms, they obviously don’t need clone vats and hangar bays and maintenance arrays and all this other stuff.
Figure out what role Titans fill, then design them to fill that role. Don’t hang extra bells and whistles on them just because they’re the “endgame” ship of EVE Online. In fact, CCP and the EVE community need to strike from the record the idea of Titans as “endgame” ships, and indeed we are all better off if we eliminate the idea of an “endgame” in EVE altogether. EVE is not a linear experience, and EVE fleet combat is not a series of raid tiers a la World of Warcraft. Titans are not “epic purples.” Titans should not be the “phat loot” that every EVE player should aspire to acquire. Titans should be specialized super-capital ships designed to fill a particular role in large scale fleet warfare. They shouldn’t be uber-ships that people use to kill 3,000 rats per day.
So that’s an utter noob’s view on the Titan problem, and how CCP can fix it. I’m not going to bother with number crunching and specific stats that should be tweaked, because none of that matters if the ship class still has no fundamental design philosophy to guide the tweaking.
Fix the house’s foundation before worrying about replacing a few roof tiles.
CCP, I implore you to get on this, just so that you can get it all behind you and get to work on the real problem with Titans: namely, how every one of them looks like a giant lego space hot dog. Seriously. These ships are supposed to be the epitome of their empire’s technology and culture, and all four look like ten mile long bratwursts.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Fail-ganking Like a Baws
Salutations, dear readers. It’s been a while. Apologies, but this is not the continuation of the prior post. One of my major faults as a writer is that I am too verbose, and I end up splitting things into multiple parts. But then, of course, time marches on, I do other things, and finishing the follow-up parts to a post about something that occurred a month ago seems ridiculous. So this is not the follow-up to the last post, and I’ll try not to make multi-part posts in the future unless all of the parts are finished in advance.
Anyway, it’s been a while, in part because I haven’t actually played much EVE in the last three weeks or so. I’ve been playing other games while my skills train up. One of the blessings and curses of EVE is the skill training system. On the one hand, I’m glad that my skills continue to train while I’m not logged in. But on the other hand, I sometimes find myself asking why I should bother logging in on a particular day, if I need a certain skill and that skill still has three days before it finishes training.
But the skills I needed have finally finished up, so now I’m back in the cockpit and ready to actually start ganking mission bears. To that end, I invested my ISK into a brand new shiny Hurricane, decked it out in the latest tech2 autocannons and sundry tackle apparatus, and launched my new baby into the aether, a blank area on her hull primed for a tally of hapless victims. My eyes flashed with ambition and excitement, my fingers primed to lock point and rain hot space lead upon the unwary and unfortunate. Today, I became a true ninja.
And then nothing happened for five days.
One of the things that other ninja blogs don’t mention is that stalking and ganking the mission runner is much like fishing or hunting in real life. There are long stretches of absolutely nothing occurring, punctuated by sporadic moments of action and violence. For every bagged deer (to reference the type of prey I hunt in real life), there are innumerable hours of just standing around staring at the woods and freezing to death. Such is the way with mission runner ganking. For every killmail and fail-fit, there are dozens of scanned down missions where the bear never shoots, or even really acknowledges that you’re there. Occasionally you get a mission runner who pops his wrecks as a desperate attempt to get you to go away, and now and then you’ll happen upon someone who will call you out in Local, as if that would do anything, but most of the time the prey responds in one of two ways: (1) ignore you completely, or (2) warp off as soon as you land on grid. Now, the truly gifted ninja can often goad or harass the MR into shooting or taking some other action, but such tactics are beyond my rudimentary and largely theoretical knowledge.
And so my beloved Hurricane, dressed to the nines with ammo racked and chambered, sat collecting dust in the hangar for almost a week. Now and then I would fly her around the system and back, just to make sure her moving parts didn’t rust from disuse, but we were both itching for action that I just couldn’t find.
Until, at last, a buck walked into the clearing and approached the salt lick.
A smile came to my lips as the scanner ticked off “Raven: 100%.” Finally, a battleship I could take. The last couple of days had given me nothing but faction battleships and marauders, and while I am more than willing to relieve someone of a grossly overpriced shiny ship, I don’t quite have the confidence to just warp in and start tangling with a Navy Issue, and Marauders never shoot. With equal parts anticipation and pessimistic reservation, I undocked my Vigil and warped to 0.
Unlike most mission sites, this one did not have a gate or multiple rooms, so I landed right in the thick of things. The Raven sat at low burn about 100 km away. Rats, both alive and dead, littered the area. From the location of the wrecks, it seems the Raven had landed in the middle of the room and then started puttering along while it went to work. Of course, since a Raven can barely top 100 m/s on a good day, it hadn’t gotten very far, but it had been in the site long enough to drift a ways away from the warp-in point.
I set right to work, pulling into a tight orbit around the nearest large wreck and locking salvagers. The wreck contained some worthless missiles and a cheap module, but I snatched it up for the aggro. And lo and behold, the angels descended, and the Metatron said, “Thy faith shall be rewarded,” and the Raven locked me up and sent a volley of cruise missiles my way.
Giddy with excitement, I rushed back to station and leapt into the Cane. With all my telepsychic power I demanded that the undock procedure to hurry up, and for the ship to align and enter warp to happen immediately. Moments later I landed in the mission area.
100 km away from the Raven.
The magnitude of my idiocy crashed upon me, and amid a string of curses I pointed the Cane’s nose at the Raven and said, “Go!” And the Cane went, at the blazing speed of 350 m/s.
You have to understand, up until this moment, the two ships I flew most often were a Vigil and a Rifter. Both of those can break 1000 m/s with an afterburner running. The oppressive lethargy of larger ships like Battlecruisers had yet to sink in. The idea of tooling around in the vastness of space in a ship that can barely make 100 m/s was beyond my imagination.
As the distance to target slowly ticked down, I made several calculations amidst nervous anger. My warp disrupter, overloaded, had a max range of something like 30 km. My speed was 350 m/s, and my distance to target was 85 km and falling. My lock range was 49 km. I figured if I managed to get into lock range, I could send my drones at the Raven and hope they would distract him long enough for me to get into point range.
But the angels giveth, and they taketh away, and at 60 km away the Raven, realizing his missile volleys were barely denting my shields and that he was currently tanking about twenty rats, warps away, leaving his drones to their fate in his haste.
Oh how I cursed my incompetence. But I was tenacious, and I intended to get that damn Raven when he warped back in to try to finish the mission. I knew my mistake was not making a new bookmark closer to the Raven while I was still in the Vigil, so I decided to plant a new bookmark right where his drones lay, so that when I warped back in I would be right on top of him. But the rats frustrated my purpose. There were too many of them, and they all turned on me once the Raven ran off, so I didn’t get very far. I managed to drop a bookmark 50 km away from the drone before having to warp off and repair. I had a hunch my prey would return quickly, so I docked up, repaired the Cane, and jumped right back to the site.
Just in time to see the Raven warp away, drones in tow.
By this time I was not surprised. Nothing in this gank was going as planned. I still thought my initial plan was sound, so I decided to stay on site and try to plant a bookmark close to where the Raven was warping in and out. I didn’t get very far, of course, under the concentrated fire of the mission rats, so I had to settle for dropping a bookmark 40 km away from the Raven’s warp-in point and make haste back to the station.
Or rather, that was the plan, right up until I hit warp and nothing happened. I checked the Overview. The lone remaining rat frigate was warp disrupting me.
Well, shit.
I locked it up, applied web, and laid into it with the 220s. Nothing. Misses across the board. I started to sweat. Was I really about to lose a Hurricane, a virgin Hurricane no less, to my prey’s mission rats?
In a panic I dumped my drones and engaged them on the frigate. Slowly, slowly, my babies began to eat into the rat’s shields. Meanwhile, the rest of the mission rats had chewed deep into my armor. Lacking any type of active repair module, I was now in a race. Could my drone kill the frigate before the rats killed me? What a ridiculous black mark this would be on my record: a brand new Gank-cane blasted to bits by mission rats, after the actual mission runner was long gone.
The frigate was at half armor as I went into structure. I continued to fire the 220s at the ship, I guess for moral support for the drones, while I checked and re-checked alignment to make sure I could warp the moment I was free.
The frigate went into structure. Smoke and fire bellowed from my hull.
An explosion in space.
I mashed the “Recall Drones” button. I would not leave my saviors behind.
“Warp Drive Active.”
Salvation.
Thus did I avoid the most embarrassing turn of events ever. Thus was my career saved by four Warrior I’s and a Valkyrie I. They have secured a place in my hangar forever after as the Drones What Saved My Ass, and they shall enjoy a happy retirement.
So what did I learn from this almost-debacle?
There is also an interesting question that arises out of this whole incident, one that both confounds and irritates me.
If it had a point on the Raven, the Raven wouldn’t have been able to run away as I slowly lumbered toward it, and the operation might have worked out a lot better. So what gives, mission rats?
I expect you to back me up next time. We both want the same thing. You point my mark, I help you kill him. You win, I win, we all win. Deal?
Anyway, it’s been a while, in part because I haven’t actually played much EVE in the last three weeks or so. I’ve been playing other games while my skills train up. One of the blessings and curses of EVE is the skill training system. On the one hand, I’m glad that my skills continue to train while I’m not logged in. But on the other hand, I sometimes find myself asking why I should bother logging in on a particular day, if I need a certain skill and that skill still has three days before it finishes training.
But the skills I needed have finally finished up, so now I’m back in the cockpit and ready to actually start ganking mission bears. To that end, I invested my ISK into a brand new shiny Hurricane, decked it out in the latest tech2 autocannons and sundry tackle apparatus, and launched my new baby into the aether, a blank area on her hull primed for a tally of hapless victims. My eyes flashed with ambition and excitement, my fingers primed to lock point and rain hot space lead upon the unwary and unfortunate. Today, I became a true ninja.
And then nothing happened for five days.
One of the things that other ninja blogs don’t mention is that stalking and ganking the mission runner is much like fishing or hunting in real life. There are long stretches of absolutely nothing occurring, punctuated by sporadic moments of action and violence. For every bagged deer (to reference the type of prey I hunt in real life), there are innumerable hours of just standing around staring at the woods and freezing to death. Such is the way with mission runner ganking. For every killmail and fail-fit, there are dozens of scanned down missions where the bear never shoots, or even really acknowledges that you’re there. Occasionally you get a mission runner who pops his wrecks as a desperate attempt to get you to go away, and now and then you’ll happen upon someone who will call you out in Local, as if that would do anything, but most of the time the prey responds in one of two ways: (1) ignore you completely, or (2) warp off as soon as you land on grid. Now, the truly gifted ninja can often goad or harass the MR into shooting or taking some other action, but such tactics are beyond my rudimentary and largely theoretical knowledge.
And so my beloved Hurricane, dressed to the nines with ammo racked and chambered, sat collecting dust in the hangar for almost a week. Now and then I would fly her around the system and back, just to make sure her moving parts didn’t rust from disuse, but we were both itching for action that I just couldn’t find.
Until, at last, a buck walked into the clearing and approached the salt lick.
A smile came to my lips as the scanner ticked off “Raven: 100%.” Finally, a battleship I could take. The last couple of days had given me nothing but faction battleships and marauders, and while I am more than willing to relieve someone of a grossly overpriced shiny ship, I don’t quite have the confidence to just warp in and start tangling with a Navy Issue, and Marauders never shoot. With equal parts anticipation and pessimistic reservation, I undocked my Vigil and warped to 0.
Unlike most mission sites, this one did not have a gate or multiple rooms, so I landed right in the thick of things. The Raven sat at low burn about 100 km away. Rats, both alive and dead, littered the area. From the location of the wrecks, it seems the Raven had landed in the middle of the room and then started puttering along while it went to work. Of course, since a Raven can barely top 100 m/s on a good day, it hadn’t gotten very far, but it had been in the site long enough to drift a ways away from the warp-in point.
I set right to work, pulling into a tight orbit around the nearest large wreck and locking salvagers. The wreck contained some worthless missiles and a cheap module, but I snatched it up for the aggro. And lo and behold, the angels descended, and the Metatron said, “Thy faith shall be rewarded,” and the Raven locked me up and sent a volley of cruise missiles my way.
Giddy with excitement, I rushed back to station and leapt into the Cane. With all my telepsychic power I demanded that the undock procedure to hurry up, and for the ship to align and enter warp to happen immediately. Moments later I landed in the mission area.
100 km away from the Raven.
The magnitude of my idiocy crashed upon me, and amid a string of curses I pointed the Cane’s nose at the Raven and said, “Go!” And the Cane went, at the blazing speed of 350 m/s.
You have to understand, up until this moment, the two ships I flew most often were a Vigil and a Rifter. Both of those can break 1000 m/s with an afterburner running. The oppressive lethargy of larger ships like Battlecruisers had yet to sink in. The idea of tooling around in the vastness of space in a ship that can barely make 100 m/s was beyond my imagination.
As the distance to target slowly ticked down, I made several calculations amidst nervous anger. My warp disrupter, overloaded, had a max range of something like 30 km. My speed was 350 m/s, and my distance to target was 85 km and falling. My lock range was 49 km. I figured if I managed to get into lock range, I could send my drones at the Raven and hope they would distract him long enough for me to get into point range.
But the angels giveth, and they taketh away, and at 60 km away the Raven, realizing his missile volleys were barely denting my shields and that he was currently tanking about twenty rats, warps away, leaving his drones to their fate in his haste.
Oh how I cursed my incompetence. But I was tenacious, and I intended to get that damn Raven when he warped back in to try to finish the mission. I knew my mistake was not making a new bookmark closer to the Raven while I was still in the Vigil, so I decided to plant a new bookmark right where his drones lay, so that when I warped back in I would be right on top of him. But the rats frustrated my purpose. There were too many of them, and they all turned on me once the Raven ran off, so I didn’t get very far. I managed to drop a bookmark 50 km away from the drone before having to warp off and repair. I had a hunch my prey would return quickly, so I docked up, repaired the Cane, and jumped right back to the site.
Just in time to see the Raven warp away, drones in tow.
By this time I was not surprised. Nothing in this gank was going as planned. I still thought my initial plan was sound, so I decided to stay on site and try to plant a bookmark close to where the Raven was warping in and out. I didn’t get very far, of course, under the concentrated fire of the mission rats, so I had to settle for dropping a bookmark 40 km away from the Raven’s warp-in point and make haste back to the station.
Or rather, that was the plan, right up until I hit warp and nothing happened. I checked the Overview. The lone remaining rat frigate was warp disrupting me.
Well, shit.
I locked it up, applied web, and laid into it with the 220s. Nothing. Misses across the board. I started to sweat. Was I really about to lose a Hurricane, a virgin Hurricane no less, to my prey’s mission rats?
In a panic I dumped my drones and engaged them on the frigate. Slowly, slowly, my babies began to eat into the rat’s shields. Meanwhile, the rest of the mission rats had chewed deep into my armor. Lacking any type of active repair module, I was now in a race. Could my drone kill the frigate before the rats killed me? What a ridiculous black mark this would be on my record: a brand new Gank-cane blasted to bits by mission rats, after the actual mission runner was long gone.
The frigate was at half armor as I went into structure. I continued to fire the 220s at the ship, I guess for moral support for the drones, while I checked and re-checked alignment to make sure I could warp the moment I was free.
The frigate went into structure. Smoke and fire bellowed from my hull.
An explosion in space.
I mashed the “Recall Drones” button. I would not leave my saviors behind.
“Warp Drive Active.”
Salvation.
Thus did I avoid the most embarrassing turn of events ever. Thus was my career saved by four Warrior I’s and a Valkyrie I. They have secured a place in my hangar forever after as the Drones What Saved My Ass, and they shall enjoy a happy retirement.
So what did I learn from this almost-debacle?
(1) If the mission site is just one location, and there are no acceleration gates, make sure you plant a new bookmark on top of the mission bear.
(2) Hurricanes are slow lumbering brutes. Don’t expect to run anyone down.
(3) If the mission runner warps off, get the hell out of the mission. Don’t try to tank the rats, and be aware that frigate rats can potentially point you.
(4) Take care of your drones. They will save you.
(5) The mission rats are more dangerous than the mission runner. That’s why you want them attacking the mission runner.
There is also an interesting question that arises out of this whole incident, one that both confounds and irritates me.
(*) If there was still a point frigate rat alive, why the hell wasn’t it pointing the Raven?
If it had a point on the Raven, the Raven wouldn’t have been able to run away as I slowly lumbered toward it, and the operation might have worked out a lot better. So what gives, mission rats?
I expect you to back me up next time. We both want the same thing. You point my mark, I help you kill him. You win, I win, we all win. Deal?
Friday, February 24, 2012
Saturday Lessons pt. 1: QCF + CONCORD
If I have a particular talent for anything, it is the ability to quickly process and comprehend new ideas and information. A side effect of this talent is that I learn things quickly, and do not need repetition or reinforcement to learn the lesson that a particular experience teaches. I make it a personal goal of mine to learn from mistakes and incorporate those lessons into future action. I will make mistakes, but I refuse to make the same mistake twice.
Tying this into EVE, my current interest is in developing my PVP skills. I refer not only to my training (which has now been organized into a four month gunnery support and spaceship command skill regimen), but rather more to accumulating the knowledge and experience necessary to be a competent pilot. I have found that this is something that a lot of pilots neglect, either because they do not grasp the importance of piloting skills, or they believe such skills to be unnecessary. Granted, a ninja salvager does not need expert piloting skills to salvage a mission, and a ninja ganker does not need expert piloting skills to bring down a mission bear. After all, most mission bear ganks are won in the fitting window, and only grossly poor flying on the part of the ganker will allow the mission bear a window to either win or run away. Most of the time, if the ganker understands how to apply a point to the mission ship and what distance to orbit at, the ganker will win simply by virtue of having a ship fitted specifically to kill the mission ship, and the mission ship will lose by virtue of having a ship fitted specifically to kill rats.
But though PVP piloting skills are not necessary for a ninja, that does not mean that they are worhtless. Quite the contrary. No gank is perfectly safe. There is never a situation where you, as the ganker, have perfect information and can deduce exactly how your target will act. If you flip the can of a Bantam, and the Bantam pilot flies off, unless the pilot is days old, you cannot know for sure whether he will: (1) abandon the can and not return, (2) return and continue mining, ignoring your theft, (3) return in a mission fit ship and try to kill you, (4) return in a PVP fit ship and try to kill you, (5) return with a group of corp mates and try to kill you, or (6) do something completely unexpected. You can speculate as to what the Bantam pilot will do, and the hope is always that he returns in a ship ill-fitted for a PVP engagement, but you cannot know until he warps back into the belt, and the moment he does he has the advantage, since he knows what you are flying and where you are.
Having well developed PVP piloting skills can turn the tide of a gank gone bad. If you’re flying a frigate, and your target returns to the belt in an assault frig, proper piloting skills can give you the edge you need to win the engagement, or at worst they may give you the leeway you need to make your escape.
With all of this in mind, I spent last Saturday cruising the belts around Caldari Space, looking for fights, looking for the chances to learn.
I was in a Rifter the whole day, not only because it is the ship I can best fly at the moment, but because it is the best T1 frigate in the game for solo PVP. If I’m going to fly a frigate, I might as well fly the best. My fit was thus:
After cruising through several empty systems, I happened upon a belt occupied by two ships belonging to the same corporation. The nearest ship, a Cormorant, was sitting right next to a jetcan. Never one to pass up the opportunity, I burned on over and flipped the can, giving aggro to both pilots. They immediately warped away.
Hoping that they would return with something worth fighting, I put myself into a medium orbit around my can and waited. Beginner tip: never sit still. Often against bigger ships, the greatest advantage you have is your speed, which lets you outrun large caliber guns. Sitting stationary negates your greatest advantage.
Sure enough, my initial target returned in a Caracal, locked onto me, and launched a volley of missiles that did about ten damage to my shields. I at once deduced that this was the pilot’s mission running ship, and after about six volleys from my guns, the Caracal’s mission running days were over. Upon inspecting the wreck, I found that my suspicions were correct, as her hold contained salvage, several thousand missiles, and ten Militants.
While I was rummaging through the wreck, (and figuring out how to make sure I collected the mission objectives), the other pilot – remember they were corp mates – landed in belt in a battleship. What kind of battleship it was I cannot say for sure, although my hazy memory tells me it might have been a Hyperion. In any case, I warped away at once.
Sitting in relative safety, I considered my options. A battleship is a battleship, after all, and I was a rookie pilot in a frigate. On the other hand, fortune favors the bold. If I died, I was out 6 million for the Rifter. If I killed, it was worth far more. I threw caution to the wind, and warped back to the belt at 70 km, hoping that would give me enough of a distance cushion to figure out a strategy.
The battleship was still there. I set myself to orbit at 10 km and closed in. I hoped that, flying at 1000 m/s at that distance, his guns, whatever they were, would miss me, and I would have time enough to run if things went bad in a hurry. Sure enough, as soon as I got into range he locked me up and opened fire.
And then his ship exploded.
Unbeknownst to me, and obviously unbeknownst to my opponent, the corporate aggression timer had run out. The timer was still active for the Caracal pilot, since she had returned first and started shooting at me, but the corporate timer had never been reset, and it had run out while I was out of the belt thinking about what to do. So, as you may have guessed, as soon as the battleship opened fire, CONCORD appeared and ended the fight before it began. Alas, because I did not realized what was happening, I didn’t think to return fire and try to get on the killmail. Hence why I don’t know exactly what kind of ship it was, nor do I know exactly how it was fit. I know it dropped some rather expensive heavy missile launchers, a moderately expensive railgun, a surprisingly expensive tractor beam, and 3,362 Nova Heavy Missiles.
There was more in the wreck, but I couldn’t carry it all, and when I returned after dropping off most of it in the nearest station, I found the original Caracal pilot back in the belt scooping up everything that was left. The pilot invited me to a conversation, and I seized the opportunity to make just a little more money.
But aside from the ISK, this experience yielded several important lessons:
The failure, or inability, to learn from experience is the hallmark of the Scrub, and the Scrub is the primary target of the can flipper and ninja ganker. Scrubs produce tears like spiders spin webs: it’s inherent in their nature.
We learn so that we do not become a Scrub, and so that we may exploit Scrubs now and ever after.
Next time: I lose ships! God damn it!
Tying this into EVE, my current interest is in developing my PVP skills. I refer not only to my training (which has now been organized into a four month gunnery support and spaceship command skill regimen), but rather more to accumulating the knowledge and experience necessary to be a competent pilot. I have found that this is something that a lot of pilots neglect, either because they do not grasp the importance of piloting skills, or they believe such skills to be unnecessary. Granted, a ninja salvager does not need expert piloting skills to salvage a mission, and a ninja ganker does not need expert piloting skills to bring down a mission bear. After all, most mission bear ganks are won in the fitting window, and only grossly poor flying on the part of the ganker will allow the mission bear a window to either win or run away. Most of the time, if the ganker understands how to apply a point to the mission ship and what distance to orbit at, the ganker will win simply by virtue of having a ship fitted specifically to kill the mission ship, and the mission ship will lose by virtue of having a ship fitted specifically to kill rats.
But though PVP piloting skills are not necessary for a ninja, that does not mean that they are worhtless. Quite the contrary. No gank is perfectly safe. There is never a situation where you, as the ganker, have perfect information and can deduce exactly how your target will act. If you flip the can of a Bantam, and the Bantam pilot flies off, unless the pilot is days old, you cannot know for sure whether he will: (1) abandon the can and not return, (2) return and continue mining, ignoring your theft, (3) return in a mission fit ship and try to kill you, (4) return in a PVP fit ship and try to kill you, (5) return with a group of corp mates and try to kill you, or (6) do something completely unexpected. You can speculate as to what the Bantam pilot will do, and the hope is always that he returns in a ship ill-fitted for a PVP engagement, but you cannot know until he warps back into the belt, and the moment he does he has the advantage, since he knows what you are flying and where you are.
Having well developed PVP piloting skills can turn the tide of a gank gone bad. If you’re flying a frigate, and your target returns to the belt in an assault frig, proper piloting skills can give you the edge you need to win the engagement, or at worst they may give you the leeway you need to make your escape.
With all of this in mind, I spent last Saturday cruising the belts around Caldari Space, looking for fights, looking for the chances to learn.
I was in a Rifter the whole day, not only because it is the ship I can best fly at the moment, but because it is the best T1 frigate in the game for solo PVP. If I’m going to fly a frigate, I might as well fly the best. My fit was thus:
[Rifter, Belt Cruising]Veterans will recognize that this fit is not the classic Rifter fit, but a slight modification of it, with a missile launcher in place of a Nosferatu and Collision Accelerator rigs in place of Burst Aerators and Ambit Extensions. Why did I make these modifications? Because I made the same mistake that so many people make, not only in EVE but in many other games: I valued raw damage above all other stats. By adding the launcher and the different rigs, I increased my theoretical DPS from about 65 to about 80. At the time I believed this to be superior. I have since learned that lesson, but let’s not jump ahead.
Highs:
3x 200mm Autocannon II
‘Limos” Rocket LauncherMids:
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Experimental 1MN AfterburnerLows:
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plate
Small Armor Repairer II
Damage Control IIRigs:
2x Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
After cruising through several empty systems, I happened upon a belt occupied by two ships belonging to the same corporation. The nearest ship, a Cormorant, was sitting right next to a jetcan. Never one to pass up the opportunity, I burned on over and flipped the can, giving aggro to both pilots. They immediately warped away.
Hoping that they would return with something worth fighting, I put myself into a medium orbit around my can and waited. Beginner tip: never sit still. Often against bigger ships, the greatest advantage you have is your speed, which lets you outrun large caliber guns. Sitting stationary negates your greatest advantage.
Sure enough, my initial target returned in a Caracal, locked onto me, and launched a volley of missiles that did about ten damage to my shields. I at once deduced that this was the pilot’s mission running ship, and after about six volleys from my guns, the Caracal’s mission running days were over. Upon inspecting the wreck, I found that my suspicions were correct, as her hold contained salvage, several thousand missiles, and ten Militants.
While I was rummaging through the wreck, (and figuring out how to make sure I collected the mission objectives), the other pilot – remember they were corp mates – landed in belt in a battleship. What kind of battleship it was I cannot say for sure, although my hazy memory tells me it might have been a Hyperion. In any case, I warped away at once.
Sitting in relative safety, I considered my options. A battleship is a battleship, after all, and I was a rookie pilot in a frigate. On the other hand, fortune favors the bold. If I died, I was out 6 million for the Rifter. If I killed, it was worth far more. I threw caution to the wind, and warped back to the belt at 70 km, hoping that would give me enough of a distance cushion to figure out a strategy.
The battleship was still there. I set myself to orbit at 10 km and closed in. I hoped that, flying at 1000 m/s at that distance, his guns, whatever they were, would miss me, and I would have time enough to run if things went bad in a hurry. Sure enough, as soon as I got into range he locked me up and opened fire.
And then his ship exploded.
Unbeknownst to me, and obviously unbeknownst to my opponent, the corporate aggression timer had run out. The timer was still active for the Caracal pilot, since she had returned first and started shooting at me, but the corporate timer had never been reset, and it had run out while I was out of the belt thinking about what to do. So, as you may have guessed, as soon as the battleship opened fire, CONCORD appeared and ended the fight before it began. Alas, because I did not realized what was happening, I didn’t think to return fire and try to get on the killmail. Hence why I don’t know exactly what kind of ship it was, nor do I know exactly how it was fit. I know it dropped some rather expensive heavy missile launchers, a moderately expensive railgun, a surprisingly expensive tractor beam, and 3,362 Nova Heavy Missiles.
There was more in the wreck, but I couldn’t carry it all, and when I returned after dropping off most of it in the nearest station, I found the original Caracal pilot back in the belt scooping up everything that was left. The pilot invited me to a conversation, and I seized the opportunity to make just a little more money.
Instancia Nardieu > are you happy now?All told, that encounter netted me about 30 million, after the sale of all the stuff that dropped off the Caracal and the battleship.
Sertoria Kumamato > Well, you did take the rest of the stuff from that Hyperion, so that's unfortunate.
Instancia Nardieu > ??
Sertoria Kumamato > If you want your Militants back, I'll put them on private contract to you at the Urlen VI station,
Instancia Nardieu > that would be nice if you would do that
Sertoria Kumamato > Sure thing. 5 million sound fair?
Instancia Nardieu > ok wait a moment
Instancia Nardieu > which station?
Sertoria Kumamato > Urlen VI, Chief Executive Panel Bureau
Sertoria Kumamato > One sec, let me get there.
Instancia Nardieu > iam here
Sertoria Kumamato > Okay, set up.
Instancia Nardieu > how does this work ._.
Instancia Nardieu > tradeing?
Sertoria Kumamato > Go to the top button the left, then under business, Contracts.
Instancia Nardieu > ok
Sertoria Kumamato > Then under Available Contracts, clear all the fields, then under "Availability" choose "Me." Then Search. It should come up.
Instancia Nardieu > ive done. you have the 5 millioon
Sertoria Kumamato > So it seems. Pleasure doing business.
Instancia Nardieu > ok. bye
Sertoria Kumamato > Bye bye
But aside from the ISK, this experience yielded several important lessons:
As I harped on back at the beginning of this post, after every engagement, whether you win or lose, it is paramount that you LEARN from the experience. Now, I am not saying that you must approach every aspect of EVE Online as some kind of academic lesson. You’re not going to be graded. But you are going to be tested. Every time you undock the other denizens of New Eden test you. Every time I flip a can, I am testing whether the target knows how to handle that situation. If the pilot fails the test, the pilot loses a ship. Every time I flip a can, I am subjecting myself to a test as to whether I can handle the ramifications of that flip.If your target warps off, be ready for him to come back in anything.It is important to quickly assess the damage potential of your opponent, and determine whether he or she can kill you.Watch the aggression timers, and make sure to keep track of corporate aggression versus individual aggression. Remember that you can exploit this.People will CONCORDOKKEN themselves. This sounds impossible, because you get a pop-up warning you that it will happen, but people will still do it. Be ready to piggy-back onto the killmail when it happens.
The failure, or inability, to learn from experience is the hallmark of the Scrub, and the Scrub is the primary target of the can flipper and ninja ganker. Scrubs produce tears like spiders spin webs: it’s inherent in their nature.
We learn so that we do not become a Scrub, and so that we may exploit Scrubs now and ever after.
Next time: I lose ships! God damn it!
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The First Adventure, a Fateful Encounter
At one point while voraciously devouring the archives of several EVE blogs, I happened upon a statement that gave me pause. I believe it was Jester (but don’t quote me on that), commenting that EVE is a gerontocracy of sorts. That is, it is a game where older players have the advantage and the power, and newer players can, and always will, be inferior. This is, of course, due to EVE’s skill training mechanic, and to a degree the logic holds. An older character will always have more skill points than a new character, and therefore will be able to fly more ships, will be able to fly those ships better, and will be able to better fit those ships.
Nevertheless, I could not but conclude that this statement is false, because it ignores an enormous variable; in fact, it ignores the most important variable in EVE Online.
The player.
A character may have one hundred million skill points, may be tooling around nullsec in an officer fitted Titan, and may have five trillion ISK in his wallet, but if the player controlling that character is a moron, those in-game advantages are worthless. Player skill, that unique combination of individual intellect, wisdom, understanding of game mechanics, and general craftiness, is a far more important attribute than any in-game number.
Now, I make no claim to be an expert at EVE Online. As someone who has been playing for less than a month, I cannot possibly assert that I understand the finer nuances of the game, or that the years of experience accrued by older players count for nothing. I’m sure that, in a PVP scenario, a seasoned veteran would be able to obliterate me with a day old character, simply because he or she knows how to fight, whereas I only know the theory behind a fight.
But that does not mean I cannot be crafty, after a fashion, and it does not mean that I cannot still get the better of an idiot.
Our story begins during my first evening cruising the belts around central Caldari space. I was piloting my trusty Rifter, go-to ship for would-be PVP pilots, fitted with the most affordable of T1 guns and tank modules. I had decided to try my hand and the ancient and revered ninja art of can-flipping, which is not quite as easy as you might think. For one, everyone uses those goddamn secured containers. Added to that, most of the miners I found were in hulks or retrievers, which don’t tend to pop cans anyway. Maybe it was because I was flying around at about 2:00 AM Central US time, and the only people online are hardcore miners who know what they’re doing, or maybe I just had bad luck.
Anyway, eventually I warp into a belt to find a Cormorant and a Badger mining away, with nary a can in sight. But lo, off in the distance, there lay some belt rat wrecks belonging to the Cormorant, and they were yet unlooted. Seizing the opportunity, I burned over to the nearest wreck, swiped an incredibly valuable Invulnerability Field I, and proceeded to ram my Rifter straight into the Cormorant, in case he hadn’t noticed me yet.
No response. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and so I began a grand campaign of bumping, flying toward the asteroid he was mining, flipping about face, and crashing into him at top speed. With each collision the mighty destroyer drifted further away from the asteroid, until at last the Cormorant was beyond mining laser range and the beam cut off.
This cruelty was the straw that broke the Cormie’s back, and he at once locked me up and unleashed the full might of his weapons. Unfortunately for him, those weapons consisted of a meta 2 missile launcher and a 125mm railgun. Further compounding his problems, the poor Cormorant failed to fit anything at all but for those weapons and four mining lasers, and after three or so volleys from my autocannons the mighty destroyer burst into flames.
A rather uninteresting kill, I grant you, but it was my very first, so it was worth recounting.
But, dear reader, this is not the end of the story. That was merely the prelude to the true encounter of the evening.
Riding the high from my first kill, I change systems and warp into another belt. By some cosmic coincidence, at the exact moment I land in belt, another ship lands as well: a Typhoon Fleet Issue. I had never seen one before, and after looking at this one I can safely relay to you that the TFI is one ugly looking ship. While I was wondering what a Phoon was doing there, I noticed that there was a jetcan in the belt as well. Flipping instincts take over, and I approach. After checking to make sure the can is not owned by the Phoon pilot, or owned by someone in his corporation, I flip the can and go into a wide orbit around it.
The Phoon pilot, a dashing gentleman by the name of Draga Lister, decides that he’s got the chops to take on a three week old Rifter pilot, and blows up my can with a cruise missile, (my can, full of some poor third party’s ore). He then pops a can of his own and brings his ship to a dead stop.
My curiosity gets the better of me, and I set my Rifter into a tight orbit around Draga’s ugly monstrosity while I Alt-Tab out to Google “Rifter vs. Typhoon.” Of course, there are no hits, and Wensley’s Rifter Guide is likewise silent on whether a T1 frigate can tango with a battleship. I decide to “Look At” the ship, at which point I notice its name, big dick cumspewer. Oh, how I cursed my situation. Would that I had encountered Draga a month or two from now! How I would revel in relieving him of his beloved cumspewer. (Seriously, I would gladly sacrifice any number of cheap throwaway ships to rid New Eden of a tumor with a name like that.)
Anyway, while inspecting I discover that there are no guns on his ship, which means he must only have launchers fitted, and since I saw a cruise missile pop my can, I can reasonably deduce that he has battleship-sized launchers. So I sat and thought. On the one hand, given the small signature radius and speed of my ship, his missiles probably wouldn’t do much to me, and my web would let me slow down and pick off his drones. On the other hand, I was fitted with middle-grade T1 guns and lacked the ability to overheat; breaking his tank was not likely.
Thus I found myself in a most unfortunate situation. Here I had a Typhoon Fleet Issue, named big dick cumspewer, that had flagged himself for me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Lamentation upon lamentation! To add insult to injury, Draga decided to yellow box me right about now, teasing that he might have a heart attack, mash his “fire” key, and CONCORD himself.
But lo, there came to me in my despair that most true and wise of ninja proverbs: “If you can’t win, at least make sure your opponent loses.”
Shamelessly stealing a trick from Aiden Mourn, I set my CSPA charge to 1,000,000 ISK, and fired off this evemail:
Me: 0
Draga Lister: -2,000,000 ISK, - 2 cruise missiles
Random miner: - 7,000~ units of Veldspar
- Sert
Nevertheless, I could not but conclude that this statement is false, because it ignores an enormous variable; in fact, it ignores the most important variable in EVE Online.
The player.
A character may have one hundred million skill points, may be tooling around nullsec in an officer fitted Titan, and may have five trillion ISK in his wallet, but if the player controlling that character is a moron, those in-game advantages are worthless. Player skill, that unique combination of individual intellect, wisdom, understanding of game mechanics, and general craftiness, is a far more important attribute than any in-game number.
Now, I make no claim to be an expert at EVE Online. As someone who has been playing for less than a month, I cannot possibly assert that I understand the finer nuances of the game, or that the years of experience accrued by older players count for nothing. I’m sure that, in a PVP scenario, a seasoned veteran would be able to obliterate me with a day old character, simply because he or she knows how to fight, whereas I only know the theory behind a fight.
But that does not mean I cannot be crafty, after a fashion, and it does not mean that I cannot still get the better of an idiot.
Our story begins during my first evening cruising the belts around central Caldari space. I was piloting my trusty Rifter, go-to ship for would-be PVP pilots, fitted with the most affordable of T1 guns and tank modules. I had decided to try my hand and the ancient and revered ninja art of can-flipping, which is not quite as easy as you might think. For one, everyone uses those goddamn secured containers. Added to that, most of the miners I found were in hulks or retrievers, which don’t tend to pop cans anyway. Maybe it was because I was flying around at about 2:00 AM Central US time, and the only people online are hardcore miners who know what they’re doing, or maybe I just had bad luck.
Anyway, eventually I warp into a belt to find a Cormorant and a Badger mining away, with nary a can in sight. But lo, off in the distance, there lay some belt rat wrecks belonging to the Cormorant, and they were yet unlooted. Seizing the opportunity, I burned over to the nearest wreck, swiped an incredibly valuable Invulnerability Field I, and proceeded to ram my Rifter straight into the Cormorant, in case he hadn’t noticed me yet.
No response. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and so I began a grand campaign of bumping, flying toward the asteroid he was mining, flipping about face, and crashing into him at top speed. With each collision the mighty destroyer drifted further away from the asteroid, until at last the Cormorant was beyond mining laser range and the beam cut off.
This cruelty was the straw that broke the Cormie’s back, and he at once locked me up and unleashed the full might of his weapons. Unfortunately for him, those weapons consisted of a meta 2 missile launcher and a 125mm railgun. Further compounding his problems, the poor Cormorant failed to fit anything at all but for those weapons and four mining lasers, and after three or so volleys from my autocannons the mighty destroyer burst into flames.
A rather uninteresting kill, I grant you, but it was my very first, so it was worth recounting.
But, dear reader, this is not the end of the story. That was merely the prelude to the true encounter of the evening.
Riding the high from my first kill, I change systems and warp into another belt. By some cosmic coincidence, at the exact moment I land in belt, another ship lands as well: a Typhoon Fleet Issue. I had never seen one before, and after looking at this one I can safely relay to you that the TFI is one ugly looking ship. While I was wondering what a Phoon was doing there, I noticed that there was a jetcan in the belt as well. Flipping instincts take over, and I approach. After checking to make sure the can is not owned by the Phoon pilot, or owned by someone in his corporation, I flip the can and go into a wide orbit around it.
The Phoon pilot, a dashing gentleman by the name of Draga Lister, decides that he’s got the chops to take on a three week old Rifter pilot, and blows up my can with a cruise missile, (my can, full of some poor third party’s ore). He then pops a can of his own and brings his ship to a dead stop.
My curiosity gets the better of me, and I set my Rifter into a tight orbit around Draga’s ugly monstrosity while I Alt-Tab out to Google “Rifter vs. Typhoon.” Of course, there are no hits, and Wensley’s Rifter Guide is likewise silent on whether a T1 frigate can tango with a battleship. I decide to “Look At” the ship, at which point I notice its name, big dick cumspewer. Oh, how I cursed my situation. Would that I had encountered Draga a month or two from now! How I would revel in relieving him of his beloved cumspewer. (Seriously, I would gladly sacrifice any number of cheap throwaway ships to rid New Eden of a tumor with a name like that.)
Anyway, while inspecting I discover that there are no guns on his ship, which means he must only have launchers fitted, and since I saw a cruise missile pop my can, I can reasonably deduce that he has battleship-sized launchers. So I sat and thought. On the one hand, given the small signature radius and speed of my ship, his missiles probably wouldn’t do much to me, and my web would let me slow down and pick off his drones. On the other hand, I was fitted with middle-grade T1 guns and lacked the ability to overheat; breaking his tank was not likely.
Thus I found myself in a most unfortunate situation. Here I had a Typhoon Fleet Issue, named big dick cumspewer, that had flagged himself for me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Lamentation upon lamentation! To add insult to injury, Draga decided to yellow box me right about now, teasing that he might have a heart attack, mash his “fire” key, and CONCORD himself.
But lo, there came to me in my despair that most true and wise of ninja proverbs: “If you can’t win, at least make sure your opponent loses.”
Shamelessly stealing a trick from Aiden Mourn, I set my CSPA charge to 1,000,000 ISK, and fired off this evemail:
Yellow boxingI checked my wallet to make sure I didn’t fall into my own trap, and then sat back and waited. Sure enough, within moment Draga sent me a reply mail:
From: Sertoria Kumamato
Sent: 2012.01.30 23:14
To: Draga Lister,
Contemplating pulling the trigger?
Re: Yellow boxingSuccess! I pressed to see how much I could milk this.
From: Draga Lister
Sent: 2012.01.30 23:15
To: Sertoria Kumamato,
erm nope - you may if you wish
Re: Re: Yellow boxingAt this point he started taunting me in local, saying something along the lines of “Aww Sertoria Kumamato, look at your widdle ship. Feeling a bit of ship envy, are we?” Ignoring such drivel, I watched my mailbox, and soon I received this gem.
From: Sertoria Kumamato
Sent: 2012.01.30 23:17
To: Draga Lister,
I'm not sure I like my odds, especially against something with a name like that.
Re: Re: Re: Yellow boxingI pressed again.
From: Draga Lister
Sent: 2012.01.30 23:19
To: Sertoria Kumamato,
this is a game - u either play and have a lol or you will never enjoy it - someone allows u to have a pop at there ship take that opportunity as it does not come along often
Re: Re: Re: Re: Yellow boxingAlas, he must have noticed his shrinking funds, and just about now the fifteen minute timer elapsed. Draga dropped his lock on me, used another cruise missile to destroy his own can (so manly!), and warped off. As he disappeared from the grid I sent him one last message.
From: Sertoria Kumamato
Sent: 2012.01.30 23:21
To: Draga Lister,
As much as I appreciate the learning opportunity, I think I can assess my likelihood of success without testing it in the field.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Yellow boxingThus ended my grand encounter with Draga Lister, with the final score:
From: Sertoria Kumamato
Sent: 2012.01.30 23:24
To: Draga Lister,
By the by, I'm sure CONCORD appreciated your donations.
Me: 0
Draga Lister: -2,000,000 ISK, - 2 cruise missiles
Random miner: - 7,000~ units of Veldspar
- Sert
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Calling
I tried EVE Online about a year ago, and managed to last all of one hour.
You see, I have a dream. A dream of a wide open space simulation game in which I get to fly awesome spaceships around in any direction doing all manner of things space-related. I tried Sins of a Solar Empire, but the combat in that game is garbage. (Also, I always went broke rather quickly and got steam-rolled by my neighbors.) None of the games on Steam fit the criteria. So in my desperation, I turned to EVE.
I had heard from the Internet, (the most reliable of sources), that EVE Online was replete with scammers, griefing, spreadsheets, and confusing interfaces that make Microsoft Excel jealous. However, I had also heard that EVE had spaceships, and an open galaxy to explore, and the ability to fly around and do whatever you want. So I created a trial account, logged in, and entered the world of New Eden.
And then promptly left the world of New Eden in disgust.
Looking back on it now, I don’t really remember why I hated that scant hour with the game. I didn’t do much research before playing it, and I had no idea as to how you actually handle the game, so I imagine that hour was largely spent fighting the UI and not understanding how to fly my goddamn internet spaceship. And since flying goddamn internet spaceships was the whole point, once I realized that the game didn’t seem to want me flying said internet spaceships, I logged off, uninstalled the game, and never looked back.
So now jump to about three weeks ago, when I decided to look back. Remarkably, it was not the release of Crucible that drew me to the game (although it was VERY fortuitous timing that I came back to the game right as that expansion dropped), but rather my dream, my fervent desire, to fly spaceships. There still was no other viable alternative, and so, steeling my resolve to brave any interface in order to get to fly my precious internet spaceships, I made a new trial account, downloaded the client through Steam, and logged back into New Eden.
This time, I stuck around.
I suppose I should commend CCP for the latest iteration of the new player experience. The initial tutorial, followed by the five career agents, worked very well to introduce the many mechanics of the game, as well as suggest possible careers that I could pursue whilst flying my beloved spaceship. However, following the completion of those career agents, I found myself at a loss as to what to do. I was already perusing EVE blogs, in an attempt to get a better grasp of the game, and reading about lowsec PVP adventures led me to consider piracy. But one does not simply waltz into lowsec with a two day old character and start ransoming haulers. I had to do something while I was training the necessary skills and accumulating the necessary capital.
So I looked up missions, learned of the Sisters of EVE level 1 epic mission arc, and set out to complete it. I wrapped it up a few days later, richer by a few million ISK, but poorer for the experience. Mission running is basically just normal MMO questing, but that EVE doesn’t tell you to “kill 10 foozles,” it tells you to “go to this place and kill all the foozles,” with the foozle count ranging somewhere between three and a boatload (for the higher level missions). This was not what I wanted to do. I did not brave the 1998 user interface of the game just to fly my internet spaceship around popping foozles and collecting 50,000 ISK rewards! There must be something more!
After further investigation, I learned that the “something more” was reserved for characters with more skill points. Incursions, nullsec warfare, piracy, exploration, all of it was for older characters with skill points coming out of their ass and faction fit capital ships. The only things I could find that were within my capabilities were mission running and low-grade planetary interaction. Thus educated, and somewhat dejected, I set course for a system with a good corporation for grinding missions and standing (a system that, coincidentally, had a good planet setup for Tier 2 planetary production), plopped down a few planetary command centers, and started popping mission rats.
For three days I was miserable. My playtime consisted of, “log in, reset planet extractors, do three our four missions, hope one of them was a high quality one that paid out 500,000 ISK, train skills toward bigger ships, log off.” This was not fun. This was a fucking job.
But then, just when all hope was lost, and it seemed that there was no fun to be had in EVE for at least the first six months, a miracle happened. By one way or another, leapfrogging from blog to blog to forum post to Evelopedia entry, I discovered something that would change everything.
Kahega's Ninja Salvaging Guide
From there I discovered the ninja ganking and salvaging blogs, wherein I learned of a whole new way to play the game. Stealing mission runner loot, creating highsec PVP, suicide ganking, salvaging from high level missions. Now this sounded like fun.
Within minutes I was in Jita, buying and fitting a Probe and a Vigil. I brought up the map and searched for the systems with the most pirate kills in the last 24 hours. I jumped my new ships there, scanned down a Navy Raven, and warped right into Angel Extravaganza. I made more ISK in one hour than I had made in the last ten days combined.
The next day, I harvested my planets, demolished all my command centers, and left my old mission system never to return.
For now I know what I want to do. I want to relieve mission runners of their salvage, which they so carelessly leave cluttering up the systems. Soon, I shall relieve them of their ships as well.
- Sert
You see, I have a dream. A dream of a wide open space simulation game in which I get to fly awesome spaceships around in any direction doing all manner of things space-related. I tried Sins of a Solar Empire, but the combat in that game is garbage. (Also, I always went broke rather quickly and got steam-rolled by my neighbors.) None of the games on Steam fit the criteria. So in my desperation, I turned to EVE.
I had heard from the Internet, (the most reliable of sources), that EVE Online was replete with scammers, griefing, spreadsheets, and confusing interfaces that make Microsoft Excel jealous. However, I had also heard that EVE had spaceships, and an open galaxy to explore, and the ability to fly around and do whatever you want. So I created a trial account, logged in, and entered the world of New Eden.
And then promptly left the world of New Eden in disgust.
Looking back on it now, I don’t really remember why I hated that scant hour with the game. I didn’t do much research before playing it, and I had no idea as to how you actually handle the game, so I imagine that hour was largely spent fighting the UI and not understanding how to fly my goddamn internet spaceship. And since flying goddamn internet spaceships was the whole point, once I realized that the game didn’t seem to want me flying said internet spaceships, I logged off, uninstalled the game, and never looked back.
So now jump to about three weeks ago, when I decided to look back. Remarkably, it was not the release of Crucible that drew me to the game (although it was VERY fortuitous timing that I came back to the game right as that expansion dropped), but rather my dream, my fervent desire, to fly spaceships. There still was no other viable alternative, and so, steeling my resolve to brave any interface in order to get to fly my precious internet spaceships, I made a new trial account, downloaded the client through Steam, and logged back into New Eden.
This time, I stuck around.
I suppose I should commend CCP for the latest iteration of the new player experience. The initial tutorial, followed by the five career agents, worked very well to introduce the many mechanics of the game, as well as suggest possible careers that I could pursue whilst flying my beloved spaceship. However, following the completion of those career agents, I found myself at a loss as to what to do. I was already perusing EVE blogs, in an attempt to get a better grasp of the game, and reading about lowsec PVP adventures led me to consider piracy. But one does not simply waltz into lowsec with a two day old character and start ransoming haulers. I had to do something while I was training the necessary skills and accumulating the necessary capital.
So I looked up missions, learned of the Sisters of EVE level 1 epic mission arc, and set out to complete it. I wrapped it up a few days later, richer by a few million ISK, but poorer for the experience. Mission running is basically just normal MMO questing, but that EVE doesn’t tell you to “kill 10 foozles,” it tells you to “go to this place and kill all the foozles,” with the foozle count ranging somewhere between three and a boatload (for the higher level missions). This was not what I wanted to do. I did not brave the 1998 user interface of the game just to fly my internet spaceship around popping foozles and collecting 50,000 ISK rewards! There must be something more!
After further investigation, I learned that the “something more” was reserved for characters with more skill points. Incursions, nullsec warfare, piracy, exploration, all of it was for older characters with skill points coming out of their ass and faction fit capital ships. The only things I could find that were within my capabilities were mission running and low-grade planetary interaction. Thus educated, and somewhat dejected, I set course for a system with a good corporation for grinding missions and standing (a system that, coincidentally, had a good planet setup for Tier 2 planetary production), plopped down a few planetary command centers, and started popping mission rats.
For three days I was miserable. My playtime consisted of, “log in, reset planet extractors, do three our four missions, hope one of them was a high quality one that paid out 500,000 ISK, train skills toward bigger ships, log off.” This was not fun. This was a fucking job.
But then, just when all hope was lost, and it seemed that there was no fun to be had in EVE for at least the first six months, a miracle happened. By one way or another, leapfrogging from blog to blog to forum post to Evelopedia entry, I discovered something that would change everything.
Kahega's Ninja Salvaging Guide
From there I discovered the ninja ganking and salvaging blogs, wherein I learned of a whole new way to play the game. Stealing mission runner loot, creating highsec PVP, suicide ganking, salvaging from high level missions. Now this sounded like fun.
Within minutes I was in Jita, buying and fitting a Probe and a Vigil. I brought up the map and searched for the systems with the most pirate kills in the last 24 hours. I jumped my new ships there, scanned down a Navy Raven, and warped right into Angel Extravaganza. I made more ISK in one hour than I had made in the last ten days combined.
The next day, I harvested my planets, demolished all my command centers, and left my old mission system never to return.
For now I know what I want to do. I want to relieve mission runners of their salvage, which they so carelessly leave cluttering up the systems. Soon, I shall relieve them of their ships as well.
- Sert
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