Eve for dummies

[Jonathan]

Eve is simple! What's more, you should play because on Tuesday they're publishing Revelations 2, which changes starbase warfare so smaller groups in smaller ships (i.e. newbs) can have fun in territorial PvP. Also, mission rewards are now split between all members of a gang so you have your choice of casual pickup groups or soloing PvE. Finally, the tutorial is shortened, revised, and instanced.

Make a Caldari Achura Soldier with 4 or maybe 5 Charisma if you're a total carebear.
Do the new short tutorial.
Hit me up for some isk.
Buy a Merlin or maybe a Kestrel and run some kill missions.
Train spaceships command skills. Don't train industry or science.
Join a corp. My current corp is PvP focused and 0.0 based, and it is fun. The corp will give you ships and fittings for free (and usually insure them for you, too), and will be very glad to have you because new players are useful (i.e. no one is going to tell you stfu noob). Or you can join an empire carebear outfit, I know a couple. A lot of guys in my corp do PvE to fund expensive PvP fits, so you should be able to piggyback on them easy.

This means you, Dave! And everyone else.

[Jonathan]

Reasoning: As Caldari, you're playing Eve on easy mode by being a missile whore. As a Soldier, you'll have good gunnery so if you decide you want to do more damage, you can branch out to Gallente in about a day and start pwning. And Achura have the best combat stats.

[Jonathan]

RIOT moved from Great Wildlands with Cult of War to take space from Smash and R0adkill in Geminate. It was not a successful campaign, and it's not hard to see why. Our leadership based us in Akora, which is only two jumps from BWF, their home system, but is also in lowsec. There was one approach to their system, which they camped effectively. They also maintained headcount during our low hours and kept us from taking and defending POSs in latenight Euro/primetime US time.

The 9 page contract report from the Mercenary Coalition is a satisfying writeup of the recent war in the north. Definitely the best actual battle report and not scam or "me vs. the 'roids" story I've ever seen. One of RIOT's leaders knows a director in MC, and negotiated docking rights with an option for station ownership in the conquered territories for us. So now we live in the north in some of the damn deepest 0.0 in the game.

[Jonathan]

The quick one-page summary of the above battle report:
http://amelia.podbase.com/warreport/ste ... rnorth.jpg

[Jonathan]

http://www.scrapheap-challenge.com/view ... &start=210
http://www.killboard.net/details/169202/

The third Titan ever killed died this morning. It was the first Titan that had a chance to fight back. It was a Band of Brothers (elite hardcore gamers) titan, killed by the SA Goons+friends. The Goons are understandably pleased.

The other five Titan pilots need to reevaluate what the appropriate level of risk is now, I think. It takes 60B to build a Titan after you get the first one, but the real trick is you have to have around three months to build the thing.

[Alan]

I might actually try this out; I'm starting out doing family med and psych (easy rotations) so I should have a lot of free time.

[Jonathan]

Revelations 2 is having all the desired effects. Lots of happy players.

Send me an evemail after you do the tutorial and I'll squirt you some isk. I'm going on vacation next week; I'll be back on the 30th.

My corp is the best, join my corp. Definitely join a corp as soon as you figure out how to fly. Fighting solo is fine and even desirable, but solo without a corp is just wrong. The NPC corp doesn't give you any support. A real corp has hangars full of stuff so you don't have to fly all over the place to get stuff.
If you don't apply to Queens, there's a corp for new players called Eve University. Very good; join that if you want more info about the game in general. They don't have any corp goals other than integrating new players into the game.
If you are looking to do a lot of PvP, my corp is good, but you could also look into Agony Unleashed or Sniggwaffe. Both are pirate corps that recruit new players heavily, put them into frigates, and lead them around for pew pew.
If you are a longtime Something Awful forum subscriber, you could join the Goons. I will shoot you in that case.

[Jonathan]

Also, if you cancel your subscription, CCP lets your guy continue to train the current skill and will never delete your character. So if you get onto a different rotation, start a long ass skill, drop the subscription, and you can come back a year later with more capabilities.

[Alan]

I won't be back in Buffalo until July 8th, so I won't be able to start until then. My PC is in a corner in my apartment, will have to hook it back up and put it on my desk. Hah.

[Jonathan]

https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=102750&nogreet=1

Free trial for Alan (or whoever).

[Alan]

Downloading now, will probably play for a couple hours tonight.

[Jonathan]

Cool, Amber's doing schoolwork so I'll be online.

[Jonathan]

How long is the new tutorial?

Some fun things to do during the trial:

1. More missions. You can do level 2 on the trial, I think. The trick is to train Connections. Most predictable rewards.
2. Go to .5-.4, head to asteroid belts, and kill the NPCs. In .4, watch out for human pirates. Sometimes you'll find difficult spawns with phatter loot this way.
3. Use the built-in scanner to find encounters. I really haven't tried this since it is new. Most unpredictable in terms of what you'll find. Seems some of them are quite valuable.
4. Yarr! I can help with piratin'.
5. Join my corp, come to PF-Q, and get in a roaming gang to learn the pew pew. (Best option! You could do this without joining my corp, but odds are a friendly would eventually kill you for being neutral before I could tell them not to.)

Other fun stuff includes fleet battles, territorial warfare, blockade running, smuggling, suicide ganking in Jita, mercenary work, abusing the macrominers and isk farmers, running black ops disrupting industrial operations, and just plain dueling. Most of that might be hard to do on your trial... suicide ganking might work.

[Jonathan]

Aw, hell.

I got the Griffin and Merlin confused. Merlin is what I meant to recommend.

Whoops.

[Jonathan]

Here's a possible fit for a Merlin I cooked up on QuickFit.

Long Range Merlin

Highs
2x Standard Missile Launcher
2x 75mm Gatling Rail

Meds
Small Shield Booster
2x Kinetic Deflection Amplifier
Medium Shield Extender

Lows
2x Power Diagnostic System

Strengths: pounding from a distance, taking kinetic damage
Weaknesses: speed, electronic warfare, damage

Guns are good. So are missiles. I went with the weakest rail guns because they use the least grid. I used rails because they are long range and the ship has a bonus to gun range. Standard missile launchers are also long range and complement the rails.

As Caldari, the mids are your tank slots. Merlin has a bonus to shield resistance, so I ran with it. First, the medium extender. It is a cruiser module which uses up almost all your grid. It also gives you a ton of shield HP. Engage your shield booster only when below 50% shield, and don't leave it on or your capacitor will be gone. The booster is for "oh shit" moments. As Caldari, your opponents deal mostly kinetic, so I slapped on couple of bonuses to kinetic resistance.

Lows on Caldari are meant to complement your other racks. The 2 Power Diagnostic System mods are supposed to increase your grid enough so you can fit the medium extender. They also provide bonuses to your shield HP to improve your tank even more.

[Jonathan]

Here's a different fitting.

Short Range Merlin

Light Neutron Blaster I
Light Neutron Blaster I
Rocket Launcher I
Rocket Launcher I

Small Shield Booster I
1MN Afterburner I
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier I
Stasis Webifier I

Magnetic Field Stabilizer I
Overdrive Injector System I

Strengths: damage, speed
Weaknesses: tank

This version doesn't tank as hard, but it shouldn't need to because it does a lot of damage. Use the afterburner to get in close to your target, then activate the webifier to prevent the target from escaping. Once in range (and your range is large), you should destroy most targets in short order. The booster is there in case you have trouble closing the distance.

Blasters are short range, high damage guns. The neutrons are the most damaging blasters. I downgraded the missiles to rockets for grid reasons.

The afterburner uses a lot of grid, so I had to ditch the extender. Also, the guns won't hit if your target runs away, so I threw on a webifier, too.

The mag stab increase your blaster damage. Damage is your tank with this fit, so more damage is better. I used the overdrive to increase your speed and help you close to your target.

[Jonathan]

For the Griffin I made you buy, you might try something like this:

Griffin

Standard Missile Launcher I
Standard Missile Launcher I
75mm Gatling Rail I

ECM - Spatial Destabilizer I
ECM - Spatial Destabilizer I
Cap Recharger I
ECM - Spatial Destabilizer I

Capacitor Power Relay I

This fitting is designed to have a EW tank. Basically, you're not supposed to get hit because the ECM will jam your opponent. Depending on your cap skills, you might could ditch the Capacitor Power Relay for a Signal Distortion Amplifier to increase the chance of getting off a jam. I could fit an afterburner in there, but I'm not sure if you have the grid.

[Jonathan]

Eve skills are such that it is impossible to master them all, but easy to max out the skills for a particular role. Best way to do training is to figure out what you want to do, pick a ship and fitting that will accomplish it, and then train towards that. Keep in mind that it is smart to train your advanced learning skills before you train anything to level five, though.

Doing it this way, you can easily be as good as the best skilled players in one particular role in a short amount of time.

For example, let's say you decided that you wanted to train interceptors and fly a Crow because they are PvP focused, cheap, good for solo, and good for gangs. Crow needs Evasive Maneuvering V and Caldari Frigate V. Your fit probably involves a T2 1MN MWD, T2 Standard Launchers, and sufficient cap skills and mods to keep the MWD running. Therefore you train High Speed Maneuvering IV and Standard Missiles V, and decent Energy Management, Engineering, and Energy Systems Operation.

It makes good sense to get the advanced learning skills before doing a long train. I'd train all the above skills to IV while flying a Condor or similar T1 frigate to get a feel for the role of interceptor. Then I'd get the advanced learning skills to IV for Intelligence, Perception, and Willpower because those are the ones required for the skills you want to take to V. With the advanced learning skills at IV, hen I'd train the skills for your Crow to V.

Maybe after that you decide you want to pirate with Gallente and drones, so you want T2 drones, Gallente cruisers, and maybe T2 armor tank. First you'd get Gallente cruiser IV, Repair Systems IV, and medium hybrids IV and start flying a Vexor with a T1 fit. The only advanced learning skill you'd need then is Memory, and then you're off and running to train Drones V, Scout Drone Operation V, and Hull Upgrades V. Then if you really like it, maybe you do Medium Hybrids V for T2 turrets and then Gallente Cruiser V for the max ship bonus.

After a while of this, all your support skills are filled in, but you were always training only just what you want and you're always flying a fit that you're very effective with.

The flipside to training this way is what I did, by getting sidetracked with industry and trade skills and training a lot of things to V before I got the advanced learning skills. I could probably have had 3M-5M more skillpoints at this point if I hadn't. Also, I kind of drifted from frigs to cruisers to battlecruisers to battleships with an eye to increasing my PvE income to fund PvP, but never getting good enough skills in one particular ship to be any good at PvP. In PvP, it is better to specialize as if you had a traditional class. In PvE, it is easier to have a broad list of skills.

[Jonathan]

http://ineve.net/skills/character.php?c ... cxMDc5NDM4

Here's my guy.

Some interesting bits:
Most of my skills required Perception and Willpower. Most of the ones I want to train require Perception and Willpower.
I haven't put many skillpoints into tank. I've never really liked getting hit in any game, so getting better at it doesn't sound appealing. I don't have T2 armor hardeners, and I lack level fives in the shield skills. I should probably fix this eventually.
I have the prerequisites for the T2 drone skills but I haven't bought the skills yet because they are expensive. Seems like the price is coming down, though, so I should just do it.
I like damage. About a third of my skillpoints are in gunnery and spaceship command (Minmatar ships mostly have bonuses to damage).
I'm definitely going to train up more Leadership skills, but not for a while. I probably could have waited to do the ones I have, but I don't regret training them.
I do regret training Production Efficiency V. Level IV would have been almost as good, and it just took forever to finish because my intelligence is so low and I hadn't any implants or advanced learning skills. At least I didn't max out mining or something, I guess.
I keep waffling on whether I'm going to train for a Huginn and get some more missile skills. A corpmate is inventing Vagabonds and will sell them to me for cheap, so I may never get good missile skills and just concentrate on guns.
Only a day away from Minmatar Cruiser V. Woo!
I have all the prerequisites to fly Interdictors except Destroyer V. I put it off because I don't want to blow 80M+ on the skillbooks yet. It'll be incredibly useful when I get one, though, so I should just do it. The Sabre is a really nice ship.

[Jonathan]

http://evefiles.mysterious-mysteries.co ... ships.html

Good description of basic ship fitting with focus on Caldari.