22/02/10 10:55 PM
| Jaspet | 43.86 |
| Hemorphite | 49.76 |
| Omber | 54.21 |
| Pyroxeres | 62.98 |
| Hedbergite | 64.65 |
| Spodumain | 74.14 |
| Veldspar | 75.97 |
| Kernite | 80.27 |
| Plagioclase | 86.08 |
| Scordite | 92.41 |
| Dark Ochre | 99.29 |
| Gneiss | 105.88 |
| Crokite | 191.13 |
| Arkonor | 220.85 |
| Bistot | 230.63 |
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 This is in response to a post by ASTRAL DOMINIX. His Harbinger fit will have a hard time running any level 4’s alone. The incoming damage is often at or above 400 dps and medium rep and resists alone aren’t going to get it. I agree with some of the commenters that the Drake can be a great mission boat, but after having run several hundred level 4’s in it and later in a Raven, I learned one very important fact: I can blitz multiple level 3 in a gank fit drake faster than I can run a level 4 [in a Drake].
I’m not going to suggest that you switch to running in a Drake unless you have a specific desire to become a full-time mission runner, and even then I would probably just suggest that you skip the drake and head straight to training for a Raven. I love the utility of these mid-sized ships and prefer to be in a battlecruiser hull if I can.
For example:
- Average Level 4: 5-10 million
- Payout: 300,000-500,000
- Bonus: 300,000-500,000
- Bounties: 1.5-4 million
- Average Level 3: 1.5-3 million
- Payout: 100,000-200,000
- Bonus: 100,000-200,000
- Bounties: 700,000-1,000,000
Then if you fit a drake to run the level 3’s in say, 10-15 minutes each, you can really clean up. It is fairly easy to blitz them for about 10-15 million per hour.
Obligatory Drake Fitting:
[Drake, LVL 3 Blitz Drake]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Shield Power Relay II
Photon Scattering Field II
Heat Dissipation Field II
M51 Iterative Shield Regenerator
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Hobgoblin I x5
Fitting Comments:
1. It’s a tight fit CPU-wise. You may end up needing to drop back to named modules for the tank to free up a little more.
2. The shield resits are interchangeable depending on what you are hunting [fit for Sansha].
3. The ‘Arbalest’ heavy missile launchers are expensive [16 million!], but can usually be resold for the same amount when you move up to a bigger/better ship.
4. Tech 2 Launchers are perhaps a bit to tight to fit here. ‘Malkuth’ are used to cut down on CPU requirements.
5. The dual-rigor catalyst rigs are key. They are the equivalent of having two target painters built into every missile you fire.
My corporate compadres, denizens of Domnion, wanton wormhole wanna-be’s are relentlessly reminding me that it has been a week two weeks nearly three weeks since I posted any information. I’ve been sorely remiss in spending much time posting information here, as I’ve been busy trying to live life in a pod out in the wilds of Apocrypha. Dominion brought some changes, but nothing overly significant to the capsuleers who fly here the wormhole. So then the question I need to answer to myself is, “What has happened?”
We’re still in the same system and we’ve managed to pick up another regular engineer. He really seems to be settling into the opportunities that exist out here in the unknown and is always eager to learn more. He laughs at our attempts to explain that living out of one or more metal boxes powered by a large metal candy cane is a “Lifestyle Choice,” but is excited about the future. We’ll have to revisit the idealism when he’s been ganked a coupled of times, podded and otherwise thrown under the bus [bus being a euphemism for Tech 2 ships with overwhelming firepower and numbers.]
The ability to run sites has picked up some as well with a fairly balanced effort at participation from all involved. We have tried [and been fairly successful] in making everything a concerted group effort, though the industrial side of things is still a bit of a struggle. The new guy has been very giddy about not only mining Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite, but being able to be compensated for it without having to worry about the market, hauling, refining, et cetra. We’re excited about his excitement too. Along the way we’ve become very adroit at operating together as a unit and understanding each others’ strengths and weaknesses. In many ways our efficiency is finally picking up and coming together.
The flip side of this situation is that we are also beginning to realize just how isolated we are. Our jargon and vocabulary has shifted significantly and we communicate in seeming nonsense to some of our corp-mates. We haul our “bloot” to market, we talk about our gases and our pre-warps, we know that “@#$@” and “aoliv89#*&” mean someone is about to die. We have reached the point where we know within a few million isk how much a particular site is worth. We can judge approximate time frames for running those sites. We have become fairly comfortable with suggesting fittings and I would go as far as to say know what should work. We have established procedures for scanning, scouting, bookmarking, mining, fighting, etc that aren’t really written down in electrons anywhere.
This is all to say that as we add new people to our endeavor out in the uncharted realms of otherwhen, we’ll be struggling not only to bring them up-to-speed, but also even just communicate.
Technorati Tags: old players, new players
Hip, hip, horrific are the words we sing
Hip, hip, horrific is our thing -(TMBG)
As I look around and back at the posts I’ve written for the last year or so, I am reminded how well things have gone, but also how spectacularly I’ve managed to fail. If you are looking for pitfalls to avoid – you’ve found them. If you want to see how not to train for something; look no further. If you would rather have less isk at the end of the day, then this is your lucky blog!
Seriously, the posts that inhabit these pages are filled with the heartache and misery of a pilot bashing her head against the same asteroid day after day after day. At the end of the day there is a hangar full of veldspar and tritanium, some trash modules and a ship that desperately needs a tune up. Along the way the pilot has learned that you shouldn’t trust another pilot but you have to trust the other pilots until they fail you. You can’t put 4000 m3 in a GSC and there’s no way to get a station container out of a station. Overheating missiles is not so effective and skilling up adequately for boosters is going to be very expensive.
There are a few bright spots along the way. Namely, the ships and modules that have been opened up through a varied training programme that includes tech 2 mining equipment, logistics cruisers and some command ships. This is easily countered by the fail combat skills that barely allow for named heavy missiles on a Drake and some lame, unsupported rails on a Moa. It’s rather comical sometimes to be able to fit a full Tech 2 tank on every ship in the game, but then realize you still only have the equivalent of light weapons for armaments. Fear the fail firepower of 150mm rails on a Ferox! My heavy missile Drake of Dewm causes fits of laughter when people can safely orbit at 55 km and pick off my drones and then me.
![Low DPS [Divide by 7]](http://eve.finkeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Low-DPS-tm.jpg)
Other suggest that I should be proud of the fact that I can invent nearly anything possible on the market, but even that seems to fall flat. I have consistently managed to lose money or break even on Tech 2 invention and production. My volume approach is low and slow, so as to be moving backwards in appearance. I can train people to use the towers, labs, production facilities, but seem to fail in doing so myself. What was I thinking! Science is for smart people. Production is for people who are actually motivated.
So what have we learned from all of this:
- Train all the skills you possibly can [let's start with 231]
- Train a wide variety of skills to level 5 [53 is a good number]
- Science skills help you store lot’s of SP [9.6 million and counting]
- Collect ships [So you can collect dust]
- Every 3-4 months spend everything you have on one ship setup and then poke a pirate.
And I think I’ve rambled on enough for all of us today. And that is how to fail.
32 feathers in my brand-new Indian headdress
32 new moons shining in 32 skies -(TMBG)
So finally I finish the long walk to Amarr Cruiser level V. It’s been a rather arduous journey toward a predefined goal that I set for myself and managed to talk another into. The completion of AC-V represents one of the milestone events that we discussed as being a relevant stepping stone along the heavily wooded path. It allowed for a bit of shiny in the midst of an otherwise long journey. Hopefully the last 10-15 days of training will fly by in comparison.
The upshot of AC-V is that it opens up the line of Tech 2 cruisers from the Empire for exploration and exploitation. Now I can fit and fly Her Highness‘ [no real devotion mind you - she just owns the flim-flamming Empire of Squirrels] logistics ships and can fly the Amarrian recons, but only with a Tech 1 fit. It seems rather pointless to fly a T2 ship with T1 gear. It’s rather analogous to giving special forces commandos Nerf® battle gear [That's another post!]. The T2 remote armor repairers and energy transfers will find a use, and only become more so as soon as I wrap up training for Logistics IV.
 
So I hit the shops and find a sweet deal on a Guardian that someone was trying to dump in Lonetrek [Amarr ships are cheaper in the State?] and flitted over to pick it up. After picking up the ship, I used some fairly ugly, low-meta, named, mission looted, gear to fit a tank on it for transport to my main hangar. I flew it quickly as I could from gate to gate, desperately hoping that anyone looking to bite into a yummy T2 cruiser would prefer ganking a Hulk to my new shiny. The trip was uneventful and I was able to even snap a couple of touristy images from the camera drones.
The whole exercise might be one in pointless futility unless I can settle on a more tanky fit that I think will allow for WH survival. Maybe the dual Guardian-lock could survive incoming Sleeper fire given the higher resists. If any of you have used Guardians in fleets against the wormhole denizens, I would be interested in your thoughts about what to slap on it.
I know, I know, I said that I would quit
All right, I promise, no more after this
You don’t know how I’ve tried
To forget what it was like – (TMGB)
So things have been busy and I’m at a bit of a loss where to start. Who knew that managing a bunch of raving lunatics with delusions of insecurity could be so much like running a corporation. All that time at the asylum is finally paying off. [Warning, excessive use of <sarcasm> makes my hands overly tired so just apply liberally where you feel it's appropriate to make it interesting for you to read.]
Towers: Apparently you have to keep putting fuel in them. Otherwise minor details like shields, guns, labs all go offline.
Labs: Mostly full of jobs, except for when something happens to a tower.
Wormholes: Much fun. I hope to stop running errands and get back in them.
Combat: I think I remember fitting a ship with something other than cargo expanders once upon a time. It was cool. I died.
Skills: Battlecruiser V was cool and the implications are still settling in. Though it’s nice to be able to jump in all the racial BCs, albeit without being able to weaponise them currently. I can fit a whopper tank to them all, but not so much DPS. I blame the ferrets.
Corporation: Growing. Leaps and Bounds. More people means more annoying opinions opportunities, but also more things to manage. Need to train Delegation [5% workload reduction per level] to level 4 and start handing off some of this stuff.
Organisation: What? Hmm? I filed that here in the stack of papers on my desk back in the tower that went offline. I’ll get back to you January 4th. Some year.
Mining: See combat. [I think I warped to a belt in a NOS Drake. Sadness.]
Invention: Lot’s of invention going on. Need to get some of it finished.
So a little bit everything goes a long way toward getting nothing accomplished. Happy times! 
Crimsoneer, over at Pods And Pills has let fly with a recent article following up on some forum posting about the efficacy of the learning skills in EVE. I had started initially to comment on it, but decided that given the sheer length of the comment and the thoughts I had, it was worth of a post in and of itself in response.
tl; dr; The game is full of choices. Everyone thinks their choices are right. Everyone else is wrong.
To begin with, full disclosure – I have all of my learning skills maxed. It was and is something I chose to do, fully cognizant of the the time, effort and results of such a decision. I have another character that doesn’t have the learning skills to find his way out of a wet paper destroyer. Both of them are more fun than a Minmatar in a leotard in a traveling Gallente circus. Ok, on with the show…
There is a lot of posting and controversy and heated words flying around about the status of carebears, game changes, felt/perceived needs and I really have to sit back and chuckle. The same people who routinely say, “It’s just a game, lighten up.” also seem to want everyone to “HFTU” at the same time. This is not directed at Crimsoneers article, but applies in the sense that we all have preferences about how we want thing to be.
In response to Crimsoneer, it seems a bit of fallacious to say on one hand,
No matter which tough choices you make, who pops you, who you get scammed by, where you get your PLEX from, every choice is designed to promote you having fun.
and then turn around and say:
Forcing you to make the choice between training your learning skills now, and thus boring yourself to death now, or training your skills later and getting bored then, isn’t a choice between option A and option B: it’s a choice between sucking now or sucking later.
It seems then you want there to be hard choices in EVE, but you don’t want there to be hard choices. I realize you said hard choices and ’suck(y)’ choices, but ultimately isn’t that a matter of perspective? To play the advocate for a moment, how exactly does choosing someone to pop me or scam me promote me having fun? Isn’t boredom a relative concept as well? To me it seems like the learning skills fall squarely into that hard choice category. Thus you end up asking yourself the difficult question, “Am I willing to do this? Is it worth it for that extra skill point I earn?” If the answer is no, move along, nothing to see here. However, some people might actually think it’s fun to train the learning skills. Sure, they’d take them free if you were giving them away, but the same could be said about Heavy Assault Cruiser level V.
There is nothing to force you into training those skills. No guns against your head. If you wanted to just ignore them, you are certainly able to. Heck, it will even save you money so that you can buy another cruiser or four.
I can understand that it might seem/feel/be boring to train something that doesn’t seem to/feel like/be able to give you another ship or module or combat edge in space. I am worried where reasoning that such-and-such skill is boring will lead to. What about Science skills, will they be next? Many of them only let you earn datacores more quickly from agents and are a legacy to a former time. Is it really worth it to have them in the game? What about social skills? They only increase the rate at which you increase your standings or loyalty points with a corporation. Surely they should be eliminated too.
How about we replace it with two skills that are mutually exclusive [if you train one the others are blocked]:
Then we still have a really hard choice and you don’t have to mess with anything that doesn’t make the game fun for you.
[caption id="attachment_328" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Class 4 Wormhole - Sold"]  [/caption]
The fourth incarnation of our frontline, wormhole, attack base is online and operational. We still have a few details to sort out and getting it all in was a bit taxing, however we are satisfied with the location and hope to hang out for a bit before bidding adieu to the current class 4 home. The resource collection has begun, but the depth of the rabbit hole is going to make this location a bit more challenge logistically. We are 4-5 holes deep and finding a way out is sometimes a bit “precarious” to say the least [one exit was 20 jumps through low-sec on the other side of the universe from where we needed to be]. This also means that a few of our pilots are still on the outside waiting to get in. They are excited about shooting sleepers and asteroids and gas clouds and even intruders.
[caption id="attachment_331" align="alignright" width="150" caption="That Looks Painful"]  [/caption]
The tower itself is running well and fueled for quite some time. Everything is a learning adventure and we will continue to adapt. The second adaptation we’ve had to make is something we were aware of from the beginning and had tried to compensate for. The wormhole has a spatial anomaly called a Black Hole that our pilots have begun to call by all manner of unseemly names that I can’t bring myself to post. It isn’t the prettiest system I’ve ever seen, but there are times when you can forget about the painful, pulsating rip in the fabric of space and get on with your business. Needless to say, we are learning more about the realities of the black hole as opposed to the statistical information about black holes. Professional tip from some amateurs: Target Painters. They are working wonders. Really.
I  ‘m staring down a long dark hallway that is only dimly lit with some bioluminescent globes that are spaced much too far apart to give any sort of definition to the length or features of the corridor. I cannot see the end, nor can I see any distinguishable openings or portals either. My choices now are to turn around and abandon this path or proceed onward to see what will become of it. Where will it lead…? What have I begun…? What have I become…?
And so my thoughts on beginning the journey towards my current skill objective come to the fore. I’ve had long training plans before. They got me into my Covetor and my Hulk and have helped me max out most of my core skills [AWU - I love/hate you]. They are not pleasant to watch, but they are fun to achieve. Kirith Kodachi has kept many people entertained with his own regales of routines passed on his way to the Ninveah and later a ill-fated Nighthawk.
 My own plans are much more modest. I am working toward the skill set needed for the Amarrian Fleet Command Ship, Damnation. The die has been cast and the decision made. Currently I’m just getting rolling on my Battlecruiser V training. Then it’s a relatively shorter time to Amarr Cruiser V, Warfare Link Specialist IV, and Logistics IV. I’m already excited, but trying to temper that elation with the knowledge that it will still be awhile. I’m also trying really hard to ignore the results of my rather Scientific Background which includes such minor details as having pants for offensive skills. I’ll need to pick up some more training in heavy missiles and heavy assault missiles to be an effective fleet member.
 The impetus for this impulse is the desire for our fleet to be able to run sleeper sites more quickly and efficiently. With the added range for HAM’s, I think it might even be useful to fit them. With a couple cheap [it's all relative right?] rigs I can fling a HAM out to 40 km for approximately 260 DPS and just a smidge over 1,000 alpha strike volley. This is modest damage, but coupled with the ability to be cap stable while running both RR and links is too hard to ignore. In the meantime, I’m an entertaining myself by pasting pictures of my new ship all over the inside of my pod. [In case you hadn't noticed them all over this post by now. I'm also playing around with fittings for Al Abd [the name I've already chosen].
And so it happens. There is the past that is always with us. There is the present that is always running away from us. And finally there is the future that never quite manages to get here. There will always be another ship to build, another system to swim, another skill to train, et cetra. From my past I have trained to be a good scientist. For the present I am working on a few small projects, but the future draws my eyes to the misty veil of time. What then shall I do and where shall I go? Do I need this or that skill to get it done and how best to proceed in that direction? The future is always full of questions.
One of the things that has changed radically within the universe that we all swim through is the way new capsuleers join us. As technology has improved and the cloning and pod-pilot technology matured, we arrive at our current place where not only can you improve yourself towards any desirable end, you can also improve and train in what would seem like no direction at all. Now a pilot can not only improve her ability to learn skills that improve her ability to pilot ships that improves her ability to learn/earn/kill/thrill, but that same pilot can utilize the new technology available to rearrange the very fabric of the brain to enhance certain basic attributes or reduce others.
The veil around my own future has grown quite thick, and I am left without real pictures of what it will look like. There have been some things that I have always wanted to do, but given the lack of direction, I let them wander. I also know that sitting here in this present and expecting to get a clearer view of the future will never cause the past to go away or said future to become clearer. I have decided then, to walk off into that veil of mist. I have been to the new technology, and drank deeply of its mind altering draught. I am now as balanced in ability as any and only break down and cry a little about my slightly slower skill training in science on days that end in “Y”.
Greetings from the past. I have arrived here to continue what was begun with a previous post on perspective. I wanted you have some background as I looked back at some of the things that have been going on lately, as well as what will happen in the future.
To some extent, we are all fellow time travelers. We do not exist here and now, independent of our previous self or actions. No matter how much we would like to be unassociated with what we might have done, or reconnected to a prior success, we are temporal creatures, bound by our own definitions and limitations of time. Now that was an incredibly long way to say, we can’t change the past and must proceed to the future while living in the now.
I have made some questionable decisions in my past. I live with the ramifications and know that my ships will someday all swim with a captain that has made those same mistakes in her past. But the ships all keep swimming. They have no mistakes made, no past memories, no baggage brought forward. Her Abbadon swims in the same space that her Burst does. Thankfully your Typhoon doesn’t regret not getting the mission time bonus any more than my Drake does.
I studied long and hard to learn how to invent things and do it well. I managed to pick up a few ships along the way, but not nearly like others have done alongside me. Most of my corp-mates can fly battleships [and a few of them even know how to fit them], while I am very happy in a battlecruiser sized hull. I don’t have much ability to deal damage, but most every ship I fly can soak a lot of it up. I have a lot of my training invested heavily in science and I have loved every minute of it.
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This is in response to a post by ASTRAL DOMINIX. His Harbinger fit will have a hard time running any level 4’s alone. The incoming damage is often at or above 400 dps and medium rep and resists alone aren’t going to get it. I agree with some of the commenters that the Drake can be a great mission boat, but after having run several hundred level 4’s in it and later in a Raven, I learned one very important fact: I can blitz multiple level 3 in a gank fit drake faster than I can run a level 4 [in a Drake].
![Low DPS [Divide by 7]](http://eve.finkeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Low-DPS.png)
