15/05/11 08:39 AM
| Arkonor | 285 |
| Bistot | 217 |
| Mercoxit | 192 |
| Crokite | 187 |
| Hedbergite | 171 |
| Hemorphite | 168 |
| Jaspet | 152 |
| Dark Ochre | 147 |
| Pyroxeres | 118 |
| Kernite | 106 |
| Veldspar | 99 |
| Scordite | 93 |
| Gneiss | 90 |
| Plagioclase | 88 |
| Spodumain | 82 |
| Omber | 81 |
COPYRIGHT NOTICE EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. EVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. CCP hf. has granted permission to Our EVE to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, Our EVE. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website. |
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.
Ouch! I usually add a title after I’ve written something up. It stems from a long habit of writing without titles and basing them off of either the content that has been produced or some obscure, arcane reference made in the article that is only tenuously tied to the rest of the content and thus only understood by my psyche and perhaps the asteroids that I spend so much time talking to [apologies to the gas clouds, I've just been busy lately]. However I thought that perhaps I ought to stop and take stock of the last month or so of output and see what I can learn and where we’re headed as well. Back to the title; I thought perhaps after adding it that it might appear like I only manage to post information monthly, but upon review realize that it only seems like that because I’m sad that I just don’t get more up there for you. Thus, I will mix in some information you might be interested in about my activities along with some information that you might be interested in about the statistics related to my postings.
[caption id="attachment_319" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Visits"]  [/caption]
I had been trying to get the WordPress Stats plug-in to work for several months, but managed to repeatedly get results of zero visits a day [sorry Mom, I know you were reading!] and once I even had -4. I’m not sure what happened, but as of September 13th, the whole contraption started reporting visits as well as the other reference information. I wouldn’t have even noticed that, but for a mis-click on “Blog Stats” instead of “Dashboard”. So I started perusing the results and checking back from time to time. There were several surprising things that I just wasn’t expecting when I started looking back at the visits, searches, references and onward traffic. I printed the daily views graph all to include in the post and quite by accident the median daily post number was highlighted.
It seems that for the half of September that I was able to get statistics for I managed to get 674 visits. I have to admit a certain amount of joy in this. I fully expect that half of that was Mom trying to see if I had finished training for a Command Ship yet. The average number of visitors was 39 and the median was 32. If those just seem like random numbers to you, let me put it into perspective. I didn’t know of more than four people who had visited the site and to find out that nearly 8 times as many visits had occurred as shiny [please help me with the illusion and don't mention unique page views, etc].
Another odd number I’d like to point out is the number 1. Apparently that is how many of the same search results led to my page being located and served. At no point in the last 17 or so days did people search for same terms to find my page. Again, the number doesn’t mean anything. I just like things that are different.
Posting about fittings and ore prices appeared to be my niche, without really trying to hit anything in particular. I have no intention of trying to replicate something you can find somewhere else like the fittings of BattleClinic or Scrapheap. They do fittings better to a certain degree, but they also aren’t the one in my ship and have little to lose by suggesting an alternative that may or may not work. I appreciate their feedback, but also like the fact that my fittings are my own.
For the postings ore prices, I have noticed that they have been steadily coming down across the board as I update the page. I don’t have enough meta-data to extrapolate anything as interesting as causality [a slippery, dangerous area to tread into with the best of information], but I really am kind of surprised. I don’t rely on ore as the primary means for my income as much as I once did and only sell a Charon-load or so a month of tritanium these days.
Finally, as I realise this post is nearly as long as my skill plan for a carrier, I’ll wrap up with some training thoughts.
- Learning skills suck, but boy am I glad I have them. For now I’ll lump them in the same category as whiny pvp pirates who can’t handle changing mechanics, I’d rather not deal with them, but I’m glad they are there to provide more depths and aspects to the universe I love to swim in. Train them well and they will change your world.
- Support skills does not mean the ability to fly an industrial ship full of capacitor charges. Train electronics, engineering, WU/AWU [I hate you too!], science, mechanics, navigation. Just because there isn’t another module or battleship attached to the skill doesn’t make it worthless. I know none of the readers would fly without having these trained, but share with your new corp-mates.
- Training for a command ship has actually been a really gratifying long wait. It is a destination that becomes so much more along the journey. By the time I finish up the training for the command ships I will also have gained the ability to fly logistics and heavy assault ships along the way. In point of fact, after the first command ship, it will only take about 3 weeks to fly any other race’s set of logistics, HACs and command ships. I will still need to cross-train for the weapons systems, but the broad, hit-or-miss, seemingly random training to this point is actually paying off at this point.
- I believe in doing things well if I can. Training something to level V is not a sign of weakness or stupidity. Ok, it’s not always a sign of an idiot, the author might well fall in those categories.
Ok, I’m done till next month. [Ok, really I'll probably try to post something tomorrow but will fail miserably, feel bad about it, mope for two days and then rinse and repeat until next month rolls around.]
A different point of view, a different type of experience, so you will have to excuse some of my disagreement with the idea that pilots’ ships are not worth the emotional investment.
I find there is a bit of a logical fallacy in equating a ship to a screwdriver. While they both serve a function and they both are tools, I doubt you would feel as cavalier about your neighbor coming over and taking his precious screwdriver to your car’s paint job. There is also the relative cost involved in losing a ship. I’m rather cavalier about Tech 1 frigate losses by the dozens in large part because I can manufacture or buy them by the hundreds or even thousands. On the flip side, losing a command ship is quite a bit more painful.
In many ways the emotion that a player develops toward her ship is connected to the very fact that they might have built it from scratch. They put a lot of time, effort and energy in to make it. It’s closely akin to the way classic car collectors/builders feel about their machines. It has become more that just metal. It has become a representation of the energy put into the creation of the ship. It is the same devotion that many pilots have to shooting other ships. Couple this creative energy put into the ship with any subsequent scenarios of survival and there is further emotional connection as the pilot has succeeded in yet another endeavor in said ship.
I don’t expect you to understand or even agree, but do know this, that the rage a pilot feels after losing a good ship, that has carried her well, or been through many times together will alway, ALWAYS have some emotional attachment to it. I understand your point of view that many pilots are too connected to their ships, and for the most part would agree. But I also understand that EVE has as many aspects to its play style as it has systems, and we are all likely to approach it from different places.
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.
From an early age, listening to my parents wax eloquent about the physics behind their Micro Warp Drives and the best way to insure success when inventing various tech 2 ships, I was hooked on science. I received my first home-datacore set when the rest of my playmates were still tinkering with frigate models. I was far from the only Achuran to be born to in Inventor enclave, nor the only one to like science and pursue that as a career. But on the other hand – I also had a great passion for the way the universe was knit together and was determined to understand it all!
I quickly graduated with advanced degrees in a broad range of science fields related to capsuleer endeavors and knew that to continue to learn and explore I would need to get out of Saisio and be able to visit the stars. I managed to barely scrape through training and prepare for the transition into the life of a “pod-pilot.” Don’t let anyone lie to you, the necessary pseudo-suicide, transneural burning scan to jump into the waiting pod-clone was painful [and it still is]. However, now I was free to swim through the stars in a super-massive space fish.
My parents, through good investments with and years of working for the megacorporation, Lai Dai, had managed to accrue a significant sum of interstellar credits and fitted me with a modest Bantam frigate and some direction to pursue. I headed for the stars and began working toward my dream as a free-lance inventor. I left the construction details to various station-side facilities, sales were done by other representative and I left the ship in the care of the knuckle-draggers. I knew how to fit a mean scanning ship or mine with the best of them, but even the thought of combat was something that was endured as a means to an end. To that end, I was spending every last ISK that I could generate on buying the skills to train and learn.
In a recent press release, CCP has announced that they fully intend to add the ability to actually get IN spaceships and fly them around the New Eden galaxy. No longer will players be limited to walking around in stations or duking it out over planetary resources, but will have the opportunity to see uncharted realms of nebulae and stars, wormholes and anomalies. Finally, a space based MMO where you can assume the role of a slick combat pilot or a disenfranchised trader. You could be a great merchant tycoon, spreading your wares and influence over hundreds of systems or a puny, low-sec pirate, camping a lonely gate in Aunenen. . . .
Personally, I’m very excited to be able to fly spaceships. As I look back to why I started playing EVE in the first place, it was so that I could fly a spaceship. Science & Maths, PvP & PvE, Research & Industry were all just icing on the cake as I get to fly a spaceship. So maybe in my excitement and desire to fly a spaceship, I missed the memo that said I would like flying spaceships more if I could only get out of my spaceship and walk around in a station or shoot other people on a planet. Shoe-horning the sovereignty mechanic on top of this seems like a poor and somewhat tenuous connection to flying spaceships.
If I really wanted a walking avatar, I would have probably not chosen EVE and a game designed around flying spaceships. Maybe it’s just sour grapes and disenchantment over the lack of any real science and industry features being delivered in the Quantum Rise patch [hardly an expansion] or perhaps it is just “old-timers” disease whereby I cannot embrace the inevitable changes that happen to things you love [they grow old and die]? I just cannot ken the path CCP is charting and what I can see does not really impress nor intrigue me.
In reality, if I was really desirous of shooting people from a first person perspective, I would have stopped flying a spaceship some time ago and bought and played a first person shooter. Maybe even something like Dust 514 where I hear they are going to add “Flying In Space” [FiS] Soon™.
We successfully dismantled the POS from our little corner of wormhole space and got everything moved out and back into high security space. There was one little hiccup as a bunch of fuel was exported to an island [group of high-sec space surrounded by low-sec/0.0 space] that required a bit of scouting to extricate.
We’ve learned a lot about the whole procedure and how to approach wormholes which makes the operation an overall success. The main drawback was the initial investment was probably overkill for the returns, but in terms of knowledge was likely priceless.
Personally, I have a very low wallet and need to seriously rectify that. As we are also looking at moving into more permanent tech three (T3) production, the capital investment costs are still accumulating [labs, reactors, component bpos, reactions, skills] and will need to be factored into the final evaluation. We saved all of the salvage from our time in the ‘hole as a precursor to production, but are considering putting it up for sale as a support for future wormhole expansion.
After several abortive and/or unsuccessful attempt to get all of our stuff moved in to our new little circle of space that we are calling home, one of our most adventurous combat pilots found a wormhole. As Letrange mentioned recently, sometimes the best place to look is in the wormholes that connect you to other wormhole systems.
- It was only 6 jumps from where we started.
- It was in high security space.
- It had a local station.
As we’re quickly learning, there were things that obviously needed to be weighed in the balance, namely:
- The high-sec wormhole had less than four hours of life.
- The high-sec wormhole was over half depleted due to some other group exploring it.
- The only ships we had to move stuff was an Iteron Mark IV and an aging Iteron Mark I.
 So at approximately 18,000 m³ between us per trip we started taking bites out of the supplies we wanted. The modules our pilots had been requesting to refit with for encountering sleepers was fairly easy to fit. The real challenge was definitely the defensive tower arrays that had not made it in the first round.
After five or six trips, our other non-industrial, combat-oriented pilot had to head out and I decided to make as many more trips as I could. I managed about five more before the wormhole decided that it has been awake long enough and in a final surge, expunged the last of its cosmic energy.
This time though, I was on the unknown side and headed toward our tower.
I found myself mining some ice to fuel our wormhole tower. As it was an off-peak time, there wasn’t anyone else from the corporation, so I was flying back and forth. The Hulk can hold three cycles with the cargo optimization rigs, so every 13 minutes or so I would make the round trip.
As I was getting several dock/un-dock cycles, I was able to catch one of the persistent display issues I’ve been having with my camera drones. A couple of them seem to have gone rogue and I get some very odd views. The net result was the following picture:
The effect is more interesting that upsetting. Any adjustments to the cameras’ vector, and they immediately self correct.
|
|
![Low DPS [Divide by 7]](http://eve.finkeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Low-DPS.png)
