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 |
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On Waking Up After Being Deprived Of Your Pod
Ouch. Blinding pain. My ship … is, why can’t I feel my ship. And … um … I can’t … seem to focus … on the present. Station … docked? Sleepy … groggy … slow.
Not unlike post-election interviews with the runner-up, waking up after a binge, stepping in it in the park or waking up in a new clone, the process of recovery is sometimes short and sweet and more often filled with emotion, pain and suffering. How you handle losing it all speaks more volumes about you than the epitaphs shouted in comms, kill board statistics or isks spent on your last ride. From an early age people need to learn some important EVE life lessons.
1) It’s a ride. It does not have emotions. It doesn’t care if you are in, on, afk, logged, asleep at the pod, finger in your nose, smiling or frowning. It is quite oblivious to anything you care about. Pets, asteroids, spouses, corp-mates, local taxes, sovereignty fees – they are all irrelevant to the EVE Train.
2) It is independent. It goes where it will. You are able to affect its direction to some extent, but more than likely it is less Butterfly Effect and more akin to Clear Skies or Carebears Attack in the ability to affect the larger picture. You look out for you and yours and things go swimmingly.
3) You will die. You will lose a lot of ships if you are actually playing the game with any level of interaction. It doesn’t matter if you are in high security, low security, null security or wormhole space – you and your ship will soon be parted. Today’s Headlines: Death Coming. Tomorrow’s Forecast: Mostly ganky with an increasing chance of podding. The only unknowns are when, where and everything except how well you handle yourself.
This is not some HTFU rant about people who can’t hack the harsh, kill-or-be-killed world of New Eden. It’s a realistic gut check for pilots who think the worst thing that can happen is getting your current clone senselessly splattered on the nose-cone of a Terror Assault missile or perforated by Repulic EMP. It’s all senseless and it will continue to happen as long as there are people flying other ships. There is always someone bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, wealthier or prettier who is able to relieve you of your capacity to be in a ship.
I’m not saying don’t be upset about losing a ship. I cry over every last one. Most of them I built. I fit them, flew them, trained them, repaired them, crashed them. All of them I loved. My ships are my life and every last one of them is important to me, from the disposable frigates to the disposable battlecruisers. They surround me, they hold me, they give everything they have to me – could I give them less. And as for my pod – that rather frail hunk of metal filled with snot and keeping my clone from feeling the effects of strenuous accelerations and combat – it too serves its purpose and no more. I have bought several clones. I will buy several more. God willing, I will not forget to buy one when I die tomorrow.
So when an overwhelming force of pilots gank you, get up, get back in a ship and keep going. Or not. Either choice is valid. The people who shot you out of the sky won’t really care one way or the other. Ranting – not likely to get you much response. Wild and derogatory remarks – again not likely to help put implants back in your head. Best case scenario – ask if it was them in the reverse situation, what would they have done. They might offer useful suggestions. The worst case scenario is they might just laugh and say, “Die.” Either way, use it to get better at flying your spaceships.
To put this in more of a personal context – the Wormhole Engineers have been attacked, off and on, since they first started living in wormholes. Mining maulings, hauling hijacks, gratuitous ganks and overt overkills have been the norm and not the exception. We learned important lessons all along the way. We first learned how to hide better and then we learned how to run away better. We learned how to be better aware of the situation not just around us, but beyond our little corner of the world. We began to learn how to resist and tank and eventually even how to shoot back. We learned how to take ammunition from out tower and distribute it more effectively on the hulls of other pilots. We haven’t had a lot of kills and we’re still not afraid to back down. However; if we shoot you, it isn’t personal and we’re not out to bully the pilots we see around us.
One of the lessons we learned the hard way was there are no innocent people out here in the wormholes. Letting an unknown covops pilot buzz around in plain site is a sure way to buy a new clone and it is still worth getting an overwhelming force out to catch and pop them. Sending the pilot back to known space is the only way to assure they aren’t scouting for a larger party. The larger force may still be there, but they’ll have to survive with one less set of eyes. They may only be scanning for exits, but that’s what we were doing until we saw someone else’s probes.
On Flying Battlecruisers In Wormholes
The battlecruisers mark the real level of entry into effectively working in a wormhole. They are extremely versatile, usually sport a decent tank and quite capable of handling the first two classes of wormholes alone and the middle two in groups. They can fill nearly any role and provide a decent amount of bang for your buck. They will usually fit cruiser sized weapons and couple that with nearly the tank of a battleship. The Tech 2 variants called Command Ships have even more tank and greater fire-power potential, but a much higher cost.
Amarr
Prophecy: The Golden Eagle. The Space Brick. Very, very hard tank. Limited damage. A remote-repair fleet of Prophecies can be a nightmare to face down.
Harbinger: Often the better choice for Amarr battlecruisers due in large part to the damage bonus. It’s much easier to tank enemies when they are dead.
Caldari
Ferox: Suffering from the same issues as the rest of the Caldari gun platforms, it can be difficult to fit everything you need on the Ferox to be effective. The tank is substantial but the DPS will be lacking. When utilized correctly in a PVP encounter, it is a phenomenal sniper dealing up to 180 DPS at 150 km.
Drake: The mission runners’ friend makes a fairly easy transition into wormhole space. It also tends to lag behind the other battlecruisers in damage dealt over time [DPS] though if fit with Heavy Assault Missiles it can wreak havoc at about 20 km.
Gallente
Myrmidon: The battlecruiser drone boat suffers a little bit in PVE from the Sleepers predilection for moving their aggro toward drones. It can fit a wicked tough buffer tank and throw a lot of drones at the problem. It makes for a great all around utility ship due to it’s inherent flexibility.
Brutix: Designed to bring pain. Often to both parties in any given conflict. Some of the most face-melting DPS comes from this ship fit to gank.
Minmatar
Cyclone: Can be an effective ship, but as with any Mimatar ship, it will be the pilot who determines how good it can be. This ship rewards the well skilled pilot with a frightening ability to kill things.
Hurricane: The Cyclone’s big bad brother likes to get in and mix it up. He throws projectile slugs around with a careless abandon that can make short work of enemies.
I apologise to all the Minmatar pilots out there because I don’t have experience flying and fitting their BC’s. I am relying on the words of one of my corp-mates as well as the general consensus of those that I’ve talked to before. To make up for some of this seeming anti-Minmatar sentiment, I dedicated the post title to their most common fittings. As always, I will probably miss something so feel free to offer other opinions.
On Living And Lasting In Wormholes
In a recent article Star Defender ponders the longevity of wormhole occupants and the preponderance of persons heading back into known space. This is increasingly true, I will agree. One of the other things we have noticed is that even within a corporation, we’ve found that some people who loved the wormhole when they first moved in, decided that it wasn’t really a long term option for them.
After doing this for almost a year, we’ve learned that it is, as much as anything, a lifestyle issue. Some people are looking for isk and have decided that missions or tending their rock gardens in high sec is more to their liking. Others miss the constant flow of traffic and capsuleers that they can shoot at. We look for people who like smaller ops, closer knit groups and slightly neurotic. The people who end up doing the best are the ones who don’t like crowds, love making things work [especially without the right tools], and are used to living on the fringes of society.
In many ways, Letrange’s post on Alliances as they relate to wormhole life is indicative of the issues involved in long term wormhole residency. If you haven’t read it, let me take the liberty of paraphrasing him, “1st, go read Letrange’s Blog Entry. Back. Good.” Basically as it relates to wormhole life, alliances are different. Both alliances and corporations need to start thinking approaching life differently from their counterparts in high-sec, low-sec and null-sec. There are aspects of all of them that apply, but there some things that need to be thought through differently.
The first to be addressed is living out of what amounts to a caravan parked on the Gaza border. You desperately need fuel, supplies and food; however, parties on both sides of you are armed and should be considered dangerous to your well-being. You have to find ways to be self-sufficient while sharing with those also in your RV. One hopes that everyone living in the same place is courteous, thinks exactly alike and doesn’t have any body odour. If you solve this in a manner that keeps everyone happy, let me know.
Other issue that exists after a short amount of time is resource availability. CCP stated that they never intended wormholes to be a long-term residential solution. They’ve set it up so all your fuel and possibly everything else you use up will come from beyond the confines of your home. Couple this with the simple fact that wormholes tend to ‘dry up’ with usage and soon there are a plethora of people and paucity of provender for them. This is the main issue for people that otherwise have the correct state of mind to survive in a hostile environment making ends meet with their own wits. They just need more ‘content’ to be content.
As a corollary to this, the more pilots that you have in a given system, the better equipped the corporation will be to deal with any of the situations that happen to come upon it. Besieged by battleships, bring it. Perplexed by pirates, pulp ‘em. Stymied by Sleepers, sic ‘em. But as above, it takes a lot of resources to provide a lot of resources and all of them chew through it rather quickly.
So we’re left with the phrase, “Lifestyle Choice” that I really think best captures what it means to be a wormhole resident. Things aren’t often grand out here, nor does it all happen with clockwork efficiency. Fleets are often best described as ad hoc and would make most dedicated FC’s cry. Logistics are always a bit of strain and a large percentage of time is dedicated to just making sure everything doesn’t come crashing down. I think it is ok to say that those of us who tend to stay out here in the wormholes are different. There’s a niche out here that we honestly feel blessed to be able to fill and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
 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
In continuation from the previous article…
Recently I found myself discussing the bygone era of naivete with regard to flying ever bigger, faster, deadlier, efficient, specialised and ultimately more expensive ships. We have all come a long way since our Ibises and Velators. The time since we’ve used civilian weapons [if ever] is far away and mostly gone are the days when the fittings and ships are limited by the skills we haven’t trained or isk we haven’t earned. We still flounder a bit on the first few times we do something new [ship fittings and how to effectively use a Stealth Bomber], but by now we know where to look for the information and make fairly educated choices and decisions based on that information.
Given that we are now what I would consider Intermediate level pilots, we are probably prime for various and sundry problems brought on by our decent into madness [Is linking to your own posts rather akin to talking to yourself? If so, I also have posts whereby I comment on my own posts thus creating a dialogue. Sadly, I'm probably going to end up posting a comment on one of my posts about a link to a post or comment of my own thus degenerating into complete insanity. I apologize to myself in advance.]. Having nearly gone off the deep end one too many times, it occurs to myself [and others, I'm far from unique or inspired], that fresh meat is needed to halt the rapidly encroaching madness. Either that, or we’d like to begin drafting some people so that we at least statistically reduce the number of insane pilot actions.
Actually, we’re debating bringing on a few newer members that we can ultimately train into effective capsuleers according to our own images while exploiting their current skills for our gain. We’re probably going to start with some dedicated salvage/mining personnel to help offset our tendency to let the mining sites in our wormholes degrade to uselessness as well as help accelerate the speed at which we can work over the various anomalies and signatures there-in. Having employed all manner of recruiting means in the past, I thought we might also benefit from some of the other blog readers/personalities out there who might like to take a chance on wormhole mining and salvaging.
I am hoping to wrap this up with a segment on some of the other recruiting methodologies and their relative effectiveness.
I once had a dream of a gleam, of a gleam in my eye
And I’ll have it till the day I die
I had a thought bubble of trouble, of trouble and strife
And I’ll have it for the rest of my life -(TMBG)
- It Sucks
The warm fluid surrounds me. The merest thought engenders actions that serve only to indulge the slightest whim of my fancy. The only thing missing is euphoria of human contact – and that is easily overlooked in lieu of the near omnipotent control available via my synaptic pathways. I am the capsuleer. I am immortal.
And good thing too – when a capsuleer falls asleep in their pod, bad things™ happen. Take for instance the most recent escapades while harvesting gas. It’s not a difficult job and sometimes your mind wanders. This time it hasn’t just wandered, my mind has set out on full scale expedition to calculate the inertial energy involved in blinking. My mind was gone, Gas Gone, as it were. Fortunately, my partner, the estimable scanner extraordinaire and EFT mogul, Mick was along with me, happily sucking in his own share of gas. [With his Tech 2 harvesters and the ability to mount 5 of them, his share is larger than my share.] So at least one of us is on guard, paying attention to d-scan, watching for probes/ships and generally preparing for anything.
Um, no.
Ripping a hole in fabric of time and space, two cocky jockeys in significantly powerful ships step appear right next to us, locking us down and shredding what little is left of our ships, pods and dignity. I know they had to have cheated because sure an alarm would have went off in my head [if I had been paying attention] and no one can sneak up on Mick. Unless of course we happen to be mining gas. I am more convinced that some of the fullerenes either leaked from the cargoholds into our pods, or messed with our sensors.
In a heart and frankly hull pounding few seconds, I am relieved of a small Gallente cruiser with 4 gas harvesters and some expanded cargo modules. Mick is in a similarly equipped Dominix and well insured. In the interminable few seconds that it takes for the foes BS to lock our pods, we are desperately and simultaneously trying to exit the warp disruption bubble the Onyx has thrown up, spamming the ‘warp to’ button and praying that something would go horribly wrong with their systems in the meantime.
The last thing I happened to see before waking up somewhere else is my pod flying through Mick’s wreck and thinking, “It should be bigger for a battleship”. I honestly feel a bit dazed and confused, not unlike waking in an unfamiliar room after traveling and having to remember that you even made a trip. It begins to filter back in bits and pieces. Gas. Exequror. Onyx. Domi. Megathron. Pods. Flash. At first it seems strange to be in a station, having flown so long without docking. And where is my ship? My pod? “Oh, look, someone left a selection of ships for me to chose from. How thought of her.”
So now I get to start over. The ship and modules were relatively cheap and no great loss. I have other. I lost some expensive implants, but frankly I considered them lost soon after I plugged them. If I was worried about losing them, I would have never undocked, let alone fly around in a wormhole. I managed to somehow remember that I had a jump clone somewhere in the universe with some old ‘plants in her head and after running into every conceivable error managed to repeat the whole unpleasant wake up in an unfamiliar place routine of a few minutes ago.
This station turns out to actually be quite far away from anything, which I think maybe why the clone was out here to begin with. I have also neglected to leave a ship in the hangar resulting in a hurried search of the market for an appropriate shuttle or frigate to get out of the system in. A few moments later I am busy flying a Gallente shuttle across seventeen jumps back home, 11 through low-sec. Why choose the low-sec route? Well, I just lost my ship and several million in implants, who really cares if I lose a few more low level implants. Besides, the 29 jumps through high-sec was more likely to kill me.
In a final twist of irony, I had been trying to get out of the wormhole for a couple of days to get some manufacturing jobs installed for some of my corp-mates. Using this fortuitous depodification, I zip over, put the job in the oven to bake. Carpé Diem.
Sensing that enough adrenaline has finally burned off to allow an attempt at sleep, I decide to call an end to flying and dock up for interim. I am immortal, yes, sleepless, no.
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.
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.
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.
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![Low DPS [Divide by 7]](http://eve.finkeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Low-DPS.png)
