How is EVE different to other games?

I was browsing around the official EVE Online forums at lunchtime when I came across this and felt the need to keep it and share it:

CCP Falcon wrote:
Okay, so what follows is entirely my personal opinion.
It's not a case of not "catering to the tearfilled entitled", it's a case of us staying true to the core of what EVE was built on.
Some of the people complaining in this thread have valid points about the fact that they don't feel safe. Simple fact of the matter is, that you're not suppose to feel safe in New Eden.
Eve is not a game for the faint hearted. It's a game that will chew you up and spit you out in the blink of an eye if you even think about letting your guard down or becoming complacent.
While every other MMO starts off with an intro that tells you you're going to be the savior of the realm, holds your hand, protects you, nurtures your development and ultimately guides you to your destiny as a hero along with several other million players who've had the exact same experience, EVE assaults you from the second you begin to play after you create a character, spitting you out into a universe that under the surface, is so complex that it's enough to make your head explode.
The entire design is based around being harsh, vicious, relentless, hostile and cold. It's about action and reaction, and the story that unfolds as you experience these two things.
True, we're working hard to lower the bar of entry so that more players can enjoy EVE and can get into the game. Our NPE (New Player Experience) is challenging, and we're trying to improve it to better prepare rookies for what lies out there, but when you start to play eve, you'll always start out as the little fish in the big pond.
The only way to grow is to voraciously consume what's around you, and its your choice whether that happens to be New Eden's abundant natural resources, or the other people who're also fighting their way to the top.
EVE is a playing experience like no other, where every action or reaction resonates through a single universe and is felt by players from all corners of the word. There are no shards here, no mirror universes, no instances and very few rules. If you stumble across something valuable, then chances are someone else already knows where you are, or is working their way toward you and you better be prepared to fight for what you've discovered.
EVE will test you from the outset, from the very second you undock and glimpse the stars, and will take pleasure from sorting those who can survive from those who'd rather curl up and perish.
EVE will let you fight until you collapse, then let you struggle to your feet, exhausted from the effort. Then when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel it'll kick you flat on your ass in the mud again and ask you why you deserve to be standing. It'll test you against every other individual playing at some point or another, and it'll ask for answers.
Give it an answer and maybe it'll let you up again, long enough to gather your thoughts. After a few more steps you're on the ground again and it's asking more questions.
EVE is designed to be harsh, it's designed to be challenging, and it's designed to be so deep and complex that it should fascinate and terrify you at the same time.
Corporation, Alliances and coalitions of tens of thousands have risen and fallen on these basic principles, and every one of those thousands of people has their own unique story to tell about how it affected them and what they experienced.
That's the beauty of EVE. Action and reaction. Emergence.
Welcome to the most frightening virtual playground you'll ever experience.

source :- https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=400977

A Milestone reached.

Actually, possibly more of a milepebble, rather than a milestone.  Today I breached the 2 million skillpoint mark!

I didn't even notice when I passed the 1 million skillpoint mark.

I still have more skillpoints in Drones than anything else, but it looks like Engineering & Shields will overtake Drones during the next week or so.

Incidentally, my current training plan is about 520 days.

I did say I was here for the long haul, didn't I?

my first major cock-up

I'm sure I've probably made others, but just not realised it yet! However, last night I made a bad call, then reacted too slowly and lost my first expensive (for me) ship.

I'd been doing other stuff the last few days (some scanning, data & relic sites, working on L3 distribution missions for SoE with my alt) whilst waiting for my training to get me to the point where I could fully fit a L3 running Vexor.  I was specifically waiting for Tactical Shield Manipulation 4 so that I could fit an Adaptive Invulnerability Field II.

I had the T1 variant on there, but missions required a bit of warping in & out, still.

Skill finished training Monday morning, but I didn't get a chance to login until Monday evening, I swapped out the Invulnerability fields and headed out to test my Vexor in a L3.

Oh, and Avengers Assemble was on the TV.

I forget the name of the mission now, but it had some towers that repaired the NPC ships, plus at least one Stasis tower.

The stasis tower was quite a distance past everything else and webbed me pretty early on so I headed in it's direction intending to take it out asap (though only moving at about 60m/s) I started taking down the other ships on the way.

My shields were dropping slowly, but everything looked manageable.

I was getting distracted by AA on the TV, but paying enough attention to swap my drones onto their next target when each ship went down.

I realised that I wasn't going to take out the stasis tower before my shields were gone so I started to recall my drones with just under a quarter of my shields left, selected a station to dock up at, and then my final shields evaporated! Turns out I'd missed that there were a couple of Heavy Missile towers too and they'd started firing on me.

Drones were in, armour was dropping, so I hit Dock and watched nervously as my armour disappeared.  I've been in this situation many times before I gotten out in 15-20% structure.  This time I was soo close.  I'm pretty sure I got to warp speed just as the last sliver of hull vaporised - "Capsule Ejected" flashed on the screen and then immediately warped to the station.

Poor Vexor.  Poor mobile tractor unit which I'd forgotten to deploy when I started the mission.

Bugger.

Luckily I had followed the golden rule of EVE "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose" and I had a replacement Vexor already fitted in my hangar, I jumped in, renamed it "Vexxed" and headed back into the mission.  This time I paid full attention, warping out as my shields dipped to 50%. I finally cleared the field, looted and salvaged all of the wrecks (including my own).

A valuable lesson learned I hope.

It's still another 4 and a bit days before I get Mechanics 5, another 4 days or so to get T2 drones, but in the grand scheme of things that isn't so long.

I'm still under 2 million SP, I still have over 700 million ISK of the 745 million ISK I started this game with.

And I'm still having a blast :)

Oh my, PI

I suck at titles of my blog posts, ah well - for all I know no-one is reading this anyway :)

I located a wormhole linking Solitude to the main high-sec portion of New Eden and brought my alt through with a bunch of minerals so that I could start producing again, plus a bunch of Command Centres so he could start setting up his PI colonies.

I then dithered and fretted about actually entering low sec space to do the work, I can see the appeal of a 2nd account so that I could have eyes in my target system, but that is quite pricey for what will hopefully only be a few minutes each month.

I'd previously zoomed around the target system in my trusty Atron making plenty of bookmarks etc, I then contracted these over to alt#1.  I finally sent in alt#1 to check out the target system and there was no-one in local so I decided to risk it, swapped into a hauler with all of my command centres in it and headed back in...still empty.

I warped to a safe spot at range, aligned to another and started scanning my target planets, then placed the command centre.  Repeat five times and then warped out...all the time I was the only person in the system. \o/

I was then able to build the colonies, start the extractors and route the resources to basic factories and then onto an advanced factory on 4 of the planets.  The 5th planet is just converting from p0 to p1.

Total cost for the setup of all 5 planets is about 20Million isk.  I'm now checking on them every 2-3 days to restart the extractors and the P2 is starting to accumulate nicely.  The launchpad with the p1 on the 5th planet is almost full so I'll have to clonejump alt#1 back to do something about that soon.

Alt#2 has about a week left training and then they'll be able to do something similar in another system - the planets aren't as good for products to p2, but I may potentially set them all up to just extract from p0 to p1.  Alt#2 is destined to stay local to the PI systems as I can't think of another use for them yet.

I'll then take a few days out from my regular training to be able to do 5 planets, with the possibility of having one of them setup as a dedicated factory planet.

Either way, next on the training plans is for all characters to be able to fly an epithal that can do the cloakyMWD trick.

In other news I succumbed and bought 2 Vexors and a Myrmidon !  Apparently trying to do L3s in a Destroyer is not ideal... I did complete it solo, though I did have to warp out multiple times for repairs.  Mission payout more than matched the repair bill (and then some!) but I conceded, that though it was fun, it wasn't particularly safe, nor quick.

My current training plan should let me fly the first Vexor with a decent tank tomorrow, looking forward to see how it handles my missions :)

fly safe,

Zeb

Settling in

I've had a few days to settle in my new home in Solitude.  During that time I also decided that I'd train at least my 2 possible alts (and probably me too ) into Planetary Interaction as an extra income stream.

I've read up on it via the Uni Wiki and a few other articles and it seems that once you are over the initial investment, it should provide a steady, if not spectacular, income.  The Uni wiki also has a plan to train an alt into PI (and not much else) within 12 days.

I paid to have dual training activated on my account for 30 days and set alt 1 to training - this meant I could carry on training my main character at the same time.  A 12-14 day training plan means I can train both my alts into PI in one month, with only one payment.

However, I now see how useful alts can be - whilst I'm in Solitude I've had one put some extra short skills into hauling and trading and he has been tootling around the main empire regions  buying up cheap minerals for me to give Industry a go.  I'm now tempted to train at least one of my alts into some serious hauling / support skills (I'm thinking Orca pilot or Rorqual, or both...eventually).

It costs a plex to have dual character training on an account (about £16) per month.  Or I could create a new account, swap the alts over and then only pay £10 per month.  But the swap service costs £20 each I think.   hmm

I think I'll stick with the single account for now, leave one alt as PI only and train the other into Orca pilot to start with plus some support skills - this looks doable within 30 days (not that I can afford an Orca !).

I've also started putting alt#1s hauling skills to use - he's being doing Sisters of EVE distribution missions.  Level 2 missions were pretty quick and could be done in an Imicus, but he's now on Level 3s which either require more Imicus trips per mission, or a ship with a bigger hold - I've been using one of the free Nereus' I received from the career and SoE arc missions.

Payouts have increased (to about 100,000isk per mission), though some of the missions have taken me in to Low security space.  The first one I split into 7 runs in an Imicus, but the second time I did this local was empty for 2 runs, so I combined the final 5 into 1 Nereus run and still saw no-one.

I do expect to die doing this though.  I'll have to look for a quick aligning hauler fit...or stick to high sec.

In other news, my main has dipped his toe into manufacturing, bought and researched a handful of Original Blueprints and started production.  Even with pretty limited production skills I made a profit (including costing in the price of minerals, none of the 'I mined it therefore it's free' mentality here).

I did spend quite a while poring over market reports and assessing costs Vs prices using a variety of sources (Market window, EVE Central and EVEHQ to name a few).  Improved skills will llead to higher profits.

I've knocked production on the head for a while until Alt#1 can bring me in a decent batch of minerals.

Accepted into Eve University

My parents would be proud! :)

I'd been running some L2 security missions when I noticed that my name was called for my application interview.

The interview itself was straight forward and relatively short, it was then followed by some admin to get me setup with the correct channels, passwords, forum access and the like, and then that was it - I was a member of the University :)  The members in the general channel were very welcoming.

Since I'd read about EVE Uni and started working my way through their wiki I had decided that I'd like to base myself out in the Solitude region (an island of high security space surrounded by low- and null security space).

The Personnel Officer who interviewed me let me know that their was a campus tour organised for a few days time, and so I joined that fleet until we reached Solitude so I could get here relatively safely.

Travelling in a large fleet was quite the experience, there was a lot to take in (I'm pretty sure that at one point I found myself on the wrong side of a gate in low security space and I spent an anxious 45 seconds holding my cloak hoping no bad guys showed up before the rest of the fleet jumped through - lesson learned though, listen to the FC, dont assume he meant jump).

At each of the campus' we visited we were greeted by the residents and someone gave a run down as to the purpose of the campus, what we could do their etc.  It was all very slick, but the Null Sec Campus welcome was most impressive.

We jumped through the final gate into the Null Sec Campus, but there was no-one waiting for us, until we were suddenly surrounded by bubbles, a bunch of ships decloaked and fired bombs at us!  It turns out the bombs were harmless lock breakers, but I'm sure everyone's adrenaline spiked.

Sisters of EVE arc

My application to EVE University was likely to take a couple of weeks to process, during this time I took the advice I'd found on the EVE Uni wiki and joined a corporation called Estel Arador. This then allowed me to create some jump clones easily (after training the required skill, naturally).  I created the jump clones at nearby stations, then left that corporation and found myself in a new NPC corporation.

I started the Sisters of EVE arc of missions.  These all seem to be geared towards the newer player, however my low skills were causing me some problems.  I asked about in the public EVE Uni channel (as I needed that open to check if my name was called for interview) and someone gave me a fit for a Tristan (one of the rewards from the career missions) that they said should be able to manage the missions, even with low skills.

I checked the fitting window and saw lots of green ticks! woohoo, I could use everything.  I immediately purchased all of the modules off the market and fitted them to my ship.

Then I checked my wallet balance. uh-oh, one of the modules (a shield extender) had cost me 3.5 million ISK!  If I had not used the buddy invite option to gain substantial starting ISK, that module would have taken a significant (50%!) of my total cash! As it happened I was still loaded, but it did teach me a lesson - I now always check market prices closely before purchasing stuff.

Anyway, the fit was great and I managed to complete the whole of the mission arc in my Tristan except for the final bad guy (Dagan).  Dagan flies a Cruiser (I think?), which is bigger but slower than my Tristan frigate. Once I got close enough he couldn't hit me, but I couldn't get through his armour - I was able to reduce his shields, but when I nibbled away his armour he was easily able to repair it back up again.

Reading through reports of others I came across a blaster fit Catalyst (8 blasters!).  I'd also been given a couple of these from previous missions so I docked up, switched ships, added 8 blasters and some ammo and then headed back out.  A Catalyst is a Destroyer, so a bit bigger than my Tristan, but still smaller than a Cruiser.

This time it went much better...until I ran out of ammo with his armour at about 50%!

Docked up again, loaded lots more ammo and tried for the third time! BOOM! got him.

I renamed my Catalyst 'Dagan Killer' and have it in my hangar near Dagan's mission in case anyone else is having trouble I can come out and help.

I really enjoyed this set of missions, and they were quite lucrative - I made about 8million ISK (so the expensive Tristan fit was definitely worth it), plus modules, ships etc

These missions took me a few days and had me travelling all over the place, working for all 4 empires, all in Hi-Sec space.  If you haven't done these missions, and particularly if you are wondering what to do after your career missions, then go see the Sisters at their station in Arnon.