Anyone play Eve Online?

[Hotfoot]

Capital ships? What's the going price on a carrier these days? 800m? Keep in mind that it takes like a minimum of 6 months to train skills for cap ships and the capital skillbooks are rather expensive themselves.

Cruisers are only >10m so if it takes you a month of work to get one you're are doing something wrong, of course it also helps if you get free handouts from corpmates or your corp's location allows you to make more money than normal at your current "level" for example: Salvaging destroyer in active Angel 0.0 space should be able to rake in plenty of allowed trit bars to pay for a cruiser in less than a week depending on several factors. In any case, even in hisec you should be able to get enough cash for a cruiser in days.

Also: Spacepoor, send isk. tia.

Sorry, I should have said, "weeks to a month to fly a proper cruiser". Months on top of that to afford to lose one in combat unless you're getting handouts.

At least a year to get the big capital ships, like Titans, Carriers, and Dreadnoughts, assuming anyone ever trusts you enough to let you SEE one.

[Commander 598]

At least a year to get the big capital ships, like Titans, Carriers, and Dreadnoughts, assuming anyone ever trusts you enough to let you SEE one.

Capship killmails basically flow like water these days so it's clearly not that big of a deal to anyone.

[Coaan]

Nice generalisation there.

It IS a big deal to small corps and alliances, where the usual are battleships and whatnot. If you can get a cap ship for a small corp and properly support/gear it out, generally you are doing damn well.

Not everyone takes part or even wants to take part in the big alliance frag-fests and lag hell that is big battles.

That said, bout a year to get competant in battleships is a good estimate....things aren't done quickly in EvE when it comes to skills...it will take a good long time to get into the ships you want to fly and fly them well.

[Stark]

However, due to the skill system you can start a long skill and just suspend your account for a few months. I've come and gone from EVE several times now, always getting some longass level5.

[wautd]

I've always wanted to try EVE Online out. Is there any ability to use capital ships independently? Or semi-independently, a la WesFox13's piracy or wautd's extortion? Flying around in dinky fighters in Freelancer lost its appeal rather quickly.

I never cared a rats ass to be getting in a capship. It's too much of a one trick pony and too expensive for me to afford loosing. Dreadnoughts anyway, carriers are a bit better but still. Ok, motherships can be nasty but only a hand few can afford them. Together with the titans, it's more of a tool for the big alliances/corps. You'll probably never see me in something bigger than a battleship/marauder

If you wanna go the lone gun pirate way, you need something fast and nimble. Granted, some battleships make great piracy ships as well, but they require quite a lot of skillpoints to be flown effectively.

Cruisers can be a great starting point to get some practice. Cheap, insurable and somewhat decent. I knew a guy who flew dirth cheap Stabbers (basicly a cruiser sized frigate on speed) nearly as effective as the 30x more expensive Vagabond (its tech 2 counterpart). You will need to train these anyway if you want to fly Heavy assault ships which is a very popular class for pirates; good tank, good speed, good damage and a relatively small size.

Battlecruisers are beefed up cruisers. They can dish out more damage and are a lot more tougher and more versatile (more fitting slots, drone bay,...). They are also a lot slower and easier to hit however, so it requires quite a lot of skill investment. Train them further and one day you can fly command ships, which are my favorite class. Some have one of the best tanks in game, while others can deal out a hidiously amount of damage. An expensive habit to loose though.

Interceptors is the closest thing to a fighter you'll probably ever fly. If you choose the right skills at the creation of your character you should be able to fly one quite quickly. It doesn't do much damage and has no tank to speak of but it's rediculously fast and a bitch to hit. Great to go deep 0.0 and play catch me if you can with the locals and look for soft targets (mining vessels, transports, noob NPC'ing battleships, etc...)

Battleships are great if you have the skills. On one hand they can dish out a lot of damage, while being able to take a lot of punishment as well. And that's good because they're easy to hit a rather slow to get away with. Another possible disadvantage is that smaller targets can be difficult to hit due your slow moving guns & longer locking speed.


Offcourse, the lone gun piracy thing can be a lot safer/efficient when you got a friend tagging along. You can save a lot of slots when the other guy handles the tackling.

[wautd]

Also a word of advice, if you're buying a ship to PvP, look at it like you've already lost it the moment you've entered it. Everyone looses a ship now and then, but if you're flying with a ship you can't afford to loose you will panic in a fight. And panicking in a fight will make you do all kinds of stupid

[Dahak]

My first renewed steps in the game resulted in the destruction of a frigate
Which shows me I should do the tutorials again. Right now, I think I will try a bit of boring mining in a safe 1.0 or 0.9-environment to get some little money (the char only has about 700k now). Don't want to shell out the money again for a Punisher...

[Jon]

The concept of setting a date as to when you can be in a cap ship is a little skewed really, because before that you're going to want learning skills maxed (basic anyway, advanced to 4) and the ability to at least fit +4 attribute enhancers (all of which increase the speed at which you can learn other skills). So as a newcomer, automatically add two or three months to any timeline to cover that (of course, you don't have to train the learning skills up straight away, and you can get into smaller ships much more quickly).

Having the skill to fly a capital ship is not enough either. It might take you 9 months perhaps to actually reach the point you can sit in the ship, but then you have to consider all of the support skills that go with operating it if you intend to survive undocking. My character is approaching two years old, and though I could sit in a carrier 12 months ago, only now am I becoming confident in my skills to keep it alive. Of course, you also end up getting distracted along the way, which adds even more time and before you know it two years have passed! Ahem.

The journey to cap ship gives you access to a lot of useful skills which help you fly sub-capital ships much better, especially battleships, whose skill has to be maxed out before you can train the capital skills, and of course because you need so much currency to buy the skillbooks and ships themselves you'll probably either become a mission whore or an adept PVPer to finance yourself along the way. I found a cap ship target a good motivator to keep me playing and keep me useful to my corp while I aimed for it.

But as has been said, capital ships aren't solo ships, really. You are fleet support, but you need fleet support, you need other players to kill smaller ships which can prevent you from escaping, or to repair you and keep you alive for longer while you deal your damage, or keep the larger ships in your fleet alive. You can't use cap ships in 'high security' space, so you are always at risk when you undock in one, and you can't really use them for anything but PVP, as they can't access most mission sites.

If you intend to play solo most of the time, they're not incredibly useful, but even in a small corporation, they can be nice to have around.

[bilateralrope]

and the ability to at least fit +4 attribute enhancers (all of which increase the speed at which you can learn other skills).

Is it really worth training to use +4 implants if your planning to be in 0.0 a lot ?

First the skill training formula. Note that training time is proportional to 1/(primary + 0.5*secondary).

So each additional point does less, and since you lose implants when you get podded, the best use I see is setting a long skill. After you get podded the training time isn't recalculated unless you change skills, so you can coast on the higher implant. Providing you don't want to use a jump clone, since that requires you to pause your skill, thus forcing a recalculation.

And this is assuming that you can acquire the implants at the station your medical clone is stationed in.

Naturally if you plan to stay out of 0.0 then you can justify higher implants because people have to lock your pod before scrambling it, and pods enter warp very quickly.

[Lazarus]

Is combat the main focus then, with other areas just a means to improve your combat ability/equipment?

I quite like the idea of training up on a smaller ship that's still vital to larger ships so I can actually be useful and not get the 'go home noob' response I've seen elsewhere. Joining in an ongoing territory war where victory has a real effect sounds great.

[Keevan_Colton]

Is combat the main focus then, with other areas just a means to improve your combat ability/equipment?

I quite like the idea of training up on a smaller ship that's still vital to larger ships so I can actually be useful and not get the 'go home noob' response I've seen elsewhere. Joining in an ongoing territory war where victory has a real effect sounds great.

Nope, the EVE Universe has a full economy that's even had the Financial Times run a feature on it. You can play without ever fighting if you want....there's mining, industry, manufacturing and trade to keep you busy too. There are ships specialized for tasks relating to those too.

Mining ships that can strip mine an asteroid belt in a sickeningly short time, or freighters that can move absurd volumes of cargo.

Combat is at times a mean to an end. Say for example an area has really good asteroid ore, or particularly good salvage...then you'd want to get together to keep other people away from it to protect your profits.

[Losonti Tokash]

Is combat the main focus then, with other areas just a means to improve your combat ability/equipment?

I quite like the idea of training up on a smaller ship that's still vital to larger ships so I can actually be useful and not get the 'go home noob' response I've seen elsewhere. Joining in an ongoing territory war where victory has a real effect sounds great.

Yeah, you won't have to worry about that. The larger corps will use you in a technique called "tackling." Where basically you and several other people in noob ships throw themselves at an enemy and tie him up while he gets murdered by bigger guns.

[Commander 598]

:words:

Pretty sure it's not THAT skill intensive to sit in a pos and assign fighters. The way I see it, your skilling is partially irrelevent, spending an unfathomable time training specilization skills for what is merely a 25-30% (Don't quote me on this) damage increase so you might possibly maybe stick out in the blob your in is rather silly.

Is it really worth training to use +4 implants if your planning to be in 0.0 a lot ?

First the skill training formula. Note that training time is proportional to 1/(primary + 0.5*secondary).

So each additional point does less, and since you lose implants when you get podded, the best use I see is setting a long skill. After you get podded the training time isn't recalculated unless you change skills, so you can coast on the higher implant. Providing you don't want to use a jump clone, since that requires you to pause your skill, thus forcing a recalculation.

And this is assuming that you can acquire the implants at the station your medical clone is stationed in.

Naturally if you plan to stay out of 0.0 then you can justify higher implants because people have to lock your pod before scrambling it, and pods enter warp very quickly.

You've never heard of jump clones?

It IS a big deal to small corps and alliances, where the usual are battleships and whatnot. If you can get a cap ship for a small corp and properly support/gear it out, generally you are doing damn well.

If your corp can't afford a single billion isk, it isn't small, it's microscopic.


When Emp Age goes live I predict a lot of whining about losing cap ships to 0.0 corps because a very large number of people who are going to show up for factional warfare are probably going to be clueless about fleet fighting.

[Coaan]

If your corp can't afford a single billion isk, it isn't small, it's microscopic.

Not everone controls huge tracts of space or large memberships. It would be a good thing to remember.

[Jon]

Pretty sure it's not THAT skill intensive to sit in a pos and assign fighters. The way I see it, your skilling is partially irrelevent, spending an unfathomable time training specilization skills for what is merely a 25-30% (Don't quote me on this) damage increase so you might possibly maybe stick out in the blob your in is rather silly.

It depends what role you want or are required to have for your carrier, and sitting behind a POS forcefield assigning fighters isn't how I fly mine. It's not just drone skills, but the skills to use capital shield boosters, capital shield/armor transfer, triage and so on and so forth. I'm not suggesting they all need to be trained to max but I feel much more confident knowing most of my support skills are at 4 and that I can properly fit the carrier. Really, I'm just reinforcing the point that reaching 'carrier 1' isn't the end of it, and that to do anything but get popped in it you need to invest a bit more time after the fact.

[TC Pilot]

Well, I downloaded the free trial for the hell of it. The tutorial was buggy as hell and laggy to the point of broken (I warped through a planet, ship wouldn't respond to "approach" commands, tutorial would skip/repeat itself). Naturally, I immediately uninstalled it.

[bilateralrope]

Is it really worth training to use +4 implants if your planning to be in 0.0 a lot ?

First the skill training formula. Note that training time is proportional to 1/(primary + 0.5*secondary).

So each additional point does less, and since you lose implants when you get podded, the best use I see is setting a long skill. After you get podded the training time isn't recalculated unless you change skills, so you can coast on the higher implant. Providing you don't want to use a jump clone, since that requires you to pause your skill, thus forcing a recalculation.

And this is assuming that you can acquire the implants at the station your medical clone is stationed in.

Naturally if you plan to stay out of 0.0 then you can justify higher implants because people have to lock your pod before scrambling it, and pods enter warp very quickly.

You've never heard of jump clones?

Yes, since I did mention them in my post. Sure they would keep the implants safe in high sec, but they would also keep them unused because I'm not in high sec to use them.

[Oskuro]

(I warped through a planet, ship wouldn't respond to "approach" commands, tutorial would skip/repeat itself)

Whenever I log in to my trial account, the tutorial tries to start itself again. But the warping through planets I believe is normal... and it is something that irks me to no end. Can you crash into a planet if you head towards it without warping? or are they just pretty backdrops? Can you collide with anything?!

I can tolerate (to some extent) the lack of docking animations, but the lack of collisions.... make me sad.

[Ayrix]

I've actually flown to a planet from space without warp, it took like 4 hours from a really close point. You just go right through it and the textures are REALLY ugly that close. However they are planet sized and quite 3d.

[Jon]

I warped through a planet

This is by design, planets are to scale and its a concious decision not to create a time sink by having numerous warp maneuvers just to align a ship so that it avoids planets/moons etc. The in-universe literature handwaves it away as something to do with how the warp drive works.

Can you crash into a planet if you head towards it without warping? or are they just pretty backdrops? Can you collide with anything?!

Nope, you bounce off anything, which again in universe is explained with the use of repulsor fields of sorts built into any powered ship to prevent collisions.

I've actually flown to a planet from space without warp, it took like 4 hours from a really close point. You just go right through it and the textures are REALLY ugly that close.

I think the planet textures have only had one update since beta, apparently now Trinity is laid down, scenery is next on the list for an overhaul, so hopefully planets and asteroids etc will get prettied up.

[Commander 598]

I've clipped through planets while in notwarp, but I didn't really expect to not not clip through them since it takes a while to get to them even with an MWD.

[Oskuro]

Nope, you bounce off anything, which again in universe is explained with the use of repulsor fields of sorts built into any powered ship to prevent collisions.

Although the lack of planetary collision or docking makes the Freelancer player in me sad, I was wondering about collisions with stations and player ships.

I did try to crash my frigate into an asteroid in the tutorial, and saw it bounce off, nice to see they have an in-universe explanation for it, and expected the warping-through-planets to be the same, a side effect of the warp engine.....

But then again, I remember not colliding with other players (although it happened a couple years back when I first tried the game)... is that so?

[Commander 598]

Only in rare situations like an oddly timed undock which leaves your ship clipping into another one. "Bumping" is a an actual tactic in 0.0 warfare.

[bilateralrope]

Only in rare situations like an oddly timed undock which leaves your ship clipping into another one.

Especially since your launch angle in now randomly placed with 15 degrees of the launch direction to reduce this. Now you can usually undock in Jita (the most populated system) without crashing into someone, instead of long pileups.

[Jon]

Nope, you bounce off anything, which again in universe is explained with the use of repulsor fields of sorts built into any powered ship to prevent collisions.

Although the lack of planetary collision or docking makes the Freelancer player in me sad, I was wondering about collisions with stations and player ships.

I did try to crash my frigate into an asteroid in the tutorial, and saw it bounce off, nice to see they have an in-universe explanation for it, and expected the warping-through-planets to be the same, a side effect of the warp engine.....

But then again, I remember not colliding with other players (although it happened a couple years back when I first tried the game)... is that so?

It might change in the future. A while back they demo'd a frigate entering a planet's atmosphere and engaging in atmospheric combat... but there's been no other news on that ever since and it's probably a few years off, they have abulation coming before then (being able to dock in stations and actually control your character, walk around them etc)