Some EVE advice...

[Quetzalcoatl]

So as I mentioned in the BoB thread I'm thinking about getting involved in EVE. From my brief fling those many years ago, I know that the character creation phase is important with regard to shortening skill training times along your intended career path. Despite reading several character creation guides, I'm still not entirely sure what to do. I'm looking to create a combat character who is less focused blasting people into atoms and more on getting cheap shots and crippling them. I realize that NPC grinding is an important part of the early game, so he probably should be able to defend himself in a straight up fight. Sorry in advance to expierienced players if this sounds like wanting my cake and eating it too. People I've talked to have suggested Caldari but I also like the idea of Gallente drones.

Ideas?

[GuppyShark]

I don't have a lot of PVP experience but it's considered standard to 'tackle' people with warp drive scramblers and stasis webifiers to keep them in the unfair fights, otherwise they'll just flee.

Any race can build good alpha strike capability into their ships, to get the most out of the cheap shots.

Your race won't really make a huge difference here, I don't think.

[Jon]

If you wait a few more weeks, the character creation process is changing signficantly.

Here's a devblog they published today, but basically you will start with a bunch less skills, but double training speed for your first 1.6 million skillpoints, and you wont have to choose your bloodline/attributes and so on straight away, allowing you more time to get off on a path which suits you. It's an interesting direction they're going.

Hello all!

Apocrypha is on the horizon and we are getting closer and closer to the final list of changes that will be popping up in March. But as usual, I get to talk about the New Player Experience (NPE).

I want to get one misconception out of the way. This blog will concern you and everyone else. If you have played for a year, 6 years, 3 months or a week, you will want to read further than this. Chances are there will be changes that will affect you! Although NPE in it‘s very existence focuses on the new player and how they are introduced to EVE, this can have an effect on older players as well. Many believe that the NPE extends only to the first 5 minutes. With some games, this might be true. But as we have all gone through the first months of EVE and often thought; „oh my, this game is too hard!"

This is something we want to help with. Our goal is to ease players into the game and not intimidate them with a hundred choices in the first minute. Start with the basics and then leave them to decide on their destiny. A true sandbox experience. Give them a shovel and a rake, and let them dig in.

Character creation

The biggest change you will probably notice is character creation. For the past few years, the process of creating your character has been a multi-step process with a lot of choices. Choices that were intimidating, to say the least, for anyone who had never played EVE before. You needed to choose a race, sex, bloodline, ancestry, career, specialization, school, and allocate free attribute points. You also had to select a name, read about the 30 skills and the 800K skill points you received from this experience.

For Apocrypha, we simplified this process. We eliminated choices that had no effect on you whatsoever and moved these choices to a more appropriate time where you could make an informed decision. You are in charge of your destiny.

We have simplified the UI, moving all choices into one screen. I think you will be quite surprised with the functionality, as it works quite well. We went through a whole fully functional "new" version of character creation before we re-did the whole thing again. These changes will be on SISI pretty soon (if they haven't arrived already) so I urge you to give it a try.

We have removed the School, Career and Specialization completely. These added quite a bit of complexity. Players were required to select these without knowing what to expect. Many times, people would choose blindly, leading them to feel let down or disappointed later on.

We have moved the allocation of the 5 free attribute points. A new player has no idea what the attributes means and, as many of you probably have done, assigned 3 to charisma because it must be awesome!

Skills received from character creation have been re-visited and removed, many of which were irrelevant to new players. Just to name one skill that a certain path could get - Who needs Siege Warfare when you are fresh out of military school? Are you going to siege a POS in your Velator?

These choices, all important, are better made once you have a true understanding of how things work in EVE. Once you know what you want to do, what you want to fly and so on, that is when you should decide on your career and skills. And it is better that you understand what the attributes do, before you start fiddling with them.

Skills and attributes

In our newest build, a player gets about 50K skill points from character creation. This might change, depending on testing. But we will be reducing the 800K quite substantially. New players should not feel intimidated by their skills, and they should be given a chance to decide, on their own, exactly what skills and path they want to go down. As a result, you will be able to create an alt which is more focused and get there quicker than before, as you can decide exactly what skills to train.

I will talk more about the skills and their effects in my next blog.

Your attributes will be very similar between the races once you start out, but now you will get to change them. A new player will have the opportunity to respec his attributes twice. This allows a new player to change previous decisions they made resulting from not knowing the system.

Once a year, you - and everyone else - can take 14 attribute points, and re-arrange them within reason. Attributes can be set at values anywhere from 5 to 15. This means, that every year, you can take all your spare charisma points and put them into perception if you so please. Or the other way around.

Careers - the sandbox way!

As I mentioned before, in the existing system players chose a career before even the first 10 minutes of play and, as with many games, it is an important choice. But with EVE, as you know, you can become anything you wish. You can move from shooting players to mining at any time. You are not bound by any restrictions by your "career." It gives the false impression that you are deciding on something, which then doesn't mean a thing in the world of New Eden.

However, you can learn about these particular career paths. As before, we will have 10 missions per career, which will teach you the basics of Industry, Business and Military occupations. These have been revamped, and are all available to you. You can go through them all if you want, or just one, or none. Your choice and your destiny.

This concludes the first part of the Apocrypha NPE overview blogs. There will be more from my design counterparts and myself in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Until then!

[Quetzalcoatl]

Thanks for the tip. Guess I'll wait and read up on backstory and ship specs till then.

[White Haven]

What you're trying to do is very contingent on how the fight starts. Since you want fights where the other poor sap doesn't see you coming, you're looking at A) piracy, scanning out people and dropping in uninvited from across the system if you feel like a life of ruining peoples' shit out of the clear blue, B) Gate-camps, so you're sitting right where some poor fucker pops out of a stargate, waiting. Somewhat difficult to pull off, especially against faster rides, C) Possibly using the new Apocrypha scan system to do tactical warps, but that's still up in the air as to whether that'll work on launch. There ARE cloaking devices, but for the most part you need to deal with a no-lock timer after you decloak on most ships. It really all comes down to who you want to fuck up, though, because that'll determine the whys and hows for you.

[bilateralrope]

If you want to get started in PvP, I'd suggest joining factional warfare (use the militia office window in most high sec stations).

[wautd]

I'm looking to create a combat character who is less focused blasting people into atoms and more on getting cheap shots and crippling them. People I've talked to have suggested Caldari but I also like the idea of Gallente drones.

Ideas?

The downside with Caldari is that if you want to use crippling modules, you'll also have to do sacrifices in your (shield)tank.
If you like the concept of drones go for Gallente for sure. An armor tanked drone boat with remote sensor dampers might be what you are looking for, and the armor tank + drones will be decent against NPC's as well.

I remember an old corpmember of mine who could lay waste with merely his Gallente force recon cruiser and his alt in a covert ops looking for targets in 0.0.

[White Haven]

The disadvantage of going FW early on, while it gets you into PvP fast, is that it makes highsec no longer guaranteed safe. When you're still trying to get your feet under you, that's a bit of a rub. Not saying don't do it, just make sure you've got good situational awareness before you do, and make sure you DON'T want to do mining and that sort of thing. Half-AFK sitting in a belt mining for hours when some FWer jumps into your belt and nukes you to hell in highsec will sorta ruin your day.

[GuppyShark]

What I've done (since effectively I only really started recently) is roll a trade alt. They'll be able to haul/whatever safely in Empire space, and then I'll enlist my main in the militia (not that I'll be spending a lot of time on him in Empire, since I'm quite comfortable in 0.0).

[Rahvin]

I'm utterly terrified of all things PvP related - mostly because in the few PvP encounters Ive had, I've either been demolished and podded or escaped by the skin of my teeth. I need better skills and equipment before I start picking fights.

Although there was the one pirate I talked into giving me 3 million isk instead of blowing me up. That was unexpected.

[PREDATOR490]

If your looking to get into PVP then Amarr or Gallente are your options to play with. Amarr is the favoured option due to having a large selection of PVP ships in their arsenal but they do take a lot of work to get the most out of.
Caldari are generally NOT a good PVP option unless your looking to get into Electronic Warefare which is something a lone wolf player will not take any benefit from.

Armor Tanking is easier than shields and frees up the mid slots for PVP related modules like Warp Disrupters / Painters / ECMs / Tracking Disrupters / Sensor Damps etc.
Amarr and Gallente are the armor tanking races by default and they both end up using the gunnery skills so training into one race will set you up to cross train into Gallente easier.

Training from Gallente > Caldari is harder since you end up having to cross train into shield tanking and a whole new area of weapons. However, if your looking to do missions then Caldari are the best for that.

Basically, no matter how you roll your going to be good at some things and bad at others. Given enough time you can train whatever you like and thus turn the bad to good but it will take alot of time.
I have been playing for approx. 2 years now and can fly Gallente and Caldari. My corp has now instructed us to start training into Amarr ships for 0.0 PVP much to my utter annoyance. Regardless, in the time it has taken me to cross train, a dedicated player can specialise in a single race to greater effect than me. Hence, it is a pretty good idea to start out with an idea of what you want to do and stick to it.

If your interested in pure PVP

> Amarr

If your interested in a lesser form of PVP

> Gallente

If your interested in missions or a fairly 'easy' race

> Caldari

If your interested in dying alot

> Minmatar

I dont really know much about Minmatar but it is something of an ongoing theme that they are the weakest race in EVE. Maybe someone else here can give you proper info about them.

[Commander 598]

IIRC, a properly specced Minmatar pilot can almost fly a tackling Rifter right from the start. Also Rifters are supposedly like the best PvP frigate ever or something.

Armor Tanking is easier than shields

A good passive shield tank is pretty easy.

[wautd]

> Minmatar

I dont really know much about Minmatar but it is something of an ongoing theme that they are the weakest race in EVE. Maybe someone else here can give you proper info about them.

Good speed and high alpha damage makes them good for roaming gans or large fleet engagements

IIRC, a properly specced Minmatar pilot can almost fly a tackling Rifter right from the start. Also Rifters are supposedly like the best PvP frigate ever or something.

Coincidentally, last night I saw a vid of a single rifter putting a Maelstrom into structure. The battleship pilot must have had his head up his arse but still
And they have offcourse some excellente specialized ships (Huginn, Vagabond,...)

[Rahvin]

I happen to be Minmatar, though because I;ve concentrated so much on armor tank skills I may cross train into Amarr ships eventually.

Minmatar seem to be "weak" primarily because of the lack of focus in our ships. Some are armor tanked, other shield tanked. Some use guns, some missiles. We lack the consistency in ship design of several other races, but we have some excellent ships. I love my Hurricane, for example - not only does it hit pretty damned hard, it's fast enough to close to AC range and can tank enough to kill NPC Battleships. It's a great gank ship, works wonders for clearing Frigates and Cruisers for the Battleships in a small fleet running missions, and isn't overly expensive. It's also flexible enough to run either a passive shield tank or an armor tank. The Stabber (and its T2 equivalents) is a great Cruiser hull, as well - if you watched the latest PvP tournament, Vagabonds were flying all over the place.

Minmatar aren't necessarily weak, but they take time to learn enough skills to be able to fly all of their ships decently - the "jack of all trades" race.

[wautd]

Aye, Minmatar have probably the most flexible ships. Flexibility is good, but the downside is you'll need to focus on a lot of skills so they're not very noob-friendly. Amarr on the other hand are as flexible as a brick. Easily to train but your enemy will know what he's up against by just looking at your ship.

[Flash]

Minmatar for life!

I agree with the above statements about some minnie ships needing a hell of a lot of training to use well. The typhoon is a classic example of this. It's a great battleship - once you have the skills. HUGE dronebay (175m3) but of course, that means training drones. 8 high slots, evenly split between launcher and turret, so that means training up missiles AND projectile. I love my typhoon, but I need to train a lot more to get the best out of it.

The other bonus to flying minnie ships is that your weapons generally don't use up your cap, so that frees up your fitting choices considerably. I am a massive slut for passive shield tanking, and minnie ships are great for this. My hurricane can solo most lvl 4 missions, and half the time I forget to turn on the invulnerability field. Of course, this is WHY I passive tank. I have one active component and I forget about it. I couldn't handle trying to remember any more than that.

[Rahvin]

Minmatar for life!

I agree with the above statements about some minnie ships needing a hell of a lot of training to use well. The typhoon is a classic example of this. It's a great battleship - once you have the skills. HUGE dronebay (175m3) but of course, that means training drones. 8 high slots, evenly split between launcher and turret, so that means training up missiles AND projectile. I love my typhoon, but I need to train a lot more to get the best out of it.

The other bonus to flying minnie ships is that your weapons generally don't use up your cap, so that frees up your fitting choices considerably. I am a massive slut for passive shield tanking, and minnie ships are great for this. My hurricane can solo most lvl 4 missions, and half the time I forget to turn on the invulnerability field. Of course, this is WHY I passive tank. I have one active component and I forget about it. I couldn't handle trying to remember any more than that.

How do you fit your 'cane? Thats what I fly mostly at the moment.

[The Yosemite Bear]

mind you I took Minmater for the grungy looks, and am enjoying my ships too. Some people have seen me running all kinds of support for the rest of my friend's actions. Technically I am the default wing/fleet leader in a group full of Caldari and Gallente.

[White Haven]

Passive tank AND no-cap weapons? Bloody hell, what DO you use cap for? O.o

[The Yosemite Bear]

I didn't say I had no cap weapons, I tend to speed in and blast the shit out of things with my guns, and missiles, while providing fire support and levels in all of the leadership skills, (plus running around with drones, repair mods, and salvagers)

[White Haven]

Erp, sorry, was referring to Flash.

[Flash]

My cane fit is simple. Be aware, this is for PVE only. You sacrifice DPS for this fit, but survivability is excellent. I think it's worth it, YMMV.

I use 6 650mm artys and two launchers (assault or heavy, depending on mission) in the highs, 3 T2 large shield extenders and an invulnerability field in the mids, lows are filled with Beta reactor control: Shield power relays.

I also use 3 core defense shield purgers in my rig slots.

Your cap recharge is shot to hell, but the only thing that uses cap is the invulnerability field, so you can still run it for ages.

I use a very similar setup with my typhoon, but with large guns and cruise missiles, or torps.

The hurricane has successfully tanked all rooms of lvl 4 Angel Extravaganza with no problems.

[Flash]

I should add, with the cane I will sometimes switch out one of the shield extenders for a 10MW afterburner if I know I need to cross large distances, or some of the NPCs like to sit out at range. I don't often find a need for this when missioning - minnie ships are generally faster than most anyway.

[wautd]

your weapons generally don't use up your cap

That's why I'm training Minmatar guns in between now. I don't fly Minmatar ships myself but no-cap guns can be interesting on ships like the Myrmidon.

[White Haven]

As long as it's on a ship that doesn't get a meaningful weapon bonus, yeah, that's got potential.