Intermittent

Still not quite dead! Although I think I am spending more time reading about EVE than playing it. But I don't think it would be fun reading about it if I didn't play at least a little. Even if what I mostly do is push the skill queue and invent and manufacture mostly T2 hybrid guns. Not even enough to plex the account, just accumulating a little ISK so that if I ever actually want to do something, I could fit a ship to do it with.

One thing I did do is get an interceptor and fly to Syndicate to find a station with free material efficiency research slots. Rubicon changes make take much less stressful, even compared to doing it in a covops frigate. No bubbles! Although I saw on the killboards someone with much the same idea, and they still go caught in PF-346.

I still chose to go for it, because that one was hours before, and there were no kills noted since then. But apparently the gatecampers had nothing better to do, since when I passed the gate the exact same people were sitting there. At least they moved to cover the bubbles, so I jumped through without issue.

So now I got a bunch of blueprint with some ME points for Gallente frigates and some of the hybrid guns. No significant gains, since they are still not really worth it to manufacture themselves, and for T2 production the cost of T1 component is not really significant. But it is something.

Skill training continues in haphazard manner, as I don't actually want to commit to purely industrial character, since that would be giving up of sorts. I went for third level mastery on Thorax. Even though masteries aren't any more sensible that certificates are, it just seems neater. I wonder if sensor compensation skills, or whatever they are called, actually have any noticeable effect? Not that I plan on getting jammed, but you never know.

I passed through lowsec a bunch of times on my way to free-ish copying slots, and apparently low level anomalies, which were added to lowsec in Rubicon, don't bunch up there as much as I would hope. Apparently people are completing them, I guess.

Unfortunately I get discouraged from trying anything somewhat risky because my connection keeps randomly dropping. Usually for less than a second. I know this is not EVE fault, because IRC resets as well. Recently it got a little worse. Maybe due to lower temperatures. In any case, it is somewhat irritating when flying around highsec, in low/null it could be a really dumb way to lose a ship. And losing a ship though out-of-game event is somehow more annoying than otherwise. I wish EVE client-server could just reestablish the socket without full relog.

Prices do go up

This time I'm posting before a month has passed! Barely. Things remain similar. I wonder how long will I keep at it, just barely playing EVE to iterate T2 production and update the skill queue. Still, numbers going up is kind of nice. In a way. And a single subscription is not really significant.

I passed a billion ISK, so I stopped updating sell orders very often. Mostly because I'm manufacturing in Everyshore, and selling in Dodixie, and while crossing regions only needs five jumps or so, it is still good ten minutes. With Rubicon changes it should be faster. I even almost trained Interceptors at some point. Anyway, the other reason is that I just don't feel I need any more ISK quickly, so the sell orders can just sit there. And it even turned out that the prices did eventually went back up and hit my sell orders.

One of them was bought up in bulk, so I guess that was the price rising in Jita and someone doing arbitrage. Or maybe someone just needed seventy T2 medium railguns. Two other did sell a few at a time, so that was a genuine local upwards price movement. It is obvious that this must happen, because all prices would land at material costs very fast, but it doesn't feel that way if one is getting 0.01 ISKed all the time.

Incoming Rubicon changes look interesting. I wonder what siphons will do to moon material prices. I read somewhere that they were nerfed, or made more recently, after tests, because they would destroy moon mining otherwise. They still might. We shall see. Warp speed bonuses look really nice, finally small fast ships will feel fast.

And apparently they are adding low level anoms to lowsec. Some time ago I tried to do anoms in highsec to measure how often factions drops do drop, but those are rare. Recently they feel even rarer for some reason. Or maybe I spend too much less time flying in circles. In lowsec the anoms are usually there, but they are too difficult to be ran quickly, and some are too difficult to be run solo in a ship that can paid for by running anoms if it is lost.

But, if many fewer people will do anoms in lowsec they will accumulate there, and then it will be possible to complete them rapidly in a relatively cheap ship. Perhaps even a PvP fit cruiser. Not that would matter at all if I get dropped by a Loki or some other silliness. Or a gang.

Metallurgy delayed

I didn't post anything for over a month? Strange. I meant to, because in my notes there is at least a title of a post. Somehow I never found time to write about that. It was Metallurgy, I meant to write about the time when I tried to go into Syndicate nullsec to find a station with a short queue on material research. And I did, and tried to research ME on some rig blueprints only to realize they require Metallurgy. Which I didn't have, or so I thought. So I raced to the nearest station with skillbooks somewhere on the edge of Solitude. And once I bought and tried to inject it, I found out that I do in fact had Metallurgy, at level zero.

At some early point of playing EVE I bought every cheap science skillbook, or actually most every skillbook which was cheap and injectable without level five prerequisite. But I didn't train some of them. I didn't think back then that I was going to research ME on anything. And definitely not in a chained way on a POS, which is where the percentages would matter.

So there I was, pointlessly flying through NPC null. At least I didn't die. CovOps cloaks are nice. I hear that in the next expansion there is going to be a T1 frigate with a CovOps cloak. Which is nice, I suppose, especially if it will cost the same as navy frigates. Because I doubt it will cost as much as pirate ships, considering Sisters have agents in highsec, and missions are infinite. Which is a fundamental disconnect with core design of EVE, but there you go.

Anyway, researching ME on those blueprints wasn't really worth that much, because I didn't set up full production for those rigs anyway. Got scared by the costs I guess, hundreds of salvage pieces per rig add up. And I am getting close to first billion ISK. Mostly through basic T2 small hybrid gun production. Recently started to make some drones.

I keep forgetting to update the planetary production. I wonder how the Rubicon change here will turn out. Unless war declaration system is shaken up I fear that POCOs getting dominated by large alliances is something that will happen. Limited wars should really be a thing, limited to a system or a constellation that is. It would at least tie stakes to something.

In the meantime I built a missioning battleship. A rail Megathron. Basic one, not enough ISK to throw at a navy battleship. Also a Noctis. It seems to be doing reasonably fine, although obviously I am getting ISK at lower range for L4 missioning. Still, twenty million per hour is a lot considering how much can you get from ratting in lowsec, at least without enough backup to bring a battleship there. Or having a T3 I guess, although that seems risky, because someone would coordinate to jump that.

Alas, fundamental flaw of PvE in EVE is that it is designed as a time sink. Which is the nature of the subscription base game, but it means that one remains exposed to attack for much too long. And in lowsec these days someone will attack, usually within minutes. Occasionally seconds, if at a warpable location, like a belt or anomaly.

I doubt this will be resolved. Even if there were resources to rework PvE in EVE, which there clearly are not, it is not easy to designed a system which would actually work and be fun. Giving up a time sink, or at least moving the time sink from something requiring being exposed to something secure, with only short smash-and-grab operations, would help immensely. And it would be much more similar to PvP as well, which I am lead to believe consists mainly of waiting for other people, whether enemies or fleetmates, to show up.

I still ignore PvP. Or other people in general. Actually I don't play EVE all that much recently. I pay for the subscription and update skill queues and manufacturing though. It is somewhat relaxing, seeing numbers go up. And I am interested in the development process, still hoping that the promises of new space and such things will go somewhere. And it would just not be the same if I wasn't playing the game, at least minimally. I still like starships. Maybe I should one of these days get a bunch of simple frigates and go on a quasi-suicide lowsec roam. Or, how much DPS do you need to need to bring down a bubble, anyway? I find that I dislike drag bubbles. Do the owners get notified if those get shot at?

Not all that epic

I did the Blood-Stained Stars so called epic arc finally. Because why not, and I got eight percent Caldari standings, so that's something. With a six month character and a cruiser it mostly involved flying around, occasionally deploying drones to shoot a bunch of frigates. Ah, the time of level one missions…

I'm also thinking about finally training Hull Upgrades V, which I have somehow forgotten about at some point, and build a L4 missions battleship. It seems like a thing to do. With local repair boost in Odyssey 1.1 EFT tells me I can reach thousand gank plus tank without T2 guns. Tank heavy, obviously, but maybe I will be able to drop a hardener for another DPS boost. Or something. That is still for next week, because without T2 tank I doubt there is much point.

The epic arc stopped my production, so I missed the chaos when EVECentral feeds stopped working. Probably for the best.

Lessons not learnt

Back in May I noticed a Nemesis wreck on a highsec anomaly and I wrote a post mentioning that torpedoes don't work on frigates. But I chose to try that out for myself anyway. In null. There were only two of them! Also two battleships, but those immediately went out of range. Unfortunately, one of those had a scram and the other a web. And so… I lost my shiny new bomber to two NPC frigates.

Not a significant loss, because I have just about enough time during week days to push forward T2 production. Not doing much more beyond that. After stupidly losing the bomber I got discouraged for a bit. Don't like losing ships, even if I can afford them. Not an attitude good for playing EVE, I know.

I tried exploring in a Helios, but nearby NPC null has still a bit too many people to really get into it, and the problem with wormholes is that I get bored with scanning in the time it takes to find a null exit. Even if the neighbouring wormhole has a null sec static, it is still many signatures to go through. At least I managed to not die on a bubble. The first time I flew into one there was no one around, and after that I actually read up on drag-bubble mechanics. I wonder if that was by design, or is CCP just bad at math and got tired after finding out the intersection point. Why would a bubble drag ships away from the exit point? Weird.

Number going up

Not quite dead yet! I am still playing EVE, although not that much. The weekend before last I was on a vacation away from my computer, and last weekend I spent my computer game time trying to complete a completable game before having to go back to work. And during the week I just don't have time to play EVE enough to do anything. Other than cycle manufacturing, research and planets.

While I realize that once one starts posting things like "not dead yet" the blog and quite possibly playing EVE at all is quite doomed, I am still playing at least a bit. Not that I did a lot on this weekend, either. Anyway, in the meantime I finally trained Electronic Upgrades V, so I have access to CovertOps frigates. Also bombers. I trained basic Torpedoes just in case, but I wonder if there is much point with minimal missile skills.

While exploration income has generally crashed I hear that you can still make quite a lot in null. The problem is getting there. Somehow I don't think that just flying into it, considering the chokepoints, is a good idea even in a covops. So, wormholes.

I even found a direct high-null wormhole once, but it lead into Vale of the Silent, on apparently sov boundary or something, because there were people there, and onlining TCUs, and no signatures in the few systems I jumped through, so I left before I flew into a bubble or something. Other wormholes lead to wormhole space, with no null exits inside, and I did not try to navigate a wormhole chain yet. To afraid to get lost. At least you can't lose probes anymore.

The issue is, since I don't want to pay for more accounts, I'm doing everything on one account and one character, because I don't want to split up training time. Which means I have to return every day to my base region to set more manufacturing. So I don't want to have my main stuck somewhere. Which means it is hard to do anything with wormhole space without multihour gaming sessions. Oh well.

Hypersynaptic fibers

T2 production is ticking along. I'm not sure how much ISK I'm actually making, because I refuse to make an actual spreadsheet, but the wallet appears to grow, so that is good. Broke through six hundred million ISK with materials for the next batch already bought. I ran out of manufacturing slots, because apparently T2 ammo takes lots of time. Eventually I should train Mass Production to five. But I think I will pause industrial training and train some more combat skills. Because who needs specialization.

Probably T2 drones would be a good idea. I am still flying around lowsec trying to rat. With T2 guns and Void ammo an assault frigate is reasonable, if not that great. A drone assault frigate, whatever it is called, might be better for clearing belts, at least with T2 drones. I have been trying to read about belt spawn mechanics, but it is difficult to find anything accurate, because Retribution apparently partially changed it.

I tried chaining a battleship spawn, which doesn't make that much sense in lowsec, but I wanted to see if that actually works. It didn't, when I came back, and there was no one in system the whole time, the spawn was replaced by a hauler spawn. But there are people who claim that chaining still works. Additional investigation is required.

Also apparently there is a limited number of spawns per system which can exist at the same time, approximately half the number of belts. So system with too many belts are not a good place to rat after all. This would explain why I encountered so many empty belts.

I have seen only a single faction spawn so far, and it dropped a tag and some ammo. Belt ratting in lowsec doesn't appear to be particularly worth it so far. But then, no one really said it would be. Doing Yards and Rally Points makes a bit less than L3 missions, and with much greater risk of player pirates dropping in. At least they are much faster to loot and salvage, since they have only one room.

And as I written before, unlike missions, belt rats and anomalies are a limited resource, and sometime they just are all cleared or refuse to spawn nearby. Although I have read somewhere that anomalies respawn per constellation? I doubt I could gather enough data to check it. But remembering which systems belong to the constellation I mostly fly around lowsec in might help. In any case, it just somehow irritates me that infinite missions exist in EVE. It seems against the basic design principles, for something to be excluded from competition this way.

Anyway, I'm doing ratting mostly because I like spaceships and shooting things in them, not because they make any noticeable amounts of ISK. Which is a problem, because I could, in principle, engage other people, and not only rats, but then I would start losing ships and my production efforts are nowhere near enough to pay for enough of those. At least not the kind that would have any sort of chance and could rat at the same time.

I have been playing for five months and still haven't joined anything. Probably suboptimal. At least when flying though lowsec I have local open, obviously, and haven't got enough screen real estate to keep corp chat open, so I don't keep getting used to CAS chat. Not that I ever say anything there.

Too many battleships

Well, I didn't make a post for more than two weeks. But I am still playing EVE, even if with limited time.

I tried to do bigger anomalies in my assault frigate, but apparently while I can more or less crack a lowest tier battleship, the kind with 400-500 thousand ISK bounties, I have nowhere near DPS to destroy anything tougher, at least not in any sane amounts of time. I am still training towards T2 small guns, EFT says I should get at least 50 DPS more with Void ammo, even with my still kind of low support skills. This won't make Ports or Rally Points with adjectives very practical, since they spawn a dozen battleships, but at least will make Yards and normal Rally Points quicker.

I can complete a Serpentis Port in my battlecruiser with about 420 DPS, at least after killing everything but battleships in the frigate, but I had to dock two times to recharge, so that is not very efficient. I tried to kill as many ships as possible in a Forlorn Rally Point, but apparently cruisers are triggers and it ended up with aforementioned dozen battleships. All shooting at my little frigate and doing no damage. It was pretty funny, at least.

On the other front I am still working on T2 manufacturing. Apparently ship prices, at least T2 frigates, are lagging behind the rapidly rising moon material prices, so that plan is not going to end well. Although I checked the Helios only, which might be undergoing some kind of post Odyssey bounce. At least T2 small guns seem to be selling fairly well. My industrial activity is strictly small scale, but I still seem to be depressing Dodixie market price once I drop only eighty small guns on it.

Assaulting Yards

I got myself an assault frigate. My first T2 ship. No T2 guns yet, but small Meta4 guns are pretty cheap. I fitted a blaster Enyo, purely for Serpentis PvE, so I left the glaring explosive resist hole alone, put a nanofiber structure on it, and hope that I can warp out before any other players can lock me. Or fully land on grid, I am not sure how long the time is between appearing on overview and being able to move, but I think there is some?

The ship is pretty brilliant for belt ratting and, which took me a bit to realize, lowsec anoms. With its bonuses, great accuracy and faction ammo it destroys cruiser rats pretty quickly, one shots many frigates and maybe three shots destroyers. Which is effectively quicker than when I did this with a cruiser, since it locks things much faster. And small ammo is cheap enough to just use faction ammo all the time. And I still don't have Small Hybrid Turrets to five. With that and T2 guns I should get another ten percent DPS. Or more, depending on what is considered base.

It even takes out battleships reasonably fast, a bit slower than in a Brutix, but there aren't that many in lowsec. And it has small enough signature that it is pretty much immune to anything cruiser and above. Unless I mess up traversal, but even then it has enough resists to recover. I have actually not tried to do a Serpentis Rally Point, because there were too many people in systems where those happened to spawn when I was flying around, but I can complete Serpentis Yards just fine.

I even got an escalation of one of those, but leading to a Serpentis Logistical Outpost, which, if the description is in any way accurate, is way too much for my little frigate. Blowing up a battleship or two is fine, but then would get boring, and I don't like the mentions of missile sentries. It is good to know that escalations are actually a thing. I wonder what the odds are for highsec anom to escalate, I did a good hundred of those probably, and never seen that.

On the other hand I have never seen a faction spawn from lowsec. Or belts for that matter. I have seen some tag rat spawns, a courier twice, but no faction. But then I either play in bursts to short for belts to respawn, or get scared of some pirate. And I read that belts work in cycles. Although I saw them at many points of those cycles, including special spawns, so I wonder, do they start at those points or I just happened to hit a belt someone left in that state? I know that happened at least once since, I got a special spawn in a belt where there were still wrecks from the final cycle stage.

Another thing I did in my new Assault Frigate was a highsec combat site, Serpentis Narcotic Warehouse. It had so many frigates and destroyers that they actually got pretty far into my armor, even though they died pretty much in one shot, but I beat them all. And the overseer structure dropped a Coreli A-Type 1MN Afterburner. So that is nice. I don't have much use for it, but assuming it sells, it is another thirty-something million ISK.

I got one of those better Tags4Sec tags, apparently worth about fifty million. Assuming it sells, the market seems a bit weird on those right now, some sort of introduction bounce I think. In general, pretty nice. I need some ISK because I want to start producing T2 ships without cutting into my half billion reserve. I still need the interface and skillbooks. And datacores. And materials, but I want to stick to frigates at first, so it is not that much per unit. But then, invention and manufacturing is a hobby within a hobby, really.

Cascading annoyances

That wasn't particularly constructive. Well, at least I trained the basic skills, invented some blueprints and produced thirty T2 modules, which I don't think sold because I have no time or patience to play 0.01 ISK games. I will one of these days go to Dodixie and change the price. But I don't think modules are worth it for casual production after all, the profit per module is too small to bother. I have queued Mechnics V, so will check out ships during the week.

The annoyances which gave the post its title started on Saturday, when I tried to do some belt ratting in lowsec. It was in some ways even more empty than usual, except one guy who quite apparently stalked my ship. From curiosity I even backtracked and watched the gate cloaked, and it was Loki. Well, there are reasons why lowsec is mostly deserted, and it is mostly my fault by still not joining a corp or anything. If I was playing the, after all, massively multiplayer game as it should be played it would have been probably fairly easy to set a trap or something. But alas.

In any case, that was merely annoying, but then I chose to do some missions, because I started forgetting why I stopped doing them. That might have not been the reason at the time. I wanted at some point to bring up Caldari standings, so I started doing L3 Caldari missions. When did I get standings to five with Caldari Business Tribunal? Well, factoring the Connections skill, but still.

What I did forget was how long sixteen missions take. But once I started I didn't want to give up. So after several hours of missions, and I also forgot that L3 missions do not actually give all that much ISK per hour, I finally got a simple delivery storyline. And it brought my Caldari standing high enough that with Diplomacy skill it was positive.

What I forgot about was that I had Gallente standing at just above three, which gave me access to all Gallente L3 agents. Including the Roden Shipyards agent I started research at. It doesn't stop research, I think, although maybe it does, but definitely blocks those small courier missions R&D agents give. R&D is kind of crippled right now, what with datacores dropping from exploration and sold in Faction Warfare LP stores, but still. It just bothers me.

So, I started doing distribution missions for Roden Shipyards, while watching things on my tablet very near a keyboard. So, almost not AFK. It took hours and the corporation standing is still nowhere. I got one L2 storyline, but it didn't bring Faction standing above three. I still didn't get another one, but I probably just will. It will most likely bring Caldari standing back into negatives, due to the way these numbers work.

What I should have done is finally do the Bloodstained Stars arc, which I have never even started, since it apparently gives a standing bonus with a faction without penalty for other factions. And I could even read mission descriptions, because that is where part of the lore comes through. Why aren't there any intermediate epic arcs, anyway? Maybe I will start it, but first I want to get Gallente standing back above three, then use epic arc bonus to offset Caldari penalties.

Quick update: I decided to finish doing those L2 distribution missions to see how the storyline goes, and it did push me above three for Gallente while still barely above diplomatic zero for Caldari. And yes, I know zero standing isn't the actually significant point for anything, I just want the buffer. Also I remember reading that R&D agents require specifically corporation standing, but it seems to work anyway? Maybe that changed at some point.

Update update: so apparently you need corp standing two less than normal requirement. That works. Not that L3 agent produces many Research Points.

Science!

When I was writing the post last week I realized that I am finally getting close to invention skills. Well, actually I was looking at Large Armor Repairer II and apparently it requires Mechanics V. And then when checking what else requires it, I remembered that a number of science skills do. I looked at those when I started playing, because I like science in principle, but then stopped thinking about it because they were going to get so long to get to.

In the meantime my perspective on what a long skill has changed, especially after starting Gallente Frigate V, which I know is not even that long compared to some, but it is as long or longer than requirement for basic invention. And I trained Science IV at some point for some reason, Engineering V for obvious reasons, as well as Mechanics IV and Electronics IV, so the remaining time is both fairly short and I need those skills anyway.

So I read up on invention and it seems that it should be doable casually without a dedicated POS. There are some copying slots more or less available, and while a POS should work about four times faster, considering the queue times, even on lowsec, since I don't plan on focusing on invention to keep my slots occupied it doesn't matter that much.

So I set Science V in the queue after Gallente Frigate V. Who needs focus. But once I get Mechanics V I will be able to train Assault Frigates, which would be my first T2 ship, and it should make pretty good lowsec belt ratter. At least with T2 guns, which I think need five more days of training. But that will wait a bit, because I want to play with invention first, so at least let Science V finish, train Production Efficiency IV, because while production efficiency doesn't seem to matter that much for most T2 items, it still matters. Of maybe it matters a lot and my numbers are wrong.

This is probably not the best time to get into T2 production, because the moon products were changed, and the prices seem to be in a state of shock, at least those that require the new moons, which don't yet have established production lines. Not to mention the whole war thing. And there appears to be plenty of stock with old prices. But right now I plan to just tinker, without sinking more that few tens of millions into this.

I played with EVEIPH a bit, and apparently there is still basically no ISK in producing any T1 module, at least without researched blueprint and Production Efficiency V. Which makes sense. I am hoping that since ME on invented blueprints is locked that matters less. And there should be some actual demand for T2 modules, because with many meta-modules usually available at reprocessing prices, why would there be for T1.

The other reason for thinking about trying invention was crashing decryptor prices. If I can't make ISK selling them, or finding them for that matter, even lowsec seemed stripped of sites when I tried it this week, then maybe I can make some using them. Not sure how worth it is will minimal invention skills, but I guess I will find out. Eventually. I have set copying for some blueprints, at bought some others of contracts, which should be researchable only with science derived from Engineering V. So maybe during the week I should try inventing something.

In the meantime I took out the Brutix I bought recently and did a bunch of anoms in lowsec. By which I mean two. It wasn't particularly constructive ISK wise, compared to even L3 missions, but more about that in a moment. Also did some belt ratting in Thorax. An assault frigate could really be better there, cost about the same, the effective DPS should be similar, much smaller signature, a bit better speed and much better agility. I haven't checked EFT for details, because I think I will leave that for after I have done at least some inventing.

Anyway, the belt ratting was actually better that anomalies, because I got lucky with high meta loot, and I got good twenty million in drops in an hour or so. Unfortunately no faction or tac4sec spawns, which could have pushed that into great category. One courier and transport spawn, but filled with tritanium, and didn't bother to bring an industrial into lowsec for a few million ISK. Maybe if I had a blockade runner. But that is something for the future.

Getting tired of missions and trying to do other things brought me to a realization what was bothering me about missions before. Everything else in EVE is a limited resource, at least on a time and system basis. Anomalies, exploration sites, belts rats, even asteroid in belts run out in most populated systems. If in any place there are too many people trying to do too much at the same time, the system becomes depleted, which exerts population pressure and encourages people to spread out.

But missions are not limited in any way. Anyone can go to an agent, well, anyone with proper standings, which is beside the point, press a button and a fresh instance full on bounties, loot, salvage, occasionally even ore asteroids springs into existence no matter what anyone else is doing. And then, no population pressure. No point in competing for limited resources. This really seem to be antithetical to the nature of EVE.

Of course nothing will probably be done because it would necessarily seriously nerf highsec, because missions are essentially the only thing that allow highsec to maintain its population density. Well, I don't actually know this, but how many people could actually make any ISK from anoms and sites in highsec? Mining and industry are a whole other thing, but at least they are nominally limited, even if they could support in high sec alone probably ten times more people. And they are not an ISK fountain.

What I would like to happen is contracts or something with agents, limited by new skills per agent type, analogous to R&D agents. Every agent would generate a number of missions per twenty minutes or so, put them in a pool, then send out the missions in a pool to randomly selected contracted capsuleers, giving the a notification in the same way storyline missions happen now. Only those who have no outstanding mission offer from that agent count, obviously, and missions that are declined or incomplete after say, four hours, go back into the pool. This way missions would be a limited resource, but they would be distributed fairly. And people not doing missions would not block other people from getting missions, because the pool of missions would keep growing until enough people who actually complete them get them. And if the proportion of missions available to people contracted was displayed in the agent finder it would encourage people to spread around. And it would make missions feel at least something that is actually happening in the universe, as it were, rather than getting triggered by button push.

Leaking money

Didn't play EVE a lot this week. But I did spent ten minutes mining ice in a lowsec system, just because it was there. Not something particularly sustainable, even if it wasn't very boring, because there are too many people passing through the system. Or apparently jumping in and out every few minutes, as the case might be. Scouting I guess? Also mined a Retriever hold-full of ore in highsec, just to remember why I gave up on mining. Because it is boring.

It might still gives more ISK than anything else I can do in EVE, now that exploration loot prices crashed. Even with decreased prices of highsec ores. Although a proper lowsec exploration pass should still be better per hour. And I guess L3 missions might make more, if done properly. But I am still mostly burnt out on missions after getting the jump clone rating, and don't really want to build up to L4. I am relatively close, I think I need Mechanics V and Hull Upgrades V for full T2 tank, and a long range Dominix build should be viable, although it might need T2 drones. Or at least Drone Sharpshooting V for whatever module boosts drone optimals and just hit them with micro jump driver and sentries.

I should have bought a Dominix before the Odyssey hit. I was even aware that the mineral cost was going to be risen as part of tiericide changes, but since I didn't really plan on hitting L4 missions I just decided to wait. And now it about tripled in price. I still have enough ISK for that, but it would take a lot.

I am considering L4 missions more because I bough and fitted a Brutix, nominally for lowsec ratting. But seeing the ISK counter dropping made me worried about losing it too much. Especially since it is probably a bad idea, a blaster Brutix that is, because rail Myrmidon could kite rats while keeping alignment if necessary. Assuming a Brutix with my skills can even complete lowsec anoms. It should, since I beat one of those very slowly in a Thorax, and probably definitely if I finally train for T2 armor tank, but who knows.

It is fit with a cloak and a microwarpdrive, so it should be able to jump through most gatecamps. Or at least most opportunity pirates. Which works on a Brutix much better than on cruisers, at least Gallente cruisers, since I didn't really look at other ones, since it has an utility high slot. And an improved cloak costs almost as much as cruiser. But I am sort of afraid to find out. Which is silly, since I could afford about five more of those before I ran of out ISK. I would feel better though if I could afford to replace it without dropping below half-billion ISK. Which while I don't need for anything, since pay subscription normally, and for now shelved the idea of plexing training for the second character. I mostly gave up on FW for now.

Not that I even expect lowsec anoms to make that much ISK. But really, I just want enough to replace the ship I'm flying, so that I don't play extremely defensively. Right now somehow lowsec feels overpopulated, despite there still being between zero and ten people in most systems. What would be neat, and more explicit than the security rating, is just straight up put on player profile time since last getting suspect/criminal flagged. Not that that would guarantee anything, but it would allow at least a degree of risk management. Honestly, the systems in EVE start feeling very small once you start feeling threatened by other players. Between d-scan and combat probes an enemy can be dropping on you with no warning inside warp disruption range within seconds.

I think I might be leaning towards the opinion that L4 missions should be removed from highsec, or at all, because their presence tends to loom over everything else that I can be doing. I suppose it would be different if I cared about PvP, but I don't that much, and solo PvP in EVE doesn't make much sense anyway. It would also be different if I joined a properly run player corp, but I am this week in even less of a mood to interact with people that usual, and the usual is not very high, so that will have to wait even more. In any case, I was doing things because they are fun, rather than because they make ISK, but then I saw my ISK dropping… well, such is life in EVE.

New Eden

My general impressions on Odyssey are in a previous post. This is my "what I did in EVE last week" post. Which, with an expansion coming out during that week, is quite related. The first thing I did, as a lot of people, is get a scanning frigate and go see how that changed, since it was, after all, ostensibly a focus feature of the expansion.

I scanned down a Combat Site right in the system I base myself in, switched to my trusty cruiser, and for once completed it first. Someone went to it after me, but they left after I grabbed the pass items. I am not entirely clear how that works, but I got to the end, and got a Daredevil blueprint! I manufactured the ship and it is not in my hangar. I could sell it, but I don't need ISK that much and maybe someday I will use it for something.

After that I realized that since NPC were supposed to be removed from lowsec Relic/Data sites, I could try my luck with that. Since I still get attached to ships, even little T1 scanning frigates, I bought a new one. For a change, a Heron, since apparently I trained Caldari Frigate IV at some point. And it does have an additional middle slot, which I put a scanning upgrade in, nano structure in low, no tank or guns, and went for lowsec.

In particular went along the path to New Eden. I am not very strong on EVE lore, since the sandbox approach minimizes the impact really. But why not. There is stuff there, like the monolith and the violent wormhole thing. And not very many players there. In three hours or so I managed to run quite many sites and get about hundred million ISK worth of loot. Fairly good success in going though second difficulty level minigame, although occasional failures happened. Managed to return without incident.

The ISK per hour might not be that great, compared to min-maxed mission running or whatever, but considering I got all than in a T1 frigate with three levels in most relevant skills it is pretty great. Exploring is now a viable career for new players, and encourages them to get out of highsec.

Speaking of lowsec, I got back to the cruiser I stashed there, and hit some belts. On the second one after Odyssey I encountered the new tags4sec NPC. And the tag sold for twenty million. After a few days. I haven't seen them afterwards, so that might have been very lucky, but then I don't clear belts very efficiently, because there are too many people around.

There is also the blue ice anomaly in one of the system. Which no one seems to mine ever, because lowsec. I am kind of tempted to get a Procurer in there. I actually bought one, because why not, but there seem to be a perpetual gate camp on the route. Today they even locked and scrambled my frigate as I was moving though. Using a frigate rather than a shuttle because I want to carry at least some of the loot from ratting. I got away, because I used two stabilizers and they didn't have a faction scram, but still, annoying. Sooner or later the frigate is going to get it, which is not a problem as such, but losing the implants would be worse, although what are the odds of losing the pod in lowsec not AFK? Unless they bring out the smartbombs, which is possible since I think there was at least on battleship there.

Mining ice doesn't seem to be very constructive, ISK-wise, especially in lowsec, but it is just something I want to do because it is there. Hopefully a Venture can carry ice in its ore hold, because otherwise I am not getting a block out of there. Assuming I can get a procurer to the system at all. It is often completely empty, so I should be able to mine a block or three. Just because.

I wonder if moon changes combined with the nullsec war will increase the price of T2/T3 ships and components enough that people will start to actually care about their ships. Or maybe gatecamps are so low risk that they don't lose their Tengus and stuff like that ever. But I looked at the prices, and right now you can make, with a high-skill character, enough money to buy and fit one of those with few hours of L4 mission running. Which seems like it screws new players who can't fly those things. I know right now I could afford better ships than I can fly. But on the other hand I can't afford to lose best ships I can fly repeatedly. Risk management in EVE is all kinds of wonky.

Although one of these days I want to move a battlecruiser into lowsec and do some of those anomalies. Assuming there is a hole in the gatecamp. Not on a weekend, I guess. I could go somewhere else, but that would require effort and reading maps. For the number of lines maps in EVE have there is an amazing number of chokepoints.

I guess I am annoyed by gatecamps because they make moving though lowsec not so much impossible, as really tedious. Especially without a second account. And I don't plan on paying a second subscription or playing the game enough to get a PLEX a month, at least not anytime soon. Moving not in the sense of travelling, where you can scout a route once and then travel fit and have a good chance of getting where you want to go if you are paying attention, but moving between systems to rat or whatever.

Although I have to try that once. Is an overheated afterburner enough for a cruiser at least to jump back before they can apply enough DPS to kill me? Depends on who "they" are, I guess. I still don't really have a good feel for how much DPS is a lot, how quickly it can be applied, and so on. The numbers seem to vary wildly between sources, and there are too many variables to calculate anything with any degree of accuracy. The general consensus though seems to be that damage has increased faster than effective hit-points, and most player-versus-player fights will end very quickly, to the point where a small gang can one shot smaller ships.

Odyssey

My first EVE expansion arrived. Although expansion seems to be overstating it, but if CCP wants to call their biannual major patches that, then why not. It's good that EVE is still changing after ten years running. It is kind of a pity I didn't start playing earlier, when I had more time. But less money. Such is life. Anyway, onwards to Odyssey.

Shiny!

Cosmetic things first. I like the new radial menu. The old one I immediately moved to the middle mouse button and then forgot about it, since it was a set of small, I think either unlabelled or labelled with a twitchy tooltips small icons, which only got in the way of navigating in space. The new one I still keep under the middle button, but with zero delay, which allows issuing commands with quick gestures. And it both looks nice and is labelled. And you can fluidly adjust navigation command ranges by dragging from the center, which is neat, if not extremely useful.

Jump animations are also nice. And the UI seems to working the whole time, rather than freezing for a moment during loading. Or disappearing completely, which I read was what happened on the test server when the feature was introduced. The undock button makes more sense where it is now, even if I still habitually move the mouse to the corner of the screen. I imagine that must be much worse for players who are playing EVE for years.

Scanning

Apparently the scanning effect annoys some people, but I barely even notice it. Even when it glitches and the arc just kind of jumps back repeatedly. I also barely notice of pay attention to brackets in space, because why would you. The list is infinitely more convenient. Especially since why would anyone care where in space the anomalies or signatures actually are? You just jump to them, and the only thing their position affects is the few seconds of warp time more or less. I guess it could matter for aggressive d-scanning. Also the exploration brackets and their window popup look completely different than everything else in space. But who needs consistency. Maybe they will change everything else to big colorful icons. What could possibly go wrong?

The scanning is streamlined, which I on the balance of things is a good thing. It means more competition, but after a few days most people appear to have gotten bored, and I like the saved time on initial scan, both for anomalies, and initial position of signatures. Automatic probe formation and scaling is also fine, since it only saves the tedium. And in some cases for very faint signatures I still had to adjust the position of individual probes manually, which is good.

Removing NPCs from Relic/Data sites was great in that it makes it possible to explore low/null in a T1 frigate that anyone can afford to lose, rather that a Tengu or some sort of multiboxed setup.

The hacking minigame is, at best, serviceable. Restoration nodes seem extremely unbalanced. Why do they increase coherence of defenses beyond initial values? I think someone doesn't quite grasp the definition of the word "restoration". Otherwise the minigame requires a minimal amount of pattern recognition, and with that the only remaining factor is luck and character skills/ship loadout. I guess that's fine. The loot appears to be a bit better from both relic and data sites, although I didn't do that much exploration before Odyssey to have a good comparison base.

The can spew is less annoying than expected. Apparently it was adjusted late during the testing to reduce the speed and number of cans. This makes it possible to most of the time capture all cans of a given type. And after cargo scanning the container before you can know which type of cans actually contains the valuable loot. I think I miss what I want about one in five times, which is tolerable. I guess this changes in nullsec, where there can be multiple types of good loot in a single container, and probably they spawn more of them moving faster.

Will Tag For Sec

I don't really plan to do anything that would drop my security status, so this doesn't affect me outright. But it is still a thing, especially since I recently tried to do things in lowsec. One issue I have is that it makes security statuses below zero essentially equivalent, since the only things it means now is how much someone cares about not having low negative sec status. Before, it was at least a vague indication of how much time someone is spending attacking other players to shooting NPC. On the other hand, it is a nice lowsec belt ratting loot.

Other stuff

I am not playing long enough to be affected by ship balance changes, so I nothing much to say about those. I can now fly Iteron V, which is nice. Although Iterons makes even less sense now than before. I only dabbled in mining, so I have no idea how mining sites being moved to anomalies will change anything. Probably increase the amount of nominally lowsec minerals coming from highsec, because the anoms will be now mined out quicker, and so respawn faster. No clue about ice changes. Even less about moon changes, although I guess a null-sec war is something to read about.

So, in general the expansion didn't seem to break anything that affects me, it improved a bunch of things that do. That, I suppose, is a success.

More rally points

I bough a Thorax some time ago with a plan to try to in it into lowsec sometime. But instead I tried chasing after anomalies. And then I thought that if I lose it I wouldn't have anything to chase anomalies in. I could just use the battlecruiser, but the cruiser is a bit faster to align, and I decided to collect loot from anoms after all, since it is fast in a reasonably agile ship and it adds up.

So, I bought a second Thorax, and this time, moved it into nearby lowsec region immediately. Almost, there was a two Proteus gate camp on the way, but they went away after an hour. So now it sits in the station in the middle of somewhat small lowsec region. But I don't really want to move permanently, so it has to be nearby. It is still very empty most of the time. It is kind of amazing actually, how the population drops immediately from twenty-sixty to zero-five. Not really unexpected, considering how a single pirate can shut up all non-PvP activity in a system or five.

Not that this was particularly constructive. In a T1 cruiser I can clear belts of rats, including the single battleship spawn I saw once. which could be handy once Tags4Sec arrives. Although the system I parked my ship has relatively few belts. I could jump to a neighbouring systems, but I am too afraid of gatecamps. Should stop worrying, because where is the fun in that? Also the cruiser cost about twenty million, so why worry. And I could just scout and then assume no one set up a camp in the last hour, because scouting without a full alt every time would get old really quickly.

Also tried anomalies, but there are mostly Rally Points, which I still can't complete in a cruiser. At least a blaster Thorax. I probably should rethink that. The main problem is that I have not nearly good enough tank. If I fit a medium armor repairer I will run out of capacitor extremely quickly. With a small I still run out of capacitor, if slower, and it can't really keep up. I finished a single Rally Point to see how long the spawns are, but it took me several trips back to the station.

On the other hand I fit in a way which should maybe, in principle, make it easier to escape from attacking players, with a Damage Control and and Explosive Membrane, which gives me about 50% of an armor omni tank. Replacing that with active kinetic/thermal hardeners should cut incoming damage from Serpentis rats by half. Which should make it sort of doable. And honestly, if someone actually scrams me then I probably won't get away, especially if already damaged from fighting rats. Hard to tell without trying, though. How much DPS do pirates usually mount? Considering one guy dropped on me in a Sleipnir, probably a lot. I warped of before he locked me, at least.

Maybe I should buy a third cruiser, since I for some reason don't like to completely reconfigure ships. Between PI and highsec anomalies I almost have enough ISK. I even got a twenty million faction module, although from an unrated complex, not an anomaly. A faction cruiser rat spawned on a Serpentis Den, but it only had ammo and a tag. Highsec anomalies are somewhat rare, or more likely, overharvested, so at least half the time I spend jumping. That was part of why I tried moving into lowsec.

I did buy a second scanning frigate, fitted with warp stabs and a nano, and used it to carry loot from lowsec back to highsec base. Lowsec belt cruisers seem to drops more stuff than anom cruisers. Which makes some kind of sense. When I was doing that there was a gatecamp with two Tengus and a Hurricane, but fortunately no instant-lock shenanigans, so the frigate got though without problems. Where do they get ISK for those, anyway? Also did a scanning sweep, but there were no signatures whatsoever. Disappointing. Oddysey makes scanning easier, which will make signatures even more scarce. At least it will be quickly obvious when there aren't any.

In general, still not bored of EVE, and there are things I want to do. Hopefully Oddysey won't break everything.

Apparently torpedoes do not work on frigates

After adding the post today I flew some more anoms. Nothing interesting NPC wise, but in one I saw a wreck of someone's Nemesis. Which is apparently a Stealth Bomber. Why would anyone try to run a high-sec anomaly, composed of frigates and destroyers only, in a Stealth Bomber? I though for a moment about looting or salvaging their wreck, but forgot if salvaging triggers the suspect flag, and I unloaded Salvagers by mistake from the ships cargo hold. Good thing I noticed that, so far salvage from faction spawns was marginal, but you never know. Anyway, I didn't really want to risk losing my cruiser in highsec, or taking the security status hit, so I left that alone. It was interesting, at least.

Running the shadows

Last week I even got invited for L4 missioning fleet by a mostly random person and didn't get horribly murdered. Apparently EVE is not quite that bad as some are trying to give an impression it is. Not that the gain was that much greater than soloing L3 when split between three people. Also micro jump drives with sniper setup seem broken mission wise, not that missions are that well though out in the first place in general. And I suppose it is not possible to kill quite everything in three minutes without full T2 setup with very high support/drone skills.

I finally reached 8.0 standing with Federal Administration, and have my jump clone. I mostly forgot why I wanted a jump clone in the first place. More wormholes, I suppose. Including going down the chain, just to see how populated are systems without k-space statics. Or dropping a clone into deep low/null sec, although of course not sovereign nullsec. It might be just easier to go there normally. I have planned training a covert operations frigate, but that is still weeks away, especially since I want some battleship skills just for completeness. Because I am mostly tired of missions right now.

Tried hitting some anoms. Apparently sunday morning is not a good time for that. Or maybe I just got unlucky, but I have seen maybe five total. No faction spawns of course. One each of a "Forlorn" and "Forsaken" hideaway though. Those should really be more common, then it might be worth it to run anoms regularly. Of course, highsec is not supposed to be particularly lucrative. I need to go through lowsec a bit more, and see how quickly the pirates actually arrive.

On that note, I played my Faction Warfare alt a bit more. I gave up on actual fighting after I got shot down with T2 weapons by "neutral" pirates twice last time, fitted a cloak and went to see how that goes. Got seventy thousand LP in maybe two hours while reading a book. In a system without stations you can just keep the cloak turned on the whole time there is anyone in Local, most people will just d-scan the plexes, see no one there, and leave after a few minutes.

I am still confused at what the timer is doing exactly when the only ship there is my cloaked ship. I think I have read, and I am fairly sure I have seen, the timer going up when no one is at the plex. But I am pretty sure in some cases it froze, and in others it kept on ticking. Strange.

Not the most riveting gameplay, to be sure, but pays ISK-wise more with comparatively much less attention that anything I can do on my main. And that's at Gallente at tier 2. No wonder the side at tier 5 overflows with farmers. Not sure what I need that ISK for, though. I guess I planned to buy some PLEXes with real money, dual train the FW alt to frigate competence, and get some actual Warfare in Warfare, which would need ISK to pay for the ships and fits.

Flying under the lasers

So, during the week I created a new character and switched the training queue to it. Accumulated around two hundred thousand skill points in basic frigate operation. Gallente, because I know at least basics about their ships and it near the base of my main character, which saves training and operating the hauler on character in faction warfare. Transferred some ISK, put together an Atron fit as good as I could with so limited skills. Which is probably not optimal anyway, but I don't really see a way to improve it.

Today, that is, Saturday morning local time, I flown around the FW area trying to do some plexes. I have not seen a lot of militia pilots on either side. Mostly, there is what appear to be typical between one and five neutral pirates of lowsec, which apparently have nothing better to do than attacking low level FW pilots. Well, to be fair, it involves glancing at local every five minutes or so, so its not as it is a waste of time as such. Although wouldn't most pilots running complexes just run away, when six year old pirate drops on grid?

I had three frigates with fittings prepared. The first I lost when I decided to charge the pirate who warped on grid to see what happen. Or, well, first to warp off to station to drop ammo, since I had way too many reloads. Mission running habits. Then returned and promptly died to T2 rockets.

With the second frigate I got lucky and actually found an Ammar militia pilot running a plex in a system with no pirates, I suppose because it had no stations to idle in, and actually managed to catch and destroy them. They were few days older, and could not hit me with their beam lasers, since I fitted for a blaster brawler. And then literally seconds later a pirate entered the system, or actually entered a bit earlier, but warped into the plex seconds after I got my first PVP kill, and destroyed my ship. With T2 autocannons. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

The third one was the last one I had a complete fit for, so I tried not to risk it, fly around the area to see what is going on, not much apparently, although it might be the time of day, and run away when someone hits the plex I try to sit on. Not very interesting.

Where do the pirates get the money for all the T2 equipment anyway. And why don't the plex gates lock out neutrals. I mean sandbox and everything, but if they limit ship types… Well, frigate level T2 equipment is not actually particularly expensive anyway. I mean, I actually finished about three plexes in various systems before I got hit by a pirate, in one case around ten seconds before, which even considering two of those were defensive means I could buy and fit faction frigate with full T2 fit. And I couldn't use it, because the FW character doesn't have the skills.

But, after playing around in EVEMon is see that I can get the skills to use all those things in less than a month, and after two-three months of fully focused frigate training the solo frigate capability seem to cap out. Of course, that is more than half the time I am playing EVE at all. But then MMO are supposed to be long term. I don't want to suspend the training on my main, which is not very focused but I want to get some battleships or something, so it will have to wait until Odyssey anyway. I might buy a plex or three, and train it that way. A second account might be marginally cheaper, but I still don't want to mess around with character transfers. And definitely not committing to paying for two accounts.

Although I wonder if that makes an actual difference. There thing about PvP in EVE is that it doesn't really matter how much your ship is worse than that of the enemy, since once you are in point range there is no running away. And then percentage points matter, and all five skills six year old characters will still kill my twenty something million frigate, and then what is the point? I suppose I could ran away only from multiyear characters and hope the others are not purely specialized in frigates.

Diminishing returns

Didn't post for a while, but I still play EVE occasionally. Didn't have as much time as I would want to. Not doing anything particularly interesting. I have 7.74 standing with a corp I'm doing missions for, and I even checked that it does have medical facilities. Not particularly sure what I want to do with Jump Clones once I have them, especially since I don't have very high level implants, but it would make me feel better.

I am kind of at a point where I have more ISK that I do know what to do with right now, but not enough to just spend it on big ships, or PLEX, or waste it trying to PVP. Especially since I don't particularly want to PVP as such, and there is nothing, as far as I can tell, in normal lowsec that can be achieved in a ship cheap enough I could afford to lose multiple of them.

I have an idea though. I saw than in Oddysey they are adding an option for dual training on the same account. Which seems like a good move on CCPs part. There are likely many people, like me, who are either too lazy or unwilling to commit to maintaining a second account. Or too lazy to just register a second time. Lowering barriers for people to spend their money is just good business practice.

I definitely don't want to pay for a second account full time, and don't make nearly enough ISK to plex it. But I could drop a PLEX or two on an alt on the same account. For example, I was somewhat interested in Faction Warfare, but do not want to sink faction standings with Empire factions on my main. So, creating a FW alt is an obvious solution. And I played around with EVEMon, and a pure combat character flying disposable ships can be trained very quickly.

In fact, I might just create that alt soon, train it for a few days pausing my main and fly some basic fully T1 frigates to see how that works. If I get constantly blown up then I can just buy a lot of those with the money on my main, but the FW dungeons NPCs are supposed to be trivial, unless what I am reading is from before the great relatively recent rebalance. So nominally FW should be achievable in that. Which is something.

So, that's the plan. Assuming I have a block of time to play EVE, because in the burst I had so far since the beginning of May I'm not really motivated to do more than a mission of poke the planets. I though about finally joining a player corp, but same thing applies. Oh well.

Faction spawns are real!

I did more anomalies. Still not very efficient as far as ISK per hour is concerned. Although if more dens or hidden hideaways spawned it would be better as far as bounties are concerned. Or maybe they spawn, but people finish them quickly, and just don't bother with adjectiveless hideaways and refuges. Of course unless the chance of faction spawn depends on the difficulty of the anomaly, then more difficult ones would be actually worse for faction spawn farming, since they take more time. The probabilities appear to be low enough that gathering enough data by a single person would take a lot of time.

Not that ISK matters that much right now, since there isn't really anything that I could spend it on that I could use. Waiting on skills. I should probably join a corporation or something, since the way this is going I will lose a sense of direction fairly soon. Because, well, I could try to go for soloing L4 missions, but really, what is the point?

Anyway, I finally got a faction spawn with a faction drop. Not a great one, but at least it proves that they happen. A tag, some faction rockets and an explosive shield hardener. The tag is basically worthless, there really should be some sort of a sink for those. Why are data centers one time use? Seems sort of pointless. The rockets are, as all ammo, in too meaningless quantity to be worth anything. I don't see why they even bother to put them in loot tables, they should drop by ten thousand at least. The hardener is worth two million ISK at Jita. I put it for six locally, because you never know.

Those all are all Guristas stuff, because I flew into Caldari space to check out how long flying to a system where a corporation I am thinking of maybe applying to takes. Also I probably should do some missions for Caldari to shore up the standings. They are still effectively positive thanks to Diplomacy skill, but I don't really want to lock myself out of parts of the map.

It turns out it is not that far. Especially considering I hit every anomaly along the way I located. Including drone encounters, which I read are pretty much worthless, but we shall see. Or not. Such is the way with low probability events. Anyway, I am not sure if actually joining a corp makes much sense considering how irregularly I get to play.

Guristas npcs are noticeably more difficult than Serpentis. I might not have much experience, but it seems that ECM is way worse than most other forms of electronic warfare. Especially considering Serpentis use sensor dampening, which does almost nothing if you attack at blaster ranges. Also missiles are really annoying when I rely on certain degree of speed tanking on my Thorax. I beat three Guristas Dens, but it took quite a lot of time, since I had to keep them at range and kill them with drones only. Probably should be using a Vexor, but I really like how Thorax looks.

Descalation

I tried clearing some highsec anomalies to see how often the escalations and faction spawns occur. So far that they did not happen even once, after about ten or so. So that is essentially useless for anyone. At least I played around with a destroyer, but seriously, what is even the point? Doing anomalies in highsec makes few hundred thousand per hour at most, which is less that L1/L2 missions. And unlike missions anomalies are a limited resource, in that they spawn on their own time are there are rarely more than one per system. And so far there was no mention of anything getting done with highsec anomalies in Odyssey. Which is a pity, because anomalies paying better than missions would encourage travelling around, rather that sitting on a single agent.

I also found an unrated complex and followed an Angel Kickbacks escalation. In a destroyer, which might be reason why this took two hours or so. Unfortunately, no rare drops. The final overseer did not, in fact, drop anything at all, and I got a single piece of T2 salvage from the whole chain. I wonder how unlucky that is. The bounties were marginal, but I suppose it would be fine for a starting player. Although with a two months character I am a starting player by EVE standard.

I get the impression that the combination of low drop rate and high value damages the balance here. Judging by difficulty, highsec escalations are supposed to be early game content, but unless they immediately focus on exploration most players will outgrow the difficulty of these things before they see even a single actually worthwhile drop. So most people, if they do them at all, will do them with zero risk.

The fact that lowsec is not low security but essentially no security, doesn't help, since it puts a cliff for progression, especially if someone doesn't want to multibox a second account as a scout. I wrote about that last time, the rewards do not scale nowhere close with the risk of losing the ship. Actually, the problem might be that the risks are not granular enough, it's either no loss, or loss of the entire ship, its fit and maybe implants. Insurance doesn't really help that much. I suppose the solution here it to make enough ISK so that losing a ship becomes a granular loss. But PvE ships are relatively expensive compared to the money you can make from PvE. And are useless for PvP.

Rally points

That did not go all that well. I took my new cruiser into a nearby lowsec pocket, and at least I didn't get attacked by anyone. There even was an anomaly. The name was was, I am fairly sure, a Forsaken Serpentis Rally Post, but the wiki says it appears in null sec and the spawn was different. Maybe it changed, or I remember wrong. Anyway, there were two cruisers and a battleship in the initial wave. It turns out that, at least with my skills, a cheap Thorax cannot take that in a reasonable amount of time. I finally took them down just on principle, but it took an hour of jumping and docking to repair the armor and recharge the capacitor, so very much not worth it for a million bounty. A the second wave spawned multiple battleships, so I just left.

A smaller anomaly might be doable, but then it would be worth less than a L3 mission. A rally point might be doable in a battlecruiser, but I really don't want to take a ship worth more than twenty million ISK, and a my missioning battlecruiser is worth way more than that, into lowsec. Maybe with way more skills… more tracking would definitely help, right now I'm missing cruisers when orbiting at blaster ranges. But I doubt it would get me past the first wave.

Alas, the reward balance does not seem to take risks derived from presence of other players into account very much. Which is understandable, because that is way too fluid to balance against. Especially considering that a static measure is meaningless, since secure sovereign nullsec is much safer than lowsec no matter what the security level is, and a dynamic is too gameable.

Flying around

I finally decided to spend some of that ISK I have been collecting, and bought and fitted a Thorax. Didn't have much time to play today, and I spent good two hours flying around collecting parts. Probably a waste of time, which is money, should have bought everything at hub for slightly more. Oh well. Total costs ended up something like fifteen million ISK, maybe a bit more. Which is probably not a good idea, considering it will take several hours to make that back if I lose the ship. And I just remembered I forgot again to insure the hull. Maybe I will remember before I take that into lowsec.

I could fit a frigate, but I am not planning on seeking PvP, because I see no point in attacking random people. And you need more than one ship to bust gate camps. Which is something I would like to do on principle. Most games seem to at least try to disincentive camping, since it is pretty obviously terrible gameplay for both sides, but well, EVE. Anyway, mostly want to see if you can actually finish a lowsec anomaly in a more or less PvP-fit (probably badly) cruiser, without getting ganked, and how much ISK would that actually make. Which I don't think can be sensibly done in a cheap frigate with skills as low as I have. Why do I still have Medium Hybrid Turrets at two?

Also training Caldari Cruisers in the meantime, not sure why, since I have yet to look at Caldari ships. But, I don't plan to even try all four racial ship skills before Odyssey, but maybe basic two. Still not even trying for Battleships. Fitting for soloing L4 missions seems to require way more other skills. I might as well finish training battleships last. Or I could, in principle, join a corp and run L4 missions in a T1 battleship… but eh.

Bronze

Nothing too interesting have been happening, and I haven't been in a mood to ramble about salvage yet. Been just griding L3 missions, to build up ISK and standing. The latter mostly for the jump clones. I still have only level three implants, so I could probably take more risks with the current one, but I don't want to. Also I plan to chain wormholes to drop into random nullsec or somewhere, just to see whats there.

Anyway, the mission structure continues to be somewhat irritating by being too random, or possibly not random enough. Since I finally got Drones V and a bunch of skills requiring that, I can complete the majority of missions without losing shields, despite having an armor tanked ship. But I can't complete L4 in a battlecruiser, and according to guides only slowly in a basic fit battleship, which I don't have skills for anyway.

I wish there was something between "squadrons of cruisers" and "squadrons of battleships". Oh well. Another irritation was again with the loot, I got a 4 million ISK missile launcher and eight million Brass Serpentis Tag, which is good on one hand, but again, that was just completely random loot from wreck as any other. This low probability drops make it difficult to figure out if looting everything is worth it.

Wormhole junk

I found a wormhole right in the system I am based on, inside a ladar side, the Token Reseirvour, so I tried my destroyer plan. It didn't quite work, the frigate sized Sleepers were easily destroyed, the cruiser sized on not so much. And they were of a weaker tier than the ones I encountered before. So yeah. I finally decided to ignore caution, and entered the wormhole without probes in a cruiser. That worked, and I even left successfully. Unfortunately just after I was finished salvaging the Sleepers someone turned up in a CovOps frigate and started dropping combat probes, so I got out without a chance to mine. Although C60 and C70 appear basically worthless anyway. The Sleeper drop are worth maybe half a million total, the salvage seems worthless, so basically that was an efficient use of time. Still, learning things. Like, if I am going to try this again, I need a Thorax or something.

Wormholes and rigs

Since I have not completely recovered from a cold I had last week I spent more of the weekend watching other people play video games rather than playing myself. Not the most auspicious launch of the blog, since I rather hoped to do something in EVE I could write about on the weekend. Still, I did some things, even if in more cursory way than if I was able to focus longer.

On Saturday I finally decided to do something with all those wormholes that were annoying me by not being radar sites. Recently I trained Cloaking III, and while I promptly lost one Improved Cloaking Device II on that Iteron, I actually bought three of those, because why not. So I put one on my scanning Imicus, replacing a mostly symbolic blaster. Scanned down a wormhole, and I didn't even forget to check its status, and after seeing that it was I the last quarter of its life found another one, leading to a C2 system.

Inside there were a POS and some ships under it, but I assumed they were offline or AFK and started scanning for sites, obviously while cloaked. While sitting very near a wormhole, which probably is a terrible mistake, but without a covert ops cloak I would have decloak to warp back. Anyway, nothing happened and I located a ladar site.

I jumped a Venture with gas harvesters, started a stopwatch and started mining. According to what I have read the Sleepers should spawn after twenty something minutes. And they did. So I jumped out. Before that I saw on d-scan someone poking around the system with core probes, but didn't leave since even if they jumped on the same site the clouds are over 30 km from the warp in point, and anyone serious about hitting a Venture ninja-mining would use combat probes anyway. Probably. Anyway, nothing happened.

I harvested 840 units of Fullerite-C72. Nominally worth about five million, but the fullerites seem to have fairly low volume in most places. I actually flew all the way to Jita to place a sell order, which haven't sold since yesterday. All that wasn't exactly worth it, but it was interesting. If I am reading the stats on the Sleepers that spawned they should be trivial to take down with my Myrmidon, but I really don't want to bring it into a wormhole. A Celestis, maybe, but it has only three high slots, so I would either have to go in without a probe launcher or drop one weapon. And it is a bit too expensive still to lose.

So I started thinking about destroyers. With only two sleepers that spawn on a ladar site this might be doable, and the forums claim that those don't respawn, so it might be possible to actually mine the site out, which would be worth considerably more than a twenty minute run. Or it might not be. But I decided to try, and bought for a few million a Corax, outfitted with launchers and a MWD, which, if the number mean what I think they mean should make it possible to kite the sleepers while hitting them from outside their targetting range. Quite slowly, but such is life in EVE if one cannot afford to fly a T3 ship with T2 weapons.

I didn't actually get to try it though. On Sunday I almost completed the fit, but I wanted to put Small Auxiliary Thrusters I to get bigger speed buffer, but there were very few locally sold. So I checked how expensive the blueprints and components were. And they were cheaper than the rig itself. Actually, the small versions of astronautic rigs build around the Burned Logic Circuit, Charred Micro Circuit and Thruster Console seemed to have prices, even if at very low volumes, that were considerably bigger than the cost.

So I decided to build some of those. I don't expect a lot from them, since the volume is extremely low, at least in the region I operate, but I am still at the stage where every five million do matter, so why not. So I spent most of my game time on Sunday flying around picking blueprints and some more of those components, setting up production, in the meantime adjusting PI, and so on. So I haven't actually flown the Corax anywhere.

Well, I tried scanning down a wormhole, but apparently either I was really unlucky, or black holes don't have sites. I saw some guy leaving the hole in a capsule, followed by a Mammoth, so maybe its better I didn't try anything with active people inside. Still sitting on the hole while scanning. I mean, what is the possible risk? If I move a few kilometers off the hole then it is highly unlikely something will accidentally (or not) uncloak me. Maybe.

On missions and PvE in general

The general opinion appears to be that PvE in EVE is somewhere between not very good and bad. After my six weeks of playing I can see there are definitely issues, both in PvE combat itself and mission structure and rewards. I don't think they are particularly terrible, though. Of course any change would have consequences which might make things worse. Also I have only done L3 missions and below and some exploration, so I have no experience with more advanced forms of PvE.

One issue that is somewhat subjective, but become apparent to me early, is that individual enemies are typically much weaker than a player ship of an equivalent class. This means that typically in a mission the player would be significantly outnumbered. Rather than give an impression of being powerful this mostly knocks me out of any immersion because I have to wonder, why are even the NPC navy ships so bad? More practically this gives combat somewhat 'whack-a-mole' feel. And makes looting tedious, especially since the wrecks tend to be spread out in an area dozens of kilometres wide. Salvage drones really help with salvaging, but even with a tractor beam looting stuff takes a relatively long time.

Of course, looting is optional. The irritating thing about loot is that it is very random, and as far as I can tell there is no way to know what the value of the wreck is without opening it. Or I suppose filling a mid slot with a cargo scanner, assuming that it can look into wrecks and/or containers. I really wish there was some indication of high value loot, or at least a stronger correlation between a type of enemy and possible loot, other that faction commanders.

Which wouldn't help with navy tags. I stopped doing missions against major faction navies partially due to wanting to avoid standing drop, but the other reason was that every single enemy ship wreck was marked as not empty. And almost always it was just a tag. And they gave no bounty, so to get anything for destroying them you had to loot every single wreck. Which is annoying and I suppose a reason why tags are relatively scarce on the market.

Another issue is that most NPC enemies are tank heavy and low on DPS. Especially effective DPS, because they seem to have no concept of group cohesion and are easily kited into separate, easy to destroy groups. This also makes missile based NPC groups disproportionately powerful. Of course, they have to be if they are to seriously outnumber the player.

Unfortunately, the effect is that once your tank gets good enough there is essentially no risk when running missions. I read that before NPC started to sometimes target drones, it was possible to just leave a good enough ship inside a mission and leave, and drone would eventually kill everything without the risk of your tank getting breached. Once you have sufficient tank the only factor that remains is how fast can you destroy enemies. Or at all. I remember I got a single battleship in one L3 mission, which couldn't even hit my battlecruiser reliably, but I couldn't get through its shields (Myrmidon without Drones V being perhaps a sub-optimal idea). Eventually I just left, refitted with five blasters and finished it, but it was still tedious.

I think missions would be better if they were more of a DPS race. Which would be more similar to how I understand, from what I have read, PVP usually goes. It would certainly be more exciting and require closer attention. On the other hand, the problem with low, but significant risk, is that the expected payout value necessary for profit varies wildly with small changes to risk, which makes it very difficult to balance without getting serious advantage to people who overpower the difficulty rating.

The lack of granularity in mission difficulty is a bit strange, too. There are five levels of missions, and the missions themselves appear to mostly scripted, as far as enemy strength goes. They seem to vaguely correspond to ship classes. But the power level of players is much more granular. Especially if you are not focusing on getting to next class of spaceships, there can be long period where the missions become trivial, and the only progress is that they get completed slightly faster, while next tier missions are still impossible or glacially slow.

I have seen an opinion that mission do not encourage playing them with multiple people, but that seems false. Due to the healing based tanks in EVE double DPS means being able to finish them more than twice as fast. Even with split rewards, this should be worth it, at least for groups of two-three people. Unless I am missing something, I have yet to try running a mission cooperatively.

Most LP store rewards appear to be wildly imbalanced. Especially modules. Even apart from the tag issue exacerbated by the tediousness of looting them one by one, the static base prices seem to be very high when compared to modules T2 counterparts. Especially considering that most of the faction modules are only marginally better. Or, in the case of Federation EANM and suchlike, no at all, attribute-wise. The only way it is better is a slight fitting advantage and lower skill level required. The former is situational at best, and the latter is useless to anyone except characters that can't really afford faction modules. It is just easier to train a bunch of levels required for a T2 module, which is around five to ten times cheaper.

I am not sure what the balance is with guns… they are weaker than T2 variants since they cannot fire T2 ammo, but requirement for T2 weapons seem to be much higher than other T2 modules, so maybe they have a niche.

Generally the situation with missions in EVE is not that terrible. I can see how they can become boring after being ground excessively, but then they were somewhat clearly, if I may try to divine the design intent here, designed to be an introduction to EVE, rather than main gameplay. Although if they do require a fit that different from effective PVP one as the internet seems to imply, then perhaps something should be fixed.

Glorious stupidity

Lost my first ship, other than the tutorial ships which don't really count. In the most stupid way possible of course. In my defense, I have a cold and slightly elevated temperature. Not enough to cause this sort of brain failure, but just enough to make the situation even sillier.

I lost a hauler. Not just any hauler, one with an Improved Cloaking Device II worth about eight million ISK. Which even dropped. And did nothing, because I got caught at the customs office. Not that, thinking about it, it would do much on an industrial anyway… it looked like an idea, but in retrospect it seems pointless. Maybe you could escape (very slowly) a small (and icompetent) gate camp with it, but probably not. And why did I got into low-sec without any Warp Stabilizers? I even had some lying around from rat drops. And the cargo expanders were all offline. That was dumb.

The silly part were the other eight million in Transcranial Microcontrollers, which had no reason to be there. I just wanted to pick up a load of Superconductors and ship them both to Dodixie. Fortunately I didn't have time to transfer them. In retrospect I should have put the Microcontrollers in the Customs Office. Alas, way too late. Even better, I should have picked Superconductors first in a cheap, unrigged industrial. Oh well, lessons learned!

The story so far, part 3: Ships, also space

After random frigates from the tutorial I picked a Catalyst destroyer and loaded it full of small railguns. Which all fit, even with low skills. No wonder that hull is used so much for suicide ganking. For L1 missions you don't even need a tank, because everything dies before it can use its weapons properly. Which is a good thing, because my understanding of tanking was at that point somewhat nebulous.

After that moved up to Celestis cruiser. As it turns out an EWAR platform is not very good for solo missioning. At least I like the name. I put two medium railguns and a rapid light missile launcher on it. And I think mixed reps with no resists. Despite that, it worked reasonably for L2s. Recently I refitted that ship to attempt running some low level DED complexes with a triple heavy missile launcher and a more proper active shield tank. It turns out it kills frigates just fine.

Then I built my current main mission ship, a Myrmidon battlecruiser. It is a mixed drone-DPS ship. Or some the wiki claims. Which worked out well, the mixed part, since I to this day don't have Drones V, and hence any advanced drone skills. So I mostly used light drones to kill frigates and mediums as supplementary DPS against cruisers. I played with an autocannon as a point defense weapon of sorts, but its DPS was pretty meaningless. So finally I mostly settled on three medium 250mm railguns, which with a damage rig consume most of the power grid, a capacitor drain and a small tractor beam. Defensively, double armor repairers and an Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane, because I am too lazy to switch fits between missions. Also a cap recharger, and power diagnostic system, weapon booster.

In middle slots, other than a cap recharger, web, target painter and a tracking computer, which might be overdoing it, but I got annoyed with missing early on after switching to medium turrets. And they do improve hit quality. Target painter even for drones, which can still miss.

Thinking about giving up on the NOS module, since usually if I am getting low on capacitor there is nothing in range anyway. And the NOS has range lower than optimal for railguns even with antimatter ammo, and they even start missing target painted/computed cruisers. But I don't really have grid for a fourth weapon. Maybe I will add a remote repairer one I have heavy drones or sentries or something. Unless it won't fit.

The other ship I often use is an Imicus frigate. Fit for exploration only, with salvager, codebreaker and analyzer, obviously probe launcher, and basic shield tank. Most highsec non-compex sites can actually be cleared with just drones, so that works out fine. I put a single gun on it, but I should probably replace it with a cloak or something. I have an Inner Shipping Imicus reskin from the first month promotion, but I am not using, partly because I don't want to lose it, partly because I got the one I am using earlier, and can't be bothered to transfer the fit, especially since it contains scanning rigs. Which are amazingly cheap, but still I would need to get some more.

I still have a single account and a single character. I though about creating an alt, if only one can safely ruin its other faction standing and get some tags, but my skills are already spread out and training a second character would only make it worse. And I don't plan to pay more than I am paying now. Not that I can't afford it, and a second concurrent character would be useful. On the other hand, it would encourage playing MMO as a single player game even more. And I hardly need that.

Still sitting in the newbie corp. I even looked around for an existing corp to join. But nothing really presented itself. Small corps are either insular or seem unstable. Large corps are large and kind of intimidating. Also most of what is presented as incentive isn't really one for me, because I want to get things like L4 access for myself. Also I got used to CAS chat channel, with is several hundred present people and stuff…

Actually I thought about creating my own, one person corporation. Both to get rid of NPC corp taxes and to try to build a POS. I wonder how viable it is to solo a POS actually. I tried to count the costs, but the prices for most of the needed things are market driven and it is not that obvious what the actual requirement are. Not that I have standings for a highsec POS anyway. And after leaving CAS there is no coming back apparently.

I could create a corp and try to recruit people, but there is not way that would end well. Not to mention probably wouldn't work at all.

Hopefully once I am more established I will decide to join someone, because while I am having fun so far that is not quite sustainable, and it would be a pity not to explore the depth EVE has due to… not sure what. Remnant social fears. Although I do note that the prototypical major alliances are based around communities external to EVE. Maybe it just doesn't lend itself to social formation?

Actually I see a fair number of single character, or what appears to be a single person with multiple characters, corporations. I wonder how many people play EVE in relative isolation? Not that a single character corp means isolation necessarily. But, EVE still is in many respects better than, say X3. And there is no other competition in this niche that I am aware of. Maybe for some people liking spaceships is enough?

The story so far, part 2: Messing around

So I started moving. Fortunately I realized you can pack a ship into an Iteron. At third skill level in an Iteron Mark III, I think only two frigates fit even with three cargo hold expanders. Maybe three? Can't quite remember. It took a few hours to move all the things to the chosen station. At least they were uneventful. Although I guess if I got ganked at that point I would grow less attached to ships.

Once everything was safely on board the station, I started to try things. Somewhat intermixed, but I will just describe each of them and the results as a whole.

One of the first things I tried was creating some Planetary Interaction bases. Only trained planetary management skills to three. Which limits options. Especially in highsec, where base resource concentrations are really low. And it turned out that noble metal prices were high because the levels of that were particularly low. Same with silicon. Which, by the way, even has in description that it is one of the more common substances in the universe, so why is it so rare?

Focused mostly on mining and processing materials to P1, because with fourth level command center an extractor with maximum number of heads, a launchpad and a few basic factories will use most of the power grid available. And a dedicated factory world would get eaten by taxes. Unless you skipped at least one, or even better, two fabrication levels, but then the amount of hauling necessary grows rapidly. Not really worth it. Although the taxes also mean that the low concentration mining is actually worth more than one would thing, because the margin partially compensates for a lower volume.

Lately I switched two planets to producing Transcranial Microcontrollers, mostly because I can, and for the lower volume. This is all hardly optimal, but for now I don't want to take time to rebuild it. One planet gets switched between fairly common Base Metals and Microorganisms every day, which fortunately doesn't require that much clicking, as long as the P0 resource is routed though a storage. They are processed through P1 to nanites, which I then transfer every week or so to a second barren planet, which combines Noble Metals mined there with imported Biofuels to create Biocells, and combine them with Nanites from the other planet. I am not entirely sure if that doesn't actually generate losses compared to selling the P1, but at least it looks cool. And other ISK sources overtook PI profits anyway.

And most ISK is really generated by the third planet in a neighbouring system, producing aforementioned Silicon. Planetary Felsic plasma levels are low, but fairly solid hotspots happen. Fourth planet is actually in a lowsec pocket and produces Semiconductors, again by rotating the extractor between Aqueous Liquids and Suspended Plasma.

Generally PI is fairly neat, even if it doesn't make a lot of ISK unless you also control the Customs Office. I though about writing a program to compute a fabrication chain with maximum profit possible including taxes, but have yet to find the time. Some basic numbercrunching gives me around 70k ISK per factory-hour, which isn't really all that much, especially considering the amount of hauling necessary for a pure factory world. Planet mining is nice in that it happens passively, so even if I don't have time to play EVE planetary goods accumulated as long as I have the time to reset extractors. And in highsec a launchpad can store the P1 output for around a week.

Trading. I tried it a little, but without being able to comfortably go into lowsec it is hard to find any good price differentials. I actually ran a route through lowsec, and it happened to be mostly empty. Something tells me the instant death in lowsec which the wikis talk about is somewhat overstated. The other problem was that hauling is somewhat boring, in some ways more that mining, since the autopilot is so much slower than clicking the jump destination that you need to touch the game every few minutes, and can't just read a book or something. Which is a good thing in some ways, because what is the point of playing the game without playing it? And trading by playing the market requires locking down a lot of ISK in stock and buy orders, which I didn't have early on and don't really have now.

Industry, thought about it, bough some blueprints to fabricate some ammo for myself, since it is a bit more convenient than searching for a market sell order nearby. Or maybe it is just the Minerals I Mine Are Free fallacy talking? Anyway, I checked the profit calculators and checked some of the numbers myself, and there is no point even starting without maximum production efficiency and a source of researched blueprints other than contract system, which is hardly reliable. And I have neither. Plenty of ISK for large mineral buy orders to capture the immediate miner market would help, too.

That did not stop me from building my own cruiser and battlecruiser. And Retriever. Not even sure why, I didn't mine most of those minerals, because that became rapidly boring. Not even sure why I trained Mining Barges. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Because well, mining. Mined a bit in a Venture. It is strange that a most boring and mostly risk free action actually makes most ISK. Well, market in action. Apparently industry in EVE is constrained by raw material supply right now. Maybe someday they will nerf highsec station industrial slots, and then… there will be massive inflation? Not sure where I am going with this. More recently I trained Mining Barges, build myself a Retriever, mined a single cargo hold worth of ore, and then… stopped. Maybe someday I will feel particularly meditative.

What made me the most ISK in these first six weeks was exploration. Or maybe it just feels like it, because the profit comes in big chunks? Anyway, it even feels somewhat sciency! And hopefully the upcoming expansion will improve it, right now the balance alone is not, well, balanced. And other issues that might make a post on their own. But, with being able to find a radar site reasonably often I made quite a lot of ISK to fuel other things. I even tried a bunch of times to explore a lowsec pocket nearby. One time a Drake warped in into a radar site I was clearing and targeted me, so I warped out. That was my closest encounter with spontaneous PVP EVE is famous for so far.

And of course, missions. I kept at doing mission for Federal Administration. Mission balance and rewards and stuff is a topic for another post as well. I got to level three missions after a few weeks. At a certain point I realized that shooting Navy ships will result in serious standing loss with owning faction, and decided I don't want that, so stopped doing those. And did two or so so called "storyline" missions for Caldari Business Tribunal. If Gallente and Caldari are at war, why are there stations for both in the same system? And not just some random civilian corporations, but government entities of both sides. Whatever the reason, they are there, which at least makes doing missions for them easier. I think I even have L3 access for both sides now.

Despite their problems the missions do involve spaceships shooting at each other, and I like spaceships. Also railguns. Speaking of spaceships, next time lets write about what I have been flying.