Thursday 11 April 2013

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?

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