Ticking down

The longest training in my Skill Queues Online yet is going to finish soon! Well, it is not quite that bad, I don't just update the skill queue. Usually I also update the invention/manufacturing slots! And recently, as I wrote before, I stated to do some missions again. Not the most engaging gameplay, perhaps, but I still like starships.

In any case Gallente Cruisers V has about a day left. Although I did poke my missioning Deimos plan in EFT and I think I need another two weeks of training gunnery and stuff to make it more viable. Hopefully. I don't really have a feel for how much damage is mitigated by distance versus signature and speed, so it is quite possible that having more effective tank on the HAC than on my current sniper Megathron would not be sufficient if I actually go for a blaster boat. A sentry Ishtar seems to be more traditional for missioning in Heavy Assault Cruisers, but what would be the fun in that?

Not that I expect the missions to suddenly become that much more fun, but a new ship class is a new ship. And at least with a microwarpdrive the flying between acceleration gates will get very much reduced, and a cruisers aligns and warps faster than a battleship. So that would be nice.

I still plan to try that "PVP" think people are writing about, but I am apparently affected too much by risk aversion. I have about 1.4e9 ISK enough to throw away a bunch of even assault frigates or T1 cruisers, much less T1 frigates, but I just hate to see that number going down. Not that it is that actually much, considering I pay for subscription and have been playing for over a year. That is what happens when you can't be bothered to make dedicated research alts.

That is in theory what the missions are for. I'm not focused enough to get a hundred million per hour or whatever people claim, but twenty-thirty million appears maybe reachable. Although the variance between missions seems kind of high. At least with the new Mobile Tractor Units looting is finally not tedious, and with a Noctis even salvaging is fine, since all wrecks are pulled into a ball inside salvager range.

I tried to cash in the loyalty points from Federal Administration, which I have been doing missions for because ages ago I picked them for reasons between liking the name and having stations in the place I wanted to base myself. It turns out that their Loyalty Store is not really great. With almost no blueprints, I should have gone for the traditional ammo and implants. Although I should probably have gone for that even if there were blueprints. But since I bought all those Caldari Commondore tags since last time I posted here, I wanted to use the for something.

So I bought fourteen Federation Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane. Because why not. At least they seem to have some sort of volume in Dodixie. Although so far not one of them sold, because I don't update the prices all the time. Or mostly ever. I keep forgetting. And I don't have or want a dedicated market alt, either.

Anyway, since at least that got rid of the accumulated loyalty points I looked for a better nearby agent to do missions for. Rodan Shipyards appears better. More blueprints! Loyalty Stores unfortunately appear as broken as when I first started playing. What is even the point of most of those modules? Why is the base ISK cost larger that the price of equivalent T2 module, before you even count the cost of tags and loyalty points? The answer is obviously because CCP rarely touches anything that already exists, to the point where basic ship rebalancing becomes the primary content of the "expansion".

But I did not have standings with Rodan Shipyards for L4 missions. Or for L3 missions for that matter, but those came from Gallente standings I have from that time when I grinded out standings for jump clones. Not that doing storylines actually contributed to that, since apparently the nearest storyline agent of the faction triggers, not the corporation, so all those standings went somewhere else, but at least faction standing came in handy now.

But that sill left only L3 missions. So I grabbed my good old Myrmidon battlecruiser and updated it for skills I got in the meantime. The fit from that time was, well, it worked back then. Why did I have both a tracking computer and a target painter? Anyway, I built a basic rail and drones cap stable Myrmidon and started doing missions. Now that I think about it I went all the way to eight doing L3, because I got a battleship fairly recently. Which was when I got burned out on missions.

At least getting to five should be fairly quick. Especially since now I have T2 rails, and even T1 sentries seem to be pretty powerful. Dumb NPCs are dumb and are burning straight into me, which means than cruisers got pretty much full sentry DPS for great results. And that is without any drone buffs beyond Myrmidon inherent bonus. Enemies are dying so fast that they are not even getting through my shields most of the time. And of course I am ignoring loot and salvage.

I am still playing basically alone. Because I am both apparently vaguely antisocial, and also playing on a fairly erratic schedule. Also of course joining a corp in EVE without coming from an external community appears somewhat, let's say, unreliable. Also I did get kind of used to the CAS chat, and you can't return to that. Without creating an alt, of course.

Theoretical numbers

Is the CSM election really getting somewhat close? I joined EVE just in time to be able to vote in the last one, which means it is almost a full year. Go figure. Of course, I'm still reading more than playing. The skill queue is ticking along at least. I mean, the worst thing about good old Progress Quest was that you had to actually keep it running to "progress", and in EVE you don't even have to do that, just log in once in a while to update the queue.

Although despite the fact that I finally started Gallente Cruisers V and could leave it alone for three weeks I recently started to play a bit more than updating my manufacturing and a Dodixie run for materials. Mostly I just did play a bunch of level four missions in my trusty Megathron.

I played with EFT a little, and apparently a HAC with T2 medium guns can get better DPS that a T1 battleship with T1 large guns pretty easily. Although I guess if is spent that month training T2 large guns rather than T2 cruisers it would different. But cruisers are faster and more agile, and with Rubicon changes they warp faster too. While the difference is not that big for missions, which are one-two jumps away most of the time, it is the most boring time. And a blaster brawler somehow seems more exciting that a sniper battleship. Although most likely not more effective.

I looked around the planets around the system I base myself in. Apparently the effective tax rate for many POCOs is actually, even with three levels in Customs Code, lower than it was before in highsec, at just 9%, even before you factor in the lowered base costs. So I build a basic P1->P3 robotics factory world, because why not. I don't even sell those directly, just feed my production with it. Not a very efficient PI setup, because I can't be bothered to update it every day, and it eats quite a lot of P1 resources. I should make or find and understand a spreadsheet that would show what the actual good P1 price point is. But can't really be bothered to.

Also placed a buy order for some Caldari Commodore tags. The return on faction modules is a bit questionable, or at least volume is, but faction ammo and implants are boring. And since I do about one mission per day anyway I don't really need volume, just something to use up the LPs. I don't even blitz the missions, because I like shooting spaceships.