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.

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.