All tank and no Gank...

Everyday in New Eden we are faced with new lessons to learn. I am certainly not the first person to do any of this. There are plenty of great resources around the Internet for new players for almost any aspect of the game. Some days I read these but most days I choose to figure it out on my own. Call me a fool if you want, but I've always kind of enjoyed the game more when I don't stop and read every last detail about a certain part before I jump in. I also still like to open gifts at Christmas when I have no idea of what's inside. Call me old fashioned but I still enjoy a good surprise.

I've been off in the real world for a little bit now. This tends to happen now and then as I am a father of 2, work for a living, and like to undertake projects that make my life more enjoyable once done. Currently we are faced with some WONDERFUL weather in New England to add to the task list. Literally part of my house blew off last night after 14 inches of snow and 3 inches of rain. However I digress. Life is a busy thing nuff said.

Anyhow I've been sneaking on here and there mining playing on my 100 inch front projection TV. I actually dropped off to sleep last night while mining. Not hard to believe at all considering the dull dreary drone of strip miners and the lack of ANY rats in a 0.6 system to wake me up. I also had 2 warm cats piled on the sofa with me that did not help. Crap drifting away again.

So basically I was in the office alone today for the morning. Being an avid believer that I can multi task. While I worked on my daily lists I also took both accounts over to a level 4 caldari navy mission agent and set about the task of clearing a nice 5 room security mission. I was playing on my trusty Dell laptop alt tabbing between a drake and a myrmidon as I went about the task of clearing the rooms. Migrating some legacy VMware hosts from an old outdated vCenter to a new one at the same time on my desktop. CAKE!

-Room 1 was simple. A pair of frigs, 4 Battlecruisers and a pair of Battleships. Easy pickings for my dynamic Battlecruiser duo. Migrated 10 hosts while clearing this.
-Room 2 was similar. Had a few waves and about twice the numbers as room 1. Migrated 7 hosts while clearing this.
-Room 3 is where it got fun. There are 3 waves spawning when you eliminate parts of each one. I started by dropping in the drake to tank followed by the myrmidon once agro has been grabbed. Went well until wave three dropped and I was not looking at 10 battleships, a few frigs, and 3 battlecruisers. Incoming DPS was getting hard to tank (cruise missiles) and outgoing DPS was taking far to long to pop the Battle ships. I was able to clear the room with some warp outs. Migrated just 2 hosts during this room.
-Room 4 is the same with more cruise missile firing battleships and some cruise sentry fixtures. It has less battecruisers and frigates. Incoming DPS is higher but tankable by warping in both the drake and the myrmidon and splitting the agro. I kite with the myrmidon to pull half the DPS away from the warp in. Now the issue is very apparent. My own DPS is just not quite up to the task. I chew down the sentry guns, and the frigates and battle cruisers. I am left with about a dozen battle ships when I need to log as folks start to drift into the office. Sure not going to get the time bonus on this one, but hey it's only half million isk. ;) No hosts migrated during this part. real work had stopped.

So basically the short of it all is the drake and myrmidon both have solid tanking skills. All T2 mods and the majority of the skills required at level 4-5. They both have T2 drones (some skills need some work still). The real downer is they have sub par weapons skills. The drake has Heavy Missiles but cannot quite field T2 launchers or fury missiles. The myrmidon has T1 blasters and is no where near T2 even if the drones are the main DPS. They need some secondary skill work too.

So all tank and no gank is where I am at. It was fine for level 3 caldari navy security missions. It's sure as heck not cutting it for level 4's.

So while I would still advise mission runners to get there tanks up to snuff first. I'd also highly recommend not doing much else until you have the guns to match the tank before stepping into level 4's.

I feel the battlecruisers are up to the task of running level 4's together once I get the gank fixed. Especially when the EVE SOB SPACE remodeling is complete and I have both my systems back online with synergy sharing a keyboard and mouse between them. No more alt tabbing again will be awesome. Perhaps some remote repping might be a good thing to add once the gank is fixed. Time will tell.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Bad Ideas...

In the real world my office/gaming room is packed away for upgrades. So starved of some EVE action I decided to connect my gaming rig to my DLP projector and play EVE on a 100" screen.

BAD IDEA #1: While the ships look really cool! Even with the text set to the largest setting it's really hard to read anything. It's also really REALLY hard to see if you are being warp scrambled. Sure the nice webbed effect is easy to spot, but not the scram. /facepalm

To make matters worse I was sleepy when running a multi Battle ship level 4 missions with one room and 3 waves in a Battle Cruiser.

BAD IDEA #2: While running level 4 missions in a battle cruiser is very possible. Trying to do a single room with multiple waves of battle ships and supporting cruisers and frigates requires some attention to detail. A little kiting here, some drone shuffling there, and warping out and back in at distance when DPS gets too much to handle. NOT SOME THING TO DO WHEN SLEEPY!

So half a sleep and biting off more than I can chew AND not being able to clearly see the warp scramble. Almost cost me a Myrmidon.

Fortunately after over a decade working on Information technology environments. Sudden calls to action result in me becoming instantly awake and able to think. If I was in my passive shield tank Drake I would have popped as they would have broken my shield and well that's a very slippery slop through armor and hull to my pod. The armor tanking Myrmidon as able to (even with cap running out during the event) keep me going long enough to warp out at 1/4 hull and some armor. After a painful repair (~2M ISK for a mission the gives 1M rewards) I was able to come back in at 100K and kite the field around to finish and loot.

So don't play on the big screen if you need to read small text (EVE does not have a GEEZER mode) and don't run single room wave based level 4's in a battle cruisers when your half awake.

We live and learn.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Ever not follow your own advice?

Some days I really can pull some serious scatter brain moments. If you have read my blogging to date you may have seen me scratching my head over the loss of LOLLYPOP! Just as you might have seen me advise new players to FOCUS DAMN IT!

Well I figured out why my Myrmidon sucks next to my Drake. It's not so much T1 Vs T2. It's not so much passive Shield tanking Vs Active Armor tanking. What it boils down too is I don't follow my own damn advice.

Drifting back a few weeks. I had decided to run missions with my mining account while Hulkageddon II was in full force. So I threw some quick and dirty skills towards a battle cruiser and I started the "grind" that is getting caldari navy from level 1 agents to level 3 agents. I could fit T1 active armor hardeners and Armor reps. I had T2 drone skills. The Myrmidon was a sure winner and should kick rat ass like my drake. Wrong...

See on my combat/hauler account I have all my shield compensation skills to level 4. On my mining account I have not one lick of time invested into the same resistance boosting skills for armor tanking. What this means is you can throw a wet rock soaked in any of the 4 damage types at my Myrmidon and little to none of that damage is mitigated. Even with T2 reppers and hardeners I am still flying around a wet paper bag with "resistance" written on it with crayon.

So basically in my haste to get out there and earn me some Caldari Navy LP. I neglected to stop and follow my own advice kids. FOCUS! The 14 million ISK reminder has EVEMON set to a skill plan to bring LOLLYPOP II up to speed.

You may all point and laugh now.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Hey where did all the newbies go?

I bumped into a wise fellow I've known for a bit in EVE today who has always been a great resource for me as a new player. We chatted a bit about what was going on in our respective EVE lives and the topic of new players quitting far too much came up.

I pondered this a moment in all my EVE experience (4 months! But I’ve been playing online games since there was an internet) and came up with 2 VERY general types of players who quit inside 1 month:

Type 1: This player is the kind who wants instant gratification but is unwilling to do any form of work to get there. (Good riddance to them and their mooching ways I say! They should by an XBOX and play a first person shooter and stay OUT of MY universe!)

Type 2: This player is willing to do the work. Enjoys a good challenge but get to the end of the tutorials and quits after drifting about for a while with no guidance. (These folks can be saved and should. They are what most “Middle aged” EVE players were once until someone showed them the light)

/STORY

(Here we go down the rabbit hole. For those with short attention spans. Skip the BLUE)

I joined EVE after tutorials were introduced. I did the tutorials for both my current accounts and found them an excellent way to kick start a green player into EVE. At first I had just one account and after I had ran out of tutorials. I found myself in a Tristan in Gallente space with no clue what I was going to do next. Thus I began to drift.

I got me a vexor next and I began to mine. As I mined I ventured out to 0.5 space seeking omber. The vexor got T2 mining lasers and expanded cargo holds and mining laser upgrades. Eventually I could fly a retriever and strip miners. Then T2 strip miners with ore specific crystals. Right around here I joined a player corp. and ended up in Caldari space. I started a second account to haul for my miner and BOOM! The corp. was suddenly at WAR. W T F! I cannot PvP in a retriever and a Hauler. So the hauling account became dedicated to combat. Of course the second I could fly anything with enough teeth to think about taking on a “red” the war was over. Back to mining…

I soon grew tired of the fractured focus off the corp. and ventured out into the world alone. This time I was not drifting. I had a direction. I founded my own corp. shortly after and began manufacturing T1 gear and starting down the road to greater things.

/END STORY (PHEW, So who’s still awake?)

OK now that I’ve told my little story here are the three biggest things I can advise a new player to do to get past the drift:

1: JOIN A BLOODY CORP! NPC corps are not going to do more for you than have you run “take 500 cubic meters of CRAP 6 hops for 20000 ISK!” mission and tax you 10%. Pick a corp. that has a focus you are interested in and apply to join. Look for happy people who you find pleasing to chat with.

2: GET A CLUE! Eve is a HUGE game with so many things you can do that no one can possibly do them all well without some serious time invested. So get googling and reading (The blog pack are a great source of EVE intel) and choose a “SKILL” to learn. Tools like EVEMON and EFT can greatly help you set training plans for these skills and fit ships for the tasks before you spend one ISK.

3: FOCUS DAMN IT! Like I said (jackass) EVE is HUGE. Stick with something until it brings you JOY over frustration. Train the “beginner” stage of a skill and the T1 version of the ship to do that task. Then go do it and start to learn that trade! Enjoy that trade! Learn the lessons to make you stronger and faster while you train for the ultimate ship and skills for that trade. I hated scanning, until I actually took the time to do nothing but scan. Now it makes me ISK, I find it fun.

Once you have done the above you should be past the “drift” and heading down the long road to glory. Your time on EVE should be fun (IT’S A BLOODY GAME) and there is no reason that virtually anybody with the desire to invest the time cannot have fun in EVE.

I will add one (well 3) thing(s) to the end, a few suggestions for the developers and influential folks. These two things MIGHT help speed people through the drift and away from the cancel subscription button:

1: Write some more level 1-3 missions and release them every quarter. Heck have a contest for the people who PLAY the game to write a mission line for you. Throw them a few ISK and/or a T-Shirt for their time and we all win.

2: Consider region based jump gates for a fee. If folks have to fly 20 hops and it takes them 30 mins. I bet they would pay ISK to do it in one jump. Perhaps allow folks to build Empire jump gates and make a living. Lord knows I have logged out early when I’ve had to make a 14 jump trip to the next agent in the NPC corp. because my eyes are blood shot from waiting for the flicker of my engines before hitting "JUMP". And don't tell me to use the bloody auto pilot!!!

3: Perhaps introduce a “blood sport” for high sec pilots looking to fight without fear of losing their hard earned ship and there implants. Some kind of arena based deal where folks can take their main account, jump in a clone and “rent” a ship to fight in. Get some combat experience before they hit a warp bubble and get blobbed by ships they have no chance to learning anything from other than “Don’t play in lowsec NOOB!" and the flash of blue. I mean you could even have a whole other side deal with folks being able to bet on the fights. Give Pirates an alternative to ratting to raise their security status but fighting up through the gladiator pits. Which adds some real world charm to the sport for new pilots looking for combat training.

Cheers

SoB