EVE 2-week trial offfer..

It was nice talking about EVE with you.

 

Surely a persistent universe like EVE needs asshats to fight against? If the Goons didn't exist, you'd have to invent them. The seem to play a role that benefits the diversity of the game universe when looking at it as a whole.

 

Goonfleet pilots in EVE dont post there because it's a shithole.

 

That's a good post, but the people who fight against us lose.

And for the record, I dont look disgusting like any of those guys L233 linked to

 

Just installed the 2 week trial. Somewhat fun in the first hour or so. Had to log off while the server resets/updates. Anyways, what websites would you recommend to me? Id like to start learning about the game.

Couple of questions, not sure if you'll be able to answer all of them:
--Does this game support multiple monitors? There just doesnt seem to be enough screen space for all the windows needed to play this game.
--Im currently working on the 10 part intro tutorial. How important is it to upgrade weapons armor?
--I read on the eve site that training learning skills is important. True?
--Im still royally confused about this skill business and how rankings and levels work. Anyone care to decipher what they mean?

Ill post more questions.

thank

 

If you think you're going to be playing for an extended time, then yes these skills are important (they basically reduce the time taken to learn other skills. For a 2-week trial, I'd say ignore them and focus on learning the other skills you need to enjoy the game. If you do subscribe, then get the learning skills in ASAP.

OK, here's how it worked last time I fully understood it

Each skill has five levels (1-5) which basically determine what you can do. You'll find that for most ships, bits of equipment, etc. you need Skill X Level A to use it. Often you'll need a combination of skills each at some certain minimum level. You can find out what skills an item requires by looking at the info tab in the item description window. Basically the more advanced an item is, the more skills and the higher level skills you'll need.

Some skills require other skills to be at a certain level before you can even start training them. This you can find out by looking at the info tab in the skill description.

Some items improve their effectiveness the higher your level in some skill, so the item description might say "5% extra chocolate dispensed per level of Confectionery skill".

Ranks aren't particularly critical, they're just a multiplier. To train a skill level you need to train a number of skill points which is determined by the level, so training level 0 -> level 1 might be 100 SP, level 1 -> level 2 is 200, level 2 -> level 3 is 400, and so on. It is roughly exponential, though not strictly. (Those numbers are totally made up, I don't know the exact values off the top of my head). Rank acts as a straight multiplier, so level 1 -> level 2 of a Rank 8 skill will 1600 SPs, rather than 200 SPs for a Rank 1 skill.

The rate at which you train SPs depends on your attributes (intelligence, memory, willpower, charisma, perception). Every skill has a primary and secondary attribute, and you accrue SPs a primary + secondary * 0.25 SP per (minute I think). Generally speaking combat & piloting skills are heavy on willpower and perception, industrial / science are heavy on intelligence & memory, NPC relations and trade are heavy on charisma. So this is why the learning skills are important in the long run, they increase the rate at which you generate the SPs needed to level up your skills.

There have been some tweaks to all of this over the years, but as far as I'm aware that's still the basic way that it still works.

Oh the other thing about skills is that they continue to train while you're offline. Furthermore you can switch between which skill you're training at any time, you don't lose the SPs. You do need to be online to start a new one though. If you know you're going to be offline for several hours (to do stuff like, eat, sleep, talk to the wife) and a skill train might finish in that interval, you can switch to one that won't. In other words try to schedule things so that skill trains finish while you're online to start the next one. Try to keep your character training a skill 24/7/365.

 

thanks, a lot of it makes sense. Im sure the more I play the more will sink in. THis is not WoW.

Im still a bit confuse on h ow you raise your rank. Is that based on implants?

 

There isn't a sequential upgrade progression. All equipment has it's uses, so have the different ship classes. It's not "upgrading" in the sense a Magic Sword +5 is better than a Magic Sword +3.

For example, a Tech II gun does more DPS than a Tech I gun and can use better ammo but on the other hand, it also takes up more of your ships powergrid and CPU capacity. So sometimes, you might want to stick to Tech I guns in order to not compromise other aspects of your ship, like tank (i.e. the ability to absorb damage) or electronic warfare.

An Interceptor has a puny damage output compared to a battleship and it can't really absorb much damage but it can do things a battleship can't, like oribiting enemy battleships at such a high speed that the battleship's guns can't track it, while keeping the battleship pinned down with a Warp Scrambler, preventing it from warping away until the big guns arrive.

That being said, in a manner of speaking, you will want to "upgrade" your rookie frigate to something better soon (you'll get something better during the tutorial missions) and exchange that civilian gun with something better because your rookie ship is really bottom of the barrel in any respect.

Yes, and it's IMO a horrible, horrible game mechanic that's putting off tons of new players.

The Learning skills increase your basic character attributes. How fast you can train skills (any skill) depends on these five attributes. All skills have a primary and a secondary attribute associated with them that dictate which of your character attributes figure into training time.

So essentially, training "Learning Skills" makes training all skills faster.

Initially, the difference isn't that great but even in the mid-term, it makes a huge difference. A char who played, say, six months and has trained all Learning skills to level IV will have significantly more SP than a char who didn't bother with Learning skills.

So it's best to get the Learning skills out of the way ASAP. IMO it's extremely unwise game design to frontload the gaming experience with something that's essentially a worthless time skink.

The best way to do it, other than spending your first month doing little more than training up Learning skills, is to train stuff that makes you better at whatever you wish to accomplish (prolly mission running for most new players) and interweave the learning skills into your training schedule.

Also, get Science to III ASAP so you can train Cybernetics I, which allows you to use +attribute implants up to +3, which further increases SP accumulation.

Skills have ranks that indicate how many SPs it takes to train them. A skill with Rank (3) takes three times as many SPs to advance than a Rank (1) skill.

The skill levels indicate how far you have trained them. All skills have levels I - V. For example, each level you train in Mechanic gives you 5% more hitpoints. The amount of SP (i.e. the training time) it takes to train up a skills levels increaes with each level.

For example, with my char, it would take me about 3.5 hours to train Gunnery from Level II to Level III, 17 hours from III to IV and about 4 days from IV to V.

It rarely makes sense to train anything to level V, unless having level V in a skill is a prerequisite to learn another skill or use a certain piece of equipment.




EVE is a very unique game that horrible suffers from being overly complex, sometimes even obscure, and does a horrible job at presenting essential informaton to the player through it's horrendous UI. Basically, it requires new players to do research.

Read the New Player Tutorial on the official website. Do the ingame tutorial. And don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions, that's what the rookie channel and message boards are there for.

And once you have survived the initial complexity shock, have a look at EveMon, which is an awesome tool for skill planning. Spending a few hours playing around with EveMon will help you tremendously with figuring out how shit works.

 

Ahh, now i understand rank. I was under the impression that higher was better, when in reality the lower the rank the easier something is to learn.

Quite an interesting game. I found it interesting that this game allows new players to relatively quickly compete with veteran players.

A few things still are bugging me, but Im going to try and overlook them.

 

Yes, it does, very much so. Nice you "got" that, because a lot of folks when they come to EVE are still in the "more XP = uber" mindset, and if that were true EVE would be very off-putting -- given that most of the stuff you'll be doing will be PvP in some sense or other. In EVE it's not how many SPs you've got, it's where you've got them! Yeah vets will have an advantage to some extent (financial, if not skills), but it's not as crushing as it might be in a straight XP-oriented game.

 

ok, another question.
Im looking at a blue print. I go to the material required to build it. Im confused by the [you : number, perfect: other number], which number is it?

 

It's the 'you' number. There are a couple of skills (Industry and Production Efficiency) you can train which will allow you to reduce the requirements progressively with each level until you reach the "perfect". That's worthwhile if you want to go into manufacturing in a big way (saves about 25% of the cost if you get both to lvl5).

 

the bad:
CCP really needs to work on a longer tutorial system. Its been very frustrating to keep moving along. After you complete the 10 part tut mission they drop you off in the universe and tell you have fun. There is still a lot to learn and it's extremely hard to get help in the channel. With so many rookies, your questions just fly by. They really need to split that channel down to a manageable number.

It would also be nice to have some sort of way to judge whether you will be outclassed by rats in a particular zone.

the good:
ive gotten to lvl 4 my basic learning skills: instant recall, learning, analytic mind. Even have the basic implants (+1) to my intelligence and memory attributes. Working on improving int/mem or mem/int skills or raising my learning skills for per, will, or charisma. Ive enjoyed planning this part of the game. I was surprised by how interesting this system can actually be. I would love it if a traditional MMO would adopt something similar.

Ive actually spent hours reading guides and other sites on this game. Also more fun than I expected.

There are many aspects of this game that have turned out to be a blast: the market system, ship buying, fitting ship, mining ....

the interesting:
--have accumulated nearly 2 mill isk. Should have my osprey soon.
--had my bantam blown up due to some sort of tower that shot me. weird.
--had my agent based in .5 sec system. Missions got hard very fast.
--havent joint a corp yet. Im very close to deciding to get a full account, but dont want to join until i decide to.

the confusing:
--No way to directly sell to an NPC?
--Jumpclones

 

This is a fair point. I joined a player corp pretty soon and found that that was the best way to learn -- player corps tend to be smaller than the noobie NPC corps so the chat is less frantic.

That's just experience I guess, keep working your way down a sec point at a time until things get too hairy. I remember my first foray out to 0.0 in with my corpies all in cruisers. That was a tense night! That was before the system in question (EC-P8R) became EVE Gank Central

Yes, it is excellent isn't it? Makes the game so much more engaging than a levelling race, it encourages specialisation and cuts out the XP grind. I love not having a level attached to a character. Likewise there are so many skills to learn (and new ones coming along) that even after three years there's still stuff to be trained.

Was this a tower by a jump gate, or station? Or was it a player-owned structure? Those could be the reasons. NPC towers don't shoot at you unless you've done something bad, ie. attacking someone. This can be pretty unforgiving though -- I lost a battleship because my finger slipped whilst I was trying to pan my camera view -- I targeted the jump gate and fired off a missile. That'll learn me for playing drunk

For some commodities there are NPC buy orders on the market (these tend to all have similar prices across the region and massive volumes). That's the only way to sell to an NPC I think.

Players developed a mechanism to cut down travel times by podding themselves when they were out in the middle of nowhere, awakening as their clone. This is expensive but then those are rich players. Formally speaking I guess this was an exploit, anyway CCP picked the idea up and ran with it, and jump clones are the result. I think you need some pretty hefty skills for a jump clone (certainly did last time I looked at them), and also they only work to travel to player-owned structures, ie. you need to be a member of a player corp which is part of one of the big alliances. In short, probably not worth worrying about at this time.

 

I've also started dabbling in this game a bit, and I largely agree with what epic's impressions are. We'll see whether I stick around or not, I feel it's either something where you get sucked into it big-time or are rather left cold by.

 

Exactly. I dont think there is much of a middle ground. Either you really get into it or not. I think Im falling in love with this game in a big way. Parts of it get really repetitive, but this is why I play in windowed mode while i do other things. Ive also spent a nice chunck of time just reading about different aspect of this game. Something I cant say the same about any other MMO or for that matter any other game type.

 

They also should make it easier to tell if an agent has missions for you. I have about 12 agents in my list and sometimes its a pain to go from one system to another to find out if they have something for me to do.

 

Travel gets a bit tedious. It can take a long time to travel a long distance -- this is deliberate and part of the game balancing, but it's something the devs have been wrestling to get right from day 1.

They feel that travel has to take a meaningful length of time, it's one of their primary time-sinks (which all MMOs have to have), but moreover it's what makes the regionalisation of the economy work. Some folks like to play as traders who'll spot regional price differences between some commodities, then buy, ship and sell. If every player can jump to every region in a few minutes then all of these differences go away, and the trader play-style loses a lot of its appeal. When the game launched it was possible to strap MWDs onto all types of industrial ship, and hence shift vast quantities of stuff around the Universe very quickly. That all got nerfed in the first major patch in an attempt to slow the game down.

It also makes complicates logistics for large corps and alliances, and those that deal best with these things fare better. Again, this makes the game richer I think.

Players often complain about travel times, because none of us really like time-sinks in MMOs. On the other hand we'd probably like the game a whole lot less if they weren't there. It's one of those counter-intuitive elements of game design I guess.

At least the auto-pilot makes for travel with zero intellectual input. Set it going and go away and make a cup of coffee, mow the lawn, etc. Not something one can do in other games where you have to run everywhere!

 

Agents that you can utilize (it depends on your standing with their corporation) will ALWAYS give you missions. There is no need to travel at all. You can, actually, sit in one place and just do missions from the same agent for months if you want to.

The only time you need to travel is when you want to move up to a higher level or quality agent once your standing enables you to get missions from them.

Again, agents always give missions as long as you qualify.