So things in EVE are starting to pick up. Problem is, I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing. There is an endless amount of information out there, I just haven’t taken the time to read any of it. I’m simply winging it right now. It has lead to some tough lessons. Two examples:
After having my fill of “Fed-Ex” courier missions, I decided to branch out and try my hand (and my ship) at a little space combat. One of my contacts had just what I was looking for — a Minmatar scout had his ship destroyed by some pirates in a region of dead space near the current base. This called for swift retribution, which I had been recruited for. The mission was simple: Destroy the leaders habitation and take out any pirates who got in the way. I was also told to leave the rest of their installation intact. No problem, nice and straightforward.
I head out to the area and locate the target. It was quite a distance a way, and there was a group of three pirates between us. I dispatched with them with impunity and headed to my target. Off to my right (or starboard, I’m not to sure about spacecraft jargon) was a group of more pirates, about ten of them. They were about a 100 klicks away, so I figured they’d ignore me. I locked on to my target and started blasting away. My little pea-shooter blasters were doing very little damage to the habitation. It was slow going and in the meantime, the pirates had taken an interest in me. Before I knew it, they had closed the gap and all had my targeted and were unloading their arsenal on me with abandon. I threw up shield booster and tried to warp out of there, but I didn’t have enough power to warp. They had taken my shields down completely, perforated my armor to nothing and were currently working on my structure when the warp drive kicked in and I flew outta there like some kind of bat. I made it back to the station with about 11 HP of structure left, nothing else. That was close. Phew. I would have been really screwed because I skimped on the insurance and would have been without a ship if they had taken me down. I repaired my ship, headed back and took out the pirates before I took out my target. It was a lesson learned.
I then decided to take it easy on the combat missions since my current Frigate isn’t really built for battle. Me contacts told me I could check any available missions from any station, so I decided to check those out. There are a ton of missions I could do. I picked one that seemed reasonably easy to do. The reward was 100k ISK for a simple pickup and drop off. No prob. It never is.
In EVE, whenever you take on a mission, they take “escrow” from you as a form of collateral that you’ll actually do the mission. For all the missions up until now, the amount of escrow was small, on the order of a few thousand ISK. Well, this mission’s escrow was 2 million ISK! I about crapped my pants when I looked at my bank account and I only had 80k in there. HUH?! This was not good. I needed to finish this mission ASAP and get my money back. So I look at the mission and set up my destination. It was 29 jumps away! I have my routing figure the safest path, so I turned off that and it would still be 21 jumps, going through some low security areas. So I switched it back and when on my way. It takes over a minute to do each jump, so it took my over half an hour, real time, to get to my destination.
I get there, locate my cargo and then my heart sinks again. My current ship has cargo space for 330 m
So I’m slowly figuring out the ropes. Slowly being the operative word. So while I’m mining tonight I’ll be reading up on anything I can find about EVE Online. I’ve got to be prepared for the wild world of EVE!
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EVE Online Impressions
Best Eve Online post ever.
http://static.circa1984.com/the-big-scam.html
damn, EVE sounds mighty interesting … i’ve been meaning to try it out just so i could write a proper review of it over at Gibbity but the learning curve seems a bit steep hehe
ag – that piece definitely got me interested in EVE when it was being bandied about as “New Games Journalism.” Still a great read.
luis – There’s no learning curve. It’s a cliff. You learn enough to put the training wheels on before they push you over the edge. It’s crazy but so far I’m digging it.
If you need a loan to buy a ship, let me know. You know how to reach me.
I have been playing eve for a while now. Be on guard cos it’s really addictive.
For an age i was what eve gamers like to call a carebare, never leaving empire space and trying to make a living as a miner. For a while this life suited me well.
I soon got tired of this and started to wonder why it was i was always so broke.
The answer was simple, its a hard life in eve if you want to be good, every isk you ern you will probably slave for.
So i had to make a hard choice and i started to be bad, at first my conscience bothered me but all the innocent people i was killing and the hard ernd ore that i was stealing soon started to pay off. I was starting to get rich, filthy rich.
Now the eve universe has opened up for me and i cant tell you how much fun i have every time i log into the game and join the rest of my corp for a fun packed killing fest. The adrenaline really starts to pump.
It’s so hard to believe that a game can affect you in such a way i am totally flabbergasted with it.
If you ever need any pointers contact me in game ill be glad to help my chars name is Vince Prince.
Just enter that into people and places and you should find me. Happy HUNTING 🙂
Ethic – Thanks for the offer. If I get closer to crunch time I may take you up on it. I just realized I need to buy a skill (which costs almost as much) before I can pilot the ship. Bummer.
Vince – I’m usually a carebear, too, but I am looking forward to the PvP aspects of EVE. Maybe I’ll drop you a line in-game.
“They were about a 100 klicks away, so I figured they’d ignore me.”
I don’t play EVE (not yet anyway) but if 100 klicks is considered a far distance then there is a problem. 100 kilometers is right nextdoor in space.
Consider; in order to break Earth orbit a spaceship will need to move about 12 Km’s a second. Yep per second. If the spaceships in EVE only have the capabilities of todays spaceships, and I bet they are better, then 100 Km’s is about 8.5 seconds away. Like I said, right next door!
Putting this issue aside, I do think (who am I kidding? I know.) that eventually I will end up playing EVE. Tony has led me to many good watering holes in the past and this one looks tasty. I just hate it when he moves on to the next one while I am still drinking!
I need to play EVE more… I am just training skills ATM -_-
Bobster – I was thinking more in terms of aggro, not speed. I figured 100 km was far enough away that they’d leave me alone. I simply thought I was out of range and they wouldn’t attack. Obviously I was wrong. Speeds are definitely on par with what you’re thinking, with warp speeds on the order of 5-6 AU/sec. I think you’ll find it quite “realistic,” as Sci-Fi goes.
I hope you do at least give it a try for the free trial. You can’t beat free!
HG – That’s a great thing about EVE – you’re grinding without the grind. Things are definitely picking up for me.