Trying to figure out drones for my new Myrmidon, Slay's Nuts, has cost me half a day of work – I did have a headache so maybe that also accounts for the lost time. Anyhow, it appears that CCP has changed the way drones worked last year sometime by introducing bandwidth. Before this a Myrmidon could control 5xheavy drones. Now it can’t. There is a lot of talk on various forums about whether the ship is worthwhile now. Unfortunately the type of person that posts on forums has a huge amount of skill points and cash that allow them to post loadouts with only Tech2 gear in them.
For ordinary mortals the upshot is this. Myrmidons can now launch 2xheavy, 2xmedium and 1xscout drones. A typical flight of drones would be 2xOgre, 2xHammerhead and 1xHobgoblin, also known as a gank set. This set up takes up the whole of your bandwidth but only 85m3 of your drone bay (leaving 40m3), allowing you to carry spares or other types of drones. After being ganked the other day I am tempted to carry ECM medium drones in the hope that these will kill the lock the other ship has on me allowing me to warp away.
Once I get the Gallente Drone Specialisation I can refit to carry 5xHammerhead II (75m3) and 3x ECM medium drones and 1x scout drone. I am told that 5 medium techII drones are a nasty bit of work.
My goal in drones is to be able to fly tech 2 medium drones.
Drone V - done
Scout drone operation V – at IV – another 6ish days training to get V
Gallente Drone Specialisation II – need to buy and train
Monday, June 23, 2008
My shiny new Myrmidon Battle-cruiser
A battle-cruiser is a souped-up cruiser that stands half way between a cruiser and a battleship. My cruiser (a Thorax) could never fit everything on it due to lack of CPU and Power. The battle-cruiser (a Myrmidon) has CPU and power to burn. My main damage is currently caused by my drones (Train for Tech II drones while in Prague) with my gunnery coming a very second place – so the idea is to aggro everything and tank while the drones demolish the rats. As such my fittings are all about keeping my capacitor from emptying and shutting down the armour hardeners. My guns, AB and drone range extender are all secondary and designed to stay outside the rats range as much as possible while the drones do their business.
The ship is sitting in bubble-wrap waiting for it’s first outing and I must admit, I am scared to use it following my first PVP encounter last night. I am down to 1m ISK, should I lose it then I’ll almost be starting again.
I notice that it is slower than the Thorax which means slower travel (takes longer to get to warp speed) and slower at sub-warp velocities. I am very impressed that I haven’t managed to use all the power or CPU yet though I am only sporting 4no 250mm railguns, 1no salvager and 1no drone range augmenter. If I could swap a gun for a tractor beam I would be tempted to make cleaning up easier.
I have fitted it out in a very traditional missioning spec:
Lows (6 slots)
Medium armour repairer
Medium armour repairer
Energised Adaptive Nano
Armour hardener (generally thermal)
Armour harderer (generally kenetic)
Capacitor Power Relay
Mids (5 slots)
Capacitor recharger
Capacitor recharger
Capacitor recharger
AB
Sensor booster? Forgotten what I fitted here.
Highs (6 slots)
Drone Augmenter
Salvager
250mm railgun
250mm railgun
250mm railgun
250mm railgun
I will have to work on electronics and gunnery to allow me to fit a greater range of guns (425mm for tea anyone?)
The ship is sitting in bubble-wrap waiting for it’s first outing and I must admit, I am scared to use it following my first PVP encounter last night. I am down to 1m ISK, should I lose it then I’ll almost be starting again.
I notice that it is slower than the Thorax which means slower travel (takes longer to get to warp speed) and slower at sub-warp velocities. I am very impressed that I haven’t managed to use all the power or CPU yet though I am only sporting 4no 250mm railguns, 1no salvager and 1no drone range augmenter. If I could swap a gun for a tractor beam I would be tempted to make cleaning up easier.
I have fitted it out in a very traditional missioning spec:
Lows (6 slots)
Medium armour repairer
Medium armour repairer
Energised Adaptive Nano
Armour hardener (generally thermal)
Armour harderer (generally kenetic)
Capacitor Power Relay
Mids (5 slots)
Capacitor recharger
Capacitor recharger
Capacitor recharger
AB
Sensor booster? Forgotten what I fitted here.
Highs (6 slots)
Drone Augmenter
Salvager
250mm railgun
250mm railgun
250mm railgun
250mm railgun
I will have to work on electronics and gunnery to allow me to fit a greater range of guns (425mm for tea anyone?)
My first PVP experience
My goal for the weekend was to buy myself a Myrmidon (Costs 32m). I have been running L2 missions for Federal Intelligence Office (FIO) to get my standing up with them and almost without noticing had a standing of 4.91 – almost enough for Level 4 missions and me without the ship to do level 3 missions – or so I thought!
Sunday evening came about and I was still short a few bob and getting fed up with the level 2 so I looked up L3 FIO agent and found one (quality 15?) I thought appropriate in Essence. I flew my trusty Thorax now named Hazelnut (tough little fecker) over there and was asked to go next door to a 0.4 security system. I must admit my heart hammered a bit harder as I jumped in but no one was there so I moved on to do my 1st L3 mission. I quickly found out that it was well within the ability of a 2m skill point pilot with a Thorax. I had to warp out once to repair and had almost finished when the bad thing happened.
A new ship popped onto my overview. It took me a few seconds to realise what was happening as he appeared just as I was picking up the loot from the last downed rat. He had me scrambled before I realise it stopping me from getting away then he dropped 4 or 5 drones on me. I tried to target but he had ECM – my armour disappeared disturbing quickly and before I realised it, my pod was in space and I was warping out as fast as I could.
My insurance company wrote to me and had a velator waiting for me with a free pressie of 1unit of tritanium (what were the developers thinking?) before I docked. I had some militants from a previous missions that I picked up to complete the mission (about 8k ISK + bounties). The level 3 certainly do pay out better than the L2s if you bring your ship back in 1 piece!
The insurance paid out 6m as did the corporation (thanks Smint and Jayden) leaving me loaded with enough for a new Thorax (Hazelnut II – about 6m as backup) and my Myrmidon (32m + fittings).
I won’t dignify the pirate that killed me with a mention – it taught me something I suppose I needed to learn – only go into 0.4 space with a PVP fit-out, particularly Warp Core Stabilisers (Stabs). I’m informed by the corporation that no one will do the same in high-security space as Concord will arrive to your rescue – you only need to survive long enough for Concord to do their work.
I have found a L3 FIO agent with no close-by low sec systems near the corporation base to continue my L3 career!
Sunday evening came about and I was still short a few bob and getting fed up with the level 2 so I looked up L3 FIO agent and found one (quality 15?) I thought appropriate in Essence. I flew my trusty Thorax now named Hazelnut (tough little fecker) over there and was asked to go next door to a 0.4 security system. I must admit my heart hammered a bit harder as I jumped in but no one was there so I moved on to do my 1st L3 mission. I quickly found out that it was well within the ability of a 2m skill point pilot with a Thorax. I had to warp out once to repair and had almost finished when the bad thing happened.
A new ship popped onto my overview. It took me a few seconds to realise what was happening as he appeared just as I was picking up the loot from the last downed rat. He had me scrambled before I realise it stopping me from getting away then he dropped 4 or 5 drones on me. I tried to target but he had ECM – my armour disappeared disturbing quickly and before I realised it, my pod was in space and I was warping out as fast as I could.
My insurance company wrote to me and had a velator waiting for me with a free pressie of 1unit of tritanium (what were the developers thinking?) before I docked. I had some militants from a previous missions that I picked up to complete the mission (about 8k ISK + bounties). The level 3 certainly do pay out better than the L2s if you bring your ship back in 1 piece!
The insurance paid out 6m as did the corporation (thanks Smint and Jayden) leaving me loaded with enough for a new Thorax (Hazelnut II – about 6m as backup) and my Myrmidon (32m + fittings).
I won’t dignify the pirate that killed me with a mention – it taught me something I suppose I needed to learn – only go into 0.4 space with a PVP fit-out, particularly Warp Core Stabilisers (Stabs). I’m informed by the corporation that no one will do the same in high-security space as Concord will arrive to your rescue – you only need to survive long enough for Concord to do their work.
I have found a L3 FIO agent with no close-by low sec systems near the corporation base to continue my L3 career!
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The end has come
Was in Luxembourg for Jimmy’s 60th birthday at the weekend and came back to carnage in FWE. From what I can make out Nexuss wanted Loctite out of the guild so he left and took with him all the raiders. This includes Ynys, Revenbo, Nagar, Noxius, Voxon, Korut aswell as the usual Loctite gang of Smarties and DPP. There is less than skin and bones left, the forum is dead, the guild had 6-7 people online last night and there is certainly no opportunity to raid.
As it turns out, I had cancelled my subscription last week with the intention of stopping till Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK). Fortunately I had got my T5 shoulders and head the week before so I will go into the expansion with a matching set of armour even if it is T5 not T6. I have mixed feeling about the whole thing, having moved from Dublin to Cork the guild was a place to meet and talk with people that I knew, a place of continuity. Now it has gone and I felt bad about it. On the other hand it neatly allows me to play Eve without feeling like I have left the team down. So I logged onto WOW last night, whispered a few people then went and logged into Eve where I was allowed to loot a level 4 mission (one piece sold for 2.5million!) and finished the evening about +10million on where I had started and I haven’t finished selling the loot.
The corporation will build me a Mymiddion if I get the materials required together. I suspect this involved going to Dodixie, buying an industrial to move stuff and then shipping it all to the corporation hanger. A straight buy for this ship would be 30ish million before fitting it out (though I am sure the corp hanger is full of stuff that will help) with another 10million on insurance. A Mymiddion should certainly get me into the level 3 missions, all I have to do is learn Spaceship Command, Gallente Frigate to L4 and Battle-cruiser to as high as possible.
So as one thing shuts down another opens up! The king is dead, long live the king.
As it turns out, I had cancelled my subscription last week with the intention of stopping till Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK). Fortunately I had got my T5 shoulders and head the week before so I will go into the expansion with a matching set of armour even if it is T5 not T6. I have mixed feeling about the whole thing, having moved from Dublin to Cork the guild was a place to meet and talk with people that I knew, a place of continuity. Now it has gone and I felt bad about it. On the other hand it neatly allows me to play Eve without feeling like I have left the team down. So I logged onto WOW last night, whispered a few people then went and logged into Eve where I was allowed to loot a level 4 mission (one piece sold for 2.5million!) and finished the evening about +10million on where I had started and I haven’t finished selling the loot.
The corporation will build me a Mymiddion if I get the materials required together. I suspect this involved going to Dodixie, buying an industrial to move stuff and then shipping it all to the corporation hanger. A straight buy for this ship would be 30ish million before fitting it out (though I am sure the corp hanger is full of stuff that will help) with another 10million on insurance. A Mymiddion should certainly get me into the level 3 missions, all I have to do is learn Spaceship Command, Gallente Frigate to L4 and Battle-cruiser to as high as possible.
So as one thing shuts down another opens up! The king is dead, long live the king.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Back to Raiding
I noticed my name on last nights raid list last night and turned up for my first raid in 2 weeks. On the menu were Lurker, Vashj , Alar and Void Reaver . By 11.30 they were all looted and Slayfoe was fully kitted out in T5 goodness with the 4-piece bonus (Starfire does +10% damage when the target is affected by Moonfire).
With all of Serpentshrine Cavern on farm the Lurker is an anachronism and only taken to get everyone focussed and to make the water safe for the runs back from the graveyard and all the racing antics people use to get back first – SSC makes an interesting obstacle course with different options for druids and hunters – Korut with his aspect and me as a Sea-lion come about equal.
Vashj went down with surprising ease – she does take full focus and did require 4 tries before succumbing to FWE, but after all the fuss – she seemed quite easy. Being near the top of the table the Nordrassil Headpiece fell to me. The Prism of Inner Calm that reduces threat from crits also fell and was assigned to Wrangler – much against his wishes I suspect – it certainly didn’t stop him dying.
The raid then rolled onto The Eye (via token person and auction house for the new hat and gems to go in it) where Alar and Void Reaver went down. To my delight 3 of the Warrior, Priest, Druid shoulder tokens fell. To my surprise I was assigned one of them. Back to the token man, the Auction house and Slayfoe is now decked out in 4 pieces of very handsome T5. Pity I am in Boomkin form so much!
With all of Serpentshrine Cavern on farm the Lurker is an anachronism and only taken to get everyone focussed and to make the water safe for the runs back from the graveyard and all the racing antics people use to get back first – SSC makes an interesting obstacle course with different options for druids and hunters – Korut with his aspect and me as a Sea-lion come about equal.
Vashj went down with surprising ease – she does take full focus and did require 4 tries before succumbing to FWE, but after all the fuss – she seemed quite easy. Being near the top of the table the Nordrassil Headpiece fell to me. The Prism of Inner Calm that reduces threat from crits also fell and was assigned to Wrangler – much against his wishes I suspect – it certainly didn’t stop him dying.
The raid then rolled onto The Eye (via token person and auction house for the new hat and gems to go in it) where Alar and Void Reaver went down. To my delight 3 of the Warrior, Priest, Druid shoulder tokens fell. To my surprise I was assigned one of them. Back to the token man, the Auction house and Slayfoe is now decked out in 4 pieces of very handsome T5. Pity I am in Boomkin form so much!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Eve – A Venture into Trading
While selling some rat loot the other night I found that someone wanted to buy my Capacitor Coil for 0.01ISK. That is taking the piss I thought and went to the trouble of having a look at the buying side of the market. I noticed two things.
Firstly that there is a huge mark up between the buying and the selling and secondly, there is a wide variety of prices in the buying side. Certain commodities have an ‘agreed’ buying price and others vary wildly. John encouraged me to have a go and place a buy order with a view to making a mint.
With 3million seed capital I placed a buy order on capacitor rechargers – something that is useful on Gallente Armour tanks, I have at least 2 of them on my ships to keep the armour repairer going. My buy order is for 200 Capacitor Rechargers being bought at 6k (the highest buy order in the region). There were broker fees and other similar fun bits (taxes) but the end result was a 1.2m down payment to the brokers. The same item sells for about 18k in Essence. If my buy orders fills up then I need to sell the 200 units for more than 6k to make a profit. I figure that if I sell about 18k I’ll be doing well by tripling the investment.
Then came the crunch. After placing the order I noticed that though I had selected region wide buying, my trading skills did not allow the buy order to go further than the station I placed it in. As a result the buy order might not fill up. Glancing through the trading skills I notice that it might not hurt having a second character with another skill set.
There are simply too many areas that I want to play in!
With a trading character with some money the market is ripe for profit for a patient player. You wouldn’t ever have to fire a shot in anger to make a fortune. The market in Essence does not appear ‘mature’ by which I mean that the price difference between buy and sell orders is large enough to make big bucks. I do notice that the usual commodities have a much tighter margin (ammo) which would indicate more trading in these areas.
It will all come out in the wash as the week progresses.
Edit Well that was a disaster - I ended up with small amounts of goods spread all over the region - only a fraction of what I anticipated was actually bought - certainly not enough to set up a sell order.
Firstly that there is a huge mark up between the buying and the selling and secondly, there is a wide variety of prices in the buying side. Certain commodities have an ‘agreed’ buying price and others vary wildly. John encouraged me to have a go and place a buy order with a view to making a mint.
With 3million seed capital I placed a buy order on capacitor rechargers – something that is useful on Gallente Armour tanks, I have at least 2 of them on my ships to keep the armour repairer going. My buy order is for 200 Capacitor Rechargers being bought at 6k (the highest buy order in the region). There were broker fees and other similar fun bits (taxes) but the end result was a 1.2m down payment to the brokers. The same item sells for about 18k in Essence. If my buy orders fills up then I need to sell the 200 units for more than 6k to make a profit. I figure that if I sell about 18k I’ll be doing well by tripling the investment.
Then came the crunch. After placing the order I noticed that though I had selected region wide buying, my trading skills did not allow the buy order to go further than the station I placed it in. As a result the buy order might not fill up. Glancing through the trading skills I notice that it might not hurt having a second character with another skill set.
There are simply too many areas that I want to play in!
With a trading character with some money the market is ripe for profit for a patient player. You wouldn’t ever have to fire a shot in anger to make a fortune. The market in Essence does not appear ‘mature’ by which I mean that the price difference between buy and sell orders is large enough to make big bucks. I do notice that the usual commodities have a much tighter margin (ammo) which would indicate more trading in these areas.
It will all come out in the wash as the week progresses.
Edit Well that was a disaster - I ended up with small amounts of goods spread all over the region - only a fraction of what I anticipated was actually bought - certainly not enough to set up a sell order.
Eve – First Level 2 Mission
Reading up on a game and actually playing it are two different things. I had read that running missions for a corporation improves your standing with them (reputation in WOW) that leads to better contacts, better missions and more rewards. Actually understanding this while simultaneously trying to understand everything else at the beginning took a while.
So I settled into the Federation Intelligence division simply because they had an agent nearby that was willing to take a chance on me. Since I have looked into things a bit more deeply with a slightly more experienced (haha - 3 weeks experience) view. They have a range of departments (different mission types) and have agents that handle missions from level 1-5 (the highest).
By the end of my first week I was flying a catalyst and easily doing the level 1 missions – I had even run the Worlds Collide mission successfully and my rep had climbed to the heady heights of 1.76! Each mission brought in about 200k between the loot, rewards and bounties. I was working towards a quality -19 agent that would offer me a L2 mission. I took it and flew into a pirates nest and promptly got my ship knocked about, in fact there wasn’t that much of my structure left when the warp engaged. I clearly needed a better ship.
With my 7.9million ISK hoarded and generously donated (more anon) I looked through the possibilities and how these would suit my skill mix. The answer was the Thorax. She is a Gallente gun boat with nice large drone hold and five high level slots. Someone was selling one for a nice 5.5million not too far away. That was the cheap part! I estimate fitting her out set me back another 4million.
Moving from frigates (a destroyer is really a large frigate) to cruisers entailed a whole new slew of skills as the guns and drones are now medium rather than small. The price of them is considerably more as well. A meta level 3 (1-5, 5 being Tech 2) can set you back about 0.4million. I was encouraged to buy Tesco-own-brand for rather less.
5x150mm railguns, 5 drones and with fitted out for armour tanking my Thorax went back for those pirates, and was forced away again, she just wasn’t happy with volleys of about 8/9 missiles striking her. I then started really looking into resistance. It turns out you need Hull Upgrades 3 or 4 for the active tanking gear (+50% resistance when activated) and there is a penalty for stacking resistances (to avoid you getting 100% I assume). I suspect that my ‘base’ station will have a vault with different resistance armour hardeners for the different missions. However, with the right armour fitted my beautiful Thorax was a different beast and tore the pirates apart. Tonight she’ll be dropping the railguns for blasters with antimatter. With the right armour she get up close and personal – time to do some serious DPS!
For the record. The much diminished cash reserves were replenished by 3 things. John (6 million initially, 3 million seed capital for trading), Jane of Infinite Covenant (3 million) and the level 2 missions themselves. The three bosses had bounties of 45k on each of them and the 20 odd guards that took forever to clean up had bounties of between 12k and 19k each. That means each L2 mission makes about 600k (100k reward, 100k time bonus, 300k bounties and about 200k loot). As you can see, well worth getting to the level 2 missions.
So I settled into the Federation Intelligence division simply because they had an agent nearby that was willing to take a chance on me. Since I have looked into things a bit more deeply with a slightly more experienced (haha - 3 weeks experience) view. They have a range of departments (different mission types) and have agents that handle missions from level 1-5 (the highest).
By the end of my first week I was flying a catalyst and easily doing the level 1 missions – I had even run the Worlds Collide mission successfully and my rep had climbed to the heady heights of 1.76! Each mission brought in about 200k between the loot, rewards and bounties. I was working towards a quality -19 agent that would offer me a L2 mission. I took it and flew into a pirates nest and promptly got my ship knocked about, in fact there wasn’t that much of my structure left when the warp engaged. I clearly needed a better ship.
With my 7.9million ISK hoarded and generously donated (more anon) I looked through the possibilities and how these would suit my skill mix. The answer was the Thorax. She is a Gallente gun boat with nice large drone hold and five high level slots. Someone was selling one for a nice 5.5million not too far away. That was the cheap part! I estimate fitting her out set me back another 4million.
Moving from frigates (a destroyer is really a large frigate) to cruisers entailed a whole new slew of skills as the guns and drones are now medium rather than small. The price of them is considerably more as well. A meta level 3 (1-5, 5 being Tech 2) can set you back about 0.4million. I was encouraged to buy Tesco-own-brand for rather less.
5x150mm railguns, 5 drones and with fitted out for armour tanking my Thorax went back for those pirates, and was forced away again, she just wasn’t happy with volleys of about 8/9 missiles striking her. I then started really looking into resistance. It turns out you need Hull Upgrades 3 or 4 for the active tanking gear (+50% resistance when activated) and there is a penalty for stacking resistances (to avoid you getting 100% I assume). I suspect that my ‘base’ station will have a vault with different resistance armour hardeners for the different missions. However, with the right armour fitted my beautiful Thorax was a different beast and tore the pirates apart. Tonight she’ll be dropping the railguns for blasters with antimatter. With the right armour she get up close and personal – time to do some serious DPS!
For the record. The much diminished cash reserves were replenished by 3 things. John (6 million initially, 3 million seed capital for trading), Jane of Infinite Covenant (3 million) and the level 2 missions themselves. The three bosses had bounties of 45k on each of them and the 20 odd guards that took forever to clean up had bounties of between 12k and 19k each. That means each L2 mission makes about 600k (100k reward, 100k time bonus, 300k bounties and about 200k loot). As you can see, well worth getting to the level 2 missions.
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