Size matters: Go small!

A couple of weeks ago, I set about to reap reward from other players' pew-pew and hard work. During another salvaging jaunt yesterday, I ran into a bottleneck: the Imicus frigate can't target more than four wrecks at a time and it can deploy only four salvage drones at once. Eemiv is trained up to deploy five drones and handle six target: my small ship is quick as a bunny but, in a different regard, was slowing me down by 20 percent.

This morning, therefore, I tried a salvage & looting fit on larger cruiser hull, which supports more targets and drones. It was an interesting experiment, and if I use a cruiser for this role again, I'll need to make major changes to my approach. Here's why.

Definitely hit (the first) I5
From The Mittani

Not wanting to spend much on a new hull or gear, I decided to start with a cruiser I already own. My first thought was my Thorax, which after all was the type of ship used to ninja loot me. However, I went with my Stratios instead. For one thing, it already had an cryptically named gravity capacitor rig installed to boost sensor probe strength, and rigs cannot be transferred between ships. (Sensor probes are required for scanning down ships at long range, i.e. finding likely ships from which to steal.) Furthermore, the Stratios itself gives a boost to probe strength. This ship also sports a generous cargo bay (600m³ compared to 465m³ for the Thorax and 400m³ for the Imicus). It also has a huge drone bay. This last I thought could be particularly useful: the idea would be I would set five salvage drones off to work, and then I could use ship-mounted salvagers, too. If I stumbled into an active combat area, rather than rely on ship-mounted guns, I could save waves of various combat drones to deal with enemies. It would also save me from having to carry ammo in the cargo bay. For those paying close attention, though, that last is a flag: the Stratios has bonuses for laser weapons, which don't require ammo; if I'd equipped guns, then they would have been the unbonused hybrid turrets Eemiv is better trained for, i.e. the first "I5" in Awful Loss of the Day "bingo." This was not a costly choice per se -- I didn't get blown up -- but it was one of several fitting and mindset errors I made.

The beautiful Stratios cruiser

From CCP Hyperion Toolkit

Here's another one: I equipped a cloaking device. My thought was that I could sit invisible in an active combat area, waiting out the combatants and perhaps even staying in the shadows until a mission-runner jetted off to go get his own Noctis or other salvage ship. The Stratios, too, is one of few ships that can equip a covert ops cloak: this special cloak allows a ship to travel at top speed and jump to warp while cloaked. Alas, because of the ship's limited CPU output, I couldn't equip the covert ops cloak, an appropriate probe launcher, and various other basic gear. So, I went with a lame, lesser cloak that cut my top speed by 75% when activated and doesn't allow for warping while cloaked. Ugh.

Anyhow, I strapped on my weak cloak and salvagers, shoved  bunch of drones in the corners, and set out. I scanned down a battleship easily enough and warped to it. The first area had just four wrecks, and I targeted the first one.

Or, rather, I tried to. Here's where things get even more embarrassing in hindsight. You see, the Stratios is an expensive hull; buying it was an early splurge. If I actually planned to fill its big cargo bay, that meant having to loot. (Looted gear takes up much more space than salvage.) And that meant a higher risk of being attacked and, in the process, tackled. Tackling refers to retarding a ship's speed or preventing it from warping away. Being protective of this expensive hull ("Don't fly what you can't afford to lose," I remind myself), I equipped it with a warp core stabilizer to ward off another player's warp core scrambler. In the unlikely event a solo mission-runner devotes a precious mid-level equipment slot to a warp scrambler, they're probably carrying just one and my one warp core stabilizer will be sufficient to counter it. And, after all, most high-security mission-runners go solo; I probably wouldn't have to contend with a scrambler at all; two or more is super unlikely. For an academic treatise on this back-and-forth theory, see this seminal scene (warning: profane) in The Big Hit.

Ah, but ya know what? Warp core stabilizers also cut a ship's scanning range in half. So there I was in that first area, sluggishly ambling silly close to these wrecks. It took way too long, but I went through the acceleration gate hoping things would be better on the other side.

My cloak and these leaves offer about the same concealment.
Photo by Douglas Muth

Remember my earlier assertion about mission-runners being solo-types? Well, it was a pair of folks running this mission. And I discerned that because they were right there on the other side of the gate, less than five kilometers away. I activated my dinky cloak and started slinking away. You remember that cloak, right? The one I couldn't have activated before I arrived, and that cut my speed by 75%? Yes, that one. I don't know whether the other players did this deliberately, but one of their ships wandered close enough to fizzle out that cloak. They didn't try to target me, but I still put tale between my legs and warped out. So embarrassing.

It gets better, though: I hopped one system over just to try again. Despite superior probing stats, it took much longer to track down big ships. But, after a few stabs, I suddenly pinged on two battleships and a marauder: things were looking up! I picked one arbitrarily and warped to it.

Upon docking up
From Futurama, "A Big Piece of Garbage"

Alas, I hadn't noticed that this cluster of ships had at its heart ahem a big green space station. A remarkably familiar space station. Eerily similar -- nay, identical -- to the one where Eemiv resides. Sure enough, I'd scanned down just the usual coming-and-going traffic in front of my driveway.

I definitely made some fitting errors today, making compromises that let me do some things mediocrely and nothing well. I also missed the frigate's greater agility, a better defensive asset than a poor cloak. And I imagine I could address some of my initial bottleneck concerns with other techniques: for example, after setting a salvage drone to work at a wreck, untargeting it and using ship-mounted salvagers to work on something else. It's a few more keystrokes, but at least it keeps me busy.

Probably doing my next salvage & loot run back in an Imicus
From CCP Hyperion Toolkit

What next, then? I'm inclined to return to the frigate approach. It might be nice to take a spin out in a destroyer, what with its higher target capacity (even with smaller cargo hold), but I'll need to cobble a fit to get a bump in CPU output: out of the box, it's a tight fit for destroyers to handle the necessary probe launcher and ancillary gear. Maybe I'll set out again with a cruiser, but I seriously need to take a look at fittings and goals. And if I'm feeling sensitive about losing the ship in the first place, then I just need not to fly it in this capacity.

Perspective

For some perspective on my glee from my last post, what with a 15,000,000 ISK haul: check out this guy.

Ninja

In April and June, I confessed to a bit of incidental thieving. Last night, I set out to do it deliberately, although a bit circuitously.

In addition to running level 4 missions, I've also undertaken several of the Gallente COSMOS missions. Unlike most other missions, you only get one shot at COSMOS tasks, and there's a bit less hand-holding (which is to say, you need to read the text to know where to go). A couple of these limit the size of the ship you can take, so I slipped into a cruiser for them. Now, in the spirit of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie:

• Being in a regular cruiser made me think about training up to fly a Proteus Strategic Cruiser.
• Thinking about the Proteus made me wonder about which subsystems to install.
• Thinking about subsystems made me think about how I'd use the ship.
• Thinking about roles and objectives made me think about exploration.
• Exploration made me think about the difference between two pieces of ship equipment: probe launchers and expanded probe launchers. Probe launchers are easier to equip but can't use combat sensor probes.
• Thinking about combat sensor probes made me think about what, in turn, makes them different than regular probes: the former can scan down individual ships; regular probes can't.
• Thinking about combat probes made me think about the time a ninja looter scanned me down, blew up my remote tractor units, and with whom I did some fun, non-destructive sparring.
• Thinking about ninja lootting made me think about ... ninja salvaging.

Ninja salvaging and ninja looting both involve taking advantage of the ship and structure wrecks mission-runners -- like me, usually -- leave behind. Someone running a level 4 mission probably is traversing three or four "pockets" of space, each isolated from the other and accessible only via an acceleration gate. A ninja salvager swoops in to break down the wrecks, harvesting components that can be sold or manufactured into other goods. Totally legal; it doesn't raise a security alert. Ninja looting involves accessing a wrecks' innards and stealing equipment not otherwise destroyed in combat. Doing so raises a suspect flag on the looter for 15 minutes because the game sees it as stealing the destroying player's property. Other players can freely fire upon suspect-flagged characters.

Think of this way: a salvager takes peanut shells; a looter takes the shells and the nut inside. And the latter can get you shot.

I researched a few ships and fits. I briefly considered using a battleship hull for its large cargo space, but I've previously lamented their slowness. Ultimately, I equipped an Imicus frigate with some appropriate equipment -- salvage drones, a fast microwarpdrive, some salvagers -- and took off.

It took three scan cycles to track down a battleship in the same system where I pick up missions myself. I warped to its signature and found myself in a mission pocket with a couple of dozen wrecks. My intent was only to salvage ... but when I curiously opened a wreck and saw some good loot, I took it. The suspect flag activated: for the next 15 minutes, other pilots would be free to shoot at me, and that countdown reset each time I stole again. Still, I cleared out the area with room to spare in the cargo bay.

I swung through the acceleration hate, ready to warp out if I rear-ended the battleship whose loot I was stealing. But that area, too, was filled only with wrecks and a gate the a third sector. Again, salvaged and stowed. My cargo bay filled up, and I ditched a pair of bulky drones for a more precious-per-cubic-meter armor repairer. Sated, it was time to leave.

I picked an arbitrary planet and jumped 100 kilometers away from it: in the vastness of Eve space, I wasn't likely to run into anyone. I figured I'd wait out the 15-minute flag's duration before heading home. That certainly would have been most prudent. But, I got bored after a minute or two. That, and I wanted to pay a bit of attention to the movie my wife was watching next to me: clip at right. So, I just jumped (jump!) home.

I could have been shot and wouldn't've been surprised if I wound up destroyed: Eemiv lives at a busy station. But, no one shot me when I arrived, nor seemed to be shooting at the two other suspect-flagged ships. To boot, I landed within docking range and was almost instantly back inside. Once berthed, my ship and haul were safe from attack.

What fun!

From buying the hull and equipment to returning home, maybe 20 minutes passed. I scored about 15 million ISK in goods. This was faster than running most missions in terms of both time and also busy-ness: constantly directing drones, navigating between wrecks, and keeping an eye on the vicinity for my returning, unaware benefactor.

On the downside, I can imagine not as easily finding a ship to tail next time, or the complication of stumbling in while they're still at work in an area. But, ya know, if it's a battleship I could probably escape fine. And if I didn't, heck, I made enough from this first run to make up for what I invested in this looting rig in the first place.

Anyhow, remaining unaddressed is, What should I spend this money on? Ideally, it would be on keeping a combat, PvP-oriented character set with replacement ships and equipment. But I don't really have that character (even with Dengar) what with not spending a whole lot of time with Eve. But, hey, maybe when my wife is out of town for a week this month, that'll change a bit!

Wear a helmet

About to set out on my commute
From Wikimedia Commons

While pedaling my bike last month, it occurred to me that there are some parallels between riding a bike and playing Eve. I somehow managed not to get hit by a car while in reverie thinking about this:

• Pick a route carefully
• A shiny, expensive vehicle only gets you so far
• Fit matters
• Don't put yourself on "autopilot"
• Learn by doing

Routing: there are two reasonable routes between work and home, and each has a major drawback. One is a low-traffic route that has a hinky and awkward-to-cross T-intersection, and the other offers a more direct route but more lights and traffic. I've taken both and prefer the former: one awkward spot is preferable to lots of stop-and-go at lights (and more exhaust to suck down). With Eve, too, I'm paying close attention to traffic levels and loss reports when wandering into and through low-security space.

Spaceman Spiff's pricey officer and storyline equipment didn't
compensate for fitting mixed guns and low Frigate skills.
From Bill Watterson (panel cropped and flipped)

Buying success: I bought a nice bike, but certainly I didn't splurge for a carbon nanofiber über-cycle. Besides cost, I don't have the skill to take advantage of one; a better bike doesn't make for a better bike-and-rider combination. Similarly, as I've learned with Eve, buying an expensive ship and giving it gear with better stats won't me a super-duper space cowboy. Even after spending time training up the skills to fly a nice ship, an expensive vessel can be stymied by equipping it with superfluous stuff, not adjusting the overview or other UI pieces to suit your needs, not training up important ancillary support skills, autopiloting, etc. As you may have surmised, I bought a couple of PLEX soon after I started playing to lay my hands on a couple of nice ships I'd like to train toward -- but, I've tried to be diligent, too, to try my chops with all the other littler and less-expensive ships I can get my hands on, and always keeping to the essential Eve adage of not flying what I can't afford to lose. In a broader essay about ship loss, Nonnak Severin also points out that "equipping the best item ... does not" make someone the best pilot in Eve -- for more, see below.

Fit: one reason my previous bike rarely got used was I realized after a few bouncy trips down the C&O Canal bicycle path that it was just a poor fit for my body. Ladening the bike, too, with unnecessary gear made it a pain to get it up and the down my apartment stairs. In Eve, fitting refers to what equipment you strap onto your ship: guns, engines, armor plates, etc. You want to fit your ship with an eye toward the types of enemies you might encounter, e.g. a pirate hunter will equipment weapons and protection against the type of damage a particular pirate type deals out and is susceptible to. You also fit your ship in response to your skills: my main character has higher skills for armor than shields; I get more benefit from fitting gear that helps my armor stats than equipment suited to shields. And fitting also refers to broader guidelines and principles: for example, don't equip both short- and long-range guns (because then you bring only ~50% of your potential firepower onto an enemy) and don't mix armor and shield buffing equipment (stick with one). The folks at The Mittani have a BINGO card for poor fits as part of their Awful Loss of the Day; here's a recent one, also by Nonnak Severin. But beyond that, and back to my ill-suited previous bike: the ship and gear need to be a good fit for what you want to do. With Eemiv, I prefer railguns at long range over combat drones, hence a Megathron over the drone-friendly Dominix. With Dengar, I'm enjoying quick movement and rapid fire, hence sticking with an Incursus frigate and not catapulting to something much bigger.

Armor buffer tank
From Giro

Autopilot: an actual thing in Eve, which has the downside of depositing you significant distance from your destination, making you vulnerable to attack. Just don't do it. On my bike, this is the metaphorical state of not being mindful of my surroundings, spending too much time thinking (e.g. about this blog post). My bike has only the most meager of buffer tanks against damage.

Experience: it matters. I now know the traffic sensor by the mall will, in fact, detect a bike; that the biggest hill is early on the commute home, so maybe I shouldn't pedal full-speed until I cross the train tracks; that most drivers will yield to me at four-way stops. And I've learned that even the people who blow me up are also very nice and offer insight; I'm not the only person who sometimes needs to drop out of a fleet to tend to family; and that there is never a want of something to do in Eve.

Ctrl Alt ... Delete!

I've written about secondary accounts I've set up to experiment in Eve's various career areas. Since starting in February, I've created four alternate characters, most of whom I've written about here. Finally, I've settled on the three characters I'm going to maintain. Here's the overall breakdown of who and what:

• Eemiv Tivianne: plugging along since February, this is my primary character. At zKillboard, you'll see an inglorious record of losing flimsy cargo ships and a couple of embarrassing losses to NPCs (um, plus part of some kill I have no recollection of). Right now, I mostly run level 4 missions with this fellow, bringing in about 10-20 million ISK each. He just finished training up to pilot a Kronos Marauder, which is a heavy duty battleship well suited to running missions. Indeed, I'd previously lamented how slow battleships move -- well, the Kronos mostly sits absolutely still, but wow! it cuts through bad guys fast. Next up is firing off some skills to use sentry drones, and after that I'm going to focus on getting more gunnery support skills up from level 3 up to 4 or 5. After rounding out my generic gunnery skills, I'll probably take a close look at taking a cruiser into wormhole space. 
• Rosy Tivianne: my first alt, which I'd made as a female avatar in response to feedback from my wife. I set her up as a miner, and got her up to snuff piloting a Mackinaw, one of the higher end strip-mining ships. However, the ship so quickly shred through asteroids that unless I paid rapt attention, there was a lot of idle time. It was a less engaging way to net about the same amount of money (and even then hypothetically: I'd still need to sell the ore) as mission-running. I strip-mined the character of its money and property and sent her to the biomass recycler. Creating and using this character was an practical lesson in weighing ISK per hour vs. "fun per effort:" in the end, mining just wasn't fun and not how I want to spend my limited time; I'd rather play the game than do the game.



Not to be confused with Long Haul, a Decepticon

• Laung Haul: This poor space-teamster was on the receiving end of my penchant for puns. I've written several times about Eemiv's inglorious outings hauling cargo, losing lots of collateral, etc. I trained up an alt to pilot Eve's capacious, sturdy freighters. And then I put him in one. And, wow, freighters are slow and boring. I considered selling the character, but it'd probably net nothing after paying character transfer fees. Recycler!
• Talon Morda: my station trader, buying low and selling high. I haven't updated his clone backup because this milquetoast will never leave his station. Started with logging in a few times per day to set up competitive prices and make a quick score, but I've been doing that less lately and am still doing okay. There are some ebbs and flows during the week in preparation for e.g. big weekend battles; market orders a few weeks old will suddenly get scooped up. He's trained up enough that I don't need to pay for additional character training, which is nice. Now that my main character is generally equipped for running missions, in addition to earning ISK Talon is buying ship equipment at good rates to keep my third and final surviving character geared up.



The bounty hunter Dengar is my
frigate brawler's namesake.

• Dengar Morda: the character I wrote about last time, my frigate-scale brawler chipping in with the perpetual (but fun-loving) war between the Blue Republic and Red Federation. With only a few weeks of training done, you can see she has single-digit percent contributions to a few kills. Dengar's mostly puttered in an Incursus frigate, but I recently tossed in some skill training to allow her to fly and fight with a medium-sized cruiser: in fact, I just bought her a few (because I expect some attrition) of the same Thorax-class I bought in March.

So, that's it. I created a second umbrella account to help my try on all these angles; it expires in a couple of weeks, and by then I'll have Eemiv, Talon, and Dengar consolidated under one account. It was worth the three-month subscription (plus a little extra to train multiple characters on the same account in parallel) to jump in, try on some career hats, and then pick what to stick with. Depending on few in- and out-of-game factors, I'll keeping Eemiv and Dengar training in parallel but not pay the extra to keep training Talon.

Ctrl Alt

I've created another alternate character to train up and get involved with player-vs-player combat. As I train her up, I'm remembering another refrain I encountered when I started playing and reading about Eve: some folks rush to pilot larger ships, but there's a lot of fun and even wisdom to be had with smaller vessels.

I'm certainly seeing this now. My main character for a while has been running level 4 missions in a powerful Navy-issue Megathron. It's fun to blow up so many pirates and other NPCs, and the loot is good: my station-trading character has made good money on his own, and selling off the loot has been a nice bonus. I've been good, too, about training up support skills to make sure I'm not flying a glass cannon.

But, the Megathron is slow. And in larger missions, I get tired of alternating between grinding down on enemy battleships and then micro-warping away so my big, slow guns can track more nimble frigates (even with drone support). Some missions have taken two hours to complete, and my completionist personality doesn't allow for blitzing missions.

My first forays into PvP with the new alt have been mixed: I enjoy the swiftness of flying Atron and Incursus frigates. Now knowing what I'm doing, the tutorial missions (which I did for some money and faction standing) flew by. It's nice to have a skill-training plan with a notion of what I'm aiming for. And training for small-scale ships and modules will be speedy compared to working away for large ships and modules.

I jumped into Factional Warfare and promptly got blown up twice. First, I went to a friendly industrial complex where my dinky Atron was promptly blown up by an enemy tier 2 (i.e. more kick-butt) frigate. Got a new one, refitted, jumped back in and really screwed up: I flew down a friendly complex, thinking I should just fly around defending it. Alas, I guess anyone flying into a complex triggers the defenses: a "friendly" vessel started shooting me. Oh, well. I shot back for a while. And then an actual enemy arrived and blew up my ship. I warped out in my pod, which his corp-mate promptly exploded. Dang.

Both of these stemmed from some errors on my part: I should have just warped out as soon as I saw trouble in both areas. But, I didn't. I'll do better next time. In the meantime, I've also joined the Blue Fleet [Corporation], in constant (fun) warfare with the Red Fleet. Red vs. Blue has hundreds of members with lots of stuff going on; I could see this as my lever into really figuring out PvB and getting the most out of Eve, especially on the community/group-play front.

I'm reminded of playing Dragon Age: I finished the game with my initial character, a bulky soldier who carried a big sword. But, I got the most from the game -- accessing quests, garnering rewards, leveling up to cause the most damage for my play style -- with my second character, a nimble dwarven sneak-thief. There was virtue in not being a tank and also, in the second go-around, knowing what skills and talents to allocate level-up points to. Ditto my preference for speed over brawn in the X-Wing games: give me a nimble A-wing over the stronger X-wing or lunky B-wing any day.

It's the economy, stupid

This MarketWatch story about games that teach "crucial life lessons" percolated up on my Facebook feed. It highlights Eve's robust, player-driven economy, quoting CCP's economist, Doctor Eyj­ólf­ur Guðmunds­son. (Also remarkable: CCP has a full-time economist. His reason for leaving? Becoming rector of the University of Akureyri.)

From The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck,
via dreamwidth.org

The article particularly caught my attention because I've increasingly turned my eye toward making money from the Eve economy. I started buying a bunch of widgets at a low price at station X, then hauled them a few jumps over to station Y where they're selling at a higher rate. Dealing with hauling stuff between stations was a pain, though, so I created another alternate character, have started training him up on trade and commerce, and parked him at a relatively busy hub. He is station trading: that is, looking for items that sell at a low price and then turning around to sell at a higher price. Station trading requires some patience, waiting for bulk buy orders to come through and then for the sell orders to trickle out. Also attentiveness: there's a lot of one- and two-cent elbowing to set the lowest and highest sell and buy prices, respectively. But, hey, it seems to be going okay. I'll let you know when I break a billion ISK.

Oh, and I stole. Again. 1.4 million worth of minerals. A miner ejected his haul into space, emptying his ore hold so he could continue to mine without having to deal with dropping his stuff off at home base. The notion, then, is to return later in a ship with a big hold (like the Iteron Mark V, several of which I've had blown up) or ask another player to get. Oh, well. I remember the game's tutorial warning against letting that happen to me.

What vexes me now is: what next? I generally still enjoy running missions, and those yield money. So, too, does mining with my mining character, and I'm seeing that happening with the trader. But, what to spend the money on? I've gone back to invest some skill training in smaller ships and weapons with a notion of getting into Incursions or Factional Warfare. Alas, my first foolishly solo stab at Incursions cost me a nice Brutix I'd named Ola T. Miza; its ending did not befit its namesake. There is some appeal in Factional Warfare as a chance to take a stab at player-vs-player combat; that may be something I take a swing at very soon.