EVE the temptress

20 August 2008 @ 11:36 pm

back in stacmon, almost low-sec it is. goodbye, algolile.
the decision was made just after it turned out that every mission i've got today from my agent in algolile was a repetition of what i already have done for him; the rewards became more lousy than before (18k + 20k bonus? +25k bounties? +almost no loot? c'mon...) and missions themselves - aggrevatingly* easy (now i understand the term "shooting to cripples"). i guess i must have made a whole circle - the repetitions started just after i was given a storyline mission (i've got some intelligence implant for that one - pity i can't use it yet). so i thought i'd try againt with the -11q agent in uphallant, the one on whose mission i've lost the atron and the first incursus. now however i can use my incursus better (which those repeated missions proved in some way - they were really a lot easier than previously, in the atron with blasters), i have a hornet (kicks ass!) and two hobgoblins in backup, i have railguns and armor repairs... and the attitude :p
so i took my stuff, sold what couldn't be crammed into the incursus and flied back the 10-jump way to stacmon. just in time to take the stuff collected on previous missions out of the corp hangar which was to be blocked in 10 minutes (the office was too expensive so PNNH did not prolonged the rent). then i went through the skillbook shopping list i've made after today's analysis (see the previous post), which costed about the same amount of isk i've earned on those repeated missions ('bout 350k). and i was given a contract on another 2 skillbooks from a comrade who does not need them anymore (love the communism :p thx, J.)

the dark times for rethger come however... no comp access from saturday for over a whole week, so i guess the last thing i'll do on friday will be setting learning of the learning skill to 5lvl (>10d) and wave goodbye.

for now, comrades. -.-''

* no, i'm not sure the word exists. but i'm sure however you know what i mean.

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20 August 2008 @ 05:11 pm

ignorance is not a bliss (skillful thinking vol.2)

my gr8 m8 CEO hinted me with some gallente frigate fittings he likes, flies/flied with or thinks of as "making-some-sense". i started to replicate them in eve fitting tool, taking my character skills into account. it was a disaster.

the only tanking i've taken into account for now was the damn civilian shield booster* and small armor/hull repair systems. first of all, i've learned from eve wiki that shield boosters are less capacitor-efficient than armor repairing (1:1 vs 1,5:1 gain). armor repairers are however more power-consuming, which sets me in search of some powergrid-boosting skills as well as capacitor boosters (and skills enabling those). but that's just the beginning.

i didn't have a slightest glimpse of idea about what kind of tanking/resisting devices there are. it turns out you can almost permatank (a new word!) a frigate or make it really, really dreadful. you just have to _know_ what to put there. which of course is not enough - you have to be able to do it first.

it turns out that almost every frakkin' device my CEO put in low or mid slots of those fittings requires learning some new skill, sometimes even to the 3lvl (+ some of them having some prerequisites, naturally). total cost of skillbooks is mere 300k isk (which on my level is max 2 missions in hi-sec), and since most of the times 2lvl max is required the time is also not very long (although it is a logistic problem to skill them all, with learning times from 7m up to 2h, having access to eve at most twice a day and not having time everyday to play at least an hour).
but when i do that... whole new universe opens up like a bottle of beer. fittings for incursus, imicus, even for atron look more sensible. and civilian shield booster finally can be put... wherever it suits (are there really any civilians in eve?).

*)
i've came to know my first eve joke.
- "there's no more useless thing than a civilian shield booster"
- "no you're wrong, in fact there is much more useless thing - a civilian shield booster blueprint"
thx, E.! :-)

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19 August 2008 @ 12:12 am

how to make your first million isk

1,3*10^6 isk, to be more precise (but not too much).
in 11 simple steps:

make your first 820k isk (see "learning to fly" and before)
get a too-hard low-sec mission and loose almost 300k isk in ships, insurance and stuff (see previous post)
do the mission finally and get a reward of a little bit over 200k isk (see previous post)
go back to hi-sec to the agent you know (this has no impact on balance)
get 2-3 missions from the guy, get 80k for bounties and 60k on rewards from each, plus loot (should not be too easy, just ok for a maulus, 2 light electron blasters and 2 gobliins - some sweat required)
get a storyline mission from the agent (about retrieval of some archeological item - some kind of plate armour, the kind you put onto yourself in wow, not the one for the ship)
get the reward. you should have almost 1400k isk by now.
get another mission (still 1h till midnight). it is the same mission like some time ago, with retrieval of something from a warehouse, advanced power grid installations with flashy lights and freezing graphics
get your maulus frakked with missiles (income: 200k isk insurance. man, that's a profit, should do that more often.)
loose 'bout half an hour and almost 300k isk for buying and insuring an incursus, a hobgoblin, 3 railguns, ammo, shield boosters, an armor repair and an afterburner (plus the negative time gain due to the unsuccessful route optimization for collecting all of this stuff spread among several stations, couple of them in neighbouring systems - this is when, after visiting 4th station to collect another piece of stuff from the list, you see your insurance-granted noobship in the ship bay, ie. you're back in the place you bought the incursus. it's 15 to midnight after all.)
go to the mission spot, finish'em all, collect the loot and the goods, collect what's left from the maulus (some ammo, an afterburner and 1 hobgoblin from the drone bay), get your bounties and rewards. you should have 'round 1300k isk (plus the stuff).

(steps 8-11 are optional.)

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17 August 2008 @ 11:54 pm

born stubborn

low-sec is a strange place, full of contradictions. it's cool. it's hot. it's beautiful. it's nasty. and, first of and above all, it's full of surprises.

1st surprise: it's relatively safe. (at least as long as you fly with noobish frigates and have an alliance behind your back, i've been no further so i really cannot tell, but for now noone ever noticed me.)
the only not-safe event happened when i already was back in stacmon from hi-sec with my stuff - i went to a nearby system to see an agent (see next surpise) and when i popped out of the gate i found 4 serpentis, 'bout 30km away from the gate. if'd have some more time, i'd stay and kick their asses, but i haven't. maybe next time.
(the other day gen.ezronymius told me he would stay in cloak near such gate and wait until some lame noob would kill the npc and then collect the loot for/and him. so maybe my intiution made me lucky - don't think gen.ezronymius was the only one that came up with such an idea, even if he's a genius ^_^)

2nd surprise: it's possible to find a federal navy agent 1lvl -11q in low-sec, just 2 jumps away. sounds promissing. on the other hand, -11q doesn sound scary - after all i've already made some missions for -20q, -16q, so -11q shouldn't be a real trouble. c'mon, i've an atron with 2 uranium-fitted light electron blasters, an afterburner and a civilian shield. you talkin' to me, punk?

3rd one. the agent gives me a mission in the system between his location (uphallant) and my corp's base (stacmon) - in dastryns system. search & destroy. but what a totally awesome reward: 94k isk and a bonus of 124k isk! wow, that's much. with my >820k isk i'd be able to buy the salvaging skillbook, finally. i just love the low-sec. so i go to the deadspace gate, make some safespots on my way (damn, that's some real life on the edge!) and go into the complex. and that's where...

4th surprise eats my first ship this eve-ning. there are some eom fiends, eom incubuses, eom imps. i take off 2, maybe 3 imps and then i have only half of my structure, so i try to run for my life. for the first time it works, with almost nothing on structure i dock to one of two stations in this system. of course this is the one that does not have the repair facility, so another couple of minutes of flying a smoke flare until i'm back alive and kickin' (and a couple of k isk less wealthy).
in the meantime i have an illumination - i go back to stacmon and buy a hobgoblin drone. some help would always be appreciated.
when i'm back at the complex, i'm totally lost in gui trying to lock those bastards (geez, how many of them...), tell the drone to attack them, tank the shield (which doesn't work), afterburn, finally call the drone back and warp out of this shit. warping works, calling back no - i dock to the repair station without the drone (poor babe).
but wait, it should wait for me there, if it's tough enough. so i repair and fly back to the complex. no, the drone's not there anymore (surprise 4a i guess). but some more fiends, imps and incubuses are waiting (until that moment i only took down 4, maybe 5 of them). this time i issue the "dock" command a couple of seconds too late - and i go back to the station in a pod.

5th surprise. ship is not everything. and atron is not so cool. time to buy something more. (remember "split second" with rutger hauer? "we need a bigger gun!"). ok, incursus has 3 turret hardpoints, should be cool. so i go back to stacmon, buy the incursus, buy the 100% insurance, buy 2 railguns and put them into the ship together with a light electron blaster, put a hobgoblin into a drone bay, put an afterburner and some new gadgets into low and med slots (small hull repair, small armor repair). and off we go.
this time was significantly better: 4 arms (3 turrets + drone) per target makes the deal. but they ate me anyway. this time i lost again on gui, but also on those hull and armor repairing gadgets - they tanked too slow or did not tank at all (at least not at this rate of fire pointed at me). i even manage to go back to the station still in incursus after the first trip into the complex, but second one was the last one.
ok, so what do i know? one drone is cool, but not enough. armor and hull repairs are weak and slow and eat capacitor too fast (that's why i did not manage to escape the last time in incursus - i just had no power). and i am stupid - i mean, ship is not everything.

6th surprise. ship makes a difference. let's try a maulus. let's put a railgun and a blaster on it (3 hi-slots but only 2 turrets, damn), let's put an afterburner and two civilian shields inside, let's put two hobgoblins into a drone bay. let's go.
this time, with a little caution and only 3 roundtrips to repair bay, i killed them all and lost only 1 hobgoblin. finally....
i've had to make another 2 roundtrips to collect the loot. after the second one i've counted the wrecks. except from my 2 (atron and incursus) there were 12 eom fiends, 6 eom incubus and 6 eom imp. 24 ships altogether. and i lost only 2 ships and 2 drones. kewl.

7th surprise. go back to the agent, tell him i'm done. he gives me the money, over 200k isk. and then a simple calculation: before the mission i've had 826 449,37 isk, after taking my rewards - 764 670,37 isk. i've lost 61 779 isk net on this business. if i'd count the possible gain from selling the loot, i'd probably be 'round the starting place, but stacmon is not a good system for selling things - everything much cheaper than average. on that evening i wasn't in the mood for flying around to some higher-sec system just to sell all of that, so i just put it into the corp hangar, set training for aonther skill and went to bed. yeah, low-sec is full of surprises. and i'm chock-full of them. further conclusions from this fiasco to be continued.

out of low-sec, today in the evening. went back to the agent i worked before - the one with the drones mission. yes, of course he has a job for me. some transport from a potentially dangerous place. 30k isk reward, 30k isk bonus (3h for it). so i went there and my client freezed for a moment. not a lag - just some complex graphics. there was some warehouse and other structures, some of them incomplete, inside an asteroid belt. there were some strange towers around the warehouse, and there were some strange lights on them. those lights completely freezed my client - i was getting not more than 10, maybe 15 fps (i remember it well, when i tried to play the first halflife on my old laptop with onboard sis graphics, it was exactly the same). and then some bandits popped out. fighting them with such a freeze was neither nice nor funny - i tried at all times to turn the view so that i don't see those damn light-towers. it cost me one repair round trip (and 11k isk of the repair bill) to kill them all, but after all i did. then took the goods, went back to the agent, finished the mission. adding up the rewards and the bounties i made makes another, that's...

8th surprise. 140k isk, much more easier than in low-sec. that means there's still much to learn and do here, in hi-sec.
(yes, i know that bounties in low-sec are starting with hundreds of k isk. maybe when you're in a thorax).

nevertheless, there's still an issue of defense. suprisingly enough, having one civilian shield booster in an atron was just enough. two simultanously working civilian shields in a maulus are eating my capacitor however and are tanking fast enough only if there are 4 enemies or less (and provided i pump them off systematically). i have no skills for other shield boosters/repairers, nor for armor ones. all i'm left with are those civilian shields and small repairers, which take too much powergrid. (or i can't use them well/wise, which is quite possible too). and maulus is much slower than atron (~700m/s with an afterburner?!), so i really need good defense (no, i don't really like roundtripping to the repair bay).
idea for tomorrow: buy an incursus, again, and try some fun in it, with 3 guns, 1 drone and some clever tanking. but the question remains - what tanking is clever?

ps. i've found the description of the friggin' eom mission, it's here. i guess i should be happy to be just 60k isk down...

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15 August 2008 @ 09:23 pm

[LJ2ME] in between

stuck out of eve.countryside,no internet,not even a comp capable of running eve client.just a cellphone+wap (not even gprs).the only thing i'm left with is j2me app for writing livejournal entries.awesome tech.
english version of t9 is so good however that it is more than possible that a new entry regarding my first mission in low-sec will appear tomorrow or the next day.for now,the character is learning,again.no new skillbooks,so just mastering what i already have (burst control lvl4 should finish sunday evening,just when i would return home).
oh,and yes,i've prolonged the trial subscription for another 90 days.i'm lost for good.

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12 August 2008 @ 11:37 pm

white collar

so i joined a corp. the allmighty people's navy of new haven. (remember: must read honor harrington again.)
when i planned a route to the corp's hq, it turned out to be relatively safe - mostly 0.8, 0.9, even one 1.0 system on my way. the last 2 of total 9 jumps were throug 0.6 systems though. the road back was supposed to be piece of cake, since being a member of the corp i'd be altogether a member of an alliance which resides in these areas, but actually flying there was a bit scary. (ok, maybe it wasn't - the ship insured and it is only an atron after all, but i felt it this way.)
anyways, it was a good point to practice fast jumping - warping at 0 to the gate, jump, then on the other side while still in cloak finding the yellow stargate and warping to it. i found myself in stacmon system faster and safer than i thought. and the ride back was then a piece of cake. (even saw some blue allies round gates in those 0.6 systems).

in the meantime, skills proceed. i follow an advice taken from some online guide, which said not to waste any minute when it comes to skill training. so, knowing when i'd be at home to be able to login and swich the current skill, i came to the fact that i have 'bout 3 or 4 "almost-done-skills" (meaning: requiring less than 1 hour to complete). this is due to the fact that when i have a skill which ends in an hour and i know i will be home in 8 hours, i switch to another skill, so that those 7 hours would not be wasted. this however puts me in need of a day with constant comp access, so that i would be able to login every hour and finish those almost-done-skills. but what a day would it be - so many skills finished, so many new possibilities :-)

now it'd be the time to take all my stuff to the corp hangar and find some suitable agent in corp's area... maybe tomorrow.

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11 August 2008 @ 12:16 pm

learning to fly

sunday left and gone. i dare to say it was successful. but first things first.

i started the day with 146 264,74 isk and following stats: intelligence: 7,42; charisma: 8,48; perception: 15,90; memory: 6,36; willpower: 9,54. (yes, the memory awfully reversed with charisma - especially if i am about to use some drones at all). then i bought two skillbooks suggested by evemon - instant recall and analytic mind - which took exactly 100k isk. and then it turned out that gallente frigate 4lvl that just finished raised my sp level above 900k, so it was high time to upgrade my clone to beta-version with 1300k sp capacity. (i have to admit i felt a little rush on that one - i'm out of default alpha clone now, i'm just a little bit less nubbish... wow.) the only catch was that at the moment i was left with as much as 8k isk. whatever, the ship is 100% insured, i have a clone and there are some spare guns and shields left after some rats in my storage, so no real panic there. (just the fake one. u know, the thrills - only 8000 isk left. that's serious).

then for about half an hour i thought it would be another "no-way" day. the previous evening i accepted the mission labeled "4 of 10" from my agent - it was about to expire, so i thougth i'd rather take it and loose the bonus (which was afterburner skillbook, so no use for me - got 3lvl trained) than loose some stadings towards him. i did the mission, awfully simple - just fly to some deadspace look at some pirate stargate, get some damage from it (how?! no one there except from me and the stargate!) and go back. and as a reward, get an afterburner device, which i already bought before the mission. (yes, my reading skills are truly amazing). and then - i have effective standing of 1.0 towards this guy, the last mission was "4 of 10", i've done all the missions he gave me without any error and now he says he has no more work for me? jeez, what have i done? o.O

ok, there's another agent here. another corp, but whatever, remember i'm still trying to get 1M isk for my salvaging skillbook. one simple mission - a bunch of lousy rats, maybe 12 of them but in two gangs, which was no real trouble at all with afterburner, civilian shield booster and two blasters with uranium charges. finally, after getting rid of the rats, a habitat was to be destroyed, which took about 10 minutes of watching how my atron hangs in space and spits with those damn blasters at a big space installation - somehow the "shawshank redemption" movie blinked in memory. when i came back to the base to get my reward and ask for another mission, i was given... exactly the same mission once more (that was weird o.O) - so 10 minutes of easy shooting, another 10 of spitting and then i came back to the base, just before the downtime, and started learning analytical mind 2lvl. then the lunch happend :-)

after the break, the agent gave me another easy mission and then he tried to be funny, giving me a mission to collect 2000m3 of some ore (which was so meaningless and worthless that noone even tries to sell it on the market, so one has to go, find it and mine for oneself). luckily enough, just when i was about to accept the mission, aura popped out with a reasonable statement, that my ship has only 175m3 of cargo space and asking am i really sure i want to do this. i did the math and said "no, thank you."

another step was to look at the map and find the beautiful feature of "available agents". it looked like last year's christmas tree at my parents', all glowing in green lights. i picked an agent in algolile system, near enough to my medclone in case of any disaster (the base itself has no med facility). and then the joyride started.

there were 5 consecutive missions. again, 2 first were exactly the same, the other 3 more colorful. as always, mostly killing some rats, but there were exceptions.

one that was funny was with some spies. i jumped into the deadspace and saw 'round 6 pirates. i engaged and then something started to kill me. i took down 2 of those guys, but the thing that was shooting at me with some missiles (i presume) already took my whole shield and armor and started to eat up the structure. fast retreat to the nearest station, repair, go back. and then it starts again. this time i was more lucky - somehow i figured out that it's not the beacon nor the deepspace radar that is shooting me but it must be one of those ships with some guns i've not seen before. i was left with no shield and no armor again (shield slowly regenerating), but this time victorious. another long minutes of spitting at the radar that was the mission objective and it was over.

another funny mission was with the drones - i was about to shoot down some of "rebelious drones" that were "harassing" the poor miners. to be frank, it was the hardest mission so far. had to do the repair roundtrip to the nearest base three times (and my only - but lame - excuse is that it was a nested deadspace). this was no-more-kindergarten mission, with lots of those fast drones flying around, tanking their shields and firing at me with whatever-it-was-it-made-great-damage. but it was worth the effort and even the repair costs (which were 'bout 7k isk) - i've got 50k isk for the reward, another 50k bonus time reward and it got even better when i sold all the stuff i've found in those drones' cargo (loads of precious alloys and stuff like that).

the last mission before i called it a night was loosely based on the "critters" movie - the job was to jump into a deadspace and destroy a lab which was infested with some furry killing machines :-) and the only real threat were "environmental terrorists", 3 on the 1st deadspace, another 6 on the second layer. (ok, i should put the quotes around "real threat" too).
the funny thing was that it was the first time i ran out of cargo space in my atron - this time i had to roundtrip to the deadspace twice but not in order to repair myself, but to collect all the cargo left by the pirates and the station. (there was some livestock there. for a moment i was hesitating whether to take it - it came through my mind that these could be those critters... luckily, nothing happend). i was about to buy another ship either way, to have 3 high power slots for 2 guns and a salvager, so picking one that has also some more cargo shouldn't be impossible. in the meantime, 500k isk gallente cruiser skillbook is also on the shoplist, but this shouldn't be a problem with a salvager.

of course i put almost whole loot on the market - there was even some enriched uranium, which gave me over 45k isk. (dunno why noone wants to buy the livestock. maybe there are the critters after all.)

i finish the day with 944 105 sp, survey 3lvl completed (which means i need only the salvaging skillbook to be able to do the salvaging), 821 278,08 isk (which means i need only 180k isk to actually get the salvaging skillbook) and 813k isk net gain. and the costs were not null - med clone upgrade, repairs, ammo, three skillbooks (136k isk for those only). due to the acquired skills (instant recall 2lvl and analytic mind 2lvl) all my stats boosted up: intelligence: 9,72 (+2.3); charisma: 8,64 (+.16); perception: 15,90 (+.3); memory: 8.64 (+2.28); willpower: 9,72 (+.18).

impossible is nothing.

oh, and during one of the drone-mission roundtrips i saw a caldari titan :-) (it was on the overview just like a space station...)

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07 August 2008 @ 04:55 pm

skillful thinking

no time to play lately. bad stomach, ensembling a wardrobe from ikea, making a radio broadcast - not much time left for wife and sleeping, not to mention a game. good times for rethger seem to come however, sunday's my wife's workshop day, so 10am-6pm i'm all yours, eve. (except downtime. yours or mine.)

so i act like a classic offlined noobie (which is exactly who i am): dwell through tones of eve guides, print those nice, colorful 2d maps of regions i visit or may visit in the nearest future (that makes five of them, since for now i keep my medclone in renyn system, 3 out of 6 stargates from here end in another regions - and all those missions i've had so far were at least 2 jumps away; yes, i print them on b+w laserjet), do whatever i can do while being offline. this includes skill planning, and this is where evemon comes in handy.

it took me about an hour to get bored of playing with the tool and finding out how long learning times i can get while trying to be able to pilot some ship or use some tool. gallente titan was of course the total winner with reasonable 302d,12h,49m,42s. suprisingly enough, the other titans would take only 13h longer - that's probably the cost to learn other race's frigate to lvl3 (which i have now for gallente). battlecruiser lvl1 is only 4 days away, +-3h depending on whether it would be a brutix or a myrmidon, while assault frigate is as long as 50d.

the most funny feature of evemon is when it tries to be helpful and suggests shortcuts. the idea is to speed up the learning process, which is cool, but only when you have a reasonable amount of money. otherwise it can be hilarious.

real-life example. one of the comrades suggests to learn salvaging asap, since it's highly profitable. cool, why not. the salvager device itself costs about 30k isk. the skill itself costs however a 1M isk, which is like a vicious circle - the fastest way to gather this kind of money would be... salvaging.
ok, let's assume for a while i somehow managed to get my dirty hands on this kind of money. (dunno, maybe would be one of those happy guys that make their first 1M isk during those 10 missions from the second agent. non-zero probability.) with my skills (electronics III, mechanic III) it requires only survey on 3lvl, which i don't have (another 36k isk for a skillbook) and after 13h45m i'm done. a brilliant suggestion from evemon is to do instant recall I and analytical mind I, which would fasten this plan by 1h22s (<-yes, that's 's' for 'seconds') but would cost me another 100k isk for two skillbooks. but c'mon, i have low memory (meaning the attribute) anyway, so why not, 100k isk less or more is not a problem (it's just 2/3 of my current balance).

but let's go further. assume i would like to fly an assault frigate. i need my frigate skilled at 5lvl, engineering at 5lvl (and i don't have even 1lvl), and then mechanic 5lvl (from current 3), and then assault ships 1lvl. lot of 4lvl and 5lvl here, so 45d of learning ahead, and a cost of 20k isk for engineering skillbook and 4M isk for an assault ship skillbook (ok, that's not a problem, during those 45d i would find a way to get this kind of money). but wait, evemon suggests something. well, before all those things i should go for instant recall IV, eidetic memory II, analytical mind IV, logic III and clarity III. throwing those in, i would save over 8d. that's a gain. the little catch is that the cost of the plan rises to 19M isk - that's 5M isk per skillbook for logic, clarity and eidetic memory skills. is it me being such a noob, or is this frakking lot of money? what i should do on my level to get this in reasonable amount of time? (finding some church and sitting with my hat pretending to be a sick kid is not an option, even if i'm sick). i mean, i will lose more time on getting this money for speed-ups suggested by evemon that i gain when i apply them - isn't that weird?

on the other hand, suggested reduction from default 302d for titan to 226d is more than significant, and while learning pure titan skills would cost 5,964,540,000 isk (almost 6B isk), adding those 76d-shortening boosters (which are exactly the same as for assault frigate) raises the cost up to only 5,979,690,000 isk, which is still the same "almost 6B isk", so it'd be definitely worth considering.

good news is that today, at 11:00am training for learning 4lvl finished. bad news is that i will be home at 6:00pm at best, which makes 7 wasted hours of training.
(am i getting addicted? no. i truly believe i don't.)

finally, i decided to stay with my current character and his "reversed" memory and charisma. there will always be a thing that i'd like to do another way when i get to now it, so once started, there would be no ending for those "'what if i'd" actions. instead, like in good old regular-rpg times, i will try to enjoy the character i've created using my intuition and lack of insight eve knowledge. may be funny, and after all it's all game should be about.

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05 August 2008 @ 08:45 am

the 'sh'-day.

(or the "no-way"-day.)

ok, so it's sunday and i have finally some time to do some serious gameplay. or so i presume.

start the comp, start the game, recall what i've done the other night. right, two missions for the second agent done and before the third one he says "now it's serious", so on saturday night i say to myself "ok, this is serious, it's better to do it with my mind clear and with some time in perspective, without the need to shutdown the comp in the middle of the mission because my brother-in-law has to sleep somewhere".
so here i am, it's sunday morning, 'bout 10:30AM (GMT+2 here and further, unless stated otherwise explicitely), brother-in-law awake and kicking (ok, no kicking, just a metaphore) and i'm in some base, eager to do the "now it's serious" mission. it turns out to be a classic 'go->shoot->collect->return', with possibly a couple of pirates or so. the mission briefing tries to be scary about how fast these dudes are, that they have some spider drone (yes, a drone <- this is singular) -and it would be a pain in the ass, but overall i shouldn't care. it says also something about web jammer and that having that the mission would be easier. the bell rang - i went to 'items' and i see the damn thing - must have be given that after previous missions. (i didn't buy it, because i haven't bought anything so far, and i cannot check the mission briefing and rewards in the journal, 'cause after it's finished it disappears. which by the way sucks a bit. but i assume the device did not appear out of the blue, so it has to be some bonus or something.)
anyways, the next fifteen minutes or so goes to hell when i look for a way to put this jammer into my ship. then i try to look for some other words that would describe the process - the word "fit" turns out to be the correct one as i sweep through the service icons of the base. and then i try to fit the jammer into the ship. no way, "you don't have appropriate skills, proplusion jamming lvl 1 is required".
ooook. another bell rings and i go back to items, where skillbook for this skill is silently waiting to be opened (and this time i do remember it was a mission reward). try to use it - another no way, "electronics lvl3 is required to train this skill". shit, that i have no skillbook for.
but wait, i have almost 200k ISK scraped together after my so-far successful missions (loosing a velator was a sight-seeing episode, not a mission, right?). so it's high time to go to the market.
wow, it's crowdy.
this time got lucky, found a skillbook for electronics for less than region average and within one jump only. bought, docked off, jumped, docked in, collected, returned. blah, routine. (does it still sound like noob at all? :p)
then it turns out it is 11:30 already. (ok, looking at the time i've logged int this is more back-to-noobish). and i recall that i've already accepted the mission. and i have deadline on bonus rewards at 15:30. so it's time to go and cick some ratass.
undock, autopilot, warp drive active, wait... shit, forgot to fit this brand new laser gun to the ship. turn around, dock to the station, fitting and... yes, no way naturally, since no ammo for the gun. whatever, atron looks cooler with two guns than with a gun and a mining laser, even if one of the guns is empty. now i'm ready <ta-da!>

warp to gate, jump to the other system, then another gate and another system, then warp to the location (ough, this excitement!). and finally i pop out from the warp within 10km form the destination. some red crosses - cool, come here you lazy bastards. one bastard, two bastards, which one is closer, maybe some of the other five?
<gulp>
and then, like a cherry on the top of the cake, the message shows - "servers are going to shutdown, be sure you are in a safe location". so, obviously, i panic.
just issued "dock" command on the nearest station and waved the pirates goodbye.

and then we went with my wife for a walk. (in RL.)

yes, of course i've missed the bonus reward deadline. shit, it was supposed to be some ammo for the gun i was given after the other mission. shit.

when i logged in later in the evening, i've finished the mission in 'bout 10 minutes. probably would have done the same and easily make it before the downtime, but maybe it was so fast because i was just pissed of 'bout the lost bonus and let the beast of anger to the poor pirates. i guess i'll never know.

so after the mission i went back to the market to buy the damn ammo for the gun. naively have i assumed that some logic in those missions can be found. i mean, having such a flow of missions and rewards:
- on the first mission i was given jamming skillbook
- on the next one i was given the device, that requires this skill
- next mission gives me a gun which needs ammo
- another mission gives me some ammo
wouldn't you assume that ammo fits the gun? i did. but i'm stupid a noob, obviously.

i took a pick at the ammo type before reporting to the agent that the mission is done (which makes the journal entry disappear. wow, the technology.) - uranium M. fine. went to the market, found loads of this stuff, with really different prices and adjectives. ruled out the "depleted" for the beginning, then neglected "blueprints"; i was left with some specialised versions (what has race to do with uranium shells?), then at the very bottom i found some generic, no-adjective, no-name "Uranium M size shells". two jumps away, but the price seems to be ok. bought 2k (~45k ISK), jumped there (wow, these views, sightseeing for today accomplished), took the stuff, try to fit it to the gun... yes, that's a "no way" again. "size of this gun is 1, these shells are of size 2".
shit.
(btw, which one of genius minds behind the eve market invented calling the sizes simultanously with numbers and with dress sizes? that's weird o.O)

ok, so i guess i have to dump this useless shit somewhere and possibly not to loose to much money on this lifetime transaction. there's a handy "sell this" command, so i use it and start to play around with the price dialogbox. i set something stupid while playing with multipliers and pressed enter instead of shift. aaargh. and i'm really screwed, 'cause i already do not have the money i spent on the ammo, i have no ammo since it disappeared when i placed the selling order and then i have even less money, 'cause the selling fee was taken. that's the lifetime business.

ok, cool down. still need the frakkin' ammo.

back to the market... wait, the market does not want to open. nothing happens when i click the button. just like that, the market ceased to exist. is there some cooldown time for entering the market after selling some stuff? o.O

shutdown.
shopping.
shit.

i go to get shome shleep.

(today programme's brought to you by letters S and H.)

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04 August 2008 @ 04:01 pm

first impressions

ok, so here i am, "just checking out" the 14-day free trial of eve online. me, who merely a month ago laughed out loud at WoW players. me, who promised oneself not to go into any MMOG's, ever. me, whose wife's expecting a baby, who works after hours and whom doctors tell he should go and take a week of just to get some more sleep... damn, whatever :]

this is intended to be a personal in-game experience journal. just eve, no RL politics, no RL relationships, no RL problems. just me and/in the game, as long as it would entertain me.

so i downloaded this client on monday's evening, a week ago. tuesday till thursday: nothing but installation, i wanted to get to the character creation seriously (after all, there were RPG episodes in my life, the fact not without significance...).

friday, at last. character created - gallente/gallente, a soldier. (friend of mine told me to take either gallente or caldari, 'cause they have cool ships and use same guns, so it's not difficult to switch from one race's ship to another, which is flexible, which is cool.)

first frak-up: my character is bald. after i have toyed around with the avatar creation utility for about 20 minutes, my character had short, brown har. but in game he looks like a young skinhead. aggrevating.

so i go into the tutorial with my young gallentian fascist (btw, isn't it a beautiful contradiction-in-terms? :]) and what i get is 'bout half an hour of starting, restarting, hangups and so on, just to fit gfx settings to the weird expectations of my laptop's on-board geforce. got quite hot, sonofabitch, i almost burned my fingertips when i touched the vents' output.

finally, when it became possible, i played 'bout 2hrs on friday, same on saturday, same on sunday - yesterday it is.

damn, it's good. damn, it's pretty. damn, it's engaging. damn.

i went through the tutorial and two first missions from the tutorial agent, then he told me about another agent who gave me another 10 missions, i've made 3 of which so far. in the meantime i got some better gun for my ship (just "light blaster" instead of "civilian light blaster", it's more powerful and doesn't have this "civilian" word, which - to be frank - really sucks in the gun's name; drawback is it does need some ammo). i've got some shield booster - another "civilian" crap, but works for now. (have to invent something to boost my capacitors - drop awfully fast when the shield booster's on). finally, i've got another ship - atron instead of velator. looks cool :]

of course, it's not a bed of roses. i've lost a ship too.

after finishing the two first tutorial missions, i thought i would wander in space for a while, just sight-seeing, you know. so i opened a scanner. some cheap shit, i thought, it can mark only 'space annomalies'. but c'mon, have i seen an anomaly? not yet. seems a good place to start the sight-seeing, right?

wrong.

i warp to the damn "warp bulb collapse" and i stop exactly in the middle of something that looks like a base. a cool base. there's a cool-looking stargate wreck, there is a station and some flying ships and some other strange-looking flying objects (something like a flying tower).

all of them with red cross marks. <gulp.>

so i take the base i came from, issue the "warp to" command. and i got hit by a pirate turret for a first time.
my ship (velator) starts to turn around. i've got hit for a second time.
i start to get some speed, the "activating warp drive" message shows, i got a third hit. at this moment, i have no more than 5% of structure.
and then i thought i escaped with those three red stripes, since i was flying really fast at this moment.
and then i dock to the station in a pod.
gee. that was cool...

it was not until i made some more agent missions that i realised that they always send me for some pirates to the locations that are called "warp bulb collapse". don't believe the coincidence :]

there were also some problems with ammo, with server shutdown, with buying/selling goods... but c'mon, am i a noob? ;-)

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