When you get to 0.0, you can make Jump clones at the Outposts.
Fixed
Quick terminology primer:
NPC Station: Non-Player Character Station. These are the stations that you see in empire space. You dock at them, fit and repair your ships, etc.
POS: Player Owned/Operated Starbase AKA Control Tower. These are anchored at moons out in space, and while they are somewhat interactable, are safe havens, and can be equipped to do a lot of the functions of a station, you cannot dock at them.
Conquerable Station/Outpost: These function very similarly to the NPC stations, except that they can be conquered and controlled by player corporation alliances. The owning corporation within the alliance can restrict access to the station, charge docking fees, ship-repair fees, etc.
thanks for the tips. sounds like i should grind a few more isk for skills before heading out. If I use a Jump clone couldn't i jump back and forth between fed and 0.0 space for skills and such?
Where is Epros? I can't seem to find it via map search.
Eve doesn't keep track of ship orientation, only ship velocity and position. Your client shows you a ship orientation, but that doesn't really mean anything. This becomes most noticeable when you are flying something like a freighter (you will enter warp sideways a lot) or when you stop moving and your ship appears to level out (stops point up or down).
Anyways, when you are at an absolute stop, your ship is essentially oriented facing every direction. Try it sometime with a stopwatch handy. Line yourself up with whatever you want to warp to, come to a complete stop, then time how long it takes for your ship to enter warp. Now try it again, except this time line yourself up by 90-180 degrees off from your warp destination. It will take you the exact same amount of time to enter warp in both cases.
What this means in terms of gameplay is that there is no such thing as "being aligned" when you aren't moving. In a fleet battle, or if you are ratting, you can stay aligned for warpout by moving towards your warp destination at 75% or more of your top speed. When you are doing this, your ship will instantly enter warp when you click "warp to".
What this means in terms of gameplay is that there is no such thing as "being aligned" when you aren't moving.
If that's true, then why does everyone always suggest being aligned to the station when you are mining?
I know from past experience, it does seem to be beneficial to be pointing in the general direction of the station. But I haven't done the stopwatch thing.
And sorry for the terminology mixup. I always though POS was Player Owned Station.
Ships take time to accelerate to warp, and a few seconds can make a big difference if there are hostiles inbound. I think aligning is more important for fleet actions, particularly among battleships. If everyone is aligned and moving toward the destination then they're much more likely to all arrive at the same time. When someone isn't aligned it's pretty obvious as they arrive several seconds late.
What this means in terms of gameplay is that there is no such thing as "being aligned" when you aren't moving.
If that's true, then why does everyone always suggest being aligned to the station when you are mining?
I know from past experience, it does seem to be beneficial to be pointing in the general direction of the station. But I haven't done the stopwatch thing.
It's pretty common for lots of misconceptions about game mechanics to be bandied about (I've probably been guilty of this as well).
The only small advantage that being pointed towards station or safespot affords when you are mining is that it's easier to notice if you are tangled on an astroid of if you are going to run into one before you get up to speed.
The best way to get a slowly accelerating ship from a dead stop into warp is to have someone slap a stasis web on your ship while you are accelerating for warp. If a 90% web is used, you only have to be up to 7.5% speed when the web is applied to instantly enter warp. Freighters frequently use this trick when moving around (becuase it otherwise takes about a minute to enter warp), but you can also use it to protect expensive mining ships like covetors or hulks.
Any ship that can fit a microwarpdrive can limit their align/speedup time to 10 seconds by turning on their MWD for one cycle. This tactic is commonly used on battleships when traveling from gate to gate.
Also note that these tricks are primarly used for warping from a dead stop. If you are already flying around or have just undocked from a station, you have to deal with your ship's inertia. When you are moving it does take extra time to reorient your ship towards your warp destination. Having your MWD on can actually slow down your warp-out time in this case.
soooo... we should just be moving at 75% speed all the time then when mining ?
That would slowly, but surely, take you out of range of the asteroids you're mining. Just stay still, make sure there are no asteroids nearby that will foul your acceleration to warp, and keep your eye on your radar/Local.
Of course, the threat of belt rats and the threat of hostile players are two separate issues. The rats tend to be easier to elude.
Right ... i associated movement with moving away... but advice given from Midshipman & others is different.
I take it as:
I find my little spot, start mining. I double click next to the gate / station / other icon for where I want to go quickly, and I turn and face it. I then STOP and continue what I am doing. I can then warp.
Midshipman seems to make it sound like that the direction i am facing is of no matter.. only speed? I have to say that i certianly warp to a destination quicker while facing it vs facing some other way (moving or not)
Lets turn this discussion. Shield tanking. I have played with EFT for a long time (can you SAVE in that program??!) and I cant find the right balance between an Invuln field / shield extender / shield recharger & others..
How can I determine my tanking? I have been playing(in a caracal) with 2 large exanders,an invulnerbility field, a 10mn ab, and a shield recharger.
My low slots are currently PDS... but I have a hard time being 'capacitor neutral' in usage. I can see that removing the extenders lowers hitpoints, but I can't see any measure of how much damage I can take while recharging ...
Midshipman seems to make it sound like that the direction i am facing is of no matter.. only speed? I have to say that i certianly warp to a destination quicker while facing it vs facing some other way (moving or not)
I'm thinking Mid is correct, I just never thought about it that way. If you try his stopwatch thing, you'll probably get the same warp time, regardless of which direction you're facing.
In my on experience, I have noticed that the "spin" of the ship to face the proper direction does vary.
Like if I'm 180 degrees from the destination, the ship almost flips around. If I'm 90 degrees from designation, it does a much slower turn.
I could swear my ships get to warp faster when they're already lined up in the direction I'm going to warp. It's probably only a difference of seconds, but if I'm mining in 0.0, those seconds mean a lot to me.
If you're facing the wrong way, your ships has to turn and then get to speed.
Like I said. Try it with a stopwatch sometime. If you aren't moving, it's irrelevant what direction you are facing. This doesn't make sense from a RL physics standpoint, but it's the way the game works. Back when I mined in Hoshoun, I used to think it mattered, so I can see why people would want to cling to the notion. But just try it out for yourself.
Regarding shield tanking a Caracal. You've got two options, large shield buffer (mix of extenders and hardeners) or active tank (shield booster and hardeners). The first one is the only one worth doing for PVP (don't even look at the dps tanked in EFT, the point is that you have a lot of HP to burn). The second one is sorta ok at PVE, but you aren't going to get a stable dps tank in a Caracal.
You'll do better passive tanking a caracal in pve too. If i can passive tank an Arbitrator for angels long enough to kill battleships, then it shouldnt be much of an issue for a Caracal.
i can tank a few angles with like 20% shield stable... i was just bored testing out the combination of harders / extenders / rechargers coupled with modules to increase recharge, etc.. SO many options, and its not showing me the metrics i want to see.
i can tank a few angles with like 20% shield stable... i was just bored testing out the combination of harders / extenders / rechargers coupled with modules to increase recharge, etc.. SO many options, and its not showing me the metrics i want to see.
In my experience with passive shield tanking, you are almost always better off with another extender or hardener than with a shield recharger. Both extenders and hardeners add to your effective hit points (ie 500 shield with even 50% resists is 1000 effective) as well as your effective recharge rate. Shield rechargers only help with the latter.
Here is an extreme (and simplified) example. You have a ship with 1000 shields and 0% base resists. It has 1 free midslot. You have a shield extender that adds 1000 shields, an invuln field that adds 50% resists, and a shield recharger that cuts recharge time in half. All three will give you an indentical increase in tankable DPS. However, with the first two you will hav 2000 effective hp, but only 1000 with the third option. If you come across a ganker that does 1000 dps, you will last 2 second with the extender or hardener, and be instantly popped with the recharger.
Of course, there are stacking penalties when you are dealing with multiple hardeners, and the values for mods I used don't match the real modules, but I hope that this illustrates the advantage that hardeners and extenders offer over shield rechargers. Since no ship has more than 8 midslots, and you usually need a few of those for an afterburner/mwd, sensor booster, warp scram, etc, you are rarely in a position where you've exhausted the potentials of extenders and hardeners, and still have room to add rechargers. I'm not saying that they are never useful, but that they won't be the best option the vast majority of the time.
Awesome thread guys. Learned alot reading through here. I gave Eve a second try due to this thread, and just subscribed. Thanks a bunch for all the info!
Wish I could be playing instead of yapping with you bozos on here, but...I'm stuck for another couple months.
Question: How viable is Exploration as a profession? I am really interested in Covert Ops as something I would like to get into, and Exploration seems like a natural fit. Anyone have any experience with it? I know I won't be able to jump into it day one, but I'd like to know what I'm working towards.
Hi, I started playing eve about 5 days ago. Everyone keeps saying find something you like and work towards it, I think I found something. I googled fittings for my rifter and I found a site that let you list fits and have people rank them. I found someone had a fit called speed tanking and I tried it out. You pretty much have an afterburner turned on all the time and you recharge cap faster than the afterburner uses it up. Is this common setup? I love the speed, I feel safer because it seems ships have a harder time hitting me, but when they do there is less margin of error for me. I like this style of play a lot. Is there a need for it in pvp? What kind of role does assault frigs and interceptors play in pvp? I haven't seen any pvp yet, but im guessing they could tackle and bring a little dmg to the fight, or maybe go after there support? Could I fly around in enemy territory an be a hair in there soup? Is it a simple matter of them using a tractor beam type device on me to ruin day? Are old players targeting computers so great they will just blow me out of the sky no mater how fast and evasive I get?
tl;dr - Is putting I'm guessing months of focus into the tiny ships fun and desirable?
Hi, I started playing eve about 5 days ago. Everyone keeps saying find something you like and work towards it, I think I found something. I googled fittings for my rifter and I found a site that let you list fits and have people rank them. I found someone had a fit called speed tanking and I tried it out. You pretty much have an afterburner turned on all the time and you recharge cap faster than the afterburner uses it up. Is this common setup? I love the speed, I feel safer because it seems ships have a harder time hitting me, but when they do there is less margin of error for me. I like this style of play a lot. Is there a need for it in pvp? What kind of role does assault frigs and interceptors play in pvp? I haven't seen any pvp yet, but im guessing they could tackle and bring a little dmg to the fight, or maybe go after there support? Could I fly around in enemy territory an be a hair in there soup? Is it a simple matter of them using a tractor beam type device on me to ruin day? Are old players targeting computers so great they will just blow me out of the sky no mater how fast and evasive I get?
tl;dr - Is putting I'm guessing months of focus into the tiny ships fun and desirable?
Thanks for reading.
Yes, speed tanking is a very viable strategy (though it will take some learning on how exactly to do it without going pop), however you will want to train for an Interceptor, or possibly Assault Frigate in order to do anything worthwhile. If you're brand new than speed tanking in a rifter might be good practice, because if you die you're not losing a whole lot. I would suggets trying to do level 2 and 3 missions speed tanking in a rifter just to get the hang of it. On some of the harder missions you may not have the firepower yet to break the tank on larger ships, but if you can at least survive in those missions through speed, it will be good practice.
Speed tanking tips:
1) Never stop moving or slow down at all ever. If you slow down, you go pop. You have to constantly monitor your targets, because if you don't give your ship a command quickly enough after you kill a ship for example, you will decelerate.
2) Don't ever fly directly at another ship. In my battleship with 1400mm artillary, I can pop frigate rats because the AI is dumb and they fly directly towards me, making the tracking that much easier even on guns that aren't really supposed to be able to hit frigates. Fly at an angle, or zig-zag, towards your target.
3) Keep your signature radius as low as possible. Interceptors are already amazing at this. Just don't fit anything that would increase your signature radius (Shield extenders, shield rigs), but instead fit resists for damage mitigation. (One exception is an interceptor with a MicroWarpdrive. They move so fast that the increased signature radius doesn't make a huge difference when you're going 8km/s).
Those are at least a few starters, though by no means the only good tips. A lot if it you may have to learn/tweak yourself. Good luck.
Those are some good tips. How do you know what level missions are? The guy I am getting missions from is a -17, and the guy I can't talk to yet is a -7.
Are assault frigates and interceptors that speed tank better off with light artillery or should I stay with turrets and missiles? Do they want to buzz around ships real close or is it better to stay as far away as possible?
I assume that I want to learn how to fly bigger ships to clear out and farm rats faster than I could with a assault frigate as much for the fire power, but for the storage space for loot. Unless it might be more efficient for me to kill things in an assault frigate and then come back with a salvager to loot everything.
What role would I play in pvp with my super speedy ships?
Also im not really sure what a signature radius is. Does certain mods and ships give off kind of a power beacon type signal to make it easier for missiles or guns to hit me?
Speed tanking is definitely a very power PVP tactic. Fast moving frigates (or interceptors) are used to tackle ships to prevent their escape while the rest of the gang takes them down. At higher skillpoint levels, Heavy Assault Ships (aka HACs) and some Recon ships can also speed tank quite effectively. Gangs of quick moving frigates, HACs, and Recons can be extremely hard to pin down and can usually escape from any gang heavy enough to take them on.
Unfortunately, for PVE, speed tanking isn't universally applicable. Missions, especially the higher level ones, will frequently either require more dps than most speed-tanking ships can put out, are too loaded with NPCs to have proper traversal to keep your incoming damage down, or will contain nasty suprises like webbing frigates/towers right at the mission warp-in. Belt-ratting can be done with speed tanking against certain NPC types, like Sanshas or Blood Raiders. Other NPC types like Angels are very missile heavy and will rip you up even if you are spinning circles around them. Speed tanked Assault Ships used to be useful for certain complexes, but now that complexs aren't in static locations and must be scanned down (a very boring and time-intensive process), there aren't many opportunities for speed-tanked Assault Ships.
When im speed tanking do I want to get right up in there faces with auto cannons or do I want to use light artillery (I think, light artillery fits on these ships) and have a really big orbit?
You've stumbled upon the eternal predicament of turret-based interceptor pilots. Close combat allows higher damage and tracking while putting you well within webifier range, while long-range turrets will drastically reduce damage and your ability to track your target (effectively further decreasing your damage). Missile-inties have the benefit of ignoring tracking-related problems, though they generally still suffer from lower damage than close-range hulls.
Trinity gave a big boost to the long-range inties, essentially turning them into a dedicated tackling sub-class, with bonuses augmenting scram range and allowing you to orbit and tackle from outside typical web/nos/neut range.
It's your choice to make and comes down to how you plan to fly and the level of risk you're comfortable with. If you're planning to dick around screwing with targets of opportunity, you can probably comfortably fly a damage-inty and pick off ships that pose a low risk of packing a web, nos, or neut (ratters). If you're flying in a gang, you'll need to weigh your roll as a dedicated tackler with your ability and desire to contribute additional damage.
Those are some good tips. How do you know what level missions are? The guy I am getting missions from is a -17, and the guy I can't talk to yet is a -7.
Are assault frigates and interceptors that speed tank better off with light artillery or should I stay with turrets and missiles? Do they want to buzz around ships real close or is it better to stay as far away as possible?
I assume that I want to learn how to fly bigger ships to clear out and farm rats faster than I could with a assault frigate as much for the fire power, but for the storage space for loot. Unless it might be more efficient for me to kill things in an assault frigate and then come back with a salvager to loot everything.
What role would I play in pvp with my super speedy ships?
Also im not really sure what a signature radius is. Does certain mods and ships give off kind of a power beacon type signal to make it easier for missiles or guns to hit me?
The links to the tracking and missile guides were posted earlier in this thread, but here's the ever-so useful link again:
Every new player should look through that guide, and especially the top 3 links on that page, the Tracking, Missiles, and Tanking guides.
It has already been said, but speed tanking frigs, intys, and assault frigs aren't super efficient for PvE (mission running, ratting), but are very useful in PvP. Depends on what you want to do.
Truthfully, despite how run-of-the-mill it may seem, I suggest for every new player to train the "normal" route of Frigate > Cruiser > Battlecruiser > Battleship, and then choose a T2 ship from there. The reason is after trying out those 4 major ship types, you will have a wealth of knowledge about combat from all fronts, and be able to better decide which type of T2 ship you want to go for.
Of course that's just my 2 cents. If you want to be PvP viable as quickly as humanly possible, then tackling in frigates would be the way to go. On the other hand I've spent most of my time in empire space running every mission countless times both for profit and learning about different ships and tactics.
Every new player should look through that guide, and especially the top 3 links on that page, the Tracking, Missiles, and Tanking guides.
Thanks, I read the whole thread, but I must have missed the importance of the link because I was at work and the firewall is not being kind to gaming links
Wish I could be playing instead of yapping with you bozos on here, but...I'm stuck for another couple months.
Question: How viable is Exploration as a profession? I am really interested in Covert Ops as something I would like to get into, and Exploration seems like a natural fit. Anyone have any experience with it? I know I won't be able to jump into it day one, but I'd like to know what I'm working towards.
From what I've read regarding Covert Ops Exploration
30% of the time you find nothing
30% of the time, what you find isnt worth the cost of the probes you spent to find it
20% of the time, when you find a combat / exploration site, it escalates outside your controlled territory
20% of the time, you find a site that requires hacking etc other specialized skills.
Wish I could be playing instead of yapping with you bozos on here, but...I'm stuck for another couple months.
Question: How viable is Exploration as a profession? I am really interested in Covert Ops as something I would like to get into, and Exploration seems like a natural fit. Anyone have any experience with it? I know I won't be able to jump into it day one, but I'd like to know what I'm working towards.
From what I've read regarding Covert Ops Exploration
30% of the time you find nothing
30% of the time, what you find isnt worth the cost of the probes you spent to find it
20% of the time, when you find a combat / exploration site, it escalates outside your controlled territory
20% of the time, you find a site that requires hacking etc other specialized skills.
I guess thats about right, the key is finding a big area of space that is not very busy. And if i found 1 site in 2 hours, whether i could run the site or not it was a great day of exploration.
Wish I could be playing instead of yapping with you bozos on here, but...I'm stuck for another couple months.
Question: How viable is Exploration as a profession? I am really interested in Covert Ops as something I would like to get into, and Exploration seems like a natural fit. Anyone have any experience with it? I know I won't be able to jump into it day one, but I'd like to know what I'm working towards.
From what I've read regarding Covert Ops Exploration
30% of the time you find nothing
30% of the time, what you find isnt worth the cost of the probes you spent to find it
20% of the time, when you find a combat / exploration site, it escalates outside your controlled territory
20% of the time, you find a site that requires hacking etc other specialized skills.
I guess thats about right, the key is finding a big area of space that is not very busy. And if i found 1 site in 2 hours, whether i could run the site or not it was a great day of exploration.
For me it's:
100% of the time, when you find a combat sites which escalate in the same system. Each one I find is generally worth 15-25 mil if I include bounties and salvage/mods dropped. As for the amount I find per system, it is a rare, RARE day that I only find a single site, while 17 active sites in one system was the max I've ran and come across. (and also lost a domi due to a 1.1 strength dual drone mother site )
I would love to find a hacking site, it would atleast pay off the gear required for hacking, but I haven't seen a single one yet. Even the ladar sites or whatever where you can mine are non-existant. Yeah so in short, I find shit, and since that's all I find, I run a few out of boredom, even though I know there's better crap out there. Supposedly.
Speed tanking eh? Thank you gentlemen, I think I just found my calling in EVE. Haven't had much of a chance to play in my 14 day trial, just spent a couple of (long) days dicking around getting my head used to the UI and the controls and queuing up skills. I had originally wanted to go with a speed setup, and if that is a viable way to stay alive in 0.0 space then I'm a happy boy. In any space game I always have the urge to be "a little bit Lando", so speed tanking sounds my cup of tea. I can only imagine how much it will annoy people to have some nippy little craft zipping around dancing between their shots. The added bonus is that fast ships are more fun even when I'm not being shot at.
Time to open up EVEmon and plan those speed and agility skills.
I'm getting an Ishtar setup to mess around with in lowsec, it's seriously a lot of fun to be outrunning things in a ship way too heavy to be doing that in.
Posts
Fixed
Quick terminology primer:
NPC Station: Non-Player Character Station. These are the stations that you see in empire space. You dock at them, fit and repair your ships, etc.
POS: Player Owned/Operated Starbase AKA Control Tower. These are anchored at moons out in space, and while they are somewhat interactable, are safe havens, and can be equipped to do a lot of the functions of a station, you cannot dock at them.
Conquerable Station/Outpost: These function very similarly to the NPC stations, except that they can be conquered and controlled by player corporation alliances. The owning corporation within the alliance can restrict access to the station, charge docking fees, ship-repair fees, etc.
Where is Epros? I can't seem to find it via map search.
Eve doesn't keep track of ship orientation, only ship velocity and position. Your client shows you a ship orientation, but that doesn't really mean anything. This becomes most noticeable when you are flying something like a freighter (you will enter warp sideways a lot) or when you stop moving and your ship appears to level out (stops point up or down).
Anyways, when you are at an absolute stop, your ship is essentially oriented facing every direction. Try it sometime with a stopwatch handy. Line yourself up with whatever you want to warp to, come to a complete stop, then time how long it takes for your ship to enter warp. Now try it again, except this time line yourself up by 90-180 degrees off from your warp destination. It will take you the exact same amount of time to enter warp in both cases.
What this means in terms of gameplay is that there is no such thing as "being aligned" when you aren't moving. In a fleet battle, or if you are ratting, you can stay aligned for warpout by moving towards your warp destination at 75% or more of your top speed. When you are doing this, your ship will instantly enter warp when you click "warp to".
Ask for a donation to get basic learning and salvaging skills, but no more. The sooner you start getting used to 0.0 life, the better.
Yes, once every 24 hours. Or if you have no implants, you can just podjump.
E-PR0 (zero) S
If that's true, then why does everyone always suggest being aligned to the station when you are mining?
I know from past experience, it does seem to be beneficial to be pointing in the general direction of the station. But I haven't done the stopwatch thing.
And sorry for the terminology mixup. I always though POS was Player Owned Station.
It's pretty common for lots of misconceptions about game mechanics to be bandied about (I've probably been guilty of this as well).
The only small advantage that being pointed towards station or safespot affords when you are mining is that it's easier to notice if you are tangled on an astroid of if you are going to run into one before you get up to speed.
The best way to get a slowly accelerating ship from a dead stop into warp is to have someone slap a stasis web on your ship while you are accelerating for warp. If a 90% web is used, you only have to be up to 7.5% speed when the web is applied to instantly enter warp. Freighters frequently use this trick when moving around (becuase it otherwise takes about a minute to enter warp), but you can also use it to protect expensive mining ships like covetors or hulks.
Any ship that can fit a microwarpdrive can limit their align/speedup time to 10 seconds by turning on their MWD for one cycle. This tactic is commonly used on battleships when traveling from gate to gate.
Also note that these tricks are primarly used for warping from a dead stop. If you are already flying around or have just undocked from a station, you have to deal with your ship's inertia. When you are moving it does take extra time to reorient your ship towards your warp destination. Having your MWD on can actually slow down your warp-out time in this case.
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
Of course, the threat of belt rats and the threat of hostile players are two separate issues. The rats tend to be easier to elude.
I take it as:
I find my little spot, start mining. I double click next to the gate / station / other icon for where I want to go quickly, and I turn and face it. I then STOP and continue what I am doing. I can then warp.
Midshipman seems to make it sound like that the direction i am facing is of no matter.. only speed? I have to say that i certianly warp to a destination quicker while facing it vs facing some other way (moving or not)
Lets turn this discussion. Shield tanking. I have played with EFT for a long time (can you SAVE in that program??!) and I cant find the right balance between an Invuln field / shield extender / shield recharger & others..
How can I determine my tanking? I have been playing(in a caracal) with 2 large exanders,an invulnerbility field, a 10mn ab, and a shield recharger.
My low slots are currently PDS... but I have a hard time being 'capacitor neutral' in usage. I can see that removing the extenders lowers hitpoints, but I can't see any measure of how much damage I can take while recharging ...
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
I'm thinking Mid is correct, I just never thought about it that way. If you try his stopwatch thing, you'll probably get the same warp time, regardless of which direction you're facing.
In my on experience, I have noticed that the "spin" of the ship to face the proper direction does vary.
Like if I'm 180 degrees from the destination, the ship almost flips around. If I'm 90 degrees from designation, it does a much slower turn.
If you're facing the wrong way, your ships has to turn and then get to speed.
It seems faster because you think "turn and accelerate" and your mind says it must take longer. But it really doesnt.
The only way to speed up the warp from a dead stop is to actually be moving in the right direction at some velocity[even if small]
Regarding shield tanking a Caracal. You've got two options, large shield buffer (mix of extenders and hardeners) or active tank (shield booster and hardeners). The first one is the only one worth doing for PVP (don't even look at the dps tanked in EFT, the point is that you have a lot of HP to burn). The second one is sorta ok at PVE, but you aren't going to get a stable dps tank in a Caracal.
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
In my experience with passive shield tanking, you are almost always better off with another extender or hardener than with a shield recharger. Both extenders and hardeners add to your effective hit points (ie 500 shield with even 50% resists is 1000 effective) as well as your effective recharge rate. Shield rechargers only help with the latter.
Here is an extreme (and simplified) example. You have a ship with 1000 shields and 0% base resists. It has 1 free midslot. You have a shield extender that adds 1000 shields, an invuln field that adds 50% resists, and a shield recharger that cuts recharge time in half. All three will give you an indentical increase in tankable DPS. However, with the first two you will hav 2000 effective hp, but only 1000 with the third option. If you come across a ganker that does 1000 dps, you will last 2 second with the extender or hardener, and be instantly popped with the recharger.
Of course, there are stacking penalties when you are dealing with multiple hardeners, and the values for mods I used don't match the real modules, but I hope that this illustrates the advantage that hardeners and extenders offer over shield rechargers. Since no ship has more than 8 midslots, and you usually need a few of those for an afterburner/mwd, sensor booster, warp scram, etc, you are rarely in a position where you've exhausted the potentials of extenders and hardeners, and still have room to add rechargers. I'm not saying that they are never useful, but that they won't be the best option the vast majority of the time.
i bought a couple new ships.. so now i can fit them all as needed and sell off the rest of the rat loot.. I'll make those changes.
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
Question: How viable is Exploration as a profession? I am really interested in Covert Ops as something I would like to get into, and Exploration seems like a natural fit. Anyone have any experience with it? I know I won't be able to jump into it day one, but I'd like to know what I'm working towards.
tl;dr - Is putting I'm guessing months of focus into the tiny ships fun and desirable?
Thanks for reading.
Yes, speed tanking is a very viable strategy (though it will take some learning on how exactly to do it without going pop), however you will want to train for an Interceptor, or possibly Assault Frigate in order to do anything worthwhile. If you're brand new than speed tanking in a rifter might be good practice, because if you die you're not losing a whole lot. I would suggets trying to do level 2 and 3 missions speed tanking in a rifter just to get the hang of it. On some of the harder missions you may not have the firepower yet to break the tank on larger ships, but if you can at least survive in those missions through speed, it will be good practice.
Speed tanking tips:
1) Never stop moving or slow down at all ever. If you slow down, you go pop. You have to constantly monitor your targets, because if you don't give your ship a command quickly enough after you kill a ship for example, you will decelerate.
2) Don't ever fly directly at another ship. In my battleship with 1400mm artillary, I can pop frigate rats because the AI is dumb and they fly directly towards me, making the tracking that much easier even on guns that aren't really supposed to be able to hit frigates. Fly at an angle, or zig-zag, towards your target.
3) Keep your signature radius as low as possible. Interceptors are already amazing at this. Just don't fit anything that would increase your signature radius (Shield extenders, shield rigs), but instead fit resists for damage mitigation. (One exception is an interceptor with a MicroWarpdrive. They move so fast that the increased signature radius doesn't make a huge difference when you're going 8km/s).
Those are at least a few starters, though by no means the only good tips. A lot if it you may have to learn/tweak yourself. Good luck.
Are assault frigates and interceptors that speed tank better off with light artillery or should I stay with turrets and missiles? Do they want to buzz around ships real close or is it better to stay as far away as possible?
I assume that I want to learn how to fly bigger ships to clear out and farm rats faster than I could with a assault frigate as much for the fire power, but for the storage space for loot. Unless it might be more efficient for me to kill things in an assault frigate and then come back with a salvager to loot everything.
What role would I play in pvp with my super speedy ships?
Also im not really sure what a signature radius is. Does certain mods and ships give off kind of a power beacon type signal to make it easier for missiles or guns to hit me?
Unfortunately, for PVE, speed tanking isn't universally applicable. Missions, especially the higher level ones, will frequently either require more dps than most speed-tanking ships can put out, are too loaded with NPCs to have proper traversal to keep your incoming damage down, or will contain nasty suprises like webbing frigates/towers right at the mission warp-in. Belt-ratting can be done with speed tanking against certain NPC types, like Sanshas or Blood Raiders. Other NPC types like Angels are very missile heavy and will rip you up even if you are spinning circles around them. Speed tanked Assault Ships used to be useful for certain complexes, but now that complexs aren't in static locations and must be scanned down (a very boring and time-intensive process), there aren't many opportunities for speed-tanked Assault Ships.
Trinity gave a big boost to the long-range inties, essentially turning them into a dedicated tackling sub-class, with bonuses augmenting scram range and allowing you to orbit and tackle from outside typical web/nos/neut range.
It's your choice to make and comes down to how you plan to fly and the level of risk you're comfortable with. If you're planning to dick around screwing with targets of opportunity, you can probably comfortably fly a damage-inty and pick off ships that pose a low risk of packing a web, nos, or neut (ratters). If you're flying in a gang, you'll need to weigh your roll as a dedicated tackler with your ability and desire to contribute additional damage.
The links to the tracking and missile guides were posted earlier in this thread, but here's the ever-so useful link again:
http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/mn06.asp
Every new player should look through that guide, and especially the top 3 links on that page, the Tracking, Missiles, and Tanking guides.
It has already been said, but speed tanking frigs, intys, and assault frigs aren't super efficient for PvE (mission running, ratting), but are very useful in PvP. Depends on what you want to do.
Truthfully, despite how run-of-the-mill it may seem, I suggest for every new player to train the "normal" route of Frigate > Cruiser > Battlecruiser > Battleship, and then choose a T2 ship from there. The reason is after trying out those 4 major ship types, you will have a wealth of knowledge about combat from all fronts, and be able to better decide which type of T2 ship you want to go for.
Of course that's just my 2 cents. If you want to be PvP viable as quickly as humanly possible, then tackling in frigates would be the way to go. On the other hand I've spent most of my time in empire space running every mission countless times both for profit and learning about different ships and tactics.
and jalad at tanagra.
Thanks, I read the whole thread, but I must have missed the importance of the link because I was at work and the firewall is not being kind to gaming links
From what I've read regarding Covert Ops Exploration
30% of the time you find nothing
30% of the time, what you find isnt worth the cost of the probes you spent to find it
20% of the time, when you find a combat / exploration site, it escalates outside your controlled territory
20% of the time, you find a site that requires hacking etc other specialized skills.
MWO: Adamski
Thanks for that link, its great, if not vaguely reminiscent of year 11 physics...
His arms open!
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
Haha. =p
I guess thats about right, the key is finding a big area of space that is not very busy. And if i found 1 site in 2 hours, whether i could run the site or not it was a great day of exploration.
For me it's:
100% of the time, when you find a combat sites which escalate in the same system. Each one I find is generally worth 15-25 mil if I include bounties and salvage/mods dropped. As for the amount I find per system, it is a rare, RARE day that I only find a single site, while 17 active sites in one system was the max I've ran and come across. (and also lost a domi due to a 1.1 strength dual drone mother site
I would love to find a hacking site, it would atleast pay off the gear required for hacking, but I haven't seen a single one yet. Even the ladar sites or whatever where you can mine are non-existant. Yeah so in short, I find shit, and since that's all I find, I run a few out of boredom, even though I know there's better crap out there. Supposedly.
shaka when the walls fell.
is there nothing Steam can't do?
Time to open up EVEmon and plan those speed and agility skills.
I'm getting an Ishtar setup to mess around with in lowsec, it's seriously a lot of fun to be outrunning things in a ship way too heavy to be doing that in.