All Posts by Jeratan

Exactly what I'm thinking Daimos.

Well they're advertising WAR pre-orders on the main page now, it's still possible that it's something completley different, although highly unlikely.

Warning: lots of predictions and educated guesses ahead.

Fileplanet has made a few announcements eluding something 'stupendously huge' and 'sinisterly massive' being available through open beta via Filefront sometime in the immediate future.

The hints... judging by their history, there is only one game big enough to warrant these descriptions considering the company it will be in:
LOTRO beta
Everquest beta
Age of Conan beta
World of Warcraft beta

Other clues:
Letters bolded that spell 'Darkness Soon'
The capitalized & enlarged letters that begin each update spell WAR

There is only one thing that can be considered 'this' huge.
Couple all this information with the recently disclosed information that WAR is going to be available in stores in less than 6 weeks, plus the closed beta now coming to an end and pre-paid orders are being told they will be given open beta access very shortly.. there is only one possibility.

WAR is coming.

What follows suit in the past is that subscribers get the first keys available, sometimes prior to the open beta being actually available to play.  Once it comes out, or the distribution of keys slows down or there is an excess of available keys, they are distributed freely to non-subscribers a few days after the initial keys have been released.

Or theyre full-of-shit-money-grabbing-sellouts trying to get their subscriber base up and it's going to turn out to be Hello Kitty Online.

Personally, I cant wait. (I bet you couldent tell :P) I got into the Age of Conan closed beta early on and it pretty much ruined the experience for me when the game came out.  We were seriously given something that would barely pass as prototype or alpha release quality.  It was so frustrating to play back then.  As I understand, the game is fairly polished, ready for release they just need to perform some major stress testing.

The first post said the next posts will reflect the open betas theyve had.
The third post said that it's finishing the 'trilogy of beta celibration'
So the next post will logically be the announcement.  Announcements have been spaced 2-3 days apart.

If my predictions are correct, the next post will announce WAR is the beta in approx 48-72 hours together followed shortly by distrubution of keys, or together with distribution of keys.  Servers will be available to play a short time after the announcement (possibly a few days).
 

Fileplanet made an announcement on the front page a couple of days ago, exclaiming there is going to be something 'stupendously huge' coming to thier closed betas in the very near future.

There was a little code in the blog, where the letters spelling 'Darkness Is Soon' were in a different colour to the rest.

People are making the assumption this is to do with the Darkfall or World of Darkness betas.  Some other people think it's the WAR beta.  At first I thought it was the D3 beta but I think it's much too early for that.

I posted this in the Darkfall forums earlier today which reflects my current thoughts.

"Chances are we're all wrong and it's got nothing to do with 'darkness' at all, nor will it be any bigger than the wow, aoc or crysis betas.  Rather it's just a ploy to get people talking about it and get the fileplanet subscription pages some more hits."

There has just been an update to the blog in question but I am yet to find any more codes hidden in it.

What do you think ?

-J

Chances are we're all wrong and it's got nothing to do with 'darkness' at all, nor will it be any bigger than the wow, aoc or crysis betas.  Rather it's just a ploy to get people talking about it and get the fileplanet subscription pages some more hits.

I think Fishy summed it up well.

Missions are but one aspect of the game.  Some people only do missions but IMO they are missing a very large aspect of the game.  Missions range everywhere from mining and courier missions to all out kill missions.  The difficulty range is quite large and not that many people have even experienced level 5 missions.

The economy of eve is by far the most interesting I've ever seen in an MMO and I don't think it will be matched anytime soon.

My advice is to try both out but don't try to do everything alone in Eve.  It's very much a social game.

Side note... IMO there is a very good reason why you can't download a trial of Vanguard;  It's awful!  By the time you realise it Sony's suckered you out of $50.  You might like it.  Who knows, it's all about personal preference in the end.

PvP is not 'forced' but you do sort of consent to it as soon as you undock.

Anyone that attacks you in Hi-Sec space (this is where the majority of players are) will result in their ship being destroyed by the eve equivelant of law enforcement within seconds.. so unless you're carrying something that is a lot more valuable than your ship is sturdy, you're pretty much safe as is takes overwhelming firepower to pull it off.

Doesnt sound like Eve is for you, though.

Firstly almost none of them seem to have any clue on how to set up a nano Zealot let alone how to fly one. (Magical 6 hi-slot Zealots, lowslots of 3 Nanos with 2 Polycarbons and Nos Zealots spells that out for you)

Secondly theyre talking about NOS like it's still 2005.  Almost nobody uses nos these days as it's nowhere near as effective as it used to be.  The closest thing you're going to see is heavy neuts which will ruin any HACs day, not just the Zealot.

The Zealot has a very strong base capacitor and it's very easy to capitalize on it with some recharge. A small cap booster on a nano Zealot is complete waste of a mid slot on it, plus you're only going to be able to hold around 10 small charges with overdrives and will run out very quickly anyway.

For this same reason the 'it sucks at solo because you can't fit a LSE on it' is not true as you put a LSE in that midslot.  Trying to armor tank nano ships makes them cap very unstable.  Don't get caught up in the whole "Amarr = Armor tanking" thing when it comes to Nano setups.  It's close to impossible to get a even remotley comparable speed, dps, agility and cap sustainability if you try to armor tank. The idea is not to take large armounts of damage.

Originally posted by Ugun

<snip> 

[In reference to the locked thread, I created a guild in WoW with ~14 friends. We went from level 1 to 70 (I PvP'd ~1 month while they caught up) and I got full badge gear, a full set of PvP gear, beat kara umpteen times, and got ZA down to the last boss in only ~7 months. The XP boost happened when I was level 50.]

Bet you played a bit more than 2 hrs at a time too ;)

Even before the XP buff you could get to 70 within a month if you went hardcore and decided to put in 6-8 hours on workdays and 16 hrs on the weekends.  Being at the top (back when that was BT progression) meant you farmed for raiding mats and then spent several consecutive hours raiding every night.  If you were in a lesser guild still doing progression runs in SSC/TK you could still be stuck doing 6+ hours a night raiding for gear.  Eve doesn't have any of these, which makes it a bit more casual-friendly.  These days I'm sure if you're doing Sunwell Plateau you're still putting in hard hours as well.

A fast Deimos could possibly tackle me and take me out pretty quick. 
They can hit 2.7km/s by just overloading a MWD with no speed mods. 

Combined with 13km web range (overloaded) I always make sure to maintain a good amount of distance as there isnt much of a buffer trying to orbit within 24km.  

Sometimes that means they escape but so be it.  To me its not worth fighting someone decent who can quickly manouver to counter my orbit and overload their web and MWD and tackle me as I'll go down very bloody quickly.  If they stick around long enough and don't look very fast, I'll go in a bit closer to make sure I keep them tackled or I'll overload my point if they start to get a bit too far.

This goes for most HAC's that have room for a microwarp drive and a web.  Anything smaller will just be BBQ'd by 500+ dps if they try to engage.  Battlecruiser sized are generally way too slow to accelerate and won't be able to get within 13km.

Can you elaborate on what you understand to be the Zealots shortcomings in solo?

I'm quite happy with it as a solo ship.

I use a couple of cap power relays to make it more sustainable when I'm solo and usually fork out for a 28km warp disruptor to get a bit more operating range.. But most of the time I do that for gangs too.  I find it's perfectly fine as a solo ship.

It's drawbacks are that it has a bit of trouble against ships with well tracking guns as it has no defense in that regard. 

Ships with good tracking guns and medium range can give me a bit of trouble, Pulse Absolution with good tracking hurts and I usually will disengage very quickly if theyre able to track me.  Yet to find an Astarte that can give me trouble but I'm sure one properly set up with good skills and using Null could hit me.

A couple of minmatar ships with AC's and Barrage loaded with good skills can give me a tiny bit of greif but I have 87.5% base explosive resistance on my shields.  Warrior II's are not much of a problem for the same reason, and only a few people use Hobgoblin II's which are the only real drones that I'm worried about.

Heavy missiles and cruise missiles are usually little problem for me, even without implants I can speed tank most missiles.

Heavy neuts usually have 21-25km range, and this is another area where my faction warp disruptor comes in handy.  If I dont have the 28K scram and I cant keep them pinned down without going in heavy neut range I will disengage from the fight.

Now for the curse, it of course does not suffer the drawback of vulnerability to some guns as it has a tracking disruptor, but it has one very fatal drawback of if you choose to engage an enemy that can last a moderate period of time and is intelligent he will just kill all your drones and then you're screwed.

The curse has an excellent defensive option, whereby if you get happen to tackled you neut the hell out of whoever is tackling you until their web/disruptor turn off and you're able to warp out.

There is no one single best.

The 'ideal ones' would depend on your gang composition.

My personal favorites are probably the Zealot and Curse.

If I could choose a gang composition of three I'd choose a Curse, a Zealot and a Huginn.
Huginn to catch other nano'd ships, do a bit of it's own dps and stop people crawling back to gates / dock range while having the gang maintain a safe distance. 
Curse to destroy the cap on ships with a heavy tank, provide the gang with a bit of saftey from guns (tracking disruptor) and do a bit of it's own dps with Hobgoblin IIs.  Armor maintence drones in the bay for when one of you leaks into armor and you don't have the ability to repair in stations and opening up the possibility of in-combat or in-space logistics.
Pulse Zealot set up for damage as they track very well and do boatloads of dps for taking down targets quickly (able to do 600+ with faction MF or Conflag).
Reason I wouldent replace the Zealot for an Ishtar is with the curse the gang may become too reliant on drones and have all of its dps killed easily by smartbombs, missiles etc.  Also the Zealot set up for damage does every bit as much dps as an Ishtar and then some, without having to wait for the drone travel time of Heavy drones or having to deal with deploying and recalling drones.

Originally posted by Eschiava

Right on Jeratan!

For anyone who thinks EVE PvP is:

Lock target
Press F1-F8
Turn tank on (or speed tank)
Wait to see who dies first.
 

They should have a look at the EVE-O Tracking Guide or Missle Guide.  These will open up a whole new world of tactics to the PvPer, as well as a whole new set of things to consider in weapon selection.

If they don't understand gunnery/missile mechanics then definetly yes.
Manouvering stratecially goes a lot more beyond tracking and missile explosion mechanics, though.

Even I am still learning ways to refine my strategies.. outsmarting and outmanouvering my opponents after thousands of kills, hundreds of billions isk damage done and considerable experience FCing.  If you think you know everything there is to know about eve pvp I can promise you your confidence is ill-placed.

After a quick look at the starting attributes:
Out of the Gallente bloodlines, Gallente Jin-Mei are overall fairly rounded and the better of the three for a combat character.  Gallente Gallente have the highest base charisma (undesirable) and Gallente Intaki have the lowest base Perception (very undesireable).
 
If you go Caldari Achura you may get a little bit more SP in the long run but IMO it's not worth it as it will hamper your early days making starting difficult and you'd have wasted SP sitting redundant missiles, active shield tanking and caldari ships which you normally would never have trained.

So I would go

Gallente Jin-Mei
King Ko Caste (+4 base perception)
+3 Intelligence
+2 Memory

Military (You sound like you're interested in combat)
Special Forces (Better drone starting skills and no wasted sp in missiles)

Resulting in
10 perception (1st most important stat)
8 Intelligence (2nd)
7 Willpower (3rd)
7 Memory (4th)
7 Charisma (5th)


From there I'd work on my learning skills ASAP (get one training as soon as you enter the game), while you work out the ins and outs of the eve universe, Complete all of the tutorials and do some missions from your starting agent. Buy/steal/beg/borrow a light combat drone to make your starting missions considerably easier (the velator with a combat drone is awsome as far as rookie ships go) and get in touch with Eve-University who can take you from there.

Originally posted by Soujyo

Hey all, I've been unable to fight off urge to try out eve after reading a few posts about still being able to "do things" with out a 2+ year wait lol.

I just have a quick couple of questions (and I have looked high and low but couldn't find the exact answers) any help would be appreciated! =)

My style of play that I'm most interested in is:
-Drone combat (is it effective when compared to other ships in PvP and PvE? )
-Are Drone ships so expensive that I'm going to be devastated should I lose one?
-Are they big slow sitting ducks that need escorts all the time?
-Am I going to be spending 8+ months getting the skills needed to get a worth while drone ship?

--------- Sniping / Hit n Run ---------

-Other interest is sniping and/or hit and run type combat (big damage low-mid range shields and hits)
-Anything that will get me usefully involved in PvP within 2 - 3 months

Honestly I've always wanted to fly a good sized ship that had decent close range fire power and butt kicking drones.

If that role is really expensive / risky, I'd happily take a smaller role doing hit and run stuff as long as I could serve a truely useful role to a corp in a PvP sense.

--------- Getting Started ---------

Lastly, if you can recomend a rough setup for the character I'd greatly appreciate it! (soon as I get a character started I'll try and figure out how to get setup with the eve university folks)

(I have invested in eve-mon and found a few sites listed in the guides that let me plan a character out, however I don't know where to put what points hehe).

Thanks for your time folks, any info is appreciated and will help me get my foot in the door.

Hello Soujyo,

Glad to hear you've decided to try out Eve.

Firstly I thought I'd just make sure you know most ships in Eve have drone bays and can use drones, however some ships have special bonuses to drones to make them especially effective.

Drone combat is effective in PvP, but like everything it has it's advantages and disadvantages.
For example, if you get your sensors jammed by ECM your drones will still be damaging you opponent whereas a ship with all guns on it would be unable to fire.. However if you fly a low-dps drone ship (like a curse) they can decide to shoot your drones instead of you, and if they can manage last long enough you may end up missing all your drones and hence most of your DPS.

In PVE drones are also effective but they have travel time associated with thier DPS.  Combat drones have relativley short range and must move from target to target.  The alternative is to use Sentry drones which have extreme ranges (most effective when used with railguns loaded with long range ammo), but they cannot move at all and their tracking is quite poor.

Drone ships are typically no more expensive and no larger than others of the same type. (the dominix is the cheapest battleship for example and the Ishtar is one of the fastest HACs)

Your first ship as Gallente (more known than others for it's drone ships, the only real exeption is Amarr's Arbitrator hull) is a rookie ship than can use drones.  None of the other rookie ships have this ability.  There is also a gallente frigate with drone range bonuses that you should be able to fly straight away called the Imicus.

The first really effective drone boat you can fly will be the Vexor which is a cruiser sized ship.  The Vexor is IMO one of the best cruisers and won't take long to fly at all.  As they don't really take that much SP to be able to fly you will be able to fly one long before you can actually afford one with your own money.  They are still one of the cheaper cruisers, though.

If you specialise for drones you will be very effective with them early on, however your gunnery missiles may lack a bit.  Some drone ship setups make do just fine without any guns at all.

If you like sniping them you will most likley need to be in a gang for PvP or have someone help you as you cannot tackle your target from long range and they will be able to warp out... however hit and run is a different story all together.  Basically you, or someone else needs to be within 24 KM to disable the warp drive on a ship you want to kill with a few exeptions (Interdictors and Gallente Recons).

In PvE the most effective ships are long range (as you don't waste time trying to get into optimal range).

You can do all this with low SP in gangs, taking smaller roles as a tackler, etc. but like anything if you specialise you can do well it quite quickly.

I would reccomend you start as Gallente Jin-Mei and train the gallente line of combat ships and decide how you want to distribute your SP between drones and guns.

I'll post up the way I would do it personally in a minute.

From my understanding, most players see eve PvP as

Lock target
Press F1-F8
Turn tank on (or speed tank)
Wait to see who dies first.

While eve PvP is by no means a twitch game, solo and small gang pvp still has a very strong individual skill element in it.

I remember sort of having a similar idea, wherein the skill was pretty much all in the ship type and selection of fitting.  In my little world, if you had a combination of better ship, better fitting fitting and/or skills you would win.  I thought I was a relativley decent pvper because I had a few pretty nasty setups (read: Mostly NOS or ECM abuse before they changed them) until I met a guy called Gazza29 this was in mid 04 to mid 05 I think... (pretty sure we were alliance mates in XETIC and then later ASCN but he quit in 2005.. I think the guy who has his account now bought it).. he used to go out in the biggest pile of shit ships than nobody thought were any good for solo pvp back then.  Even now nobody considers ships like the Harpy or to a lesser degree, the cerberus for solo PVP... He didnt use nanos, ecm, or nos or any of that stuff which was considered king for 1v1 back then.. would go deep into hostile space alone with cheap fittings... get their attention by killing a hauler or a miner or two... and then just rack up kill after kill, splitting them up and roaming around, winning numerous 1vN's that nobody thought was possible and he had by far the most solo BS kills with frigates and other smaller ships that never should have been able to pull it off than anyone else I knew.   Since then I've really ignored the 'general consensus' of eve and just tried to use every single mechanic of the eve universe somehow to my advantage.  There is a lot to eve pvp than meets the eye initially. 

IMO the most overlooked factor by far is manouvering... Especially if you pilot Amarr ships.

Originally posted by baff

Noobs can never catch up with vets.

It's the way the game is designed. Get over it and move on.

There is still plenty of enjoyment to be found in the game.

While I agree with the last part of your post, would you mind elaborating on why you beleive the first two sentences to be true?  Are you having a negative experience as a new player pvping? are you a veteran yourself who doesn't see how newer players could catch up?

Hey Vingvega,

The most important thing in eve is to make good friends to help guide you that have the right attitude... its very much a social game and you won't get anywhere if you don't make any friends.
If you find yourself in a pinch (in game) PM me here and I'll see what I can do to help smooth out the 'transitioning' process :)

Originally posted by damian7

Originally posted by Jeratan

Didn't you just call me a bob alt yesterday?

Make up your mind kiddo, I'm one or the other.

 

actually, i believe you're just some random person that either doesn't play eve, or you're in the middle of the trial to MAYBE up to 3 months.  everything else i say is just to play with you(r lack of knowledge of eve, while asserting you're a super vet of 5 years and know 3 devs), sort of like how you don't understand "dining in nol".

but on topic -- you are actually providing me far more laughs than the op.  and that's saying something cuz the op drew some pretty darned funny pictures in my head.

 

but, thanks for agreeing with me that you're making nonsensical poastings.  now i know i SHOULD be enjoying them.   cheers.

Someone thinks they're a cool kid 'cuz they just discovered CAOD.

It's hilarious having every single one of my posts signed by this kid.

Goon promo video: JihadSwarm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a03AA0ikeI8
When the frustration of having the GBC wipe their arses with you gets too much, shoot at miners in hisec instead.  Funnily enough the date of the video post concurs with this theory.

Originally posted by Cannes

Link is broken.

But the fastest way to get into pvp and be worth a dam is going for interceptors.

In order to be effective with these you'll need your navigation skills (Navigation, high speed maneuvering, evasive maneuvering) up a bit to be fast an nimble. Then you should look at engineering skills (Engineering, energy systems operation, energy management) For fitting and capacitor. Lastly electronic skills (Electronics, Long range targeting, signature analysis and  propulsion jamming) For faster, longer range locks and being able to use Tech 2 webs and scrams without using too much cap.

Truth.  'Ceptors are useful on so many levels and always will be.