I’m fairly sure joining BRAVE won’t get you blacklisted by any of the large power blocs if you want to jump ship later. From what I hear they have great FCs, newbie friendly doctrines and are very active. The downside is that their home is a popular roaming destination and depending on your TZ there might be periods where you’re stuck in a station.
Karmafleet gets you access to the best space and being part of GSF means they’re not very likely to lose it. Probably the best choice if you want lots of blues so you can focus on exploration or mining with some PVP on the side.
TEST has worse space and is an underdog compared to GSF, they’re more organized and richer than BRAVE though and their feeder corp Brand Newbros is focused on new players while Karmafleet has a higher SP average.
Horde for lots of fleet PVP and new player friendly doctrines that won’t take you ages to train into. I’d say they’re like a more organized BRAVE.
EVE-Uni if you don’t mind their slower recruitment process and are looking for a more mature corp culture.
Signal Cartel if you’re a solo explorer and just want some people to chat with.
If you want to get into PVP but the thought of being an F1 drone puts you off Pancakes, Mercenary Academy or some smaller FW or lowsec/npc null corps might be a better choice than the big nullsec corps.
I jumped on the free to play version to see what was up and noticed a new tutorial. Was happy to see that because I never had the original work for too long before it would get tripped up and not advance. Thought the new tutorial was well done until it stopped working when it told me to drag a skill book to my queue. Not only do I not have time for Eve, but I definitely don’t have time for their game’s intro to not work.
Wow, thanks for the rundown. I knew of all those corps, but didn’t really know where they excelled or how they compared. Especially since lots of their websites are hidden behind being a member (that’s why Brave looked nice, because most of the info was in the open).
Probably made the decision harder instead of easier though!
Tonight it was time for a shits and giggles PVP fleet, as we all formed up flying bright yellow ORE Ventures.
For people who don’t know, the Venture is a mining barge with two turret slots, (usually used for mining lasers) and two drones spots (usually used for mining drones).
This made it slightly embarrassing for the seven people we killed. Especially the two Destroyers we took down.
First kill of the night was a 75,000,000ISK Worm, which suggested things were going to go well.
It turned out to be the only fight where we actually lost a ship, which meant we finished the night with ~6,000,000 ISK lost and ~111,000,000ISK killed.
I’ve never played EVE but just read a long summary of the release, build, transport, and destruction of the KeepStar (Death Star) ship they released in march. Wow, sounded epic. Well worth a read, even if you dont play EVE.
By all accounts the Blackout part is exceeding expectations. NPC tax is also being increased to deal with the isk faucets in one way. Hilmar was talking about extreme things to do to shake up the eve universe with CCP Falcon but as with all things Hilmar its usually so much guff because he generally cannot be trusted. What Hilmar says is in a different universe to what he does usually.
Lord have mercy. I’m on the verge of resubbing. I’ve been playing as an “Alpha” clone for the past few days. That means I’ve been free to play. The trouble with Alpha is that I can’t train my main’s skills at all without buying expensive skill injector things. With the paid Omega account, I can train anything I want. But before I take the resubscription plunge, I have a couple questions.
I no longer have to “back up” my “clone”, right? Formerly, if someone destroyed your ship and your pod, you’d lose skill points unless you’d backed yourself up. As I understand it, backing up is no longer necessary or possible. Is that correct? If so, that’s a GREAT change. It eliminates the risk that always worried me most.
Even so, it appears one wants “jump clones” now to prevent losing your clone’s installed augmentations (implants?). I’ve never tried making a jump clone. I think I have a few augs. I should make a jump clone, then?
Why do people stress directional scanning to watch for PvP gankers? I assume it’s because the General Overview has some sort of range limit, beyond which players no longer appear on the Overview? Does anyone know what that limit is?
More generally, if anyone has any thoughts about jumping back in, please feel free to pipe up. EVE is not a perfect fit for me. In the right circumstances, I actually like PvP, especially if there’s not as much downside risk now (see question 1 above). But I will never condone or like griefing, and there’s certainly some of that in EVE. I’m still thinking on it, but I keep logging in to play…
It isn’t a fixed number, but in general between a few hundred and two thousand km. (EVE “grids”- the chunks of space in which ships can see and interact with each other - are not fixed in size). Whereas the scanner works from up to 13 AU distant. So if you can find a spot to warp to between 10000km and 13 AU you can get a sense of what’s on a gate before leeroying into it.
I’ll be honest dude, I’ve been feeling the tug as well. Usually my MMO of choice is LOTRO, but I’m getting that burnt out feeling I get with any MMO after a while, and am thinking of returning to EVE for a spell.
@BrianRubin Do it, man! You know you want to. Is there a Qt3 corporation we can join?
@Mark_Weston Thanks for your reply. So should I be warping to within 13 AU of gates before approaching them, even in high sec? (Also, I love that use of “leeroy” as a verb, lol.)
Also, if I sit 12 AU away from a gate and scan it, can people detect that I’m scanning and come after me? Is my D-scan like active sonar on a submarine or destroyer? Or is it more like passive (quiet) sonar?
I’d been wondering what pilots mean when they say someone is “off the grid” or “on the grid.” Does that mean visible to General Overview?
Hopping back into the game now. Not getting addicted or anything, no sir.
Almost certainly not. Unless you’re flying a freighter with high-value cargo, or anything that might make a suitable target for suicide-ganking. In general the average pilot, especially one who’s limited to an alpha clone, flying average ships, doesn’t need to be taking these kinds of precautions in high sec.
And in fact this is true in many low sec systems, and quite a lot of null sec. Most of the surprise combat tends to happen in a few high-traffic chokepoints.
No. Though now you’ve suggested it, that would be a cool mechanic! On the other hand, if there is an organized camp on the gate, or (perhaps worse) scouts for a camp on the other side of the gate, there will probably one or two pilots in the camp who are on-the-ball enough to be constantly spamming their d-scanner in 360’ mode to give them a few seconds warning of incoming threats. So when you warp into d-scan range and see them, you might want to assume that they’ve seen you and are now more alert. But, by default, they don’t know where you are. (Though a good and motivated player might be able to narrow down your location using multiple scans over smaller and smaller arcs until they have you located to within 5 degrees of sky. And then, if they can correlate your direction to an astronomical body - e.g. your scan result is in the same direction and the same distance as Moon X - then they might take a punt on warping to Moon X to see if you’re there. So never hang around in one place for too long.)
This kind of advice has limited benefits, by the way. The biggest threat to you, in general, is the hostile on the other side of the gate you want to jump through. And obviously scouting and scanning is no help to you with this. It’s worth checking the map regularly, if you’re traveling in a bad neighborhood. Those helpful stats about how many kills happened in the last hour can be a valuable clue, sometimes.
STOP POSTING IN THIS THREAD!
I don’t have time to resub.
please…
yes, on grid you can see in the “standard” interface, off grid, you need to scan for them.
What you want to do with lowsec and null sec gates is avoid bubbles and ships with warp inhibitors.
Generally a route will be bubbled in a direct line from another gate, so:
If you warp direct from Gate1 to Gate2 then you’ll be caught in the bubble.
If you’re quite and Gate2 is in range then when you jump into Gate1, you can do a directional scan of Gate2 and see if a bubble and a couple of ships come up, all this before your 10 second cloak comes off.
Else, you can try warp in the direction of SomeMoon and stop part way and do a scan from there …
If there is a bubble up then you can warp all the way to SomeMoon and then warp to the gate at max range, see where the bubble is and if it’s clear, warp from where you are to the gate (or back to the moon and back to the gate again).
@Mark_Weston Thanks for your helpful replies. Last night someone noted that I’d been in my (NPC) corp for 18 years! I’m proud of that “record”. Would joining a player corp terminate that 18-year streak? I thought I had joined a player corp back in the day, but as I think back on it, I may have joined only in their chat.
@Bateau I’m glad to hear you’re interested too. My first impressions is that the game has improved a lot since 2009. Someone online noticed that I was with the game at launch. They asked me: “So you remember when there was nothing here?” The answer is yes, I do, heh.
Now there’s a lot more to do. The “Agency” welcome panel outlines some of it. There’s a tutorial for new players; 5 sets of missions for various career paths (exploration, industry, business, military, advanced military); a 50-mission “epic arc” (the “Blood-Stained Stars”) that you can repeat every 3 months, for each of the four major factions; a new challenging PvE “abyss”, about which I know relatively little; and the COVID minigame I mentioned earlier, a safe and (maybe?) socially-beneficial way to earn isk and other rewards.
I tend to prefer PvE stuff, and the new content will keep me busy for a while.
Obviously EVE is most famous for its PvP content, and while that’s not my main focus, I actually kind of like the sense of danger. Last night I spent a little time practicing directional-scanning so I could learn how to detect when players are sneaking up on me. Now that I realize we do NOT lose skills even if we’re “podded,” I’ll be more willing to take risks.
I’d be up for jumping back online. It’s always more fun with another person. I’m an old school miner/drone player so I’ve got a range of ships I can still play in alpha. Can do some mission running and salvaging for starters.
Back when I was active (6+ years ago) It took a minute or two for a good scanner to be able to track you down if you’re not directly on a gate or a planet.
Aah - I remember now, to get an “angle on the gate”, you warp from your gate to SomeMoon and mid warp - create a bookmark. As soon as you hit the moon, warp back to your bookmark and you now have an alternate angle to warp to the gate from.
Oh yes, I remember creating a bunch of those bookmarks for the low sec sectors I transited through frequently on my mission runner and mining rat killer days.
I also had fun in a stealth ship, finding POS’s and marking them. I kitted out the fastest Galliente stealth ship I could, and went at it. But I had heavily invested in speed implants and skills, so was confident I could get away from whatever trouble I stirred up.
Never went to null sec though. Too much of a care bear. And god that was all 14 years ago now.
