There are, sort of. I mean, after a little while, losing a frigate is going to be pretty meaningless to you because they're so cheap -- while early on, losing a frigate can be downright painful.

But as you advance, the ships get more and more expensive. For example, I'm in a cruiser right now, and that runs me 3.7 mil through my corp for at-cost. The next true class up from this is battleships (arguably battlecruisers, but whatever) usually cost 100mil.

Start factoring in the cost of skills as you advance, and high-quality modules to fit your ships properly, and any corp expenses (some tax, some don't) or projects that you contribute to (corp operations can get REALLY expensive once you start building outposts / stations, plus buying blueprints, etc) and there's plenty of ISK drain on the player.

The only true ISK sinks (that removes ISK from the game) are things you purchase from NPC sellers -- that would mostly be skills -- and the money lost when you lose a ship.

Of course, that's fine, because players need lots of money. Lots of ships get blow'd up in war, so players in corporations and alliances at war need deep wallets.

Sure.

EveMon: Character Planning Tool

QuickFit

Grismar.net Wiki

Ideal Learning Skills Schedule

Eve Skills Roadmap: Can you effectively fly the ship you bought?

There's lots more I can list, if you're looking for any particular guides or resources.

Regarding corporations: the in-game chan is pretty worthless AFAIK. Checking the Eve-Online.com recruiting forum is somewhat better, but it depends on what style of play you're looking for.

If you can't find a corp on there that you think you'd fit with, convo me in-game and I'll see if I can find some corps that you might fit with. If nothing else, as long as you're not planning to be a pirate you could probably join the PA corp I'm in as they're pretty open. The corp is 99% PA posters, but there's a few that aren't and there isn't any particular requirement to join other than the "no piracy" rule.

The other route to take is just to keep an eye out in-game. Check people's profiles and their corps' profiles. Most will note if they're recruiting in there and who to contact, so you can ask around until you find one you think you might fit with. If you get in and decide you don't like it, you can easily leave.

The starting tutorial is sooooo long. I think the mining portion of "filling my hold before i go on the next training section" is going to take me a week.

Yes, tutorial is massively long.

But if you skip it, you tend to ask stupid questions and people tell you to do the tutorial. So it's worth doing.

Also, HELLO HI STABN!

Spicy is telling me i should not play this trial because it is addictive like wow which we have both just recently quit. I think instead i should get spicy addicted. Opinions?

Heh, just found this link on the Eve-O boards. A WoW EU player gave Eve a try. This is hilarious. And also a pretty good example of "if you'd react this way then Eve isn't for you."



You are never completely safe in Eve, and death has consequences. If you stick to the safer areas you're less likely to get blow'd up, but you'd miss out on all the action.

For example, you know that corporation from the story above that pulled off the huge heist? Story time!

Two nights ago, a corp member looted a wreck that had been left behind from a battle he wasn't involved in. Doing this is a gray area. If you're looting stuff that belongs to an ally (for example, the alliance who defends the region we're based in from pirates) then you can cause serious diplomatic problems.

Anyway, he loots it. He announces it in corp chat. Lots of people (including me) go a bit overboard nuts, and tell him to contact CVA (the larger alliance in our space) because we're fairly sure it's theirs. He does so, in their public defense intel channel. They say it isn't theirs. He decides to hang onto it and if anyone comes calling and can identify/prove ownership, he'll return it.

About 30 minutes later, I get blown up by a member of Guiding Hand Social Club, the corp that pulled off that heist. He and a buddy proceed to blow the crap out 3 or 4 other non-corp locals (everyone in our corp docked after I got killed, to figure out what was going on and whether we could defend). He then tells the looter that he wants his loot back, or he's going to keep killing people.

Discussions occur. Corp chat gets heated on both sides, between people telling him to give the GHSC member the loot, and others saying no way.

It quickly becomes obvious that it is NOT his loot, and this GHSC member just saw the announcement on the defense intel channel and figured he could pull a quick scam.

The looter proceeds to engage in negotiations with the GHSC member. What happened in these negotiations is disputed. The looter claims that he traded his Apoc battleship (~100 mil in value) for a fitted Taranis interceptor (which he claimed he sold for 17 mil almost instantly), plus 100 mil in cash. He also keeps the loot, which he says is worth 100 mil. Others in the corp are pretty convinced he's lying about both the loot value and the 100 mil in cash in that deal to save face after getting scammed.

After this, the GHSC member convo's me and tells me he'll compensate me for my lost ship if I post some messages for him in corp chat. I don't believe him about the compensation, but he claims to have a spy in our corp so he'll know if I posted it. I post it, decline his imaginary compensation. He replies, and quotes one of the other members saying "His motto ought to be 'I'm in ur station, stealin' ur shipz" and says that IS a good motto.

So we've got a GHSC spy.

No corp directors were on, so frankly you had a lot of people telling the looter to do the exact opposite of what should have been done, because policy in situations like this hasn't been clearly laid out for new members. So corp directors, when they saw what happened later, took his side on the issue by and large, and were none too happy with those of us who told him to give the GHSC member the loot.

Then this morning, he essentially came out and quit the corp. He admitted he'd been pretending to be a new player when he's played the game for quite some time. He claimed that the loot he got from the wreck was worth 500 mil. He called lots of people names for not hunting down guys who, frankly, would have demolished the noob forces that were in our area at the time (most were doing stuff to set-up our 0.0 base).

Basically, after all the heads of the corp backed him up, he then acted like a total dick, thought that everyone hated him, took his ball and went home (alt).

Oh, and the GHSC member has been in and out of our system since. Of course, now that our directors have said that not only that corp members should NEVER pay ransoms/make deals with con men like GHSC but that GHSC is now deemed kill on sight, these guys have been a little less irritating. Some of the combat forces have come back for a bit, etc.

My point? None of this could happen in high-sec, or in any other MMO -- not with the same stakes, and not with all the possibilities. The range of views on this in the moment ranged from "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE MOVE YOUR [censored] OUT OF HERE NOW" to "He's just a scammer, tell him to piss off." And really, the actions that lead up to it could have concievably led to any of those results. We could have pirates and scammers coming to our system, thinking we're easy pushovers. We could piss off the wrong scammer, and get involved in a war. We could have pissed off the alliance that controls the area, and REALLY gotten f'd in the ass. Or we could just end up with a couple annoying but powerful pirates that we have to chase out now and then.

Which is what seems to be the end result.

But that's why you gotta get out of high-sec, if you're trying this game. Whether you want to be the pirate/scammer, or the honorable anti-pirate/anti-scammer, you'll only get that kind of stuff going down in low/zero sec. To me, even if I'm only on an hour or two each day, that's way more interesting than grinding quests/levels/dungeons/etc.

I lost a ship worth about 5 mil in this whole dramabomb, but who cares? That [censored] was way more tense, entertaining, and exciting than any WoW quest I ever saw.



tl,dr: GHSC (corp that pulled massive heist) member killed me in order to draw out a member of my corp for a scam. Said corp member refused the initial scam, but probably got scammed anyway. We all wig out, because we be afraid of GHSC. Corp Directors tell us that we shouldn't take that from anyone, no matter who it is, and that GHSC isn't as powerful anymore as people think. Scammed corp member quits in particularly dickish fashion. We all chase around GHSC member because he's in our stationz, stealin' our shipz.



Last note: Probably should have mentioned earlier that they'll be having downtime for between 12-24 hours today to upgrade and maintain the servers and database. This doesn't happen often, I imagine it's to tweak things affected by the last huge content update to reduce lag.

I missed a few convos today since I left myself signed in, so if you want to PM me here or reply in thread with questions, go for it.

Lovely story, mad.

See, that's the kind of stuff why I enjoyed playing Ultima Online back in the days before they wussied it down by introducing a safe facet (damn you, Trammel). Scammers, looters, thieves, player killers - they all enhance the playing experience. Getting ganked & griefed may be annoying at times, but if it's done with style it can be a great experience even if you're the one at the losing end.

It's just the kick of being at risk theoretically wherever you go. And the better the spots are you want to hang at, the more risk.
There are two player types: One that goes "OMFG GREIFER!!" (they somehow always misspell that word) and quits disgusted, returning to WoW to grind monsters (now isn't THAT exiting!!), or those that say "lol, that sucked, but in a funny way. I wanna do that, too" and try to adopt to use the same tactics or (imo even better) develop counter strategies.

I, for one, am the gank-me-now-but-I'll-be-back-to-whip-you-good type. It's just fun playing games like this, hopefully learning your lessons when you're getting your ship handed back in tidy little scraps.

Like yesterday, I took my noob character to do some trading runs just to see how that works - all in .5-.3 security space (from what I gather, upcoming pirates love .4).
Now, putting an approx. 25k ship (insurance is 8k, equipment about 16-17ish) plus another 40k trading goods at risk for a measly profit of 10k may be questionable at best (I could've made more by mining in 1.0 sec space in less time), but it has been fun.
Especially, fleeing from two wannabe pirates who didn't get the gate camping thing right while mocking them in local has been entertaining.

I'm really starting to like this game. I'm still fairly clueless at which skills I want to pick up in which order, but I'm getting more informed every day. Furthermore, the possibilities are HUGE. And that's only from what I've seen what the game mechanics offer. The whole meta game possibilities (scamming, politics, production lines, orders, trading, etc... heck, you can even buy shares of in-game coorporations?!) seem almost endless.
All I need now is a solid corp that don't mind having a casual european player learning the ropes while hopefully contributing.

Mad, any suggestions? Feel free to eve-mail my char (Lil'Red Ridin'Hood) if you've got any pointers.

So I pretty much finished the tutorial last night. I had to start it over on char #2 after mad suggested i go straight to freighters 4 for my combat character. I was just going to finish it on char 1 and then move to char 2 but it didn't continue currectly when i got home. Kept saying "you have to be in deep space pocket #2", but no matter how many times i tired to warp there after finishing the mining exercise it never got unstuck.

Ah well.

So char #2, i mine my first asteroid, it depletes, i get stuck again needing to 'warp to deep space pocket #2". Whatever. This time i skip on until something i can complete (going back to the station to refine it) and continue on. Now i'm doing the missions at the end of the training and i think the last couple have paid me something like 30k+30k time bonus (giving me like 150ish now). Damn, might be able to buy a non-total noob ship soon. I still have a mission or two left before "reveal the full ui" and the real game starts.

I restarted yesterday, since I found out that my first character had horrible attributes and skills for what I wanted to do (kill NPC pirates).

The tutorial seems very picky about where you are in order to proceed. That's kind of annoying. Especially at the end where I'd figured out what to do so I was ahead of the tutorial and I couldn't easily get back in the situation it needed me to be in in order to proceed.

The server is down today for maintenance it seems and I'm bored. So I dug around on youtube and found a very well-produced recruitment video from a player corp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1kMG_YxK3Q

Also, here is an article about the heist from PC Gamer:
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Good stuff.

Madtown, and everyone:

Good to see an Eve thread. I myself tried it out about a month ago, and have been playing quite a bit since then. I agree with much of what people have said about the game, very different from previous MMORPGs mostly in good ways.

For the past month I've been doing the solo thing and it honestly doesn't suck as bad as Madtown makes it out to be. Obviously it would get old after years and years of it, but for a beginning character it still is fun to run missions in high security space and slowly learn about the ins and outs of the game.

I do have some friends (who told me to try the game out) who are part of a big corporation in 0.0 space, so once I feel up for it I'll join up with them and try that aspect of the game.

If anyone checks out the trial, has any questions about playing or just wants to shoot the crap for a few my character name is bigswedeloverboy; feel free to message me whenever you see me online.

PS Learning skills suck!

Swede

Madtown,

That story was painfully nerdy and I really liked it. Maybe I will demo your nerdlinger game.

"you cannot warp there because natural phenomina are disrupting the warp."

asdflkjasdfkljasdfljkdas;fjasdfjasfjs

anyway

I have an agent mission to kill some pirates but when i follow the journal entry there are no pirates there. WTF?

I think i missed the section on scanning, maybe i need some probes or something to find them.

I finished the tutorial today. Is this the first set of pirates you have to kill? I remember other players killing them and I had to wait for them to respawn.

So your first agent is in the training base and he sends you to another after a mission or two. It was the first mission from that second agent (who is in another system).

That char is stuck somewhere when i zone right now anyway (ui won't load) so i'm playing another .

I just finished a mission from the second agent. I had to find some pirates and kill about 18 of them and take out their habitat. I think that might be where you are stuck. I went to the location they gave but didnt find crap. I think I kept trying the link through the mission details and it got me in an empty part of space and most everything in my overview was far away moons and such. Only two things were close a beacon and a gateway or something like that. I used the gate and it warped me to the pirates.

I figured out the mission was in dead space where you can't warp. I had to leave and come back to finish the last part cause I ran out of ammo. LOL the pirate's home took like 300 rounds+ to kill and after all the fighting earlier I didn't have enough. Not sure if you have upgraded your ship but you will probably need to for this mission. I got the cheapest frigate 45k and put two cheap guns on it and it was easy. I took out the far left group first, then the middle one and the large group on the right had about 10 ships. I shot at the habitat and they all came. I just kept flying away from them and keeping my targets up while I killed them off.

Stabn, sometimes you don't have enough capacitor energy to warp in one jump. So after the first jump you end up in the middle of nowhere and have to jump again.

Another thing that confused me a bit was that in some missions you go to a beacon instead of an accelerator gate. The beacons work exactly the same but they're small and easy to miss so you *think* you're in the middle of nowhere.

Yah this was the one. That gate just wouldn't work last night. When i tried to go through this morning it worked fine. What i'm still unsure on though is how i am supposed to use the gate. The mission doesn't say anything about it.

Yah i had bought a new ship and put standard missile launchers w/ flameburst missles in them. I was basically doing 1 missile one kill. Really sick compared to starting noob ships guns.

Fixed the bolded sentence. Also those pirates dropped a 75mm rail gun so i have two missles and the rail gun now.

I've been lucky enough to get a couple of Small Diminishing Power System Drain I's as drops. They're a variation on Small Nosferatu I and drain a little more energy but also cost a little more power to run. I was stunned by the price difference.

The plain Nosferatu fetches 30,000 ISK when sold. The variation goes for 1,5 million. I have no idea why. Can someone explain that? The difference is minimal as far as I can see. So I'm probably missing something.

When it gets to progressively better modules there's a very steep point of diminishing returns. Typically any component will have five or six commonly available varieties (plus a bunch of really rare, named stuff). What you picked up was one of the best of the common varieties for the Nosferatu, thus fetching the handsome price. Also, the station, solar system and region you are selling in can have a huge impact on the value; as a greater supply drives down the NPC prices while a greater supply drives them up.

Swede

Lost my first ship, woot. My insurance was like 60% too so i was pretty effed. Coming back now though, working on ship #2.

Stabn:

What race are you? I assume you're going the route of flying a ship associated with your starting race for now at least.

Swede

Achura
flying something caldari

This mission i'm on now is kind of a bitch. Four sets of pirates in this area and i basically managed to take out 1-2, go repair, and fly back. There was probably 20 total when i started and about 5-6 left now :/. I even stopped to buy a better standard missile launcher for one of my bays but all it does is fire .5 seconds faster (like 10.5 instead of 11) so i don't really notice much of a difference.

Lol apparently that was just the first of 4 beacons to jump to. Ship #2 went down in the second attempt at the second group (went for one kill too many :/)

I just want to say this

the music in the EVE-never fades trailer is a [censored] trip