I'm currently at a bit of a cross roads as far as what I want to do in the game, maybe you other Eve-freaks can help me out.

I'm currently grinding out lvl 3 missions in my Drake. I've been playing around with lvl 4 missions and I can do them, though it takes much more care and planning. I've been working on saving up cash for a Caldari Navy Raven (currently sitting at about 450M ISK, and it takes about 900M to buy a CNR) OR I can just go for a regular Raven - the appropriate skills will be ready by the end of this week).

I have some friends who want me to join their 0.0 corp, but I like my freedom and no corp-responsibilities and politics to deal with. If I do join the corp I'll most likely never drive the CNR around due to the gank risk, so if I went that route it'd be kind of a big investment for something that just sits around my hangar.

So far I've pretty much just spent my 1.5 months of Eve running missions and messing around, so another avenue would involve me finding some smaller corp and joining them for some lesser involvement and stuff, but I'm wondering what the smaller, non-0.0 corps can offer that you can't do on yourself in the game.

Well, that's enough rambling for now. Maybe someone has some ideas, either in regards to my ship decisions or my corp selection.

Swede

Swede, I'm thinking about upgrading to a Drake next. Would you mind sharing your setup?

^^ Also i can't really tell you much about corps. I've been in two now. One for 7 days (they were worthless overall), and one for two days (madtowns). Madtowns corp is pretty cool. They have a decent little .01 area, seem to communicate well, and overall are adding value to my gameplay at the moment. I'm still pretty new to having a corp that actually does things so i unfortunately cannot tell you much about it . So far I am definitely glad i joined.

All my modules are of the tech one variety, as I don't have the skills to use T2 stuff yet nor the cash to afford the fancy rare stuff.

For high slots I use a mix of heavy launchers, basically the best T1 ones I have looted off of mobs. Currently I think four Arbalest and three Limos types. I use a salvager for the eight high power slot.

For the mediums I typically use two large named T1 shield extenders, two hardeners of various flavor depending on the mission, and one medium named shield booster. The last slot is for a named T1 afterburner.

For the low slots I normally go with one damage repair module (boosts all your resists for both shield, armor and hull when activated), two power diagnostics units (the ones that boost power grid, cap recharge and max capacity as well as shield HP) and one ballistic control unit (for increased damage and rate of fire).

The drake can also hold 25 m3 of drones, so right now I use 2 T1 hammerheads and 1 T1 hornet. I hear that T2 drones are a huge improvement so once I get my skills ready for a battleship I'll probably train pretty hard on drone skills.

I use three rigs right now, the one that increases capacitor recharge, the one that increases missile damage, and the one that increases shield recharge.

With this setup and pretty mediocre skills at this point I do fairly well against all lvl 3 missions. Some of the tougher lvl 3s (blockade, extravaganza) requires me to snipe at the bad guys but most of the others I'm fine just cruising around salvaging while killing off the mobs.

For [censored] and giggles I have tried a few of the lvl 4 missions with this setup and I wouldn't recommend doing this until you're pretty good in the skills department and can use the T2 modules on the ship. My shield can handle the damage output of the battleships of the lvl 4s, but my launchers can't do enough damage to take them down in a reasonable period of time. If you had a gang of two drakes or similar battlecruiser types you could definitely do the lvl 4 missions without too much work.

Shoot me a message next time you're on if you have any further questions. My character's name is bigswedeloverboy.

Swede

Swede: Join our twoplustwo chat channel!

I should join that one, too.

On a side note: How do I get rid of that frickin Noobie Help channel? I close it down every time I log on, but when I log on the next time it's back. Like a never-ending nightmare.

The newbie channel opens every time you log on until you've played for 30 days.

i'm totally in

The developers of EVE have chosen to make the game pretty instead of realistic. Which is fine by me, since you sometimes get some very nice sceneries. And I have a feeling that looking at how space would realistically look, would be a tad dull.

I'm sure some of you grab the occasional screenshot, so let's see them.

Vilon (sorry, I don't know your 2+2 name) had just done a level 3 mission in his cruiser and that went well, so I wanted to do one too. I got to do "The space telescope". The story is that the evil Guristas have set up a gigantic space telescope inside Caldari space and my mission was to destroy it.

The mission wasen't meant to be done in a measly cruiser and the telescope was pretty hard to destroy. I had to hit it with over 400 light missiles to destroy it. So what better way to pass the time than to grab a screenshot.

Fiske: If you're using a Caracal equip it with either heavy missile launchers or at least heavy assault launchers. The damage increase is noticable.

Swede

I have a general question and thought some of you in this thread might know the answer rather than start a new one. What kind of connection speed is needed for games like EVE? I'm looking into switching ISP's and one of the options is to go to a slower 756kbs. Would this work or would I run into big lag problems. I currently have 10mbs connection and it plays just fine.

I just found an incredibly useful resource: http://eve-central.com/home/tradefind.html

Basically, you enter a couple of system or regions that you want to trade between. The site will then find which items you can trade between the systems/regions and make a profit. Right now, for example, I can make a trade between the forge and citadel that equals out to 159,000 isk per jump - with my max capacity specified at 400m3!!

I was just trying to see if I could do a level 3 in the Caracal. I finished it, but my range with assault launchers sucked and I went back to level 2 missions. I made enough to get a Drake a couple of days ago and I'm doing level 3 missions in that now. It's *much* easier than in the Caracal.
I'm Chia in-game btw., so we've met there...

It seems that a lot of people are using Caldari ships. I was wondering have people used Amarr, Gallente, or Minmatar ships? Also, what are the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different empires ships?

Dunno about relative strengths & weaknesses, but I'm sitting in a minmatar frigate (rifter) and I like it.

I still need to get some helper skills (to increase cap & cpu output) up to be able to fit everything I'd like to, but I'm well on my way.

I'm using a Minmitar destroyer "Thrasher". And for a noob like me its the nuts. 7 turrets and a launcher slot means I can pound the [censored] out of the NPC rats. Added couple sensor boosters and I can pick most of them off at 20km. I am working on some skills to help out CPU and pwergrid as well as I can't fully utilize my low and mid slot to tank up like I want to yet but vs NPC rats I don't take much damage anyway. I put Sabertooth light missils (EMP)in my launcher slot and it pretty much chews through their sheilds on the first hit.

Its also not bad for small time mining. With a couple cargo exxpanders I can fit about 540m3. But when I add 2 Miner 1's I have to take all but 2 of my howitzers offline to have enough juice for them. So I really don't go much below .7 space for mining with it.

I have done a little "suicide mining" with a probe in .4 when its quiet. Just a couple miner 1's and a cargo expander. Only lost one ship doing this so far, but with what I made mining and the insurance payment I came out way ahead. A couple guys with -9.5 and -9.8 security ratings in battle ships pwnd me in about 30 seconds flat. Not much sport in that. Kind of like going fishing with a few sticks of TNT....

Oh, and anyone know the aswer to my post above about connection speeds?

Chigger: At 756kb you'll be fine

Many people start as Caldari because you can get your Charisma down to three, and most people feel that is by far the least useful attribute.

I used the trial period to get the three learning skills up to IV, then started working on a base set of skills that all pilots should have (I found it in the forums somewhere; I'll post it once I get home). While everyone was getting into cruisers faster than I, I now have many of the secondary skills necessary to actually fly my brand new cruiser (Caracal).

I think alot of people (myself included) were attracted to Caldari ships because of their missile capabilities. Caldari ships are the best missile boats in the game and missiles are a whole lot stronger than turrets/hybrids at low skill levels. Apparently turrets become somewhat stronger than missiles at high skill levels particularly for pvp, but I'm still loving missiles.

Minmatar ships are the fastest and the rifter (a minmatar frigate) seems to be one of the most versatile boats in the game. Gallente have the best drone boats with their large drone capacity. I'm not sure about the other race.

Dire,

I went caldi because of the low charm. Missiles are definitely fun though .

Like the previous posters have mentioned, Caldari stands out for their beginner friendliness. Missiles (which Caldari pilots do well early on) are quite nice for mission running and ratting, the common ways for people to learn the game. As Dire mentions, the missiles have some significant downsides, especially for PvP; including missile flight time vs. instant damage for turret-based weapon systems.

The Gallente faction focuses on armor tanking (as opposed to shield tanking that Caldari favors) and turret based weapons, as well as significant damage output from drones (drones can be extremely useful for other races too, including Caldari).

Amarr focuses more strongly on beam weapons, lasers etc. These weapons typically don't use ammunition, instead they use capacitor energy when fired.

Finally, the Minmatar is really the ultimate in flexibility and customization. Minmatar ships are typically fast and agile, and their weapon of choice is projectile weapons (autocannons and artillery) which offers good one-shot power but lower damage output for prolonged fighting. The neat thing about Minmatar is that their ships are often more flexible than those of any other race; with the current modules/skills a minmatar ship can be outfitted as a shield tanker or an armor tanker, as a missile boat or a turret boat; which makes them some of the best ships for experienced (with lots of skill points) pilots engaging in PvP mostly.

Another theory on the popularity of Caldari is that they are the first option to click on at the character selection screen. The thought here is that many new pilots simply pick Caldari since it's listed first, and then get some time and skills invested in the character and are too lazy to turn back.

As was mentioned several times Caldari offers the lowest charisma score, which means higher scores in the other areas.

Keep in mind, however, that the beginning ability scores are subject to change as you train the learning skills and aquire ability score implants; just pick the race/class that seems to fit your style the best and go with it, it really won't handicap you beyond repair later on unless you max out your charisma score or something silly like that.

Swede

I'm looking to get hooked up with a decent corp in Eve. I've been playing for a couple months, and I inherited an Amarr char w/10 million SPs, which I've gotten up to around 12 million. I've also got a bunch of cash, but I'm having a hard time finding a corp that seems worthwhile. I've found some disorganized corps, some people that were quite immature, but I haven't yet found what I'm lookin for.

I figure if anyone can help, ya'll can. Ship me a PM if you've got ideas, or any help for me... I really wanna get into this game, but I'm quite picky about people.

Thanks!

yasher

I just dl'ed and played for 2ish hours. I might have quit earlier but I wasn't sure what was a good stopping point as I've never done this MMO thing before (this one seems to avoid almost every reason why I think MMO's are ******ed so I thought I'd give it a shot). Then I decided to quit, looked around, realized I didn't know how and had to ask in the newbie channel. lol UIaments.

Yeah, it's completely counter-intuitive to try the 'Escape' button to get to some sort of main menu...

Given that I can't remember the last time ESC = Menu in a PC game I played, and that the "quit game" option is in the settings menu, yes it is. ;P I'm not b*tching by the way, I thought it was hilarious.

qq more nub.

i assume they told you about alt-q as well.