The computer gaming Gods conspired against my plan to spend a couple of weeks fussing around in EQ2. While I was actually only playing my Illusionist, one of my kids tripped over my Ethernet cable and ripped the sucker right out of the back of my tower. The damage cracked the shared casing it was housed in requiring a trip to good ole Best Buy, where I had to leave my baby as they didn’t have a replacement but would order it. Sans tower, left me with only my laptop and I had NO intention of downloading and patching the EQ2 client on that puppy. Given that the EVE Online (EO) client download and patch is fast and painless, I returned to the dark crevices of deep space.
When last I left EO, I was without a corporation. Since that time I’ve received numerous suggestions regarding corporations that might suit me better. I followed a huge group of track-back links to a forum that was discussing my EO posts and ran into some very helpful players. Several of them were gracious enough to send me private messages once I joined their forum, to point me in the direction of good beginner corporations, PVP corporations and even, serious role playing corps and channels. If you’re not already familiar with the Scrapheap forum, go check it out.
After gathering my personal belongings from various stations near my old corporation’s location, I decided to try a few missions. At this point I only have two ships left post the war declaration – my PVE fitted Tristan and mining fitted Imicus. Patience has never been one of my strong points and my lack of it, was about to cost me big time. I chose a mission from the Agent in my “home” station. I’d like to start a new series of agents and missions because the ones I have now are starting to be a bit above what I can solo in the Tristan. To complete the typical kill rat scenario, I have to warp in and out several times, making repairs along the way. Once I’ve killed all the rats I have to return to loot, salvage and then complete the quest. Depending on how many rats there were it can take anywhere from 45 minutes up to an hour per mission. I’m assuming that if I changed over to a different NPC agent faction, I’d start with low loyalty points and get easier missions. However, since the goal is to build up your standing points with them, I’ve been reluctant to start over and I rather like the kill type missions.
I entered the Deadspace for the mission and there are about a dozen rats. Three of them are Transporters and two of them Sentries. I know that I can take out the remaining five easily enough if I can separate them. However, between being on a laptop and perhaps because I’d patched using the Trinity client, I have HELLA lag going on. All of my controls are so sluggish it’s hard to tell if I’ve activated a module and I struggled to launch the drone because the menu kept freezing. If I had any common sense I would have bailed right then and there.
Through a series of warp in to focus fire one unit down, warp back to station and repair and then return to the mission encounter, I get nine of the twelve ships down. I still haven’t retrieved the required livestock (Militants) or blown up the specified transport, according to my mission journal, so what I’m looking for must be associated with one of these last three rats. The problem is that they are all clustered together and to take one of them out, I need to be able to tank the damage from all three while we (me and drone) focus fire the weakest link. I’m in there doing it lag and all, but things are dicey. I’m intermittently activating my shield booster for as long as my capacitor can tolerate. However, once my shields drop to only 30% I make the decision to just keep it on even if it does a complete drain.
The target rat is almost gone. I know that one more missile in his face and he’ll be toast. The missile fires away, lands with an explosive whack and he vaporizes. A bit tired of the in and out routine, I contemplate taking out the sentry so that I’d only have one more round trip back to finish off the mission. The drone is on him and he’s got no shield left and leaking armor as well. I keep firing to see if we can take him down. My capacitor drains and my own shield disappears rather quickly because the transporter all over my ass now. But oh my impatience to be done with this mission gets the better part of me – even when my armor begins to melt away. “If I leave now,” I say to myself, “he’ll be back at full capability by the time I return from repairing at the nearby station.” I’m so close to taking him out that I decide to keep at it.
The transporter is close now and it hits me like a thunderbolt from Zeus, rocking my whole ship. The blast actually made it into my hull layer. Without a doubt it’s time to retreat with all haste. I have to get the hell out of here. I try to drain a little more shield from the capacitor while I target the nearest station in the overview and hit Dock. But lag, always the inopportune partner, decides otherwise. I waste precious seconds trying to get the drone into the bay, having to do it with the menu since I didn’t bother rebinding all my commands on the laptop. Screwing around with unresponsive menus was just enough of a delay to allow another missile from the transporter to land, and that was all she wrote. An explosion, huge a ball of orange light and the next thing I see is my pod blinking in space.
I get back to the station a bit deflated and angry at myself for waiting that long to bail on the attack. Not wanting to make two more trips had just cost me a 700K ship including the fittings. On top of which, I’d repaired several times during the course of the mission and lost two drones. All told, it was probably an 850K loss. What bothered me wasn’t the loss of the ship/cost, as much as I was about 1.5M way from getting into a better class of ship, a Cruiser. I needed all my funds for the Vexor. However, now I’d have to back track and spend money on either another frigate which were really at end of life for the missions I was doing, or bump up to Destroyer which I had the skills to fly but had heard they weren’t worth the investment. Which ever way I went, I was going to have to dip into my Vexor funds. I was definitely not happy about the situation. I could just go mine to make some ISK. ::Hurl:: that’s about all I did the last few times I had an EO account but I just couldn’t stomach it much this time around. I was too hooked on the sugar rush of combat.
I logged off for a while to contemplate my choices. I did a little research. I didn’t find anything truly inspiring on the matter. By the time I logged on again I’d decided to bump up into the next class of ships available to me, a Destroyer. For my race, that meant purchasing the Catalyst. I looked for some suggestions on fitting and went about purchasing the ship for 950K and fitting it to the best of my skills and pocketbook. 1.2M ISK later I was ready to roll. I desperately wanted to finish that mission to recoup my losses. More importantly, I wanted to loot and salvage my ship. Unfortunately, by the time I returned everything had re-spawned. There were a couple of wrecks still there but my ship wasn’t. :: Cries big salty QQs:: Oh well, lesson learned. Let’s rinse repeat the previous strategy except, stick to taking them out one at a time.
I eventually got down to the same three ships left for elimination. I approach, lock the target and begin focus firing the Sentry. Catalyst has no missile launcher slot so this time I’m in much closer combat range. My shield is going but plenty left to blast one of the guys into outer space and I do. I set myself to warp out and can’t!! I’m stuck. My ship won’t move. There’s some invisible barrier blocking the ship from warping. I see messages in orange text about, “you can’t do that while warping,” but holy shit, I’M NOT WARPING! Capacitor empties and the shield dies. I’m trying to keep my wits about me and not completely panic as my armor begins melting away.
I try to target closer objects just to see if I can shift the ship into a slight different orientation to get off the unknown barrier but I can’t. By this point my armor is all gone and my hull is fading fast. I’m banging the dock command for all I’m worth and suddenly I start warping out. I’m on fire and continuing to take damage as though the rats are behind me – following me out of Deadspace to the station. I know this isn’t possible so I’m confused as to why I am still taking damage. My capacitor has some juice so I activate the shield booster to beat some of it back which it does. I hear that glorious voice that says, “Docking request accepted,” and I breathe a sigh of relief when suddenly, I ricochet back to the encounter area and explode! OH MY FUCKING GAWD!
Kahn!
I was literally shaking with rage and frustration. I thought it best to log for the day before I turned into a basket case. I composed myself as best I could and logged a petition to CCP Support, asking them to replace my ship and explained the circumstances. I’m not holding my breath over it, but it certainly can’t hurt to try. In a single day, I’d paid the high price of making any sort of mistake in EO. The accumulated cost of those mistakes wiped out ¾ of my meager noob wealth. Yes, I’m insured but damn! I take complete responsibility for that first lost ship. However, the second one has bug written all over it. I need a day or two to lick my wounds and decide how to proceed from here.
No worries though, “I VILL BE BAHCK!”
Oh...my...gawd.
You must want to kill a small animal after all of that.
BTW, I'm still looking for a corp too, so if you find a really, really good one let me know.
Posted by: darrenl | January 28, 2008 at 11:58 AM
@Darren...as it happens, I did find a small corporation that seems very cool. If you dont mind VERY small - less than 6 people on at any given time, I'll pass on the information. They are industry focused and working toward that end and are producing T2 ships. I had planned on taking my game in that direction but have since changed my mind.
All the members I've met so far are very even tempered and helpful. They participate in planned PVP activities as welll. I won't be staying with them however, because I have some other ideas in mind. ::Wink:: But I totally suggest them if small and industry is to your liking. If so, drop me an email.
Posted by: Saylah | January 28, 2008 at 02:39 PM
Ouch. Looks like you've met the dreaded desync bug. While usually reserved for large fleet battles, it can and has struck me while even mining. Basically, the server thinks you're doing one thing (still sitting in the encounter), while your client thinks you've warped away already.
In very minor occurances, I've been in small mining ops, using jetcans to mine into. To access these you have to be within 1500m of the can. Well after a few hours of mining, at times I'll see a jetcan on my overview that is like 500m away, but when I try to put stuff into it, it says I have to be within 1500m of the can to use it. =P
I've never had it desync as bad as you though, only heard stories about it.
Anyway, if you'd like a couple million isk to get into your Vexor, I'm game. Just email me your character name if you don't want to give it out publically.
Regardless, keep the destroyer! Its not a great mission ship, but its one of the best salvage ships in the game, especially in your budget! Stick 3-4 tractors, the rest of the highs with salvagers, the meds with cap rechargers and one afterburner, and the lows with cap power relays.
What I tend to do on missions is. Fly my combat ships and finish the entire mission. Make a temporary bookmark in each room of the mission where there are wrecks/loot cans, name them room 1, room 2, ect. Return to base and complete the mission (don't forget anything, like the militants if required for that mission). Then switch to your salvage ship, and use the bookmarks you made to warp to them for the loot/salvage.
Its also a nice noob mining ship, as it can fit 8 mining lasers.
As you progress to higher level missions, you'll find it much more efficient to do it this way.
I am curious though, how is your Catalyst set up? You mentioned that you are shield tanking. Usually Gallente ships are geared more for armor tanking, as they have more low slots than mid slots.
Its been a while, but I'd probably fit it with a damage control, small armor repairer, and a mission specific armor hardener in the lows. 2 cap rechargers in the mids or one recharger and an afterburner. 8 125mm railguns in the highs or 6 guns and a couple nosferatu (to help with cap, you suck your targets cap and get it for free), or 6 guns and a tractor and salvager.
To find out what damage types you'll be facing for each mission, I generally use the following site:
http://eve-survival.org/missions/
Its pretty straight and to the point.
Another tip I'll share is in regards to your constant repairing at stations. With this armor repair setup, you can already repair your own armor in space. What I'd also do is buy a small hull repairer, and keep it in your ship's cargohold. If you take hull damage and need a fix, dock at a station, swap out something for your hull repairer, undock, repair, redock and fit your mission gear back on.
This way you avoid all those repair costs that seem to add up by the sounds of it. This wont fix your drones, but it will fix your ship. You can use remote armor and remote hull repair systems if you want to fix your drones, although they're usually cheap to fix in stations.
Anyway, hope that helps out some folks. =D
Posted by: Draekas | January 29, 2008 at 05:50 AM
@Draekas...I appreciate the detailed response. I took a quick peak at the guide you linked to an it will be very useful going forward in determining what I will be facing and making minor tweaks to my setup.
Thanks for the amazing offer of ISK! I'm going to squeeze by on my own though. I had been hording 2 containers of fittings from missions and salvaging, many of which I realized that I've out skilled and would be able to utilize the next version up so I reprocessed and sold the raws. I also had 3 containers of mining components saved for doing some industry manufacturing. However, I'm going to take my game in a different direction so I sold all of that stuff too. Between those two garage...hanger sales ::smile:: I good again. BUT THANKS FOR THE GRACIOUS OFFER.
I'm working on an interim fitting for the Vexor. I found posts here and there but nothing for when you're just getting in it and can't fit the uber toys. Perhaps you'll have time to check back early next week and give some feedback.
Posted by: Saylah | January 29, 2008 at 02:30 PM
Sure thing. =D
The thing to consider here is what ship path you're going to take. Vexors are a drone boat path, that you will most easily upgrade to a Myrmidon battlecruiser, and then the Dominix battleship. For PvE setups specifically, you mostly need to worry about 3 things skill wise. Training your tanking skills:
Tanking:
Hull upgrades - increases your armor hp 5%/lvl
Repair systems - Lets you run your armor repairers faster
Kinetic, Explosive, EM and Thermic armor compensation skills (less important, they help with passive armor resist modules you may have)
Basic armor tanking skills here. Your basic setup from cruiser and up, is to fit several resist modules (armor hardeners and such) to the damage type you'll be taking, and one or two armor repair units to heal yourself.
Capacitor skills:
Energy grid management - Increases max cap size
Energy system operations - Increases rate of cap recharge
These are vital. In an active tanked setup (most are), Cap is Life (not my quote). Both of these skills increase cap regen, and are vital to survival.
Drone skills:
Drones - get this to level 5 ASAP. control of one drone per level, max of 5. Switch to this now if you haven't already maxed it.
Scout drone operation - Increases drone control range, and at level 5 opens up T2 scout drones. Medium scout drones will be your main weapons in a Vexor and Myrmadon.
Drone interfacing - Unlocked with Drones V, increases drone damage by 20%!!! per level. A must have for a drone boat. Take it to 3 or 4 asap.
Combat drone operation - Increases drone damage by 5% per level.
Drone specializations for various races, to unlock T2 drones when you are ready.
Drone navigation - increases the speed of your drones.
Electronic warfare drones - (Electronic Warfare IV required) further increases your drone range by 3k/level.
Since you're flying drone boats, drones are your DPS for the most part. So look at this section as your DPS section. DOn't worry about guns and such so much, concentrate on drones for your DPS to start with.
Fitting skills:
Electronics - increaes your CPU
Engineering - increases your power grid
Weapons upgrades - decreases the CPU requirements of your turrets and launchers
Advanced Weapon upgrades (weapon upgrades V required) - decreases your turret/launcher power grid requirements.
Various other skills reduce the CPU or grid need of certian modules as well. You can search for them.
These skills are largely to help you actually fit all the modules you want to fit on your ship. Engineering and Electronis V are almost no brainers, and are both rank 1 skills, so aren't bad to train.
The Vexor:
You've got 4 lows, 3 mids and 5 highs (but only 4 turret points and no launchers). Since you're a drone boat, keeping optimal range and stuff is largely a non-issue, unless you want to play with some guns too. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't move though.. they'll miss you more in general, if you're moving, with the exception of missiles.
A basic Vexor setup would be something like:
Lows:
2 mission specific armor hardeners
1 Damage control unit (increases shield/armor resists by a bit, and hull resists by 50% so you wont melt instantly when in hull anymore)
1 medium armor repairer. Get the best one you can afford, they're more efficient.
Here, you permarun the hardeners and damage control, and turn on and off (to save cap) the repairer
Mids:
3 capacitor rechargers (cap is life)
OR
you can try to play with cap injectors. I'm not that experienced there though, so I'll skip that discussion.
You could stick an AB in there to keep distance as an option as well, and it will work on some missions if you can stay out of thier optimal range and still keep in your drone range. In missions with lots of missile spam at you, it wont though.
Highs:
1 or 2 drone control augmentors (each adds 20km drone control range, and costs no cap)
A mix of railguns and nosferatu.
Guns for some extra DPS, NOS to suck enemy cap to boost your own. Nos are generally shorter range though, mediums are 10km or so.
Anyway, aside from 1 drone control unit, fit these LAST. These are your least important modules in a standard drone boat setup. Your tank/cap is everything, your drones are your damage.
Anyway, that's a basic setup for a vexor. Remember the ship's bonuses are 5% medium hybrid turret damage (blasters or railguns), and 10% drone damage/hp per level. All the differnet drone damage bonuses stack, so they're self reinforcing.
Hope that helps.
Posted by: Draekas | January 29, 2008 at 08:24 PM
As an added note, if you are going to continue playing, upgrading to a myrmadon is a no brainer. All the skills/modules from your Vexor are the same size as the battlecruisers (except the battlecruiser skill which requires I think which only requires spaceship command IV). However, it has more slots, better cap, hps, ect.
The Myrm only needs gallente Cruiser 3, and battlecruisers 2, so skill wise it'll be easy to get into. It'll just come down to the 32ish million isk price tag.
Posted by: Draekas | January 29, 2008 at 08:40 PM
Holy crap that's a lot to absorb! I'll compare your notes here with what I've started fitting. I'm trying to find a mod that can read a fitting and out put it?? Versus me writing out everything to discuss here and plus I save my setups in case I have to replace a ship.
I definitely want to go the Drone boat setup, it's why I specifically selected Galle as my race. It suits my playing style. I can already tell that I'll need to shift some items around. I have some of the specialty items you mentioned. I got them from missions or ratting and kept the more unique ones even when I wasn't sure why or if I'd need them.
The hardners I already know are out of my price range at the moment having checked because I saw them in an example fitting on BattleClinic. As far as my skills I'm definitely up there with the Drone skills. Am at 5 and already working up interfacing etc. I somehow neglected some of the mechanic skills so have them in my list so I can do the hull upgrades which I can't utilize at the moment past 100M Tungsten - if i'm remembering that correctly.
I'll keep tweaking as I can and post what I have going. This is will stay my PVE ship until I'm comfortable with how if handles. It's very different than the ranged missile setup I had going on the Tristan. I don't want to risk this to a PVP encounter if I can avoid it just yet. :-)
Again, thanks for the amazing reply.
Posted by: Saylah | January 30, 2008 at 07:11 PM
The hardeners are fairly common mission loot drops, at least in higher level missions. Its been a while since I've run some level 1s and actually looted them. They're about 100k each or so, or you could place a buy order for one of each of them (so you can swap them around as missions demand), for much cheaper. Do this in a main hub, and it will fill pretty fast, because, as I said, they are common loot that people insta sell after looting missions.
They don't seem too expensive, unless you were looking more at Tech 2 varients, which will run ya a couple million each.
Just watch out for anything with the term Hardener in the name when you loot. Some will be shield hardeners, but some will be armor hardeners that you can use.
Armor plating can be useful, as it gives you more of a buffer until you die. However, it does not help at all when it comes to cap running out. The higher your resists, the less you need to run your armor rep, which is a huge cap hog. Generally, for tanking missions (not PvP), you want to try to get as cap efficient as possible.
In many missions, you'll survive the dps fine as long as your cap lasts, but once its low, you need to bug out ASAP. So with regards to plates vs hardeners, the hardeners are almost always better for armor tanks.
For shield tanked ships, this is NOT always so. Passive shield tanks rely on getting your shield as big, and the regen as low as possible. Not so much for the hp buffer it provides, but because (similar to cap regen), its a static caculation of Max shield(cap)/shield(cap) regen time to find your shield(cap) regen per second.
As a note, when armor tanking, explosive damage is almost always your lowest resist, and requires special attention. In fact, its almost zero if you have no explosive armor hardeners fitted.
Posted by: Draekas | January 30, 2008 at 07:30 PM
@Draekas...in reviewing the sitation about the hardners I was mistaken and thinking about something else. It was that I dont have the Hull upgrade skill at the appropriate level. I'm working on that now.
Posted by: Saylah | January 31, 2008 at 09:48 AM
Yep, da rage, been there, done that. This game definitely takes a mental adjustment from the "it's my stuff" mentality to the "well, its there to be used, I need to only get annoyed if I don't make good use of it". Where "Use" is understood to mean "loose".
Incidentally don't dis the destroyer. It's a tricky boat to use properly and has plenty of uses outside combat. The thing a lot of people loose track of with the destroyer is that it's a very specialized boat that's really unhappy if you don't fit it the way it was designed to be used.
On the combat side it's very tricky to use till you get your skills up quite a ways. Once you get at least Advanced Weapons Upgrade 4, it becomes the frigate/drone killing death machine with tissue paper for armor it was meant to be. You can set one up with a bit of a tank but the gank version will just outshine it.
On the other hand they also make great ratters and salvagers. The ratter version has either 4-6 weapons and 1-2 salvagers and 1-2 tractor beams. The full blown salvager is 4 tractors, 4 salvagers, AB, Cap recharge and as many expanders as you can fit in the lows. It's used as a sweeper to clean up wrecks after missions. BTW you can book mark a wreck (one in each room), turn in the missions and use the book marks to find the wrecks. so long as you don't' take more than 2 hours to get to a wreck after you kill it you'll be able to loot/salvage it. That way you'll still get the mission bonuses.
Basically any mission with Sansha, Amar, Minmatar or Angel rats in it is always worth salvaging. Thats because those are the wrecks that provide the Melted Capacitor and Alloyed Tritanium Bars as salvage. Check the market on those. They are a serious source of income for any new player. They'll give you a leg up on the financial situation early on. Yes the salvager skill is expensive for a newbie, but these days the first 3 trit bars pay for the skill. After that it's an isk injection into your cash flow.
Posted by: Letrange | February 02, 2008 at 06:23 PM
Letrange...thanks for the information. The Cat is definitely a different beast than the Frigate. I'm not so sure that it suits my style but I'm going to give it a go again. I've been satisfied with my PVE setup of a cruiser so far.
Thanks of the tip about bookmarking the rooms on the missions!! That will be a big help in letting complete multiple mission and then go back for the salvaging.
Posted by: Saylah | February 03, 2008 at 08:52 PM