I’ve started working on my plan to join EVE Online Faction Warfare (FW) as my return to space adventure. FW was supposed to lower the bar for getting players engaged in PVP. I’m about to see how well it works. My methodical mind won’t allow me to jump in headfirst. No, I must have a plan and strategy.
The Plan
My plan is a three-pronged approach. First, I need to plug up a few holes in my skill training. I’ve had an account off and on for several years and am bumping up against having 4 million skill points. Yet I’m still a neophyte in EVE. When I re-subscribed a few months ago, just how many holes became evident from a couple of conversations and an in-game rendezvous with Letrange. I’d been taking care of the obvious while also squeezing in production training. I recently stopped that production training to focus on rounding out my combat skills. Namely, I need certain skills to fit my PVP ship of choice, the Tristan. This brings me to my second priority, equipping “The Fat Man” as best I can for FW PVP.
The Ship
I’m Gallentean and have flown all of the Gallentean Tech 1 frigates at some point or another. Of them, I like the Tristan the best. I’ve read that the Incursus is a very good PVP frigate but too bad, I’m going with the Tristan, my favorite T1 frigate. When configuring a ship for combat it’s important to exploit its advantages while minimizing its weaknesses. I’ve poured over the EVE forums, BattleClinic forums and Google search results. I’ve narrowed in on a prime setup that I believe will work well. That doesn’t mean I’ll be able to execute it well in the reality of my first real foray into PVP. *Smile* However, having a ship that is appropriately equipped for the task at hand, is the first hurdle. There will be a separate post on the configuration I’m planning. I want to solicit some advice on cost effective alternatives and what I can substitute for things I can’t equip until all my training is complete.
Step three is to acquire the ships, fittings and supplies, and haul them out to an appropriate home base. I purchased the ships already. I assembled them and insured them right then and there. I wanted to avoid forgetting to insure them in the heat of wanting to re-enter a fight after being blown up. It was also time to upgrade my clone. All that remains now is to finish training a few core skills that are needed. I will have an intermediate fitting that I can use until I finish the 36 days of training needed for my desired ship configuration. That’s right, 36 real time days of training. If you’ve never played EVE, that much time might sound staggering but in the scheme of things in EVE, it’s not.
$10 Million ISK Education
While the training time didn’t surprise me, the cost of the skill books set me back on my heels. To moderately equip my Tier 1 Frigate as a decent PVP ride, I spent 10 million ISK on the skill books! I was floored. The saving grace is that this is a one-time cost that never deteriorates or is lost, UNLESS you don’t upgrade your clone. I was already at 3.8M skills before the dozen books or so I purchased, so I went ahead and upgraded now. Again, this is to avoid forgetting to do it later in the excitement of getting started in PVP and inadvertently screw- the-pooch by getting pod-killed. SAFER IS ALWAYS BETTER in EVE Online. That’s something I don’t mess around with – being cheap when it comes to insuring some sort of recovery from lost assets. You will lose ships. And while it’s not a regular occurrence, you could be pod-killed. Keep your ships insured. Keep your clone updated.
I purchased books several jumps away to get them at lower prices but there wasn’t that much variance. I could have put in some buy orders and set the price I’d like to pay. I saw plenty of those and not many takers. Trying out FW PVP is something I’m going to do. I didn’t feel like haggling and waiting on someone to accept a buy order. I bought what I needed and flew around picking things up.
New Skill Training Features
The new Skill Queue came in handy for getting things started. It only allows you to queue up the equivalent of 24-hours of training. I was a bit disappointed about that limitation but it’s better than nothing. Using the new “Inject Skill” command, you can get skill books into your skills list so that they show up in the Skill Queue before they’ve been trained once. This is VERY convenient for queuing up the first few training levels on newly purchased skills. You can also queue up the same skill multiple times. Typically going from 0 to 1 is only 15 to 30 minutes for a skill. With the Skill Queue, you can queue up multiple new skills for training. To consume the full 24-hours, you can elect to skill them to levels 2 and 3 depending on the training time. Just click the skill again in the Queue and choose “Add” again and again. That part was sweet.
Not being cheap and waiting on buy orders to get the books a bit less expensively, allowed me to get the skills going immediately. I can finish it in the 36-day minimum. Letting days pass while you’re trying to get the book for a lower price is more time added to the completion cycle. Personally, I felt the 36 days was more than enough time without heaping on additional wait time.
Loving when a Plan Comes Together
In a single evening of work, I put my research into action. I purchased my ships. I purchased the skill training books so I could equip my ships the way I planned. 10 million ISK lighter, the new Skill Queue has all of the skills with no prerequisites queued up and firing off. My Stage I plan for entering EVE Online Faction Warfare is complete.
Postings still to come… Stage II - Tweaking my Tristan Fitting and Stage III – Signing up for FW and what that entails.
Notices your choices of skills in the "needs prerequisite" side of things.
Looks like another case of my more veteran eyes spotting something: Specialization skill books. For those not familiar with EVE these are T2 skills. Basically if you want to stick to a plan of "keep it cheap while I learn" you won't need to start training these first since they have no effect on T1 guns/missiles. If you eventually plan on equipping T2 guns/missiles though they have a place in your plan. But keep in mind the costs:
T1 Meta0 frigate net loss (hull + modules + ammo + insurance cost - insurance payout) kick around 1-300k per hull lost.
T1 Meta0 cruisers net loss kick around 1.5 to 2.5 mil per hull
T1 Meta 5 frigates net loss kick around 6-8mil per hull
T1 Meta 5 cruisers net loss kick
around 20-30mil
T2 Meta 5 Frigates net loss kick around 20-40mil
Note that most pilots don't usually start flying T2 ships till they hit 6-8mil SP and even then it's usually frigates.
Posted by: Letrange | March 23, 2009 at 03:42 PM
@Letrange - thanks for the info. Those specializations are for a couple of T2 items the PVP fitting I wanted required. I only started them in the queue because they fit the limitations of what the queue will let you select. Rather than have hours of empty since you can't use the tool to queue things longer than the 24-hour period, it was just convenient to slap them in their now even though that don't fit into my initial ship fitting.
Unless I selected something in error in EVEMon they were related to guns and missiles. I think the actual ship fitting is scheduled to publish Wed if you want to check back to give more detailed advice.
Posted by: Saylah | March 23, 2009 at 04:20 PM
Yeah, the T2 weapon skills (rocket specialization, for example) are earned by players for mission points (LPs). Those are going to cost you more, because they're not seeded directly from NPCs.
Posted by: Halostorm | March 24, 2009 at 02:41 AM