To keep folk informed, I’ll be pushing Eve Online blog posts (and other topics) to a new blog separate from this one. Some quick polling showed people assume this is a near pure PHP medium so a new blog for the non-PHP topics is called for. This fits in with my target of 3 blog posts a week which now won’t be seen as spamming Planet PHP ;) .

When I left off my last post I was enjoying ownership of a new Caldari Kestrel Frigate in Uitra, in the game called Eve Online, and had just joined a Corporation to further my experience and have a support network available. You can find me in-game as “Maugrim McFiriba”, the character I invented in the mid-90s with the now infamous “The Reaper” nickname, and later used as my internet handle all over Yahoo from 1998. Best of luck to other PHP developers trailblazing through Eve right now – I’ll add you guys as buddies in-game ;) . Email me if you want in on my chosen Corporation in the next week or two.

This week started off quietly with me outfitting my new Caldari Kestrel. After training the required skills I’m now running with 4 Standard Missile Launchers (1 is held in reserve). To add a little to my “tanking” (the ability of a ship to absorb damage for extended periods without exploding) I’ve fitted a Shield Hardener, a Small Armor Repairer and a Shield Booster. The first is passive, the final two eat Capacitor power. My naming is not exact – still getting the hang of having module names memorised ;) . I figured out recently that I was off the mark about increasing my ship’s capacitor max – I actually need to make modules I install require less by training relevant skills. In any case, I can now fit in those tanking modules and 3 Launchers without stressing my capacitor beyond it’s design limits. If I disable the Armor Repairer I can put an extra Launcher online (at a safe distance from the enemy since it drains my Capacitor dry when activating!) and increase my fire power by 33%. Assuming my shields can take the return beating with the Shield Booster enabled for short periods, and I don’t end up really really needing that Repair module, I can chew on level 1 Pirates from a distance of 20km or so and take out a ship with each grouped launch. I’m sure that won’t last long as the Pirates get wind of my new death dealer ;) .

More after the jump.

I’ve also now moved from Uitra to Perimeter. Moving to Perimeter leaves me a little closer to my Corporation mates, and just three jumps from Jita. Jita remains a lagfest but it’s a huge market and some of the prices there are just lower then going elsewhere. You can get almost anything in Jita since it’s a natural trading outpost at the confluence of three other star systems. If you can abide the lag at the weekend when it is bustling with commerce. Yesterday I narrowly missed a Corp member’s request for a run into Jita to grab a cheap module for 20 million ISK. That’s 20,000,000 ISK. As a newb I barely scrape by on a measly 435,000. If I’d had the time I could have earned an easy 1 million commission. Corps are where all the money is at – budding players need to get off the newb training wheels and find themselves a Corporation.

Mid week I received a mail from the Corp mailing list inviting members to a mining op (an operation where we strip mine anything valuable from asteroid fields and sell, sell, sell). I’ve accepted the invitation so this Saturday I’ll be mining for the Corporation. I have my laptop on tap for some light reading/writing/browsing while my ship is stockpiling ore. It’s not the most entertaining of professions but the social dynamic is good, and some teamspeak and multitasking works for me :) . Maybe it ranks with WOW’s mindless grinds but it serves a purpose in Eve Online and I do have a new ship to buy later. Primarily though it’s about standing – I don’t want to be the newb who isn’t contributing to his Corp’s future success. I do have a *lot* of writing to get started on anyway – more on that in another blog post sometime. It’s a 100% taxed op, meaning all proceeds go to the Crimson Industrial and Development. Sunday’s op will be for member-profit.

One of the Corp members should be loaning me a Caldari Osprey (Cruiser) for the ops which will be a massive step up from my lowly Kestrel with its meagre cargo capacity. I’ve spent the last two days training my Caldari Frigate skill to 4, and Caldari Cruiser skill to 3. If the op goes well, and Sunday’s secondary non-taxed op does also, I will be shopping around for a new Caldari Caracal (Cruiser) to replace the Kestrel with. Since I’m on a Missile binge, the Caracal is the best Cruiser to step up for. It will be my fourth ship since starting the game, but really the first I will have purchased myself rather than having it awarded. Moving to a Cruiser should afford me more development room for a while and hopefully make the pirates on these Agent missions less of an annoyance. With a Cruiser also comes additional cargo space – I really need to read up on developing decent Salvage skills for those wrecks I leave behind on missions! It will also offer more room to expand my tanking ability, at the expense of speed and manouverability obviously since a Cruiser is far larger than a Frigate.

This week’s highlight was when a fellow Corp mate, Sam Savage, asked around for anyone interested in a Heavy Assault Launcher he scavenged from a wreck. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity to get at least one expensive piece of kit for that Caracal Cruiser in stock without personal cost. I met Sam down in 0.7 sec space a few jumps from Perimeter and picked up the Launcher – which is now sitting in storage in Perimeter. I have items scattered across Perimeter, Uitra and Urlen – need to grab everything and move down to the mining op location Friday night so I’m ready to rumble come Saturday afternoon. I think my Clone Beta is still sufficient in case of my imminent death (me; total newb; >1.1 million skill pts). Tip to those just starting, keep the clones updated or you’ll lose excess skill points if killed!

With all these Missile Launchers available on the Kestrel I learned eventually (some would say “Doh!”) to assign Launchers to multiple targets correctly. I can’t believe I spent this long wondering how to switch from launching 4-missile barrages at one target, to 2×2-missile barrages against each of two targets. The solution was of course to target two ships (I need to train Targeting to pick more), activate two Launchers for the current primary target, click the secondary target’s graphic in the top right of the UI, and activate another Launcher or two. Hello sitting ducks…! Being able to target more than two ships seems pointless in the Kestrel but the Caracal will have more firepower to distribute across targets.

I also learned another new cultural term “can flipper” referring to another player who attempts to steal the contents of your Canister while mining. Seems to be something players often do to attract the wrath of the owner and provoke them into a PvP confrontation. I suddenly want that Caracal real bad so I can accept a few provocations and get in some PvP experience. I still feel my newbness like a millstone around my neck at times – like when a Drake pops out of a gate marked with the yellow tinge and skull of a wanted player and you wonder if they’ll pop off a few rounds at you for getting in their way ;) .

With the move to 0.0 space (non-existent security!) with the rest of the Corporation in the near future (part of a larger scale Alliance migration), I need to get that Caracal rolling and my tanking skills pulled up. I’ll ask around the other members if there’s any particular specialisation that would be handy for the Corp to have. Squatting in a Cruiser will likely leave me with a lesser role than those pulling 360′s in Drakes and I sure don’t want to be too close to whatever causes a Drake trouble when it turns up without some preparation and suitable skills to at least make my 5 second survival expectancy count for something useful. Hopefully we smaller pilots can fill in some time doing recon in Frigates, or even Cruisers – though Cruisers may be a bit too big and slow (and expensive) for purely recon roles. I’ll ask someone.

In other Eve news from random reading, I’m following sources of intel about the struggle between Tortuga, Goonswarm and their stubborn foes Band Of Brothers (BOB) in 0.0 space. Things do not look good for BOB who in the recent past of Eve were one of the most prominent Alliances. Their fleet is still nothing to be sniffed at according to the intel, but when an Alliance talks about a star system as their Alamo it can’t be a good sign. I’m way out on a limb when it comes to politics in the 0.0 sectors, but I hope this isn’t a sign that the internal struggles of the 0.0 Alliances are going to cease. Where will that leave me as a budding PvP player? My current Alliance “Eve Evolution” hopefully will offer plenty of opportunities for fleet ops where I can gain practice and experience before we’re pushed into a war of our own. A few fleet training sessions wouldn’t go amiss. Some of this might be Alliance pushed – another thing to ask my fellow Corp mates.

Lot of newb questioning this weekend ;) .

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