Adventures in Mission Running

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!

When I started playing EVE back in 2006, I had but a simple dream: to be able to fly all the ships in EVE. While I worked on this path, I also learned that there is a difference between being to fly a ship, and being able to fly a ship. So I branched out, working on skills such as engineering, electronics and the like. As I described it back then when asked, “I want to be able to max out the attributes of whatever ship I was flying without fitting any modules.” This became my new path.

As the months and years went by, I continued to hone and learn new skills. Spaceship Command, Gunnery, Drones. All the while in the back of my mind there was the dream, “Fly every ship and fly it well.”

So where does that leave me now? Since I’ve moved out to wormhole space with my current corporation, making ISK hand over fist and getting my claws bloody with some PvP. I also have some skills I have left to work on so I can definitely see myself playing EVE for a few more years yet.

Obligatory pie chart of skills:

I wrote up a guest column over at CrazyKinux’s website about setting up a mission running Dominix.

You can read it here.

A short post tonight…

Forgot that active armour tanks needs activated armour mods to work properly. I’ll miss that Ishtar… Hopefully v2, a Dominix-class battleship lasts a little longer.

Here’s a picture of v2 above Sankkasen I

:) v2 above Sankkasen I

In other news, I’ll be going to Fragapalooza 2009 this weekend. If you find yourself in the Fort Saskatchewan area, pop in, and look for the guy wearing a fedora (I’m pretty sure I’ll be the only one). I’ll also be one of the few guys playing EVE there too.

One of the things I’ve always loved about EVE Online is how beautiful it is. Especially after Trinity and subsequent updates, I have spent hours just sitting in my ship, marvelling at just how gorgeous this game can be.

Especially the ships. The way the starlight gleams off metal and the fire and fury of weapons. Yeah. Damned beautiful game.

Which leads me to today’s subject.

I present to you, High Beams!, an Amarr Navy Slicer.

High Beams! in space

High Beams! docked

Yes, it looks like an Executioner-class frigate that got bent the wrong way, but it has headlights!

And this is why you don’t surf the contracts before going to bed, kids

Not much to tell lately, ran missions, blew up stuff, ran some more missions. Traded in some loyalty points and cruise missiles for some faction cruise missiles. Hopefully they sell quickly.

Finished learning Thermodynamics and nanite skills. Looking forward to trying them out with Clear Skies soon. Went back to working on Leadership skills for the next time I can get over and help my corpmates shoot at people I can help boost things like armour and shield hitpoints and targetting range.

Here are some screenshots. Enjoy!

Clear Skies broadside

Checking a wreck

Knock Knock

Hauling stuff

Worlds Collide

Santola system, The Citadel region

Warped to the mission site. Armour repair and tank mods active. While not quite as robust as the tank of a Dominix-class battleship, an Ishtar can be a tough nut to crack. Hopefully I don’t find a nutcracker on this mission.

Dropped out of warp. The overview shows several targets between me and the gate into the next area. Four turrets and several reprogrammed mining drones (that bear a striking resemblance to rogue drones). Noticing that they’re keeping their distance from my ship, I use one of my favorite ways of dealing of targets that like to keep their distance:  Tech two Sentry drones

curator sentry drone

Capable of popping destroyer and frigate sized targets at range in one salvo, five of them can make short work of even battleship rats in short order. Comparing them to artillery or railguns wouldn’t be too far of a stretch.

And like artillery, you need to have some way of dealing with those targets that get too close and orbit too fast for the sentry drones. Enter the tech two medium and heavy drones.

infiltrator medium drone

praetor heavy drone

After watching them dealing with the wave of reinforcements, I fly to the acceleration gate and jump into the next zone…

Acceleration gate with behind it

And meet my nutcracker. Fortunately I was able to escape before all the magic smoke escaped.

:) burns!

Unfortunately, I left my flight of praetors behind. Luckily they were all there when I came back. until I got one blown up by having it pull aggro. :S

But in the end, the mission was completed and I got paid. Which is good, because it was getting late and I was getting tired. =D

Sankkasen system The Citadel region

It seems someone heard my comment about this agent giving out only Guristas kill missions because the very next mission was Angel Extravaganza against the Angel Cartel. Unlike the Guristas, who like to use mainly Kin/Therm damage and sensor jamming, the Cartel likes to hit you with a little of everything and a target painter occasionally to make it hurt more.

I open the fitting screen and pore over Happy Face’s current setup, I decide to swap out the Kinetic hardener for an explosive one.  Result is slightly evened out resists with a needed boost to explosive resists.  I decide to give it a try. if things  go pear shaped, I’ll try something else.

The new tank works great. I barely see any red at all in the armour during the mission. I take advantage of the situation to grab a couples of screenshots of the action…

Happy Face vs Angel Cartel battleship

Happy Face vs Angel Cartel battleship

Everything else didn’t go as smoothly as the mission tonight. Noticing some banter in local, I pasted my current fit of my Eos. A rascal who shall remain nameless deemed it to be a fail fit.  Curious as to see how well this admittedly PvE fit would fare, I proposed a 1:1 against the rascal. Earlier today I had read this most interesting plog post of Mynxee of the Hellcats about 1:1 and honour and rules and such. Link is here so you can read it. With this post still in my memory, I had planned to invite this guy into a fleet, where we would warp off to a random planet and have this duel. All aboveboard and honourable. Except guy’s already in a fleet and wants me to join his fleet. And that’s when it gets entertaining for the rest of the system reading local as he starts getting rude when I decline this offer and subsequently block him. Then he logs into his alt and tries to get me to duel this guy, offering to act as a neutral observer. As far as I was concerned, the chances of this duel ended when I blocked him. Then he did his ta da! and revealed himself as the rascal I had blocked.  There was some smack talking and talks of war deccing each other’s corps (which amused one of my corpies later on when I told him the tale later on). Eventually I grew tired of this banter and added a couple more names to my blocked list.

Can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow night!

Time to introduce Happy Face, my Eos-class command ship I’m flying out here.

Eos-class command ship, Happy Face

That’s her sitting in the station docking bay.

And for those that are curious about my setup, here’s the current setup, courtesy of EFT:

EFT setup for Happy Face

Halaima system The Citadel region

You tend to forget certain things when you use a drone boat like a Dominix-class battleship or Ishtar-class heavy assault ship like I usually do for missions.

Ammo for one thing. Drones don’t run out of ammunition so all you have to worry about is making sure they don’t wander off and get themselves destroyed. More than once I’ve been orbiting a target wondering why it’s not being destroyed when I notice that the reloaded gun group is waiting for me to send the fire command… And then there’s the awkward moment when you notice you’re out of ammo so you have nothing to shoot at your targets.

Weapons range is the other little detail I tend to forget. Turret weapons are limited by factors like optimal range and accuracy falloff. What that boils down to is that you have to keep your target within a certain range for your guns so that you can hit and hopefully damage said target. There’s also the tracking speed of your gun turrets to keep mind as well. With Happy Face, the solution is orbit within a few kilometres so its blasters can hit the target. On the other hand, with my Maelstrom-class battleship Clear Skies with its artillery, they work best on targets that are further away and moving slower. Like they say in that popular film, “Stationary ships don’t react well to 1400s.” Of course a flight of drones is handy with either ship for those that get too close and/or fly too fast.

It does make it a bit more exciting to actually have to fly around to get to your targets though. Which is a nice change of pace from how I usually do things in my drone boats.

And of course, as soon as I bother to fit an ECCM module onto my ship, these Guristas don’t try to jam me.

Sankkasen system The Citadel region

After collecting a set of +4 implants and Happy Face, I make my way here to talk to the new Spacelane Patrol agent. He gives me some missions shooting at Guristas and I’m on my merry way.

You might be wondering why a Brutor would be out here in Caldari space, working for allies of the Amarr Empire that enslaved my race, et cetera, et cetera. The short answer: They pay well and the missions aren’t that difficult. The longer answer: I find it advantageous to be able to fly through all of highsec without being labeled a Criminal and thus Kill on Sight (KOS). So every year or so, I fly out to Caldari space, run a few (hundred) missions while my Social skills do their magic to bring up my standings with the Caldari (and by extension, drag up my standings with the evil Amarr Empire that enslaved my race)

Another question you might have is why I’m using a rather expensive Eos-class command ship to run missions. As I mentioned earlier, the missions out here aren’t that difficult, usually variations on the theme of  “Fly here. Shoot Guristas. Fly back.”  Since Guristas like to use Kinetic and Thermal weapons, a ship that can fit a 95% Kinetic, 90% Thermal resistances would be the cat’s meow, as they say.

Time to reload the blasters and shoot more Guristas!