Towelly wrote:
What follows will probobly seem like very noobish questions (because well... they are) but as I tend to go all out with these kinda things I want to know what's going to happen in the long run. Also I apologies if I use too many WoW comparisions as it's the MMO I "grew up on" in terms of the genre.
In an effort to alleviate boredom now that I don't have to work crazy hours any more and without transgressing back into raiding in WoW I have decided to look into EVE. A couple of days ago I started the free trial gig on steam and like I'm sure many new comers to EVE, I feel a touch lost in the enormity of it all. Again I presume this is fairly normal and like every MMO the more you play the more you learn (although in a more brutal fashion as I've heard the EVE learning structure referred to as a cliff rather than a curve).
I guess my main questions are more based around the potential of the game rather than more base stuff (although I presume Merlin>Condor? as I'm just flying somewhere to sort that out now) so I'll do this in a list as it seems best.
1) I have been led to believe that some skills can take upwards of months to train and that's fine but at some point along the progression line are you ever allowed to operate your own fleet (as in multiple ships all under your own control rather than the in-game [similar to say the WoW group/raid system] say for instance a giant self contained mining fleet or am I "limited" to only doing this in a corp or group of people? If it is "limited" (that really is the wrong word) that's fine it just might effect how much I can play much like my issue with being at raids in WoW at very specific times.
Next two are kinda linked
2) In some big PDF guide thing I was reading there was a very brief mention of the methods of getting ore to and from your mining ships to stations. The most common method is apparently "jet canning" (or something like that, it was late) where you jettison all of your mined ore into a capsule that from all I can work out (and this is where I get a little lost as the guide didn't offer much in the way of explanation) is near infinite in size. Am I all wrong on this or is it roughly accurate.
3) I have heard a lot about "hauling" and "haulers" however as a trial account I can't use them apparently, while I've done quite a lot of searching I have been able to find out very little. From my understanding you basically use certain ship types (I at first though the Badger was one but mebe not) to take the jettisoned cargo "thing" full of ore and drag it back to the station of your choosing. Again if someone could give me a quick outline on that I'd appreciate it (If you haven't figured it out I quite like the idea of being involved in the whole large scale mining side of things one way or another).
4) Are there Corps out there who are willing to take what might be (I honestly don't know) a bit of a risk on someone like myself who is smart enough to learn the ins and outs of the game but currently has little to no clue?
I'll cut this short for now but any help would be appreciated.
All pretty common questions.
some skills
do take months to train. But they are usually specialised and pretty far up the skill training tree. I have had my account for a year now and been playing pretty solidly since may, and I may have only come across 1 or 2 month long skills, and I decided they weren't worth it to train, due to weighing up the benefits to the training times. In fact I have been trying to get my standard fitting certification and at level 5 they only take 10-12 days depending on attributes.
No, you can't control NPCs, the only "NPC' things that you can control are drones. Miners do get miner drones, but they aren't the awesome barges you are hoping for. They are just drones that mine 75m3 per cycle and get popped easy. You also get sentry drones and fighter drones and repair drones and ECM drones and drones for just about anything, but again that is further down the track.
Jetcanning is a very efficient way of mining. Each jettison can holds 27,500m3 of stuff (I think), where as your beginning ships only hold about 400m3 of stuff. It is not good to do this with other players in the belt, as they can come and take the ore out. I often like to make an alt and go around stealing cans. If they take the bait they shoot, and I can shoot back without getting in trouble from the police - CONCORD'd. Always good for lulz. It is best if you find a nice quiet system, you can fill up the can, go back to station, grab a hauler and pick it all up in just a couple trips.
Yes, a badger is a hauler, I fly Iterons in my trades, but thats just because Gallente have one at every level of the Industrial skill, unlike the other races, and the Iteron MK V is the biggest of the industrials. Then you get blockade runners and freighters and jump freighters, but again, they are all further down the line.
Ofcourse there are corporations out there willing to take you. Miners are always being recruited into industrial corporations, and get quite a big payback from corp mining ops, especially when they get some skills behind them.
Hope I answered some questions, I have some guides I could send you if you want, I actually have quite a good mining guide.
And if you think the PDF you read was confusing, one the BF2s'ers sent me a PDF on grid manipulation
Once you read through it you realise how simple it is, but when you open it up it is like hitting a brick wall.
