The current problems with EVE Online mean that Kali, the next big update will probably be delayed at least a month. But some more details have been released in the latest blog, including screenshots of the new seamless zoom feature.
The idea is to integrate the map into the main display and simply let you zoom out - from your ship, through to solar system, region and finally all the way to the whole galaxy.
I was just looking through the ships and found the most specialized ship in there. By “most specialized” I mean one that is suited really well to a single task and really badly to anything else.
There is vaguely a choice of four (one for each faction) so I went for the best one. It is the Charon. The Charon is a freighter designed for carrying stuff. And that’s basically it. It’s very good at it though. A Badger, the Caldari industrial can carry about 5,000 cubic meters of stuff. The Charon can carry 785,000 cubic meters. All this comes at a price. Firstly, it’s very slow - 60 m/s without skills. And you can’t even put a microwarp drive on it. And it’s not that the Charon has limited CPU or power or anything (which it does) but that it has no fittings. That’s right, not a single slot. There are a couple of other sneaky uses for it though. It has high shields and very high armour and hull which means it might distract the enemy in a big fight. You’d hope that they’d assume it was carrying something important. Or along the same lines you could use it as bait maybe but there are much better ways to do that.
I just downloaded an excellent little program called EVEMon. It’s basically has an item/skill database for EVE and tells you how long it will take you to train skills. You can either select the skills specifically or select an item and it selects the skills necessary for that item. It also reads the XML format that the EVE website makes available so it knows which skills you already have. It also tells you if training any learning skills would make things quicker and the optimal order.
To fly a Leviathan and be able to operate an Oblivion (the Caldari doomsday weapon) will take, at best, 298 days.
PS. Just having an item and skill database readable outside of EVE in an app instead of on a website is quite handy.
The next big update in EVE will be called Kali. This will include a few things, including contracts - an overhaul of the missions/escrow/market system as well a big graphical update. The thing that I think most people are waiting for is Factional Warfare. All I knew about it until recently was vague implications that the name give. But I just received issue 2 of EON (the quarterly EVE magazine) which has a more in depth description of what the developers are hoping for with Factional Warfare.
Firstly, it looks like all the factions will be involved. There’s a two page graphic that has the four big ones in the middle, Gallente, Minmatar, Caldari and Ammar. But the others are scattered around, including Jovian Directorate, Khanid Kingdom, Angel Cartel, Thukker Tribe and even Concord.
But what will it actually involve? Well it seems the big part is the ability to do a “tour of duty” with a faction. This gives you access to special missions of a fairly grand scale involving the factions. This has major downsides. I’m assuming it would also make you a valid kill target for anyone doing a tour of duty for a faction at war with one you’re working for.
Also, factions may eventually be valid targets for war declarations by alliances. Could we see Band of Brothers marching in and taking out a faction? I’m guessing completely destroying a faction would be impossible, but taking large chunks of space would be a laugh….
Remember the magazine is six months old and a lot of it is vague. But exciting things are definitely on their way.
Besides missions, deadspace complexes can be a good way for a new player to earn money in EVE Online. If you completed the tutorial (which you really should) you will already have visited a deadspace complex. If you haven’t, they’re basically EVE’s version of dungeons*.
I wouldn’t suggest trying deadspace complexes (complices?) if you’re really new since level Is aren’t really worth it. And to be honest I never tried level IIs, but level IIIs definitely are. I can do them in a badly-fitted cruiser without much of a problem so a well-fitted Frigate shouldn’t be out of the question, and if you can get a friend in there with you you’ll be fine.
Inside you’ll find lots of drones which unfortunately don’t have bounties on them and they don’t drop much cool loot. What you will find though is a couple of interesting containers with “Overseer’s Effects” in them. Although it may not be guaranteed, the ones I’ve seen are 5th Tier Overseers Effects and 7th Tier Overseer’s Effects - the latter are worth 600,000 ISK if sold to the right people. The right people being DED (a division of Concord). It may take you a few jumps to get there but 600,000 to a new player should make it worth it.
I just got the Level I mission, “Worlds Collide”. The story is that some civilians got caught up in a fight between Guristas and Angels and you have to rescue them. It was offered to me for about 250,000 ISK (including bonuses) so I accepted.
The first part was easy. Lots of pirates and my Moa (a Caldari cruiser) freshly fitted with heavy missiles barely got scratched. Unfortunately the acceleration gates (there were two - one Angel and one Gurista) only accepted frigates. I tried in a badly fitted out Condor and lasted about three seconds… Luckily NPCs pirates don’t go for pods and the Condor was given to me free by an agent. Since I couldn’t be bothered to properly equip a frigate that wasn’t going to use again I had to give up on the mission. So beware of that one.
EVE needs a mini client. Something that can run as a normal window without taking up lots of resources that lets you do most thing you might want to do in a station. Things like sending/receiving EVE mail, accessing the market (setting up orders or just plain immediate buying/selling), changing skills, possibly accessing player missions (or contracts as they will become) and corporation management.
There’s lots of times when I don’t want to play EVE as such but I’m waiting for something to happen. And in windowed mode EVE takes up a lot of system resources and performs far less well.
Maybe this would be better mentioned on the EVE forums…
A new patch called “Dragon” was deployed to EVE recently (it took a whole day and they still have an extended downtime today to fix some problems it introduced).
The biggest change for new players (or anyone hanging around Empire space) will be the new agent missions. For anyone really new, on board stations are agents. These are NPC characters who hand out missions to players. Early on, missions are the best way to make money. To be offered a mission by an NPC you need good standing with the NPC (or with the NPC’s corporation such as Lai Dai or even the NPC’s faction such as Caldari). New players will always have a good enough faction standing to find an agent who will help them. Before, most missions were courier missions. Go somewhere, pick something up, go somewhere else, drop it off. Courier missions have new been almost completely removed. Instead you get combat missions. For the low level agents (I and II) these involve killing pirates and rogue drones. Occasionally you also have to fetch back some loot or blow up a structure as well.
For the most part this is a good thing for everyone. The main advantage is they’re more fun. The second advantage is that overall, you get more money. Although you may have to pay for ammo you also get the bounty for blowing up pirates. The only disadvantage is combat missions get harder much faster than courier missions. If you do lots of missions then level II agents (who pay more) become available to you before you can actually do them. Yesterday I nearly blew up when I came across pirates that were harder than I expected: Level I missions tend to have pirates around the 3000-6000 ISK range which you can do in a frigate. A couple of level II missions I did had the same pirates but lots of them. Then suddenly I come across a pirate in a Moa (a Caldari cruiser) with a bounty of 50,000 ISK. Since I’m in a Moa I managed to complete the mission still but I had to regroup and recharge my shield and do it in two attempts.
So to summarise, the new missions are good, but beware.
Ooh, after reading the forums I found a way to increase the number of research points you get when doing R&D in EVE Online.
After starting R&D you can also ask the agent for missions. The rewards for the missions are extra research points instead of ISK. The reason I had to go to the forums to find this out is because it apparently isn’t available until a day after you start the R&D.
As a follow up to my post about becoming a scientist in EVE Online I can now report I am now officially researching.
Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be generating any cool tech II blueprints for a while though. I am generating 3.8 research points a day. Although I don’t have anything to compare that with, it doesn’t sound like many to me. So right now I’m busy doing agent missions for Lai Dai - the corporation that my research agent belongs to - in an effort to increase standing and therefore the number of RPs I get.
There are lots of little things I’d like to know (and I’ll test and find out if no one tells me) about research. Like: