Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[xaritscin]

gave myself a rest from high sec. decided to return but i was bored and wanted some fleet action. tried to join brave, it looked fun at first but it didnt seem like i was doing anything, there was also a lot of people on system so i think i wouldnt have been able to farm.

dropped out of that and just went back to init. i also discovered the arbitrator can be a reliable ratting platform, if a bit slow on ticks. regardless, it will take a long time to get back into omega, but at least im dont feel the pressure of having to get plex quickly.

long therm goal should be about getting on an Archon, but since i've never used a carrier, an Armageddon may be a much better option.

For ratting, a Nidhoggur is best. An Armageddon might be okay for pvp, but it's probably not a great ratter. If you want a ratting cruiser, vexor/ishtar are good. A ratting battleship? Without question a Rattlesnake (which is also very pricy).

if i can make a plex with some few days a month and have enough to spare for financing small ship PvP im done. i dont care for tick efficiency. my missile skills are mediocre at best so wanted a ship whom which i could exploit some of my top alpha gunnery skills, the Armageddon is one option but a Dominix can be used too. probably with autocannons in order to occupy the midslots with drone mods. i dont have money for a rattlesnake either.

the ishtar may take a longer time than mastering amarr/gallente battleship but my main thing is that im closer to T2 lasers than T2 missiles so its a win/win situation if i can pull the laser armageddon or a laser dominix, althought i can also use other guns.

[Skyrunner]

The problem is that batlteship gunnery is pretty poor for ratting, because your large weapons will miss the frigates and cruisers more often than not. Also, to be within your optimal range you'll have to be close up to the rats, which increases damage taken and is dangerous if roaming people warp in on you .

 That's why people use drones, since they have good enough tracking to kill everything.

I think a Dominix could work, since it has drones and a drone bonus.

[lordcooper]

I really do suggest you take Skyrunner's advice here.

The way you're talking about fitting your ships is generally only seen on the occasional hilarious lossmail that gets passed around.

[forsaken1111]

I used to run a drone domi all the time, it was a lot of fun and quite effective. And this was before it got drone-specific improvements.

[Skyrunner]

Drone domi for ratting?

[forsaken1111]

Cheap on maintenance, cheap to repair, decent cargo. At least at the time. No idea how it shakes out now. Hell the domi was a pretty good PVP platform back then too.

[Girlinhat]

Vexor Navy Issue (VNI as seen commonly) is basically the king of low drone superiority.  Gallente faction cruiser, so it's Alpha-capable, with 125mb drone bandwidth, so you can field a flight of heavies or sentries.  Because it's drone heavy, you can use high slots for drone control range, mid slots for shield, and low slots for drone damage and damage control.  The 'common' way to play them is to warp into a site, activate your prop mod, and orbit something at 50km, with the pirates chasing you while your drones take out pirates.  I find a target painter helps, as you can target paint one of your drones and the AI sees 'oh this ship is using ewar it must be a threat' and the pirates will attack you and leave your drones alone.

As far as capital ratting goes, carriers seem to be 100% preferred.  Dreadnoughts only seem to show up in pvp - especially destroying structures - and with C5/C6 wormhole sites, which aren't unusual to have 2-3 capitals to take them out.  The problem with dreads in w-space is that they really shine when in bastion mode, and bastion mode makes them unable to move, and if you're unable to move then you're an easy target for getting dropped.

90% of combat in this game is a contest of 'who's the most slippery' because you should only fight when you can win.  If someone engages you and you can't beat them, you should run, and if you can't slip away then you're dead.  VERY rarely will you have a fair fight, 99% of the time it's gate campers and cyno drops that catch you off guard with more ships.  Even if you're in a dreadnought, they'll just bring stealth bombers and tackle, or they'll bring 4 dreadnoughts because fuel is cheaper than your kill.

Stay slippery.

[xaritscin]

using a VNI is a no brainer and its boring. back then people used to rat with a BS or even a BC for that regard. that's why i want to get an armageddon/dominix.

just warp to the site. send the drones and tank the damage. and stay aligned....

yeah and alpha clone can have acces to the VNI, but im not wasting time rolling a new clone for that when i can crawl again to omega with my main character.

[forsaken1111]

VNI wasn't even a thing back when I played regularly.

[Rince Wind]

I used a Macharial, but that was for missions in Highsec. Later the t2 Tempest, forgot its name. But Incursions were just better money anyway.

I guess where you live is important as well. In Provi you shouldn't fly anything expensive that takes a while to align, as everyone and Spectre Fleet keep roaming there. (At least 3 months ago) More remote places might be better.

[Mini]

Vexor Navy Issue (VNI as seen commonly) is basically the king of low drone superiority.  Gallente faction cruiser, so it's Alpha-capable

Technically alpha-capable, but alphas miss out on the main draw of the VNI: being able to field 5 heavy drones. Since they're restricted to mediums, a normal Vexor is almost as good and hugely cheaper.

The problem with dreads in w-space is that they really shine when in bastion mode, and bastion mode makes them unable to move, and if you're unable to move then you're an easy target for getting dropped.

Nitpick: it's marauders that use bastion, dreadnoughts use siege.

[BlackHeartKabal]

How strict are F2P restrictions this time 'round?

[Rince Wind]

This time?


Anyway, you can only fly one races ships, up to cruisers, and use the respective weapons. Some skill maximus depend on the race (eg amarr can train armor tanking higher than caldari, who are better with shields). I think Gallente is considered the best alpha clone race. Most t2 modules are behind the skills that you can't train, but you can fly decently fitted ships.
You train your skills with half speed.

You are not the same as a paying customer just slower, there are more restrictions.

Alpha accounts can't be logged in at the same time as other accounts on the same computer, so you can't just make a decent scout for free. (Well, you can if you use 2 computers.)

[Skyrunner]

using a VNI is a no brainer and its boring. back then people used to rat with a BS or even a BC for that regard. that's why i want to get an armageddon/dominix.

just warp to the site. send the drones and tank the damage. and stay aligned....

yeah and alpha clone can have acces to the VNI, but im not wasting time rolling a new clone for that when i can crawl again to omega with my main character.

thats because ratting is boring! Its largely a solved issue.

[Girlinhat]

How strict are F2P restrictions this time 'round?

Consider it 'free to trial'.  You're never gonna make big on an alpha.  You're restricted to the lower 3 ship classes, with the 2 biggest locked out, and ALL capitals locked out.  You're also locked out of T2 gear, which makes a world of difference.  You can fly faction ships, which are better than standard T1 ships, but they're not as good as T2.  You've also got 1/2 skill training speed and I'm not sure any useful skills are allowed up to 5.  So an omega account that's like 3 weeks old is probably going to out-perform a maxed alpha, just because that omega could be running T2 frigate fits.

The main benefit of the new alpha clones is 1: You can trial forever, instead of the 21 day limit, so you can keep pestering the game.  2: If you lose omega, you can still alpha, and you might have some omega assets you can sell off to get the money to go back to omega.

But really, an alpha isn't going to reasonably get the isk to buy plex.  You can probably sub for 2-3 months and be in a position to isk it after that, but not from the start.  Incursions are a good choice right now, as The Valkyrie Project (google 'eve tvp') has standard fits and skills for running sites.  It's kinda boring, but it's 120m-250m per hour (31.5mil per site).  Current plex is sitting a bit above 1bil, so in 4-8 hours of solid running you could flip a plex.  But you gotta get there first.  They run pirate battleships, which usually run ~800mil with fittings, and take a month of two to get into.

I would suggest learning cloaking first, THEN your incursion ship.  While you're waiting on the skill training, you can fly an exploration frigate with cloak and try to make some money in null peeking at data and relic sites.  Most of null is just empty, completely lacking people, the populations are centered around gate campers and home bases, and those are easy to locate if you view the map by pilot numbers.  So just wander into null sec, either through a non-camped route or through a wormhole, then start scanning things, and if someone shows up in local you can just tap cloak until they leave.  Remember - if you're between 2,000 and 5,000 of a hacking site, you can right click your data/relic tool and set 'auto-repeat' to OFF, then when you cloak it won't stop your hacking.  BUT if you click any hacking nodes it'll fail.  So you can sit halfway hacked and cloaked until you un-cloak, and then you can resume hacking.

By running exploration sites you can make up the isk to fit your first incursion ship, and then the isk flows like water, and you should figure out another isk-making activity, because incursions will wear on you.  Or spend 3 days running incursions to pay for your plex and get spare bank, and the other 27 days fitting super cheap frigates and going suicide pvp because you can replace your losses!