The idea of this post came from Poetic Discourse, a report what accounts I have and what my characters learn, what are their plans, and so on. I hope my plans help you make yours. And that your comments help me refine mine. If not, move along, nothing to see here.
Thursday morning report: 61.4B (1 PLEX ahead, 1.1B spent on logi, 0.5 on Titan, 0.4 on Rorqual)
- My main, Gevlon Goblin. +4 implants, 6.4M skillpoints.
My training was erratic at start, since I assumed I'll make money with Industry skills. Then I made a remap to perception-willpower too early. Lesson to learn: don't remap your first char in the first three months. No matter how much you read, no matter how smart you are, this game is too complex to make a plan with that knowledge. I'm currently locked in my P-W remap and have to deal with it. I'll learn the skills for the ships I'll use in rest of my (foreseeable) life:- a Basilisk with logi 4 to play with my girlfriend and to join high-sec incursion for fleet practice.
- a Charon freighter
- a blockade runner
- an Orca which I'm already flying
- a stealth bomber to pick up shinies in lowsec
- Hek alt who practically never leaves Hek - Boundless Creations Factory. +3 implants, 1.0M SP. A picture tells thousand words:
- My main, Gevlon Goblin. +4 implants, 6.4M skillpoints.
- This is the home of three nearly identical characters: the traders of Amarr, Dodixie and Rens. They all have +4 implants, 2.2, 1.6 and 1.6M SP. The one in Rens has an interceptor that is now collecting dust in the hangar. Future plans: finishing the trade skills, learning R&D. While they have much to learn, their training will be completed in a year. Then I move one of them to another account and into the slot one learning pilot and close one of my accounts, saving the PLEX. No point having an account where no one learns skills. Of course this can change, maybe I'll pick up manufacturing, but that's unlikely as I already have my hands full with trading.
- This account was was started with the plans to fly a titan. Then I realized that I need to live in null before jumping on a titan, so put in a Guardian logi. Then an Archon triage carrier. Recently I realized that the titan is totally incompatible with the previous two ships. I mean I started with an Int/Mem remap to learn support skills. Will continue with P-W to learn the ships, then back to Int/Mem completing the support. That's perfect for Guardian and Archon, I'll be ready to fly the Guardian soon with Logi 4 while learning Logi 5 and the Archon skills. But what about the titan? If I learn the hull after the Archon, I'll fly a low-skill Archon for a year before I sit into the titan losing 10M SP that I spent on logistic skills. If I perfect the Archon, I can't remap back to P/W before my second birthday and then I've wasted 25M logi SP. I have to realize that the titan just don't fit in. Some dreams are too bold to pursue. So the logi/triage pilot has +5 implants, 4.5M SP, all of them Int/Mem support (besides the Cybernetics 5 that is the last remaining learning skill in the game). I'll finish them in 25 days, then learn Amarr Cruiser 5 and Logi 4 in another 25 days and WH/null, here I come! In that remap I'll learn the Archon and if the FC requests, a shield logi. Without such request I can go triage in 173 days. The timescale of this game can't stop amusing me.
- My now unemployed Jita transport interceptor alt. In the very beginning I hauled with a T1 frigate, and did not want to hold my main down for a month, so when moved to interceptors, rather created the alt here. +3 implants, 1.2M skillpoints.
- While I'll fly in null, I won't stop being an industrialist there. So my Rorqual alt has born. Still in newbie phase, with only 0.8M SP, +5 implants.
100 days learning of Int/Mem, then 76 days to learn all my ships to rank 4: the Rorqual (it can dock, like carriers, right?) the Obelisk freighter and the Anshar jump freighter (picked them for highest HP, comment if it's a bad idea and other race is better). After this comes a 45 days learning of Mining Director and Wing command to be able to boost a mining fleet. It is followed by 95 days of industrial skills, needed to compress ore. After this I learn all relevant skills to 5. - With +3 implants and 0.5M SP sits on this account the former CEO of The Voice of highsec. Only corporation leading skills. Will be good later if I'll ever have a corp.
- While I'll fly in null, I won't stop being an industrialist there. So my Rorqual alt has born. Still in newbie phase, with only 0.8M SP, +5 implants.
- As I said, the Titan couldn't fit into the logi/archon plan. But if you trade and get 2 PLEX worth of money a day, there is no such thing as "too bold dream". So meet my fifth account with only one character: my new Ragnarok pilot. Having 0.3M SP he is ready to conquer the +5 implants first, then the rest of the World.
101 days of Int/Mem and Int/Perc support skills, then 131 days of Perc/Will and I will have Minmatar Titan 4 and can fly a totally useless titan. Then I'll learn the leadership skills. The length depends on how many different fields needs to be boosted. There are 4: armored, information, skirmish and siege, each takes a month to learn. Warfare link specialist is another 20 days. I don't know if I need fleet command to be fleet booster. To have that to 4 is 2 months, 40 more days to 5.
After having the needed fleet boosting skills, I go back P/W for titan 5 and doomsday. Finally back to Int/mem to get a jump portal generator to complete all support skills. (note: if I'm in an alliance the FC might be able to convince me to get an Avatar instead. Or a Leviathan. Not an Erebus. If you don't have a dozen of that already, I'm not looking for you) - On the top of my own accounts, I give a PLEX a month to my girlfriend, as it would be stupid to pay for it with real money and she doesn't like EVE trading - yet. I lured her into the game to play together, but she wanted to quit soon since in this game she can't play with a "pet class" and without pets, an MMO can't be fun. I gave her a present box containing 10x Hobgoblin I and some drones skillbooks. Since then she is happily using her Rokh as a drone platform for level 2-3 missions. Please don't comment. She started all games so weird way, refused to learn from others, figuring everything out on her own.
With +4 implants and 6.1M SP, she will finish support and "essential" drone skills in a week, and remap P/W to learn Dominix and Rattlesnake. Then she'll remap to M/P to learn the drone skills. Like, all of them. A Thanatos carrier is among the long-term plans. A supercarrier is not. When I told her it can't dock, she lost interest.
Thursday morning report: 61.4B (1 PLEX ahead, 1.1B spent on logi, 0.5 on Titan, 0.4 on Rorqual)
4 comments:
4.6M SP of which 1M is in Science, do I win some special award? :)
Yeah, a newbie with remaps is a dangerous breed.
Here's my story in short:
Remapped for Charisma at first, because I knew I'll be a trader. Well, I partly am, but for start, you don't really need a lot of SP for that. So I remapped for mining (that is Memory) quickly, because that looked like a goldmine. Then of course I discovered that mining alone is boring and ineffective, so I had to remap again - final remap, so I had to be wise. This time I was almost sure that I'll mostly do exploration, trading and of course flying more ships, so currently I have an int-per-cha remap. That is suboptimal for sure, but still better than sticking with that shitty memory remap and it covers most of the skills I will be learning in my first year until the next remap.
I support the idea to disallow remaps in the first 3 months. I KNEW I should have a skill plan, but I could not even tell what I would like to do with my character. The other way to fix this issue is to allow much more remaps in the first months or some kind of SP redistribution, which the community opposes, because it's welfare. So yes, let's go with the no-remaps-while-you-are-new.
A few minor notes:
A Rorqual pilot is... not expected, necessarily, but definitely appreciated if they can run other links as well as the mining ones; there's a midslot item called a Command Processor (which requires Warfare Link Specialist 5) that allows a ship to run extra gang links, so a Rorqual with 2 of them fitted can run 5 links; typically those will include Mining Laser Field Enhancement, Mining Laser Optimization, Shield Efficiency and Active Shielding, with the 5th link being either Harvester Capacitor Efficiency or Shield Harmonizing depending on whether the cap efficiency link is needed to run stable. Those links aren't for PvP survivability, but rather PvE since belts in null spawn battleships; those shield links can give a mining group the survivability to tank BSes while their drones kill them, meaning they don't need to warp out and reship for combat every time things spawn. Obviously those require Siege Warfare leadership skills as well.
You should also make sure to train up Infomorph Psychology on any characters you plan to take to Null (might also be of use to your station traders - use one trader to cover 2 stations if you have the spare order slots) whenever you're in the right remap.
Since you have several characters training for Capital ships you should also train some spare slots for Cyno alts - having your own network of characters who can light beacons in disposable frigates makes the logistics of moving caps a lot easier.
Finally while the inability to actually catch up to older players on raw SP is obvious and daunting, I’ve never heard anyone actually put that as “New characters can never compete with veterans” before. In fact, I’ve only heard people bringing up the same thing you have here, that a new player can focus on one area and get their skills as good or better than any veteran.
While technically right, I'd claim that having to train for 1+ year(s) pretty much counts as "you can never catch up with the veterans".
If your skill plan is over a year long and you will actually stick to it, not remapping immediately is incredibly stupid. I do agree that people who don't know what they want to train for yet shouldn't waste their remaps though.
Post a Comment