EVE Character report (with titans)

Quick note: yesterday I met the worst scammer ever, and made an extra post about it which just hit 10K visitors!

My first character report was a month ago, from now on I will post such report every month, around the 20. day. I hope my plans help you make yours. And that your comments help me refine mine. If not, move along, nothing to see here. I try to use a simple format that can be copy-pasted and updated. First an overview table, then detailed description of characters. Unused characters are ignored.

Char#	Personal data	Account#	Implants	June SP	July SP	Remap	Last month focus
1	Gevlon Goblin	1	4	6.4	6.82	P7-W7	Accounting 5 (+cry on remap)
2	Hek trader	1	3	1.0	1.04	C4-W10	No training, busy trading
3	Scout/cyno pilot	1	3 +booster	-	1.38	P10-W4, later I10-M4	Caldari frig 5, later support
4	Amarr trader	2	4	2.2	2.33	C5-W4-M5	Accounting 5
5	Dodixie trader	2	4	1.6	2.37	C8-W6	Accounting 5
6	Rens trader	2	4	1.6	2.37	C8-W6	Accounting 5
7	Logi/Triage pilot	3	5	4.5	6.42	I10-M4	Support skills
8	Rorqual pilot	4	5	0.8	2.69	I10-M4	Support skills
9	Ragnarok pilot	5	5	0.3	2.15	I10-M4	Cybernetics 5, support skills
10	Nyx pilot for sale	6	5	-	1.78	I10-M4	Cybernetics 5, support skills
11	Avatar pilot	7	5+booster	-	1.29	I10-M4	Cybernetics 5, support skills
12	Girlfriends' character	8	4	6.1	7.90	P10-W4	Gallente BS, gunnery

Total SP of my characters (not counting Nyx for sale and girlfirend of course) in June: 18.4. In July: 28.9. I gained 10.5M SP in a month. So the statement that "latecomer can never catch up" is not true. No one can learn rank 6 skills, more skillpoints mean ability to fulfill more roles, to fly more ships. That can also be achieved by different accounts. Accounts can be paid with PLEX you get for playing well. So no, a good playing new player can easily outperform a mediocre veteran.

1. My main, Gevlon Goblin. 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. Like learning Accounting 5 in that remap. I'll learn the skills for the ships I'll use in rest of my (foreseeable) life: a Basilisk with logi 4, a Charon, a blockade runner, an Orca which I'm already flying and a stealth bomber to fly lowsec. My future is clear: Jita will be my home and Science and Trade Institution my corp till the end of days. I'll make ISK for nullsec ventures. After I finished the ships, I'll remap for more trade skills.
2. This pilot practically never leaves Hek - Boundless Creations Factory and does only trading. Future plans: finishing trade skills (Accounting 5 is missing among many other 5s). Then learning research skills to work with the agents to trigger storylines and some passive income from datacores.
3. She is my first nullsec pilot, her job is to scout for the rest pilots, do exploration and open cyno if needed.
4. She trades in Amarr and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills.
5. She trades in Dodixie and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills.
6. She trades in Rens and ran my planets. I switched them off, because I am cutting back my moneymaking. She'll learn to fly an Orca, as a fallback if my haulers would go on vacation.
7. This pilot will be the first to move null/WH. Soon flying a logi (type depending on alliance fleet), then train for an archon triage carrier. Will perfect these skills, won't learn any more new ships
8. While I'll fly in null, I won't stop being an industrialist there. So my Rorqual alt has born. Still in newbie phase, learning of Int/Mem, then my ships: the Rorqual the freighter and the jump freighter. After these comes Mining Director and Wing command to be able to boost a mining fleet. It is followed by industrial skills, needed to compress ore. After this I learn all relevant skills to 5.
9. This pilot has long way before flying anything but a shuttle. 101 days of Int/Mem and Int/Perc support skills, then I learn skirmish warfare support and fleet command. Then Perc/Will almost forever for Minmatar Titan 5. Unfortunately I'll have to have guns which is even more skills.
10. To experiment with Character Bazaar, I started training a Nyx pilot. We'll see how much profit this sale will provide
11. My second titan pilot. Originally planned as Avatar, but since I know more about how fleet boosting goes, he'll either be sold or turned into Dreadnaught pilot. (OK dreads have guns). Capital fleets are usually armor-tanked, right?
12. 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. She is still extremely casual. She minds her training queue and sometimes run some random mission but that's it. I hope she'll like the game more when she sees nullsec on my monitor. She is great player when involved in a game, so if she'll get the taste, she'll be a great addition to the same alliance I'll go.

I want to talk about a central part of my nullsec plans, the titans. I posted several titan plans, mostly replied with various disagreement, yet until I asked for explicit theorycraft I got some useful answers. Let me share it. Providing a boost to a fleet is a huge positive, you won't find a fleet without a booster. Who shall give it? Gang assist modules have 5000 CPU requirement, making them unfittable to ships except for ones designed for them. The commonly used are command ships and T3 cruisers. These ships get a faction boost for one group of gang links. For example the Vulture provides 15% bonus to siege warfare links with perfect skills. A Tengu with the proper subsystem provides 25% bonus. A titan can't give that.

There are 4 groups of combat links, each contain 4 boosts, 3 provided by the modules, 1 provided by an implant called "mindlink":

• Siege warfare
  • Active shielding: -10% (12.5% for T3) shield booster and transporter cycle time
  • Shield efficiency: -10% (12.5%) shield booster and transporter capacitor need
  • Shield harmonizing: increased shield resistance. EFT says 28.1% (35.2%) resistance to a ship having 0 on its own
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and 15% Shield HP
• Armored warfare
  • Rapid repair: -10% (12.5% for T3) shield booster and transporter cycle time
  • Damage control: -10% (12.5%) local and remote armor repair capacitor need
  • Passive defense: increased armor resistance, lazy to EFT it
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and 15% Armor HP
• Information warfare
  • Electronic superiority: +10% (12.5%) ECM and target painter strength, +6% (7.5%) Remote sensor dampening and tracking disruption strength
  • Recon operation: +10% (12.5%) EWAR range
  • Sensor integrity: +15% (18.75%) sensor strenght
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and +15% targeting range
• Skirmish warfare
  • Evasive maneuvers: -10% (-12.5%) signature radius
  • Interdiction Maneuvers: +15% (18.75%) web and point range
  • Rapid deployment: +10% (15.5%) AB and MWD speed bonus
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and -15% agility (practically align time)

Titans have unique bonuses, but no T3 bonuses:

• Erebus: +37.5% armor HP
• Leviathan: +37.5% shield HP
• Ragnarok: -37.5% signature radius
• Avatar: +37.5% capacitor recharge

For a supercapital fleet the best would be having +37.5% HP for the primary tank (shield in a shield fleet), +37.5 capacitor recharge, 3 links for their primary tank, resist link for the secondary tank (armor for a shield-tanked fleet), rapid deployment link, 3 mindlinks: 1 for increasing the 3 tank links, 1 for secondary tank HP (with resist from link and damage control that's another 0.5-1M EHP/ship) and +15% targetting range or +15% agility. These can be provided by an Erebus/Leviathan, an Avatar and a T3 booster ship in booster positions. The titans need no links, they can fully provide their unique boosts without them and can use the mindlink implant, all 5 links can be on the T3. This is why my link-titans were laughed at.

Now meet my Ragnarok: Wait! Didn't I just say that links on titans are bad? Indeed they are, but this titan doesn't belong to the supercap fleet. I mean it warps with them, stays with them, on the comms with them, following orders of the supercap FC. However it's in the supporting subcap fleet, in fleet booster position. Alternatively it arrives alone with the subcaps, this case several ships of the fleet have cyno fitted for obvious reasons. This is the shield fleet boost version, if the fleet is armor, it has 3 armor links, 1 shield and Armored warfare mindlink.

9 subcaps definitely don't deserve a T3 squad booster (a 10th combat ship is better), so they can only have fleet and wing booster. This titan is providing them the -37.5% signature radius, the primary tank and the passive on the secondary tank. The wing boosting T3 is providing the Skirmish and EWAR links. A Scimitar has 65m signature. With a Skirmish mindlink Loki as wing booster, this decreases to 42m. Enters my Ragnarok as fleet booster and it goes down to 26m! Who wants his logis be harder to hit than Rifters (35m unbuffed)? Who wants his drakes be as hard to hit as a destroyer? Any interceptor wanna try out how it feels to be smaller than a pod? You may say that the stacking of Ragnarok bonus and Skirmish link bonus are not intended, but it makes no sense as the Ragnarok bonus is useless to supercaps and alone barely better than the Loki bonus. No, no! It's the well deserved reward of those who are bold enough to drop a titan in a subcap battle.

The "Gevlon seeks nullsec place" saga is about to end. By next week Friday, I'll be in a nullsec corp, one way or another. You won't be disappointed by my plans. You guessed, it won't be "join noname_pet#24 in its epic quest to get sov for carebearing".


Thursday morning report: 110.2B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).