Friday, November 13, 2009

OMG, corp expansion!

Well, it’s finally done. My corp is officially a 2-man affair now that my buddy Si Gong has embraced the Dark Side and subscribed to EVE Online. Now of course the fun part will be to set up some kind of curriculum to teach him the ropes now that we can think in the long term. The first thing he needs to do is get re-acquainted with the superb and flawless UI called the Neocom. Taking a 3-week long break after playing only 2 weeks of EVE… some things tend to get forgotten. I was happy to find out that he had kept his skill queue full of good stuff and it restarted as soon as the subscription came into effect. The learning bonus for newbies is a great thing because it allowed him to skip skills that can wait a little bit and doing the main category skills and of course the all-important learning skills. At 600k SP he can fly a decently fit destroyer for missions (though some tanking skills will be in order) and he can fit throw-away PvP frigs without a problem, tackle gear and all. And now that we’re in the same corp we can actually practice tactics without CONCORD dropping donuts on us, but being put into the teacher’s seat I notice that it’s simply impossible to learn to play EVE by oneself; yes the tutorials are better than when I got on over a year and a half ago, but some things are just never mentioned and the only way to find out about ‘em is either by reading tons of guides (and getting lucky) or being told about them. I really enjoy teaching the game though. It makes you appreciate everything you find great about it, and even though I do get to tell about the bad aspects of the game its depth never ceases to amaze.

The main lessons yesterday were some very basic ones, but very important ones at the same time. At some point during the evening Si Gong wondered about the ability to start training for bigger ships (ie : cruisers). Now there’s a double-edged sword and a half. Sure he has Gallente Frigate IV but at such an early age rushing into cruisers and bigger mods would be a recipe for financial disaster. And anyway, it’s much better to be able to field a nasty frigate than some half-assed cruiser any day of the week, and that got the point home. Add to that the fact that cruisers cost millions of ISK instead of a few hundred thousands, especially when the income is coming in very slowly… yep, he got the picture. The next lesson was also linked to ISK and the market : Si Gong was noticing that even after just 2 weeks of play his ships and items were starting to get pretty spread out across Gal space. At least he doesn’t have a fleet of 20 ships yet, but I did tell him that people usually don’t have stuff lying all over New Eden. Probably over this weekend we’ll go pick up some of his ships and bring them to D94 HQ in Rens. So even though we’re only two guys we’ll try to work as a corp should.

So now in the upcoming weeks I'll be doing my best to show what EVE has to offer in both PvP and PvE (I don't think we'll go mining though!), and even give some background story to remove some of the Greek I seem to speak sometimes as I explain things in more detail than someone new to EVE can handle. But I think I have a good student so one thing is sure: fun will be had :)

Fly dangerous, and recruit new players!

o7

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