Multi-boxing or Dual-Boxing EVE

[Treesy]

Howdy all,

Just wondering if anyone has Dual or Multi-boxed the space sim called EVE successfully using Keyclone, and if so how?

I cant seem to get the maximiser to display the two clients correctly, one client seems to want to load over the top of the other.

Only by running each client in window mode and dragging the second client over to monitor two can I get close to what Keyclone does with WOW.

cheers,

Treesy

"Just be yourself, cause everyone is taken. "

[hardcoded]

Short answer: not that I know of. (been out for a good year)

Long answer:
I never used keyclone, but multiboxing eve was pretty easy once you get the hang of it -- you're not terribly hampered as eve is not an input-intensive game. It rewards socialization and strategy/tactics more.

The only thing you can't really do is go on fast chases through multiple systems and more than two in big fleet battles ( the load and/or dsynch time between clients differs noticeably, even when using multiple computers). Also during fleet fights clients would shoot up to like 1G+ ram at times, taking down other innocent clients with it.

The most important thing that multiboxing is the abiliy to not get completely shut down if important systems are camped or hot. Also when running on patrol groups, also have a few guys ratting(our alliance leaders would do that occasionally :P ) There are some things like that which are easy to do simultanously

Scouts -- achura scouts are your second greatest power (aside from diversity) Log them in a system ahead of your freighter, and keep them one system ahead. If paranoid, one system ahead and one behind. Also investing in some target scrambling for throwaway tacklers/jammers is good fun. Also just for looking at systems - a friend found a stray carrier for me to pick up once :))
Also have one parked outside of a system where you are camping.

Mining -- standard domi, barge, industrial setup, along with a rorqual for crunching ore, especially if you have a few friends.

Combat -- find complementary roles for small engagments -- interdictor/HIC, battleships, support ships shield boosting and remote sensor boostin ospreys/blackbirds were my favorite with some carrier support. You only have to really pay attention to one of them at a time. Targetting with ctrl-click and F1-8(on the sorted overview, not in space). Pew pew pew.
Map similar things to similar keys - ctrl -1 for shield/armor boosting or MWD. Also command ships are born for groups, or battlecruisers if you're hurting for isk.

Me and a couple of guys had the same setup around n-rael for the longest time. interdictor, cruiser ( I used support remote sensor boosters and shield boosters, he used stabber), some BS for DPS ( I always liked a sniper megat for killing the scouts/distractions warping in at 100 ) and carrier for fighters. If you're hard up on isk, a domi is insanely efficient on a cost/isk basis.

The main focus is to only have to deal with one or two clients at any given time. After a while, it becomes like second nature. Bubble and/or web, F1-8, orbit, BS 1-8,shield/armor rep and remote rep on guy being targetted.

Friendly policing -- Alt corp for cleaning up farmers that are blue to you. Really. Very important and a hell of a lot of fun if you can get a few guys in on it. Kid tested, mother approved.

Spies - Milk your enemies. Not a fan of it myself, but other people seem to love it. I can understand that causing drama on the _other_ guys side is satisfying. And really the only way to win a fight. I prefer to do it with straight combat. :)

Trading -- train up a couple of trading alts on an account, have them stay near border systems between regions in freighters with different types of trade orders. The right buy order in the right place (and especially at the right time -- bot selloffs, 1000's of blocks of ice at very low prices, or holiday weekends buyoffs are gold mines) done multiple times makes serious bankroll.

And a shout out to the guys in Minor Threat :)

[Treesy]

Thanks for the advice Hardcoded,

I found out that EVE can be run in windowed mode quite easily and you don't even need to alt tab or do anything else cause the mouse just freely moves from one window to the other.

Also, I'm just keeping it simple atm, just Dual-Boxing, doing mission runs together, and I have two alts that are miners so when I need some ISK I just mine for a while :D

Big change from WoW, no setting up macros etc, very user freindly. :thumbsup:

[hardcoded]

Missions - raven and drake were always the favorites. With shield upgrades, you can passively tank on the drake and I always actively tanked with the raven. Have the drake take out close small targets (with a priority on scrambling/jamming ones) and the cruise raven take out any big or far-away targets. The last time I missioned, the drakes could actually hold the aggro very well and were the preferred way to hold aggro(amazing passive tank), but that might have changed. Either way, bc/bs combo will do you well, caldari bein much easier, gallente harder, and other races being very difficult last I tried. (although minnie ships are a blast to fly for level 1-3 missions)

Also I'd always forget -- always pack drones to kill scramblers and use a target painter on the raven, t2 target-painted(or the highest t1 equivilant) targets get hit hard with cruises.

[Thulos]

The funny thing about eve is most long term pilots multibox eve because it is so simple to multibox. Improvements in the server code has made multiboxing eve on big fleet ops even easy. The lag and desync issues are so much better. I was multiboxing in an 800 person fleet fight a couple weeks ago and didn't desynch once. Even loading grid is faster because you can turn off brackets which reduce the amount of stuff the client actually has to load. In addition you can turn of loading polygons for things such as drones so when there are 400 fighters zooming around they don't cause you to lag horribly. A year ago a fight of that magnitude would have been impossible.

As far as general advise goes hardcoded has given you a lot of that already and is pretty accurate. I personally do not like to use a target painter on a raven but thats because I rat in deep 0.0 space and fit my raven as a bait ship for gankers and am running around with Fighters from my Thanatos pilot. If you plan on L4 missioning in a Raven you will also want to drop the target painter and field a standard L4 tank. I also would just double box Raven's for L4 missions instead of using a Drake and a Raven. Raven's are the ultimate pve battleship in the game so you can't go wrong with them. :thumbup:

Hey hardcoded what alliance were you in?

[d0z3rr]

Considering my brain almost melted from the learning curve, I'm quite certain if I could multibox that game I'd be along the lines of Albert Einstein genius level.

Someday.....

[Thulos]

Considering my brain almost melted from the learning curve, I'm quite certain if I could multibox that game I'd be along the lines of Albert Einstein genius level.

Someday.....ROFL, the learning curve is very steep but from a pve standpoint getting into multiboxing is a lot easier and is manageable. I would only recommend multiboxing in pvp to the very advanced user. If you aren't very comfortable with it, its a very easy way to lose expensive ships. With that said you can multibox in pvp and be effective.

[hardcoded]

If you plan on L4 missioning in a Raven you will also want to drop the target painter and field a standard L4 tank. I also would just double box Raven's for L4 missions instead of using a Drake and a Raven. Raven's are the ultimate pve battleship in the game so you can't go wrong with them. :thumbup:

Hey hardcoded what alliance were you in?Agreed, except for the target painter :P

I found using the drake or nighthawk was much more effective at taking the damage than the raven, and the extra dps on medium-sized targets (and for the o sh*t scramblers) was noticeable enough for me to juggle aggro between the raven and bc. They nerfed it a noticably before I quit, but 4 LSE's, 2 passive shield mods, I forget the low slot shield mods (the ones that seriously harm your unneded cap regen) along with the shield extender rigs - your regen capacity passively exceeds (read - easy to multibox) almost all L4 missions, even after the nerf.

And I was in r0adkill, and ran VSPC. We had another guy in-corp who ran 7 or so clients, and I ran 10 along with a bunch of other hardcore players and our friends. We were around for pretty much all of the Geminate history(I was good friends with the person who wrote the majority of that page). The core of R0adkill had a lot of corps like that, and was around for most of the stuff listed http://www.eve-history.net/wiki/index.php/Geminate in the wiki (I came in around forsaken empire times, fighting 4s in my first 0.0 fights). I have to say though, my favorite time was when our corp (no alliance at the time) drove out a couple of alliances. Having no standings with a tight-knit group turned out to be a blast :)

Near the end, I can't say I knew who 1/4 of the people were.. but I did get quite a few laughs from hearing the noobs die in defense channels. But yeah, hung around Geminate for 3-4 years and had a blast. The complexity of multiboxing is the only reason that wow doesn't put me to sleep :) Eve is a refreshingly complex game that is weighted towards thought, patience and planning.

[Thulos]

And I was in r0adkill, and ran VSPC. Cool, i'm in Goonswarm (heh). Of course after just bragging about the new server code I desynched tonight in a fleet fight of 600 vs BoB and Atlas and died to a friendly double doomsday.

[hardcoded]

Yeah, goons are good folks(for being a bunch of jerks ;-p ). Glad we could go down so epically to such a good group :) It was over long before it was finally over, good to have an excuse and a memorable end.

[not5150]

I tried out EVE for a week... beautiful graphics, but DAYUM. So many options... it's like work to learn everything. Do I have to enroll in Starfleet Academy just to get my ship out of the starter system :)

[Thulos]

Yeah, goons are good folks(for being a bunch of jerks ;-p ). Glad we could go down so epically to such a good group :) It was over long before it was finally over, good to have an excuse and a memorable end.Ya, goons are definitely big jerks, but they are amusing once you understand them. I just happened to be in a corp that ended up merging under goons. We are the only non Something Awful corp in all of goonswarm. I hate how they behave sometimes but I will never leave because their forums are so unbelievably amusing to read.

[RobinGBrown]

I wouldn't recomend EVE to anyone, as it's massively biased to the veteran PVP players like Thulos and harcoded here. It will take you _YEARS_ to 'catch up' with them and there are no shortcuts on the way. The game is perversely complex, it seems made deliberately so by the developers, and a large number of the guides and other information out there is badly out of date. It is very easy to multibox though and doesn't need any helper programs as it's almost entirely mouse driven.

Walk away, just walk away, or you will spend 9+ months pissing money up a wall only to end up just as far behind the curve as you always were.

Maybe we can persude Sam Deathwalker to play it - he loves to waste money and if you spend enough you can buy your way in at a high level - it's certainly more of a challenge than WoW