Recommend 4 ships/careers for me!

[jimbobobb]

Long time MMOer, started with MUDs, then UO, then AO, then WoW - finally decided to try an MMO without an acronym, and here I am plunged into Eve. I must say I absolutely love the game and a huge thanks to komtor for sending me the 21day trial. I'm a huge nerd, and the whole min/maxing and tactical aspect of the game is just drawing me in like no other. That said, I am still a newbie, and would love some advice from those more experienced.

Currently running four accounts. Will eventually set up innerspace (and that will probably spawn a new thread from me) but for now am just alt tabbing a bunch. At the moment I'm just through the tutorial, have been running some random level 1's and about to start the level one epic quest line, but of course I have to start planning early.

Basically the first thing I did was buy an ECC code for each guy, and immediately sold one plex for 300mil and then used the other one to turn them into real accounts. So money is not a problem. I bought them all basic implants and then neural remapped all my points into mem/int and started the learning talents. I just finished up my first tier (rank 1) learning talents to 4 and will have the 5s out of the way by next week. I then plan on taking the 2nd tier (rank 3)learning talents to level 4, and Evemon tells me that will take another 25 days, but want to basically have my careers kind of planned out.


I was thinking (my guys are gallente)

1 - pilot, aiming towards more leadership skills as well to hopefully pilot a command ship eventually

2 - Logistics Pilot

3 - bwah? was thinking electronics/ops and scanning, and if that's not realistic, then something in industry

4 - Miner/salvager


I kind of wanted to be able to try everything, but is this realistic for boxing? Would it be infinitely easier if the guys were all basically the same? Or one leader type and then 3 combat pilots? I have another 3 weeks while I finish up learning skills and basically just fool around in the game so I have a bit of time to get more of a feel for the game, but wanted to ask those with experience if this kind of thing is feasible or if I'll be kicking myself for trying this. Thanks much - any and all input is welcome.

[RobinGBrown]

I'd recommend having them all go miner to start with. It takes about two months or so to skill up for using a Hulk and a lot of the skills will be useful later.

The advantage of doing this is that it will be much easier to earn some ISK in game by mining and taking those two months will get you over some of the gotchas at the start of the game.

Once all your chars can mine you can either train them further into whatever ships you want or start other characters on the same accounts.

As to further careers start with frigates and train one of each Interceptors/Assault Ships/Stealth Bomber/Elec Warfare. Go Tech II frigates before moving to cruisers

After that move up to cruisers then tech II cruisers - Logistics/Command/Heavy Assault/Recon

Then finally move up to battlships then tech II battleships - Black Ops/?? (I forget which is the other tech II battleship)

Have each character specialise in a type of ship and weapon system that progressess nicely

Assault > Heavy Assault > Tech II Battleship
Stealth Bomber > Recon > Black Ops

The one thing NOT to do is go straight for tech I battleships - it takes forever to train the weapon skills you need for large tech II weapons and without them your ships will be pointless.

[Meeo]

It honestly boils down to what you want out of the game. I currently run 7 accounts across 4 machines, i only use a KM multiplexer to use each one, unlike kroms mega mouse setup. Below are a basic idea of what my toons do. To say the least, you can try everything you want to, there is no wrong way to try something, don't let anyone else tell you other wise. Depending on the reasoning/drive you have to play the game, myself had the idea to try everything as well so i am.

Some people will argue to strictly do this or that, but there is no fun in that. RobinG's suggestion for mining is right on the dot, i dont recommend mining if you dont like, so dont force yourself to do it. I enjoy mining so my miners are mining quite a bit at the same time im flying around doing pvp on 2 toons. Screen/Toon Management is a key thing, they better setup you are to do the more enjoyable the experience.

Based on the below descriptions, i also must say that i jumped around a lot, it slowed down my overall end goals, but i dont regret it really. Im currently enjoying myself in the new providence area running with a great group of people, its a slow process right now since we just moved there, but well see in a month or 2 if im still playing LOL.

--
1 toon is a recon/force recon/stealth bomber/cyno alt for scouting and cyno'ing. This toon cannot mine and will never mine, as she is the only eyes and ears i have when doing my thing in 0.0.

I have 1 combat pilot who serves as my main, who hops around a bit skill wise but is primarily a Tengu pilot until i can get him into a Command Ship, he also has the ability to fly caldari Logistics, but i rarely use him for that. He can also mine in a Hulk, bare minimum ability however.

My 3rd toon is my ace in the hole, so to speak. He is a Domi/Megathron BS5 pilot with spec skills for every sized hybrid weapon. This toon also is my main toon for Gate camps, as he is also a Heavy Interdictor pilot.

I have 2 other multi-role toons, Both Fly tech 3 cruiser (Tengu and Loki), each also does another role, 1 being a carrier/triage pilot and the other being my freighter/jump freighter pilot, These 2 are my main miners, fully loaded with +4 skill in each processing skill, and exhumers5, upgrades5, these 2 are my work horses.

my 6th toon is my Orca/Rorqual Pilot, who is currently skilling to be a my new primary jump freighter pilot, so i dont have to re-task one of my other toons when they are mining or doing combat work.

Then last but not least my 7th toon, is a highsec afk freighter pilot, lvl 5 Salvager, and Corp Management toon with Empire control 5 for when ever i make my own corp.

[Kromtor]

It sounds like you're doing the right thing with learning skills but it's difficult to have the patience to train the second tier of them to 4 when you're just starting out. Good luck with that.

Couple things to note:
Don't bother training up charisma learning skills on a character unless you are going to use him for leadership (gang boosting). Gang boosting benefits become very substantial when you're in a ship that gives bonuses to it, you're using 3 or more modules for it, and you have an implant that doubles their effectiveness. So you're definitely right to want one guy in a command ship (best ship for gang boosting) just make sure you're headed into the command ship that is going to give you the bonuses you want to be gang boosting.

If you want to gank people in PvP there's probably no better way to do it than have at least 1 person in a recon. You can probe out active ships, warp to them while cloaked, warp disrupt them from afar while sensor dampening them so they can't target you back while you have your other ships move in for the kill.

Don't get the wrong idea about mission running - they make absolutely no money until level 4's but with four chars you could do level 4 missions very fast (just have your leadership character do them and have the others help) and you'd make about as much money as mining. The real benefit is you'll be training skills that help you in combat.

The fact that you are gallente isn't that important, you can still go any direction you want as far as ships go.

I'm starting to lose focus, I can't make up my own mind about what I want to fly long term so I can't give much advice. A recon ship would be great. A interdictor or heavy interdictor is what you want if you want to camp gates. You can provide the actual DPS killing muscle with whatever you want from assault ships (small, cheap low dps) to heavy assault ships, to battleships, battlecruisers. Everything works if you have a good combo. Maybe let us know what actual ships you intend to fly specifically and we can point you around to potential better alternatives.

[Kromtor]

i think jimbob has gone into a medically induced coma to help pass the time while waiting for his initial learning skills to finish. i support.

[Gurblash]

That first few days is a brutal wait. Especially if you don't have 3+ implants.

[jimbobobb]

Incoming rediculously rambly, hard to understand wall of text - TLDR version at bottom!


No coma! Sorry, had a super busy week at work, and just general innability to check the boards. Thanks a ton for the advice everyone. Right now I'm 12.5 days from having all my learnings kills done as far as I plan on taking them (rank 1s to 5 and rank 2s to 4). I like the go miner advice, and do plan on getting 3 characters to at least the minimum to pilot a hulk (Evemon says 50 days on that) while taking the 4th character further and eventually into industry/research.

Here is where is gets kind of strange for me....I wonder if I am being silly, but the min/maxer in me is telling me that before I do my 2nd remap, I should try to get the memory/int type skills that are just generally usefull across the board done.

In my humble newbie opinion, things like...

Engineering to V
Electronics to V
Jury RIgging and armor/shield rigging skills to IV or V
Mechanic type stuff to V
then some drone skills to V as well
(all the skills I laid out here plus a few others will take about another 90 days according to evemon)

And THEN remap and go my combat/spec ops way. Evemon tells me my current plan will take about 150 days including everything - so at the end of those 150 days I'll basically have the basic 'everyone should probably have this' stuff, plus be able to pilot a hulk. This means basically I can spend the next 4-5 months running around in my four destroyers fooling around in level one and two missions and doing some mining and maybe fooling around in lowsec with some frigates - just getting to know the game while I let skills cook. Like Meeo said it's what you want from the game, and I'm happy doing what I'm doing right now, but is this normal? Or do people remap right into their per/will and just go nuts on the ship skills?


It looks like I eventually want to really set up....

Main char
Start towards piloting a Proteus (I seem to read lots of good things about the strategic cruise ships) then eventually some kind of command ship, maybe an eos, otherwise a HAC maybe

Secondary/Logistics
Oneiros

Covert ops guy
Helios/Sin

Industry guy
Miner/Salvage after missions

Also at night I have been just starting my guys mining an asteroid in high-sec and then just go to bed, to wake up to a cargo full of minerals in the morning. Haven't gotten exploded yet doing this - good idea, or have I just been extremely lucky?


A few questions:

Is my sick min/maxing head being stupid by basically delaying my 'real' progression towards what I want to fly by almost 5 months? Really I'm having fun just smashing level ones and flying around in space right now - I'm in no hurry.


Do I need a logistics ship? Right now all my guys are flying a catalyst with one shield transfer aray each - I basically just all focus on whoever is taking damage, and they can keep them full even through an entire room aggro type situation - I just have cap problems right now is all. Games like WoW make me think I need healing/a dedicated healer, but would it be better to just have 'attack' type ships and just blow stuff up before it has a chance to even hit me?

Robin you give very detailed advice about how to proceed in terms of ships, but do you recommend you go that route even if you want to specialize the characters? Like if I'm shooting for a special ops character, should I still try to advance him more or less the same way as my main, or should they take the shortest path to their respective goal ships?

Meeo you said you don't regret flopping back and forth all over the place - how long did it take you to get your characters where they are now even with the flopping? It seems this game is very much about the long term, and everyone says not planning for it is death, but you seem to have a great group.

Kromtor how long did it take you before you were running level 4s? I'm making a small amount of money running 1s and a bit of mining, just curious how much you can realistically expect to make from running level 4 missions mixed in with some mining?

Sorry for the wall of text ;-/

TLDR version:

I'm a silly completist min-maxer - am I being stupid planning for like 2 years down the line if it delays my 'progression' now?

Should I take all my characters through all the ship advancement lanes to start, or take them to the ships I want them to eventually pilot as fast as possible?

How long till people can run level 4s on average, and how much money can you expect to make from that?

[RobinGBrown]

Hey Jimbobob

EVE is a minmaxers heaven, especially as there are very few 'right' ways to progress. the one I suggested is just how I would do it if I was starting out multiboxing, it's not how I actually did it, that was incredibly more fumbling around and wasting time than you can possibly imagine.

Gettign ships skills early is a rookie mistake. Flying a battleship without being able to tank _and_ DPS is just asking for your expensive battleship to be blown up and there's only so much of being blown up that you can afford, and battleships are cheap compared to some of the tech II ships out there.

Regarding specialization there's a broad set of skills that are required for every class of ship regardless of the specialization. If you can't tank a frigate then you won't be able to tank a cruiser. You have to learn tech II small guns before you can use tech II medium guns, and so on.

So all your chars will have the common skills they need plus their individual specialisations.

I'd recommend mining with your firct character on each account and then starting second characters on each account for the combat - there's some loss of progression that way but not enough to counter the bonus skills when you start out and the fact that you'll be able have your miners in one place with their ships and your combat chars in another location with their ships and be able to switch between the sets of characters.

My favourite thing about EVE is the planning game - I love 'Evil Genius' mode.

Grrr, all this talk of EVE has made we want to play it again, curse you Jimbobob!

[Kromtor]

Your plans sound good, get the learning skills in advance and I like the ship ideas (proteus backed up by logistics is a brick of hell thats hard to kill). I don't think you need a person devoted to mining/salvaging. I think you're going to wish you had him in another logistics or DPS ship. Logistics ships really shine when they have another logistics buddy because you can transport capacitor back and forth to each other to generate shitloads of cap which you can use for more ship repairing. Any old pilot can hop in a destroyer after missions and salvage all the wrecks. And if you really get serious about mining you'll want all your guys trained into it.

If you end up doing level 4's you'll want a lot more DPS because there is a lot to kill in missions. But you have a good setup for ganking and you can always take your covert ops pilot onward into recon ships which are some of the most OP ships in small gang warfare.

[Shabu42]

Off topic: but wow, I tried the trial once for a couple of minutes, love the idea of the game, just didnt really get used to it. But I read some of these posts, it is so confusing if you dont know what they are in game lol. Out of curiosity, how long does it take to catch up to most avg players, like how long it takes to get to 80 with like a 5.2k gs

[Kromtor]

you can be competitive and having fun in small gangs in a month or two unless you want to get your learning skills way up first

[RobinGBrown]

Off topic: but wow, I tried the trial once for a couple of minutes, love the idea of the game, just didnt really get used to it. But I read some of these posts, it is so confusing if you dont know what they are in game lol. Out of curiosity, how long does it take to catch up to most avg players, like how long it takes to get to 80 with like a 5.2k gs

first of all you can't compare wow levels to eve characters, it doesn't work the same way at all.

eve characters are open ended - in effect it's as if there were no level cap so they just keep on getting better as time goes by - after a while the incremental increase gets less but you're looking at at least several years of play before that starts to happen

the downside of that is that it's _impossible_ to catch up with another player who started before you and this is one of the major problems with eve

this also forces players to join into groups - and as a multiboxer one thing I really dislike is being forced to group

that said it takes about a year to get to be decent at some of the smaller ships but you're looking at three years to get to carriers


p.s. I do mean _years_ it's not a typo, eve is a very slow game with regards to improving characters

[jimbobobb]

Just an update:

Man I LOVE this game - I still wow it up, but this game just gives my inner space nerd so much more than WoW.

My four guys basically took Robin's advice and started down the mining path. They're sitting in retrievers now (well one guy just hauls in his Iteron IV basically - filling up a can every 6-9 minutes is awesome), working their way towards hulks, with the main also headed towards an orca. Joined a mining corp that of course folded about 3 weeks into it, but it's pretty nice just semi-afk mining in .5 space, making a decent amount, while I plan out my mission runners. Definitely used the 1.99 thing to buy 3 new accounts, who are going to be my mission running trio. Am currently running a faction guide I found with them, and will see where that takes me - the goal is to have them all plus 6-8 with every single faction. It looks pretty possible from all the math, and the way it's set up and at my pace, it will just take a year - but it's fun, and it's a goal! What is everyone else up to?

[Meeo]

Current in the process of moving my toons from Providence 0.0 space up to the far far north to hang with -Mostly Harmless- and the rest of the Northern Coalition. If you need any standings blitzed, i can assist in Caldari space for a bit, i can blitz level 4s with you in the fleet to get the standings split, and all the loot.

Hit me up on Cirocke, im usually on a bit.

For a mission runner, i would highly recommend Social III or IV, Diplo III or IV, and Connections III at least. This will greatly assist getting you into level4s faster. However, that being said you would still need around meta4 fit or t2 fit (t2 preferred), BC to solo level 4s easily. But then again i have seen people do them in multi-cruisers before, its just a matter of experience at that point.

[Yopie Ismypie]

Ive been boxing in eve now for 6 months. Currently, I have 3 miners, a transporter and 2 mission runners. Is there a corp that other boxers are in? I would love to be in a corp with other boxers.

Yopie

[RobinGBrown]

I think everyone either runs their own corp (like I do so that it's easier to share inventory amongst characters) or has joined a big corp to play with.

I tried to form an alliance of multiboxer corps with Souca a while back but it turns out that alliances are expensive in terms of extra skills and running costs. Still like everything in EVE you learn by trying.

But I'd be up for creating and/or joining a multiboxing corp if anyone is interested? Although there's always the problem of everyone having their own favourite patch of space to play in.

[Meeo]

Ive been boxing in eve now for 6 months. Currently, I have 3 miners, a transporter and 2 mission runners. Is there a corp that other boxers are in? I would love to be in a corp with other boxers.

Yopie

Yopie, what TZ are you in if i might ask. Im in a large alliance. that is part of the northern coalition. I am currently looking for those who would like to come out and do Indy production and mining in 0.0 space, with some PVP (if you would like, with no requirements). Not to mention the Anom/Plex chaining running generates a lot of iskies.

Contact me in game on Cirocke

[aboron]

I think everyone either runs their own corp (like I do so that it's easier to share inventory amongst characters) or has joined a big corp to play with.

I tried to form an alliance of multiboxer corps with Souca a while back but it turns out that alliances are expensive in terms of extra skills and running costs. Still like everything in EVE you learn by trying.

But I'd be up for creating and/or joining a multiboxing corp if anyone is interested? Although there's always the problem of everyone having their own favourite patch of space to play in.


I have an alliance that I created when our little group left a failed large alliance. We want to keep it small but don't really care what the member corps do (as long as they follow alliance standings lists don't create diplo problems for us out in 0.0 )

If any boxer corps are interested in tacking in with us hit me up in the in-game dual-boxing.com channel, i'll be the "Neo" guy idling in there (now that i know about it).