How goes it in Eve land?

[Redbeard]

Was driving home from Walmart and my brain said "Man I should check out whats going on in Eve".

You guys still chugging along? I see a new expac is coming out soon.

Considering bringing my 6 children back to play.

[Redbeard]

Ended up reactivating 5.

I am glad I left myself in a fairly good spot this time. These are all decent at both mining and missioning.

I need to reorient myself, looking around it looks like there has been some significant changes to both mining and missioning so I have to see if what I was doing is still viable.

[Morganti]

I'm playing 5. I see a random in the dual-boxing.com chat channel once in awhile, but overall I would call it pretty quiet community-wise. Doing level 4's in 2 nightmares/2 basilisks/noctis and I'm looking at a new level 5 setup (all T3 cruisers) and a lowsec pvp setup (harbingers) now that I'm using isboxer video feeds. Kicking myself for missing the factional warfare isk faucet that recently got patched, but oh well. Still making enough doing level 4's to plex all 5 accounts, even at 600mil a piece, but it requires a lot of time and precise agent location (I do 5 agents within 4 jumps of each other on 3 different guys....currently running 9 different versions of 'Enemies Abound').

[Redbeard]

I keep seeing reference to new AI... I was running 5 drakes for a while.. and then working on upgrading to tengus / golems for L4s. Anything gonna cause me an issue there? All my ships run their own tank so theoretically it shouldnt matter who is taking fire.

On the mining front it looks like either hulks got nerfed or covetors bumped... maybe i will just fly covetors, 1/5 the cost (or was at least).

[Morganti]

Tengu's and Drake's main missile system (heavy missile launcher) is getting a dps nerf. Golem torp's are getting a little buff. Assault missiles are getting a buff (drakes will probably go with these for small scale pvp and stick to HML for blobs). All of the mining barges were redone to fit into one of three roles (tanked/big ore bay/best yield). Mackinaws are now the "go to" barge for everything (they have the big ore hold for the T2 barges). Retrievers are the T1 version of Mack's and both have a huge ore bay. Ice mining isn't worth doing unless in mass with all the possible boosts you can think of.

[Redbeard]

I wonder if there is a new king to be crowned with the apparent Caldari nerfing going on.

I am up to try anything other than drones... My main char has max level drone skills and I eventually wrote them off before even boxing the game due to the inconveniences.

[Morganti]

Drones are a pain, I agree. I usually don't put them out on more than one or two guys at a time due to spawns targeting them, but they are required for killing frigates closer than 20km where my Nightmares can't kill them. Hurricane is getting nerfed a bit too, so it's not just Caldari.

[Steel Dragon]

Drones arnt bad if you go the ishtar / vexor / domi route. Tank the ship crap out sentrys and have them assist your primary pilot very low interaction and huge dps boost to your primary ship. You can also do a spider tank domi build with a ishtar for strong tanking high dps if you want to go the drone route. Personaly ill stick to my 5x tengu just going to hams instead of hmls.

[Redbeard]

Hey Dragon,

Can you explain how HMLs -> HAMs will change your play style?

I need to read up... if I recall correctly, HAMs were more damage but shorter range, eh?

[Morganti]

HAM's are shorter range, better against small targets. More in your face play instead of sit back and spew missiles. Turn on your AB on all your guys and hit 'regroup' on your FC's fleet hud and all your guys will orbit you at 2500. You 'steer' with the one guy and the others try to keep up with him (like an incursion anchor essentially) and pound crap with missiles at short range. I'd like to do this with my harbingers, but I think I'm going to hose up my transversal badly if I do...missiles should work fine though.