I was on holiday for a week, and it hurt. I’ve spent time away from my PC before, and going back to my Mum’s house means I can always pull the ol’ SNES out from underneath the bed, but it was different this time. No amount of Mario Kart or Streetfighter II could hide the fact that I was really missing EVE. Oh God, I think I may have a problem.
I’d set Spaceship Command to train to level 4, but that’s only a four day job. I was going to miss a good three days training time - three important days in my quest to upgrade from frigates to cruisers… but I handled it, man. I’m okay. It’s fine. I think, in the future though, I won’t leave the house, ever. I might miss something. Like the war.
Two days before I went home I received an in-game email from CONCORD, the EVE universes’ police force. A corporation calling itself Ruthless.com had officially declared war on StateCorp. We had twenty-four hours to marshal our forces before the shooting began. It was scary, it was exciting, it was destined to be bloody… until CONCORD declared the declaration null and void less than two weeks later, without a shot being fired.
Ruthless.com consisted of one person, one numpty in a ship somewhere who didn’t like our name. Rumblings in the chat channel connected him to alliances that were aligned against the greater good that StateCorp is part of, the thinking being that our corp was just one of many targeted as a political action, rather than an outright military one.
Not that it bothered me, mind. I was still zipping around in known space, amassing a meager fortune from my agent at the State War Academy. A bonus reward of the Amarr frigates skill pack meant that I was able to learn to fly new ships – and soon the Merlin-class Winsborough’s Revenge was joined by Ripley’s Bane, an Amarr Punisher-class frigate with the amalgamated looks of the eponymous Alien and a giant space-penis.
In combat situations, the Merlin packs missile launcher hardpoints, as well as a couple of turrets. It’s able to soften up targets from range before closing in and finishing them off with railguns. The Punisher, however, is all about the turrets, so it requires different tactics. There’s no pussy-footing about - you have to go straight for the throat, getting inside the enemies own turret range and hoping your guns are bigger than his. There’s also another hi-slot left vacant, perfect for a Smartbomb. Anyone with memories of 8-bit gaming will remember how the Smartbomb cleared the screen of the Bad Men, giving Our Hero the chance to fight again. In EVE it’s not that powerful, but it does send out an omni-directional pulse that will damage anything within, say 5 clicks of your ship.
They’re handy for close range fighters like the Punisher – in lieu of missiles to take down enemy shields, a Micro Graviton Smartbomb gives you that little bit of extra ooomph. Just don’t use them next to a stargate.
In CONCORD patrolled space – rated security level 0.5 to 1.0 – local military and CONCORD ships guard stargates, guaranteeing safe passage. If you open fire on another player ship, you had better make sure you can outrun a bullet, because they will take you down. However, around some stargates there will sometimes be NPC pirates – Guiristas or Angels or the like. You can earn a few bob while coasting towards the gate by popping them and lifting whatever cargo they jettison… but if, say, you have a Smartbomb, and if, say, you use it too close to a guarded stargate….
BANG! WHAM! Down goes Ripley’s Bane, first and last ship of that name. Thankfully, CONCORD don’t stoop to pod killing, so I was able to jet to safety, and the sanctuary of my newly built Moa-class Cruiser The Excellent Question.
It had taken a while to get the skills together to properly fly the Moa – not only do you need the Frigates skill at level four, but to fly a level 3 Cruiser, you obviously need the Cruiser skill at level 3. Arqueturus, StateCorp’s resident Wise Old Man, with almost two years of game time to his name (and a personal fortune of nearly 600m ISK), not only gifted me a newly built ship, but the guns and other modules necessary. All I had to do was let skills train.
But which one to start with? To use the shield hardeners (“Very important MPK” says Arq) you need Tactical Shield Manipulation – but to train that you have to have Engineering at level 4 . To train the cruiser-class medium hybrid turrets skill, you need the small Frigate version at level 3, and Gunnery at level 1. To fly something like a Heavy Assault ship needs eight, nine, ten skills, most at level 5… and to get even a rank 1 skill to level 5 requires more than three weeks of training.
Where do you start?
While we waited, Arq, deValhubert and I went rat hunting in Sotrenzur. I was loaned a Cormorant, a Caldari destroyer armed to the teeth we set off through the systems’ asteroid belts. Some rats at belt one, none at two, or three. deV, in the fastest ship, boosted off ahead, scouting, and somewhere I got separated trying to keep up with him. Faced with six rats in cruisers, I wasn’t too bothered. Sure, the Cobra Mk III was slow, but she was sturdy and equipped with seven medium turrets. BANG! WHAM! I took the first guy down! BANG! WHAM! I knocked out the second… while steadily failing to notice that my shields were gone and my armor was being quickly depleted by the five remaining ships…
M Piquet > I’m at a different belt
deValhubert > Warp to us
deValhubert > Right click on Gang
M Piquet > Found some rats. Little ‘uns
M Piquet > Sot iX belt 1
deValhubert > omw
arqueturus> i’ll save this liquidator for you 2
M Piquet > Okay, so not so little
arqueturus > are you going to leave?
M Piquet > Um
M Piquet > Bits of me are
M Piquet > I’m leaving some behind
…and so fell the good ship Cobra Mk III, captained by a numpty…
Back in Uosuosokko, a day later, I was still reeling from the blow of losing Ripley’sBane to ignorance and further numptiness, but I felt that taking the Moa out for a spin would soothe the troubles. However, a warning that you should stay docked and away from any and all figures of authority for at least thirty minutes after igniting their wrath came just a tad too late – I watched The Excellent Question undock from the station, turned away, and when I turned back she was gone.
Three ships in less than one day. That’s the EVE learning curve for you. So I hid. I hid in the station and I cried. I had one last ship, my big, fat hauler Badgers Are Fun, and that was good for nothing but AFK mining and large-scale transport. I hid until it was safe to go out, and then I decided to do something sedentary and safe, something that didn’t involve shooting. Like AFK mining.
Looking back, it’s easy to see where I made the mistake, because it’s plainly obvious. I went for low yield, high profit ores, and I choose a 0.4 system to do it in. If you open fire on another player ship in 0.4 space, CONCORD wont come to their help, which is why pirates thrive there. I found this out when someone called Princess Alvilda first scrambled my warp engines and then shot my big, fat hauler out from under me. Unable to go anywhere in my life pod, thanks to her scramblers, I was at her mercy. “Gimme a million ISK or I’ll kill you” she said, adding a completely unnecessary smiley.
“And if I give you it, you’ll shoot me anyway,” I retorted. Honour amongst pirates? Yeah, right. “No deal.”
I closed the chat window. She opened up her guns. One day, four ships, one lifepod. M Piquet lives on thanks to the wonders of cloning, but that one day of ignorance will live on forever in his, my, mind. That was the day when EVE became something more than a child’s playground, and became the real, dangerous world that it really is.