Asking for suggestions on presenting EVE to the masses

All this week a group I’m part of in my college (we’re the geeks and nerds) is hosting a games expo. We have card games, board games, miniature games (Warhammer 40K anyone?), and of course, computer games.

Next Friday the topic is going to be online games and since I’m the only one of the group that plays EVE (yes, the I’m trying hard to convert them), it falls to me to present it to the masses. What I’m asking for is sugestions on how to do it. I’m a full-on miner, so I don’t have any flashy combat ships to show the folks

How would you guys go about presenting EVE to people who don’t even know it exists?

Alts and metagaming

First of all, the important stuff: I got the idea for this post from Mynxee’s blog – go and check it out, people, you’ll be happy you did. Anyway, in one of her posts, Mynxee says that:

someone responded to one of my forum posts with the claim that using an alt was a form of metagaming and that the use of alts was ruining the game.

She disagrees, and suggests that someone write a lenghtier post about it. I was dry on ideas for posts, so I’m going to turn pirate for a few minutes and steal that idea .

I’m all in favor of alts and wish I had one. I’m running EVE on an old laptop, so running two clients at the same time would probably kill it for good, but if it weren’t for that, I’d be running two characters all the time. Mining  with a hauler standing right there is the best way to mine, you don’t have to fear ore thieves and you’re in a gang so you can finally make use of that Mining Foreman V skill you have just sitting on the shelf. Most of my corp mates have an alt (one of them actually has 8!) and those that don’t are thinking of getting one.

Now, I understand that for someone who doesn’t have the disposable income to run more than one character, someone else having two or more sounds very unfair, but I don’t see the problem. Sure they can mine faster, and yes, by having characters that specialize in different things they see more of the game than you do, but does this diminish your fun? No it doesn’t. You still get to do all the things they do, it will just take you a bit longer to get there, that’s all. And if you want it so bad, just cough up the cash and run an alt for a month or two. Give up smoking and you’ll find that your cash flow goes trough the roof (trust me on this one).

This isn’t WoW, where the fact that you didn’t have the latest Tier 14 gear meant that no one invited you to raids. This is EVE, folks! Tech I gear is still the most prevalent and cheapest way to fly and fight. Turning on the meanness, I think that people that complain about others having alts and that they are “ruining the game” suffer from the “They are having more fun than me!” syndrome. This is where a person feels that someone else is having more fun than they are (whether in game or in Real Life) and that that should not be allowed. Either we are all laughing our collective keisters off, having the best loot and the most fun or we are all doing “Kill Ten Rats” missions until the Universe explodes. A middle ground is impossible. Meanness off.

Mining Spreadsheet 1.1

I have finally gotten up from my lazy behind and updated the Mining Spreadsheet. I’ve added all the ores in the game, along with a nifty calculator than factors in station taxes based on your standing. This calculation isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough

There are bound to be some mistakes in there, so if you find any, please let me know, and I’ll fix them. Full credit will be given, of course

Mining Spreadsheet 1.1

Has skill changing affected your Real Life?

This question came to me on Monday. I only had morning classes, so I was free to do whatever I wanted during the afternoon. A friend invited me over for dinner, and I was planning to spend some time with a different group of friends, just goofing off, and then go straight to her house for dinner. Then it hit me: I had a skill that finished training at six. Now, I knew that if I went to dinner without going to my house first, I’d only be getting back home at around midnight (turned out to be around 2 am) and there was absolutely no way I was going to to let myself loose 6 (8) hours of training, I just wasn’t. So I came home and changed the skill, missing out on a couple of hours of fun with my friends, just for the sake of EVE… What have I become? .

So the question I have for you guys is if you’ve ever done something like this. Have you ever woken up in the wee hours of the morning just to change a skill (I’m guilty of that one myself)? Have you ever changed plans that you had because of a skill change? Or am I alone in my obsession with not wasting a single second of training time?

Ghost training

If you’ve seen this, you’ll know that CCP is going to disable so called “ghost training”, which is defined as an account that is inactive but still has skills training. How does this work? Suppose your account is due to run out tomorrow. You choose a long training skill (Gallente Battleship, for example, takes 41 days to train) and let your account run out. 40 days later, you reactivate it and you just had 40 days of training for free. From what I hear, this was actually promoted as part of the appeal of EVE when the game first came out.

Now, the forums are already seething with folks who are against this measure by CCP. From the usual “I’m going to quit!” , “You’re going to loose hundreds of costumers!”, to the always funny “You’re just trying to make more money out of us!” (it’s a company, what did you expect, that CCP would give you the game?)

My personal opinion on this is that if CCP wants to cut this out, I’m okay with that. It won’t affect me, and it will help to make things somewhat fairer for folks who actually pay for their alts.

Not quite revenge, but still sweet

Something happened to me yesterday while I was doing what? Mining, of course The same pirate that robbed my can showed up in my belt. Now, after our first encounter, I took the trouble to not only set my standings to him to -10, but also to add him to my AdressBook, in a special folder for bad guys. It pays to do this, since you always know when potential trouble makers are online.

Moving on: he shows up and promptly robs one of my wrecks. Rude, and looking for a fight he was. After that he started bumping me to no end, but I always managed to stay inside of the 15Km range of my MSMII’s, so it was more of a nuisance than anything else. Because of my new and improved cargo capacity, I don’t jetcan mine anymore, and he must have gotten bored with me. Here comes the best part: he got so bored, in fact, that he warped away and logged off……leaving his 5 beautiful Hammerhead I‘s behind They are now the latest addition to my collection. Just like it says in the title, not quite revenge, but still sweet.

Habit

Habit can be a dangerous thing. When you’ve done the same thing over and over again, you stop thinking about it. After all, things have always been like this, they could never be different, so why bother thinking about them? The danger lies exactly in that, because when things change, you don’t notice them and that can be fatal, especially in EVE.

When I was can flipped, I was appalled. That had never happened before, and I’ve been mining for a long time, since I first started playing this game. Because not being stolen from had become a habit, I was not ready for when things changed. Stagnation is death. So I had to change.

I went with choice number 2, Rigs. I got my Hulk some Cargohold Optimization I rigs, which gave me a 15% cargohold bonus each. That in itself was pretty good. But thanks to yomma’s excellent suggestion, I started using some GSCs in my cargo hold. Incredible devices that use the 4th dimension to it’s fullest, these containers actually have more space inside them (3900 m3) than the space they take up (3000 m3). Ah, the marvels of science.

The rigs and the GSCs combined allow my Hulk to ferry some 20K (give or take) m3 of ore, not quite a jetcan in itself, but pretty impressive none the less. Cargo mining has become my new way of mining. I have changed.

This change, combined with the startling discovery that I had been, for the past 2 weeks, mining the wrong ore, has really livened up my mining hours, so I guess getting robbed was the best that could have happened to me

I was robbed!

So, there I was, mining my own business (ha! I crack me up), happily filling my jetcan with some lovely Pyroxerers, when a ship jumps into the belt. No problem there, he was probably just ratting. Then it happened, he started getting closer. Crap, I thought, here we go. I stopped my mining lasers and recalled my drones. Transferred as much ore as I could from the can to my cargo hold, but there was still a lot in the can. And he did it, he flipped my can, then just stood there, hoping I’d retaliate. No way I’m that stupid, so I just warped off back to station. He then sent me an Eve-mail thanking me for the ore and saying that it had been a pleasure doing business with me. Meh, if it makes him that happy to taunt me, he must not have much else going for him in life, poor guy.

I’ve been playing this game for some time now, and this was the first time I came face to face with a real life ore thief, never happened before. I know EVE is just a game, but it kinda bothered me that I had just been robbed and I guess the fact that I was bothered added another layer of victory for him. Still, it was something new to experience, and I am nothing if not opened to new experiences in EVE.

After consulting with my corp mates (none of which was close by, unfortunately), we reached the conclusion that I had only two choices:

1) Get another account to act as a hauler. I’ve thought about this, and I’m willing to give it a try. However, my computer is so old I think Lincoln probably used this same model, I have no idea if it can run two EVE clients at the same time. I tried to create a 14 day free trial, to see if I could run both clients at the same time, but CCP has (and wisely, in my opinion) prevented folks from running both a full account and a trial at the same time, so the only way for me to test this is to get another paid account. I’ll get back to you on that.

2) Rigs! If I install some rigs in my Hulk, I can increase its cargo capacity, not only making mining easier, but also helping me cut my loses if the ore theft happens again. I have two options in this, Cargohold Optimization I and II. One costs around 40M and the other 280M. Yeah, guess which one I’m going to go for?

Mining Spreadsheet

Took me long enough, I know, but here, finally, in all it’s glory, it’s …*drum roll*… the Mining Spreadsheet!!! And the crowd goes wild!

Actually, the crowd does not go wild, no .Since wensley asked me for it, I’ve been working on making the Excel spreadsheet I use a little prettier, adding some bells and whistles. Right now, it only works with Pyroxeres and Kernite, sorry. It’s still a work in progress, I have a couple of ideas that will make it more useful, but it works, so I’m giving it to you guys to use as you please. Change it, delete it, love it, hate it, do as you will. But please let me know what you think of it .

Mining Spreadsheet 1.0

Data Mining

Data Mining, as defined by Wikipedia, is “the process of sorting through large amounts of data and picking out relevant information”. I think I’ve come up with a slightly different definition: Data Mining is Mining for Data. Allow me to explain:

I, as a miner, am interested in getting the most ISK out of my Mining Crystal II’s. That means that I try to mine only the most valuable ore I can find. In the region of space I’m in, that is sometimes Kernite, but mostly Pyroxeres. And besides that, I try to mine the rare types (the ones that give 10% and 5% bonuses to yield) first. So far, all of this is normal, and expected of a miner. What makes me different is what I do with that ore.

I don’t simply dump it in my hangar and then refine it, no sir. First I like to analyze it. How much did I mine today? Why? Do I have more Solid Pyroxeres because they are simply more abundant or did something prevent me from getting at the Viscious Pyroxeres? Did I mine more today or yesterday? These questions help me understand the way I mine and find ways to improve it. Mining is not just about the skills (although they play a major role, of course). The way you fly your Hulk around the belts also plays a big part in determining if you fill a can in 20 minutes or 30. 10 minutes don’t seem like much, but after an hour I have 3 full cans against your 2. It makes a lot of difference in the long run.

So, what kind of “Data Mining” do I get out of my ore? Well, type and quantity is an obvious answer. I have a nice Excel sheet set up  where I can just place the amount of ore I’ve mined and it tells me its predicted sell value. The amount of minerals that each ore yields is known (check Halada’s guide) so all I have to do is figure out is the average price for each mineral. For that, I thank the Matari Mineral Index. I put it all together and presto, I now have a record that helps me during the mining day to see how much I’ve mined so far and  that records how much I’ve mined in the past. This, in turn, helps me to predict future income, which is useful to no end. I’ve even set up a little graph that charts my income .

Do any of you guys use a similar system or have a suggestion for improvements on my own? Let me know in the comments!