EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi Aurelius,

Welcome to the game! As an altaholic of the highest order - last count I am over 100 , though not all subbed at the moment due to irl - I would like to present some of the work of others, as well as add my two cents.

I am going to break this down by quality of life and purpose, and then ease of life.
At some point in your EVE career you are going to have to make decisions regarding the qualify of life you want in EVE.

This mostly will tie into how you tend to generate your ISK or Plex subscription fees. They are seperated into things that are pure qualfity of life or PVP improvement living outside of hisec, vs more income generation oriented ones.

These often overlap so the ones that are suitable for your chosen playstyles should be first choices. They will focus on Characters and Assets. Characters being comprised of location/affiliation/and SP as the relevant stats. As the saying goes, its not what you know... it is who you know. This applies when you wish to play during a traditional downtime for one friend group, or wish to get away from a situation that does not interest you at the moment.

Each category is broken down by order of general importance in terms of priorities for alt/ main skilling and slot planning.

Keep in mind that the general assumption is that pvp is at least not uninteresting to you and so will be prepped for by your main - if not for offensive reasons, simply to keep your stuff in your wallet and hangar.

That said,

Income Generation: The spice must flow...



1. Market Alt - This is a lifestyle improvement before it becomes an income generation one. Being able to have a characters permenantly logged out in Jita 4-4 is a high quality of life improvement. You are able to quickly buy things for your PVP characters and courier it to Null, low, or wh space. This same toon can also be a cyno from Jita to a lowsec station if you end up using capitals of any type. A Market alt you can Margin trade, spec, manipulate the region with if that is your area of interest. This alt may also eventually get hauling skills if you do not outsource your trade hauling (you should, it is a waste of your time at high isk).



Typically this alt will have interceptors, T3 (Tengu), Blockade Runner, Freighter, Orca (optional). The ship order is important as Tengu is required for the actual standings grind if you choose to go that route.

EventualStandings 7/7+ to Caldari State/ Caldari navy. 8+/8+ Preferred

This alt NEEDS:

Contracting and Trade skills (Do trade first then contracting)

Social skills

Fitting skills when everything else is complete.



2. Production Alt - Similar to a market alt, these are generally T1 or T2 production chars. They will have Production and Science skills and generally a Freighter thrown on, or some method of hauling high value through dangerous space (think blockade runners, t3s, etc).



3. Logistics Alt - This character is for those that need the ability to move large quantities securely over distance - particularly nullsec or losec. It also applies to the Rorq pilot in mining operations. They will typically have trained Freighters/Jump Freighters and/or Rorqs. Carriers are usually the long term train as well. Since they should hand off to the Production Alt at the lowsec entry point they come after you already have a neutral Freighter in Highsec. Any heavy tower/ citadel industrial production will need this.



4. Null Market Alt - This is your alt for import/export, PI, Reactions administration. These functions can typically also be ran on a 2ndary or primary PVP character so its the least important.The player established empires burn through huge chunks of goods... make money off them.



Ease of Life:



1. Main Additions - Your Main character is almost always going to be a PVP char. However, it is very easy to add some quick skills to your main to make life easier. High Jump clone skills, Contracting, Starbase defense, Cynos, Tengus/Inties for nullfied, BR's for quick M3 movement, Carrier for moving your own ships.



2. Secondary PVP Alt - This is the character that eventually is cynoing your Main around, or scouting for it, possibly even serving as the logistics for them instead of a dedicated logistics alt. The long term train on these is often a supercarrier or Titan. These are essential to quality of life in areas outside of hisec.



3. Dedicated Supercarrier/Titan Pilot - The secondary PVP alt can often turn into this dedicated character while a new Secondary Subcapital alt is created.

There's a refrain that seems common when this sort of line of questioning comes up that suggests:

There is no need for an all V character. In fact, that 4's for the most part are all that you really need. The 4's give you 80% of the skill's value for 20% of the time of training the whole skill. Some V's certainly do open up other skills and categories of activity, but that otherwise the V's are pretty much a waste of time and energy best devoted to other skills/activities in contrast with the seemingly limited value that one singular skill at 5 will give a character.

While i'm not about to argue against the notion that perfection's not all it's cracked up to be, - I am some what wary of this in an absolute sense. Full categories to V, and sets of related skills, in particular core (but not limited to), support skills that apply to all things you do in a ship at a given time do i'd argue make a very note worthy impact on one's play experience.

These V's come into play when you're trying to fit ships in unorthodox ways to achieve a goal that yes, another ship could do better...But if stuck with a sub par ship due to non-existent market or limited access to a market/ability to produce yourself? The V's can make an activity viable. And not just 1 V, but related and applicable sets of V, in conjunction with relevant and applicable hard wiring implants, which themselves improve specific skills.

Full skill sets at V permit margins for error, experimentation and just squeaking through situations where a generalist, there and then could not. Does this matter all the time? I doubt it. Perfection's not everything. ... Does the Generalist who runs with 4's and a few 5s here/there typically have an easier, and more flexible play style on average? I imagine they do.

If anything however, i'd only suggest focused perfection does have applicability and usefulness when you need to do things that are usually impractical without tool X, Y or Z especially under difficult circumstances that make use of X, Y, or Z impossible / a very bad idea.

1. Name it 1ron3ank and have all the SP.

You'd need a lot of accounts. That or $28,000 of skill extractors to do it on 1 account. There's quite a few things to do in Eve. http://swiftandbitter.com/eve/wtd/



A serious Eve player wouldn't be caught dead in high sec.

no more OGB. They have or are getting rid of off grid boosters.

Whatever you decide to do now likely wont be the same thing your doing this time next year. So planning out the next 10 years on multiple characters is kind of a waste. Your tastes and activities will change as you learn more about the game. You will find things that you love about this game and things you cant stand doing( for me its mining and hauling). Those will change as well.

So the best advice i can give you:

1) Skill injectors are faster and likely cheaper than trying to keep training going on multiple characters.
2) The amount of accounts you need depends on what you are doing. If you want to have a mining fleet of you then you will need multiple accounts and characters. If you want a scout you will need just a second account. If you want to do a lot of indy or trading you will want multiple alts. If you are going to fly a cap and want to get yourself around, you will need multiple accounts. It really depends on how you play on how many accounts and alts you need. But to do everything in game you only need 1 character.
3)My final advice is: live for today and dont worry about tomorrow( or the next 10 years). If you spend all your time looking towards the future your going to miss a lot of the present.

You're not "seeing it" because the downsides that we've listed are of no consequence to you:

- Multiple accounts cost subscription money. People typically can afford $15-$30 per month for a game, but 6-8 accounts cost in the $100 / month range, $1200 - $1500 / year, and that's a significant quantity worth thinking about, for people.

- That cost is not justified for a forum posting alt, or a trade alt that just sits in Jita to monitor prices, or a planetary industry alt that just logs in for approx 1 hr at the end of the day to flip over the PI factories and empty out the production bin.


Otherwise, injecting skills is useful in certain scenarios. Consider this: let's say you need a market alt, so you can at least reduce the higher taxes we have now, by training some skills. Alt won't be used much, maybe once a week when you sell stuff, so, just use a character slot on an account you have. To train the 5 million skillpoints that would give you full Trading skills, you can:

- use 3 PLEX to activate dual-training for that account for 3 months, and train the character at the rate of 1.6 M SP per month, for a total of 4.8 M SP.

- use 4 PLEX to buy injectors to 4 M SP, and apply them to the alt without having to modify the subscription on that account in any way, and you get the Trading alt you wanted within 1 hr. Because you're injecting skills for a character that's under 5 M points, there is no loss to the skill injectors and you get the full value, making them worth it.

This.

If your scouting you need a second account. If your lighting cynos for an alt you need at least a second account though 3 accounts would be easier. If your mining you need as many accounts as you want alts to mine at once.

If your trading, you can use alts on the same account. I used my alts on my 3 accounts for trading alts for a couple of years. If your doing research, manufacturing, PI, etc you can use alts on the same account. No need to have multiple accounts for each activity.

Though i would note that when i traded i kept an alt in jita and another on a second account at the destination hub. The jita alt did the buying and hauling. The selling alt only had skills to sell( this was before injectors and multi alt training was possible).

Ultimately how many accounts you need depends on what active activity you need and to which degree you are going to do it. The most accounts are consumed by mining. Ive seen up to 12 alts mining at a time. I think its ridiculous and a total waste of money but to each their own.

I read your comment 3 times and each time I seem to understand a little bit more. Quite a few replies on the thread contain concepts I'm unfamiliar with.

So here's a question of which the answer would help me out a lot. I thought that an alt brings with it exactly the same cost to keep it online as another account. I need one PLEX to activate an alt so it starts training and I can fly with it. Same as another account needs 1 plex for having it online for 30 days. Is this incorrect? Can I activate an alt for 30 days for less plex than an account?

Another probably noob question. Is buying game time cheaper than buying plex?

Many thanks, now I understand!

One of the fun things of playing EvE is that I don't have to log in to play the game. When traveling I'm just writing in my notebook to make plans on what to do when I log in and how to set up these accounts. Currently my plans change every week due to new insights I get. Absolutely amazing how complex this game is. More challenging than RL I feel currently lol