EVE General Discussion

good point on the distinction between multiboxing and having alts. There are things you want alts for that don't really qualify as multiboxing, and there are times you want to multibox an alt in a way that is not attention-intensive.

Mining - multiboxing practically required unless using a solo miner as an afk or low-attention activity. As a solo miner you're completely reliant on friendly boosts, hauling, etc to be even remotely effective.

Missions - Don't need alts at all

Trading - alts not required. You can make purchases and market checks with same-account alts and this requires no skill training. If you want an account doing some hauling while you do station trades thats more of a luxury than a necessity.

Nullsec ratting - alts not required

Null/low explo (combat sites) - with good skills, proper ship selection, and a bit of research, most combat exploration sites are soloable without alts. Multiboxing an alt for scanning or scouting is very nice, but far from a necessity if you're in sov space. IMO dual account training, the introduction of the stratios, and the introduction of mobile refitting structures is a buff to true solo in this field.

null/low explo (profession sites) - alts provide very little here

WH life - alts are very useful for just about anything, be it scouting, hauling, probing, keeping eyes on a hole, fueling towers, doing PI, assisting in combat via multiboxing, or doing empire stuff. That said an alt doesn't seem strictly necessary if you're in an established corp or going daytripping with friends. Although in the former case you would expect many people to have an use alts.

PI - Alts are necessary to scale up production. They also provide the full benefit with low SP investment, however all of this can be done without multiboxing, and alts can be fully leveraged without a second account. Also dual/triple character training can be well used here.

t1, t2, manufacturing - needs alts to scale up or to fully utilize the capacity of a pos. Alts are generally encouraged as most of the time you have nothing to gain by partnering with other people. Much of the time however you only REALLY need alts for the extra blueprint copy slots or manufacturing slots, meaning that this can be well handled with a few plex for dual/triple character training. Multiboxing not required.

PVP - I know its a bit wrong to list multiple varieties of PVE activities and then lump all PVP into one thing, but whatever. For PVP you have a few categories of alt usage. You've got noob scouts that sit on chokepoints that can be logged in for a quick check for gatecamps. You have scouts in ceptors, recons, or covops that someone might multibox when hunting war targets, scouting for a fleet, shadowing an enemy, or positioning for a cyno or tackle (or providing off grid boosting). Lastly you've got people that will multibox ships that require attention in combat (everything from ye olde falcon alte to dual boxing battleships and logi). By and large though if you're going out with a gang or a fleet and looking for fights, most people are going to be focusing only on their one account. In otherwords, alts not required.

I've always meant to ask: so this is my alt . . . I'd love to have her train some research skills to generate some passive income. But don't I still have to grind missions to get standings (access to higher-level research agents)?

What's the point of training combat skills on an alt that never leaves station?

one day I will solo fly a titan and doomsday gooncarriers in the cold of the night, nothing more needed...

its a solo game like RL, although some like to pretend "teamplay" to use others for their advantage...

better fly solo out there, fly alone and die alone, thats the only spirit

Counterexample to the helpful post.

regarding PI, any time your profit numbers are based on the p1 or p2 reactors being fed at 100% efficiency from ECUs, i would advise slashing your projected earnings to about 80%.

A very quick/honest answer to this question would be no, i could not play this game without the ability to have alts, its all part of the whole experience, in my opinion.
Of course i'm quite capable of playing solo, but i wouldn't the game nowhere near as much.

Imagine eve without alts? The online population would shrink at least 50% overnight.

Of course you can play without alts, OP.

Go to www.minerbumping.com and learn about the Code.

Alts promote bot-aspirancy in New Eden, and you, OP, can help change all of that.

Eve without a cyno alt or 3 would be difficult.

Without alts? Probably

Without multiboxing, yes

The only kind of alts I use are actual "Alternate Characters". As in characters who have nothing to do with eachother and often are on completely different sides of the universe/galaxy (if we're considering wormholes).