EVE General Discussion

I've recently come back from a 3+ year hiatus, and something has struck me. I want to know whether I'm right or wrong on this. Wasn't there a time in the past where people flew generic lines of ships as a matter of course or practice? When tech 2s, tech 3s, pirate faction ships, etc. were either rare or nonexistent?

Nowadays I can't even find a discussion on ships that uses names I know and understand like 'Raven.' All I hear is names I don't know, and I have to google to find out. 'Oh no, to run level whatever complexes, you want to do it in a Rattlesnake, not in a [GENERIC].' 'No bro, for faction warfare, you want Machariel.' On and on. It's like you don't even hear the names of generic ship lines anymore. It's so bad that the other day, when a guy was insisting on flying a generic, people were saying 'well if you HAVE to fly a [GENERIC], make it a navy issue [GENERIC].'

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for additional content and ships in the game, I'm all for tech 2s, tech 3s, pirate ships, whatever. It adds choice, it adds flavor, etc. But when that stuff is considered so good, or the generic stuff considered so bad, that all anyone wants to fly is the fancy-shmancy stuff, it seems there must be a problem somewhere.

The other day I had just saved up enough money to buy a good old generic Drake, and had just gone into what I thought was a nice quiet asteroid field to practice shooting on rats. I simply wanted to figure out how to fly again, as I was literally doing absurd things like trying to use arrow keys or WASD to steer the ship, and I literally couldn't remember how to target or fire weapons. When all of a sudden something called a 'Jackdaw' decloaks next to me and blows me to Kingdom Come.

All I could think is 'WTF!' I mean, this guy didn't even have the common decency to gank a poor defenseless noob using a ship that noob could know, understand, and pronounce. No, he had to do it in something called a 'Jackdaw' of all things. I mean I literally thought I was reading it wrong and kept typing 'Jackjaw' into google to figure out what the hell it was. I mean, come on! You guys get off on beating up on poor, defenseless, crippled noobs? Is that what makes you happy? Fine, then I say do it proper! Decloak in front of me in a Calderi Raven or whatever, and unload all 6 or 8 barrels directly into my face! At least I'll be blown to smithereens by something I can pronounce! At least it will be a good old-fashioned generic!

Which brings me to battleships. Back when I used to play, these were things people aspired to sit in and fly. Heck, it was my dream, my life's ambition, to fly some big fat battleship bristling with all kinds of firepower. Now, everybody keeps telling me to stay away from battleships, that they suck, nobody flies them, etc. It's like WHAT?!?! Are you serious?

What on earth has CCP done to this game when battleships are considered junk, and nobody wants to fly anything but high-tech fancy-shmancy stuff?

Okay, off of my soapbox. Time to go point my noob ship at some 'roid for the next 12 hours to try and save up for my next real ship. Donations welcome.

Sounds like you're talking to farmers or bads.
Yes, generally people will get minced in t1 hulls, unless it's a big gang of them flying in an organised manner.
Battleships, on the other hand, are not flown because people are generally no-fun slobs. MJD Typhoon with scram web can be amazingly good fun and i've had to yolo mine into quite a few clouds of faction frigates or cruisers. They assume i'm backed up, going to light a cyno or part of some other elaborate bad scenario because they don't want to lose.
Unwilling to lose = unwilling to play
The insurance on battleships is great too.

I still use generic Raven to run missions.

Jackdawed...it happens...

What were you doing in low or null if you don't want to pvp?

Just got shot at by a Vengeance. Again, had to look the thing up to even know what it was. I hit warp-out as soon as I saw the thing (which was within a second), and got a message "warp scramble attempt blah blah" and then BOOM - one shot blew my shields clean off. Luckily I escaped before he got another shot off.

I don't believe I've ever been killed, or shot at, by anything other than tech 2, tech 3, pirate stuff, whatever. You'd think that CCP would notice this and do something about it... unless this is by design? Is this their intent? Does anyone know?

Heh.

I'm in a similar position as the OP. My first month or so back was a HUGE wake up call. Back when I was last playing, warping to something at 100 km was safe, recons still showed up on D-scan, Rifters were the king of frigate pvp, and the only cloaky frigates were Bombers and scanning ships.

Most of my fits no longer worked, my corp had moved, neuts now had optimals and falloff, and solo pvp had completely changed thanks to the introduction of SAARs.

It's not as bad as it was, but I still find ships on D-scan that I just don't recognize. On the up side, I have no shortage of things to blog about.

Hang in there, OP! Us old-timers will catch up eventually.

When null-sec alliances use pirate ships (Machariel, Rattlesnake, Bhaalgorns) or T3s (proteus) for CTAs you can say for sure there is something wrong here. And this is overfarming: too many farmers provide pirate ship BPCs and too small amount of stuff actually gets destroyed.

You could see things like this years ago: i remember in 2010 i used to use Corelum armor modules because they were dirt cheap and i had no skills for T2 ones.

Well now you are hitting my other point - that it's all tech 2, tech 3, pirate ships, etc. We agree here because I already said this is what is used now vs. bread and butter, generics, etc.

Perhaps I should state that GENERIC battleships are the things seen as 'useless,' at least by many. Yes, the tier 2, tier 3, and pirate stuff is used.

Well when entire null-sec fleets are constructed of nothing but non-generic battleships as you just said, I doubt this is what the game designers intended. I think balance has gotten away from them.

Yes, very. The whole line up of T3 destroyers and cruisers needs a massive rethink, same for ships like the Ishtar that's capable of BS-like dps with BS-like projection while being a small & fast package. Oversized prop mods is another of those things that just needs to go.