The Golden Rule

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The Golden Rule of EVE is never fly what you can’t afford to lose. A corollary of that rule is that eventually, you will lose your ship. It’s the hardest lesson for new players to come to grips with. Other games foster a sense of item permanence: you work hard for the best item you can get, and then it’s yours forever.

In EVE, you can work hard for weeks or months to acquire a ship you have your heart set on, raising the necessary isk and training the necessary skills. Then comes the big day. You hop into your dream ship, undock, ready for its maiden voyage. And it can get blown up literally in the first few minutes.

If you haven’t followed the Golden Rule, you can bankrupt yourself with one bad decision. Unfortunately, this is a situation that marks the end of many players’ first attempt at EVE. The loss is too bitter, and they quit in frustration.

Other players are quick to tell newbros about the Golden Rule, but I’m not sure anyone really learns it until they fly something they shouldn’t. Typically, this is early days for a player; they don’t have much, and it’s taken them a while to accumulate it. So, it’s easy to sink your entire, hard-won net worth into one ship, whether because of the cost of the hull, fit, cargo or its associated collateral. Furthermore, it’s tempting to do so. It takes isk to make isk, and new players often try to leverage what little they have to improve their financial situation.

[Fitting] Sunesis (travel)

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I’ve routinely found myself in need of a ship that can perform quick hauling errands through low-sec. Round trips of less than 10 jumps to pick up relatively small cargoes. A runabout, if you will. Typically, I’ve used a travel-fit frigate like this Atron to perform these routine tasks.

Travel frigates are excellent for this kind of utility. They can get off gates with a fast (< 3 sec) align, which is good enough to evade most gate tacklers, outside of a dedicated camp. They're also excellent for burning a long distance off a gate or station for setting bookmarks, or as non-combat scouts, cloaking up in a perch. I like to keep a core probe launcher on them for wormhole travel utility and basic scanning work.

However, their small cargo bays can be problematic if you need to pick up more than a handful of modules from a nearby station. And unfortunately, those frigate hulls with large cargo bays tend not to be agile enough to get below a 3-second align. To address this limitation, when needing to haul mid-range cargoes, I've taken to keeping a mwd-cloak trick capable Nereus fitted for a relatively fast align (6 sec). If there's someone on the gate or ugly local, I can mwd-cloak trick to jump off the gate as safely as possible. If things look clear, I can risk jumping directly and shave 4 seconds and some hassle.

But an industrial's cargo capacity really is overkill for these medium hauling errands. I've been looking for a solution to this problem for a while, and I think I've found it. Enter the Sunesis, the Special Edition Jovian destroyer. It has 600m3 cargo capacity, can align in under 2 seconds, scans very well, and even retains some combat capability in this travel fit configuration.

Eve: Then and Now

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Hello, capsuleers! It’s been a while. With Covid downtime, I’ve been back playing Eve for a couple of months now.

I originally launched this site contemporaneously with the formation of a corp known as Kaede Industries. Kaede Industries started off very well, at least relative to my original goal of creating a viable small industrial corp.

However, it was not to last. We grew quickly, attracting many recruits, and also unwanted attention. Little more than a month or so into our life as a corp, we picked up a wardec, which was piled onto by other corps/alliances until we had rolling wardecs for two months.

This demoralized the memberbase, and we eventually reformed as a new corp in a new location to escape the pressure. While this was ideal for the average member, who just wanted to mine, it was a deep blow to me, as I was heavily invested in the original corp identity and location. I continued on for a bit, but with my enthusiasm gone, I was eventually distracted by the launch of a little console game called Destiny. It became my new gaming focus, and I just never logged back in and stopped working on the blog.

Fast forward to 2020. I had played Elite Dangerous off and on, in brief stints, for a couple of years, whenever I needed to scratch that internet spaceships itch. I like to call it “slicker but shallower” than Eve. With the Covid shutdown, I was occupying myself by playing Elite Dangerous pretty heavily for about a week. One day, in the middle of playing, I realized that what I really wanted to do was go play Eve. I got up right then and began downloading the Eve Online client.

When I came back, I made a new account/character (Renn Omaya) to start off fresh, though I took advantage of my old account to jumpstart with 1,000,000 skill points. I redid the tutorial, the career missions, and the SOE Epic Arc. Within the first two days, I’d registered a new corp: Sudfel Enterprises.

This was Kaede 2.0. All of the original goals of the first corp, but with slightly more experienced execution. It was pretty successful. We got up to just over 30 members, probably closer to low 20s in unique players once you discounted alts, before we were approached by a local corp of similar size about merging into them. They’re a FW group, with a strong pvp presence, but few miners. We had a strong mining presence, but few pvp’ers. We shared similar industrial goals, and that corp is actually a reformation of a group I had been a part of prior to starting Kaede Industries.

Most of our members have already moved over, and I just finished closing up shop at Sudfel, for the most part. I’ve resigned as CEO, and as soon as my 24-hour wait timer is up, I’ll officially join up with them myself. I’ll be taking on an industry/trade-related role in the corp, in addition to getting my feet wet as a FW newb. Sudfel Enterprises will most likely be closed officially. Kaede Industries will remain open but also remain inactive, for now.

Now that I have fewer demands on my time from a corporation management perspective, I have time to return to the blog. Lucky you! I’ve already removed or replaced all the broken links that had accumulated over the years, as well as refreshed the Resource Hub with some updated content.

Also, I recently posted a short fiction piece about warclones as part of YC 122 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest. Check it out!
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YC 122 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest

I am submitting Red vs. Blue to the YC 122 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest via my character Renn Omaya.

Red vs. Blue

Placid Region—Josmaert Constellation
Algasienan System—Algasienan IV, Moon 1
Republic Security Services Assembly Plant
YC122 April 16 06:42

Xavic Kae reviewed his notes for the security briefing as he listened to Kaede Industries’ factory manager Sandor Fabron conclude his industrial operations report. The heavyset, middle-aged Gallentean baseliner looked a bit disheveled, with red eyes, mussed hair, and uneven stubble.

With a thought, Xavic accessed the corporation security feed through his neocom. His search filters returned a list of log entries recording Sandor’s movements for the last 12 hours. Ah, no wonder the man looked worse for wear. He’d been at the station’s manufacturing facilities throughout the night, returning to his quarters only four hours ago.

“In summary, our mineral reserves look good,” Sandor said. “The most recent contract shipment from Sudfel Enterprises resolved our isogen shortage. We’ll be poised to resume full production at the conclusion of the current build project.”

At the head of the meeting table, the hologram of Kaede Industries’ Chief Operating Officer Benetavo Saraki asked, “How is our new project progressing?”

“We began production yesterday morning,” Sandor replied, “and the first subassemblies are already rolling off the line. Current projections indicate we can begin construction of the Orca itself within three days. Final delivery another ten days after that.”

“Excellent. I know Ms. Omaya is eagerly anticipating this addition to her corporation’s mining fleet.” The capsuleer paused, then said, “Thank you, Sandor, everyone. Dismissed.”

The factory manager and three other corporate officers rose from the table and began filtering out of the conference room. Xavic kept his seat and eyed the projected holo-image of his boss as they filed out of the room.

Benetavo Saraki was a dark-skinned Caldari male with short-cropped dark hair, carefully groomed mustache, and tattoo over his right eye. He appeared to be dressed in all black—boots, leather pants, tank top and vest—though, of course, this was just a simulation of his typical wardrobe while on the station. Xavic knew the capsuleer was actually piloting a Viator somewhere in Syndicate space at the moment.

His boss projected a polite, patient smile toward the corporate officers filing out of the room, but as the door sealed behind them, he looked at Xavic, expression settling into something more serious, intent. “I’ve reviewed the security report you sent me last night. Assuming there’s been no emergency developments since then, brief me on our special projects.”

Why Mining Barges Should Have a Utility High Slot

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I haven’t posted much this past week. I point you to reasons I discuss in this previous post about time management. Real life matters and in-game preoccupation have left me with little time to blog recently. But I have returned, and I’ve got stuff to say. So strap in, dear reader, as we explore the following idea.

I think mining barges should have a utility high slot. I actually suggested this once in a CSM town hall meeting, but without any context behind it, I don’t think the idea got much traction. So, this post aims to present that context. Why should barges get a utility high slot? What are the benefits? Are there drawbacks? What would it mean for gameplay?

[Fitting] Exequror

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If you’ll recall from this post about our first war, I had need of an Exequror to rep up the armor of a POS array. So, here’s a remote armor rep fit for that purpose. This fit is a little more skill-intensive than what I usually put up, but when you’re repping POS stuff, you want to field the best fit you can.

Risk

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“Risk” has become somewhat of a buzzword in the world of EVE. It seems to insert itself into any discussion of game balance or proposed changes. Which is appropriate, in some ways; in the pvp-centric game world of EVE, every activity you do is governed by the risk of potential loss. This has to be balanced against the potential return from that activity, which is why you see so many discussions concerning “risk vs reward.” Often these discussions descend into bickering arguments where both sides point to “risk,” or lack thereof, to backup their side. With so many interpretations of what risk in EVE means, or what it should mean, the concept of it is becoming muddled. I’m going to attempt to analyze my interpretation of risk as it relates to gameplay, and present my opinion on how it should be balanced.

[Fitting] Epithal

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I’ve decided to continue the theme of low-sec travel for a couple posts. If you haven’t checked the blog lately, I recently posted a guide to low-sec travel and a frigate travel fit for low-sec. Today, we meet the low-sec fit Epithal.

Traveling in Low-Sec for Beginners

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So, I have fresh corp members who are new to the game and/or have never traveled (properly) through low-sec. I thought I’d write up a basic primer for how to move through low-sec. This is purely from a travel/hauling perspective. This isn’t a guide to operating in low-sec (i.e. missioning, mining, exploration, pvp, etc.). But it covers the basics of traveling in low-sec with an expectation of survival.