The Caldari Battlecruiser “Drake”

It seems that in most MMOs, you face certain spending steps where one have to save a bit of money in order to advance to a new thing in order to enable a bigger income source. Thinking of WoW, my first thought would be getting the mounts. You have to save a bit of gold to buy the necessary skills and the mount itself, but you enable yourself to travel faster, thus quest and level faster, thus earn more gold. Although this process has been nerfed down a bit, it is still there today. In EvE, at least in the beginning, this step seems to be when getting a bigger ship. “You need ISK in order to make ISK” they say, and after 4 weeks into the game, the first Lvl3 agent was available to me, promising a higher income, but requiring more than my frigate blasting Caracal. So I bought the next bigger ship, the natural choice for a relatively new missile spamming Caldari pilot, the infamous battlecruiser “Drake”.

The Drake – as I should later learn, one of the most flown ships in New Eden. One of the most used ships, also one of the most disliked ships. Able to fit the relatively hefty tank but has also relatively low damage output. Things I wasn’t aware of four months ago. Things that didn’t matter at that point. I was more worried about how to fit that thing and how I could bring it through those new Lvl3 missions in one piece. After all, the first battlecruiser was quite an investment. Once again, the large EvE Uni-Wiki came to the rescue. However, I wasn’t completely satisfied with that fit. The resists were kind of low, so I wanted to fix that. I was already aware of the different meta level items for T1 modules, so I checked the market if I could afford some upgrades and could free up midslot that way. I took the T2 based fit from the EvE Uni-Wiki as an idea guideline. First thing I checked were the shield rechargers. The T1 Meta 4 variant “M51 Iterative Shield Regenerator” were sold for around 10k ISK in Jita. This was triple the price of the Meta 0 variant, but 10k ISK per piece wasn’t really an issue. The price steps of the shield power relays were a lot steeper, so I took the Meta 2 module “Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay” for 100k ISK each. With the better shield recharge modules, I removed one shield recharger and the invul field and used two mission specific hardeners. So, my fit for Guristas was like this:

[Drake, T1 PvE Drake]
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I

M51 Iterative Shield Regenerator
M51 Iterative Shield Regenerator
Large Shield Extender I
Large Shield Extender I
Heat Dissipation Field I
Ballistic Deflection Field I

Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Drone Link Augmentor I

Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I

Hobgoblin I x5

I bought two of each shield hardener so I was able to adapt my resists for each mission. Reviewing that fit now, I should’ve also taken a look at better missile launchers. After insuring the ship, I went to my new mission agent and started those new Lvl3 missions. The first mission was quickly done. Then, I almost lost my Drake on the second mission. What happened?

The mission was The Blockade, Lvl3. I was already aware of things like trigger ships that spawns additional waves and EvE Survival as a guide for dealing with such things. With one destroyer, 3 battlecruisers and 4 elite cruisers on grid, I checked the description for the trigger:

Note: The triggers may vary, so do the spawns. Usually the ship with the highest bounty is the trigger.

I didn’t read any further and thought in the lines of “Hey, the destroyer has the lowest bounty, so it probably isn’t the trigger, is it?”. Well, it was! I suddenly had 12 battlecruisers, 4 elite cruisers, 6 destroyers and 2 frigates on the field. My tank began to melt. I tried to kill the elite cruisers first, because I knew they were from the first wave, but I wasn’t able to kill them in time and I had to warp out. So I started to focus on the smaller targets first, frigates, destroyers, then the battlecruisers, while I warped out repeatedly. That worked, until I hit the trigger battlecruiser. More stuff on the field, including more elite cruisers. From this point on, I wasn’t able to kill anything anymore without my little T1 shield tank with my low skills gave up. I tried… and got away with 30% armor. So I called it a day and tried it again after the server downtime. The mission was reset, back to wave one. And I also did some research – turned out, the trigger note should say something like:

Note: The triggers may vary, so do the spawns. Usually the singleton with the highest bounty is the trigger.

And that worked – the destroyer of the first wave was the only ship type that was only once on the field. From that moment on, I could tank each single wave without a problem and could finish the mission.

That looks tankable

Things went relatively smoothly from there. I flew some mission, got some standings and ISK. But ammunition supply turned out to be an issue – the nearest market was quite expensive and also 3 jumps away – not really the best thing. The next interesting market was Jita – 10 jumps out. Getting ammunition was a choice between hauling stuff a long way or paying extra and still hauling stuff around. That was annoyance and I decided to change this…

Clueless in Space – the random impressions of an EvE newbie – will continue soon™…

Multigaming

Starting with my trusty Cormorant, I made myself at home in the “The Forge” region and started missioning for the Lai Dai Corporation. Since I was still busy with my thesis and also attended to four raid nights each week, my time for EvE was rather limited. Still, I was always searching for ways to increase the amount of ISK I own. Since I own a dual monitor setup and a quite powerful PC, I could run EvE at the same time I was running WoW. Name it multigaming – like multiboxing but with two different games.  I was wondering if I could use the time, which I was spending in raids, to profit in EvE.  It would have to be an activity, which only needed little to no attention, doesn’t lead to a ship loss and still provides a usable income stream (compared to the almost empty wallet). Turned out, there is an activity, that fits this description: AFK-Mining in Highsec using a little T1 ship. And I had this nice Cormorant. So I slapped two Miner I and an Expanded Cargohold I on it and went out mining. To make it clear, I think mining is rather boring, but if your wallet is almost empty, the possible income was nice. And since I was raiding, I was busy with some other game anyway. Also, back then we were still in the middle of making progress, which means a lot of wipes. Or in other words, a lot of short breaks, where I could send my Destroyer back to station, unload it and send it back to an asteroid belt. I kept this up until it stopped to be an appreciable source of income.

The Caldari Cruiser “Caracal”

With only little time for playing EvE, I had lots of skill training time, which enabled me to not only aim for better ships, but also to throw in the first science skills, which would be necessary for the research agents I aimed for. Speaking of ships, my first aim was the Caracal. Since there is a huge difference between being able to put a pod in a ship and actually do something with a ship, I started to look for fits and stumbled across one, which is posted on the EvE-Uni-Wiki and added two rather cheap medium shield resistance rigs (~120k ISK each) to it:

[Caracal, PvE Basic Skills Caracal]

Compact 'Limos' Assault Missile Bay I
Compact 'Limos' Assault Missile Bay I
Compact 'Limos' Assault Missile Bay I
Compact 'Limos' Assault Missile Bay I
Compact 'Limos' Assault Missile Bay I

Invulnerability Field I
Photon Scattering Field I
Large Shield Extender I
Large Shield Extender I
10MN Afterburner I

Ballistic Control System I
Ballistic Control System I

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
[empty rig slot]

Hobgoblin I
Hobgoblin I

So, I added the ship and those modules to a new EvEMon-Skillplan and set up my training queue accordingly. A few days later, I had my brand new, fully fitted Caracal. This started to one-shot stuff in lvl.1 missions and also the first lvl.2 mission was a blast. Then I almost lost the Caracal in the second lvl.2 mission and found myself in my pod. What happened?

The mission was Recon (1 of 3). Clueless as I was, I accepted it, warped to my place and started shooting things. What could possibly go wrong? Turned out: A lot! The first wave came in: a frigate, a cruiser and a battle cruiser (or putting it in a newbies view: a small plus, a not so small plus and a bigger plus). I was worried about the battle cruiser, but the frigate already exploded and there wore only two ships on the grid. So this seemed fine. Then more ships turned up, mainly elite cruiser. I wasn’t able to do much damage, but they did to a lot to me. So I started to warp out and back in. Sniped more frigates, but after the fourth wave spawned, I wasn’t able anymore to get out in time. My cruiser blew up. Back at my current home station, I bought a shuttle and set course to Jita in order to buy my second Caracal (which still has a “II” at the end of its name). Then I did a little google-fu. Turned out, I wasn’t the only one with the problem. The solution was apparently to just fly to the second gate, before there are that many waves of NPCs spawned. The solution seemed so easy that I was wondering what the mission text actually said. So I looked it up:

Objectives

Scout the deadspace areas, then report back to your agent. Destroying any pirates found in the area is not a requirement.

Reading quest mission text, useful skill to have. Should’ve known that from WoW already. Still, there now was that room full of stuff that blew up my Caracal – so how to deal with that? I didn’t want to wait till after the down time on the next day. So I got the cheapest frigate on that market that I could fly, slapped some shield tank and an afterburner on it. Warped in, approached the exit gate, activated my afterburner and hammered on the warp button. With 15% armor left, I was finally in warp. Mission completed.

Not much happened in the following two weeks. I continued to enhance my science skills and continued to fly missions. I also skilled for having a first dedicated salvage vessel and bought it eventually. So, a usual newbie start, I guess, at least with the missioning. This continued until lvl.3 missions started to show up at the horizon. It was clear that I would need a bigger ship in the near future…

Clueless in Space – the random mishaps of an EvE newbie – will continue soon™…