Morning Discussion

Good morning Shackers. Christmas is exactly a week away, so if you haven't figured out anything better for your significant other than a Warcraft time card then it's time to get moving. And two time cards is only better if she plays.

Things were busy yesterday in news it seems. Sony consoles have a new firmware available with flashy things and features to play with, and decent images on the next batch of Square games showing up. Possibly the coolest though? Full team play for NBA Live 08. I couldn't care a whit about the game of basketball, but even I would like to try that.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 18, 2007 5:38 AM

    The New Official NOT WoW, but Eve Online thread!

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      December 18, 2007 5:39 AM

      Got my first Command Ship last night! GO ME!

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        December 18, 2007 5:39 AM

        GO YOU!

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        December 18, 2007 5:46 AM

        [deleted]

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        December 18, 2007 5:48 AM

        Holy shizzle, that is awesome.

        How about that Black Ops ship, btw?

        I know its current price is beyond silly, but it does look sexai.

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          December 18, 2007 5:49 AM

          Buy me a Black Ops skillbook, plz :-)

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            December 18, 2007 6:02 AM

            No u. I'm poor.

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            December 18, 2007 7:27 AM

            http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=660539

            Makes me not want a Black ops anymore. :(

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              December 18, 2007 7:40 AM

              It seems like completely useless "black ops" type ships is a standard for sci fi MMOs. When I was playing Earth and Beyond, there was a ship like this you could use. Had a cloaking device, was incredibly fast, and could jump from system to system without the use of warp gates (much nicer to jump from point A to point X without having to travel through B...W to get there).

              So you assume the standard shit with ships of this type: Crap weapons, and crap armor/shields. No problem, since they aren't for fighting. The main use for a ship like this was 1) taking small loads of cargo great distances quickly to get high profits, 2) mining in dangerous areas (so you can then sell the rare commodities to people), so you can cloak if a strong enemy gets near, and 3) smuggling.

              But what else do they do? They make it so that anytime you jump, everything in your cargo hold decreases in quality by 50%, meaning that a) anything you've mined will not be purchased by anyone because you need 100% stuff for crafting, and b) anything you buy can then not be sold for a profit.

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                December 18, 2007 7:46 AM

                Nope, the main use for a ship like this is bringing in Other ships with the jump portal generator. But as those in the thread point out, the fuel requirements, and the jump range suck. So hopefully a future patch will un-nerf them (haha ya right).

                Also everything in your cargo hold decreases in quality by 50% wut? Was this specific to EaB? cause I don't get how this would apply to EvE.

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                  December 18, 2007 8:07 AM

                  Specific to EaB. Items could range in quality from 0% to 200%. Anything you bought from an NPC was at 100%. The quality came into play mostly when discussing ship upgrades, as items would decrease in quality over time when used. However, the prices that NPCs paid for standard cargo items was based on an assumption of 100% quality. So you'd pick a few things up to fill your small cargo hold on one side of the galaxy, and then warp to the other side of the galaxy to sell for maximum profit.

                  It wasn't necessarily any better than doing a standard cargo run in a big ship. But then they made it so that warping decreased everything in your hold from 100% to 50% quality, meaning you lost money if you tried to sell it.

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                    December 18, 2007 8:11 AM

                    EoB revival! I must play

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                      December 18, 2007 8:14 AM

                      EA shut it down 3 years ago, hehe.

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                        December 18, 2007 8:19 AM

                        ...causing the first major influx of Eve players \o/

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                        December 18, 2007 8:20 AM

                        I know, theres a revival of it going on. From what I understand EoB is open (code wise) now and they could open it kind of like an emulation only without the illegal.

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                          December 18, 2007 8:22 AM

                          I take that back, they are trying to 'reverse engineer EoB' and emulate it.

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                            December 18, 2007 8:22 AM

                            http://www.enb-emulator.com/ for reference

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                              December 18, 2007 8:34 AM

                              If they could build in a marketplace (so the general chat channels arent spammed with "selling lvl3 engine 200/200" messages), I'd totally play it again.

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                                December 18, 2007 9:28 AM

                                They would still spam Local in trade hubs....

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                  December 18, 2007 8:11 AM

                  yeah was an EoB thing.

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                December 18, 2007 8:58 AM

                T2 Battleship hulls are fairly worthless. Spending 1 bil for the hull itself is way too expensive for a ship that can be put out of commission by a t1 cruiser while it's picked apart by a couple recons.

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          December 18, 2007 7:38 AM

          If you do it yourself, they can be around 600mil. You know, if you have Battleship Constr 4 and all that.

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            December 18, 2007 7:42 AM

            I'll stick to dreaming about a Domii/Megathron for now.

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              December 18, 2007 7:47 AM

              You'll be there in no time. But going for a BC, and working on support skills would help you along as well.
              Haven't heard of many ppl using megas lately, they still decent?

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                December 18, 2007 7:53 AM

                I have no idea. Focussing on two things (appart from the essentials): armortanking and drones. Those combine pretty well with the Dominix and Megathron afaik. The Dominix being dominant due to drone bandwith and the Megatron due to high powergrid (fitting heaven) and armor hitpoints.

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                December 18, 2007 7:55 AM

                Mega are pretty much the standard for fleet combat... I only trained for one to use as a sniper BS. It has a great layout for multiple damage and tracking mods, and does great damage (for a long range ship).

                They're also pretty sick for extreme close range... Few things can out damage a Blasterthron w/ a full load of heavy drones.

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                  December 18, 2007 8:00 AM

                  Blasterthron w/ a full load of heavy drones > sounds like my shit, allthough sniping is cool too. But how the hell can you get a slowass ship like that close enough to be effective? Web?

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                    December 18, 2007 8:08 AM

                    microwarp drive, web, and a bit of hope :-)

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                      December 18, 2007 8:19 AM

                      Cool. But for sniping plus hard drone rape the Dominix seems more suitable amirite?

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                        December 18, 2007 8:20 AM

                        Dominix is by no means a sniper ship; it's a close-range ganker and one hell of an NPC ship.

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                          December 18, 2007 8:22 AM

                          Allrighty. I might stick to the Megathron then since i do plan to get to 0.0 and help you nuke people from orbit and /spit on them.

                          please don't shoot me mr. absolution man

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                            December 18, 2007 12:14 PM

                            by the time you're using a megathron as a sniping ship, you'll be well more experienced and have multiple battleships.. just plan for what looks like fun for now, you'll get the rest eventually

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                        December 18, 2007 8:25 AM

                        For "hard drone rape," yes. For sniping, eh. Some people (used to?) actually fill their Dominix's hislots with Heavy Nos, although I'm not sure if that's still a good setup post-nos nerf.

                        With very good drone skills and high Gallente BS skill, you stack up a lot of multipliers to your heavies' damage. Drone Interfacing V + Heavy Drones V + <race> Drone Specialization IV + Gallente Battleships V (Dominix Bonus) = 100% + 25% + 8% + 50% = 183% extra drone damage!

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                          December 18, 2007 8:28 AM

                          disclaimer: I'm not totally sure that's how the bonuses stack, EVE's math can be strange and confusing sometimes

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                            December 18, 2007 8:37 AM

                            Your math was correct. It adds up all total bonuses then applies it to the base value.

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                              December 18, 2007 12:18 PM

                              no, each bonus is a percentage increase.. this is why command ships have such insane bonuses

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                            December 18, 2007 12:16 PM

                            No, that math is wrong actually.. 100% * 1.25 * 1.08 * 1.5 = 202.5%

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                              December 18, 2007 12:27 PM

                              that's twice today I've been smacked back into place. goddamn my misinformed ass.

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                              December 18, 2007 12:39 PM

                              That math makes no sense, though. If they stack multiplicatively, then shouldn't it be calculated like this:

                              effective = base * b1 * b2 * ... * bn
                              
                              effective = base * 2.0 * 1.25 * 1.08 * 1.5 = base * 4.05

                              Otherwise the math isn't commutative and you have to arbitrarily choose a "first" bonus to apply.

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                                December 18, 2007 12:56 PM

                                no, multiplication doesn't care your order of operations. Im not sure directly how the equation sits in their code, but they take each seperate multiplier and multiply them together..

                                so 1.25 * 1.08 * 15 = 2.025

                                the they multiply the base damage by that multiplier, making the damage total be 202.5% of the original damage

                                is the 2.0 a missing multiplier stat?

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                                  December 18, 2007 1:13 PM

                                  Yeah, I meant the 2.0 to be the +100% from Drone Interfacing. So we are saying the same thing.

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                    December 18, 2007 8:15 AM

                    Microwarp Drive. Web(s). Or just sitting on a gate and waiting for someone to come through :P

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                    December 18, 2007 12:07 PM

                    a slow ship's greatest asset is the opponents underestimation.. the best fights you'll ever see are when multiple people underestimate a solo ship and try to take it down and lose.. multiple ships can always run, its looking lonely and weak that gets a fight

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                      December 18, 2007 12:25 PM

                      case-in-point:

                      During the Northern Campaign (in which Mercenary Coalition led a multi-alliance initiative to completely remove the northern powers at the time (and fucking rolled them over)), I was flying around in my Pilgrim between two of Freelancer Alliance's hub systems, basically on a well-travelled route. I was doing this for a few days, mostly observing, but also looking for limp-looking targets. I had managed to kill a few industrials and some small stuff (frigates, T1 cruisers).

                      One afternoon I found a lone BlackBird (Caldari T1 ewar cruiser) sitting about 15km off a gate, so I slowly moved into position, then uncloaked and began my attack. As soon as I had him locked down and set my drones on him, the gate went hot, and in game a Sabre (Interdictor), a Taranis (Interceptor) and a Zealot (Heavy Assault Ship). The next few adrenaline-filled minutes were fast paced, with me turning on mods, switching targets, throwing drones on people, and trying to get away. About a minute in, after the BlackBird went poof, the Zealot had me down into about half armor until I got my tracking disruptors on him, at which point he could no longer hit me. I quickly focused my nosferatus, webber, and warp scrambler on him and held him in place while I popped the Sabre and Taranis. Then I sat for 2 or 3 painful minutes while my medium drones slowly chipped away at his armor.

                      After the fight, I kind of sat there in awe of what just happened. The sense of impending doom in this game gets the adrenaline going like nothing I've experienced in any game before. Your heart rate goes up and you start sweating. Seconds feel like minutes, minutes feel like hours. I had to smoke a cigarette and grab a beer to calm myself down.

                      God damn I love this game :-D

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                        December 18, 2007 12:29 PM

                        I agree about the adrenaline... EVE PvP gets my heart going unlike any other game

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                        December 18, 2007 12:29 PM

                        are you in MC? what's your character name? we've probably fought side by side without knowing it

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                          December 18, 2007 12:31 PM

                          not in MC anymore, but going back very soon. taking a break to get my carebear char's invention career going. My character names are in my bio.

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                            December 18, 2007 12:36 PM

                            all of these threads entice me to go back to the game, but really I dont have the time, and its such a horrible addiction. I have some friends in MC, great guys to fly with

                            I wish I could pause time to play the game for a few hours every day

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        December 18, 2007 6:02 AM

        Gratzerz!

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        December 18, 2007 8:17 AM

        What's it do?

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          December 18, 2007 10:00 AM

          Command ships are used mostly as a fleet support ship. There are two types:
          Fleet Command
          Field Command

          Fleet Command ships are known for having uber-hard tanks (up to 95% resists across the board) with a generally low damage output (less than most Heavy Assault Ships). Their made to run Gang Support Mods (known as Warfare Links) that give boosts to specific attributes across a squad, wing, or entire fleet, depending on skills. These bonuses can affect a number of attributes, from ship speed to max damage, and even shield and armor resistances.

          Field Command ships are best for smaller sized fleets, and have a much higher damage output than Fleet Command ships, but have a weaker tank (though still really strong). They are also capable of running gang mods, but are less effective with them than the Fleet Command ships. These ships are great for small-scale PvP, for mission running, or for general NPCing.

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            December 18, 2007 11:10 AM

            the use of the term "tank" in this game is still confusing to me. any other MMO a tank is someone who takes damage well. can i just replace the term "tank" in EvE with "defensive capacity/stats" ??

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              December 18, 2007 11:13 AM

              yes. exactly that.

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              December 18, 2007 11:37 AM

              "tank" means your resists to the four damage types + your ability to repair damage. You can get really crazy with the number crunching if you're into that sort of thing.

              For example, say someone is shooting you with hybrids, doing 50 kinetic + 50 thermal damage per second. Your armor resists are 40% kinetic, 60% thermal. That's

              50 * .4 = 20 kinetic
              
              50 * .6 = 30 thermal

              50 total damage per second after resists


              Let's just pull some numbers out of our asses and say your armor repairer can repair 30 points per second, and you have 1000 total armor.
              50 - 30 = 20 net damage per second
              
              1000 armor / 20 dps = 50 seconds

              Assuming you can run your repairer indefinitely (you won't run out of capacitor), you have about 50 seconds before your armor is depleted. Better kill your enemy quickly!

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            December 18, 2007 11:14 AM

            You people are going to make me break down and play this game, and I know I will end up hating you for it.

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      December 18, 2007 5:46 AM

      You sure do post these things early, you must live in Europe or something.

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        December 18, 2007 5:50 AM

        Nope... I'm US East. My first hour of work is pretty much looking over messages from the night before, so I sit and wait for Morning Discussion to be posted :-D

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          December 18, 2007 5:52 AM

          Oh an early riser. One of THOSE people. :P

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            December 18, 2007 6:06 AM

            it was the " :-D " at the end of his post that gave it away

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      December 18, 2007 9:36 AM

      i want to collect every gallente BC and up =( gotta buy em all is there something wrong with me?

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        December 18, 2007 9:53 AM

        Not at all. It's nice to have a personal fleet; this is actually a goal if you join a 0.0 PvP alliance. You'll want to have as many backup ships as possible. I'm a huge fan of Interceptors myself, so I tend to keep a half dozen or so on hand.

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      December 18, 2007 9:45 AM

      hypothetical pvp situation:
      i warp in to a camped stargate, i'm still cloaked.
      can i log out, be "safe," and log back in when its clear? (lol)

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        December 18, 2007 9:52 AM

        if you warp in, then yes. If you jump in and you're not in a bubble, then yes. If you jump in and you're in a bubble, you're fucked.

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        December 18, 2007 9:53 AM

        You mean jump in? (Not warp.)

        No.

        When you log out, your ship warps off a set distance (?) in a random direction. Depending on whether you have participated in combat in the past 15 minutes, it then either disappears or hangs in space for 15 more minutes.

        If there is a bubble (Mobile Warp Disruptor or Interdiction Sphere) on the gate, your ship will not be able to warp away, and it will be a sitting duck. Boom.

        If there is not a bubble, I think your ship still has to warp away normally (i.e. accelerate to 80% speed), so the campers will have time to try to lock and fire. If they shoot at you but you still warp out before being warp scrambled, you will be combat flagged, so your ship will stay in space for 15 minutes, giving them time to potentially scan probe you and kill you anyway.

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          December 18, 2007 9:54 AM

          Your ship insta-warps, unless you're in a bubble. Then it will stay right where it is, like you mentioned.

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            December 18, 2007 9:55 AM

            Ah, was not sure on that point. So if there is no bubble, your ship will warp away, but if you have been in combat recently there is still the chance you will be probed out and popped before your ship disappeared.

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              December 18, 2007 10:01 AM

              Yep, if you have an aggression timer, your ship will warp away, but it will stay in space for up to fifteen minutes, during which time you can be probed out and destroyed.

              In addition, if you log out with aggression, then log back in before the timer runs out, it will be reset to 15 minutes.

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                December 18, 2007 10:22 AM

                You guys are exploding my head again.

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                  December 18, 2007 10:51 AM

                  This is how the first Titan even built was destroyed, BTW.

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                    December 18, 2007 11:23 AM

                    The second one went in a very similar manner :-)

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            December 18, 2007 12:03 PM

            it doesn't insta-warp, it still has to accelerate - you can catch people who log out

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              December 18, 2007 12:08 PM

              That's what I thought initially... who is right?!?!

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                December 18, 2007 12:13 PM

                I dunno I havent played in a bit, maybe they changed it? but it used to work this way

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              December 18, 2007 12:29 PM

              this is correct and i learned the hard way a couple of times. people CAN attack and KILL you if you log out. better to cloak and slowly move away to get away first. logging out is not a 100%!

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        December 18, 2007 12:01 PM

        no.. no matter what situation, you aren't "safe" if you log out

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      December 18, 2007 10:26 AM

      So i got the trial, jumped in and did the tutorial. joined the shacknews channel said "wow this is overwhelming" then logged off for the weekend. I think I will try some more tonight, I really want to give this game a chance shack.

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        December 18, 2007 10:29 AM

        yeah, dont sweat how much you dont know yet. i just said "eh fuck it" and tried to learn 1 thing at a time, game became immensely less worrisome that way. plus, ask questions in the shack channel!

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          December 18, 2007 11:04 AM

          True. When i got to the point to train my skill in the tutorial, I was like. Oh shit, what do i pick? Everything sounded awesome but I have no idea what the hell I am doing. I hear talk of this 0.0 space but have no idea where I am at haha. Anyways, I am going to keep doing these silly bounty hunter missions and mining random asteroids.

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            December 18, 2007 11:35 AM

            "oh shit, what do i pick?" excellent question to ask fellow shackers!

            though very boring, the safest bet to start with are skills that will reduce the time it takes you to learn other skills. the universally approved order for this is as follows:

            Instant Recall - Level 1 (memory attribute)
            Analytical Mind - Level 1 (intelligence attribute)
            Learning - Level 1 (skill learning speeder-upper skill)
            Instant Recall - Level 2
            Analytical Mind - Level 2
            Learning - Level 2

            ... and so on to Level 4 in this order. the sole function of attributes in this game are to reduce the time it takes to learn skills based off those attributes. So in this case, the "Learning" skill is based off of Memory and Intelligence, and, crazily enough, so are those Memory and Intelligence skills.

            Now that I've said that, don't freak out. There's some really cool programs out there (Evemon) to help you plan this shit out in the future. For right now, thats pointless because you're still figuring out what is what in the game, so dont worry about it!

            Side note: you may have some of these skills "grayed out" with a green checkmark next to them, or they might not be visible, depending on what you have in the "settings" tab. Don't panic! Some starting characters don't have Analytical Mind or Instant Recall available by default (mine didnt). To make them available, I bought the two Skill Book items from the starting station and used the item.

            Training these skills up will take a few days if you stick with just them. I found that I broke out of that "learning skill learning" path midway to train a few other skills i discovered i needed for some piece of gear i wanted to fit on my ship for the hell of it. There's no sin in this, diverging from the holy path of skills while starting out wont "cost" you more than a few hours of time, and quite honestly I'd encourage it, the world won't end and you'll have more fun. ...I'm only just now working on Learning 4 but i'm piloting a cruiser >_> wee!

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            December 18, 2007 12:49 PM

            The above and other good stuff: http://www.kylania.com/eve/skills.php?p=learning

            You can check that in the ingame browser :)

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        December 18, 2007 10:59 AM

        I'm planning on playing for a while tonight, there have been lots of folks on lately. Welcome!

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        December 18, 2007 12:04 PM

        the best way to learn is to ask questions

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        December 18, 2007 12:30 PM

        remember the numerous of posts that this game has a high learning curve. ELITISTS ALERTED!

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          December 18, 2007 12:42 PM

          it's not so much a learning curve as it is an undefined slope

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      December 18, 2007 11:59 AM

      I have a question about the new electronics warfare ship options that opened up.

      Sadly, because they are new, I have yet to find much in the way of comprehensive information about them. For example, what kind of starting skills should I go for, and what should I focus on when it comes to skills needed to pilot them?

      I am also unsure of how they function in a fight at this point. Will I be acting like an "enchanter" of sorts, knocking out targeting systems, disabling ships, and generally wreaking havoc on an opponent's ability to fight, or will I act as a variant on the command ships, buffing the rest of my gang?

      Any clarifications and starting advice on EW would be very appreciated. Thanks!

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        December 18, 2007 12:34 PM

        while I cant speak directly to the new ships since I havent played since the new patch, EW in general is used to disable enemy ships from doing as much or any damage at all. This can happen in many different forms, including blocking their ability to lock targets, decreasing the ability of turrets to hit targets, decreasing locking time and distance to a crippling degree

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        December 18, 2007 12:43 PM

        First, these ships are for PvP. If that's what you're after, then read on. I'm honestly not very familiar with EW, but I know the basics.

        ECM: these prevent a ship from acquiring target locks for a certain amount of time, effectively preventing them from doing any damage (there are exceptions, e.g. Friend-or-Foe missiles or drones)
        Remote Sensor Dampeners: reduce a ship's targetting range, forcing them to get closer before they can shoot at you
        Tracking Disruptors: reduce a ship's turret tracking speeds, making it harder for them to hit moving ships

        Other stuff?

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        December 18, 2007 2:01 PM

        if you still have Q's about e-war, I'll be in the Shacknews channel tonight and know a fair amount about it.

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          December 18, 2007 2:22 PM

          I have yet to set up my account again. I will likely be doing so just after Christmas or right at the beginning of the new year. I'll be in the Shacknews channel without delay once I'm on. At this point, I'm just doing the preliminary research.

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        December 18, 2007 2:24 PM

        Thank you all for the advice. I am definitely interested in going for PvP in 0.0 space, since that's where all the gripping action takes place.

        It seems that the best bet is to follow the basic creation guidelines and branch out from there towards the EW skills. I'll have to learn the rest as I go with some help from the channel, which is fine.

        Thanks again.

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      December 18, 2007 1:24 PM

      So, all this talk has convinced me to try the 14 day trial this Christmas break. Is there any starters guide I should read, or wiki I should bookmark. I know to join the shacknews channel, but is there anything else I should do to help fend off death/destruction/bankruptcy/lazers?

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      December 18, 2007 2:06 PM

      Hey, are any of the NWS corp guys available to chat on AIM or your instant messaging client of choice?

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      December 18, 2007 2:11 PM

      mmm...Vindicator....so sexy...mmmm.....

      http://nitrus.googlepages.com/2007.12.18.07.09.57.JPG

Hello, Meet Lola