Seamless, Simple and Intuitive - Choose only two

Due to the issues following the deployment of FozzieSov on the 14th July all active accounts received a "gift" of 50,000 skill points. Excelent, I like free stuff and skill points are much wanted. The process should be simple, I've done it before so I just have to remember how. 

Simple? This is CCP and it isn't.

It took me about five minutes to realise that you don't do it in the skill queue but in the Character Information screen on the skill tab. You expand the skills, right click the skill you want to apply the points to and then enter the amount to apply (this is because you may want to spread it about over a few skills).

Just one small problem, you need to do a few extra steps if you're already training skills and more again if you happen to have the skill you want to apply the points to in your queue.

Ok, I'll pause my training queue whilst I apply the skill points to the skill I'm currently training.

BUZZZZZZZZ. No can't do that, I need to remove the skill from the queue, apply the changes and pause, again, the queue then apply the points.

I'm sure it was the way to do it when implemented in the "olden days" but the whole process is no longer intuitive and really needs changing. We should be able to apply skill points without having to pause the queue OR having to remove queued skills then adding them again.

Still, I've got 50,000 skill points that will give me about 20 hours off the currently training skill my characters are doing. That's reason to celebrate, just ignore the UI issues applying them :)

Drones are dead, long live Drones

Let me present this screenshot from EVEMon:

In just over 5 hours 30 minutes Advanced Drone Interfacing V will complete and that will mark the end of training Drone skills. Finished, Done, The End.

Unless they add new Drone skills and I really don't think they will. Actually I think they might want to cut the power of Drones further... but I digress. That is a post for later.

It's taken me nearly a whole year, at 2700 SP per hour, to complete the Drone skills and this skill, which is pretty much, no it is useless but it does round off the whole category and it makes the first that I've actually completed on this character to V:

Of course this achievement will occur during the early hours of Friday morning my time and, whilst something special, there is no way I will be awake.

So this post will mark it and I shall then move on to the depressing Navigation skill as they are woeful on this character.

Woot.... Urm... Yay for Me!

I can recall a couple of years ago reading a blog (a pirate/ninja salvager from memory but the name escapes) who showed a screenshot of his pilot finishing all of the skills to V in the navigation tree. 

It's a great achievement to complete all skills to V in a tree, some are going to take a very long time (and a lot of ISK) whereas others don't need completion to V (i.e. they only lower capacitor usage). 

One of those trees that does deserve the effort is Navigation and it is with great pleasure I awoke this morning to see High Speed Maneauving V completed on my null sec pilot:

Pretty.

There is one skill missing but I don't use Micro Jump Drives (at this time) so as far as I'm concerned the tree is complete. The Jump skills were the longest and most painful but, consequently, the most rewarding to complete.

The character moves on to Int/Mem skills before finally starting on Gunnery, 4 years overdue I'd say. All he has is Gunnery III in that branch but when he's finished it's going to be Level V's all over the place!

Passing 100 million skillpoints

Previously I mentioned that my 'main' was getting close to 100m skillpoints, well that time has passed and my 'main' passed the 100 million skillpoint milestone at 12:50 EVE Time on the 9th December.

1616 days ago my he was born into the fire that is New Eden. He started his adventure in Amdonen and Nishah but has since moved on from these locations and adventure I continues today but all over New Eden. 

In his time he's lived in a wormhole, mined in high sec, moved to low sec and back to high sec, flew a carrier into battle, run missions and performed huge amounts of research and manufacturing.

He's not the best trained character but every SP he's got has been a pleasure for me and he's continuing to expand his skills and recently finished training for the Aeon he bought over year ago. He has the Amarr Titan skill trained to Level 1 but I doubt sit in one before 200m skillpoints roll around.

My 'null sec main' is currently 2.5m skillpoints from 100m and my 'pvp alt' is 14m but it is the guy who finishes first that people remember.

FIRST!

Random Facts

• Of the the 318 skills he knows he has 101 at level 5 and 95 at Level 4 with only 3 skills yet to be trained. 
• His skill breakdown shows that the top 3 for points are Spaceship Command (27%), Drones (16%) and Gunnery (10%).
• He was the character that built my first Carrier and Paladin and was the first to be podded when I made a disastrous investigation of a low sec system aged 25 days
• For just over 3 years he had trained no guns to Level 5 nor had any of the support skills above Level 3, but the Paladin being built was too much of a draw and in less than four months he had all Large Guns and Support Skills to 5. Yet he hasn't flown the Paladin since December 2013.

276 Hours

In 276 hours my main will pass 100 million skillpoints. That's nearly two weeks and if EVE Online has taught me one thing it is that patience is certainly needed.

Norm, as he's known, is the first of my characters to reach this milestone and I think it is fitting that when he does he'll have reached 100million SP with 100 skills trained to Level V.

He has just finished Fighter Bombers V, 39 days it took and now he's off to complete the rest of the Drone tree skills in order to close that branch of training off.

It's slow training, I only have the Level V to do for all Drone skills but once that's done he'll be moving onto something new and I'm not yet sure what that will be.

Skill Queue Evolves

Evolves is probably not quite accurate, certainly it is changing with the removal of the 24 hour limit on skills that has been in place since (I believe) it was introduced in 2009.

One of the biggest annoyances with skills was the 24 hour limit, having to remember to keep it stocked and running was a major inconvenience not just when you were playing but if you were away on holiday or had an unscheduled break in play.

The 24 hour shackle is being removed. 

Now that its being removed its fantastic news. I shall be able to load up characters skill queues with as many days training as I see fit (to a maximum of 50 skills). Finally my skill queue will be a closer representation to EVEMon Skill Planning than ever before.

Edit: I can indeed confirm that the maximum number of skills you can have in the queue is no limited by duration but the number of items. Fifty to be precise:

I won't go all OCD on them about the space missing before the opening bracket

I can train my alts safe in the knowledge they just need to be updated once and then can remain logged off for almost the entirety of their skill training. Then I can unleash them upon New Eden.

Huzzah!

CCP have obviously seen more positives in allowing this than negatives and it certainly is in most peoples Top 3 feature likes for Phoebe.

Maybe bittervets can update their skill queues and then leave, same in the knowledge that they are still training but saving the rest of us who do login from listening to their whining and "oh woe is me" posts on the Forums and elsewhere.

Planning Ahead

Over the past week I've spent time considering the future of my characters and what direction I want them to follow with regards to their training.

I have four accounts with my four main characters and a mix of cyno and PI alts, of varying skill levels, occupying the character slots on these accounts. it's the main characters I'll be talking about, providing a little background but also setting out what I want them to do in the future.

Shared Background

All of my characters started off with a mining focus, training to fly mining barges and then Exhumers with two being cross trained to fly the Orca and, later, the Rorqual. This is how I got my start in EVE Online, either running or participating in Mining Fleets in high sec and null sec. It wasn't moo goo money but it was a regular source of income and I really enjoy mining.

Since finishing their initial mining training they have all gone off in different directions in EVE but now I'm taking a longer term look at their uses and will plan training queues for them to maximize my return from them.

Planning

EVE Mon has been extremely useful, no vital, in helping me see my available options even if the results have been slightly depressing when I saw how long each skill plan will take to complete. But the advantage of planning my skill training for the next three, six or twelve months means I have objectives and am not wasting my game time on things that I will not benefit from in the long term.

I've now got four plans that I will be following as closely as possible until they are complete. I cannot predict everything and requirements may change so there will be some variation but I have a plan to follow that will open up more ships, modules and professions for my characters.

Main Character (Capital / Logistics Pilot)

93 million skillpoints

This was the first character I created in EVE but I don't use him everyday as I once did. He now spends most of his time in High Sec space supporting the activities (via logistics/manufacturing/invention) of my other characters.

Primarily an Amarrian ship flyer this character recently and he can fly every sub-capital ship bar T2 frigates and he has recently injected the Amarr Titan skill book (I had spare ISK and it completed a long term objective). He can use all guns but T2 rail guns and he has poor missile skills but he is not a combat pilot he has always worked logistics for me. As a result he can fly all racial Freighters/Jump Freighters and has most science and production skills at Level IV.

One aspect of his skills that I am disappointed with are his Drone skills, considering he flys drone ships and carriers his Drone skills are woefully inadequate. This is what I want to change and as a result I've used EVE Mon to work out a skill plan that will get all Drone skills to Level V.

Not ISK will be needed as all the skills are injected but the total time to get the entire branch to V will be 203 days at 2700 sp/h (Memory/Perception).

Once Drones are complete I will move back to Perception/Willpower attribute mapping and continue to work through the remaining Gunnery and Spaceship Command skills that I have either at Level IV or haven't started to train. This training will add another 360 days training, once a remap to Perception/Willpower is performed.

All in all, this character has his skill plan set for the eighteen months.

Miner / Booster / Logistics (Capital / Sub Capital)

90 million skillpoints

This was the first alt I created and was done so to meet the requirement of a pilot who could fly an Orca and boost whilst my main mined. When I was deciding to move to Providence I realized that I need to train all the remaining Leadership skills and thus, my Booster alt was fully born.

He can fly ever single racial ship below Battleship class and he is also a max skilled Rorqual and Jump Freighter pilot. This is nice as he continues to live in Null Sec where these skills are very useful for managing my towers and helping to move input/outputs about.

One peculiar thing about this character is that he maintains to this day the same gunnery and missile skills he was born with, they have never been improved and there has never been any need for him to have done so.

I have considered the role and at some point I will be adding Science and Production skills to his abilities but for the time being I will continue working on Support Skills to Level V and when this is done he will change to finally getting all racial Battleships and T2 Spaceship Command specializations to Level V.

According to EVE Mon will I have another 127 days on the Support Skills with Science (excluding T3 construction skills) at 491 days and Production at 259 days. He's going to be chock-a-bloc full of skills and will make a superb Industry addition to my roster.

Fun Fact: It was my wife who designed the portrait for the character and I haven't changed it since she did as she periodically checks his image and when I did once change his appearance I copped all kinds of hell over it.

Combat Character (Sub Capital pilot)

80 million skillpoints

I created a second alt a couple of months after the first because, well, I could mine more with two miners and a booster. It was only when I was living in a wormhole in 2011, and after he was able to fly Exhumers, that I changed his direction to being a sub-capital combat pilot.

After I moved to Providence this character become my defacto main and I recived a lot of encouragement/learning from the FC's that were active at the time. His skills adapted to the needs of the fleets I was in, moving from T1 vessels into T2 based Recons, HAC's and HIC's. He is well trained to use all T2 guns and HAM/HM/Torpedo's with just Level V specialization needing completing for all these.

It was this character that prompted a lot of my planning when I discovered he was only just over a total of 7 days training (and an injection of ISK) from being able to fly all racial dreadnoughts and able to use all capital sized guns.

He's now training for dreadnoughts/capital guns and will move on to finishing all sub-capital ships and gunnery skills to V. Something that EVE Mon tells me will take just 797 days with 204 days of to get each racial dreadnought to V.

I'll need more jump clones for him at some point but I am lucky to have at least four spare clones.

Miner (Scanning / Sub-Capital pilot / Manufacturing Alt)

58 million skillpoints

The youngest and most cross trained of my characters, he was born with a singular purpose: to be a perfect mining character which he achieved in about six months of training.

Has since become my scanning character after spending about 3 months training every scanning skill to V, which he completed two days before the release of Odyssey and the revamp of the scanning system.

He moved on to training to fly all racial sub capital ships under Battleship size and also able to fly the Amarrian Jump Freighter. As a result he acts as a back up jump freighter pilot for me in null sec. For the past year he's been working on Support Skills.

In planning for the future I've decided that I need another character to be able to manufacture modules and ships and so this character will be starting on Science and Production skills and will do until they are all Level IV and he can make all ships but T3's and Capital's.

EVE Mon tells me that this will take 77 days for all to Level IV and then another 125 days for the Production skills I'll need to actually do the building of modules/ships that I need to. Once this is done I'll have a remap available and I think getting Drone skill maximized (much like my main is now) will be a good choice for another 230 odd days training.

No Plan Ever Survives Execution

I have plans for each of my characters and I will be following them as closely as possible but there will be times I will have to make a detour and train skills I wasn't planning on. This has happened before and will happen again but my aim is to remain on the path I have chosen as much as I can.

The skill plans I have created will improve existing skills but more important open up new ships, modules and adventures to be had.

I'm looking forward to the training even if it will consume most of the next two years.

Open Fire! All Weapons!

If you've ever had experience with POS guns you'll know how powerful and effective they can be under player control. We have a skill available, Starbase Defense Management, that allows players to control one gun per level trained.

It's a great skill and one I made sure I had at least two characters who live in POS'es have trained to Level 3. However it is a skill intensive skill, in order to control the maximum of five guns requires at least 52 days of training and 17 days of this is to get Anchoring to Level V, which is the pre-requisite for the skill.

With the coming of Kronos we've received the wonderful news that the pre-requisite skill is changing from Anchoring Level 5 to Anchoring Level 4! 

Defending via AI controlled POS weapons no more

We'll still need Anchoring 5 for Mobile Large Warp Distruptor II's (WH/Null Only) and Outpost Construction (Null Only) but Anchoring 4 will be the new requirement to get Starbase Defense Management. 

POS Defenders certainly have reason to be joyful now, this is a great change and a small one that goes a long way.

Lowering Broker Fees

I've previously mentioned that I was looking to see if I could save more ISK by lowering further the 0.75% broker fee incurred when setting up Sell Orders on my Trading Alt.

 

I'm happy to report that I've managed to lower this to 0.70% as of today but I don't believe I will get this to what I thought was the lowest level of 0.1875%.

 

0.7% Broker's fee and dropping

Standings were increased by being in fleet with an Alt missioning for Caldari Navy and then sharing the rewards when completing the mission. For Level 1/2 missions this was frustratingly slow, but training Connections to IV and Social to IV on my Trading Alt improved the rate at which I gained standings.

 

A little extra training to make the standings increase faster

The 0.05% reduction in my Broker Fees seems to correlate with a 2.00 standing that I have with the Caldari Navy. Based on this I believe I should see a maximum reduction of 0.05% per 2.00 standings, meaning a total reduction of 0.25% or a final figure for Broker Fees of 0.50%.

 

Current standings after a weekend of grinding

It's not a huge amount but over trades I do a month this will add up to be several tens of million ISK and that's no longer being removed from my wallet.

 

 

Standings

Standings 101

 

Standings are an ever present thing in EVE be they Faction, Corporation, CONCORD, NPC or even Player. Most are not that important but Faction and Corporation standings are important for the access they give to better items in LP Stores.

 

None of my characters have high standings with a lot of factions or corporations, I try to keep Amarr positive as I live in Amarr space but the others I really don't mind. I just want to avoid that situation where the standings hit -5 and I can be attacked by Faction Police. I've also got good standings on my industry characters for a couple of Corporations so that when I reprocess I can get that elusive 100% refining (with no loss or tax) in high sec stations.

 

Changes

 

I've recently audited all my characters and decided that I need to really get all faction standings positive and on two characters that PvE I want them to be +5 so I can benefit from Level 4 missions and the LP rewards they allow me access to.

 

So I'm starting the slow grind again, on five characters. Fortunately friends have pointed me to a couple of good systems where I find multiple Level 2 and Level 3 Distribution agents in the same station to get my standings up quickly and open up Level 4 agents.

 

Learning New Things

 

I've also decided to return to Osmon as there are good Level 4 agents there (not to mention Sisters of EVE) but more importantly in the same system are two Faction agents I can use to get good boosts to my Faction standings with Minmatar and Caldari.

 

What I did not know is that completing Storyline Missions (available every 16 completed normal missions) for one of the major races also affords minor increases/decreases with other factions. Run a Storyline mission for Minmatar and you get a large boost to Minmatar standings but a smaller positive boost to Gallente but a small decrease to Amarr.

 

Now run the Caldari storyline mission and you get a large positive increase to Caldari and a small one to Amarr with the small decrease to Minmatar.

 

The best bit though is the positive boosts are always larger than the negative boosts so over time the positive/negative boosts don't even out as you might expect instead the positive wins and by doing Storyline missions you'll improve standings with all four major races.

 

Skill Changes

 

So I'll be PvE'ing some more but I've restructured my training to make sure the characters all have maximised Social, Security/Distribution Connections, Negotiation and Diplomacy skills in order to improve rewards and standings I'll receive.

 

All up it's only about a 15 day variation in training to maximise these skills and it's a nice break from some of the long Level V skills I have been training.

 

So, back to the grind but the grind will be worth it. At some point I need to improve pirate faction standings and that'll be interesting as they don't exist in High Sec...

Unintentional

I never planned this but I had to laugh.

 

Four of my five active characters have training that completes within sixteen minutes of each other and all skills are Level V ones so they've been active for at least a week and I've only just noticed.

 

The skills that are going complete around the same time are:

 

Social V

Science V

EM Shield Compensation V

Thermic Armour Compensation V

 

and looking at each of the next skills, this may happen again next week as they all move on to more Level V skills.

 

Totally unintentional but perhaps its my sub-conscious at work making sure I don't forget to keep the queues filled and best way to do that, arrange it so I have to update multiple characters at the same time.

 

Not a great blog post, I know. I promise I'll do a better one later today.

Character Planning

Then

 

I can remember when I started playing EVE Online that training was important and as a result I found and started using EVEMon so as to plan what to train. However it was at least 6 months BEFORE I found EVEMon where I was training whatever I wanted and really was not doing anything efficiently.

 

I'm not embarrassed to say the first time, it was Christmas 2010, that I tried EVEMon and I could not work out how to get it to inject my plans into EVE for my characters to follow. How I laugh at myself now but I can remember how annoyed I was as I did not have access to EVE for about two weeks.

 

Epiphany

 

 

 

After I learnt what EVEMon was, it's feature set and how to use it did I have a "oh now I get it" moment and from that point on I really understand how skills worked and how my attributes modified how fast I learnt.

 

The removal of the Learning skills confirmed this and made the learning thing much simpler and now all I had to remember was what my attributes were mapped to and then apply that as my view in EVEMon and I could plan what I wanted to do.

 

No longer did I train what I wanted instead I would train skills that were mapped to my attributes and then when I'd reached a certain point would I remap and start training something else.

 

Now

 

EVEMon's skill planning has been critical to this and each of my characters has two skill plans:

 

Working 

a working skill plan that allows me to add/try different things to see how they do/fit with other plans/ships/modules I need to train.

 

Primary Objective

the characters primary objective for all training with their current attributes at maximum

 

I'm sure other people either have more or less plans but for me the two on each character is enough. I review them regularly but I try to avoid making changes to skill plans unless I really have to. My plans include remap points as well as the addition/removal of ad hoc training with remap points indicating completed objectives.

 

For me the planning aspect and having goals works to my mindset. The Working plan allows me to mess about and see how changes or different training will integrate with what I have. It also allows me to do a quick check to see if perhaps my Primary Objective can be changed to something new.

 

Example

 

A recent exception to my Primary Objective plan for one character has been the addition of JF training. The character, who is on a intelligence/memory remap, has had to train jump related Navigation skills which are intelligence/perception. I wasn't going to remap specially for intelligence/perception, as there aren't that many skills to warrant this, whereas intelligence/memory is a very large group of skills and I want to continue on using this remap after this detour.

 

I may have wasted a few extra days training but in the long run not using one of my precious remaps was worth it.

 

The Future

 

All my characters have training set for 2014 with a Primary Objective for all of them:

 

• My main is finishing Amarr Carrier V and Amarr Dreadnaught V then all gunnery skills to V before getting the long overlooked Memory/Perception so he can get all Drone skills to V.
• My PvP alt is still on Intelligence/Memory and doing all support skills (recently completed all sub-capital armour skills to V), will continue on this for another 9 months at least.
• My Logistics Alt is on Intelligence/Memory and doing all support skills same as PvP alt.
• My Scanning Alt is on Intelligence/Memory and doing all support skills same as PvP alt but with aim to switch to Willpower/Perception to get all sub-capital ships in a years time.

 

I'm also going to be receiving a Minmatar character from a friend who will be leaving EVE Online due to not having time to play. This character, which I keep the training queue active on currently, is extremely well skilled in support skills, all sub-capital Minmatar ships, all T3 Strategic Cruisers and Projectile weapons.

 

I don't know what I'll do with him or whether he'll be a trained character for 2014, but it's a new character that will give me options.