User:Caitlyn semah/Journal

Caitlyn's Explorers Journal/Guide

Hi! Welcome to my "journal/guide?". What is that you ask?

Whining to follow! Feel free to skip this section, but it's included so people understand my viewpoint.

Well, I'm documenting some of my journeys through the beginning of E-Uni. Full disclosure, I was here for a year before, and took a "break." Last time I was here, I fell into a trap that I don't intend to fall into this time. I wanted to learn about [wormholes] but to do that you need the sophomore title. My play style is incompatible with the sophomore title in general, and as a result, I ended up playing the game a way other than how I wanted to, so I could get the chance to learn what living in wspace is like.

Coming back this time, I still have the same interests. I explore, I fleet once in a while, and I play around in wormhole space. I don't have a lot of time, so scheduled fleets are pretty rare for me. I don't have time to block out 3 hours of time where I can be at the computer and on mumble without stepping away for periods of time. I'm a solo player that takes part in chat, I'm not good enough to teach stuff and don't intend to pretend, I'm extremely casual, and I don't really set goals. I've essentially been told that to get sophomore, I have to do the exact opposite of all of that :) I have no intention of dong that. This is a game I'm supposed to find fun. I'm not going to play a month the way someone else thinks I should play and burn out again.

I've been given some options:

• Teach - I don't know what I'm doing. The goal is to learn, kind of chicken and egg.
• FC Fleets - I don't have a lot of predictable 3 hour blocks I can set aside. Plus I'm not comfortable with people relying on me to give them even a slight chance of coming back alive :) Testing the waters in HSC, people have not been keen on the advert, "I will probably get you killed"
• Do The Explorers Shadow on the wiki, and document it - The next titles person I talked to, then told me this didn't count. After I did it. It was still fun, and I recommend it.
• Show killboard activity with other unistas - Maybe eventually I'll have enough. So far I've only been on 4 fleets, which I think is a huge amount for someone with my level of free time. They all take an hour before you can even get started, and are hit and miss if you kill anything at all. I originally wanted to play logi in fleets, but I will put a hold on that until I have the sophomore title. I can't waste opportunities to get the KB stats the Uni wants by doing something like that. My first logi attempt no one could answer how the FCs add us to the killmails, and no AAR was written, so there was nothing to comment on. I did comment on the kills, though. I'll pick up logi once I've checked the KB stats box. I also participated in a few fleets where we had no kills, unfortunately, so those don't count.
• References - I talk in chat a lot, but I'm shy. Anyone who isn't new is on mumble, and I'm not going to be on mumble if I'm not doing fleets. Not my thing. References are out.

Write substantial wiki guides - I'd be making stuff up. I don't think that's a good idea, but I'd do it if required. Substantive forum posts - Other than asking questions, which I do plenty of, I don't have anything substantive to say. Another staff person recommended that I create a log of my solo journey - I don't mind doing that, let's try this one :)

If you've made it this far, you'll have picked up that I'm a bit grumpy :) I'm extremely shy, and would not normally post a "journal" but it's a last ditch effort, and the only real way for me to do that is to do it without much editing. Otherwise, I'd spend so much time worrying about it, that I'd never finish it. I've spent 6 hours on this one already :)

With all of that said, why the "/Guide?" tacked on at the end? Well, it could be a guide. If you want to know how to do things right, do the exact opposite of everything I do :) I don't plan to say that I'm doing things the right way. I'm just doing them my way. It'll give people an idea of what a specific type of playstyle is like.

None of that matters, so what about wormholes?

Now that I have the description of the forum thread out of the way, here is my first post. Some observations on the sophomore title and some advice.

The sophomore title is required for hanger access and the ability to edit corp bookmarks mostly. I've haven't used the corp hangers since I've been back, so I can't actually remember which ones are which, but that's the idea. It's not a big deal not having it at most campuses because someone of that level or higher is likely around that can assist you. This creates a system where people can still have all of the access they need, but abuse is checked by having more valuable items given out by hand. Possible corp losses are minimized, without a real impact on availability.

In E-Uni, other than an occasional fleet called noobs night in the hole, or being invited into the wormhole campus for a day trip if they want to use you as bait, you need the sophomore title to learn much about wormholes. Additionally, the other options don't teach you to live in wormhole space, only visit.

Now there is some contention and conflicting information about the reasons for the requirement that you have sophomore title. As far as it being a requirement to get into the WHC:

• The title is used for POS permissions - This is accurate to an extent. The main POS is open to the alliance, and so is access to some of the hangers. The more shiny things are secured behind different pos permissions or a different POS group altogether that is limited to a subset of people who share the password.
• Corp bookmarks are used extensively, which require the title to change those that you didn't create. - You CAN create bookmarks though, which means junior people could participate in scanning efforts without having access to maliciously remove needed bookmarks back, but someone with the trusted sophomore title would have to be the manual check before removal, just as hanger access is secured.
• Location OpSec - You don't even need to be a freshman to see the bookmarks...
• There are other security measures, but none of them are affected by the sophomore title itself.

Some people have mentioned that maybe citadels will change all of this. That would be interesting, but none of the mechanics from above are really affected by the sophomore title when it comes down to it. There is no difference in giving the freshman a pos vs a citadel other than the ability to individually store your ships. That would, of course, be ideal. Short of that a freshman POS with a personal storage hanger could provide a pretty good introduction to POS mechanics and wormhole space that they can't get anywhere else in E-Uni that I'm aware of. Due to the limited amount of mechanics that the sophomore title actually affects, a citadel would only be a small relief. If that's what opens up the WHC to the perma-freshman, that would be great, but I'd imagine they already have a citadel in place. I arrived too late yesterday to attend the noob night in the hole.

An Alternative: WHC Annex

If things aren't changes coming with the citadels, I'd like to see alternate options for learning wormhole life. such as a WHC community college :) You can go there as a freshman to learn the mechanics and participate in efforts that are unique to wspace, such as hole control during pvp, buttoning up a hole for protection, rage rolling the highsec static to get near the desired destination, or maybe something I'm not even aware of because my only way to learn about wormholes is to read the blogs or forums of other corps. The wormhole would be a different hole than the WHC. That way all of the people who are afraid of having to deal with newbies, or are looking for the non-newbie corp feel can stay at the WHC, and the introductory education can be done in the other location.

People right away objected to this when I mentioned it before. One staff member thought keeping the WHC inclusive of newbies was important so the vets can teach the new players. I disagree with this because it's not inclusive now. The new players aren't allowed in at all, unless invited temporarily for an event. This would cause division post-sophomore, but for the perma-freshman, this would be a chance to actually learn about wormholes. Right now the only option for someone with a playstyle that doesn't align with the sophomore title requirements is to leave the Uni and either come back when they have that experience and are looking for something different.

A Second Alternative: Setup your own POS or move to Thera

Live in Thera! It's kind of a cool option. It's NOT like living in real w-space, but it's a neat transition if you have to teach yourself. A stepping stone. So I linked Thera already, and you can wait until I've said my spiel to read it, but read it.

So what makes Thera so interesting? It's pretty much the new center of the universe. It has so many wormhole connections to the rest of EVE that many people use it to travel from place to place. It has over 20 system connections. Not only that, it's the only wormhole with real stations. SOE has multiple stations in Thera and kind of uses it as a hub. There are cloning facilities, so you can install a jump clone, which is pretty cool in my opinion. If you know anything about NPC Null, it's a pretty close feel. Except there are no gates. Multiple corps live in the same stations and generally you want to get off station ASAP and out to a safe. Drop probes, hit your insta-undock, cloak enroute, bounce to your safe cloaked when you're done. Now you're ready to scan your way out.

You might ask, 20+ wormhole connections? How the hell do you scan all of those down and figure out where you want to go in any sort of timely fashion? Don't, someone else already did it for you! There is an alliance out there called EvE-Scout Enclave [SC0UT] with a newbie corp in it called Signal Cartel. They are explorers that treat everyone as blues and will not attack anyone, regardless of security status of the space. Their main job is to maintain the Eve Scout website. (http://www.eve-scout.com/) In addition, if you watch https://www.twitch.tv/evescout late friday night and weds I think, he's usually taking newbies out from Thera into null or somewhere to teach them how to do exploration. Coming in through the backdoor wormholes rather than the high/low/null borders seems to be a lot safer. He also goes into how he chooses where he's going to set his destination. If you use tripwire for your hole diving, which I do, signal cartel shares all of their data with everyone. So anything they've scanned, you'll see. So you'll likely see a few hops out of Thera down the wormhole chains. Our WHC, and I guess the Uni, use a custom mapper. People say it's better, but I prefer tripwire and likely will until I'm in the WHC and figure the mapper out more.

With eve-scout up to date, you'll always know what signature to scan to get the hole you want. Always cloak and warp to at a distance from a safe. Popular destinations, like those close to tradehubs, are often camped. That might mean ancored drag bubbles on route to it from the station. Getting to a safe first allows you to come from an unexpected angle. It's not likely they'll bubble the hell out of the hole, because anyone jumping in, can just jump right back out. Even if they've engaged. Unlike gates, you can jump with a timer, except for a polarization timer. I'm not getting into that now, this is already a book :) Just come from a different angle and jump at range to make sure it's clear. Then bookmark the WH from the overview. The scanning window is off by a bit, bookmarking from the overview gives you an exact bookmark. Warp to your safe, warp back to your bookmark, and jump. Once the hole expires, just rename your bookmark to be a new safe. That way you can stockpile safes :) It's nice to have them.

What you do get out of Thera that I like, is a changing map. Your neighbors always change. Sure, you share your system with a ton of other people, but you nevr know who is about to jump in. A large wormhole corp might be trying to lock down two of the holes to use a a temporary supply chain. Many corps roll away from Thera, so you're less likely to find large active corp wormholes next door unless they're running logistics through there.

What wormhole stuff can you not learn in Thera?

For one, you can't anchor a POS, so POS mechanics are out. Thera is also a shattered wormhole, and I believe you can't anchor a citadel either. You're stuck with the stations. You could technically rage roll, I guess, but I don't know why you would. You'll also never be able to maintain any kind of control of Thera. People can jump clone in, you can't destroy the stations, and there are more wormholes than players in your fleet most likely. I don't know if gas huffing or mining are options, but I believe not. Even if they were, that's crazy. You're crazy. Stop thinking that.

You want a POS you say?

Setup your own POS somewhere. This costs money. If you can get a few like minded individuals, you might be able to pull it off. You can try it temporarily or you can actually move in for a while. Living in a hole by yourself is pretty dangerous. It's hard to keep control of it at all. You might end up with neighbors, or people hunting you down often. It IS an option though. I'd like to see this as a formal Uni excursion. Deploy to WH space for like a week, every few weeks. Give freshmen the chance to live out in a hole, even if they' have a perma-freshman playstyle.

Also:

• Wormholes
• Moving into Wormhole Space
• Living in Wormhole Space

These links are written from the expectaition that if you're Uni, you'll be joining the WHC, so take some of that with a grain of salt if you're not eligible.

What if you want to find a newbie WH corp?

Some people, myself included, think of joining other corps that have a newbie WH presence

• http://www.eve-scout.com/signal-cartel/ - So signal cartel is pretty interesting. You get a lot of support for living out of Thera. The downside is PVP is looked down on. If you're ever on the killboard, you have to explain that you were defending yourself. Kind of blame the victim in my eyes, but they're dead set on neutrality. It means a lot of people treat them as blues right back. Very pointedly newbie friendly.
• http://www.torpedodelivery.com/careers/ - The CEO is hilarious. Chance Ravine. (Watch this hilarity). Rollplaying a torpedo delivery agent is encouraged. They don't actually hold corporate assets. They are more of a community with a common theme. They spend their time doing exploration, scouting wormholes to track people down as a paid service, locating types of wormholes for people. They claim to be able to track down any corp or a wormhole that meets your requests in a matter of days. They claim to scan every wspace system every 6 days. It's mostly PVP focused. You're delivering torpedoes to peoples faces. Drone party packages tend to be pre-armed. Stealth bombers, stratioses, and small stealth hunter types.
• The jobs forum has a few newbie friendly corps that you may want to review
• /r/eve - There are some corp resources there you can dig up