Tech II Frigate or Battleship?

So, I'm in a bit of a quandary.  Right now, I'm improving my mining skills, as a good source of ISK is always needed, but after I do this, I'm going to need to make a choice.  I know I want to get into a new ship class - the question is, what?  The two things on my mind are a PvP-geared Assault Frigate or a mission-running battleship.

Let's take a look at the rundown of the pros and cons.

Battleship (Maelstrom)

Pros

• It's a battleship.  It's big, mean, nasty, and I would feel great knowing that I own one.  When I started playing EVE, I thought that owning a battleship wasn't something I would ever really achieve, and if I actually got there ... well, wow, I will have impressed myself.
• Owning a battleship will put me on a more even footing with fellow corpmates and alliance members.  Currently, I run level four missions fairly often with a really nice guy called ZORRODEN, who basically lets me mooch off of his missions.  I can help out some in a Hurricane, but I could do a whole lot more with a Maelstrom.  Also, I'll finally be able to tank plenty of damage on my own without having to warp out once the aggro gets serious.
• I might be able to solo some level four's.  The harder ones like Angel Extravaganza are out of the question, but I'll be able to fit a Tech II tank, so I think I should be all right for the easier ones.  Even half the ISK from a level four is quite a bit, and the amount I would get from soloing them is massive compared to what I can earn now with level three's.
• Finishing up the basic Minmatar progression would give me a sense of closure over the whole thing, sort of a clean slate to go wherever I want.  I think I'll be sort of relieved once I'm out of the frigate -> cruiser -> battlecruiser -> battleship line.  My focus for my first eight months in EVE has been on climbing this ladder, and getting to the top and being able to look around more closely at my other options will be nice.  I realize that this is basically a self-imposed limit that's pretty stupid, but try as I might, I can't break it.
• I think it's what I *want* to do, if you know what I mean.  My gut feeling is to go with the Maelstrom and see how things turn out.

Cons

• A Maelstrom costs two hundred million ISK.  For me, that's a lot, as much as I can make in about five good days.  It also means that I have to be prepared to lose the thing as soon as I purchase it, which will be difficult.  I don't think it will crush me if I get ganked my first time out with my new toy, but it will be hard going.
• I won't have the skills to fly it well for a very long time.  T2 large guns alone is far over a month's training time from where I'm at right now.  I also need to work on my drone skills, navigation skills, and especially missile skills. However, my shield tanking is pretty decent, so for mission running, I should be all right on most of them.  In almost all the missions I've done so far, tank is much more important than gank.
• It will put me back on my plans to head into lowsec for a while.  I'll explain those in detail in a later post, but suffice to say that my schedule will probably be thrown back by at least two weeks if my calculations are right.

Assault Frigate (Jaguar or Wolf)

Pros

• It's cheap. A Jaguar is just thirty million ISK a pop, although I'm not sure about the Wolf.  I can afford to lose a few of them and it won't bother me very much.
• I've been vaguely wanting to fly Assault Frigates since before I got my first cruiser.  It's not a strong desire, but it's there.
• It will force me into T2 guns.  Considering that I always consider the "Recommended" certificates as a prerequisite to buying something, I will finally have the skills to use T2 Small Autocannons by the time I get into one of these.  I'll need T2 guns and ammo to go into PvP if what I've heard about it is correct.
• On the same note about the certificates, I'll have to train some Gunnery support skills that I've needed for a long time.
• The most important pro is that getting several of these is one of the several things I want to do before I head into lowsec.  It's basically sticking to the plan that I made for myself and not wandering off of it as I too often do.

Cons

• I don't want it as much as I want a Maelstrom.  Something in my head is telling me that this is the most important thing and that I'll be unhappy buying a Jaguar/Wolf before the battleship.
• I'm not sure which Assault Frigate I want - as far as I can tell, the Jaguar is more like a versatile jack-of-all-trades while the Wolf is a heavy damage-dealing brawler.  I can see where the Jaguar's extra mid slot would come in very useful, but at the same time I like the idea of hitting my opponent very, very hard.  I mean, the word "Assault" is in Assault Frigate for a reason.  If I end up buying the wrong one and then regretting it ... well, they're cheap, but still ....
• Although 30 million ISK is not all that much, I suspect it will begin to add up once I start losing these frigates in combat.  I've been thinking about using Tech II-fitted Rifters instead and just using Assault Frigates when a little extra muscle is called for.

Daily Update #3

I started out the day a little bit before downtime, with a bit of mining in my Covetor, then went ratting in my Rifter.  The rats were relatively plentiful, and I ran into one that dropped me some faction ammo as loot.  I've never seen faction ammo before, so ... sweet.  I doubt I'll be using it any time soon, but I guess it's nice to have around.

I finally fitted some Medium Cargohold Optimization I rigs on my Mammoth, which it has honestly needed for several months.  The cost was slightly shocking - 18 million ISK, putting me down to a wallet with just 35 million ISK inside.  I spent most of my morning running a single, very difficult level four mission with a corpmate and then salvaging it.  It got me about 30 mil from the bounties, reward, and salvage, so I was fairly happy.

After this, I hauled all of the minerals I had mined over to the nearest trade hub in my Mammoth.  I had about seventy thousand meters cubed, and my Mammoth only holds a little less than a jetcan.  The three trips of five jumps took about forty-five minutes, but the payout at the end was worth it.  I ended the day with about 112 million ISK to my name.

I did a little bit of mining in my Covetor, about half of a jetcan, before I called it quits for the day and logged off.

All in all, not very interesting.

Daily Update #2

A while ago, I promised to do daily updates when nothing really worthy of a full post happened that day.  Obviously, I've sort of failed at fulfilling that promise, but hopefully I can start fixing that now.

Anyways.... what happened to me today?  Really, not that much.

I spent a few hours mining in my Covetor and pulled in about four jetcans of ore, more than I've ever been able to do in one sitting before.  In general, stuff was pretty boring, but after refining the ore, the estimated price was 43 million ISK.  Considering it usually sells for a lot more in the nearest trade hub, I've made back all of the money I spent yesterday.  So, cool beans.

Annoying Loki

I had an encounter with a Loki today that showed me I have no idea what I'm doing with my D-Scan. I was sitting around in the early morning, right after downtime, and a guy belonging to what looks like a pirate corp jumps into the system.  It takes me about thirty seconds to check all his standings and his corp, which is way too long if you ask me, especially since at that hour we were the only two people in the system.

I use my D-Scan, but my settings are messed up and it doesn't work like it should.  It takes me another ten seconds to get it working properly, and I finally manage to see what sort of ship he's flying.  It's a Loki, which meant that I wasn't really in any danger from a gank, but I didn't realize that at the time.

He keeps popping in and out of my D-Scan every few minutes or so.  I know that he can't be jumping in between systems, because his name never vanishes off of local.  I figured he was just docking and undocking from the system's one station, but just to make sure I align to it and put D-Scan on sixty degrees.

He doesn't show up.

In the end, he left, but for the entire time he was in the system, I had absolutely no idea where he was.  I probably could have been dead several times over if he had meant me any harm.  As I later found out from people I was talking to, his ship was far more expensive than mine and posed no threat to me, but if he had had any bad intentions, my Covetor would now be forgotten space debris floating around an asteroid belt.

Lessons Learned

I asked a whole lot of questions about staying safe while mining and about the D-Scan, and I learned some very valuable lessons.

• D-Scan does not show range on objects that do not appear in your overview.  I didn't know that before.
• I should keep the D-Scan window below where I have local chat positioned, on the lower left side of my monitor.  Whenever I mine, I should always be using it.  I like to think of it as a radar warning reciever, the thing that tells aircraft if a missile or other aircraft's fire-control radar is trying to lock on to them.
• I should find a belt where the system's stargates and stations are all further away than the D-Scan's maximum range, and warp out if I see any combat ships show up.  If I can't find a belt that far out, I should drop the range on the D-Scan to be below the distance between me and the nearest gate or station.

Other Stuff

I forgot to bookmark a jetcan and ended up running around nearly every belt in the system trying to find it again.  Part of the confusion is that my corporation has bookmarks in the asteroid belts where they can be mined out without having to move very much.  Since I tend to mark belts by how many slots down they are in the drop-down menu, that means that "the third belt" can be two very different places depending on which menu I used.  I need to remember to save my cans' locations.

Covetors, Warriors, and Crunchies

So, today has been my first day playing EVE in about a month and a half.  I'm rusty but I'm having a lot of fun getting back into the game.

First things first.  The amazing friend spoken of in my post earlier today got all my Core skills up to Standard (look at the certificates if you don't know what that means) and trained up the prerequisites for both T2 Warrior drones and a Covetor, among other things.  Anyways, I had a lot of shiny new stuff I could use, which unfortunately meant I had to spend my shiny ISK.  I guess to get something shiny you have to give up something shiny?

All in all, I shelled out about fifty million ISK today.  For some of you, that might not sound like much, but for me, it's almost exactly half my savings.  With it, I bought a Covetor, five T2 Warriors for it, and a poor man's fit.  It's not exactly the most intelligent thing I could have done with my money, as I'll be able to replace almost all of the T1 modules on that barge in just a few days with T2, but I think I've already made up a lot of the price.

Covetors

Anyways, time for the ever-present fitting rundown.  I don't have a snazzy graphic for this one because I'm on an iPad and you can't really do that sort of thing very easily.

Do Not Pass Go (Covetor, Asteroid Mining)

High Slots

Strip Miner I

Strip Miner I

Strip Miner I

Mid Slots

Survey Scanner I

Low Slots

Expanded Cargohold II

Mining Laser Upgrade I

As you can see, this is hardly an inspired fit.  After the new changes to mining barges, which I really didn't know anything about at the time I made this fit, I think the Expanded Cargohold II is kind of useless.  I'll probably be replacing it with another MLU as soon as I can.  If there is a use for it, can someone tell me?

This Covetor hauls in so much more than my old Scythe that the two don't really compare.  I can fill a jetcan in about 30 minutes with this thing without even trying, while it took about 45 with my Scythe if I was really paying attention.  That's the other nice thing about the Covetor - the cycle is a lot longer on the Strip Miners, meaning I've got more time to check D-Scan and local chat, talk to corpmates, and do whatever else I want to before I have to pull ore from my hold into the jetcan.  The ore hold can also hold two Strip Miner cycles, compared to my Scythe, which could only hold one cycle of Miner II's.  Basically, it leaves a lot more room for me to mess up.  And that's good, because I mess up a lot.

I managed to mine two jetcans in about an hour and a half this morning, counting the time I used to piddle around with skillbooks and find my Mammoth, which I had left lying around in a forgotten station a few jumps away.  Overall, mining with the Covetor is a lot more profitable and a lot more relaxed than mining with the Scythe, and I like it much more.  I suppose I'm a bigger target for gankers, but I mine in a very quiet system where it's usually just me and the alliance members plus about three random people. I'm also sometimes in a group with more experienced players who have a better idea of when to run than I do.

Warriors

On to my new T2 drones.  Honestly, I've forgotten how my old T1 ones performed because it's been so long, but the T2's are supposed to be a big step up.  Either way, they've served me pretty well.

I was surprised to learn that the Covetor had 50 meters cubed of drone space, and I quickly filled half of it up with five Warrior II's. The other half I planned to fill with mining drones, but was surprised again when I discovered you needed a separate skill to fly mining drones.  So those will have to wait until I get around to training it.

Right after buying my drones, I warped into a belt and ran into five Angel Cartel rats.  Three were the normal combat frigates, but the other two were a miner and an industrial.  Unfortunately, I've forgotten their names, but I'd never seen either of those ship types before and I wasn't sure what they were.  Since those two weren't targeting me, I was afraid to release my drones lest they got a bit banged up.

Finally, I chose to just let the drones out and hope for the best. As expected, the three combat ships were easy work and I moved on to the miner and the industrial.  I finally realized what they might be when my drones destroyed the miner without it firing a shot, and my suspicions were confirmed when I asked about it in Alliance chat.   Unfortunately, the industrial warped out before I could kill him, but the miner had nice loot for a frigate.

Nothing too important, but I thought it was interesting.

Crunchies

All right, you might be thinking.  I get why you said "Covetors" - that's a mining barge.  And "Warriors," because those are drones.  But "Crunchies"?  What in the world is a Crunchy?

Good question.  My corp's name is Crunchy Crunchy, and I was trying to think up some nice-sounding name for this blog post.  I knew I wanted to talk about my Covetor, my drones, and my corp.  But "Covetor, Warriors, and Crunchy Crunchy" or "Covetor, Warriors, and Corp Stuff" didn't really have a flair to it.  So I will hereby call my corpmates Crunchies, because it sounded cooler in a blog post title.  I've got great priorities, no?

You also might be wondering why my corp's name is Crunchy Crunchy.  Another good question.  And the answer is that I have absolutely no idea.  I'll have to ask my CEO.

Anyways, time for me to get to the point.

My CEO and some members of the corp and alliance have decided to move into lowsec space.  Quitea few of them are veteran PvPer's - one has owned a Rorqual and some other capitals before, and participated in battles with scores of supercarriers involved.  So to them, lowsec probably isn't much.  Some of them went in, checked out the system we were thinking about, and all seems well, so some of us are going to be living over there now.

I have to say that I really like the idea of living in lowsec.  It's got more danger, but I'm surrounded by nice people who know a lot about this sort of stuff and are more than willing to teach me the ropes.  And I know I can make more cash in lowsec if we manage to get a mining op set up there.  I've wanted to PvP in EVE for a while, and now it seems like I may have my chance.

However, I have a few problems.  For one thing, I have no working microphone.  I bought a new one a few weeks ago while I was travelling (nice microphone for a price I'd never get back home), but then the airlines destroyed it by rough baggage handling on the flight back.  I've got nothing else that works, so that means I'm more or less unable to communicate quickly and effectively when I really need to.  I'm pretty sure I'll be able to pick up a cheap mic in the next two or three weeks, and considering I'm low on ISK right now, I might want to make a few hundred million to spend on new frigates and cruisers to PvP in.

The other thing I'm not entirely sure of is the distribution of corp members across our old base in highsec and our new one in lowsec.  I know some people have elected to stay behind, but I'm not sure how many.  I don't think I want to be out there without a few guys around to back me up, but my lowsec moneymaking potential will be seriously gimped if one member's decided to move into lowsec.  Currently, he refines and hauls my ore for me (same guy who was nice enough to train my skills while I was gone), and while I can do a reasonably okay job hauling to the nearest trade hub with a Mammoth, my refining and trade skills are terrible.

I'm not entirely sure what to do right now.  I think I'll clear up on the uncertainties I have on where everyone is going before I make a decision.  Right now I'm leaning towards staying in highsec until I can get another headset, though.

I'm back!

After spending seven weeks away from home, I'm finally back in my own house.  It's quite lovely really.  I was getting sick of travelling.  Anyhoo...

I got a new headset to replace my old one that hasn't worked in months, only to discover that the airline baggage people shattered the plastic attaching one of the earpieces to it.  Unfortunately, that earpiece also has the microphone on it, and I'm not sure if it works any more.  It was hanging by a wire when I took it out of my suitcase.  I'll try to glue it back to something semi-functional, but chances are I've just lost myself about thirty bucks.

I entrusted my account to a friend for the time I was gone, and he kept my skill training going.  I know that I can now use Tech II light drones thanks to him, and I've gotten a lot closer to being able to get in a mining barge.  I've got about 6.5 million skill points now if EVE Gate is to be trusted, which I sort of doubt.  Earlier it was telling me I had 12 million.  If said friend ever reads this, you are awesome.

As I write this EVE is about to undergo its daily maintenance, but I can't wait to get back into the game.  Hopefully you'll all be seeing an actual EVE-related post (imagine that!) in the next few days.