After yesterday’s rather interesting adventure into the lunacy of EVE online I decide that it was time to read up and further understand the game before jumping back in. So I went online to the EVE Wiki (which for anyone new to the game I really suggest going to) and looked up what is the best route for my character to go if I wanted to become a fighter.

The main thing I came to understand out of the read up is the need for skill training within EVE. Skills dominate the conditions of EVE Online and are essentially critical to how you as the player progress. While I knew that they were rather necessary to continue I found myself at a total lose for how to go about training to the ones that I need.

For starter its seems like I need to focus more on both long range and shield Management which are critical in the beginning. With long range it becomes much easier to deal with pirates and swarm groups due to your ability to keep them at an overall ineffective range. With this you are also able to lessen the overall capability of what people refer to as “drone swarming” (please correct me if I am wrong, trying my best to learn), which is one of the early tactics, that NPC’s seems to use. They draw you into or near there group and the begin to send out turret drones. Now while one of these drones is harmless, large groups are rather effective at fucking your day up.

The second addition was that of shield management, which it took me awhile to understand, but I finally nailed it down to this. Simple how effectively you use your shields in battle when they are deployed or used. So when your getting hit my three to four enemies and your shields are rapidly falling you can simply deploy a repair like mechanism to have them hold for just a bit longer. Now this won’t repair them all the way (unless you sit around for awhile and wait) however it will buy you extra time to get off those few extra rounds for damage. With that you may be able to finish of your opponent before they get you.

So with all of my upgrades fully understood and my ship equipped with some of the best guns money could buy (for now) I took up a small scouting mission that seemed easy enough. After the jump I approached my target only to realize that it was yet another jump gate. Now luckily I need only to spot the gate for this mission however I knew in mission to come that I would yet again have to jump through.

So I netted the profit from the mission and took up the next one, and what do you know it’s a search and destroy mission, involving… you guessed it pirates. Now after yesterday I was not really that eager to jump right back into combat and try to wreck some fools however I knew the only way to get better was to at least try to. So I took the mission and went on my merry way.

Now before I get to the mission I did also see some thing rather crazy and interesting today. A raid by a real group of pirates who were wrecking shit on this small convoy passing through the system. I kept my distance but in the interest of writing I stayed to watch the insanity unfold, and damn was it crazy. From what I read on the chat channel it seemed like some corporation was warping through carrying a payroll for some mining group (I think it belonged to them). Anyway as they were moving through they were suddenly ambushed at a gate by two small frigates, however they were just the scouts. As soon as the battle commenced a large number of new targets began to show up on my target list. They were players but instead of the traditional highlight of green, they were paint yellow, the color of the pirates.

After I scrambled to get a safe distance (by safe distance I mean like a good ten klicks) I watched the action unfold, and man was it awesome. The corporation called it for backup but they were getting ravaged by the pirates, who were taking them apart piece by piece. Suddenly more and more targets appeared, it was what I was guessing to be bounty hunters or something cause they engaged the pirate immediately. After about ten more minutes of fighting it all became quiet, it seemed that the corporation had held off the pirate group, but not without sustaining really bad casualties.

Maybe it was seeing this crazy fight that got me the confidence to jump back into combat. Or maybe I was just getting bored? Either way I took the mission, jumped, and manhandled every pirate scumbag who came my way, and man did I feel satisfied turning in that mission.