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Friday, June 10, 2011

Some reflection on 0.0 life - and kills (yay)!

Been a bit of a blah week the last week has.  Been mostly on my alts doing PI in high sec.  Strangely enough this has been most of my char's income lately.  I think I'm still suffering from the shock of my first fail cascade.  I've gotten to FAIL space, did a bit of "get ships ready for operations" and then just hit a "blah" patch.  I'm loathe to setup PVE ships even though I know I need to do it to get some income generating.  Mainly it's the "Since I'll just need to evac them anyways" feeling left over from the R.A.G.E cascade.  That cascade really brought home the "keep your footprint light" necessity of 0.0 life.  Especially since I currently lack significant integral strategic mobility (read: I don't yet have a suitcase carrier or jump freighter).

This also has to do with the nature of FAIL itself.  It espouses a much more nomadic lifestyle for it's combat operations that I was used to when we were with R.A.G.E.  Again I'm feeling the lack of strategic mobility inherent in being a non-carrier capable pilot.  I am discovering that this is more of a major barrier to entry into null sec life than I had previously supposed.

It works like this:  Industrial presence in null sec consists of mainly 2 things:  Extraction and supercap construction with their associated infrastructures.  The only reason some of those are there is that they can't be done anywhere else.  That's it.  I'd estimate that 90% of null sec industrial presence consists of elements to support those two activities.  Except for some minor manufacture, just about everything else comes in from Empire.  The reason is simple:  High sec stability.  So long as it's relatively easy to ship stuff to 0.0, there's no reason to get serious about building stuff locally.  This is especially relevant with the vast shakeup that most of EVE is going thru (the "dodge the PL stomp" game the rest of us are playing currently).

So operationally and strategically I have to maintain my main character and the main alt's mobility.  This precludes getting into lucrative stuff like PI since starting and abandoning planets gets tiresome after a while.  Not to mention the lack of personal/corporate/alliance logistics for industrial purposes.  I may get my alt into PI pending the finishing off of his recon skills, but my main will be away too much to make it worth while.

My frustrations with this lack of logistics is a major part of the reason I haven't been posting much.  Or logging in for long periods of time for that matter.  The truth is my characters are about 2-3 months away from being logistically independent.  And then there's the "skill up for the flavor of the month".  Another barrier to entry in 0.0.  Once I get my logistics in place there will be a month or three of skilling up other faction ships and weapon systems.  In order to make things consistent for their FCs and simply the "buy kits in high sec and sell them in 0.0" style of logistics, most 0.0 alliances maintain "standard fleet fits" of a limited number of ships.  Again it's frustrating when you don't have the skills to fly the main fleet ships.  You marry this with the 0.0 attitude of "our way or the high way" and you have the reason 0.0 is so sparsely populated.  Frankly wormhole logistics were easier that being in 0.0 without a carrier.  I've now done both and I stand by that statement.

Regardless of the above, I finally got on when a decent roam was starting last night and managed to get in on the action.  Yay, got in on 6 kill mails. 

I'll stick it out for the nonce, but stay tuned to see if I say "fuck it" and head back to wormhole space while I wait for my skills to get to the point where they will make life workable in k-space 0.0.

Man over 4 years in game and I still don't have the skills to make life in 0.0 workable.  Crazy game.  (currently training Matari BS 5 - slog slog slog).  Ah well, such is EVE.  Although I can see why a lot of otherwise potential pilots say "fuck it" and never play or just dabble and then seeing the 4+ years it takes to become "useful" in 0.0 simply play another game where it only takes them 3-9 months to get to the end game.  CCP has made some rather bad design decisions from the point of view of attracting new pilots, but especially for moving those pilots from high/low sec to 0.0.  Or even retaining those that hit the 6 month slump.

9 comments:

Knug Lidi said...

Wow.

My 2.5 year main I thought was getting ready for 0.0, but I see there is much more to do. I think I'll hang in wormhole space for now, and try to get some low & null experience through roams.

Logistics has always been the bane of small alliance life, whether in WH or null. I am surprised to hear that null space logistics is more of a nightmare than WH.

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

@Knug: never let character age keep you from trying 0.0 life, or anything in EVE for that matter. It's harder yes, but not impossible.

@Let, about the "light footprint": I couldn't agree more on this, but the irony is that most alliances require that their pilots fly a whole multi-tool's worth of ships, and that they have spares for them. And they don't care how you acquire them, but leave you little time to do anything ISK-making related.

Knug Lidi said...

@cosmic: Oh I have no doubt I can try 0.0 with what I have, but I'm a builder-type, not smasher. My goal would be to build a 0.0 lifestyle and having to depend on others for logistical support rubs me the wrong way.

I intend to have our merry band as independent as possible, when it comes to ships and supplies. Of course, getting to grips with other inhabitants is the other tricky part

Letrange said...

@Knug yep if you're a jack of all trades - expect 4+ years before you can even start to think about going to 0.0 unless your corp is setup to help you. Most aren't.

Chris said...

FAIL space is ridiculously easy to get items into and out of back to high sec. Use the cloaky hauler and utilize the JB network.

Letrange said...

@chris - that's fine for everything except the hulls. (not to mention exactly how I got my current ships down there). The problem is operational flexibility once I"m down there without some carrier to move them around to the operations area.

Toldain said...

I started in 0.0 at about 3 million skill points. My corp put few demands on me, but I was basically useless for a long time.

The lack of industrial presence was startling to me, too. It's all about the jump freighter. So 0.0 has an extractive economy.

I think CCP understands there's an issue. I'm sure their decision making process, in the past, has been, "Let's try this, and see what happens!"

Anonymous said...

I was in the Vale area was left by the NC to collapse and burn (partly I believe in CCP nerfing null in favour of the larger alliances). We were left to get everything out ourselves, and if it hadnt been for 1 corp mate jump freightering my stuff out I'd still be carriering it out now!

As Cozmik indicated... anyone can live in nullsec - you just need some support

Mat Westhorpe said...

I recently dragged my hapless corp of 7 members out into null-sec alliance life. Coming from a largely high-sec background, it's something that none of us had experienced and some of our members have only been playing for a few months.

I agree that the logistical aspects of getting the right kit to the right place is a frustration, but if the alliance joined is supportive and has the infrastructure in place (which they must have in order to survive themselves), this doesn't need to be a barrier.

Despite these issues, thus far our null-sec experience has been pretty positive. We've found that as much, if not more variation in content is available to us and the alliance community is thriving, friendly and happy to educate the clueless. Low skills certainly hasn't hampered our involvement.

Perhaps we have been lucky and fallen on our feet with an alliance that is different from the norm, but Split Infinity has definitely been good for us.