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EVE Evolved: How to fit the Enyo and Ishkur

Brendan Drain — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, PvP, PvE, Opinion, EVE Evolved, Guides, Sandbox

When tech 2 ships were first introduced to EVE Online, the first models off the production line were interceptors and assault ships. Interceptors served as agile tacklers with unmatched speed and maneuverability, while assault ships provided a slower but tankier option. Each race's assault ship had a bonus to its racial resistances, making it an incredible tank against certain damage types. This made it great for ninja-ratting in nullsec or tackling larger ships of a particular race. When subsequently released ships were also given this racial resistance bonus, the assault frigate lost part of what made it so useful. Players have begged for an assault ship buff for years, and in Crucible, it finally arrived.

The Gallente Ishkur and Enyo have always been capable PvE ships for speed-running low-level missions or ninja-ratting in nullsec, but with Crucible, they've become absolute monsters in both PvE and PvP. With the maneuverability and signature radius of a frigate but more tank and damage output than a tech 1 cruiser, both ships are incredibly fun to fly. Drone users will probably prefer the Ishkur, but the Enyo's raw damage output and buffer tank are truly terrifying.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I offer PvE and PvP setups for the Gallente Ishkur and Enyo to help you get the most out of these incredible revamped ships.

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EVE Evolved: How to fit the Enyo and Ishkur originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Evolved: Fitting the Gallente Talos

Brendan Drain — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, PvP, Opinion, Hands-on, EVE Evolved, Guides, Sandbox

Among the hundreds of changes brought by EVE Online's recent Crucible expansion, the new tier 3 battlecruisers certainly rank as player favourites. Rather than giving each race a bigger, tougher battlecruiser, CCP gave the new ships the ability to fit battleship-class weapons but heavily limited their defensive capabilities. All four tier 3 battlecruisers are turret-based, letting them output massive damage with close-range guns or hit for solid damage at battleship sniping distances.

As with all new ships, it can be difficult to figure out how to fit the new tier 3 battlecruisers to make full use of their unique combination of high damage output and high mobility. Last week I looked at three viable setups for the Caldari Naga, which proved to be an absolute monster with 1,000-1500 DPS when using close-range blaster setups and a terrifying 650 DPS when sniping at 100km-130km. This week I take a similar look at the Gallente Talos, a ship designed specifically for close-range combat. I explore a traditional armour-tanked blaster fitting with dual webs, a shield-based variant that packs a huge 1,500 DPS punch, and two long-range blaster fits that give the Naga a run for its money.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I explore four solid PvP fittings for the Talos, with both shield and armour setups.

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EVE Evolved: Fitting the Gallente Talos originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Evolved: Flying the Dominix

Brendan Drain — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Classes, Game mechanics, PvP, PvE, Hands-on, EVE Evolved, Guides

Of all the ships I've flown over the years in EVE Online, the Gallente Dominix remains one of my absolute favourites. It's big, it's slow, and it looks like an upside-down mouldy shoe, but it's forever been one of the most versatile battleships in the game. With a massive bonus of 10% to drone damage and hitpoints per level of the Gallente Battleship skill, the Dominix can easily deal around 500 damage per second just with its drones. It can take on targets of any size by switching to medium or light drones and can field a full rack of six railguns or blasters to push its damage even higher.

In PvE, the Dominix can be set up as a long-range damage platform for blitzing missions, a salvaging platform relying only on drone damage, or even a heavily tanked ship that will take all the damage while your drones automatically kill everything in sight. For PvP, the Dominix can be used for short-range damage, sniping, remote repair support, electronic warfare support, spider-tanking, capacitor warfare, and other roles. It can shield tank or armour tank and can even be set up with a reasonable hull tank for a surprise factor.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I give two viable PvE fittings for the Dominix and two of my favourite PvP setups, along with advice on how to use each setup to its fullest.

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EVE Evolved: Flying the Dominix originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Evolved: Upgrading to a PvP cruiser: Minmatar and Caldari

Brendan Drain — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, PvP, Hands-on, EVE Evolved, Guides

Over the years, I've introduced several friends to EVE Online and tried to give them the best start possible. Offering a financial safety net for ship losses definitely helped a little, as did providing funding to back market experiments and manufacturing or research ventures. What I found helped most of all was to bring new players on quick PvP fleets and discourage them from gravitating toward mining or mission-running as their primary form of gameplay. The adrenaline rush of EVE PvP is something I've yet to find in another MMO, and it's the reason so many of us are hooked to the game. It only makes sense then to introduce new players to it as soon as possible.

Last month, I encouraged new players who might be starting out on their own to grab a few friends and similarly charge into PvP from day one. To follow up, the last two weeks' columns have been dedicated to getting new players into their first PvP frigate and upgrading to a cruiser, with emphasis on staying financially ahead of the inevitable ship losses. Last week we tackled Gallente and Amarr ships, with some cheap battle-tested setups for the Thorax, Vexor, Arbitrator and Omen that new players will be able to fly with only a few weeks of skill training.

In this week's EVE Evolved, we look at Minmatar and Caldari cruisers, with setups for the Stabber, Rupture, Blackbird and Moa and tips on saving your escape pod to minimise the cost of death.

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EVE Evolved: Upgrading to a PvP cruiser: Minmatar and Caldari originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 07 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Fanfest 2011: CCP working on mobile New Eden functionality

Jef Reahard — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, real-world, MMO industry, News items, Mobile

Hopelessly addicted to life in New Eden, maybe to the point of wishing you could take EVE Online with you on the go? Well, that day may be closer than you think if one of CCP's EVE Fanfest 2011 demos is any indication.

The Icelandic development firm showed off a new project designed to run a streamlined version of EVE on Nvidia-based Tegra 2 mobile hardware (that excludes iOS devices, for the non-technical Apple consumers in the audience). The demo was basically a render of EVE's ship fitting interface, shown running on a tablet and a phone, with the future intent being to provide limited functionality sans a PC (think market transactions and skill queue management). According to Gamasutra, CCP has yet to announce a release date for the project.

EVE Fanfest 2011: CCP working on mobile New Eden functionality originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Online player creativity -- Ship fitting edition

Brendan Drain — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture

Two months ago, CCP started a new series of monthly EVE Online devblogs showcasing the game community's creative efforts. The EVE community is known for its artwork and incredible fan-made videos, but through CCP Fallout's monthly blog series, we've come to see some of the community's other creative endeavours. In previous editions, Fallout looked at in-game news and politics website EVE News 24, question and answer site Skill Training Complete, an impressive minecraft video of a scale Gallente shuttle, and a collection of EVE podcasts.

In the latest issue, CCP looks at some of the latest developments that have drawn attention during December. There's an impressive video showing off the new EVE character creator that will be going live with Incursion 1.1 later this month. The video shows off both male and female avatars. Also covered is the Python Fitting Assistant, a cross-platform offline ship fitting tool similar to the very popular EVE Fitting Tool. The highlight of this month's blog has to be LOLFITS, a website where players can post some of the monumentally bad ship setups they've seen players use. If you think your ship setups are poor, I guarantee they're spectacular compared to some of the hilarious setups on LOLFITS.

EVE Online player creativity -- Ship fitting edition originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Evolved: The Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase

Brendan Drain — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Professions, PvE, Opinion, Hands-on, EVE Evolved, Guides

The EVE Evolved column has been home to dozens of in-depth guides on various aspects of EVE Online. Over the past two years, I've written multi-part guides to many industrial and PvP-oriented topics. On the topic of research and development, we've covered tech 1 research, invention, reverse engineering and five top tips for researchers. Perhaps more useful was the three part series on trading, which first covered the basics before delving into advanced trading strategies and a few useful tips. Other guides which have proven popular among newer players included our three-part guide to mission-running, and the recent three-page guide to exploration.

Members of the EVE community regularly produce new guides and tools to help players make the most of their time in New Eden. This week, EVE player Laci surprised the EVE community with the release of an impressive new guide aimed at new players and industralists. The comprehensive 416-page Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase (or ISK for short) covers practically everything a new player could want to know about the game. Until now, the guide had been available only in Hungarian. After intensive translation and design work, the full guide has been released in English.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I take a look at this impressive guide and ask its creator Laci a few questions about it.

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EVE Evolved: The Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE dev blog explains new ship fitting screen, saveable configurations

James Egan — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics

Among the changes that will come to EVE Online with the March Apocrypha expansion is the user interface for fitting ships, and this is the topic of the latest dev blog from CCP Fendahl. Critics of the game's user interface might be surprised to learn that there is a team that focuses solely on UI, and it seems they've been quite busy with this radical layout change. Ship fitting in Apocrypha will be focused on an iPod-like ring where you array your modules and rigs, as well as subsystems for Tech III ships, while viewing your ship (and how it changes) in the center. This large fitting reticle is flanked by collapsible side panels which are used for item selection and displaying ship stats.

Browsing the hundreds (in some cases thousands) of items in the various division hangars in a given station should be easier, with collapsible sections in the left side item panel. The stats panel to the right actually provides more info about your ship setup than before, by mousing over and bringing up a pop-up box. CCP Fendahl addresses the fact that this is more complex than the previous system: "While this increases the barrier to entry when learning how to fit a ship for the first time, we also think that the fitting screen is a critically important interface that needs to show all the relevant numbers."

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EVE dev blog explains new ship fitting screen, saveable configurations originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Visual Guide: Before you undock

James Egan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, Galleries, EVE Online, Game mechanics, Guides, PvP, Tips and tricks, PvE

There are a few essential things any pilot in EVE Online should do before they undock from a station and get themselves into a potentially hostile situation. Come to think of it, anytime you undock there's at least some chance of hostility. Keeping that in mind, think of this as a visual checklist you should go through before entering space, as you're not only risking your ship, but your skillpoints if you bite off more than you can chew. This happens all too often, to novice and veteran pilots alike in EVE. So to help you avoid this fate...

Head to the guide >>

Gallery: EVE Visual Guide: Before you undock

EVE Visual Guide: Before you undock originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A look at EVE Online's combat basics

James Egan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, PvP, Tips and tricks

Jim Rossignol has become well-known in the game journalism scene, more recently as a regular contributor at RockPaperShotgun and the author of This Gaming Life. Along the way, he's become a veteran EVE Online player, and he's passing along some of that combat know-how to readers in a series of articles at Eurogamer. Rossignol is starting out slow with the first installment, easing readers into "the basic principles of killing people," but he'll progress to more advanced aspects of combat and conflict in EVE. Ultimately, he hopes to introduce players to the ambitions and tactics of New Eden's alliances, which can number well into the thousands of players.

In 'combat basics', Rossignol relates the basic principles of combat in EVE Online to the standard groupings of damage, tank, crowd-control, and healer that most MMO gamers are familiar with from other titles. He notes that these combat roles are quite different in EVE, as a given ship's module fittings give players a great deal of flexibility, but of course makes for a more complex PvP system. Rossignol touches on the idea that speed is king in EVE, and he's correct. Just keep in mind that the nano-era's days are numbered, a fact which Rossignol stresses as well. Have a look at Rossignol's combat basics, and his take on the ever-changing state of PvP in EVE Online.

[Via CrazyKinux]

A look at EVE Online's combat basics originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rogue Signal: The Basics of PVP Fitting

Phillip Manning — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Guides, PvP, Tips and tricks, Rogue Signal

PvP, though pervasive in EVE Online, can be a frightening prospect at first, be it as a fresh-faced cadet, or a deep-space miner taking up arms for the first time. The continued discussion of The Empyrean Age no doubt has even more new and old pilots seeking advice for that first PvP encounter. For the newcomer to EVE's PvP, one of the most daunting challenges comes long before undocking. You have your shiny new war ship, and you know you are going to fight with it...now what? While ships in EVE, like flat-pack furniture, come easy to assemble, they are also missing key components (also like most flat-pack furniture). This week's Rogue Signal will deal with filling in those bits needed for combat, and getting you ready to contribute to fighting the good fight.

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Rogue Signal: The Basics of PVP Fitting originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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