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Originally Posted by Radahr Manasponge

First off, is there a skinng/UI mod movement in this game at all? I'm pretty burnt out on Teamspeak/Ventrillo/et al, but the chat interface is absolutley ass-tastic in this game. One of the good things about WoW was it's UI modding community. I do miss that.

Negative, the ui is the ui. I kind of put most of my crap in the chat menu and pretend it's firefox with the tabs.

Next up: I see lots of people referring to 'tier 1' and 'tier 2' missions (and on up the line to tier 4 and 5 and whatnot) in regards to the difficulty. what the hell is this designation? I don't see this anyplace! at what point of what setting does one move from tier 1 to tier 2? and so forth.

I think what you're seeing is folks refering to agents level 1,2,3,4. level one missions are almost all frigates and newbsauce stuff. level 2 is mostly frigates with some cruisers. i think (i just started three) three does mostly cruisers with the rare BS, and 4 does BS's and cruisers and fun stuff like that.

basicly you can do 1's in anything, 2's you want to eventualy move to a cruiser, etc. You gain access to higher level agents by getting your faction up with the faction that they belong to

On this same topic of 'not getting' the mission difficulty setting; I took some agent missions over my lunch...I got three courier missions in a row (no combat, easy, low money). then I got a 'kill pirate NPCs' mission...that had two ships to blow up and done...it took me longer to warp to the accel gate than it did to kill them!

some times you just get asstastic mission locations.

my next mission is called 'world's collide'; this takes 20 minutes of nonstop combat, i log 26 pirate NPC kills, and have 10% structure left at completion, and am out of ammo on three of my merlin's four weapons. *sheesh*
Next mission: three pirate NPCs, 20 seconds to complete
Next mission: courier, one jump away
Next mission: World's collide again, only this time I'm dropped out of warp withing firing range of 15 of them. I last long enough to shoot down exactly ONE NPC ship before getting blown out of mine....roughly 40 seconds....where the HELL did they suddenly get all this armor from?
This kind of 'progression difficulty' isn't the norm, right? I just musta gotten a wonky set from the random number generator, right?

it's very random. you'll learn to spot the hard ones and get ready. build up your tank enough to where you can always get out. one thing i do in worlds colide type misisons is i warp in, make a book mark. warp back to base. then warp to my bookmark within 100km...then i'm not stuck with a million angry rats shooting me with missiles inside my falloff.

Next question: ship gear. Those of you that have played a while are familiar with all the different flavors of what's available. It sure is a lot for a newbie to get used to!
Other than the blaringly obvious naming conventions (Missile Launcher I, Missile Launcher II, etc) or the slightly harder to see but relevant 'tech level one' and 'tech level 2', is there a way to get a handle on certain things, gear-wise? For instance, I played all four races to the top of the frigate chain thus far, so I've played with many different weapon types. But the differences within the same weapn family! The Compressed Coil 150mm might as well not even be NAMED the same as the other 150s, say the light autocannons, as glaringly different as these weapons perform...it's more than a night and day difference, it's like a centurys difference! But the range difference ALONE is 900m to 13KM. There's gotta be an easier way to compare or know what to kind of look for, OTHER than pulling up 50 different property pages and taking copius notes on each, right?

look at the item's description, look at variations, then hit compare. add more and more items to the compare chart it generates to see clean comparisons given parameters you set.

Next, progression. I get the standings (make them happy, do work for them, get better standings with a nice numeric value. straightforward). What I don't get is why I'm supposed to ... care?
At the end of the day, I understand that that EVE is a mostly PVP game, and to accomplish DICK you have to join a corp and PVP. That's fine. So what's the cutoff point for grinding NPC rep? I've been told that one you get rep over 8, for instance, you can move clones around to different stations.

Personaly i think you need exactly enough to run level 4 missions, then just let the rest come. there are jump cloning service corps in the game that will let you set up clones for a cost of less than a few mission runs.

Since I haven't PVP'd yet, I haven't really seen the need for this. *shrug* I also don't seem to get the point of using my so-called 'loyalty points' on the tributes they occasionally offer...most of what they offer is useless and either gets instantly sold, reprocessed or trashed. Is that the way it stays? Or should I just save my points 'cause the tributes get better?

some times they offer good deals to turn a fast isk. some times later on you can get offered 'navy issue' ships that are a lil better. there's some good stuff and good deals but it tends to come at level 3-4 misisons i think.

I've also spent my time in the 'relatively' safer high-sec areas. I've seen posted many times that 'ratting' is a standard 'grind' moneymaker. Wild guess: is that short for 'piRATing' in lower security areas? Just random PVPing and seeing what you get from the wreck when you win?

ratting is killing random npc pirates in astroid belts. gives isk and security rating.

missioning is doing agent missions
salvaging is using salvagers to destroy wrecks you make for parts you resell. thats where some real money is. you can salvage while ratting or missioning.

other means ot make monies are mining, exploring (with probes and junk), playing the market, etc.

[quote]Lastly (for now)...I had someone tell me to start working up mining and manufacturing early. All they said was it was the king of moneymakers later. Wide question here, but is this true? if so, how does one (besides training up the obvious 'mining' skill) begin to walk this path?/QUOTE]

i honestly think (keep in mind i'm a newblett) that the best way to handle mining is with a mining account. let your combat character combat, mine with a miner. you'll cripple the progression of both. level four missions makes mad money if you salvage.

-Xel Vaugenhar.

PS. learn to salvage. it's awesome.

if i missed anything re-ask. i'm at work and need to atleast pretend to get something done