Bay 12 Games Forum

I watch /r/eve and noticed mention of 2016 being WILDLY profitable for CCP, and the online user count hit like 60,000+ at some points.  I've also heard that 'the population levels are dropping and by summer we'll be pre-alpha level' but I suspect it'll level off notably above the pre-alpha level.

Personally I suspect one of the deeper reasons for the alpha clones was so they could stop people making trial alts for spamming multiboxing.  Like, it wasn't unusual to make 20+ alts to sit in systems and watch local.  And then after 21 days they'd make a whole new batch.  There's THOUSANDS, potentially millions of accounts that have only existed for 21 days.

Either way, the general attitude seems to be 'it was a good move, and after the initial spike in players it's still running pretty strong'.

How strict are F2P restrictions this time 'round?

Consider it 'free to trial'.  You're never gonna make big on an alpha.  You're restricted to the lower 3 ship classes, with the 2 biggest locked out, and ALL capitals locked out.  You're also locked out of T2 gear, which makes a world of difference.  You can fly faction ships, which are better than standard T1 ships, but they're not as good as T2.  You've also got 1/2 skill training speed and I'm not sure any useful skills are allowed up to 5.  So an omega account that's like 3 weeks old is probably going to out-perform a maxed alpha, just because that omega could be running T2 frigate fits.

The main benefit of the new alpha clones is 1: You can trial forever, instead of the 21 day limit, so you can keep pestering the game.  2: If you lose omega, you can still alpha, and you might have some omega assets you can sell off to get the money to go back to omega.

But really, an alpha isn't going to reasonably get the isk to buy plex.  You can probably sub for 2-3 months and be in a position to isk it after that, but not from the start.  Incursions are a good choice right now, as The Valkyrie Project (google 'eve tvp') has standard fits and skills for running sites.  It's kinda boring, but it's 120m-250m per hour (31.5mil per site).  Current plex is sitting a bit above 1bil, so in 4-8 hours of solid running you could flip a plex.  But you gotta get there first.  They run pirate battleships, which usually run ~800mil with fittings, and take a month of two to get into.

I would suggest learning cloaking first, THEN your incursion ship.  While you're waiting on the skill training, you can fly an exploration frigate with cloak and try to make some money in null peeking at data and relic sites.  Most of null is just empty, completely lacking people, the populations are centered around gate campers and home bases, and those are easy to locate if you view the map by pilot numbers.  So just wander into null sec, either through a non-camped route or through a wormhole, then start scanning things, and if someone shows up in local you can just tap cloak until they leave.  Remember - if you're between 2,000 and 5,000 of a hacking site, you can right click your data/relic tool and set 'auto-repeat' to OFF, then when you cloak it won't stop your hacking.  BUT if you click any hacking nodes it'll fail.  So you can sit halfway hacked and cloaked until you un-cloak, and then you can resume hacking.

By running exploration sites you can make up the isk to fit your first incursion ship, and then the isk flows like water, and you should figure out another isk-making activity, because incursions will wear on you.  Or spend 3 days running incursions to pay for your plex and get spare bank, and the other 27 days fitting super cheap frigates and going suicide pvp because you can replace your losses!

Even when ductwork was working it didn't seem to work.  I tried piping around hot and cold air, but could barely change the temperature at all.

An interesting mod though is 'quantum coolers' which are like heaters, but cold.  It consumes a lot of power, but simply lowers the temperature.  It's a free-standing item with no output.  Just cold.  It's maybe kinda cheaty, but super fun.

It's not surges though.  The event literally describes 'a fault in the power line' which implies the wires are frayed or not insulated well.  Which would be a construction problem, which you CANT take effort to prevent.

There's two mods I've seen, one (my favored) adds fuses and circuit breakers, the other adds heavy wire which doesn't explode ever.

Mountains are also climate controlled, so if you're on a mountain you can try and dig deeper, under 'overhead mountain'.  It can spawn bugs, but it's also a decent way to avoid instant overheat.

GRAV looks alpha access as fuck, but I'm a sucker for big skies, so please?

I think the likelihood of plot happening should increase as your ship's material type increases, both in total and in ratio.  So a small xanion ship has less of a change of plot than a huge ship of titanium and xanion - it matters both WHAT it's made of, and HOW MUCH of each material.  It could guide you to plot by putting more emphasis on NPC chatter, like bulletin boards that mention hidden mass sectors more and more, or salesmen who randomly talk about meeting pirates in empty sectors.  Then when you go there, there's a higher chance of those things happening based on your material value.  Some 'NPC Chatter' would be almost essential though, just background lines of chat appearing in the chat box, rumors circulating over wide band radio, ambiently...