Day 8 : Faffing on the Weekend

Up at 6 am. On a Saturday. I've got a party to go to tonight so I'm going to take it easy all day. You know what that means.

Initially, probably because of waking up at such a stupid time, I'm a bit jaded. I've done a whole week now, I've not had the guts to throw myself into PVP or anything. I'm still loitering around in hi-sec space learning stuff slowly and being a noob.

Cup of tea and a cigarette later I'm a bit more optimistic and start coming up with a list of things I'd like to do

• Try PVP. I've got some spare basic frigates. I don't mind if they get destroyed
• Aim for the next ship bracket - the Cruiser class. I'll need to re-order the skills I'm learning. Its about 7 million for the ship. I've got some work to do.
• Trade and Manufacturing. I need to investigate these and try and figure out what makes a good trade route. First thing to do is to travel around and look at stuff. I could check one of the aggregator sites but I'm trying to do this thing from first principles.
• Try low-sec space, try mining and maybe some of the PVE stuff there.

Join a corporation and get involved in whatever they are up to. I don't want to go cap-in-hand though. I'm also enjoying discovering and learning without constant prompts or the need to get a particular thing done.

Thinking of PVP I figure I can make the simple frigates if I get a ready supply of a certain type of mineral. It doesn't crop up in the region I'm in, but it does crop up just across the border. Just to make it more entertaining I choose a 0.6 system and move a destroyer and a hauler up there. I spend a few hours being amused at how easy this is. Additionally I have a Salvager unit fitted to the destroyer so I can scan the wrecks of the computer controlled ore pirates and maybe get something of value out of em.

Around this time an odd ship warps into the asteroid field, empties my cargo cannister, and proceeds to circle me. He's now red flagged. I can attack him and the police won't bother me. He is highly confident though - floating closer and closer before orbiting round. Basically he is taunting me. I think this means he is either a) suicidal b) very good at what he does or c) has a bunch of cloaked pals just waiting to pop out and gank me. I back off. This kind of scrapping can be tried with a cheaper ship.

Since its getting around lunchtime and I have a couple of other things to do, I set the autopilot for Jita then the ship can travel while I do stuff. Theres nothing low sec enough in the way to make this particularly dangerous. Once I get there I spend an hour or so gaping at the number, size and variety of ships. I see one huge Amarr transporter that looks like the Rebel troop transporters from Empire Strikes Back. Up close my ship is tiny.

A word here about nationalities. I was going to say "space nationalities" but thats the solution from every failure of imagination sci-fi script ever. Put "space" in front of it. "Space flu", "space goats", "space zombies", "space nazis", "space Y fronts", etc, etc, etc.

There seem to be four main nationalities you can choose from that have their own distinctive ship styles, right down to engine exhaust and weapon preferences. Gallente have organic looking ships, Minmatar have cool ships that look like they were cobbled together in a rust belt warehouse, Caldari ships are brutal purposeful looking heavy metal, Amarr ships all look like they are related to woodlice.

From: http://mmoreporter.com/2011/02/07/four-years-later-a-newbies-return-to-eve-online - also a good read.

I quickly come to the conclusion that the Caldari, who run this Jita place, are "space nazis". I know, I know, I said I wouldn't do that. I don't like em. I think I'm being soft. While we are at it, I don't like the Amarr either, mainly because their flavour text mentions they are an empire and they are slave traders, and their people have no freedom. They are "space anal-retentives". I did it again.

Back to Gallente (cool, democratic, and care bear enough for my EVE wimpiness) space. I should have played Minmatar who basically boil down to "space Mad Max".

Mucking around in a safe system, practicing scanning (manipulating a 3D map of objects in a 2D medium takes some practice - more on scanning when I get better at it) I find a wormhole. A wormhole is a hole in space linking one system to another. The other system could be far far away. Wormholes are prone to shutting down after so much traffic has been through them. The people in the "Rookie" chat channel advise two things. 1) Don't go in it and 2) if you do - bookmark the exit. I'm not having any of (1) after backing down from PVP this morning. I use my smallest, cheapest ship and jump through the wormhole. I find myself in a system with only an alphanumeric designation, no human parsed name. I sit there for a few minutes to see if anything happens. Nothing does. This is more worrying than the alternative. Theres not much I can achieve in a small ship so I go back to get a larger craft. When I return the wormhole has vanished, so I probably only just saved myself a long long trip home.

Now its getting to the evening and I'm heading to the pub and later a party. Not a "space pub" or a "space party" thank god.