Ender's Game

If you play Eve or enjoy sci fiction you need to take notice of Ender's Game releasing in theaters this weekend. I reread the book this past summer and the application to Eve is paramount despite the fact that it is just a good entertaining book. While I remain skeptical if the movie will live up to the book I will be in line this weekend to go see this movie.

Some of the interesting themes that apply well to Eve is the idea of zero g combat. Fighting in an environment where you can go up, down, side to side, and forward or backwards, will ring true to any Eve Online player.

Check out the trailer below.

Amazon's PLEX Dump

I have been reading about amazons little PLEX mishap they had. According to CCP only a thousand or so PLEXs were sold during the deal. The article on TMC says the market price did drop 10 to 20 million but has since leveled.

I would like to look at two things considering PLEX prices. First, I suspect this injection of PLEXs on the market will have similar affects as the CCP PLEX Intervention that happened last year. In that it will cause PLEX prices to level off in the short term. Now I wouldn't consider it out of the question for CCP to start buying up small quantities of PLEX or to with hold any future buy back interventions they could have been planning. Just remember PLEX is a moderated item and CCP can and will intervene.

The second thing is to watch the affect this will have on PLEX prices on the eve of the Rubicon expansion. Did you see what I did there? Anyway break it down to simple supply and demand. This episode, incident whatever you want to call it, will it curb the potential price peak of PLEX for this expansion?

Time will tell.

Beginner's Guide

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Eve Online is a space based sandbox style MMO produced by CCP. Before you blast off to the stars you need to understand a couple of things. Playing Eve at first can be hard and is unlike any MMO you have played before. You play as an immortal space pilot who flies massive spaceships through the cold darkness of space. You train skills in real time and interact in a space scape that is controlled by other players. From the ships you buy to the space stations you live on someone has built them, shipped them, and manages them.

You need to first decide what race you will play as. The good news here is your decision will not impact your choice of ships later on (Note: Free to Play Alpha clones are only able to fly ships of their race. If you subscribe you can play any ship). You can train later on to fly any races ships regardless of your starting race. If your not already in game check out this quick walk through of the character creation process.

Once in game get comfortable navigating the interface. Your first thing you want to do is get your character training up skills. As mentioned previous skills train in real time and you need to keep skills queued up. They will continue to train even when you aren't logged in.  Later on in the game you will be training skills that take days or even weeks to train. Click on your character portrait on your neocom bar. Then click on skills and get to the skill que window. You start out with only a few skills you can train. You can buy more from the market where npc sellers will provide them at a constant price in various station locations around the game.

With your character window still open lets check out your characters attributes. These attributes could better be referred to as skill attributes as they affect how fast your skills train. Each skill has two attributes that affect its training time. The more points in an attribute the faster a skill will train.
Each attribute has an unchangeable base value of 17. When you first start you can remap or move the points around twice after that you can only change them once a year because of this it is strongly cautioned that you wait to remap until you have a good grasp of the game and what skills you want to train towards. You have 14 re-mappable points. You can only add up to 10 additional points to any one attribute.

The best way to map out your skill training and best possible attribute configuration is to use the program EveMon. EveMon is a free third party program that uses a API key from Eve that you can use to plan your skills out and attributes. Some corporations even use this program to verify what and how many skills you have trained.

Now lets check out another feature that will affect your characters attributes called implants. Implants are items that can be bought on the market and increase your attributes. Attribute Implants range from plus 1 to plus 7 attribute points. They require the skill cybernetics to use and cannot be used again or resold after being plugged in. As a new player it shouldn't be to hard for you to get your hands on some plus 2 implants for each attribute.

What is a clone? A clone is you. All your skill training is kept in your clone. You need to upgrade your clone level as you gain skill points. Because if you are killed meaning your pod is destroyed without an upgraded clone you lose those trained skills. The space station your clone is saved at is where your going to start if your pod is destroyed. Keep that in mind when venturing far off into space. Your clone also has all of your implants in it. So if your pod is destroyed  whatever implants you had plunged in are destroyed as well. You update and save your clone at the medical bay in the station menu. Note some stations don't have medical facilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Also Check out Eve Online's Official FAQ

What is Eve Online?
Eve Online is a Sci-fi spaced based MMO. Based on one continuous server, everyone plays in the same game server. The game is a sandbox style, you can do what you want. Check out the Eve Online Wikipedia article or the official Eve Wiki About Eve Online article for more information.

When did Eve Online come out?
Eve Online launched in 2003. The game has changed a lot through its many expansions.

How are the graphics? Have they been updated?
Yes, the graphics have been updated several times over the years and still look sweet. Ship models are constantly being updated. Here is a link to the latest System Requirements.

Is Eve Online Fun?
The game is incredibly fun noting that I am biased. Maybe fun isn't the right word more like addicting.

Is Eve Online Hard?
The game mechanics can be complicated. It is hard to just jump in but like all games the only way to learn is to just jump in and play.

How much does the game cost?
Eve Online costs $19.95 that lets you buy the game and gives you your first month of time to play. Sometimes you can get the game through steam for as little as $5 dollars during one of their weekend deals. Also if you have an old account they sometimes have special offers for resubscribing.

What is the monthly subscription fee?
The monthly subscription fee is $14.95 dollars a month.

Are the expansions free?
Yes, to date all the expansions have been free.

Is it worth the subscription fee to play?
For me I started playing the 14 day trial and loved it. I wasn't doing anything exciting or fancy I was just playing with simple ships and mining asteroids I subscribed after a week of playing.

What is a PLEX?
Pilot Licenses Extensions or PLEX is an actual in game item you can redeem for 1 month of Eve Online game time or trade on the in-game market.
 
Can you buy in-game money with real money?
In a way you can buy whats called a PLEX through your account management for 19.95 for 1. A PLEX is an actual in game item. You can a) redeem this item for 1 month of game time or b) trade it in-game for in-game money(ISK). Current In-game PLEX prices can be found at Eve Central.

Can you make enough in-game money in your first month to buy a PLEX?
With no help, no in-game friends, no corporations, I tried mining I played about an hour a day average. All I did was mine and trade some. I made 240 million ISK. A PLEX at the time(July 2012) ran about 500 million ISK. You will have loads more fun in game if you don't worry about the money and just pay for the subscription but everyone has to learn for themselves. If you work hard after 3 to 6 months in, you could be paying for your game with PLEX.

How many characters can you have on an account?
You can create up to three characters on a single account, only one character at a time can train skills though.

Can you have more than one account?
You can have more than one account. Lots of players use more than one account and I have heard of some big corporate hot shots having as many as 22 accounts. 
 
What is Dust 514?
Eve: Dust 514 is a free to play FPSMMO for Sony's PS3. The game is played out on planets within the Eve Online Universe. Check out the Dust 514 Wikipedia article for more information.

Is Dust 514 free to play?
Yes.

What is Eve: Valkyrie?
Eve: Valkyrie is a quick action fighter plane type shooter themed after the Eve Online Universe. Most notably it will launch using the Oculus Rift.

Getting In Game

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Take a quick look at the Eve Simplified:Character Creation Walk-Through if you want to get an idea of some of the choices you will need to make as soon as you create a new character.

If your already in-game or would like to take look at the starting tutorial you can find a quick walk-through here of the first couple tutorial missions. Also you can find lots of screen shots of what the game acutally looks like in this walk through guide.

If your just dying to get started you can get a free 14 day trial here, or you can support Eve Simplified by signing on with the 21 day extended trial. Also a list of subscriptions costs and other whys you can buy the game are listed in the Subscriptions and Specials Post.

Other Helpful Links
Eve Online New Player Video Guide
Eve Online New Pilot FAQ  - A great 38 page pdf introduction into the game.
Eve University: Uni Wiki
Official Wiki: Evelopida Beginners Guide
Eve Simplified Guides

Eve Rubicon: Investing and Speculating

Let's check out what interesting investments opportunities can be made for Eve Rubicon (Yes all I can think of is that darn Jeep model)

POCOs
POCO changes are going to be a big drive for conflict and will make pi production costs possibly shift down, I think as people shop for better tax rated POCOs, corps that raise their taxes will soon find their planets empty there is just to many choices. They will be hard to defend large amounts of planets expect smaller alliances to dominate pockets of regions. A smaller type of sov warfare for high sec and a way to generate some income a great change to the game. Expect fluctuations in PI products to level out several months after release.

A quick side note. Everyone is bemoaning the fact that the goons are just going to ROFL stomp all of the high sec POCOs and own all of them. My question to you is why would they want to?  Goons are a large null sec alliance they will be busy protecting their moon shiz out in null. If POCOs were the end all take all they would own all the low sec ones which they don't. Now will there be PI Interdictions you bet, probable be an annual event, but I doubt a full 2000 system POCO Goon Empire will emerge from this.

Now as far as investing in the Customs Office Gantry and building them, besides a slight up tick in prices at release I think they will stay stable. Remember in low and zero you can already blow these things up but no large market really exists for CO.
DevBlog: EVE Rubicon: Player Owned Customs Offices in Hi-Sec Make sure and read the fine print they are shifting PI tax rates and changing all sorts of stuff here.

Personal Deployable Structure
PDSs not a lot of information exists to give us a clear direction. Expect this to be a great build and a way to make lots of isk if you have the means to invest in such a large project. I am definitely going to keep my eye on it but I am into building stuff. Expect to need a freighter to move any large amount of these around. Effects on the market: moon prices will vary slightly around the fact that now pirates will be dumping plunder on to the market if the mechanic works right for the siphon unit.

Warp Speed
Hopefully with the work around the mechanic pushes freighters to be a little bit faster for those of us that do our own hauling. Exciting news and an all around great fix.

New SOE Ships
New ships are always nice though they will no doubt be bought using lp. Meaning mass production is out of the question. If you have a few billion isk this might be a fun place for speculating once patch goes live. It will probable be worth it for a couple months until the ships are common place.

Other Ship Changes
As far as investments goes interceptors were sold out within minutes of the announcement so unless you where on top of this one you could catch the tail end of the speculation here.

UI Changes
Other changes deal more with  UI aspects nothing here to really invest in. Although some of the skills are getting switched around a bit if you deal in the skill book market.
DevBlog: License to kill: Certificates Overhaul

My Investments
As for my own investments I think I am going to stick with what I have been doing. Working the implant market and building industrial ships. The Expansion really only means one thing increased player activity and that is all I want/need to move my market orders. Glad for the early release date Nov. 19, 2013.

Links and Updates in no particular order: