Monday, January 5, 2015

Lessons Learned

There are many parts of EVE which are difficult to grasp.  For veteran pilots in the game, who are especially used to PVP you can move on to the next post, as this will not really impact any of you.

Our corporation has made a point of taking on brand new pilots in game, either brand new accounts or individuals who have spent their formative years in EVE being bound to High Security space running missions or mining.  We even seek trial account players, as we want to provide assistance and training to them as they evaluate whether to commit to this game long term.

Some things in EVE you can teach by having someone read an article, a wiki post, a forum post.  Some things you can teach by having someone watch a video.  A video is is much better than having them read an article.  However, there is one part of the learning experience which is missing by having a member solely watch a video.  Return demonstration.

My real life job deals with clinical informatics for a large healthcare organization.  We teach physicians, nurses and ancillary staff on aspects of use of an Electronic Medical Record.  We frequently teach new concepts that are introduced or provide training to new staff to the organization.  A key aspect to our training is return demonstration of the concepts being taught.

In EVE, sometimes the best type of training for individuals is the type which is conducted real time, especially when conducted over voice communications.  Whether this training is conducted on Sisi or Tranquility (TQ) does not matter, but for brand new pilots in the game it is very doubtful they have setup Sisi or even know how to, so for today's lesson, lets just face it that they will be training on TQ.

Our lesson that triggered this post was a recent loss of a corporation exploration ship on Sunday.  The pilot in game mentioned that he had lost his ship, and when we asked what the circumstances were, he stated he lost it to a gate camp.  The gate came he referred to was a one man gate camp, but we will not focus on that little hiccup.  For those of you wondering, generally a gate camp will consist of 3 or more ships and "usually" is far larger in size.  Tama is a good example of a system with an active gate camp at most times.

Now, if providing the lesson in real time on TQ over voice communications, I would have explained to this pilot that a gate camp will happen frequently in game.  This will happen far more in null security space and wormhole space.  When jumping into any system, your ship is always cloaked.  This is the session change cloak.  DO NOT MOVE.  Yes, there are 6 ships surrounding the gate, and they are all flashy red.  These pilots mean to inflict space violence upon your ship and pod as well.

Survey the system, by moving the camera around in  space.  Where are their ships in relation to the gate?  How far away from the gate are you?  Do they have any unique ships which mean that you will not be warping away (interdictor or heavy interdictor).

Ok, they are 15-20 kilometers away from you.  You are 8km away from the gate upon spawning.  When you decloak, you will immediately spam the jump button on your in gate (the gate you just came through), while at the same time activating your microwarpdrive.  You did fit one, right?  This will be dicey, but you should be able to get one cycle off and get back to the gate.  This is called gate crashing.

You made it back?  Great, this was your first lesson in survival in EVE.  It is not always about doing what is logical.  In this case, it would be trying to warp to your out gate.  That is what tutorials teach us and what the autopilot has set for us.  There is no manual in the game or tutorial which will ever cover crashing a gate.  As far as I know of, there is no course taught by Eve-Uni on this topic.

This is why our corporation really requires use of Teamspeak and for pilots to be on it when they are in space.

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