My Pet Project

You're probably wondering what "pet project" I have going on. Well worry not, I'm about to tell what it really is, but first, a bit of backstory...

When I lost my old Amarr main due to my drunken stupidity, I was distraught. It was 6 hard months of dedicated skill training, down the tubes. But I decided to give it another go, as a Caldari. Thinking that Caldari technology and advances in ECM and shielding would work better than my energy-guzzling lasers and heavy-to-move-around armor, I went for it.

Boy was I in for a shock.

So I was 3 months into my new Caldari main, and decided to use one of the great tools that the EVE community has: Quickfit.

So I was setting up ships I was planning to own, seeing how well they performed on paper in PvP situations, against other ships from other racial families, and discovered something that basically was a slap to my combat-scarred face.

Caldari shielding requires too many slots used by needed PvP-related modules to work solo.

Caldari ECM, their ace-in-the-hole, had just then suffered a nerf to effectiveness, leaving only 3 ships in it's family to actually be effective enough to be considered as "ECM boats". Coupled with the fact that the same slots for shielding technology occupy the same slots for ECM modules and the fact that these ships would soon become priority-one targets in combat... well...

Caldari weaponry (missile weaponry), whilst easy to use and very deadly on impact, suffers from flight time issues at range. Whilst turret weapons deliver their damage instantaneously, missiles need to fly to their target to score a hit, leading to a delay to damage application. Sure at short-to-medium ranges, this is not too much an issue, but in large-scale fleet warfare where combat occurs at extreme 150+km, flight time is a major factor.

So I then decided to return to my Amarrian roots, but how?

I then spent the next month or so researching on the fastest way to return to Amarr ships, and, not counting a 3-month break from EVE that I took due to personal issues with certain players in an old corporation I was in (and other reasons I will not speak of publicly), I decided that I needed a solid base to create this new character from.

I then endeavored to recreate my current character to run NPC missions for funding. Soon I had access to lvl4 missions, the hardest-to-do alone missions, with the greatest pay. (Note CCP has just released lvl5 missions, meant for gang work, so I did not bother considering them due to difficulty).

I then spotted the character creation info I have mentioned in my previous entry, and thus became the start of my return to Amarrian combat.

Using another tool from the EVE community, namely EVEmon, I planned my skill training to encompass another step I wish I have taken in EVE: Mining. Mining, when done right earns millions of isk per hour, and would definately help in setting up a new base to work off on once I retire my old missioning character.

The total time as of this post is 524 days, 12 hours to return to Amarrian combat ships.

Yes, it is indeed a dedication of nearly two years of play- and training-time in EVE. Even then, the current plan I have can change, and it may add, or subtract, the number of days of skill training I have planned.

Now, you may be wondering why I chose to plan to train for Amarr ships? Dont they have disadvantages like the Caldari? Why yes they do. In fact, thats enough for another entry in itself, so...