Training update.

As with any MMO, progress is one of the more important aspects of the game. If your avatar progress stalls, your gaming experience takes a big hit. With all its complexity and depth, EVE has been a very understanding game. It doesn't penalize me for only playing 2-3 hours a night. Not having to shoot 100 times my guns or mine 50 asteroids to level a skill is a great feeling. Nothing makes me happier than waking up my laptop and have the EVE Skill Monitor greet me with a "Skill training complete" message. So where am I?

In the last month Dante has made a lot of progress in multiple areas. He is now able to fit Tech 2 armor hardeners, has almost all light/medium drone relates skills to IV (Gallente spec is next) and has improved a bunch of core skills involving shields, MWD and ABs. The biggest decision made was a decision involving his dps potential. I'm very clear as to which ship I want him flying by the end of the year (GO GO Ishtar!!), but I wasn't sure what I wanted to fit for dps. One thing was certain, it had to be Tech2. Anything less, to me, would be an epic fail.

I pulled up EVEMon and look at the time it would take for him to get Tech 2 blasters... approximately 21 days. Not bad, I thought. I can be going around on my Isthar with some nice Tech 2 blaster for on-your-face pew-pew. Unfortunately there was something wrong. As I was thinking on that fitting, nightmares of my experience with blasters on the Thorax and Brutix came to me. Blasters? Am I really going to put blasters on this ship. I hate blasters!! True, they are awesome at close range and with the right ship/fits/skills probably unstoppable, but Dante doesn't have those skills.

I looked again at the Ishtar info and then at his skills. Back and forward... Wait! What was I thinking? Am I blind? 10% bonus to drone hp and dmg, +5km bonus to range, +50m3 bay. Then I look at his stats... Interfacing IV, Combat Op IV, Sharpshooting IV, Gallente Spec III, Durability IV, Navigation IV, Scout Op V. The answer is DRONES stupid!!!

And so it was. Since he already had access to light and medium Tech 2 drones I just added the Heavy Drone skill all the way to V in the planner. After 28 days he gets Ogre II. Dante is currently 3 days away from Heavy IV. After that I'm queueing some other skills to improve other aspects of his game to then continue to Ogre II.

Armand's training schedule was much easier to plan. I knew for a long time what I wanted from him. In these past couple of weeks he learned to fly an Iteron V (that is a lot of cargo for a Tech 1) and a Viator. The Viator has been specially handy since it allows me to carry anything Dante needs and brings back all the loot from the ratting/plexing. Besides a lot of hauler skills he improved Mining Barge to IV and added mining drones. Right now he has a couple of days of drones skills to improve those mining drones benefits and then is straight to a Hulk. That wont happen until October thanks to Astrogeology V (12 days) and Mining Barge V (20 days), but I look forward to him destroying belts with the gang. After that is some logistic training so he can support Dante in w-space before heading to production.