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Enjoying EVE Echoes - A semi-beginner guide
vqly
Member UncommonPosts: 296
Hi mmoers!
I have been playing EVE Echoes since launch, casually at first but getting more and more committed as the months go by, mainly due to the in-game friends I've made and the corp & alliance I am in.
This is definitely a unique game, especially on mobile devices. It's different, it's tough, I almost rage quit umteenth number of times when my 500+ million isk ships (with all the fittings and riggings) went kablooie, but friends and corp-mates kept me sane and resolute, and the fun continues after a few days of mourning, because in the end a mmo-space sim of this complexity is very unique and rare on the mobile platform. I feel this game will have longevity and more content as time goes by.
At the moment, the game has enough things to do to get you started and motivated for most likely a few months, unless you join a corp/alliance to make your own content. Things you can do revolve around:
1) Doing "News" Encounters -- one shot missions, doing either combat: fighting 3-4 waves of NPC pirate ships, exploration -- fly somewhere and scan a system by clicking a button, deliveries/industry: picking up cargos or ores and deliver them to a destination. News Encounter missions are the easiest thing to "grind" out casually, safe from PVP.
2) Doing "Story" missions. Some of the News Encounter missions are prerequisites to a more involving "Story" mission, which has better monetary reward, multi-steps storyline, and a loot crate reward upon completion. When picking up news encounters, you might see a faction icon (Caldari, Amarr, Gallente, or Minmatar) under the mission title, and a checkmark if you have already completed it toward a story. Complete all the news encounter missions for a particular story and you can go into the Story encounter area and accept a story contract -- which will be placed in your ship hold, and you don't have to start it right away. You can even sell this contract to other players if you don't want to or can't do the mission yet (they are pretty tough to do when you are first starting out), or you can save them to do when you're a bit more skilled and have better ships.
If you do start the story mission via the contract, you have 1 week to complete all the steps of the story, some involving more than one fight. Also note that different stories have different difficulty level, with the easiest being the following four T6 (Tech 6) faction stories:
T6 Stories
* For Patriotism (Caldari)
* Spark of Rebellion (Amarr)
* Super Soft Drink (Gallente)
* For Freedom (Minmatar)
I suggest doing the above first before moving on to the T8s (the next level of difficulty), which are:
T8 Stories
* Mega Corporation (Caldari)
The hardest missions right now are the T10 stories, and you will most likely need a fairly beefy fleet (group) involving at least one tank and high dps to complete.
T10 stories
3) Ratting. Outside of missions, you can just go find anomalies to "rat" -- which are just public fight zones that you can warp to and kill npc enemies, to get bounties (automatic payout for killing any enemies in the game), and loot drops. The lower the security level of the system, the better the drops and bounties. Also, when you clear out an anomaly, it will de-spawn when you warp out of it (as long as there's a base anomaly still in the system), and a new one will spawn -- with a chance of it being a special anomaly called Scout, Inquistor, and Deadspace. These are the "dungeons" of EVE Echoes where you have to go in and clear "room to room" via a jump gate activation to each room.
Because ratting is in public spaces, there is a higher risk of PVP and being killed by other players while doing this, since there's usually no concord (npc police) present where they are, and especially when you're doing so in null security systems (0 or negative security), since they're much much more lucrative.
Read the Wiki Guide to ratting for more details on ratting and anomalies.
4) Mining - slap on some mining lasers on a mining ship and warp to mining zones where ores abound for you to lock on and sit for hours on end zapping. The rare ores can be found in null and negative sec system, but the common ores in high and low sec are still sough after so there's definitely a market. Mining zones are also in public area, but those in high sec have concord presence so it's safe from other players, while low sec to null sec are more at risk.
You can also process these ores into minerals for selling on the market or to use yourself in manufacturing.
5) Industry - the backbone of EVE economy, which exists, even though it's not as robust as that of EVE Online. This is a broad subject since there's many things you can specialize in for manufacturing, from reverse engineering blueprint, ship buildings, modules (equipments) and riggings manufacturing, structure construction (currently Outpost parts and soon Citadel i.e. space station parts), and probably a few more things I missed.
6) Market -- which I will lump delivery / hauling into also. This is where you buy low and sell high, or you move goods for others either via the in game delivery system (which I am not too familiar with), or personal contracts -- which a few corp mates of mine have been fairly successful with running a side business in.
Note that at the moment, for me I feel like this is a difficult activity do just do by itself (without building the goods and/or doing combats for supplementing income), because the tax rate ON TOP of the broker fee for the game is so high, even after skilling into some of the tech to lower the rate and fees... but who knows maybe after a certain point this could be lucrative.
7) PVP - you can just be an actual pirate and fly around to hunt other players (e.g. miners) or gate camp (catch travelers flying through) with warp scrambler bubble, to destroy and for loots (when a ship is destroyed the items and cargo on them have a chance to be looted in the wreckage), either to defend your corp or alliance space, to take the fight to another corp or alliance, or simply becaue that's your life choice -- you're free to do so in null and negative security zone (and certain area of low sec).
TL/DR:
There's things to do in EVE Echoes if you're interested in a complex space sim on mobile (and PC emulator if you have that kind of setup).
My suggestion for new players is to COMPLETELY finish the tutorial and ALL the Advanced Tutorials first, since they'll teach you a lot and also give nice rewards such as skills and multiple ships (even up to a T5 ship). I also highly recommend you find an active Corporation to join because fleeing with corp-mates you trust is the best way to finish harder missions or ratting without the fear of being PK by players pretending to want to party with you (since friendly fire are totally allow in the game), plus you will have experienced players for tips and advices on the game.
Look me up in game if you need further help.
Fly safe! o7
- ViryLittle
[CCCX] Cerberus Combat Corp
part of the Void Alliance in Eve Echoes.
https://discord.gg/gTV8QcVbZy
I have been playing EVE Echoes since launch, casually at first but getting more and more committed as the months go by, mainly due to the in-game friends I've made and the corp & alliance I am in.
This is definitely a unique game, especially on mobile devices. It's different, it's tough, I almost rage quit umteenth number of times when my 500+ million isk ships (with all the fittings and riggings) went kablooie, but friends and corp-mates kept me sane and resolute, and the fun continues after a few days of mourning, because in the end a mmo-space sim of this complexity is very unique and rare on the mobile platform. I feel this game will have longevity and more content as time goes by.
At the moment, the game has enough things to do to get you started and motivated for most likely a few months, unless you join a corp/alliance to make your own content. Things you can do revolve around:
1) Doing "News" Encounters -- one shot missions, doing either combat: fighting 3-4 waves of NPC pirate ships, exploration -- fly somewhere and scan a system by clicking a button, deliveries/industry: picking up cargos or ores and deliver them to a destination. News Encounter missions are the easiest thing to "grind" out casually, safe from PVP.
2) Doing "Story" missions. Some of the News Encounter missions are prerequisites to a more involving "Story" mission, which has better monetary reward, multi-steps storyline, and a loot crate reward upon completion. When picking up news encounters, you might see a faction icon (Caldari, Amarr, Gallente, or Minmatar) under the mission title, and a checkmark if you have already completed it toward a story. Complete all the news encounter missions for a particular story and you can go into the Story encounter area and accept a story contract -- which will be placed in your ship hold, and you don't have to start it right away. You can even sell this contract to other players if you don't want to or can't do the mission yet (they are pretty tough to do when you are first starting out), or you can save them to do when you're a bit more skilled and have better ships.
If you do start the story mission via the contract, you have 1 week to complete all the steps of the story, some involving more than one fight. Also note that different stories have different difficulty level, with the easiest being the following four T6 (Tech 6) faction stories:
T6 Stories
* For Patriotism (Caldari)
* Spark of Rebellion (Amarr)
* Super Soft Drink (Gallente)
* For Freedom (Minmatar)
I suggest doing the above first before moving on to the T8s (the next level of difficulty), which are:
T8 Stories
* Mega Corporation (Caldari)
* A Soldiers Way (Caldari)
* Divine Redemption (Amarr)
* True Divine Trial (Amarr)
* Modern World (Gallente)
* Business Magnate (Gallente)* Matar Reborn (Minmatar)
* Disaster Relief (Minmatar)
The hardest missions right now are the T10 stories, and you will most likely need a fairly beefy fleet (group) involving at least one tank and high dps to complete.
* Bad Hare Day (Caldari)
* Friends by Blood (Amarr)
* Sweet Poison (Gallente)
* Angel or Devil (Minmatar)
3) Ratting. Outside of missions, you can just go find anomalies to "rat" -- which are just public fight zones that you can warp to and kill npc enemies, to get bounties (automatic payout for killing any enemies in the game), and loot drops. The lower the security level of the system, the better the drops and bounties. Also, when you clear out an anomaly, it will de-spawn when you warp out of it (as long as there's a base anomaly still in the system), and a new one will spawn -- with a chance of it being a special anomaly called Scout, Inquistor, and Deadspace. These are the "dungeons" of EVE Echoes where you have to go in and clear "room to room" via a jump gate activation to each room.
Read the Wiki Guide to ratting for more details on ratting and anomalies.
4) Mining - slap on some mining lasers on a mining ship and warp to mining zones where ores abound for you to lock on and sit for hours on end zapping. The rare ores can be found in null and negative sec system, but the common ores in high and low sec are still sough after so there's definitely a market. Mining zones are also in public area, but those in high sec have concord presence so it's safe from other players, while low sec to null sec are more at risk.
You can also process these ores into minerals for selling on the market or to use yourself in manufacturing.
5) Industry - the backbone of EVE economy, which exists, even though it's not as robust as that of EVE Online. This is a broad subject since there's many things you can specialize in for manufacturing, from reverse engineering blueprint, ship buildings, modules (equipments) and riggings manufacturing, structure construction (currently Outpost parts and soon Citadel i.e. space station parts), and probably a few more things I missed.
6) Market -- which I will lump delivery / hauling into also. This is where you buy low and sell high, or you move goods for others either via the in game delivery system (which I am not too familiar with), or personal contracts -- which a few corp mates of mine have been fairly successful with running a side business in.
Note that at the moment, for me I feel like this is a difficult activity do just do by itself (without building the goods and/or doing combats for supplementing income), because the tax rate ON TOP of the broker fee for the game is so high, even after skilling into some of the tech to lower the rate and fees... but who knows maybe after a certain point this could be lucrative.
7) PVP - you can just be an actual pirate and fly around to hunt other players (e.g. miners) or gate camp (catch travelers flying through) with warp scrambler bubble, to destroy and for loots (when a ship is destroyed the items and cargo on them have a chance to be looted in the wreckage), either to defend your corp or alliance space, to take the fight to another corp or alliance, or simply becaue that's your life choice -- you're free to do so in null and negative security zone (and certain area of low sec).
TL/DR:
There's things to do in EVE Echoes if you're interested in a complex space sim on mobile (and PC emulator if you have that kind of setup).
My suggestion for new players is to COMPLETELY finish the tutorial and ALL the Advanced Tutorials first, since they'll teach you a lot and also give nice rewards such as skills and multiple ships (even up to a T5 ship). I also highly recommend you find an active Corporation to join because fleeing with corp-mates you trust is the best way to finish harder missions or ratting without the fear of being PK by players pretending to want to party with you (since friendly fire are totally allow in the game), plus you will have experienced players for tips and advices on the game.
Look me up in game if you need further help.
Fly safe! o7
- ViryLittle
[CCCX] Cerberus Combat Corp
part of the Void Alliance in Eve Echoes.
https://discord.gg/gTV8QcVbZy
Post edited by vqly on
Comments
I feel this is probably the best MMORPG on mobile... Eve, itself, is not everyone's cup of tea... but I'm about to start playing.
Can you discuss the pay vs no pay options... also whether ipad/tablet vs phone makes a huge difference?
1st, Re: Ipad/Tablet vs Phone, not too much difference in terms of which is better, just your own personal preference as to which device you'd prefer to play on. You definitely get a lot more real estate (screen space) with the tablet, and buttons/text/icons are bigger... but a phone is more readily available and convenient to just have with you.
But the beauty is, you can use both devices and switch to whichever one you rather play on at that moment, as long as your account is linked to one of the external services provided (currently Facebook, Twitter, Apple Game Center, or Google Play). Note here that you can even play on different platforms (ios or android), as long as the service you bind your account to is also cross platform (i.e. facebook and twitter), and not the platform dependent one like Apple game center or Google Play... so keep this in mind when binding your login to a service!
For example, I was able to bind my account to Facebook and can easily switch to playing the same account/character on my iphone and my older google pixel 3 phone.
If you have only Apple devices (or only Google devices), you can bind to those platform specific services and be able to play on any of the devices that are linked to the platform.
Fair warning though that the game tends to be a battery hog, so whichever device you use, make sure you can get to a power source or have a battery pack handy to plug into for extended play.
I have also known players that play on a PC using mobile emulators, but I haven't done that myself.
You can download the game for free and start playing right away without purchasing anything, and be on an free account called Alpha clone. Anytime in the game, you can purchase an Omega clone for 30 days, at a Basic level or Standard (slightly better) level. Or purchase both to combine their bonuses.
Being on Alpha also has lots of restrictions and penalties.
The main differences are:
1) as Alpha, you gain skill points (leveling up) much slower at the basic speed (30 points per minute). In EVE Echoes (just like on EVE Online), the only way to skill up and gain levels is through training in real-time.
The free Alpha accounts train skills at the slowest rate with no bonuses. Also, if you're not training a skill you can store up passive skill points that you can later dump (expedite) into a skill... but at the Alpha level you only generate and store 50% of the points you would have if you had been actively training a skill instead.
The paid (Omega) accounts gain bonus skill points per minute and can generate and store passive skill points at a higher percentage.
Basic clone add +5 skill points (SP) per minute, bumping you to 35 SP/minute, and allow you to gain 70% passive SP if you're not training.
Standard clone add +25 SP/minute, bumping you to 55 points per minute, and allow you to gain 80% passive SP.
You can purchase both Omega packages, and combine them to gain +30 SP/minute (total 60 SP/minute) and be able to gain 100% passive SP if you're not training.
There's also one-time purchases called Cognitive Neuroscience chip that you can install and use 3x on a single character (not account), at different levels (base, advanced, and expert). You can only apply each chip at each of the level a single time (i.e. can't purchase and apply the base chips twice), and you can only apply a higher level chip only if you have done the previous level(s). Each chip add +5 SP/minute skill training permanently on the character you applied the chip to. However this will still leave you with all the Alpha restrictions if you do not have one of the active Omega clone.
2) Alpha are limited to T7 ships and below. They can't fly T8 or higher ships. Certain super rare (faction/named) equipment's are also restricted to paid omega accounts only.
3) Alpha can only trade from the main market at certain trading hubs called Interstellar Trade Center (ITC), while Omega (either package, or both), can make purchases or put up items for sell on any stations.
4) Alpha can't make contracts (direct trades) with other players, and can't accept them.
5) Alpha can only skill up the basic level of any skills up to level 5, and not be able to purchase and skill into the advanced and expert levels.
Those are the important distinctions. There are a few others such as the daily rewards having alpha and omega gifts (omega can accept both the alpha and the restricted omega gift), being able to place planetary mining arrays only on high sec system, dropping items into your corporation hangar etc... but those have been changed recently so not sure what the restrictions are or will be in the near future.
With that said, while being on a free Alpha clone account has limitations and no bonuses, there's still plenty you can do. You can still play and do missions, mining, fleet with other players, buy and sell (at specific locations), join a corp, set up planetary mining in high sec, etc. You can certainly make enough ISK (in game currency) to buy PLEX (currency you can purchase using real money or ISK), which you can then use to buy Omega packages (170 PLEX for Basic, 430 PLEX for Standard, 500 Plex for both level).
As of right now, PLEX is selling for approximately 900K ISK per plex minus tax, so you can purchase a Basic omega at 170x900K = 153 million ISK... which seems a lot but definitely doable over a week or two doing the right things (and having helps will make this much easier). I have seen plenty of players making enough ISKs to go to Omega without spending any real world money. There's the time commitment though so the ones that can afford it just pay for the Omega packages, currently at:
$5 for Basic
$13 for Standard
$15 for both
The game paid system is a bit confusing, so I hope this helps.
- ViryLittle
They did imo NOTHING right,worlds/ships/space/combat all of it very sub par.
I could draw up a template of where this game needed to go but it is far too late for that now,Eve is a big time outdated game.I will say this,they turend me off right from day 1,NOT about the ships or the risk as so many like to think,it was about showing me they had NO CLUE how to design such a game.
Example is the way you learn/train skills,that is NOT how i want to see it done,the exact opposite in fact.
Single player ships,ok there is some plausible realism in that but they are not going to be living in those,especially when all they do is sit in a cockpit with some dated looking hub.So the characters need planets and open world space stations to return to,places to craft ships and NOT buy them out of thin air.We need planets to first inhabit and scour for resources so we can learn the tech to build these ships.We need npc's to hire to help build ships.
Then on top of that ISK should NOT exist,it is outside game interference that RUINS a game.So CCP did everything half assed or wrong and THAT is why the rest of us do not like EVE.I kind of laugh over the years i keep seeing threads pop up where fanbois like to think players are just afraid of risk or pvp,well that is why i am telling you that is NOT the reason,it is a LACK of game design that keeps us away.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I am doing duo package ($15 /mo) since my gaming time is much shorter than it used to be.
EVE (Online & Echoes) are more like a space-themed math and strategy game, but with other players and lots of moving parts and underlying complex systems. You crunch numbers for calculating market production cost vs gain, time taken, manufacturing success rates and material process rates, how far to approach or orbit during combat, how far and how hard does various weapons shoot, how fast do ships go and armor and shield strength in various situation, etc
That doesn't mean combat is boring (it can be and it's not twitch base), but you do have to make quick decisions in the midst of battle when s*** hits the fan. Fleet ops for both pve or pvp can get chaotic and intense (good Fleet Commanders are highly respected and sought after for this reason), and results of those decisions can be immensely satisfying or devastating.
While "math in space" sound a bit boring on paper, this game is one of the only few games that makes my heart goes from resting boredom to chest busting excitement in a few seconds flat... the intensity of the excitement of handling swarm of elites coming way too close to your group, or players coming at you (or the horror of watching that hull going red with you not being able to do anything except to gape in terror), is nothing like I have felt playing other MMOs.
And you should see some of the crazy spreadsheets and scripts/programs that builders and strategizers have created for various parts of the game. They are kinda beautiful
A few things this game does well (in my opinion):
- single server for all players. There's no shards or east and west servers etc. You join the game, you're literally playing with thousands of players at the same time. So you will be playing with all players around the world, from europe to asia to americas to oceania. This could be a good or bad thing -- for me good, since I think I am among good companies with open minds, but you will definitely encounter intolerance and racists xenophobic players during your play, which hopefully you can just blacklist and ignore and not bother with.
- an actual working economy. A majority of ships, equipments, and player own space stations etc will eventually be created only by players and not provided by the game (except the equipments from loot drops or crates), and an economy exists for mining, processing, manufacturing, transport, and trading that is very complex and very necessary.
- politics & diplomacy... if you're into that sort of thing, is organic and ever present, even if you are trying to avoid it, and definitely power by players and not the game. There's no "faction" wars but there's player base diplomacy, area of controls, corporations and alliances negotiation and wars, cooperation and betrayals, bankers funded ops and acts... etc. You know the EVE Online stories out there... it's starting to happen on EVE Echoes too as the game aged and territories and alliances become more permanents (or fractured with histories). A "sovereignty update" is coming out within a month or so that will allow even more players control of territories and resources to exist (which will naturally inform more politics and diplomacy). So if you're into a game that has real meaningful politics, this (and EVE Online) does this really well (queue the records-breaking EVE Online wars callbacks).
- a fairly streamlined interface and fairly smooth and reactive latency in terms of players control. There's a few minor hiccups however, which hopefully will get ironed out over time.
--------
However the game on mobile do have quite a few annoyances also. Five of my top cons on the NetEase impletation of this game right now are:
1) the chat system is horrendous... you can get basic messages across but you lose all chat history if you get disconnected even just for a few seconds. Screen transition would take you out of chat mode so you have to retype everything if you're chatting while traveling from system to system. Censorship of words that are truly bizarre, and a whole slew of other issues. Most corps use Discord for important and persistent communications outside the game, but the in game chat system implementation is just stupid.
2) they still have to work out the inherent problems of playing on mobile devices where you have to put the game down at short moment notice, or lose connections in the midst of battles. The system of warping players out if it's a legit disconnect is kinda working, but sometime it's not.
They started a ship recovery system via Support tickets for PVE-base ship losts (outside of the actual insurance game feature for lower Ts and trainer shipss), where you can submit a Support ticket to ask for ship recovery, but they have limits to how often and what kind of ships you can recover and based on how it's destroyed, and you usually lose a lot of equipments and riggings that are very costly to replace. I am also not really sure how long they will have this system available to players, they might take it away without warning.
There will probably be ongoing studies and experiments on how to perfect this kind of gaming on mobile devices, with all its inherent gotchas for a game that contains seconds of decisions for dramatic outcomes. Maybe they will figure it out eventually.
3) bots and scammers and spammers. While this is common to a lot of online games, it was especially terrible at first for a while with scammers and ISK sellers everywhere. However, it has gotten better with massive ban hammer swings that seems to be effective. We will have to see if it keeps. My advice is to just know the common scams and be wary of any offers that's too good to be true, and use the blacklist and report player abuse features often.
4) not enough content for the solo and non-pvp players. Hopefully they will add more game contents eventually such as a more involving exploration mechanics, long multi weeks or months story lines or champaign (like the Sisters of EVE storyline on EVE O), more player control stations and territories mechanics, etc.
5) The market/player economy is weaker than it should be because of the horrendous tax rates and fees. Again maybe this can be mitigated with better skilling, but I feel the market isn't as robust as it should because players are wary of putting up large orders and paying massive fees just to not have the item be sold, and when sold got another chunk of tax cost out of the return. The alliance I am in is trying to mitigate this with a player driven market outside of the game with something called a Void Bank, which is a system mainly to facilitate trades via a player to player contracts using an out of game currency called Void Coin... which obviously have inherent risk but I think it's going to be a boon to the economy within our alliances once it's more mature and trusts are established.
Sorry for the novel of a post
- ViryLittle