EVE Online blog: Ding! Clone Grade Gamma
posted:
5/7/2009 12:00:00 AM
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In a level-less society, there are few milestone indications proving you've advanced. EVE Online's chat channels aren't caked with "Ding!" messages slathering over what level someone's popping champagne corks over. Yet the "Gratz!" that follow a triumphant message stating the new ship you've purchased can often fall surprisingly limp as well. That's because in EVE, being able to fly a certain hull type doesn't mean you can fit that certain hull type with appropriate equipment. You could pilot a cruiser -- a popular, high-powered ship class -- in short order: the license is yours, have at it. But you won't necessarily have the acumen and certainly not the experience to put it to good use yet. The technicalities are beyond the scope of this blog, but suffice it to say that any player can prematurely get themselves into the cockpit of a large boat long before the rest of their gangly-youth body has caught up to the size of their paws.
There is one method for accurately measuring a character's growth and advancement, but it surprisingly lacks ceremony...
I swung over to the always-trafficked Brutor Tribe Treasury, Rens solar system. The Six Kin Development Warehouse -- my usual haunt where I pick up a solid stream of missions from my security agent -- lacks cloning facilities. I deftly slapped down the sixty-five thousand ISK purchase at the Treasury and ding'd in corp chat that I'd upgraded to a Clone Grade Gamma. Solemnly, as expected:
Crickets. Nothing...
* * * * *
They're a quiet lot by default, so I can't fault them overly much. But that clone will retain two million, fifty thousand skill points in the event of my demise. (Think of it as a 'save point' for my character Billy Blame's advancement. I currently have just over one million, three-hundred thousand skill points, and my then-current clone was steadily approaching the lip of what it could muster. I have to imagine that that's solid progression, since I've focused almost exclusively on Learning skills; skills that do nothing except increase the number of skill points I acquire per hour. From go, I earned seven-hundred twenty skill points per hour, according to my iPhone's Capsuleer app. I now earn one-thousand two-hundred eighty-seven per hour. I've nearly halved the rate at which I acquire skills. (There is a major discrepancy between EVEMon (EVE Monitor) and Capsuleer in reporting how many skill points I earn per hour, but I'm neither inclined enough nor numbers-savvy enough to prove who's correct.) When a single skill takes several days to top out at level five -- even at my low levels -- the patience to train Learning skills pays rich dividends over the course of a tenured career.
Regardless, my purchase of a Clone Grade Gamma was a silent and uneventful ding, likely because there's nothing outward to disclose, nothing showing off me piloting a new Bellicose, Rupture, Scythe, or Stabber-class Minmatar cruiser. But it was a solid indication that my patient training is paying off. Just as it does for absolutely everyone in these space lanes. Which is why it's never a call for celebration.
They're a quiet lot by default, so I can't fault them overly much. But that clone will retain two million, fifty thousand skill points in the event of my demise. (Think of it as a 'save point' for my character Billy Blame's advancement. I currently have just over one million, three-hundred thousand skill points, and my then-current clone was steadily approaching the lip of what it could muster. I have to imagine that that's solid progression, since I've focused almost exclusively on Learning skills; skills that do nothing except increase the number of skill points I acquire per hour. From go, I earned seven-hundred twenty skill points per hour, according to my iPhone's Capsuleer app. I now earn one-thousand two-hundred eighty-seven per hour. I've nearly halved the rate at which I acquire skills. (There is a major discrepancy between EVEMon (EVE Monitor) and Capsuleer in reporting how many skill points I earn per hour, but I'm neither inclined enough nor numbers-savvy enough to prove who's correct.) When a single skill takes several days to top out at level five -- even at my low levels -- the patience to train Learning skills pays rich dividends over the course of a tenured career.
Regardless, my purchase of a Clone Grade Gamma was a silent and uneventful ding, likely because there's nothing outward to disclose, nothing showing off me piloting a new Bellicose, Rupture, Scythe, or Stabber-class Minmatar cruiser. But it was a solid indication that my patient training is paying off. Just as it does for absolutely everyone in these space lanes. Which is why it's never a call for celebration.
