Life in Eve: A Good Problem to Have #eveonline

I have way too many ships.

A part of that is sort of a collector habit: there are so many pretty ships in EvE, and I can fly them, so why not own one (or two, or ten) of each?

There's nothing inherently wrong with that; the problem arises when you get a ship and, having got it, refuse fly it, because you might lose it. This reminds me of something. Oh yeah...

Unwrap your toys and PLAY WITH THEM.


Now I'm know for a fact that for some players, collecting is the point. That's fine. It's a sandbox; play how you like.

But for me, collecting is NOT the point -- I want to get better at actually playing the game and exploring all the little nooks and crannies in the sandbox.

You know what everyone tells you to do when you ask how to get better at PvP?

"Get some ships, fly out to low- or null-sec, get in fights, blow up. Repeat."

This stings a little more in EvE than it does in, say, WoW, where you can learn about PvP quite effectively for no other real cost but time, and actually earn some flavor of currency even if you continually get your ass kicked. By contrast, if you're fighting and losing ships in EvE, the main 'gain' from the experience is knowledge and (if you're wired to enjoy it) fun -- in most any other respect, you're out of pocket for the loss of a ship.

But you know what? I am well insulated from the pain of that particular sting. Though I'm NOTHING compared to the real traders and money-makers in the game, I find myself able to drop several billion on a wormhole (including all the hardware, tower bits, upgrades, fuel, et cetera) and make it all back in short order, and that's just liquid assets -- I've easily got three to five times times that floating in hangars spread out all over New Eden (which, I shouldn't need to point out, is somewhere I typically spend very little time -- those ships are doing nothing but gathering space-dust).

I mean, seriously: how many ships do I really need when I can only fly one at a time?

Clearly, I need to blow some up. It's time to get some education.

I've been trying to get in fights in Syndicate (renowned for its small gang PvP) off and on for a few weeks months, but at the same time I don't want to get into stupid fights if I can avoid them, just for the sake of losing a ship. So I've spent more time learning how and when to GTFO and haven't really seen many explosions. (Except for when I jumped my Talos right into a seven-man gang landing on the far side of a warp gate. Oops.)

The most interesting thing about these activities has been in the systems between Stacmon (where I've left a number of ships for roams with RvB and Agony) and Syndicate -- it's all low-sec space, and thanks to the changes to the UI I've become aware of the fact that it's part of the Faction Warfare system in EvE, which has recently gotten a pretty big overhaul.

I mean, I guess it has. I don't really understand how Faction Warfare works now, or how it used to work, or... you know... how you do it. I try talking to some of the local NPC Faction Warfare agents, but they won't have anything to do with me since I'm not "part of the war effort".

So I do some reading.

And... maybe this is the solution I'm looking for.