Fleet self invites are still a bit of a misnomer; you do still need to be invited to them by someone, but at least you don't have to do it individually anymore.

The old way was to set up a fleet with someone and invite people who wanted to join one by one once they had requested that you do so. Now you can post a general invitation and let people click that invitation to join the fleet, putting the work in their hands.

To set up a self-invite fleet:

1: Start a fleet. You can either choose to invite someone or you can rt-click yourself and form a fleet of one (unfortunately you still need someone else to get gang boosts, or I'd be in a fleet all the time).

2: Rt-click the little triangle on your new fleet window and set the channel to self-invite. You are given two options: corp or alliance (if your corp is in an alliance).

3: Go to the channel you want to invite from, rt-click your name or your avatar and click channel->post fleet invitation. Don't forget to tell everyone what the invite is for!

Step 3 will work no matter who you are in the fleet. Remember that new people may be entering the channel all the time, so in case of disconnects or new people you might wish to repost the invite every few minutes.

OK some of this post is, I feel, a little out of the reach of newer players, but people are asking about it, so here goes:

In Eve-Online you are immortal, in a sense. Now I don't want to go too much into the philosophy of it (surely when you're dead, you're dead?) but in Eve part part of the reason that entering that most dangerous of professions, pod pilot, is so popular is that you become effectively immortal. This is because we have access to clones.

There are two types of clone (or rather two uses of a clone since they use the same technology):

Medical Clones

Medical Clones are imprinted with a subconscious link to you so that when you die your consciousness merely snaps back to your clone, often on the other side of the galaxy. They have to be updated regularly or you will lose 10% of your memories (skillpoints) when this happens.

Go to a medical bay (in a station that has one, not all do) and ensure that your clone is up to date right now if you haven't done so already. There's one at our HQ in Vellaine, for instance. The default clone stores only 900k sp so buy yourself the next one up from your current skillpoints, or two up if you are training fast. You also have the choice to move your medical clone to somewhere more convenient, once created.

Note that your clone is a physically separate creation from you, this is not teleportation, so any implants you had in will be lost. Medical clones are a pod pilot's incentive to do the job, so they are available to anyone, no matter what your standings.

Jump Clones

Jump clones are used for deliberate moving around between clones. Again the actual technology is the same but since this is purely for convenience there are more restrictions attached, so they are generally referred to by the different name. Train infomorph psychology to be able to use a jump clone and you will have the skill needed to jump your mind from one clone to another. Since this takes a lot out of you psychologically it can only be performed once every 24 hours.

Again, your clone is physically separate to you so any implants you had at the time will be left behind (not lost, as your old body stays where it was). Some people use jump clones for this very reason, to leave behind expensive implants when they are about to do something dangerous. Others just use them to effectively teleport themselves between two widely separate bases of operations.

Training needs to be suspended, and of course you need to be at a clone bay to perform this, so most times that means you need to be in a station (some very large ships have clone bays but I wouldn't worry about that for now). You also need to not have a medical clone at the same station, as resources are limited and even the most patient of station managers won't dedicate two bays to the same pilot (if you attempt to have two clones at the same station one will be destroyed to make room). Jump clones are created at stations with medical bays but by flying them around you can have one wherever you like, there doesn't need to be a medical bay there to perform a jump.

Now for the bad news. Extra clone spaces are limited so station managers only allow space for them to their favourite pilots. That means you need a corp or faction standing of at least 8.0 with the corporation or faction owning the station to be able to create one. For many people this means that jump clones are out of reach for a good long while. However player-owned-station owners can set your standings at whatever level they wish, so you may be able to talk someone into letting you set one up. Try placing an Ad in the wanted forum, or having a look in the sell orders forum, as people sometimes offer this service for a fee, or join a corp with high standings already, or their own POS.

The first of, I hope, many pictures have come in. These are from Kerberan who promises me many more. Now I just need to find him to take some pics of my ship...

I've been feeling this blog lacks colour and as I'm currently restricted to classic content I'm sending out a general call for pictures.

If any corp or alliance members have any pictures from a premium version of Eve send them to me and I'll publish the best on here. I will crop the pictures but for sake of size should be converted to jpeg format, and should preferably show something relevant (ie not just your ship), and should be taken with the UI disabled (ctrl-tab).

Send pictures to tranka@blueyonder.co.uk.

I was going to write something about patching, but i found out someone else had gotten there first. Never one to reinvent the wheel, here it is:

Patch days And You

The major points in the patch, with comments:

-When undocking, you now undock at maximum velocity in a 0-15 degree angle from the undock point to ease congestion around undock points.

As detailed in PrismX's Blog: Drones, Fighters, Shuttles and Rookie Ships in space will be deleted on the first of every month unless within proximity to a Starbase. Anchored containers will have a 30 day timer from the last time they were interacted with and will be deleted when the timer expires unless in proximity to a Starbase.
Character Creation and New Player Experience - This is great news, especially for miners, and those wishing to use can for advertisements (the older, out of date ones will be swept away), but more generally as all those hundreds of cans must cumulatively cause a massive lag on the servers. I wait with bated breath to see just how much quicker it will make everything seem.

All windows have had a welcome page added; a short text explaining the window. - That could get annoying.

The description of the "Social" (skill) has been clarified. - Clarified how?

Ship resistances have been changed as detailed in Zulupark's Blog. - This is easy to say, but doesn't help a lot just reading through the notes. From memory this means that all explosive resistances have been reduced by 10%

The Apocalypse gains +5tf, +1000mw and +1500 capacitor capacity. The capacitor capacity ship bonus has been replaced by a 7.5% bonus to large energy turret optimal range per Amarr Battleship skill level.
The Omen and Zealot now have 5 turret slots (+1 turret).
The Moa and Eagle now have 5 turret slots (+1 turret).
The Ferox now has 6 turret slots (+1 turret) and 1075mw (+75mw).
The Raptor now has 3 turret slots (+1 turret) and loses 4mw.
Jump freighters skill now adds 5% agility instead of 5% velocity per level.
Jump freighter bonus to hull hit points has been extended to also add the same bonus to armor and shield.
Jump freighter base cargo capacity has been increased by 25%.
- All fairly self explanatory, making crappy ships half workable.


Drones have been issued a memory upgrade, and will no longer forget what their 'engage' target was after 60 seconds.
-Like a lot of people I did wonder, but I put this down to my imagination.

Mining drones have gained some more shield, armor and hull hitpoints.
-But still pull them in when you see a pirate coming, right?

NPCs

Dungeon NPCs are now able to react based on your standing towards them.
-Now this one worries me. Does this mean that if I warp into a pirate mission they will all aggro me at once, or does it just mean if I'm in a gang and I have the lowest standing it will be me that a new spawn decides to target? Or neither? 'Able to react' is distinctly unhelpful information.

Several missions have been fixed to spawn correctly.
-Again, what missions, where?

Science and Industry

There are now additional settings and filters that can be used both in the Browse and the Details tab of the Market window. You can filter by skills (only items that you have the skills to use), by CPU and powergrid (only items that can be fitted on the current ship, not taking into account already fitted modules), by solar system security, buy/sell order deviation and so on.
-Excellent change, I was only wishing out loud in chat the other day that you could do this.


Self Invite Fleets
It is now possible to allow people to invite themselves to your fleet. The fleet boss can put the fleet into self-invite mode for his corporation or alliance. Anyone in the fleet will then be able to right click on his entry in a chat window to post the invitation into that channel. This feature is very convenient to quickly set up fleets.
- Excellent for corps that do a lot of group flying. This is one of the first things we will be using.

Overview Tabs and Bracket Filters
It is now possible to apply the same settings that are available to overview to inflight brackets (brackets are the icons that appear over items in space).
It is now possible to assign overview and bracket settings to tabs in the overview window which allow fast switching between different overview and brackets setting profiles.
A new tab can be generated by right clicking a existing tab and selecting the Add Tab option or by using the Overview Tabs option in the Overview Settings. To create a bracket filter you create a Overview Settings profile with the icons you want to see in space and assign it to an Overview Tab as a Bracket Filter.
In order to quickly show all brackets you can use the default key combination alt-z which toggles all brackets on and off. The alt key no longer shows all brackets.
Electronic Warfare Effects shown in Overview
You can now see all hostile Electronic Warfare Effects from other players or NPCs against your ship in the Overview (if the enemy ship appears on your overview).
You can turn off showing these indicators in the Overview Settings, each Electronic Warfare Effect can be toggled.
-These, apart from the ship changes if you happen to fly one of the ships affected, are probably the most important changes for this patch. The cumulative effect of all of that is that you will be able to set a tab up so by the click of a mouse you will be able to see only those ships that are using EW on you, and despatch them first. No more guessing or quinting to see faint trace lines. Ewarriors beware, we're coming to get you!


The Items and Ships windows will now remember their sizes and open/closed states properly. -Hopefully this means that the fixed items and ships window will not blank out when you change ships anymore.


The EVE client now communicates to the Xfire chat client how many EVE players are online. -Hmm, Xfire might be worth looking at, if you can use it for chat or voice even if eve goes down and use it ingame too.


To bring equality to the world, if your character is female then you will now have a female corpse when podkilled. -Hmm. Given the 100% male language used by agents I think it takes more than this to bring equality to Eve.

The LP store now automatically reloads when the filters are changed.

So overall some useful new toys to play with. Now excuse me while I reset all my settings. Dammit.

Courtesy of dragonrider000:

Player: brush teeth
Eve: you don’t have a toothbrush
Player: buy Electric Toothbrush I
Eve: are you sure? that item is 58 jumps away
Player: fly to item
Eve: autopilot disabled. waypoint reached
Player: dock
Eve: docking permission requested
Player: dock
Eve: docking permission requested
Player: dock
Player: dock
Player: dock
Eve: docking request...... accepted
Player: buy Electric Toothbrush I
Player: equip Electric Toothbrush I
Eve: you don’t have the skills necessary to use that item
Player: buy Teethbrushing
Player: train Teethbrushing I
Eve: skill training complete
Player: equip Electric Toothbrush I
Eve: you don’t have the skills necessary to use that item
Player: buy Electric Toothbrush Operation
Player: train Electric Toothbrush Operation I
Eve: skill training complete
Player: equip Electric Toothbrush I
Eve: insufficient power

There are some instances where you can legitimately shoot another playe in Eve, or be shot. The rules vary depending on where you are:

Hi-Sec:
You can shoot another player who has stolen from you, or has already shot at you, without alerting the authorities. In this case the player will appear as flashing red in your overview. The exception is if the player is in a pod. You cannot destroy a pod in hisec legally unless you are at war with that corp.

Do not confuse flashing red with having a red minus by their name (you, your corp, or your alliance does not like them), having a skull by their name (they have a bounty on them), or having their name coloured orange or yellow (they have a negative security status). If you are at war with a corp you will probably show the red minus by a players name but that does not mean that everyone with a red minus is a legitamate target.

Failure to adhere to these rules will result in a security standing drop and Concord showing up and blowing you up, pod and all, at varying speeds related to the security of the system (fastest in 1.0). You will not win against Concord. You can, of course, shoot someone expecting to be blown up for it, but you had better do a hell of a lot of damage with your first shot or it'll be fairly pointless.

Low security space:
Shoot anyone you like but you will take a security standing hit for it and if you are near some sentry guns you will get shot at for it (but you have better chance of lasting against guns than Concord).

0.0:
Shoot anyone you like, no sec standing hit, the only consequences are political.

The advantages of joining a player run corp are numerous, but there are disadvantages. The advantages are:

1) The corp hangar.
The corp has a joint hangar, accessed via any station that has an office of your corp, where you can share things like ammo and mods that other people no longer want, or has been deliberately manufactured the the corp members.

2) Looting and Salvaging.
You have the right to open and tractor the wrecks and cans of anyone in your corp, whether they are online or not.

3) Standings.
NPC corps are often set to red (i.e. shoot on sight) status by player run corps because, as they can't be have war declared upon them for their actions, NPC corps become a haven for greifers (pirates who attack others just to annoy other players rather than economic or political gain). Also NPC corps never achieve the standings needed to set up a POS, or set up jump clones (although larger player corps have trouble with this too).

4) Teamwork.
Probably the most important one, player run corps tend to have a strong sense of teamwork and are more willing to invest time in new players. People in NPC corps have very little to gain from this, and tend to be very solo players with little interaction between players.

I have rather shamefacedly signed up for the forums, finally. If you have already, or if you can do so, please sign in on the topic below so I know who I can talk to on there.

SAFE Forums PVE Sign-in.

Finding the best agent for you shouldn't be a mystery. Don't expect a mail telling you to change agent, this is something you have to check out for yourself. There is a very simple procedure for finding the best agent you can use:

1) Open Character Sheet.
2) Open standings.
3) Scroll down to corporations, click the top one. If corporations is just about empty you can also follow the same procedure for the top faction and pick a good sounding corp within it (if you want kill missions you should be able to find one that sounds as though it gets involved in combat).
4) Click the agents tab.
5) Expand the list, and it will show which agents are available to you.

Do enough missions that your standings get high enough that more agents become available to you. If this is happening too slowly for you train the 'social' skill to gain standing more quickly and train the skill 'connections' for a percentage gain on your current level of standings. Having zero standings before skills and connections at 4 used to enable you to access minimum quality level 2 agents without having done any missions at all; now you will have to do at least one or two.

Use the best agent you can for the level you can safely complete. Agent quality has no reflection on mission difficulty, just on your rewards for it. For mission types see bio info below. Also bear in mind that lower security systems give better rewards, but once you are into .4 or below you can be shot at by passing players too. Agents close to lowsec space but not in it may ask you to go there once in a while, don't forget you can always turn down one mission every 4 hours, but if an agent is doing this a lot it might be worth looking at a change of agent. If, on the pther hand, you prefer the rewards of missioning in lowsec find an agent deep within it to be safer; it's the border between high and low that carries the most risk.

For a database for comparing agents across eve I recommend the database at eveinfo.com under links, out of game. Alt-tab is your friend!

Administration: 50% Kill, 50% Courier
Advisory: 34% Kill, 66% Courier
Archives: 5% Kill, 90% Courier, 5% Trade
Astrosurveying: 40% Kill, 30% Courier, 25%
Mining,5% Trade
Command: 97% Kill, 3% Courier
Distribution: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Intelligence: 85% Kill, 15% Courier
Internal Security: 95% Kill, 5% Courier
Legal: 50% Kill, 50% Courier
Manufacturing: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Marketing: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Mining: 5% Kill, 85% Courier, 10% Mining (II)
Production: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Public Relations: 34% Kill, 66% Courier
R&D;*: 0% Kill, 50% Courier(S), 50% Trade
Security: 90% Kill, 5% Courier, 5%Trade
Storage: 5% Kill, 95% Courier(L)
Surveillance: 95% Kill, 5% Courier

People often ask what the most important skill to learn is when they start eve. The short answer is everything. You are always better learning lots of skills to level one or two, so you can fit the modules you need, than training a single skill to level 5. Take a look at my skill tree and you can see how many skils are useful even just for combat. Use the time when you are online to train these quick skills to basic levels, or you will get very bored waiting for the longer ones.

So what are the longer ones you need? Well when you start, and assuming you are here for the long haul, your learning skills. Take a look at the learning skills in the market. There are specific skills that boost all five attributes, and then more advanced versions for you to train once you have the original ones to level 4.If you look at the attributes of any skill you will see listed the two attributes that affect how quickly that skill trains, one primary and one secondary. Now take a look at the attributes of the learning skills themselves. All the basic learning skills are affected by the attributes Intelligence and Memory, logically enough. Alternate between these two first (the skills are Analytical Mind and Instant Recall) then go on to do the rest of the learning skills, before going on to the advanced one.

DON'T train either set of skills to level 5. Back in the bad old days you HAD to train the basic ones to l5 to be able to access the advanced, now you don't have to. the level 5 skills really aren't worth your time unless you plan to be around for at least 3 years. Plan out the longest set of skill training you can think of in Evemon if you don't believe me. Level 4 is worthwhile though, especially if your going to be doing pvp and risking implants.

You can also speed things up still further by training cybernetics a little and putting some attribute implants. +2 implants (Beta) can be picked up very cheaply just about anywhere.

After you've trained these skills... Well, that very much depends what you want to do. Download Evemon and set yourself an individualised plan for whatever items and ships you want to be able to use.

And if you are still confused, you can always ask. Most of all remember: you can always switch skills without losing any skillpoints. If you know your current skill is going to finish before you can next be online, switch to something longer. Never, ever, leave nothing training.

This is a sticky on the New Citizens forum, thought they were worth adding here though. Mail me if you think of any more.

* You are not safe in 1.0 security space. CONCORD is there to punish, not to protect. Get used to the idea.
* In most cases, the only way to be 100% safe from agression inside the game is to be docked in a station. Being cloaked in a secret safespot could work too.
* Never fly something (or with something in the cargo) you can't afford to lose. Yes, not even in highsec.
* Never grant corporation rights to stuff you can't afford to lose either. No exceptions.
* People offering free stuff ? Probably traps. Use caution.
* Free stuff usually isn't. Not even minerals you mine yourself.
* If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Paranoia pays off here. Double-check everything.
* Scamming and unethical behaviour some would consider griefing is not only allowed, it is encouraged and rewarded by the game mechanics.
* Harrasment or real-life threats however aren't, and you can get a shiny ban for them. Learn the difference.
* If you lose stuff, it's ALMOST ALWAYS YOUR FAULT. Really, only yours.
* More expensive stuff is not always better stuff.
* Slightly better stuff usually costs many times more as slightly worse stuff. Choose wisely.
* T2 is usually cheaper and better as best named, but harder to fit. Sometimes it's not better. Other times it's not cheaper. And occasionally, neither cheaper nor better.
* Showinfo and Variants->Compare are your best friends. Use it on all stuff you can.
* There is always heavy lag in Jita and other trade hubs. But then again, you almost always find what you might need there, and can get better prices for the stuff you want to sell fast. So, it might be worth the risk of getting stuck there. Just know you COULD get stuck there.
* Just HAVING ISK doesn't matter all that much, it's MAKING ISK that's important. If you BOUGHT your ISK (either "illegally" from some site, or from a valid GTC trade), expect to soon be parted with all of them.
* Total skillpoints count doesn't matter much either, it's level of relevant skills to the current situation that does. Yes, that does mean a 2 mil SP combat-oriented newbie could badly beat up a 60 mil SP industry-oriented veteran.
* ALWAYS check your clone before you undock.
* ALWAYS check your ship insurance before you undock. If it's a T2 ship however... not THAT important.
* There are no "solopwnmobiles" in EVE. Everything you can fly blows up if it's shot hard enough.
* All other things being equal (experience, skills), superior numbers more often win a fight rather than superior ship value. However, things are hardly ever equal.
* There is no such thing as "a fair fight" or "an unfair fight". There's only "a fight". Circumstances are irrelevant.
* Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
* Just because you CAN fly something doesn't mean you SHOULD.
* With enough skills and experience, ship size really doesn't matter all that much.
* If you logoff in space without a PvP timer, you're only safe after 2 minutes... and then only until you log back in. If you logoff with a PvP timer, it's at least 15 minutes. Bottom line, once a fight started, don't logoff. You'll only die anyway.
* If you PvP long enough, you WILL lose your ship. It's only a matter of where and when.
* Just because some character is just a few minutes old doesn't mean he's a newbie. Many people have alts. The reverse is also possible, people come back after very long breaks, and characters are sold. You could see year-old newbies around too.
* Skills that take less than 1 day to train are short skills. Over one week is long.
* You're in this game for the LONG HAUL. Don't expect to do something meaningful in the grand scheme of things in the first day of your first trial account ever.

In case anyone wants to use one I made a sig image. Feel free to make alternatives, or use it on your own sig, preferably with a link here, like this:

As a perk to members I am providing free T1 manufacturing services at our HQ. To get any item or ship manufactured:

1. Buy a station container at HQ and put your name on it. Don't password it.
2. Drop off the needed 'perfect' amount of minerals and a blueprint (or copy) into the container.
3. Drop the container off into the 'Manufacturing' hangar.
4. Send me a mail telling me you have items to manufacture.
5. When I am next on I will set the items building. When complete I will drop the items, the container and the blueprint off into your hangar.