I’m not a new citizen, but I couldn’t find a better place for this question.
I’ve been on Eve for a long time, but despite promises to myself, I haven’t really had the motivation to really play the game for a few years despite paying CCP monthly with the thought that, maybe soon, I’ll play again.
At this point I’m thinking I should just move my account to Alpha, but before I do that, if I have any skills, ships, and planetary colonies that are Omega-only, do they poof out of existence forever, and if I decide to resub, would I have to learn those skills and attain my stuff again? Or do they come back after I resub?
I can’t always afford $15 per month and frequently alternate between Alpha and Omega. When you revert to Alpha you keep all your SP for all skills trained and you also keep all loot/items/isk you currently own. However while you do keep the training for any Omega skills you may have, you can only use Alpha skills you have trained. Any ships you own that require Omega access you keep, but you can’t fly them. Also any modules that require Omega access you will keep, but again you can’t use them.
I make certain to keep “Alpha friendly” ships/builds around so that when my account does drop down to Alpha I just pull those out of storage and use them until I can go back to Omega again.
You will keep your skills and ships (or anything that requires Omega), but you won’t be able to actually use them until you upgrade back to Omega status (skills/ships that require Omega will simply become ‘locked’ from using them, not removed).
PI setups will also still be there, but because Alphas don’t have access to PI skills, you won’t be able to actually interact with your planets or take goods off until you return to Omega status again.
So in short, everything you have now will not go away, you will get it back when you upgrade back to Omega status.
No by mothballed I mean in an NPC station.
Preferably in a transportable state I.e. unloaded guns , no modules in the cargo for ships
For structures unanchor (I’m drunk don’t judge my spelling) them and also put in an NPC station.
Reason being that should you want to move and/or liquidate any of said assets you can do so through contracts without needing to sub.
The skills that are Omega-only (past Alpha levels) will grey out and become inactive; they’ll remain your character sheet but they won’t provide the bonuses that they’re supposed to provide.
Skills unlock ships, and also skills unlock modules for you to use (install in your ships and use). So for example you will lose access to Tech 2 ships (cov-ops for example), but will still have access to Tech 1 ships (basic cruisers, for example). However, if you have a cruiser that has Tech 2 guns in it, you won’t be able to get into the cruiser because the Tech 2 guns are installed but you don’t have the skill for them (it’s greyed out Omega only). So you have to uninstall the guns before you can use the ship.
So what Ralph is recommending above is to do some “spring cleaning” as it were, and put away the ships / gear that will become locked out, and otherwise the ships that Alphas have access to, get some alpha-level gear for them.
Because one of the things that gets disabled is industrial / transport ships (you still get access to level 1 of the industrial skill), so your max carrying capacity for “loot / gear” will likely get reduced from 10-15,000 m3 to 2-4000 m3 or so. Which means more trips to Jita.
You also get fewer market trading slots, and only 1 contract slot. So trading / getting gear as an Alpha is a bit more cumbersome.
With an emphasis on ease of transportation, so if you’ve anything important that you’re going to (temporarily) lose the requisites for, in locations you may not have explicit access to you may want to get those to an NPC station that a courier easily can move them for you.
Not true, as of December 5th update, Alpha Clones can use T2 Small/Medium weapons (if trained for it). Assuming that it indeed is the case that you are unable to use T2 guns, it is just a matter of stripping the ship “bare” yourself or by someone you trust that does have the required skills. So long as you have the skills to fly the ship itself you should always be able to make it your active ship, however if there are some mods where you do not meet the requirements, those mods will simply be offlined.