Actually - if you’d read the title - it was Starting Out or Starting Over.
My initial advice would work for both but someone Starting Over - after losing everything - would be in a different situation. They may or may not be able to just do a couple of career agent missions and get a free Venture.
Now - in the time since my last post - I went to your web site, read your training guides there, have been doing some exploration and looking at some YouTube videos on it. I’ve also reacquainted myself with why I didn’t do Project Discovery.
You may have 3 web sites but you only posted a link to one of them. On that one - as is appropriate to that web site - you are NOT teaching New Players how to play the game - you are teaching New Employees how to Grind Missions for your Clients. Those two things are vastly different.
Now - correct me if I’m wrong - but my understanding was that if you have a Grinder whose job it is to fleet up with a client and improve their standings with a corporation (which is what your company does) then you are going to want them to be able to run the highest level missions they can - immediately.
Thus - if they can do it - you are going to have them running Level IV Missions for your Client to start. To do that - they would have to already have Battleships of their own. The only reason you would have your Grinders running lower level missions for a Client who wanted their standings raised with a particular Corporation - is because the Grinders Standings with that Corporation weren’t high enough to run anything better.
Thus - your emphasis in having a Grinder run lower level missions - is to get through them as fast as possible so that they can move on to higher level missions which will increase your clients standings more rapidly. I mean - your client is going to have to be fleeted with the Grinder while he is doing this - so - you want to get through it as quick as you can.
All of that makes perfect sense - for your Employees - whom I would assume - would pretty much all be Mission Runners - not Miners.
But things are going to be different for a Brand New Player - especially one who WANTS to be a Miner - or something else other than a Mission Runner. Here - your orientation - is completely towards Mission Running. Now - I can understand that given your business but that doesn’t mean your advice is good for someone just starting out - as they may not know what they want to do. Here - advising people to just blitz through those low level missions as fast as they can and not bother to loot or salvage - is not such good advice.
If they do not do anything but blitz through their Level I and II missions - are they going to have enough money from Mission Rewards and Bounties to be able to buy and fit a Battle Cruiser to run Level III missions? Not to mention buying and fitting a Cruiser for their Level II’s.
Sure - you can run level I’s in a Frigate - but a Destroyer is faster.
Sure - you can run level II’s in a Destroyer - but a Cruiser is safer.
I … really don’t think they could run Level III’s in a Destroyer. There may well be people playing this game that can do that but I’m not one of them and neither will most new people be. So - are they going to have the money doing things your way - without looting or salvaging their level I’s and II’s to buy what they need for their Level III’s?
The other thing here - is that if they haven’t gained experience in looting and salvaging level I’s and II’s - how well is that going to work for them if their first experience in looting and salvaging comes with Level III’s? Wouldn’t it be better for them to have experience doing that before they have to worry about Ninja Salvagers?
So - I looked at Project Discovery and remembered why I didn’t do that. They are asking you to take your two eyes and look at scientific data and make a judgment about it. I didn’t like that idea as I felt I wouldn’t be qualified - and - as a principal - I am concerned for the validity of their results. Having amateurs do things like that is going to be questionable. The other thing is - since I haven’t yet actually given it a try because of these reservations - I wonder about how you are compensated? Is it on the number of results you turn in - or - on their validity? Are there people just grinding through these things as fast as they can for the ISK without regard to the validity of the study? I don’t know. If I do give it a try maybe I’ll see. But - my experience with things like this was through the early SETI Distributed Computing Project. I was part of a little SETI club and we had about 30 computers running SETI units. Here - everything was done by the software they designed - so none of it was dependent on the scientific ability of the participants - all they had to do was be able to install the program on their computers and the software did the rest.
As to Exploration my memory is coming back to me on that too. In all these claims of all this money to be made - the impression I’ve gotten is that a lot of the people making those claims - are not taking into consideration all the “dry holes” (to use an old water drilling phrase) that they come up with. It wasn’t like I didn’t have any good hits on Data or Relic sites - it’s just that in the time I took finding what I found - I could have made a lot more money mining in a Venture. But - it wasn’t just me - the guys I whose videos I was watching - that were doing High Sec Exploration - like I was - weren’t making any more.
So - as I’ve told you before - my past experience with Mission Runners who thought everyone should be a Mission Runner - was that they were viewing things from the POV of an experienced player running Level IV Missions - not that of a new player who barely knows how to dock his ship.
Now - the other thing I have noted and mentioned before is - some people are better than other people at different things. Here you have a mixture of personal skill and personal experience. Some people are just quicker than others - and that makes them more successful where speed is more important - but - may not help them in tasks where other things make greater contributions to success.
The one thing I read on your web site that I didn’t already know (iirc) - was that Distribution Missions improved standings more rapidly than Combat Missions and (as I did know) they were faster - they were just more boring.
The guys really making a lot of theoretical ISK (they were going off what the alleged value of their loot was based on what their cargo holds said it was worth) was that they were doing that in Worm Holes and Null Sec. I don’t know how good an idea it is to tell brand new players to go into Worm Holes or Null Sec.
One guy was showing what HE could do in a Heron with a brand new Alpha character he created as part of the video - but - while his character was an Alpha - HE - was a veteran player.
The other guy had a really good ship which among other things had a cloak.
In my successful ventures into Low Sec and Worm Holes (those where I didn’t get blown up) - I had a cloak. Alpha’s can’t have cloaks. And having a ship that is designed to have a cloak - rather than just slapping one on whatever you’ve got - is something that is probably beyond the skill and finances of your average New Player.
