The State of EVE – Some Player Activity Statistics

By some accounts, EVE is not in good shape. Some people are worried about the recent drop in player subscriptions and a drop in concurrent online users, specifically, and others are worried about perceived "stagnation" in various parts of the game, such as null sec. The Nosy Gamer kicked off most of the recent discussions about the state of EVE with his post, first, covering the average number of players online, and then in his more detailed looks at those numbers, the latter of which got picked up by The Mitanni.com. 

Episode 45 of the Crossing Zebras Podcast is a good example of the doom-and-gloom response these numbers have generated for some (surprising since, by their own admission, the guests on the episode haven't been playing much EVE lately--but not for lack of content, they explain, as their null alliances have had frequent OPs lately, which they have simply not wanted to participate in because they are not big or newsworthy. Rather, my perception is that these guests are the sort of players who at least currently wait for content to generate, not the type to create it for themselves or others).

But player subscription numbers, online users, and personal assessments of the state of the game (or null sec, etc.) are not the fully story. What about player activity? What about spaceship content? 60,000 players logged in at one time--a number surpassed a few times in 2013--is mostly irrelevant if those players are in station and not engaged in any actual gameplay and if they deem no activities worth pursuing besides skill training. Is there any way to gauge player activity? 

In what follows, I cobble together some stats taken from Dotlan--stats on ship kills, NPC kills, and jumps, by type of space. I compare 2012 with 2013, and then I compare 2013 with the first half of 2014 projected over the rest of the year (I'll explain this more below). 2013 saw massive improvements in every category on 2012, as many players would expect, but 2014 does not appear to be such a bad year after all--at least thus far. In fact, low sec and, to an extent, null sec, seem better than 2013 in terms of player activity. Obviously the numbers are limited, and ignore important fine-grained details such as the fact that the first 3 months of 2014 were likely better in most categories than the next 3 months, consistent with the numbers on average concurrent users. Nonetheless, they paint a fairly positive picture of the state of EVE.

2012-2013: Ship kills, NPC kills, and jumps by region

To recap the past few years, 2012 saw the release of Inferno and Retribution. EVE was on an upward trend after CCP had learned valuable lessons from Incarna etc. etc., with development focusing on fundamental gameplay mechanics, particularly just getting people out into space. 2013 continued this trend with Odyssey and Rubicon, while also started to lay the groundwork for future big features. 2013 is often considered one of, if not the best year for the game, with player subscriptions reaching all time highs among other news-worthy statistics, such as largest battles (by player count) and most players logged in at one time, not to mention the complete revitalization of low sec, etc.

With the first half of 2014 came Kronos, which I predicted would be a fantastic expansion for thehealth of low security space. Kronos marked the end of the traditional expansion cycle (for now at least), preparing the way for the last half of 2014 to bring four separate releases—Crius in July, Hyperion (Sep), Oceanus (Nov), and Phoebe (Dec). However, the first half of 2014 also experienced a decline in subscription numbers. Let's start by looking at how 2012 compared to 2013:

 

Alas, no graphs, but what's important is pretty clearly communicated in the changes from 2012 to 2013. Start with ship kills. 2012 was a good year compared to the years prior, yet 2013 blew it out of the water. High sec and null sec both saw a small increase in ships killed, but low security space (literally) exploded. In 2012 and, really, ever year prior, if you wanted fights your best bet was to avoid or pass right through low sec and head into null, which even in 2012 saw quite a bit more action. From 2013 on, though, that fundamentally changed, with low sec not only completely overtaking null in ships killed, but edging closer to high sec than null ever did. Wormhole space also saw a decent increase in kills, hurray! These numbers, though, aren't surprising. Retribution and Odyssey both did more for the state of low sec than any expansion before them--and probably more than every expansion together. Rubicon helped, too, but also helped null with the warp speed changes and interceptors specifically.

I also included total ship kills in the top ten systems to see if the increases in ship kills were due to popular systems getting (much) more popular, or if the fighting was more spread out. It turns out that the top systems in every type of space improved, becoming much more active specifically in low sec, but not enough to account for the total changes in ship kills. I also checked the top low sec systems relative to the total ship kills in low sec. I excepted the rapid growth of Brave Newbies would concentrate PVP in low sec more than it was in 2012, but it turned out that the top systems in low sec still only accounted for a little over 5% of the total low sec PVP--a fantastic sign of the health of low sec I think, as it suggests that the activity remained spread out.

Now let's look at NPC kills (Dotlan classifies this as faction kills, which I assume are NPC kills). Interestingly, even though 2013 experienced growth in terms of player subscription as well as massive growth in terms of ship kills, NPC kills on the whole declined in every type of space. I don't know enough about PVE in EVE to explain this, but a few causes standout to me: First and most obviously, players PVP'ed more and PVE'ed less. So these declines are actually a good sign in some ways. Second, some changes would account for less NPCs being killed--specifically, Odyssey removed NPCs in (the old) relic/data sites. I am not sure if this is enough to entirely account for the change.

Finally, what about jumps? Jumps indicate players are traveling in space, regardless of what content they pursue. The number of jumps in high sec stayed almost exactly the same, null declined, while low sec of course grew nicely. The obvious message is that high sec stayed balanced with the new players coming in replacing some older players leaving the game or leaving for low sec. In terms of what areas of the game actually felt that growth from 2012 to 2013, then, it was low sec.

2013-2014: Ship kills, NPC kills, and jumps by region

This much is all likely expected. But what about the transition from 2013 into 2014? We are only 6 months into 2014, and massive changes are on the way both for the game as well as for the way content is introduced to the game, via the 10-release model that replaces the expansion cycle. So, I can only speculate on what the next 6 months will bring. So, my comparisons will assume that the statistics of player activity during the second half of 2014 will be roughly like that of the first. Given the negative assessment some players have about the first half of 2014, this would, presumably, be quite bad indeed. To calculate these projected numbers I simply took the Dotlan stats for the first 6 months of EVE and projected them over the next 6 months (they include the full month of June but not the first week and a half of July), the first column being the previous statistics from 2013, the second the projected 2014 statistics:

The tl;dr version is that the first half of 2014 (and thus the projected state of EVE for the full year) is no where near as bad as some people are describing, at least in terms of player activities in game. Let's look at the comparisons in more detail, starting with ship kills. High sec space and wormhole space both experienced small declines, with high sec ship kills returning closer to its state in 2012. Wormhole space gained so much momentum in 2013, though, that the (projected) -6.66% decline in ship kills only negates a small protion of the gains in 2013. And that's the bad news.

Now for the good news: Low sec, amazingly, is even better in 2014 than in 2013! In fact, low sec comes within  few hundred thousand kills of high sec. Given the amount of ship kills that, historically, occur in high sec, that's pretty crazy and a great sign of how healthy and active low sec is. Now for null: apparently, null does even better in terms of ship kills in 2014 than in 2013. That's a surprise, given that the EVE news sites and blogs rarely go a week without posting about the "stagnation" of null. There is clearly a stagnation of news about content in null (rather a self-fulfilling prophecy for news sites, given that they control this fact) yet not a stagnation of fights. Keep in mind that in March of 2014 Braves Newbies and the HERO. coalition moved largely to null sec, out of low. This helps explain the continued positive growth of ship kills in null sec, and it makes it even more remarkable that ship kills increased in low sec when one of the biggest groups largely left. Total ship kills stay roughly the same, which means people are fighting less in high sec and more and more in low sec and, to an important but lesser extent, in null. So much for the percieved stagnation.

What about the other two categories? They mostly continue the trends of 2013--except for one important case: NPC kills in low sec. While no where near the number of NPC kills in high (which continued to decline), NPC kills in low rose by nearly a quarter in 2014. That means right around 25% more NPCs being killed, which means more people in low sec, in space, killing NPCs of various sorts--that is a pretty massive change. NPC kills also slightly rose in null, likely due to the "cold war" status of the region and the increased use of afk-tars. Interestingly as well, jumps in low sec continued to rise, while jumps in null also reversed the 2012 to 2013 trend and increased modestly.

Some Final Thought: Why the decline in the ACU? 

In sum, 2014 is not a downward spiral of stagnation and despair. In some areas, 2014 saw a decline from 2013 (e.g., NPC kills) but many of these trends were present in the 2012-2013 period and many of them are likely positive signs of the game's health. In fact, however, in terms of player activity, 2014 is in most cases about as good as 2013, and in some cases even better.

This makes the drop in the ACU and, presumably, in player subscriptions all the more surprising. I don't have a fully explanation obviously, but I do have three important pieces to the puzzle:

1) There might be roughly the same number of flesh and blood players in EVE in 2014 as there were in 2013, but less newer players (as evidenced by the drop in high sec ship kills and NPC kills as well as from public numbers) and, notably, less alt accounts, which translates to less alts logged in at the same time or one after another, if only to train skills. The decline in alt accounts is likely due to two factors: The continued increase of PLEX prices, and the new ability to train multiple characters on one account. This has led many people, it seems, to close an alt account or two, but, more importantly, it also signals that EVE has not actually lost very many individual players.

2) Players seem to be doing more when logged in. Player subscriptions are down, and concurrent number of players online are down, but some forms of activity, such as low and null sec ship kills, are up. This suggests that players are spending less time logged while pursuing no content--such as sitting afk in stations. Instead, players seem to be doing more while logged in for less time. This might indicate a positive improvement, that players are able to better maximize the enjoyable parts of the game compared with their play time in 2012 or 2013. 

3) Regression toward the mean. 2013 was, by most accounts, the best year of the game's history. When athletes have a banner year and then experience a decline the following year, thousands of new pages and TV time are spent explaining it in rigorous detail when, in the vast majority of cases, their overall abilities have not declined but their averages have regressed to a more accurate status. That, perhaps, is what is going on with EVE in the decline from 2013-2014 in stats like concurrent users online and new player subscriptions, etc. 2013 was an amazing year, and it is probably too much to expect CCP (or the players who generate content) to surpass or even match that. Instead, it would be much more realistic to hope for a continued, small but lasting growth in important statistics.

And that is roughly what we see thus far in 2014. Low sec is better than ever. So here's hoping CCP can do for the other areas of space what they did for low, because it has been a massive success.

Safe(r) Hauling

In June, my first month making over 10b isk trading, I sold 73 billion isk worth of goods. That means I hauled 73b worth of goods myself, given that I do my own hauling. I've yet to be ganked while moving cargo (at least not since I first started trading and used T1 industrial ships for a brief period, receiving one desperate gank needing two ruptures for a cargo of 110m), though I fully expect to one day see it happen. I titled this post "safer" hauling because there is really no "safety" in EVE--that's why I play the game, after all. I personally enjoy ganking haulers and participating in events like Burn Jita--and think gank-groups like CODE. add interesting content to the game. Even the best tanked ship possible may succumb to a large enough horde of catalysts--if only for the fun and challenge for the catalyst pilots!

So, I thought it might be worthwhile to say a bit about how I haul goods. I use four ships as the task requires:
First, when hauling small amounts of expensive goods, the only sensible option is to use a blockade runner. I don't have anything to add that's not covered in this excellent example of fittings for these ships.

I occasionally--quite rarely--use a freighter. To be frank, there is only one remotely sane* way to fit a freighter:

Three Bulkheads. Why people put anything else on their freighters will always remain a mystery to me, particularly when, looking over the freighter losses on the killboards to groups like CODE., people typically use expanded cargoholds even when they don't need the extra cargo space.

* There are always exceptions, and one exception to this freighter fitting involves using multiple alts to web the freighter into warp quickly.

I typically use an orca to haul large amounts of goods, however. Besides the fact that it is a less-obvious target, why an orca? It makes sense for a number of reasons. First, orcas can field a tank comparable and in some ways greater than a freighter. For instance:

 

Warps slightly faster, aligns slightly quicker, and has a bit better tank than a freighter--particularly against thermal damage, which happens to be the most common damage type of large ganking groups (via blaster ships like catalysts). (Those two implants are also too cheap not to use when hauling.) 

The significant decrease in cargohold is nonetheless worth it when choosing an orca over a freighter, though, for a second reason. Orcas cost about half as much as a freighter, making them far less costly to use--and far less impressive kills. Though groups like CODE. will (and have increasingly started to) gank anything that comes through their system (the Aufay pipe lately), most players like expensive killmails--it makes the preparation of a fleet of destroyers worthwhile--and making the killmail around 600m less is thus worth the trouble. In general, though, for every freighter lost, you could lose two orcas for roughly the same price.

Finally, since Kronos, I've started using deep space transports on some occasions. Their price is on the decline now, and I am really excited about their potential. For one, the fleet hangar can hold a little over 60,000m3, allowing it to carry a battleship--a feat even the orca above can't do. Here is one fit I've been using:

The Pith B-type thermic field is only 4m and the explosive version 18m. The ship is slow to align and warp compared to its blockade runner cousin but much faster compared to the orca. DSTs get a bonus to overheating, which is where these ships really shine. Against thermal damage, the above fit jumps to an insane 1.1m EHP:

Obviously, the smart thing to do is bring thrashers instead of catalysts for this ship (or throw in a cruiser with a bunch of medium neuts). I am sure there are smarter ways to fit these ships, but for my purposes at least, the above is more than enough. Whatever you do, though, don't fit your DST like this. 

Those are the ships I usually use. The how and when of hauling, though, is even more important than the fit. First, and partly aided by my strange schedule, I haul at off-hours, when server population is quite low. Second, avoiding afk-hauling is a must, especially when hauling at prime time and while carrying expensive goods. As I make more isk and when it is the middle of the night US time, I am increasingly willing to auto-pilot with an empty cargohold. A loss mail is inevitable, but I consider it just another transaction tax.

Market Milestones - 10b in one month

The end of June brought to close another month of trading--my best month yet by leaps and bounds. In May I reached a record of 8b isk in profit, while in June I smashed that and made a little over10b isk, roughly 338m a day. Total number of orders stands at 250, and total sell order amount is at 47b isk. Here's what my income has looked like (in millions of isk) since I began tracking the data (exploration profit is averaged over three periods due to the vast fluctuation in profit, as described in my past posts about income in exploration):

I'm looking forward to what July will bring, as it will mark a full year of trading. I should reach a full 300 orders by the end of August, with sell orders around 60b given the items I plan to add to the market. After that--who knows! I likely won't add more trading characters, so my profits will likely be put into longer term investments. PLEX seems to be the common choice, but this sort of highly long-term trading will be a completely new world for me.

As I've described in previous posts, my trading methods are a little peculiar. Here are some of the distinctives:

• First and perhaps foremost, I trade on only one character. Many established traders (who, understandably, make many times more than I do) have numerous alts for trading, sometimes upwards of a few dozen characters dispersed throughout the trade hubs of New Eden. My goal for this trader is to reach and maintain a stable 300 sell orders and it is unlikely I will expand to more characters. This is partly because, as this very helpful post at MarketsforIsk explains, when you have only a finite and stable amount of play time, eventually your “Return on capital employed” will hit a wall. At that point, given that you cannot play for longer periods of time, you can find better trade hubs or better items to sell, but that's about it. For me, 300 items is close to my optimal number of orders, particularly since I am constantly changing hubs and changing items I'm selling based on trends and preferences etc. 
  
  
• I do my own shipping. Many traders—for good reason—contract their shipping to organizations like Red Frog. Transport adds a large time sink, as well as added risk since groups like CODE. have increasingly started targeting freighters regardless of content. I am partly helped here by the fact that I sometimes work at home and can do semi-mindless tasks like hauling without much interference. This character also functions as a casual explorer, occasional combat scanner/scout, and rarely as a link alt—she is spread quite thin currently.
  
• I update orders usually only a few times a week, and never more than once a day. 
  
  
• I buy straight from sell orders in major trade hubs or even locally. I hate updating orders and I hate buy orders, so I avoid both as much as I can. As a result...
  
  
• I don't aim at certain profit margins—such as 10-20 percent per item—but at movement relative to the margins. So, I sometimes make only 1-5 percent profit on items, which is fine if the items are moving.
  
  
• As my slowly progressing series on trading explains, I trade in fairly predictable items at fairly predictable locations—like trading ammo at mission hubs. EVE is a game which rewards knowledge, and many traders are by far the most knowledgeable players about the market trends in EVE, which they exploit for impressive profit. Me, I'm still pretty new, I don't know too much about the game compared to others, I don't speculate about the market, and I make a lot of mistakes. As a mostly solo PVPer and casual explorer, I simply sell the items I am familiar with, the sort of thing a month old character could do—and, to my surprise, it has worked for me. 
  
  
• I don't use spreadsheets to track my trading. I use EVE Profit and, I'm rather embarrassed to say, I simply jot down what I need to restock in a notepad document in the EVE client when items sell. Like many other peculiarities of my trading habits, this is largely due to keeping things as simple as possible—lest EVE start to feel like a job.
  
  

PVP Dry Spells

For the past few weeks—maybe even over a month—I've been in a dry spell in solo PVP. The sort of dry spell that makes me roam hoping to explode, so long as it involves a solo fight or something close. I've had a hard time finding fights, win or lose. I only have anecdotal evidence, but it just feels harder to find solo fights of any sort currently than, say, 6 months ago. The expansion being released makes it even harder, as it feels like no matter how excited I am for the expansions, my main activities when they are released always seem to be logistics--hauling, market orders, etc. As nice as the new low sec exploration / PVE content is for the health of low security space, they also involve a huge amount of travel. My single Mordu BPC only came after a few hundred belts--fortunately I was able to do a bit of PVP at the same time, and the pay out at the time was equivalent to a PLEX.

This PVP dry spell has led me to reflect back on my losses on the first half of the year—48 now. I wish it were higher, as it would mean I've found more fights in general. I divided my losses into the following groups, which I think pretty well reflects what it is like to be a non-elite solo PVPer in EVE:

“Blobbed” here means killed by a sufficiently large number of pilots and in such a way that it is highly unlikely I get even a single kill during the process. “Out numbered” generally means fighting 2-3 ships, and “outgunned” means the ship is a class or type higher—e.g., fighting a pirate frigate in a T1 frigate (generally, the cases where I die to a blob or small gang are also cases where I am partly out gunned as well).

Out of 48 losses total thus far in 2014, the following are ship losses while attempting to solo in low or null sec (so pods and fleet losses are not included):

Blobbed: 12

Out numbered: 6

Solo loss: 9

Of those 9 solo losses, 4 were against ships that outgunned me (typically, fighting navy frigates in T1 frigates). 2 were “just die already” fit coraxes I was desperate to explode due to really disliking coraxes. Of the remaining 4, one was a great fight between a 400mm plate rail comet (me) and a SAR rail comet in which I died in a fire. Another loss came in a destroyer against an assault frigate that was also one-sided. The second most recent was a fantastic slug-fest in a 400mm plate coercer against a 400mm plate algos where I learned how much better the algos is at that sort of brawling. Finally and most recently, while trying to solo in a punisher, I died to a hard counter a few times over—a neuting, TDing slasher who could also leave the fight at any time.

The frustration caused by dry spells is actually one of the things that gets me to try harder and try new things in EVE. So, I am going to be doing two new things in the coming months:

First, I am going to be doing a short stint in FW, specifically in the Amarr FW. My reason for this is primarily to PVP in a new area of space and see some new faces (I've almost never ventured into Amarr/Minmatar FW space). This is part of my goal to earn a kill in every low sec constellation as well as visit every system in EVE. I won't be joining an "elite" group, but trying to look like an easy target in hopes of getting fights. Finally, with the Minmatar currently hoovering around T3-T4, there will, hopefully, be a few targets around.

Second, once I lose enough ships in FW, if there is a "summer war" heating up I may join Brave Newbies with some newer friends. Since I am a virtual newbie when it comes to null sec as well as coalition "PVP" I figure it will provide a decent opportunity to find some action and meet new players.

Besieged Covert Research Facilities - now spawning in a system near you

Besieged Covert Research Facilities are now spawning all over low security space. It appears that around one spawns per five or so systems, but they can be more spread out or more clustered as the case may be. The rats come in two waves: Three ships of some combination of Mordu battleships and cruisers, and then some combination of five ships (four battleships and one cruiser seems typical). They do significant kinetic damage with no trouble applying the DPS at ranges past 100km and to targets with low signature radius, and they appear to be weakest to kinetic—this makes typical PVE ships like the tengu and the ishtar perfect for soloing these ships given their high default resists to kinetic. I am playing with fits at the moment, but so far an active tanking heavy missile tengu seems to work well, putting out upwards of 700dps with scourge fury heavy missiles at 70km—well away from the point range of the Mordu ships. The sites can thus be farmed in only a few minutes given the small number of rats. Even with resists in the high 80s or into the 90s, these second wave in particular requires a decent tank.

It is too early to tell what the average isk payout of these sites will be. Covert research tools, one of the new low-grade pirate implants, and a new ship skin BPC, seem like a fairly consistent group of drops from each site. However, the market will take a few days to weeks to settle on prices for these items.

Here are the drops from five sites thus far:

1. Thrasher Thukker Tribe BPC, low-grade harvest alpha, and around 5m in covert research tools.

2. Cormorant Guristas BPC, low-grade edge delta, and around 5m in covert research tools

3.Thrasher Thukker Tribe BPC, and around 5m in covert research tools

4. Coercer Blood Raider BPC, and around 5m in covert research tools

5. Ferox Guristas BPC, low-grade snake epsilon, and around 5m in covert research tools.

Once the price on the ship skins settles I look forward to PVPing in them. The low-grade pirate implants will also make a cheaper alternative to the mid / high grades, as I assume the price of a full set of LG snakes, slaves, etc., will balance out to a few hundred million isk.

These sites add a new set of content to low sec exploration and another reason to live and travel there, without really overshadowing any of the other exploration content.

Are there any games like EVE online?

Sometimes my friends ask me why I don't play X,Y,Z, and why I solely play EVE. I get incredulous stares when I say "It's the only game worth playing so far as I'm concerned."

Say I want to play a game that has the following features. First, there has to be PVP, but not in rigidly defined ways or prescribed areas—it has to be an integral part of the game, part of the next two features. Second, the game has to be a sandbox in some minimal senses—and not merely having a crafting system, say, which some game developers seem to think is the condition for being a sandbox. I take “sandbox” to mean that players can build and destroy vital, core parts of the game world. Third, it has to involve risk. Rewards in games mean nothing to me if there is not also risk. On my view, features 1-3 combine to transform a game into a virtual world.

It is also a plus if the game has a lot of content and minimal bugs—further conditions which exclude many newer games due to the increasing trend of releasing games in beta or alpha or in pre-release-releases where players pay to bug test and read dev blogs about someday content. People seem to love newer games, but for me, a game needs to be released—and continually updated—for a few years until I consider it worth playing. (E.g., I tend to buy Total War games only 2 or so years after they were released, both because that's about how long it takes CA to fix many of the broken features and that's how long it takes the modding community to get really established.)

There are really only a few games which satisfy these features—partly because these features identity virtual worlds more than mere games. Cross out virtually every MMORPG, even those billed as sandboxes. Some mostly single-player games involve world-building, but not in the sense where PVP is integral to the sandbox and the risk elements. So far as I can tell, besides EVE online, your options are slim. Dayz (and its clones) is one similar such game. Player interaction in the game is highly unpredictable, usually outright strange. While the game is certainly not a themepark, it is also a bit too much like a drawn out FPS with weird social interactions for me. Someday, if and when permanent modification of the game world is implemented (e.g., building and fortifying), and if server size ever sufficiently increases, I may find it worth some time.

But so far as I can tell, EVE Online is almost completely unique in satisfying my conditions 1-3 (as well as having years of content and few really major bugs). And it likely will be the only game / virtual world satisfying those conditions for at least 5 years. At least 5 years because, first, few games are in development which aim to satisfying conditions 1-3. Of those that are, many of them are from very small studios, and many likely will only have a small following upon release. Could a game be released with features 1-3 that surpasses EVE? Sure, but to match the amount of content—player created content in addition to dev created—the game would need at least a few years of a dedicated community building, destroying, exploring, fighting, etc. Devs create the means and tools for a sandbox game, but the players ultimately make a game a sandbox. So, I guess for me--now and in the next few years--my gaming choices boil down to either EVE, or nothing really.

The Monthly Top – May 2014

Zkillboard has a nice little feature which lets you view the monthly (as well as all-time) “top” for any given pilot, the most useful stats being the most used ships and the most frequent systems for that character's PVP “wins.” I figured it would be worthwhile—for my own reflections, at least—to make a series covering my monthly top 10—the ships, at least, but sometimes the systems as well. I wish the killboard had a monthly top losses as well, but generally my top killing ships were also ships I lost the most of. I will start with May, 2014:

For the month of May, I was in Stay Frosty, and virtually all of my fights were solo (attempts at solo, at least). May and June tend to be some of the busiest months of the year for me “IRL,” so I am happy with how much activity I ended up with.

1. Coercer. 17 kills.

Tied for the top ship of the month for me is the coercer. I have been flying versions of the “Standard” PVP fits for coercers for the past few months as part of my plan to solo in every combat capable ship in EVE at least once. I used a standard 400mm plate armor fit, sometimes with (now “mid-grade”) low grade slaves which really helped the viability of this brawling setup when combined with the ship's decent range and passable DPS. I also used a high DPS, small pulse laser fit which proved quite solid, scoring kills such as this dual-rep incursus, a near 2-shot on this condor, and other such kills. The high-DPS coercer does not have as much DPS as max DPS catalysts nor does the 400mm plate version have as much tank as the 400mm plate algos, but it combines those types of fittings with a generous engagement range when using scorch. I learned the value of that ranged DPS the previous month when I warped on top of a high DPS catalyst and managed to pulse the MWD outside of his blaster range—but still inside the coercer's laser range. Lasers are still quite new for me, so this fight was a learning experience.

In a quick secession of fights, this coercer, which eventually died to a random command ship, provoked a high sec group of players into throwing what looks to be their entire fleet of ships at it, to no avail, including a mackinaw, a noctis, a retriever, and a drake navy issue. I'm not at all sure what happened here, but at least they got a sort of revenge in the end when a passerby killed me.

1. Astero. 17 kills.

The Astero is one of my favorite ships. I use a fairly standard dual rep, cap boosting fit for scouting around, for semi-afk PVP activities such as waiting for explorers to wander by, as well as for exploration in 1/10 – 3/10 DED combat sites when there is little else to do. With drones on aggressive and an afterburner going, the latter is largely a semi-afk activity as well. I've also scored almost 50 solo kills in my astero—which I bought sometime in November 2013 and have yet to lose as of June, 2014. The 17 kills of May include many a hapless explorer (for the new players among them I always repay them more isk than they lost and strike up a conversation about exploration and PVP, explaining how they can avoid getting killed next time they venture into low sec. I've made a few friends this way). However, the astero is more than capable of fighting other PVP ships. This algos is one real fight this ship had during May, as I tend to be fairly risk-averse in this ship, maybe because I like it so much.

3. Stratios. 13 kills.

In May, I mostly flew a Stratios in high sec while in a +5 attribute clone, during short play sessions, as part of one of my completionist goals to visit every high sec system in game. I visit new systems and poke around a bit, doing some exploration sites in this ship, but also getting into some strange fights at times. This drake was upset I killed his mobile tractor, while this thorax—a frequent baiter of mission runners in this area of space—was no match for the pre-nerf Geckos which boosted my Stratios fit up to an insane 850 DPS. RIP pre-nerf Geckos.

4. Ishkur. 9 kills.

There's actually not much to say about the ishkur kills in this month, as I was largely testing out fits and cleaning up some mobile tractors I found.

5. Tormentor. 7 kills.

Like the coercer kills, the tormentor kills in May were part of my attempt to solo in every combat capable ship at least once, and like the coercer it is frequently underestimated (which can make getting fights a bit easier). Laser ships like the tormentor are still very new to me. I used a “standard” 400m plate fit, a dual rep fit similar to the dual rep incursus, and a small ancillary armor rep fit with a 200mm plate (again similar to a parallel incursus fit). The tormentor is a pretty tough little ship, capable of fighting above its mere T1 class due to its decent DPS at scram range and its excellent tank when either passive or active. All of my fits are afterburner fits—which opens it up to being easily kited. Flying smart can sometimes prevent this, getting lucky where you land can also help, but sooner or later if you fly afterburner fit ships you are going to die a slow, painful death to a kiting ship—such as to a condor or the new garmur.

6. Purifier. 7 kills.

Tied with the tormentor is the purifer at 7 kills. I had a blast in this ship in May, with many reminders at how viable stealth bombers can be even in low sec against the right targets. I flew the purifier around low sec mostly looking for clone soldiers while keeping an eye out for potential targets in space—an activity that pairs nicely with having two monitors and doing something besides EVE on the second. I encountered this ratting caracal as well as this harbinger navy issue while not really looking for fights, but stumbling on them anyway.

7. Moa. 5 kills.

The Moa, now one of the hottest ships in EVE, used to be ugly. I started flying it when still ugly and it quickly became one of my favorite cruisers. I use again fairly standard blaster as well as 200mm railgun LSE fits, and have an XLASB fit in the future line-up. In cruiser-class brawler versus brawler fights, it fares pretty well. However, it is quite slow and runs out of cap very quickly, which makes flying the 200mm rail fit somewhat odd—on one hand, you have good range. On the other hand, you cannot exactly kite since the MWD only lasts a minute or so.

8. Celestis. 5 kills.

I was largely trying out some bait celestis fits, simply getting a feel for its tank and DPS. This resulted in fairly odd kills like this one but nothing really special.

9. Nereus. 5 kills.

Also largely testing out some bait fits and shooting some mobile structures. Nothing really special. 

10. Executioner. 2 kills.

Finally, the poor executioner. I've tried hard to get a fit that works, that can score some—any--solo kills, but the executioner simply isn't as solo-friendly as most other frigs. Using a scram range kiting fit with an active armor tank, I scored this cormorant kill and counted it as a massive accomplishment as was the first time I've flown the executioner without just dying in a fire.

There are a few other ships I flew and scored 1 kill in, and there are many other fights I had which either resulted in 1) me exploding, or 2) no one exploding, but that's roughly how May went for me—a lot of really strange fights which occurred when I wasn't exactly looking for a fight. However, I learned a huge amount and made steady progress toward my personal goals in EVE, so I count it as a successful month.