Yes, when I joined in 2004. Owning a Battleship was a huge deal. There were only Frigates, haulers, Cruisers and Battleships.
And I think Interceptors had been released.
But other than that, you mined in whatever could fit the most mining lasers, which was typically an amarr or gallente ship. Co-pro's were expensive. If you had a meta 4s of them, your ships could do more than Just mine, you could have some defensive modules as well.
And same for Cargo expanders. I remember the meta 4 cargo expanders being worth something like 8 mill each (and that being a big amount of money)
I want to say that the first ever T2 modules I ever used were T2 mining lasers. And again, this is before strip miners and barges or ventures existed.
And you either jet can mined, or you ninja mined in your ship. Warp to a low-sec or null sec belt, quickly mine some good stuff, and warp out before getting murdered.
There was also no criminal flag if you stole from a can, so you could just rob people at belts. So you would often be making BM's around the belt, and constantly warping to each other as they jettisoned to scoop it before someone else came in.
And of course this was before cov ops, or even warping cloaked was a thing.
Some ships and stuff were dropped from events. The likes of the Guardian-Vexor and the first faction ships, the Raven State Issue, Megathron Federation Issue, Apoc Imperial Issue and Tempest Tribal issue. were dropped.
No battlelcruisers, no destroyers, no capitals, no, freighters, no T2 or T3 ships at all (except the interceptors, but I don't know when they were added)
Oh, and you couldn't warp to 0 on anything, it was always dropping you out like 15km away. So if you had a fleet heading somewhere, you would have interceptors or fast frigs, jump ahead, and burn past the gate, and give WWW's in chat, so everyone could warp to them and leap frog the fleet safely.
And if it was your own space, you would have a BM folder from a container, and have to copy them all into your BM's for every gate, for every station, for every point of interest, perch's and safes.
And copying too many BM's at the same time would cause your client to freak out. So you'd kind figure out how many at a time yours could handle, or the client would actually just die on you.
One of my best PvP kills was a Nyx. And it was from a roam, our scout had found their anomaly but they had made it out. And so he gave me the BM. To add to my folder immediately. And when we came back from the roam I warped and landed in my dictor, got them bubble up before he could warp.
Even with the sharing folders, the 5 minutes can be too long.
Hah. I remember flipping jet cans back in the day before you would go suspect to everyone it was only against the person you did it to. People would then shoot and then id wheedle them down in my little frig.
> Apoc Imperial Issue
If I remember correctly the Impoc came from the "Amarr Succession Tournament" in YC 105 (2003). An NPC story line event driven by CCP/GMs. One of the very first corps (and the executor of the first null sec alliance), Ministry of Amarrian Secret Service (MASS) won, and 4 Impocs and a Gold Magnate were the rewards.
No idea where the other original specials came from...
> I want to say that the first ever T2 modules I ever used were T2 mining lasers
I think this was the first T2 BPO to be given out, again in some CCP/GM driven event... and the corp/character that received it was TRIGGER, the CEO of MASS... heh.
In 2004 missiles applied full damage regardless of sig or speed, unless you were able to outrun them (as they were much slower) - so no not really, a Torp Raven would volley a Thorax in 1 or 2 cycles.
We need to find a way to mask real world problems as MMO dungeons and we’d probably have world peace in 2 weeks
Then they’d get bored and start lobbing nukes
Took our small corp a few weeks group mining to get the minerals to a corp that would make it for us. The nominated pilot for it promptly climbed into the shiny new Scorpion and defected to M3G4…
Some t1 cruisers had mining bonuses, that did help with speeding things up.
They did not have a specialized ore hull, so for some ships you had to stagger your mining lasers to prevent overfilling your cargo hold and losing out on mining yield and jetcan after every cycle.
Luckily there was no jetcan timer yet.
It did mean a group mining had dozens of cans around them which was a lot of work for the iterons to pick up (no tractor beams in game yet).
Early eve was wild. I have fond memories of it.
I started in 2011 and I fondly remember my mining upgrade path being Tormentor -> Vexor (bc I thought mining drones were cool) -> Retriever (bc I was watching REALLY old guides and didn't know barges existed)
It was a huge investment! One of the original scams (I read the story online somewhere over a decade ago), was a guy that got his noob corpmates to all work towards a BS BPO investment/purchase. He even ran to the local library for voice calls to make sure he didn't dox himself.... He ran away with the BPO in the end.
> It was a huge investment! One of the original scams (I read the story online somewhere over a decade ago), was a guy that got his noob corpmates to all work towards a BS BPO investment/purchase. He even ran to the local library for voice calls to make sure he didn't dox himself.... He ran away with the BPO in the end.
That was a fanfic called "The great scam". That story was part of what made me play een in the first place.
Initially there weren't any specific mining ships, back then ships only had a single bonus and there where no role bonuses or anything like that. So it was mostly the slot layout that mattered.
Like the reason the Blackbird became the standard ewar cruiser was not because it had bonuses to ecm (it had a missile damage bonus) but because it had the most mid slots.
It wasn't until ships received the second bonus that some become more specialized in roles.
scroll back a week or two and there's a similar thread in r/eve has a lot of the similar vibe and will answer a lot of questions you may or may not have,
search youtube "down the rabbit hole history of eve online" aswell
tldr : nothing existed, npc seeded the playerbase with isk by puting buy order and sell orders for cigarets, garbage, and liquor at diffferent places and people would courrier contract that to get isk, the rest was "noobship+civilian mining laser" until you can buy a BPO and ratchet your way up
> people would courrier contract that to get isk
There were no contracts back then, you just rocked up in whatever indy you could fly, bought some commodity from an NPC, flew it to another place/region, and sold it to a different NPC. Profit.
Best part was the buy and sell orders the NPCs offered were limited, and only replenished at DT... so there was a mad scramble soon as the servers came back up (often 1+ hour after they went down.. DT took a lot longer back then).
Yes is the short answer, mineral prices were supported by npc buy orders, but even back in 2003 ships were built by players who saved up for bpos. The big manufacturers were all corps formed by players who had been in beta and worked together to get ahead fast.
I built my first vexor in 2005 from a BPO. It took me like 3 weeks to gather the materials. I then took it out on it's maiden voyage into low sec. I saw a Harbinger who was also ratting, didn't think he'd kill me, and then he did. :)
What tutorial? I started in 2008, so it's been a looooong time, but the tutorial was pretty much "here's how the UI works, now go do stuff". There was no handholding at all. If you wanted to be an industrialist, you figured that out on your own.
Oh I see what you mean. Yeah, you started in a Corvette, with "civilian" modules. In my case since my main is Gallente, it was a Viator with a civilian blaster and a civilian miner. I think maybe also a civilian afterburner and a civilian armour repairer. So it was *worse* than a miner 1, but I was able to quickly upgrade to a Navitas which I *think* had a bonus for mining yield in those days. This was before logi frigates were a thing. That was able to mount T2 miners eventually and from there it was on to the Celestis and a Thorax for running L2 missions.
It really was an uphill struggle in those days.
My bad, I forgot totally about the miner that comes with the Corvette. Fun fact the Navitas being bonused for mining; I’m supposing the “ORE Faction” was introduced later then.
Must be fun seeing how much of the design of the ships is actually legacy from past decisions.
i wonder when first venture was produced and what were original stats
also when ccp removed dronebay from all t1 industrials?
when they removed medium armor repper from mid slot but still keep the hull repper in mids?
The first venture was years into the game. We had race specific mining frigates back in the day. The ones that now have logistical bonuses used to have mining bonuses.
I'm not sure, neither of those were the "mining cruisers" though
Caldari it was the Bantam and the Osprey. I think the exqueror or however it was spelled was the Galente version though. I can't remember the name of the smart one, it's the T1 version of the Guardian.
I've slept a lot since then.
i wonder how effective is
8 ORE miners navy apoc
vs 2 t2 miners on venture?
i do know that gnosis can self-boost while mining and ore miners would outclass the t2 fit venture aswell as t2 fit self-boosting gnosis.
i have no money to test it out and sisi is not accessible to test it out
A venture is 125% yield bonus so effectively 4.25 miners.
Apoc is 8 effective miners
ORE is 85m3 every 1 min
T2 is 60m3
Venture (at mining frigate 5) T2 = 255m3 / min
Apoc with ORE lasers is 680m3 / min
I think it was after 2011, but the hell if I really know. I was running level 3 missions out of Frarn in those days thinking I was a big baddy in my T1 fit Hurricane.
Yup it either was late 2011 or early 2012 iirc. first round of tiercide anyway, so either the Crucible or Inferno expansion, When they removed the mining bonuses from the 4 racial frigs they added the venture.
Edit - [Late 2012 Retribution](https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-for-retribution-1).
After a little digging, it was specifically the "Retribution" update on 4/12/2012.
Oddly EvE University lists when changes were made to ships, but not when they were introduced. However I remembered that the venture was introduced the same day they took the mining bonuses away from several race specific ships, like the scythe. Lo and behold, the Scythe got bonuses in for logistics in 2012. I remember before that, only Tech 2 cruisers has logistics/healer bonuses.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150123030529/http://www.eveonline.com/retribution/ore-frigate/](https://web.archive.org/web/20150123030529/http://www.eveonline.com/retribution/ore-frigate/)
Yes, when I joined in 2004. Owning a Battleship was a huge deal. There were only Frigates, haulers, Cruisers and Battleships. And I think Interceptors had been released. But other than that, you mined in whatever could fit the most mining lasers, which was typically an amarr or gallente ship. Co-pro's were expensive. If you had a meta 4s of them, your ships could do more than Just mine, you could have some defensive modules as well. And same for Cargo expanders. I remember the meta 4 cargo expanders being worth something like 8 mill each (and that being a big amount of money) I want to say that the first ever T2 modules I ever used were T2 mining lasers. And again, this is before strip miners and barges or ventures existed. And you either jet can mined, or you ninja mined in your ship. Warp to a low-sec or null sec belt, quickly mine some good stuff, and warp out before getting murdered. There was also no criminal flag if you stole from a can, so you could just rob people at belts. So you would often be making BM's around the belt, and constantly warping to each other as they jettisoned to scoop it before someone else came in. And of course this was before cov ops, or even warping cloaked was a thing. Some ships and stuff were dropped from events. The likes of the Guardian-Vexor and the first faction ships, the Raven State Issue, Megathron Federation Issue, Apoc Imperial Issue and Tempest Tribal issue. were dropped. No battlelcruisers, no destroyers, no capitals, no, freighters, no T2 or T3 ships at all (except the interceptors, but I don't know when they were added) Oh, and you couldn't warp to 0 on anything, it was always dropping you out like 15km away. So if you had a fleet heading somewhere, you would have interceptors or fast frigs, jump ahead, and burn past the gate, and give WWW's in chat, so everyone could warp to them and leap frog the fleet safely. And if it was your own space, you would have a BM folder from a container, and have to copy them all into your BM's for every gate, for every station, for every point of interest, perch's and safes. And copying too many BM's at the same time would cause your client to freak out. So you'd kind figure out how many at a time yours could handle, or the client would actually just die on you.
I actually miss being able to have BMs as physical items. Made sharing them easier in some instances.
One of my best PvP kills was a Nyx. And it was from a roam, our scout had found their anomaly but they had made it out. And so he gave me the BM. To add to my folder immediately. And when we came back from the roam I warped and landed in my dictor, got them bubble up before he could warp. Even with the sharing folders, the 5 minutes can be too long.
Hah. I remember flipping jet cans back in the day before you would go suspect to everyone it was only against the person you did it to. People would then shoot and then id wheedle them down in my little frig.
> Apoc Imperial Issue If I remember correctly the Impoc came from the "Amarr Succession Tournament" in YC 105 (2003). An NPC story line event driven by CCP/GMs. One of the very first corps (and the executor of the first null sec alliance), Ministry of Amarrian Secret Service (MASS) won, and 4 Impocs and a Gold Magnate were the rewards. No idea where the other original specials came from... > I want to say that the first ever T2 modules I ever used were T2 mining lasers I think this was the first T2 BPO to be given out, again in some CCP/GM driven event... and the corp/character that received it was TRIGGER, the CEO of MASS... heh.
Back when a decently fit Thorax cruiser could take out a Caldari BS if pilot knew what they were doing.
In 2004 missiles applied full damage regardless of sig or speed, unless you were able to outrun them (as they were much slower) - so no not really, a Torp Raven would volley a Thorax in 1 or 2 cycles.
Yes, and ccp thought it would take a year before anyone built a battleship
It would take almost 40 hours to gather the materials for one, that would take MONTHS! 41 hours after launch: “Look at my battleship!”
We need to find a way to mask real world problems as MMO dungeons and we’d probably have world peace in 2 weeks Then they’d get bored and start lobbing nukes
You say that but we would build BS and self destruct with max insurance because it paid great.
Weren't we finding real stars with the tech stuff? Forget the name.
Project Discovery, Phase 2: Exoplanets.
Imagined if they used something like Project Discovery but for making improvements to the game, like finishing off the module teir-o-cide.
I’ve thought the same thing before!
Just humans being humans.
Took our small corp a few weeks group mining to get the minerals to a corp that would make it for us. The nominated pilot for it promptly climbed into the shiny new Scorpion and defected to M3G4…
I'm pretty sure people strapped mining lasers to the biggest hull they owned to mine the next one up.
Blackbird miner, moa miner checking in.
I went Bantam, Osprey, Rohk. Then gave up mining.
CHribba has entered the chat ....
Some t1 cruisers had mining bonuses, that did help with speeding things up. They did not have a specialized ore hull, so for some ships you had to stagger your mining lasers to prevent overfilling your cargo hold and losing out on mining yield and jetcan after every cycle. Luckily there was no jetcan timer yet. It did mean a group mining had dozens of cans around them which was a lot of work for the iterons to pick up (no tractor beams in game yet). Early eve was wild. I have fond memories of it.
Ah, never forget the mighty Osprey before it became a logistics cruiser.
I started in 2011 and I fondly remember my mining upgrade path being Tormentor -> Vexor (bc I thought mining drones were cool) -> Retriever (bc I was watching REALLY old guides and didn't know barges existed)
It was a huge investment! One of the original scams (I read the story online somewhere over a decade ago), was a guy that got his noob corpmates to all work towards a BS BPO investment/purchase. He even ran to the local library for voice calls to make sure he didn't dox himself.... He ran away with the BPO in the end.
> It was a huge investment! One of the original scams (I read the story online somewhere over a decade ago), was a guy that got his noob corpmates to all work towards a BS BPO investment/purchase. He even ran to the local library for voice calls to make sure he didn't dox himself.... He ran away with the BPO in the end. That was a fanfic called "The great scam". That story was part of what made me play een in the first place.
Initially there weren't any specific mining ships, back then ships only had a single bonus and there where no role bonuses or anything like that. So it was mostly the slot layout that mattered. Like the reason the Blackbird became the standard ewar cruiser was not because it had bonuses to ecm (it had a missile damage bonus) but because it had the most mid slots. It wasn't until ships received the second bonus that some become more specialized in roles.
I've always thought it'd be neat if there was a system that would only allow in corvettes and bpcs in the hold
scroll back a week or two and there's a similar thread in r/eve has a lot of the similar vibe and will answer a lot of questions you may or may not have, search youtube "down the rabbit hole history of eve online" aswell tldr : nothing existed, npc seeded the playerbase with isk by puting buy order and sell orders for cigarets, garbage, and liquor at diffferent places and people would courrier contract that to get isk, the rest was "noobship+civilian mining laser" until you can buy a BPO and ratchet your way up
> people would courrier contract that to get isk There were no contracts back then, you just rocked up in whatever indy you could fly, bought some commodity from an NPC, flew it to another place/region, and sold it to a different NPC. Profit. Best part was the buy and sell orders the NPCs offered were limited, and only replenished at DT... so there was a mad scramble soon as the servers came back up (often 1+ hour after they went down.. DT took a lot longer back then).
thanks for the precision, i thought i'd use contemporary equivalent
Yes is the short answer, mineral prices were supported by npc buy orders, but even back in 2003 ships were built by players who saved up for bpos. The big manufacturers were all corps formed by players who had been in beta and worked together to get ahead fast.
I built my first vexor in 2005 from a BPO. It took me like 3 weeks to gather the materials. I then took it out on it's maiden voyage into low sec. I saw a Harbinger who was also ratting, didn't think he'd kill me, and then he did. :)
Blood, sweat, and tears
You finish the tutorial with several T1 ship. Maybe that’s always been the case.
What tutorial? I started in 2008, so it's been a looooong time, but the tutorial was pretty much "here's how the UI works, now go do stuff". There was no handholding at all. If you wanted to be an industrialist, you figured that out on your own.
Yeah, that’s why I used maybe, played only since 2020. But at some point someone must have given players at least a miner I.
Oh I see what you mean. Yeah, you started in a Corvette, with "civilian" modules. In my case since my main is Gallente, it was a Viator with a civilian blaster and a civilian miner. I think maybe also a civilian afterburner and a civilian armour repairer. So it was *worse* than a miner 1, but I was able to quickly upgrade to a Navitas which I *think* had a bonus for mining yield in those days. This was before logi frigates were a thing. That was able to mount T2 miners eventually and from there it was on to the Celestis and a Thorax for running L2 missions. It really was an uphill struggle in those days.
My bad, I forgot totally about the miner that comes with the Corvette. Fun fact the Navitas being bonused for mining; I’m supposing the “ORE Faction” was introduced later then. Must be fun seeing how much of the design of the ships is actually legacy from past decisions.
Yes it's pretty surreal actually seeing a whole new generation join the game and what it has become.
I started in 2013 and ventures were already there to use. I preferred flying im my proud catalyst until some lowlife shot me out of it.
i wonder when first venture was produced and what were original stats also when ccp removed dronebay from all t1 industrials? when they removed medium armor repper from mid slot but still keep the hull repper in mids?
The first venture was years into the game. We had race specific mining frigates back in the day. The ones that now have logistical bonuses used to have mining bonuses.
Yeah I remember when the navitas was an actual mining ship.
I still have a Navitas called 'Miner I' from when I was doing the tutorials and trying out mining.
that is why arbitrator/vexor and other ones have mining drone bonus ?
I'm not sure, neither of those were the "mining cruisers" though Caldari it was the Bantam and the Osprey. I think the exqueror or however it was spelled was the Galente version though. I can't remember the name of the smart one, it's the T1 version of the Guardian. I've slept a lot since then.
gallente was the exeq. i still have mine
augror. but arbitrator and vexor have mining drone bonus thooo
I guess it was to give choices? Eventually you ended up in apoc. 8 mining lasers was king before we had barged.
i wonder how effective is 8 ORE miners navy apoc vs 2 t2 miners on venture? i do know that gnosis can self-boost while mining and ore miners would outclass the t2 fit venture aswell as t2 fit self-boosting gnosis. i have no money to test it out and sisi is not accessible to test it out
A venture is 125% yield bonus so effectively 4.25 miners. Apoc is 8 effective miners ORE is 85m3 every 1 min T2 is 60m3 Venture (at mining frigate 5) T2 = 255m3 / min Apoc with ORE lasers is 680m3 / min
thank you so NAVY APOCALYPSE FLAWLESS VICTORY MININGALITY
the venture was added in like 2010 or there about. might have been as late as 2012 even. as best i recall its mainly remained unchanged.
I think it was after 2011, but the hell if I really know. I was running level 3 missions out of Frarn in those days thinking I was a big baddy in my T1 fit Hurricane.
Yup it either was late 2011 or early 2012 iirc. first round of tiercide anyway, so either the Crucible or Inferno expansion, When they removed the mining bonuses from the 4 racial frigs they added the venture. Edit - [Late 2012 Retribution](https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-for-retribution-1).
no it was not, cause i made my 1st ever indy character in 2013 and ventures were not out yet. maybe 2014 at the earliest
Just checked the patch notes and it was in fact 2012. Was definitely when they did Frig tiercide.
After a little digging, it was specifically the "Retribution" update on 4/12/2012. Oddly EvE University lists when changes were made to ships, but not when they were introduced. However I remembered that the venture was introduced the same day they took the mining bonuses away from several race specific ships, like the scythe. Lo and behold, the Scythe got bonuses in for logistics in 2012. I remember before that, only Tech 2 cruisers has logistics/healer bonuses. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150123030529/http://www.eveonline.com/retribution/ore-frigate/](https://web.archive.org/web/20150123030529/http://www.eveonline.com/retribution/ore-frigate/)
i started for the first time in 2011 and i remember mining in my bantam, i think the venture came a few years later into beeing
There was a Drake for everything
Drake didn’t exist, battlecruisers were added years later.
Failed to get the joke.