May 07, 2010

I have an hour to play EVE

Given one hour of log on time a day how much could you accomplish? Would you be able to PVP, trade, mine, build or even be a part of a corporation?

Recently I have found my free time waning and getting a decent chunk of time locked away is almost an impossible task, being in the Australian time zone I am also lucky enough to have a prime time hour pulled out from under me (2030 to 2130) and the associated wind down and wind up also chews another 30 minutes. So on either side of the scheduled downtime I try to get as much done as possible, but how much can you really do with an hour in EVE?

HEAPS! But most of it is not fun and I don't want to roam around solo all the time, EVE is an MMO not an FPS. I usually end up joining a gate camp or doing some anomalies but recently those gate camps have been very quiet and shooting rats all the time without needing the sec status boost is very stagnant. Alliance CTA's are out as are anything that involves more than 15 minutes travel chews into my hour play time too much.

I have had grand plans of taking on wormholes, installing jump clones in pirate infested space for quick engagements and flying through 0.0 choke points in the hope of fights but they all seems to be empty when I arrive. My corp is always a great source of entertainment and everyone is always willing to try something new but gathering a fleet and setting off in under 20 minutes is a miracle in the making.

So to the time conscience or time restricted EVE players out there, what do you do with an hour in EVE?

4 comments:

  1. Heh, an hour is all I have these days as well. But when I'm done with finals I should have a lot more free time :-D I tend to actually stick with some low stress high-sec exploration. I can usually scan down between 5-8 systems (depending on if I actually find anything) in an hour, and its one of those things to not really be stressful, but also to keep me engaged.

    Oh, and the eve-bloggers channel is always fun :-D

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  2. Since you said you don't want to solo roam, I guess I can't help you. With very little time I either just bring up a windowed EVE and sort my hangar/EFT whore/etc. or jump in a ship and fly away from home until I'm out of time.

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  3. It all comes down to good time management. With a little planning ahead, and using out of game tools available to you, you can do most things you want to.

    Let's take your roams for an example. If you have corp forums, use them to start a recurring roam during the hour you have to play. Get a good organized fleet boss to set up the fleet for you shortly before you are able to log in, and set a time limit for tardiness, say 10 minutes. If people are not there by then, then they better have a fast ship because you will not wait around for them.

    Of course, no matter how well you can manage your time, this won't really help with CTAs, but at least you may be able to maximmize what you can do in the short period you have available to play.

    Also, I suck at time management.

    Krispy

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  4. Exploration. If you find something without the time to finish it, you can get corpmates to split the isk.

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