Lessons learned in Empyrean Age's factional warfare
Podcasting hero Van Hemlock has been blogging about EVE Online quite a bit of late. His recent post 'The Lessons of War' chronicles his experience of learning the factional warfare rules of engagement in the Empyrean Age expansion. He writes about being a solo pilot for the Minmatar Tribal Liberation Force, when the entire militias of the Amarr and Caldari races have kill rights on him anytime and anywhere. It's even harder to do well when you're running with an alt fresh out of the academy but, win or lose, he seems to be having a good time.
Van Hemlock's approach is to spend very little on any individual ship (it's likely to be blown apart anyway) and learn what he can from the experience of trying to survive. As he explains a bit about the mechanics of factional warfare, and its objectives, Van Hemlock imparts three key bits of wisdom in "The Lessons of War...": there are ways of preventing a (single) rival from engaging you, flying fast and nimble can trump much greater firepower, and as fast as you may be -- there can always be someone faster who will try and take you out. Although he openly states that he doesn't know a great deal about PvP in EVE yet, it's clear that he's learning very quickly from his mistakes, and doing so with minimal emo rage. See Van Hemlock's "The Lessons of War" to learn a few things from his successes and failures in EVE Online, it's certainly a good read.
