Back in November my main crossed over to 210 million skill points. I had been training an alt up for some time, but went back to Wilhelm to cover a couple of bases and indulge myself in a bit of fantasy. I went and trained up Capital Ships V, my last prerequisite before I could fly a titan. My dream was to run across an empty one somewhere in space, buy the skill from the character screen, use my unused skill points to train up the skill, then hop in and fly off in glory.
That was unlikely to ever happen, but if it did I was going to be prepared.
That done, I thought no more about it until the mass test on Singularity last week. The purpose was to test out the Avatar titan model and if you logged in for the test they just gave you one to try out. You just needed the skills to fly one… and what had I so recently set myself up to do?
So of course I logged in and got myself a titan! I bought the skill, applied skill points and hopped on in.
The new Avatar model in the hangar
I really should have thought this through however.
The problem was that I was in the Keepstar in 1DQ1-A, our home base. That is fine and dandy so far as it goes, but now I had a ship to fit… along with a bunch of other people there… and on the test server you can buy most things for just 100 ISK a unit. (No titans or super carriers, but most every other hull.) But to buy them you have to be in one of the designated NPC stations, and the nearest one in Delve was eight gates away.
That doesn’t seem far, until you’re going to gate in an unfit titan in a system full of people hungry for some fun. Fortunately you can use the /moveme command on the test server (command list here) to jump yourself to one of a few designated systems.
But which system to go to?
I foolishly jumped to Jita, only realizing once I got there that I needed a Keepstar to dock a titan in. Did any of these systems have a Keepstar handy for that? A couple of them, M-OEE8 and FD-MLJ were at least in null sec, so I jumped to the latter.
A new SKIN up
There stood a Keepstar for use during mass tests, so I docked up there. But the market was in an NPC station across the system. And, as I had reminded myself in Jita, you can’t park a titan in an NPC station.
But I could fly out and bring back supplies. So I undocked in my pod and warped over to the NPC station. There, I went to the forums to find a titan fit. That got me a shopping list. I bought all that, but needed to haul it back to the Keepstar. Everything is just 100 ISK, so I bought a Charon freighter (and a SKIN to go with it… all SKINs are also 100 ISK, so if you want to play ship SKIN dress up the test server is the place to be) and flew it on back.
Brightly SKIN’d Charon
At the Keepstar I fitted the Avatar. I discovered that I needed another skill to use the doomsday. Why would you bother with a titan if you didn’t have that skill? So I bought that too, filled up the fuel bay with helium isotopes, and undocked.
Of course, once you have a titan fitted out and ready to go you want to do something with it. So I asked in local is there was anybody I could shoot.
I am too nice sometimes. I spotted a few people I probably could have shot, but I wanted a volunteer. And I got one. A person in a Chimera, the Caldari carrier, fleeted up with me and warped on over. I locked him up and unleashed the doomsday.
Over the left shoulder shot!
He exploded on the hit.
Chimera goes boom!
I almost did not get a picture of that. The problem is that almost every time I see a doomsday going off, it is part of a huge operation and we’re at 10% TiDi, so I have minutes to capture a shot from just the right angle. But here there was no TiDi at all, so it just went Zap! Boom! and done. I had to scramble.
The other person, whose name I forgot because I have a brain like a sieve at times, flew off to go get another Chimera, so I hung around the Keepstart waiting for the timer to go down on the doomsday. You only get a shot every five minutes. You also cannot dock during that time. And there is even a brief time after the shot where you cannot warp or jump.
Other people got in on the act and I took a doomsday hit of my own.
Zipped right through me
I think he was using a different flavor of doomsday. It didn’t impact by caught me in the blast. It blew through my shields and 4% of my armor. I could eat a few more of those.
Meanwhile my friend was back with another Chimera. This time I wanted to line up for the shot.
Aimed right at him
I let fly with the doomsday, but when the blast cleared he was still there.
Chimera shields flaring
Not only was he still there, but he was barely scratched. He had fit for maximum EM resistance, since the doomsday I had was an all EM weapon, putting out 1.3 million points of EM damage. But if you tank for that it isn’t an issue.
Meanwhile, somebody in a Hel was asking for a turn, to I lumbered in their direction while I waited for the timer to go down. Once I was ready, it was time to shoot again.
Targeting the Hel
They too had tanked for EM, so I did very little damage there. Not exactly the Deathstar I guess, but it was fun to actually try it out. I might go back and play around some more, maybe try one of the other doomsday weapons. But at some point they will wipe the server and mirror Tranquility again and my Avatar will be gone. I likely won’t ever have one on the live server as I get tired and bored even thinking about the effort it takes to earn that much ISK. Ah well.
As it turns out, while I was doing that, over in M-OEE8 was where the big test was going on. I probably should have jumped over to check that out.
What a view!
The new Avatar model being tested and will soon be in your hands on Tranquility!
#tweetfleet
@AndreBergB pic.twitter.com/xKV0YHcBjv
— EVE Online (@EveOnline) April 4, 2020
And if you want to see what the new Avatar model looks like firing the doomsday, Jay Amazingness put up a video of one firing.
Another day in New Eden.
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