Preparing to restart level three missions

6th January 2009 – 12.51 pm

I wake myself up and jump in to my pod, punching virtual buttons to work out where I left myself after coming home to Caldari space. I see an available agent on my station contact list and one ship and one shuttle in the hangar. I quickly assume that I have moved half of my working fleet, comprising a Drake and Cormorant, to my mission-running destination and prepare my shuttle to head back to base to collect my other ship. It is only out in space that I realise I have added one and one to get three and remember that I diverted away from my course to the agent to pick up some new skill books, after I scanned the EVE Online certificate system and found some easy skill gaps I could fill. I am not where I thought I was.

Getting permission to dock again my ship is guided back in to the station. I try to work out where I am, where I want to go, and how to go about getting there with both ships. This is too much for my puny brain to cope with at the moment, particularly when I can't even remember if the Drake is the Lightness of Being or the Marquis of Granby. Rather than straining a muscle I repackage my shuttle and throw it in the hold of whichever ship is currently with me and set the ship's autopilot destination to the location of my highest-quality level three agent.

As I jump from system to system, then head back to base in the shuttle to pick up the other ship—the Drake, in fact, with expanded cargohold modules so that I can carry the shuttle back with me—before going back to the agent's system, I browse the skill certificate system again. I have some training to schedule. The journies themselves let me train the first two levels of rocket competency, which awards me the frigate launcher control certificate. This feeds in to and completes the Caldari soldier and Caldari special forces certificates at the standard level, which is a pleasant bonus. Now I need to work out what to train next.

My plan is to complete the required training for the passive shield tanking standard certificate, although seeing that the improved certificate is recommended only for command ships I wonder if it's worth achieving for my perceived future. Luckily, the standard certificate is recommended for flying a Drake, so I don't feel like I have wasted any time training unnecessary skills. To complete the passive tanking skills will only take a few days so I need to work out what to learn afterwards. Going back, I look to see what I need to train to be awarded the improved certificates for Caldari soldier and special forces, and this highlights that I still could use some training in core competencies.

At this point, I have both my salvaging Cormorant and my mission-running Drake in the station with the level three agent and have completed some training and set a new plan running. I may not have blown anything up but it feels like I have done enough for now. Not only do I have a fairly good idea of what skills to train, or at least which certificates I can be aiming for, but everything is in place for my level three mission-running to restart. All I need to do is talk to my agent. To help this along I think I'll train a long skill next, something taking over a week to complete. That way I don't have to worry about keeping track of its completion or what to train afterwards and can instead concentrate on explosions. Big explosions.

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