Wednesday, June 3, 2009

A Macro Hauler is....what...exactly?

I’m disappointed with EVE Wiki. Why? Because I expected it to be able to tell me what a Macro Hauler was. Instead I had to go and figure it out for myself and, frankly, I’m not 100% sure I understand what it is.

Best I can tell, a macro hauler is an application that automates courier missions in EVE Online. And, I’m about a day away from completing mine.

I didn’t even realize what I was doing, which is a pretty common thing for me. The way my mind works, I envision what I’d like to do and start figuring out the best way to do it. The only reason I even bothered looking at what a Macro Hauler was, was because I was (jesus, how many times can I use “was” in a sentence?!) researching courier missions in general. I was looking for a way to quickly increase my faction standing with an empire, and it seems the only way to do that was to do a LOOOOOT of missions. Well, then I was thinking “How can I do a lot of missions, without having to work on it? Oh, right, duh, I’ll make another agent!”

Turns out that that’s what a Macro Hauler is.

So I spent several hours yesterday coding it up and testing it out. I’ve got it to the point where it will accept a mission, check to see if it’s a courier mission (if not it declines it and asks for another) undock and start flying to the correct stargate. Just a few more steps, a lot of which are simply the reverse of what I’ve already coded in this agent, and I’m done. Yay me!

Once I get my faction up to 5.0 I’ll find a nice little spot in .5 space and set up my first POS. Hmm….I should start planning that out too so I have the resources on hand. See you next post!

3 comments:

  1. How do you get around the issue of not declining 2 missions within 4 hours?

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  2. Well I could just code around it, basically adding in a block of logic that says "If, after you complete a mission and try to get a new one, it's not a courier mission twice in an hour, sit very very still and don't make any noise for an hour.

    But I'm not putting that in yet. At this point I'm still wrapping up the code to make sure the concept is sound.

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  3. The quickest way to gain faction is to have Social to 5 and then do all tutorial and career path mission for an empire. That alone will get you over 5 IIRC. In addition you can do all three graduation certificate missions, the courier loop mission for that empire and if you can get them the pirate tag missions.

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