EVE New Citizens Q&A

Am thinking of going into exploration and have found no career agents specifically for exploration. Am i missing the obvious or is there not a exclusive agent line for exploration?? Also was blessed with some isk by a RL friend and would like to know what would be a good starter ship for exploration. Ty in advance

exploration means - among other things - scanning

make sure u watch some kind of video tutorial for scanning
like this from ccp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heYfTA00Idg

best ships for scanning are considered the t2 covert ops frigs (not the bombers)
but basically if your skills are ok, u may find more useful to be in an-all-around
ship so after scanning you can actually go and do whatever u have to in there.

leo

if you still have all that free isk you should pick up a seet of sisters probes and sisters scanner. That way you should be able to make up for the loss of a scan bonused ship. Using a cruiser with a utility high slot like the vexor allows you to scan and run sites in the same ship. The vexor is a good choise as it is a drone boat which frees up power grid and cpu for tools like your code breaker or a cloak. check out this guide.

Lets pop a few myths:

- "you need a probe bonused ship for exploration", this is nonsense and only really applies in 0.0, sortof. The vast majority of sites in high and low sec you can probe out just fine in a combat fitted ship with a probe launcher on board. The sites you can't probe out that way tend to be sites you're either not very interested in anyway and/or you would need a proper ship&fit to make them happen in the first place. Also, as most probe bonused ships can't do combat that would mean having to use two ships and because you tend to roam around for sites that would create a logistical mess

- "Sister launcher and probes are a must have", this is again nonsense. Sure they help a little bit but generally it's unneeded in the majority of situations any starting explorer may find himself in. It's similar to "all pve ships must fit faction damage mods" and actually that makes more sense than "must use Sister gear". Newer players can't afford these faction items and might lose their ship or "misplace" their probes making the whole thing not profitable. There really is no need to use it

- "exploration is difficult and scary", not true either. Generally people who tell you boogie man stories like that simply have no clue on how it works or enjoy mindless grinding over using their braincells and rather than admitting to that they will make up some nonsense trying to sound cool

- "if you want to make isk with exploration you need to leave high sec", anyone telling you this should be flagged as an idiot and ignored for the rest of time. You can make tons and tons of isk in high sec, if you do it right and have put in some effort to figure out how to do stuff then you'll consider 100 mil an evening "a slow night" very soon.


If you're fairly new in this game and/or exploration here's what you need to know:

1) if all you can really fly is frigates (because you're new) then you're best off hunting for radar sites, they're few and far between but generally make you 5-30 mil each and are super easy. They can be done on a 2 day old character with some basic probing and drone skills while being able to use a codebreaker. Best ship for this is the Imicus while the Magnate is also decent, both can use drones meaning you can kill the few&easy frigate npcs just fine

2) if you can use a cruiser or BC then you can start doing actual combat related sites, while there's many types of sites (and some can be done in frigates) you're generally only interested in DED and Unrated sites. Don't waste time on anomalies, Grav&Mag or Ladar sites and don't bother with Drone sites either. I'm not saying they're worthless but isk efficiency-wise they're simply not on par with Radars, DED and Unrated

This website will help you a ton figuring out what's what and how do to stuff, bookmark it, make it your homepage on the IGB and use it extensively. Set it to the faction space you're in and if you find a site click on it from that page and it'll tell you what to do, what to expect and what to shoot.



Case in point: friend of mine is completely new to the game, with no financial help from me and little to no guidance (he mostly figured it out himself by reading up on stuff and actually putting in effort) after 4 months he had 6 bil isk, purely from doing high sec exploration in a t1 fitted Drake. Now he's 8 months into the game and has amassed 14 bil isk, and all he really does is do exploration for 1-2 hours a night IF he can be bothered. It's great income if you're willing&capable of putting in some (brain) effort and, to me, it's less boring than grinding missions or the likes.

If you have more questions on this just mail or convo me ingame.

- Probing issues are about lack of experience and not having trained Astro Pinpointing, not about some slightly increased probe strength. Does it help? I can yes IF that slight extra strength makes just enough difference to add another "zoom in" level on your probes, otherwise it does nothing and even then it only saves you time. So probing being annoying does NOT come from lack of probe strength, not in high sec (which is that this is all about, a newer player asking for entry level info)

- competition depends on which faction space you're in. If you choose to be in the overcrowded, over carebeared Caldari system then yes you'll have competition :)

Exactly, that's the whole point. Rinse and repeat, fast as you can go. Skip resolutions, home in on your target before someone else does, and get more done in the amount of time you have. Lots of times it comes down to a minute before someone else drops in on your radar site. If they got there first then it's your loss. So yeah, I use every edge at my disposal to get there first. Fast ship, high skill and stacks of bonuses. Then comes the ability to evade or lock down. Lastly something to dent ships with if it comes to that. Been at it a couple years, good profession. Explorer.

"a newer player asking for entry level info"
And that's what I gave. This is my free time, I'm not a forum bot, I actually play the game. Like I said, get a T1 and plan out your skills. If you stick with it you'll undoubtedly want a T2 soon, and you don't want to be wasting SP on useless stuff since it takes quite a bit of time to train for explorer and any needed supporting skills which can be many. Besides that you need your core skills, which is very important for whatever you do.

What are you talking about? Or just trolling? It doesn't take 2 years to train explorer. You should be in a T2 on a 90 day plan. Six months and you are in a T3.

Which is... You are a troll?
Quit trying to pound square pegs into round holes, sir.


moving on heh


That's for sure, you don't want to be probing anywhere near jita lol. There are places in caldari space that are less explored, but you wont get that info out of meee. But I usually go to exotic locals since I'm also a trader and run cloaky couriers. But explorer locals are guarded almost as much as trade routs. But I go to jita often on runs, and have an exploration ship there for layovers, so it's sort of hard not to run into other explorers combing through the systems. I'd probably have recommended lonetrek but even that gets congested now a days. You need to travel pretty far from jita to escape it.

Please tell me this makes more sense after I go through the newbie exploration missions, as this is very confusing to look at right now! :)

Not really, I had most of this stuff down before I ever undocked my first exploration T1. I've been playing mmo's for some 16 or 17 years (MUD's before that), my primary genre, and I've learned that research is the difference between having fun from the start or making huge mistakes that will take time to pay for. But I like to read a lot, and you are not at the point of being able to make any bad mistakes in this game yet. Heck, I've researched games I've never even played lol.

Look, I'll put it this way, chances are exploration won't be the all encompassing profession for you in this game, though a fun pastime you may always spend time in. In fact I guarantee it if you make it to your first year here, it won't be all about exploration. It is a good place to start though, leading to many other things to do. But if you put six months into exploration, chances are you will branch out into things like marketing and with blockade runners or cov-ops couriers, or go into recon, possibly stealth bombers, or even black ops. If that is something like you have done in other games than you are set (as has been for me so the choice was obvious). So there is no reason not to explore all the info asap, work out various long term skill plans with EVEMon while starting out on something in general (decide on long-term later as there are many choices). Check out builds and comments at battleclinic. Read 'ISK the guide'.

But even 90 days into exploration (a good first goal) will get you a competent character. Many-many people have alt accounts with competent explorer characters as they are very useful. Even on the same account as an alt, still useful, just like I use my explorer cov-ops skills to help my lowish-SP (low clone costs) pvp combat alt. 90 day skill plan is really the best thing to work out first, moving in the right direction which is pretty uniform depending on the general profession you choose, be it exploration, mining, manufacturing, marketing or combat (though more variation in combat choices as you may focus on later), but it's mostly cookie cutter the first 90 days, then variations to training really opens up after that. There is no hand-holding in this game, it's your job to study, which I don't see as a chore as it's all so very interesting and different from anything else.

Thanks for the info, I haven been looking into exploration more and more for scavaging soon.
with this info I could also put up with hacking as you mentioned. might take a peak at it later on. : D
Really thanks.