EVE General Discussion

Bring some friends or vet your choice of targets a bit more carefully is all the advice i can really give you. Learning to use your directional scanner will also make a big difference in terms of spotting people before they arrive on grid.

If youre willing to leave your indy corp in someone elses hands for a while you could also try joining a lowsec corp and getting them to teach you.

Buy rifters and practice.

Firstly, I would suggest not ratting in lowsec, since it doesn't sound like it's going very well. My route was to train as fast as I could to run lvl 4s where a bit more isk can be made.

On the pvp front, you need to find someone to run with.......or you are going to die in a fire over and over and over. Eve pvp is mostly a group activity. Some people do learn from the solo standpoint, i guess, but I do not see much solo pvp going on.

Once you get your lvl 4s going, you can afford to run some cruisers into low or null sec, but my main suggestion would be to find some people to pvp with instead of trying to do it alone.

What do you expect in Low sec? What would you have done if I pointed you from 40km? Why not keep doing your missions in HiSec?

There is no reason to go to low sec.

Find a null corp or head to Providence. Chances are the war dec corp is red to Provi anyway. You will need to do some research in to who is blue to the holders but pretty much anyone with space or makes a living out of war dec'ing small corps has had a run through provi and is red to them.

Here are three basic methodologies for improving your chances in low sec:

1. Don't get caught: This is the idea of constantly refreshing and checking your directional scanner so that you can see if someone's attempting to probe you down. Checking local for potential hazards, infoing strangers, etc. is another part of this, and so is fitting ship agility modules that can help you align to warp faster. Make sure you're either zoomed pretty far out or have suitable overview settings to be able to react immediately if an unfamiliar pilot appears on your grid. Also check out map statistics - are there lots of players active in the system recently? Have their been any pod kills?

2. Don't get trapped: This is the strategy of accepting that sometimes people will get close enough to you for long enough to scramble you, and the objective is to be able to survive and get away regardless. Warp Core Stabilizers can achieve this, and you can still be able to fight if you fit your ships with this in mind: such as by adding a sensor booster with a range script, or relying primarily on auto-targeting missiles (which aren't great, but a lot better than their reputation suggests). ECM is another option here, and you can also try methods revolving around being faster than your attacker. If you can break his target lock, you can escape him. Be wary of pirates who are familiar with your tactics or are able to bring in friends.

3. Don't get found: Not as suitable for public spaces like asteroid belts, but very useful for missioning and similar activities, this is the strategy of making it harder for an enemy to scan you down. Basically, you need to get your (signature radius / sensor strength) as low as possible, and you do this by fitting ECCM modules and/or backup sensor arrays. You need to be able to achieve a very low end result for this to be at all useful, I'd shoot for around three and under: and you can still be found by a fully bonused scanner until you get down to a little over one, but it seems to deter more casual would-be assailants.

Edit: Important note - this doesn't work if you use drones.

Those are the three methods I use the most to help prolong my survival in low sec. Other options include bringing enough support to be a poor target, or, of course, winning the fights!

If you are going to rat in low sec, use a frig or destroyer until you learn the ropes of staying alive. Using a t1 cruiser in low sec is asking to get ganked. You might as well paint a target on your hull before going out there.

Low sec ratting can be pretty rewarding.

If you can hang in until you can fly a cloaky T3, you will be petty much invulnerable. Until then anything with a cloak will do. The only real problem is getting in and out. But once you are comfortable with using the map that should cut your odds of being ganked.

I can spend a day or two in low sec and not see a soul except the odd ship passing through. And they are as likely to rabbit at seeing you in system as you are at seeing them.

Mr Epeen

Lowsec is dangerous! Here, take this:

• Rookie Lowsec Survival Guide (just be aware that this one is old, some of the points are invalid. Which ones? I'll let you find out)
• Rookie Lowsec Survival Guide]Kessian's Lowsec Survival Guide[/url]
• Alexia Morgan's 24 Tips to Surviving Lowsec

But above all, bring a friend. Find people who know low sec: try flying with a militia perhaps, and try talking to them about ways to improve your lowsec survival skills. Militia chat can be like a tour through a sewage plant at times, but eventually you'll find someone who knows what they're talking about :)

Perhaps consider joining EVE University or hunt down Agony's PvP classes. When you get advice that doesn't work, it's really up to you to figure out what didn't work: was the advice wrong (watching D-scan won't help against cloaky targets), or were you just applying it incorrectly? This can be hard to figure out. Finding friends who have a clue will help you get a clue.

When you start worrying about the range that some people can get from warp scramblers and warp disruptors, consider that a fleet-boosted Arazu can get about 100km. By the time you see that Arazu, it's too late to do anything because they are cloaky recon ships.