EVE New Citizens Q&A

I read every guide I can get my hands on and I'm still having issues with low sec piracy.

I'm unsure whether I'm supposed to be using the directional scanner or if I'm supposed to use probes. I rarely find anyone in low sec, and when I do they're either moving so much that the directional scanner is useless or sitting in one of the stations.

So how exactly do people find prey?

Dscan will help you chase people when they bounce off celestials, but it wont help you land on people who are in a deep space pocket or in a safe. you will need probes for that, and they are bulky and require a lot of sp to make use of them efficiently. (not to mention, an specialized ship for the probing, unless you want to offline half your modules when you want to probe someone down.)

and finding prey is more about where you are, rather than how you get to them.

Lowsec piracy on traders and industrials is almost dead im afraid, and if you find targets they will fly from station to gate and back, preventing any chance of engaging them. sometimes they fly with enough (disposable)backup to deter any pirates. or worse yet, they are stabbed the crap out and they will escape all the time. also, keep in mind that most of the "tools of the trade" are not available for use in low-sec. (warp bubbles, bombs)

so, if you are looking for prey as in "industrial pilots", you wont find any. if you are looking for shiny ships, or some logistics, you can try on the LVL5 mission hubs. but you cant go in alone. make a search on the agent finder for lvl5 agents of the Security division, then look at the "NPC killed in the last hour" stat on the sovereignty window of the system and neighbor systems, this way you can find active mission fleets. you will need someone to use combat probes really fast and give you warp in on their logistics. if done properly you can wipe an entire fleet, hold some battleship for ransom, or just get some cool kills with just a destroyer.

a similar thing can be done on null space, specially now that a lot of rats scram. but getting in to harass the anom runners can be a problem, and you will need a cloacky ship. (lots of sp) and a LOT of patience.

i think the best option would be to join FW, not so much for the FW, but to get to know pirate corps that operate on warzone space preying on the militiamen. they often operate on invite only, so you'll just have to be proactive and try to talk to some of their Recruitment officers or pilots. the best way of joining the pirates is being one of their victims. :D

the minnie militia has a few pirate corps and alliances that are part of the war effort. (if not only just to make their piracy more lucrative)

anyway, the keyword is "group play" don't expect to get very far as a solo pirate if you are new. once you have some experience and access to more specialized small ships, then you can give it a try.

So joining a corp would help with the pirating?

How would I go about finding a decent corp? The forums or that in-game corp finder? I've poked around a bit and don't see anything that seems like it would suit what I would like to do. Should I just fly through space until someone tries to ransom my ship and then talk to them?

That sounds like it'd be fun.

Oh, and thanks so much for the fast replies. Helped a bunch.

Take a pvp fit battlecruiser into a easy low level mission and let them find you....can't be hotdropped that way either. Drop a jet can right where you land inside the first gate so you know where they are going to land.


...Oh and that part above about "few and far between" faction fit ships is bullshit. Find a few relic sites in low sec, premark them and wait for the sisters probe launchers to start dropping.

Its like going fishing.... except in a video game. Sound like fun to you? Because it sure doesn't sound very fun to me.

First off, before you do anything, join a corp. Learning EVE on your own is not an exciting, rewarding, or intuitive experience because there's a lot of stuff you need to learn and the price of learning the hard way is high.


Secondly - it depends on what you mean by piracy. There's a ton of PVP that goes on for various reasons across all security levels of EVE, particularly in the faction warfare areas of lowsec. This is just people shooting other people and doesn't really constitute 'piracy'.

If you mean a more classical definition of 'piracy' which is, "**** in peoples' cereal while they aren't looking to fight anyone" then the answer gets a lot more complicated. You have to find someone who is doing something and in a vulnerable position, and then shoot them. Examples (absolutely not an all-inclusive list):

-Finding people running exploration sites in lowsec. In particular, covert ops ships which are used for the Relic and Data sites are pretty damn near defenseless and even a low-SP player in a Rifter can kill one easily

-Camp gates - sit on a gate, find people traveling through, and shoot them. This requires a ship of at least cruiser size to tank the gate guns unless in nullsec. In nullsec, you can deploy a "drag bubble" to more effectively camp.

-Find people running PI (Planetary interaction) in low/null security space. They will be using industrials to ferry materials to and from their planets at the customs offices, far away from any sentry guns. Murder them.

However, in this I must reiterate that you should join a corp that likes to do these kinds of things. In order to kill other players you need to outsmart them. If you're bumbling around not really understanding how all these game mechanics work, that will be a problem.

Piracy is sadly now mostly a high sec endeavour.

Find a way to legally attack someone, scram them, drop them into structure, then demand a ransom.

The best two ways are to join their corporation, or to trick them into giving you kill rights (usually by having them shoot you when you are providing neutral remote repair to the corpmate that's shooting them.)

Not enough prey in lowsec.

You can now also try hunting Stealth Bombers in low sec belts.

That is half the point of the new 'tags for sec' update.

Set an overview tab to just show ships and belts.

A lot of SB pilots fit bling Arbalest's to save on fitting room. Could be a steady income, and major pay off if they have a hold full of tags!

If you can catch them


Anyone doing this yet? I fancy a rocket fit SB would be the best tool for the job. Thoughts???

Says the assburgers attention span guy who thinks dueling people constitutes piracy and you can't make any money robbing people. Please, enlighten us with more moronic posts about topics you're clueless on.

Talking as a portential target. You have to understand that you have two types of non-pirate in low sec. The smart and the dead. The dead usually scuttle back to high sec and start posting here about how evil, twisted pirate players have killed off low sec, or that there are gank gangs behind every gate.
The smart, we sit here, reading all the tips your fellow pirates give you and try to come up with counters. Which even I will accept, must be damned frustrating for pirate players because 90% of my counters are based on not getting caught in the first place.

The main problem, is not that the High/Low sec pirate/non-pirate game is broken, well not as such, but to use a phrase that seems popular at the moment, in the UK at least, is that it is "No longer fit for purpose."

Perhaps, what is needed now, is for both sides to get their heads together, without it all sinking into the usual cess-pit of bad mouthing each other, and see if we can't come up with a system that works for both sides