EVE General Discussion

Just out of curiousity what is your bread and butter when it comes to pirating?

My mainstay for ransom are explorers. I have a 10 system loop that I scan down then haunt with a custom fit nemesis. I don't do it as often as I should. Although it is very fun its not quite as fun as a good fight.

I have considered moving to FW space but I don't have any corp mates in FW space and even though I mainly fly solo its nice to have some back up when the Russians roll through or the neighbors have an alliance-wide roam.

I do grab any clone rats that I see while hoping around. 1 transporter tag can replace a fit cruiser so I tend to sell those as fast I can find them.

It is possible.
Try to NOT LOOSE ships.
Loot every wreck-even cynofrigs. A cynogenerator can be sold for double or triple the price in lowsec systems.
Ninja salvage (best with drones), steal, ransom (demand reasonable sums not " give me 500 mil isk" from a guy in an osprey).
try to get autopilot guys (yes there are a lot of them in lowsec).
PICK YOUR FIGHTS!! If you can not win or you are not 75% sure - DONT AGGRESS!
Get an hauler alt for high sec.

Dammit, 500 server error ate my post!

The gist of the post was: I tend to break even with PVE and make profit off of PVP. I do PVE in order to maintain certain corporate upkeeps and maintain my sec status. The longer you keep your ship alive the less ISK you need to break even, so at some point you reach an equilibrium where you have a hanger full of ships, a wad of ISK to your name, and simply no need for more ISK.

As others have pointed out a network of friends helps a bunch. With a gang at your back you can scale up your activities, such as ransoming a POS instead of a ship, or remove POCOs as merc jobs or replace them yourself for the passive income. That way you can either force others to pay high taxes, or attract new soft targets by keeping them low.

For-profit-piracy is a ton of fun. It can get a bit boring when no suitable targets present themselves, so hopping the belts looking for NPC Battleships and Clone rats is a nice way to pass the time. You make some extra ISK and there's less chance of getting hotdropped compared to gatecamping. It's just more practical to allow yourself a marginal PVE income on top of your raiding.

C&P is by far my favotite forum section and I am a fan of your work. I want to give the high sec piracy thing a try because it seems like there is big money in it. My problem is that I can't seem to fix my sec stat. I always tell myself that I'm going to save the clone tags but then I inevitably loose a fight with the whole day's loot haul in my cargo hold (bad habit, I know) and need to sell the tags.

Last week I told myself "I'm not taking any fights". My plan was to rat my sec back up to make f'ing with carebears easier. I took out a cheap fit glass cannon catalyst to help convince myself that running was a good idea. Some dumb damn incursus pilot landed right on me and popped instantly. This just teased the beast so I went and grabbed a cruiser and proceeded to gather 10 more kills. Then drunk on blood, I loaded up with extra ammo and paste and headed out to providence cause screw NRDS. Thats where I lost my ass. It was a great fight though and a good chase too.

I fly mostly Gallente and love a balls deep brawl. I also have a hard time not taking fights. I go in out numbered, I take fights on gates, I like to try to punch up a class. This costs me more in the end but I just hate docking up. The undock button is where the fun is.

Maybe I need to reconsider my ship choices or figure out how to not suck at pve... or pvp... really I suck at EVE in general. I need sponsor or something.

It took my buddy 400mil to bring his sec status from -10 to 0.1 in one go. You dont need to grind for tags if you have isk.

Now you see that's the issue right there. I live on 40mil at a time. Infact, if I put more than 40mil into a fit it makes me skittish...which sucks ass. If I ever had 400mil in one spot I would spend it all on ships and stock pile them in every system that I frequent so I could always ship up or down where appropriate and never have to wait longer than 60 seconds before getting back into a fight.

Edited for stupid smartphone

I can't eject while engaged? Ah well, I guess those 2 ships went faster than I thought. Regardless, gankers never bring bubbles and pods align fast and warp even quicker, so you just lose a ship. Retrievers and macks don't require many minerals to build so we have those in reserve. And hell, I'd give you a waypoint for our POS if you want to follow my pod. My mining lasers can't kill you, but our station guns can. Then I get to see your boobs! What I'm saying is ganks are almost always predicated on people not wanting to lose ships. If the person doesn't care about the ship, they just wait to warp in a pod. Bring bubbles, they can't warp, and you have more leverage. Otherwise you're stuck with crappy loot and no shiny pod kill.