Warfare & Tactics

I'll be honest here for a minute. A week into the game the thought of being blown up by a ship while mining bothered me quite a bit. I just wanted to sit out there and mine in my little Venture while I tried to build up some wealth. I had almost no isk and frankly had little to no idea how to even do missions very well. I am still working on how to do missions well up to this point. About two weeks into the game and with my first corporation we got wardec'd and started to lose ships to what seemed like a one man corporation with two characters on it. I lost a Rupture and I think some other ship to him while out and about buying up things to do missions with in high sec space. It was pretty annoying especially since I thought I might have a shot at fighting back but didn't even manage to get even one hit on him while he tore into my ship with a Comet. I started to think to myself if this is how the game is then it is going to be pretty tiring just trying to do missions and earn isk when someone might come along and blow up my ship. Not to mention that I would at times lose my ship to a mission encounter, and we aren't even talking level 4's here.
I had no idea what skills I would need to be able to fight back against another player, as well as how to even counter the ship they are using to fight me. Even today I get quite frustrated because I don't know what I did wrong in a pvp fight and what would have helped me to survive. People were telling me to pick my fights wisely in pvp and I had not a damn clue what they meant by that. I'd see a ship coming towards a plex I was in and in my mind it was okay do I stay or do I go? If I stay I guess I will try to fight this person and see if I come close to at least winning. Everytime it seems I chose to fight I lost, and you can imagine how incredibly frustrating it might be to loose dozens of ships in faction warfare not really knowing what happened exactly that lost me that fight. I got so frustrated sometimes I did stupid crap like just get my ships blown in suicidal fury just lining up to attack or be attacked by something. Probably doesn't make much sense but I guess the point is I wasn't learning crap anyway.
Now there are places like EVE University out there to help you out I suppose. Yet, all there classes are also publicly available. Even then I have a feeling they might not teach me much either in the way of how to pvp better, nor did I really feel like answering all their questions fully in their questionaire and repeating all their rules back to them in my own words.

So in my mind if I want to learn to be better at pvp my options are to keep throwing ships at others ships that seem along my size or close enough and hope that I can take them down fast enough before they eat through my tank. My tank usually gets eaten through quite fast regardless though. This all leads me to think that this game requires a substantial amount of thought and planning that perhaps I am just to stupid to be able to carry out. Or I just don't get it and am not really picking up the pvp skills in the game that matter. Perhaps there are players out there who REALLY do understand the game well enough to teach a month+ old player like myself and would even take the time to patiently explain things to me. Yet those players seem rare I guess. Reading a bunch of EVE Uni guides is one thing, but truly learning while doing is where the real learning kicks in I think. It's weird though because it seems like the vets or skilled pvp players either don't know what they are doing exactly or suck at communicating how they do what they do, or they are keeping it all super secret as if its valuable pvp info they don't want you knowing. Or I am simply looking for a formula that will help me survive more pvp encounters that doesn't exist, and if I can't learn on the fly and constantly adapt at a moments notice I will always lose.

A few quick pointers, cause i'm in a hurry.

- convo the guys that killed you, ask them for advice, what you did wrong in the fight and so on. Most PvPers will be glad to lend a word

- learn the differences between weapon systems. Range, tracking, damage. Learn what ships fit what weapons.

- Range dictation is KING.

- learn the most common fitting for the ships you enocunter

- the 3 combined above. The question you need to ask yourself when engaging is: what range should i stay at? will i be able to keep it? at the same range, who tracks better and deals more damage between us? will it be enough to break my/his tank?

- check your killers' killboards for inspiration about fittings

- do not give up!!

Join the chat channel Spectre Fleet and go on some roams with them. Get Teamspeak 3. Join a PVP training corp.

I had a similar problem learning algebra--at first I kept thinking x had to be the variable, and that a,b, and c had to be constants. I thought that I, J, K had to be integers and that y had to be the label for the up-down line on my page.

Then i tried some problems and it turned out that x was just a convention and that if you started the problem by saying something like, suppose x is a real variable and b is an integer you could use b as an integer rather than J or K.

I sure wish I had had a little help the first month of algebra so I read the book and did the problems and then I moved on to trigonometry.

your humble servent
SeaSaw

The learning curve for a new player getting into PvP is rough to say the least. If your core fitting skills aren't up to scratch, I'd stick to running missions/mining and making money until they are. There are plenty of guides out there that''ll tell you how to do this. With good fitting skills and enough isk to throw a truckload of frigates away, you'll find the going a little easier.


For a much quicker route into PvP, find yourself a corp willing to help new members. I can't stress the importance of being around more experienced players enough. I took the E-Uni route, and while their lessons are certainly informative, I didn't really start learning until I actually went out and fought stuff. Fleets are an excellent way of learning the basics, because there are plenty of other people around you to get shot at first. If you can't stomach the E-Uni recruitment process, try a Faction Warfare corp. It's the quickest way to get out there shooting things, and you can make money while you do it.

How quickly you learn is entirely up to you. Battleclinic is a great place to get ideas for ship fittings. Check the killboards regularly to see what people are flying. EFT and pyfa are excellent tools for testing out ship fittings. Talk to people. Above all, don't be afraid to lose a ship. You're going to lose a lot before you get good, but each loss can teach you something new. Just keep it cheap until your confidence grows.

Dayman Industries? Aren't those the guys whose definition of pvp involves shooting their fellow militia members and then running away?

Ok, seriously - what is up with this new love for bio

Quite a few pvp players say they don't care about the plexes they just want the kill. Frankly I just want to stay alive and hopefully get a kill. I've tried to get some kills and what not, but usually things went bad.

Right now I am using a Condor in some fleet pvp and that seems to be nice due to range, yet without a web on the target I barely do any really good damage. If I fly around manually with a MWD it feels insanely annoying and fast and makes it hard to keep a point on anything at those speeds. Frankly I have no idea how players manually pilot by double clicking in space, keep a point, and also keep out of range of scram while supposedly noticing the direction a ship is moving...

Way too much going on there for me to process in a fast fight. Perhaps this is something younger folks excel at better then an older guy like myself. Maybe its a dexterity and reflex thing.

The other problem I have noticed with light missile boats is that unless you have the missile speed and explosion radius to compensate (or one or the other), fighting anything that is moving quickly and doing good damage is a pain. At the moment I maybe do 1/4 of the damage I could to even a rat in a plex. The other problem is that it seems for a range boat the damage also isn't that great and I can't even kill a rat.

That is with 33 dps and 426 kinetic volley. I am guessing unless I am MUCH closer to the rat to ensure my missiles hit it I am going to consistently see far less damage as it moves quite fast at times. That also makes me wonder if its even possible to really kill anything with a condor with light missile lauchers as a half baked kiting ship. I mean what's the point of kiting at all if you can't even kill anything quick enough? And again not even mentioning the awkward feel of moving around in space like a balloon that's letting out air while trying to manually hold point and still try to get in damage that will most likely miss.

It just seems like a bad idea to even use light missiles unless the target is a sitting duck I suppose.

everyone loves sad clowns

Disclaimer: Almost falling asleep at keyboard, waiting for some stats to come in at work, thought I'd lend a primer.

Lots of people are telling you to "go learn" but I thought I'd give a few real rough tips here for pvp for a noob.

- Guns can only turn so fast, so if you orbit (or move tangentially to) someone they will have issues hitting you. The closer you are to them while you are moving, the greater the tangential velocity. Also, the smaller you are the more this "moving tangentially disrupts ability for guns to hit you" affect is applied.

- Missiles do damage based on your signature radius and speed. Smaller sig, higher speed, less damage. Bewar of modules that increase your sig (like mwd's). Of course you can outrun missiles somewhat too.

- warp scrams (as opposed to warp disruptors) turn off MWD's, but not afterburners.

This should give you an idea why a small ship (like a comet) can be hard to hit in a rupture. Especially if the rupture had artillery fit (guns have different stats, tracking speed gives you an idea how fast a gun can traverse).

This is by no means the be all and end all of pvp, in fact it barely scratches the surface, but hopefully it gives you an idea of why you lost so hard previously. And knowing why you lost is the key to future victories.