EVE New Citizens Q&A

Also, things are balanced this way, unfairly if you want to call it that, partly because if it were easy, everyone would do it, and then you wouldn't be able to get anywhere in a cruiser or battleship for all the frigate people just waiting to take you out easily. So it's possible but not easy.

Same with piracy, actually. Anyone would take the chance to make an easy 100 million off a juicy target if it were easy, but it's not. You lose access to high sec, and on top of it most players know the dangers and take steps to either avoid the hot spots or protect their ship (warp stabilizers, cloaks, use fast-aligning ships, etc.).

This is kind of what it boils down to, really.

I don't call myself a pirate, what I do is PVP; I don't expect to make ISK from it but sometimes I do. My targets are anything and everything that I find in my area that isn't in my fleet. When I do PVE it is often just in the hope of baiting someone into coming after me.

If I was concerned with actually earning ISK, I'd probably become a high-sec outlaw ganking freighters and such.

OP goes from raging aspiring pirate to whining forumite in less than ten seconds



Good luck with your career (forum or otherwise)!

We literally do fly paper ships. Happy hunting. :)

Stop trying to lure me in to kill me with a alt that has a Strategic Cruiser and warps in after I find you.

Either way I will kill you! And then I will kill you with Smartbomb swarm when I get some buddies!

Doesn't get much more piratey.

Also, Mr Bumblefck touches on an important point. For any aspiring pirate the forums are a very important place. Have you ever seen a thread ransomed? I have.

There's no better place to display the cut of one's jib.

I want to be honest, and others can correct my errors but it is really difficult to make any isk in piracy in eve. Piracy for profit is pretty much limited to high security system ganks. It is actually one of those things I really want to push CCP for is a means to sustain yourself as a pirate. Ergo, you can go off to lowsec and never have to leave, use alt, etc.

Yeah, in seriousness this is true imo.

Somewhere like lowsec most people don't fit expensively, especially if they're doing frigate PVP as the OP seems to be looking for. You could probably take the loot from all the kills in one night and you'd probably have made more ISK if you spent that same time mining or missioning. You'll get lucky sometimes and get some great loot out of your kills, but you can't really bank on it and certainly can't sustain yourself purely from it.

In Amber's case, hunting explorers can net you some tidy loot, though rather than camping relic sites you'll probably make more if you actually ran all those sites yourself.

Ransoms can be great, but the opportunities for it (and finding people willing to pay) are likewise intermittent.

People "pirate" for the fun of the fight, any loot is really just an added bonus.

Highsec ganking is a different matter and you could certainly make some good money from ganking freighters and such, though it's generally not a solo thing. I'd imagine bumping freighters and ransoming might be one solo way of making some semi-reliable ISK though.

tl:dr - If you're looking to make profits then PVP generally isn't the way to do it, especially not frigate PVP somewhere like lowsec. PVP is more often an expense that people PVE to pay for. Though in saying that you only need to get that one amazing ransom or loot drop and you might earn enough to sustain yourself for weeks/months. Though don't go betting on it.

I'm not sure how all corps work, but in our corp scouts generally make the most profit from PVP. Anyone can be a scout though, whoever finds a target or sets up a fight/gank for the rest of us is entitled to any loot from it. This often sees some of our pilots make hundreds of millions, if not billions sometimes, from a single encounter.

This is because the game is a PVP game. So while in the real world the pirates are attacking civilian ships operating in peacetime, in this game you're like trying to be a pirate during World War 2; most of your possible targets will be escorted and/or be freaking warships better armed than you.