EVE New Citizens Q&A

Oh lord... *buries face in hands*

You know everything you learned from console games? Forget it. All of it. It will not help you here.


Basically it's a multi-system "mission" where you must gather up forces (either your corp or randoms), warp to each beacon, and deal more damage to the enemy NPCs than the other player fleets without dying.


When Incursions first came out, some "hardcore" players in billion ISK "pimp" ships fitted with several billion worth in "pimp" mods tried to take on the lowest level Incursions by themselves. I believe said players lasted the better part of 30 seconds to a minute.

Does that answer you question?


Some corps/alliances have formed around Incursions so they can better be able to do them in the most quick and efficient way possible. My knowledge of the corps is limited however given that I have never actually participated in them.


The long and short of it is that it isn't exactly newbie content. The people who mostly run Incursions generally want either "pimp" ships that can deal a lot of damage at range and highly skilled logistics pilots to keep everyone alive.

LOL dont hate on my console skills! This is very telling about incursions. So right now, my train of thought with this is the same as going out for pvp...get better first.

No, I just read too much.



One does not get better at PVP by sitting back and waiting for skills to train. In fact if you first start PVPing a year from now in a battleship you're both going to miss out on a year of PVP and lose your battleship in seconds because you won't know what you're doing.

Okay... a few things...

1. See Tech 2 stuff as a "goal" rather than a "minimum baseline" when looking at any activity. You'd be surprised by how many vets use T1 stuff (the Meta 3 and 4 equipment in particular) even though they can use all T2 stuff. In some cases, Meta 4 equipment is just as good and sometimes better than T2 equipment.

2. As a new player... the ONLY things that veteran players have over you are:
- Better support skills: skills that affect all ships and make a ship generally more efficient.
- Versatility: anyone can match a multi-year veteran in any one specialty within a relatively short period of time. But since the vet has had more time he/she has access to more specialties than a younger player can.

With careful planning, the first problem can be overcome in the space of ~3 months. The later problem is more of a process and will never end until the game does. So make judgement calls based on which specialty you feel you give you a greater edge over your foes and/or will help your allies the most.

3. All space in EVE is "PvP space." High-sec is not "safe" by any stretch of the imagination and should you sufficiently anger and/or tempt someone with enough "bling" in your cargohold, they WILL shoot to kill you (and willingly swallow the cost of losing their ship to CONCORD). And yes... "suicide attacks" are perfectly legal.

Meta level 0 is "flat" tech 1, meta 1-4 is "named" (150mm light 'scout' autocannon I, for example, is the meta 4 variant of the 150mm light autocannon I). Meta 5 is t2, Meta 6+ is faction/deadspace/etc

In general, higher meta means the item is more expensive and more effective, but it's usually not that simple. The meta 4 stasis webifier has the same slowdown (-60%) as tech 2, but costs more CPU than the meta 2. Tech 2 armor plates give the same amount of armor HP as the best named plates (Rolled tungsten) but have a heavier weight drawback. In general, meta level is only particularly useful when comparing named items.



You'll lose some sec status, much more if you kill the ship, and vastly more if you kill the pod. The amount depends on the sec level of the system you're in, but one action will never ban you from a system.

It's usually done to people flying really expensive stuff in really squishy ships (e.g. Tech1 haulers loaded with hundreds of millions of ISK worth of ****). The people who do it have a friend or an alt nearby to scoop the loot as soon as CONCORD kills them off.


You've done "lots of reading and studying" and I've played the game since 2007. Your conclusion isn't anything new or unique; tons of newbies come to the same idea and every time it's wrong.

If EVE PVP consisted of arranged 1v1s with identical ships and identical fits then your concern would be correct, but it isn't. You can fly in a fleet (one t1-fit t1 frigate isn't going to kill much else, but five certainly will). You can train up for basic t2 mods or ships rather quickly (though for the sake of cost I'd recommend the latter option until you figure out what's going on).

Meta level is more of a general "this is better" type number. Basic stuff is Meta 0... T2 is Meta 5... Faction stuff and above is Meta 6+.

As a beginner, all you need to know is that the higher the Meta level, the better something is.

When you get advanced enough, do check through the various stats of each item. Sometimes, a lower Meta level item will have superior stats compared to a higher level one... and it will be cheaper. For instance...

- A Meta 4 armor plate is superior to a T2 armor plate. They both give the same amount of HP, but the Meta 4 plate uses less powergrid and has lower mass (i.e. less "red bar" is used on your ship and it is lighter).
- A Meta 2 or 3 MicroWarpdrive is situationally superior to a T2 MicroWarpdrive. Both give the same speed boost, but the Meta 2/3 MWD uses less powergrid and capacitor power per cycle. The T2 MWD on the other hand carries a lower penalty to your ship's overall capacitor power.
- A Meta 4 shield extender is slightly inferior to a T2 shield extender. The Meta 4 one uses less of the ship's powergrid, but the T2 one adds a fair bit more HP.
- A Meta 4 turret is generally inferior compared to a T2 turret. The Meta 4 turrets may have exactly the same stats as the T2 turrets, but only the T2 turrets can use T2 ammo and is affected by the "specialization skill" which adds an additional 2% damage per skill level.


The penalties for suicide ganking are as follows:
- the ganker loses his/her ship (if they somehow avoid this, file a petition. To avoid CONCORD in any capacity is considered an exploit)
- the ganker does not recieve insurance for his/her ship loss.
- the ganker goes GCC (Global Criminal Countdown) where anyone in the game can shoot him/her without penalty. In addition, the ganker will be automatically ganked by the NPC police again if he/she undocks in anything other than a pod in high-sec for 15 minutes.
- the ganker loses security status (the loss is based on the security status of the system and the security status of the 'victim'... the higher the security standing, the higher the loss). This causes a host of other issues.
-- if a ganker's security status is below -5.0 then anyone can shoot him/her and his/her escape pod on sight.
-- Faction NPC police (not CONCORD) will follow the ganker around high-sec and shoot at the ganker if he/she stays still for any amount of time.
- And finally... the ganker's friend (who didn't suicide gank) may not get the loot off your ship in time... sometimes opportunistic players other than them will quickly scoop up your remains and profit off of your demise and your gankers' efforts.

What low security status will NOT do is:
- ban you from any system. It just makes travelling through a high security system harder (and near impossible with ships cruiser sized+)
- ban you from the game. Just because you did bad things to certain defenseless people, doesn't mean you're a griefer. You actually have to work at that (ex. you are "griefing" when you harass the same person over and over again for no discernible reason).

Don't forget ECM. I (3 years old player) was furiously raging a few days ago because a Blackbird (TI cruiser, you can sit in one in a day or so) was chilling 100k away from my Scimitar (TII logistics ship, which I have perfected every skill to fly) and continuously jamming me, making me completely unable to repair my fleetmates.

There is a compare button in the item stat dialog. Click that.



If you start with a sec status of 1.0 you can kill about 8 ships before you get problems with the navies in a 1.0 system. If you start with 0.0 you can kill about 15 ships before your sec status drops below -5.0 and get the navy after you in any highsec system.

With a sec status below -5 you are free game for any player. No NPC will come to your aid.

How fast you can fix your sec status depends on many factors. As long as you stay above -4.9 you can fix it even in highsec. If you know what you are doing you can get a sec status of -10 up to -1.99 in about a week, without getting excessive.

Wow, thanks for all the info people. I see a lot about being a scout and the like and while I wouldnt totally mind that, Id much rather be one of the heavy hitters when involved in larger battles.

Thanks for clearing up the Meta thing, I had no idea there was a compare option when looking at mods and the like. Very useful.

And while this may be one of my first serious MMO's im nowhere near new to the optimizing of equipment in not just RPGs, but other games in general. I played on called Chromehounds once and that was particularly stat heavy loadout wise.

I feel much more "confident" about what I may be capable at this point. I will be in PVP space today!