EVE New Citizens Q&A

Been trying lots of different things lately and I decided to give hauling a try. I have an Iteron from the rookie training which I plan to use. I loaded it up with some expanded cargo holds, but noticed that there is only one turret available and no drones. I guess I am pretty much sitting duck in this thing, so should I even bother fitting a weapon in the high slot or is there something else that a hauler could fit that would make sense in that slot? What about mids? I fit an afterburner on there right now, but I have one more slot. Thanks for your tips!

Heh, the single turret slot of haulers is to fit a mining laser of course. :shakehead:

In hisec? Not much you need to do with it early on. You will get scanned, no one will bother, mostly worthless cargo to them unless they just do it for kicks which is unlikely. If you get a better hauler, stuff it full of propulsion and shields and/or armor. Well, not sure about armor, but shields won't slow you down. Guns? No.

Yeeeah... that's why if you stick with it you'll pick up marketing. Look into the marketing skill tree, you'll find what you need.

Well if it's hisec, they are going to die and take security penalties. On my main that has marketing and does a fair amount of hauling, I'm less cautious under 100 million. But whatever the worth, if I can fit it into one of my t2 cov-ops couriers then I do. By the time you skill to a t2 hauler, you start to look like a target, and you probably are. Hauling thru low and nul is a different situation though, everything is fair game.

Oh and speaking of money, marketing / trading + hauling is the greatest ISK risk in the game. But it's also the best paying profession when things go right. Takes a lot of focus though, much like real world trading, apart from them not trying to pod you.

I found that i enjoyed my life as a trader/manufacturer way more after i stopped hauling stuff myself.

Get familiar with using freight contracts and let other people do that for you. 'Professional' freighter corps (PushX, Red Frog) dumped the price for courier contracts so low that it's not worth to move stuff yourself from an ISK/hour point of view. Why spend an hour hauling stuff around, when you could just pay someone 2mill for it. Use that hour for market research instead, it will pay off way more. There's people slaving away in a job even more boring and risky than mining for less payout than mining, abuse those guys for your own profit. If you are hauling to or from a major tradhub, you don't even have to use PushX or Red Frog, you can just put up a contract for 60% of their price and wait a day. Somebody will always do the menial tasks.

More profit and more fun time for you.

EDIT: And yes, trade skills are VERY important in our line of work.

Transaction Taxes: Accounting
Broker Fees: Broker Relations + standing with the broker's corp and faction

You rarely need a gun or anti-tackle on a hauler! Frankly, when you get attacked in a hauler by anything other than a weak NPC, if you can't warp away you will die. Haulers are meant to be fragile and weak on purpose.

With that in mind, A 3m isk destroyer can easily destroy an untanked Iteron (2-3k EHP) before Concord arrives. This means, anytime you carry 10m or more in cargo, it is potentially profitable for someone to blow up your ship....

If instead, you fit tank (like 2x Medium Shield Extenders in the mids and maybe even a DCU), you will be much harder to gank (6-10k EHP). Realize, that "much harder to gank" really means suicide gankers need only a few more ships or bigger ships to destroy you before concord destroys them. In benefits to you, that means you can carry more isk-value in goods without being a target... although at 10k EHP, I wouldn't recommend carrying more than 40m isk in cargo.

Typically, Suicide gankers won't gank you unless you are carry twice the value of the goods as the ship(s) it takes to destroy you.

To give you an idea... a Freighter (largest hauler in the game) typically has 150-200k EHP, and they regularly get suicide ganked because some pilots try to haul 4+ billion isk in cargo, while the total value of ships needed to gank them is much less than 1 billion.

My advice to you, if you go into hauling:
1.) Don't haul more than you can afford to lose.
2.) Tank your ships (typically passive tanks are better than active tanks because you'll grow weary of always activating hardeners).
3.) Carrying large amounts of isk in an easily destroyed vessel makes you a target... It's akin to walking down a ghetto ally with diamond necklaces and Rolex watches displayed on your persons.
4.) Learn to double-wrap expensive items or train for an orca...
5.) Don't be "that guy" who loses a 50m isk iteron, a 100m isk iteron V, or a 5+ billion isk freighter to suicide gankers....

nm, misread thread

Sorry, I didn't mean the reading was hardcore, the stuff I need to do (ie train months for some of those things) I am not afraid to do that, more that I am just dipping my feet into this area right now so not sure I want to skill path myself down that route. I guess this is hardest part of Eve, deciding where to spend all your time training! I'm all over the place in my training right now, but I guess that's not horrible since I'm only 1mil SP