EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello, before I post this, let me say straight out that I probably have "mastered" about 0.5% of this game. So feel free to point and laugh - just know that I'm an easy target!

Which is kind of the point of this post...

So yesterday I decided to lose my virginity and see if I couldn't get myself killed by another player, the idea being that your first time is always scary and it's best to get it over with. Also, I was a little confused as to pods and clones, so I thought it was important to see how all that worked (pretty simple it turns out).

So I headed out to pick up a focusing crystal, which was at a station in 0.4 space, which I believe is... Lowsec?

I kept my eye out through all the gates and didn't see another player.

However, when I approached my station, there were two or three players there. Two had little (colored?) skulls, and one had a blinking skull. I remembered that this was bad, but I couldn't recall the exact details.

Anyway, I knew I had to get out of there, as I only had seconds left of life at this point. I had tried to jury rig an emergency jump destination by opening my assets and just having a safe station ready. Unfortunately, as soon as the blinking player locked on to me I clicked something wrong and my assets tab with the station ready disappeared, and then it was like that scene in Star Trek 2 where Khan is wildly searching the Reliant's control panels yelling "Where's the override? The Override?!?"

Anyway, I died two shots later. I'm fairly positive the guy who killed me looked and was sitting in his chair exactly like the villain from that South Park WOW episode.

So, a few learnings for me, and then a question:

1. Yep, don't go outside of the kiddie pool until you can at least not get one or two-shotted
2. REMEMBER TO PUT INSURANCE ON YOUR SHIP, IDIOT

And question: what do I do in any situation where a hostile player is where I want to go, or is approaching, or whatever? Because there's no way I could fight my way out of a wet paper bag right now. How do the pros who wish to flee escape quickly? Is there an emergency warp button? A way of setting up your screen so you just click something and get away?

Also: whatever view I had on my scanner didn't even register the player at the station; I thought I had everything set up, but they only way I saw them was on the screen, right in front of me, and by that time it was too late. Is there a way to set it up so my system goes "Arrooo-gaah, arooo-gah, hostile neckbeard-sporting, twinkie-eating player inbound!!" Or you know, the spreadsheet equivalent.

I suck, I know. At least my avatar is hot.

Thanks in advance for any advice people are willing to give...

Go into your overview settings, and make sure under "Filters" that you have every type of ship checked, from pod to shuttle to all of them. You can also set up the overview to show you stations and gates, starbase towers, drones, all sorts of things that could attack you.

You can save some of these overview settings as profiles, and then on the last tab you can assign profiles to tabs (up to 5 tabs), to make it easier to navigate. To give you an example, I have one tab that just shows ships, stations, and gates, another that also includes wrecks and containers of all kinds, another that shows ships and drones, and finally one with everything on it (so when I use the directional scanner or scanner probes they scan for everything).

As far as getting out fast, I sort the overview by the distance column, and I click on any station or gate in the overview that is far, and immediately press the warp key.

But, as it's been suggested, your best bet is always to NOT get in the situation, rather than to try to get out of it. If you don't have a bookmark set up to land you at 1000+ km from the station so you can use the directional scanner to see who's loitering at the station, you can warp to station at 100 km (maximum range).

A lot of the ships CAN hit that far, but some can't, and you're forcing them to first try to approach you before being able to shoot, which gives you time to escape. At 100 km you're also outside the range of warp disruptors, so they can't pin you down and prevent you from warping away. And if it looks clear, you can always warp away to some planet and come back to the station at 0 km ready to dock.

You also need to pay attention to the list of people in the local channel, show info on all of them, figure out if they're possibly pirates or if they're miners or what. The fewer people in local the better your chances.

And finally, before you leave on your trip, study the map, look at your itinerary. See where it goes from high-sec to low-sec, see how many gates there are, how many planets, etc. If you're passing through a system with only 2 gates, they can definitely guess where you're going, and intercept you when you exit out of warp.

First: this may help you get your overview sorted:
Overview Guide
It's really long, but I find setting up your Overview is something everyone should know how to do

Second: Congratulations on getting shot:) Now go get shot again! You should keep fitting frigates the best you can and go out hunting as often as you can. Experience > Skills :)

You can also pull up plenty of good fits for your frigate of choice as well as all kinds of PVP guides, so i'll leave you to that:)

Also, in lowsec, if you're in a station and someone with a criminal tag is in the local channel but not listed under the station 'guest' tab, them being waiting outside to get you is a fairly likely possibility.

So... you can just log off in the station if you don't want to deal with it. Basically the further in advance you act the more likely your strategy is to work, escape-wise:

Jump-cloning past enemies > Noticing them and logging off > having set up a quick-warp out of the station > switching to a ship with fast align time > fitting your ship with warp stabilizers > just clicking really hard on the warp button

That's obviously just in terms of avoiding dying, though, most people are willing to take _some_ risk or they'd not be playing this game.

I escaped once... long ago in 0.0

and the local chat:

*logs in the day after a very unsuccessful op... still in enemy space*
Surfin's PlunderBunny > ik'm druk I dont care what u do!!!!
*goes to other gate but it's a dead end...*
Surfin's PlunderBunny > can't get out that way
*goes to another gate in system but it just loops around and comes back*
Surfin's PlunderBunny > oh u guys suck
Soljour > says the person in a pod who lost thier ship last night
*Finds planet that lets me warp to exit gate directly and avoids the bubble*
Surfin's PlunderBunny > FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!