EVE New Citizens Q&A

1. Yes

2. No - the amount of bounty paid out for a ship kill is I think 20% of the value of the ship you destroy so unless they are flying something particularly shiny you don't get much of a payout

3. Download Evemon & start off by making a skill plan that covers the core certificates as a good start

4. 250m isk will but and fit a lot of T1 frigates which are what you should be flying for your first several months whilst you learn some pvp skills.

5. it doesn't work like that Eve is a sandbox not an arena. I'd suggest looking up a corp like RvB or Brave newbies or joining Fleet Warfare although that wouldnt be a personal choice

Useful links:

Tuskers Free For All
RvB Forums
EveMon

a small addition to the already good advice: while RvB is very much about the fun and blowing things up, faction warfare is deeper and can also provide you some income so that you are not permanently spacepoor.

Stumbling blindly down the same path as you, this is what I have 'learned' so far... (People are immensely more willing to 'help' than the tough dog eat dog environment might initially indicate). Here is a newbseye view about in ship PvP... Which is arguably only a slice of the game. Hopefully smarter people will read it to prevent me from telling simply wrong things... Hard to prevent my own stupidity in the matter. Correct my misinformation by any means necessary!

Here is an up to date thread of people on this forum at least talking about 'lone' PvP. You will get a sense of the challenges that apparently experienced solo pilots face. Multiply that by a factor of roughly 1000 for rookies such as you and I.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=216771&find=unread

I have been wandering around losing ships attempting to start my own EVE journey by learning solo PvP. This is recommended by no one as a way to learn the game. I am both ignorant and stubborn. What I have learned is that usually your adversaries are excellent teachers, whether they are a lone pilot in a superior ship, someone who grabbed something like a t1 frigate just to fight you or gate camp where you have virtually no chance of survival or even a fight. My experience base is extremely limited so keep that in mind. I don't think this route is for most people.

RvB is a single corporation divided into two teams for the purposes of sploding one another. It is newbie friendly, but not explicitly a 'teaching' corporation. They also get involved in large events and fight as a combined 'puprle' force. Go look at there forums for details about what to do before joining. It will give you a sense.

FW is a play style dedicated to taking and holding ground through capping objectives and such. Based on race. Go here to see a report that seems to be of action at its best:

http://themittani.com/news/enaluri-falls-caldari-evacuate

Sov play seems to have to do with player owned corps that vie to politically, economically and martially control areas of the universe. There are many good maps of what this looks like and how it has developed over time. The long arc narratives of the game seem to take place here. Apparently they can be harder to join, having more stringent requirements, being bat**** paranoid about you being a spy, setting them up, ripping them off etc. If you look into the last site above you will see the this is not unfounded. Some of them are even based on community activity that precedes the players involvement in EVE. You must be an active member of that pre-EVE community to effectively join such corps. In fact, attempting to do so without such involvement will apparently often get you taken for however much space wealth you have managed to scrape together this far.

EVE UNIVERSITY is a kind of special case of the above. They are newbie friendly and explicitly a teaching corp. They also seem bat**** paranoid (no offense EUNI) and the application process therefore may require DNA samples and several forms of arcane ritual.

Whatever you do you are going to lose a lot of ships if you are interested in PvP. It does not really seem possible to minimize this, nor is it encouraged.

Though the 'space battle' element is not remotely like twitch play, or if not in a fleet like press a button to attack, I have fund it very satisfying (though so far losing alllll the time). Though the details of the game mechanics have been intricately analyzed and understood they are... Ummmm.... Complex? when it comes to actually fitting and flying a ship as a rookie while considering them all. This is seems to be one reason why people pick affiliation with player corporations and such. In that case you can be given a specific role and some 'script/fit/training' plan to have a chance of successfully completing that role. This approach lets you play a role in larger battles very quickly. Small ganking crews and gangs seem to me a viable way to go. I have yet to be approached for recruitment by a pirate, but this is not surprising since I suck.

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member". Groucho Marx

The actual pre-PvP preparation is massively complex, though it can be approached simply through affiliation, a willingness to throw stupidity at it or some combination of both. For a rookie, the universe is truly vast, though apparently it seems to ummm... shrink as you play more. (I have yet to see any psychological studies dealing with the possible compensatory actions of players based on this apparent shrinkage.)

The PvP is not just about the 'pewpew' involved when you are in a ship and see another ship. You have to figure out how to survive long enough to even get in that position, have sufficient resources to replace the ships you inevitably lose, etc. Additionally, plan on being lied to, tricked, mislead, etc. as part of the PvP. Your primary sources of in game learning are the kill mail you receive and looking at your own combat log if you are not affiliated with formal corps and such. :/ After that I have found that being in your pod having just been slaughtered is a pretty good pre-condition for learning and for people being willing to offer counsel about fits, tactics, your stupidity and general uselessness, etc.


Finally, though you can apparently 'get into action' very quickly through some of the above methods you should probably plan to read and research as much as you play for a time at least. No idea if this really tapers off, but I think you may find this MUCH more intensive than other MMOs you have played. I know I have and I am still completely lost and confused and now see that this is not likely to really change for quite some time unless I severely limit my notion of play to some subset of a subset of possible play options. I have found it necessary to do that to some extent in any case.


Offered with apologies.

Bounty or pirate hunters aren't really a thing, the people in EVE who get paid by other players to do harm to groups or individuals are typically referred to as mercenaries. Particularly problematic is that the definition of a pirate is entirely subjective and there's no clear in-game mechanism to distinguish a pirate from anyone else.

There are a large number of different mercenary groups that operate across different kinds of space and each has its own method of operation, a list of (mostly) reputable mercenary outfits can be found here. The actual skill requirements to be effective as part of a fleet are very low, in a few days a character can be useful and in month or so you should be fully proficient in a T1 frigate.

You may find getting into a good mercenary outfit difficult though and will inevitably find yourself being called all kinds of mean names while the person calling you them explodes underneath you.

Welcome to EVE. Before we go further I would like to you take all the knowledge and experience you have gained in other games, wrap it all up, and set it aside. They will be of little help here.


The next thing I would like you to do is lower your expectations a little bit. EVE PvP has more in common with RTS games than WoW arenas... but with significantly more posturing, preparing, and tactical maneuvering.


1a. "Lone Wolves" do exist... however it is not really something you can just jump into right away. It requires significant mastery of the game, weapon, and tactical mechanics... which is not something you will learn quickly... or by reading guides. You must learn from others with the experience... either by joining with them (which may involve you swallowing your pride) or learning the hard way and trying to hunt them down (which will require significant amounts of money to replace your losses).

2a. Bounty Hunting is, for the most part, not something you would do full time. Most of the people who get bounties slapped on them...
- run with groups that are just as skilled as they are.
- are loudmouths/mouthpieces/mascots that have never undocked.
- hidden away in some backwater fortress system with 1000+ other guys who are mindlessly bored.
- usually don't fly anything expensive enough to warrant the effort.
HOWEVER... there are sometimes "unofficial" contracts you can take from the Crime and Punishment forums. They can range from the "assassination" of a person, to humiliation, driving a person away from a certain area of the game... or some combination of all of the above.
Jobs like this usually require a certain... "passion." The rewards you can get from these kind of works can be more than just ISK (ex. "spicy" chatlogs filled with profanity, threats, ad hominems... expensive loot... prestige/infamy).

3a. "Bounty Hunting" and "Pirate Hunter" don't have particular skillsets the way they do in other games. It's more abstract. They are simply jobs.
The skills you need would be the same skills that any PvP pilot would (and the same skills that the people you want to go after already have). Do some research on what kind of "tactics" you would prefer. Range, brawling, kiting/skirmish, ganking, awoxing, etc and choose ships that can best use those tactics (note: no single ship can do everything... all ships have different roles, strengths and weaknesses).
Some of those tactics require more player skill than character... which makes them both easier and harder to perform.

4a. ISK always helps... but it will not make you "good." It will just give you more options on what you can buy and/or gives you time before you have to look for a source of income.
As far as being competitive... if you can fly a fast frigate and slap on weapons, a Microwarpdrive, Warp Disruptor/Scrambler and/or a Stasis Webifier you are far from useless (and being able to fit all of those things requires no more than a day or two of training). You may not win 1 vs 1 battles against most people... but if you work with others in groups then you can take on ships many times your size.

As your skills develop then you can then operate more independently... with all the experiences you gained from your time working in a group.

5a. You're thinking of "Arenas." Those don't exist in EVE beyond ad hoc tournaments created and managed by various corps and alliances (the most famous being "Red Federation" versus "Blue Republic"). The preference here is more towards open world PvP where "fairness" is kept by allowing everyone to use the same tools as everyone else.

And if you want to see and/or enjoy the company of more "solo" players I suggest you find your way down into low-sec space. Lots of hunters around those systems. And if someone kills you, open a conversation and ask them. More often than not, they will give you advice on how to be better next time.

Ok, skilling up:

Eve does not have classes, you can train any skill you want. The skills function equally well with all races, you just need to train them. In Eve, "classes" are actually determined by the ship you are currently flying (logistics = healer, ewar = debuff, etc.), with most ships being DPS (with a self-tank and self-heal).

So as a result of the lack of limits, most people end up training some 200+ skills to various levels, and this gives them the capability to fly multiple ships (one for each situation) and fit them with various weapons, shields, armor, jammers, etc.

The tutorials and the tutorial agents will give you some free skills if you do their missions, but otherwise you're expected to make money and buy and inject the skills you need, then train them up.

You are building a combat pilot. There's all sorts of different kinds of PVP, and you'll need a grasp of what ships are good for different kinds of PVP, so you can decide what ships to train, and thus decide what skills to train. However, the skills that you see on the market can be categorized into several broad groups:

- Ship skills - these unlock ships for you, and are found in the Spaceship Command group. Pretty simple, train a skill to unlock the corresponding ship, then train the skill some more to make the ship bonuses better with each skill level.

- Weaponry skills - Gunnery, Missiles, Drones - each ship will use a combination of weapons: some use drones + hybrid blasters / railguns, others use missiles + lasers, etc. Bigger ships use bigger-sized weapons, so you train the weapon systems that your ship needs, once you've decided on the ship. Each ship has a description that says what bonuses it has and what slots it has for weapons, so this gives you an idea of the weapons to train.

- Support skills - these skills make ALL your ships fly better, and are critical for a combat pilot. You're looking at the skills under Electronics, Engineering, Navigation, Mechanics - if the skill says something about targets, speed, energy, shields, armor, hull, power, agility, or propulsion modules (afterburner or MWD), pretty much train the skill, it'll be useful.

- Non-combat skills - Trading, Industry, Corporation Management, Research, Refining - all these could be useful, and you may want to train at least a basic ability, maybe to level 1 or 2 just so you're not locked out of being able to sell your stuff on the market, refine the odd ore, etc.

So, right now you don't really know what ships you'll want to train for your PVP, so start with the support skills until you read up and decide. You can't go wrong with more shields, more armor, shield and armor resistances, more speed, armor repair, hull upgrades, afterburners, targeting, etc.

And while you're doing that, read up on the ships. You have frigates, used in PVP for small skirmishes, scouting, and more importantly tackling a target so it doesn't run away, destroyers for anti-frigate, cruisers (better defenses for DPS roles), battlecruisers (some are really popular for PVP as they have solid DPS and versatility), battleships for large fleet action, and then you can also look at the Advanced (Tech 2) ships that can do stuff like intercept, warp around cloaked, apply ewar from huge distances, etc.

You'll probably end up deciding on a race's ship lineups, or maybe two races, and you'll probably end up training a line of gunnery (projectiles, or lasers, or hybrids) AND some missiles AND some drones, and progressing up the ranks from frigate to battleship and beyond.

Being bad at it is half the fun , but yep that's a good point.

1. Yes but it's fairly skill intensive. As a new player you are best spent assisting a gang.

2. No.

3. Join a corp aimed at these things, they will point you to what you need, and more importantly what they need.

4. The money helps if he gives you the plex.

5. Space battles in nullsec range from 10v10 to 1000v1000 man affairs.

My best story that I can tell in a short period of time was when I was with Bomberwaffe, our dedicated bomber wing and we were going to kill an IRC CSAA that was building a titan. We had snuck into system using a covert cyno and a blackops battleship fairly early on in the fight so we could set up.

The enemy had something like 900 guys sitting on the gate. Capital ships (We weren't bringing any caps), battleships, hacs, you name it. The full gamut. While we were waiting on our main force to come up our FC spotted a small group of about 50 or so T3 battlecruisers loitering away from everyone else. Our FC made the call and warped us in at about 45km from the targets, four full squads of bombers decloaked and dropped bombs saturating the area with explosions. We warped off and where there was once an entire small battleship fleet, there were only pods.

Shortly after this our main forces began to pile into the system and we had to stand by to avoid bombing friendlies, so we started dscanning for disconnects/people warping to safes in order to "Hide" from combat. Another wing warp and we land... on a carrier, a thanatos to be exact. At most our entire bomber wing may have cost about a quarter billion isk. We had already killed about two billion isk in BC's, and we were about to kill another 3-4 billion worth in this single carrier.

And we did.

Several more bombing runs commenced and we picked away at groups of battleships with 10 kills per run or so. But the opening kills are what really made the night.

I'll try to summarize as best I can... but some in-game research is also required on your part (hint: read the descriptions and bonuses of various skillbooks, mods, and ships).

- Your primary focus should be to work on your "core skills" (the skills that affect all ships). Some examples of these include, but are not limited to...
-- Engineering (+5% Powergrid for all ships)
-- Electronics (+5% CPU for all ships)
-- Mechanic (+5% structure HP for all ships)
-- Hull Upgrades (+5% armor for all ships)
-- Weapon Upgrades (-5% CPU need for all weapons)
-- Advanced Weapon Upgrades (-2% Powergrid need for all weapons)

- It should take a little under a month to get to everything to level 4 (except for Advanced Weapon Upgrades (AWU)... that will have to wait til you max out Weapon Upgrades).
- It will take another month or so to max out your "core skills" at level 5 (again, wait on AWU... that takes 30 days to get to level 5 by itself).

- Mix in some "fun" skills into your training que. It may extend the time it takes to max out your "core skills"... but it keeps things fresh.

- Chose a tanking style your prefer. Armor or Shields.
-- Armor can pack on the most effective hitpoints (EHP) and generally has higher resistances. It also allows you to freely use mid slots for utility and Electronic Warfare. However, armor slows down ships and active armor tanking is generally inferior unless on a ship with certain bonuses (armor resistances or armor repair amount).
Look for Armor related skills in the Mechanics skill tab.
-- Shields naturally regenerate with time and possess some of the strongest active tanks in the game. They take up mid slots, which allows you to make use of low slots for damage enhancement modules, and don't slow down a ship one little bit... leaving it nice and nimble. However, shield mods tend to be power hungry and their active tanking modules suck up power the way a starved fatman eats cheesecake.
Look for Shield related skills in the Engineering skill tab.

- Turrets or Missiles?
-- Turrets: the most common weapon system in the game... mastering the support skills here allows you to take advantage of ships used by all the races in the game.
--- Hybrid Weapons: weapons of "extremes." Railguns can shoot very, very far but deal poor damage. Blasters deal the highest amount of damage in the game, but at the shortest ranges.
--- Projectile Weapons: short range autocannons fire rapidly and have a flexible engagement envelope, but deal poor damage for short range weapons. Artillery is somewhat the opposite... slow rate of fire and poor tracking... but each volley can potentially kill a ship.
--- Laser Weapons: Pulse lasers are extremely flexible short range weaponry... second in damage only to blasters they can project that damage equally well between short and medium range... however their ability to track targets at extreme close range is lacking and they are very dependent on capacitor power to function. Beam Lasers deal the most consistent damage over a period of time at range but require even larger amounts of capacitor power and ship resources.

-- Missiles: different mechanics are applied to missile damage... they always hit, but they deal poor damage to ships smaller than their class. Only Minmatar, Caldari, and advanced Amarrian ships utilize this weapon system.
--- Short range: Rockets, Heavy Assault Missiles, and Torpedos are all designed to fire rapidly and deal a significant amount of damage.
--- Long Range: Light Missiles, Rapid Light Missiles, Heavy Missiles, Cruise Missiles are designed to deal damage at significant range.

I decided last week to give EVE a try again for the third time in the past few years. Having a much better experience this go now that i have a new mind set. I have played many other MMO's including WoW for 6 years. A little advice, take what those other MMO's taught you and throw them out the window before really attempting EVE. They will not benefit you and actually cripple you. Secondly patience is EVERYTHING in this game. There is a saying in this game, do not fly what you cannot afford to lose. Live by this atleast until you have a Jay Leno sized hull collection and can take a loss. For a new player it is unbelievably frustrating to empty your wallet on that new shiny ship and get blown up an hour later and your back in a starter ship. But i also go by the rule only fly something that your skills make effective, it's like if a 16 year old just got his license and jumps right into a corvette, what you think is going to happen...... So do not just jump into that new caracal as soon as you get your cruiser skill to level 1, take time map out your skills so you can fly it effectively and pew pew other things.

Me personally i am just gaining SP and mission running at the moment to get a firm grasp of the game before i go into any kind of heavy pvp action, as much as they are hated i will probably be a carebear for my first month or so. PVP is a mass part of this game and it is everywhere and can come anytime, but if you run right into it be ready to be blown up and podded.......Alot