EVE New Citizens Q&A

The big difference is that when you use auto pilot you won't warp to 0 on gates but land 15km off. This gives the bad guys enough time to scan your ship and remove it from space if they want to. If you warp directly to the gates then they have to pop you while you align before warping which takes much less time than flying 15 km.

Using auto pilot to find the route is perfectly fine though.

If you don't have any valuable cargo, plenty of time and nobody that is specifically out to get you then autopilot is fine.

Don't ever use it in low or null sec, because there's a high chance that there will be people out to get you by definition.

Valuable cargo is defined by how much it takes to blow up your ship versus how much someone may make by looting your cargo.

This.

An ship on autopilot will warp to a gate at 15km and then travels to the gate at maximum sub-warp velocity before jumping.

Not only does this give people who want to greet you by using their guns the time to see if you are worthy of such welcome. It is also a lot slower then manually warping to a gate at 0 and jumping (or use the jump button, which does exactly the same).

And a lot of pilots will use the "set destination" option to plot courses and just follow the 'yellow brick road home'.

To continue the tutorial:

Pirates / PVP'ers can attack you when you arrive at the gate, or after you jump through the gate, on the other side, as you align to your next destination so you can enter warp. As you've seen, if you don't use autopilot, you minimize the attack opportunity as you arrive at the gate.

You can still be attacked on the other side, though, and such attacks are organized in the form of a gate camp. The gate camp has frigate ships that can target you really fast, to warp scramble you and keep you there, and larger DPS ships that are positioned at optimal weapon range, so their hits do maximum damage to you. They also have scouts in adjacent systems to let them know that you're coming, give plenty of warning.

So, what can you do to maximize your survival chances?

- Ask a friend or use an alt to scout the route ahead, looking for ships as described above loitering at gates.

- Don't put too much valuable cargo in your ship. Typically, industrial / transport ships can be taken out before Concord arrives by a few Destroyers or a single battlecruiser, and so for the suicide squad, it'll cost them in the vicinity of 8-10 million to replace their ships once Concord gets them. So don't put more than that in your cargo; don't make it profitable for them to shoot you. Larger ships (freighters), or tougher ships (cruisers, battleships) require a bit more firepower to take out, so you can carry more valuable cargo, but still the equation applies. You can use a tool such as EFT (Eve Fitting Tool) to see how many hitpoints your ship has, and what combinations of ships do enough DPS to take it out within 10 seconds or so.

- Use all available slots on your ship for maximizing your defenses. Armor resistances, shield resistances, shield extenders, as much as you can fit.

- Use the most agile ship that you can. An "attack" frigate doesn't have much in the way of defenses, and it's pretty dangerous cause they can pop you real easily, but the ship can go from 0 to "bye suckers" in less than 2 seconds, which means you may be able to get away before they can do anything. The only thing is, the cargo is small, and (more importantly) they can abandon their camp and follow you and try to hunt you, and if they do that it's likely they'll get you.

THIS. Recently was told that the "D" button was my friend in regard to manual jumps, and it's true. Highlight the yellow target (gate usually) in your overview and hit D on the keyboard and off you go. Gets you there faster and safer (usually) but it means you have to stay on top of the journey rather than hitting autopilot and running off to make a sandwich. That 15k crossing from dropping out of warp to the destination might not sound like much, but sometimes it can be.