EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm fairly new to EVE, I'm grabbing the jist of it with the help of my friend, yet I'm a bit lost in to what I should do. I have a few questions if you guys don't mind answering them?

1: I have a Venture, and currently it has a Miner I Lazer and a Gattling Rail I equipped, I heard that the Gattling Rail is useless on it, since I should be using drones. I've learnt Drones I and Mining Drones I, but I have no idea what drone I should be getting, nor where it actually goes onto my Venture.

2: I'm doing mining to gather some ISK, but I know later on, I'd be aiming for bounty hunting or some sort of PvP. Problem is, I have no idea how it'd work and I know I am going to lose a LOT of ships trying to learn how it all works. Until I get the hang of it all, what is an affordable yet powerful enough ship that'd get me through it all? Friend is encouraging me towards a Caracal, though I'm not so sure. I'm guessing I could use the same ship for missions too, though I'm no so sure. I have a Kestrel at the moment.

3. What are the multiple ways that are a bit riskier yet yield higher ISK gains? I want to explore into nullsec and wormholes, but I fear I am going to get shot out of the sky as soon as I leave highsec. This is probably inevitable, but I'd like to at the least get out the front door. Are there any specific modules I'd need to get? Like, warp jammers or anything?

Hope you guys don't mind answering this! Thanks in advance.

Thank you for the reply.

For ships, do you have any one that you'd recommend or to look at? Or is it just frigates as a whole?

At the beginning, missioning seems to make very little, but I'm guess that's due to them being lower level ones. They get much more profitable as time goes past, right?

Also, how profitable is bounty hunting? I genuinely love the sound of it (and I am actually hoping there is some sort of fame behind bounty hunting too)

1. go ahead and fly it. Read up while you're using it, talk to people and you're fit and ship will improve as you grow.

2. If you want to lean small gang/solo type of pvp join FW. Look for a corp that has a good ship replacement policy that gives free ships to it's members, they're out there and you'll be able to try out many different ships to see which style of fighting you like. Brawline, kiting, sniping, bait, they're all fun. Join in as many fleets as you can and learn from the FC in how he flies his fleet, who he engages and who he runs from. Learning from different FC's will give you a good pvp base to start experimenting on your own with fits and tactics. PvP costs isk for most people. Be prepared to have other isk incomes to help pay for it

3. ISK making usually falls into two catagories: trading and industrial. Trading is more lucrative, easier to get started and lower isk entry barrier but also more of a venture that can make your eyes bleed with spreadsheets and numbers numbers numbers. Indy, specifically manufacturing can also be very profitable. Not as high as trading but to counter that it is a much more varied venture including researching, building, hauling, trading, etc. I've made a fortune in these areas and use it to fund my pvp activities on my pvp alt, I've never bothered looting a wreck; all I do is get into fights!

This is based on end game or near end game scenarios. I've personally done both at high level trading and indy ventures and at my peak was earning 40b/month on the indy side and 70b/month on the trading side for comparison. PvP alt, while not as good as many in the game does have 160b in kills and 7b in losses, mostly bs and down.

Mining, while enjoyable to some, is typically considered the lowest paying in eve. It would be difficult to keep youself in pvp ships doing mining.

IMO isk making goes something like this: mining < missionins < incursions < fw grinding < WH's < manufacturing < trading (am I missing one? anyone have a different order?)

However, you seem to have a good plan forming and you're looking to have fun more than make isk as fast as you can. Play the game for what it is: to have fun whether it be mining or not.

It does indeed. I rated that on the assumption it would be for isk grinding and you would have an alt in other factions to grind fw missions or plex. As the missions and plexing only need a SB or below, the entry skill level is low compared to the isk returns. At Tier 3 if I recall correctly, you should be able to grind about 250-300m/hour and at Tier 4 ginding at 500-700m per hour. These are end game scenarios

Sorry, mind if I ask what a SB or FW is? I'm incredibly lost actually!

Steve already answered #1 adequately, so I'll focus more on 2 and 3.

2. In my opinion, the best way for newbies to get started in PvP is to hook up with a PvP corporation and fly a tackle frigate in fleets. You can fit a T1 tackler for around 2 million isk at the most basic level, so it's much less expensive than starting out in a cruiser like the Caracal. Many corps have ship replacement programs to cover these as well.

3. Probably the most lucrative career in EVE, if you have some starting capital, is station trading and scamming. There are guys who sit in Jita and never undock who have wallets in the hundreds of billions of isk. However, it takes a special kind of personality to spend all your video game time managing spreadsheets, it's not for everyone.

I get the impression that you are looking more for the next step up from highsec mining, both in terms of risk and isk. I have two recommendations. The first would be running lowsec or nullsec exploration sites. It can be fun to run around and evade pirates and the isk isn't bad. My other suggestion is ninja looting. Set yourself up in a highsec mission hub and probe down battleships running level 4 missions, then warp in and steal all their loot. A typical mission pocket can net you 20-30 million or so. Since you get a suspect flag from looting other peoples wrecks, anybody can shoot at you, and you will occasionally lose ships until you get the hang of it. At first you should keep your looting ships cheap - if you lose a 2 million isk ship per 100 million looted, that's a pretty reasonable cost of doing business.

Both of these ideas will make you pretty good isk and help you to learn skills like probing and surviving in hostile space which will help you out later on.

Thanks guys, that makes sense.

As for ninja looting, that sounds incredibly interesting, though admittedly I have absolutely no idea how to do any of that. Though I'd probably have to sit down and read about it a bit more, considering I'm guessing it's not as simple as warp in, loot and hope to not die.

But thank you for giving me an idea of everything guys, I do appreciate this.

From what i gather about ninja looting you would need a ship with combat scanner probes.

then sit on a station and wait for a target to undock.

in the scanner probe interface check the ships id and iirc set the search results of ur probes to ignore all results excapet the target.

wait for them to warp to a mission.

then start scanning the system trying to pin the ship down.

once found warp to him and steal his things.

I think thats correct but im saying this all from memory and ive never actually done it myself.

A word of warning though some people will reship to a pvp ship when u land in thier mission and start stealing from them. if they come back in a pvp ship just warp off or cloak whatever.

It can be worth having a ship scanner fitter as well. If you scan the mission runner, and find they're full of shiny modules, they're a /lot/ less likely to shoot you. After all, you might be baiting them into shooting you, thus allowing you to shoot them back. And you'd have a few minutes to swap ship. It's not an uncommon tactic, which means you have an advantage through bluffing them.

If you want to be careful, anchor a mobile depot or giant secure container in a safe spot (while in warp, create a bookmark. this is a 'safe spot' as people would have to scan you down) and stick your ill gotten gains in there, rather than 'risk' going back to a station to unload it, while suspect.

Find a busy 0.5 or 0.6 system, with nearby level 4 agents if you want to find people to loot.