EVE New Citizens Q&A

Long story short - I'm on my third attempt trying to get into EVE. Finally making some progress due to mainly thinking about things differently and finally understanding some of the lingo and gameplay.

I've joined RvB, emptied my wallet buying large amounts of frigates and some destroyers, researched fittings and come up with a nice variety of versions I'm planning on getting blown up with.

This is my first real taste of PvP and things are going along nicely (sure beats mining!).
However, due to me really wanting to learn how to solo PvP (reasons for it include learning how to hunt down targets with dscan and learning regular hotspots in our systems etc) I'm finding it hard to engage targets alone.
So, I need to figure out some ways of baiting or trying to set up scenarios where I might stand a better chance before the cavalry arrives.

Thus, I come here to seek advice.

I'm at a stage now where I can zip around the systems and scan down isolated targets that I can pew pew on (destroyer, battleship, frigate - doesn't matter, I just want to fight something that isn't part of a swarm and isn't a pre-arranged 1v1).
What I'm struggling with isn't so much dictating distances during a fight, it's setting the fight up on more even "ground" or where I am at the advantage and then maintaining it - not necessarily kiting.

To explain, here's my last fight:
* I go to a safe spot nearby a gate (some 200+km away).
* I spot a lone target some distance away at what I assume is his safe spot.
* I know there are others nearby somewhere in the system (RvB systems always have enemies around), so I decide that I'll go for it and hopefully get a decent fight before I get blown up.
* I start my afterburner and burn about 25-ish degrees away from him into open space as he burns straight towards me.
* I hit orbit as soon as I can lock him.
* We start to fight and it's going surprisingly well as I'm not dead within a few seconds.
* Scramble and web from both sides.
* I overheat my guns at a point where I think I can kill him before I burn out.
* That's when 4 of his friends show up and all that's left to do is align and get ready to warp out.

I'm assuming they were in the same fleet which allowed his friends to warp to him?
Is there something I can do to perhaps avoid this or at least let me have the upper hand in this situation?
Can I somehow prevent/delay his buddies from warping to him?

My worry is that the answers will be "nope, you have to fight as a small gang, always" or "get a kiting ship, scrub".
I happen to like the ships I fly and would like to make the most of them (since I can't afford to by anymore anyway).

Thanks for the replies

Go to Nomaa, solo at your hearts desire.


Nomaa is RvB's solo fight system and doing fleets there is against their rules.

I thought about FW, perhaps that is the next step once I've died in all my stuff.

Sounds good, thank you.

Join FW.
Goto FW.
Find a system with only a couple of people in and start running one of the timed sites.
People looking to solo will see your ship inside and come and fight.
Sometimes they have friends but you should be able to see them coming due to only 1-2 others in local

I had quite a lot of fun solo fights in RvB. Last I knew they had a special system (Nomaa) for solo fights. They aren't really arranged fights...you just go to that system and look for targets. There was also a chat channel for solo pvp. Ask about it in corp chat and someone can surely tell you what it is.

From what I can tell FW seems to be a valid next step.
For now though, I enjoy the focus that RvB offers me, although I think my timezone is part of the problem in finding enough fights.

I had heard about how EvE was a lot of waiting around for a few intense and very quick fights. This is pretty much what I've seen so far.
The actual fights are fun, things go boom and it's a nice "culmination" of a lot of planning and faffing about with EFT etc. Regardless of if it's my ship or my enemys ship that goes pop.
But it's very short and feels a little one dimensional (aka, a basic frigate seems to offer a fairly limited set of interactions per minute at the level of play and understanding I am at).

That tells me that I likely need to escalate things a little bit. It also makes me wonder if the trade-off in flying with a fleet (less adrenaline fueled hunting and more point and click at coloured tabs) is worth it for a chance to enjoy some longer engagements and potentially more targets.

What would be an experienced players view of fleet PvP vs solo PvP?
Pros and cons?
How should my thinking change?

As someone who tried some solo PvP (Usually died horribly), does a lot of small / medium sized fleet PvP and has been part of huge fleets in the past.

My personal opinion is that fun and experience you gain from PvP decreases with the size of the fleet.

When you go in solo, you learn from every step you take, every move you make.
When in small / medium fleets, you still learn, you still have your identity and your own personal skills and judgement still matters.
When you are in the huge fleets, you are just another +1 person in the fleet (given you don't do special roles like FC, Anchor, scout, etc). You will hardly learn a thing other then listen to FC and press the keys he asks you to press.


Pros and cons:


SOLO:

Pro: It's fun. No bitching. No waiting on others. No neckbeard ordering you around.
Cons: You will lose a lot at first. Target selection. Harder to learn when you don't have others around.

SMALL / MEDIUM FLEETS:

Pro: Friendship. Bit more safety due to numbers. You can take on stuff you can't take on solo and wouldn't fight you if you were in a large fleet. Learning from others how to PvP (for instance: Learn how a FC leads a fleet and eventually you can try it yourself).
Cons: You have to roll with the fleet.

BIG FLEETS:

Pro: You are safe (safety through numbers), look at fish, wildebeests and zebras...they all do the same, be on the bottom of the food chain and thus group together and hope your neighbour is the next target of the predators.
Cons: Waiting...waiting...waiting. The bigger the fleet, the longer it takes before it's ready to go out. Personal quality doesn't matter, you're just a +1 person (quantity over quality)



EDIT:

If you want a change of starship violence without any hassle of joining another corp or what so ever. Take a look at the public roams of EVE:

1. RvB Ganked - Hosts roams on Saturday evening (around 20:00 / 21:00 EVE time). Fun, semi big roams hosted by Mangala Solaris or guest FCs.

More info:

Channel = RvB Ganked
Website = Here

2. Spectre Fleet - Hosts fleets through out the week at random or more scheduled.

More info:

Channel = Spectre Fleet
Website = Here

3. Redemption Road Roams - Started out as a host for Sunday evening roams but now is expanding with regular Aussie timezone roams on Saturdays, quick roams on Wednesday and supporting other peoples roams if they request it.

More info:

Channel = Redemption Road
Website = Here

There are a few small groups and individuals doing this, but most wardeccers by far are larger groups who operate by having many concurrent wars and focusing on farming kills in trade hubs and the routes between them. I recently experimented a bit with wardeccing moderate sized (20-50) PVE corps and taking them on solo.

Using my watch list, locator agents, and an inconspicuous alt, I was able to scout out war targets who were off on their own away from the fleet and hunt them down with a T1 frigate. I got lots of kills this way, and found it a bit more interesting than finding random fights in low or null, in the sense that you are challenging yourself to defeat an entire corporation, creating a story that goes beyond each individual fight.

You have to be okay with murdering the occasional mining barge though, it's not all PvP fits ready to go.