EVE New Citizens Q&A

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That said, a lot of good advice has been given by posters above. Try different tactics, find out what works for you and your corporation.

But whatever way you choose OP, good luck and fly safe!

First - been there done that. In the first few months of EVE ended up in a number of wars in a smallish indie oriented corp.

There are a number of things which you are going to need to survive and it's important that you get them, some have been mentioned some have not.


1) Leadership & Goals. About the worst thing that can happen to an indie corp in a situation like yours is the "every man to himself" situation. I'm surprised that this has not yet been brought up but it's actually not something uncommon for young indie corps to fall apart under continual wardecs without them. Given that you guys are still around after multiple wardecs and significant losses, I take it that you have some coherence to keep going.

2) Intel - Mara was spot on with this. You need to know who you are fighting. What are their assets, how are they working, how big their fleets, where are they going what are their habits, their bases, who are their enemies and perhaps most important of all why did they consider you a target in the first place. There are many ways to collect intel but I cannot put enough emphasis on how important this is. Once you know your enemy you will know what your real options are. Make sure to keep an updated list of enemy pilots!

3) Know your friends. Friends in EVE may be fickle, but they can be essential, both as sources of intel and at times as surprising resource in other ways to. Prepare for war, make friends (but be careful - trust no one). Wardecs are kinda nice because they help to see who will really stand with you guys.

Which leads to...

The Plan.

You need to plan for contingencies and wardecs is one of the bigger one which little industrial corps need to deal with.

The posters above have identified the two viable courses of action:

1) Avoid the war
2) Fight the war

There are a few strategies to this, which will depend on the skills, dedication and cohesion of your pilots.

Avoiding wardecs:

Stay docked up. Contrary to what some say this is actually very effective at stopping wardecs. There are two main problems though - morale will go down the gutter (you will lose members). Additionally it does nothing to stop future wardecs. If this is the only option take it, but it's a crappy option.

Drop corp. The oldest trick in the game. Depending on your operations this may be more or less complex. If you have no anchored assets in space, limited assets in space and few trade connections/partners this could be simple. If you need to take down poses, re-build PI gantries, move millions of m3 of junk from existing corp offices and re-negotiate a set of alliances this can be a major PITA.

Fly differently Stop being predictable. Disperse out, explore, go into a wormhole (you don't need nearly as many skills for this as people seem to think) head out to lowsec for a while (it's probably not worse than highsec during these wardecs, and you will learn a lot more in lowsec) - whatever. Sometimes avoiding wardecs is as simple as moving 10 jumps to somewhere else, while at other times you will be hunted to the end of the universe and back (I enjoy it when people come hunt me... but hey that's just me). This can also be tough and you will probably still lost pilots.


Alternatively - you fight.

To do this you need to pick a general strategy, and try to fight. Get friends involved if you can - a couple of PVP pilots made all the difference in one of our earlier wars not because they could fight off the attackers but because they gave the rest of us a few tips as to how not completely fail and led us into some fights. We didn't win much but we learned. (This is how bears start to grow baby teeth).

Mercs - my experience with mercs is, contrary to that of some of the other posters, overwhelmingly positive. But you need to know your mercs, I've only ever hired out people whom I've known from long before the wars started and in addition to that we paid for results - i.e. a relatively small up front fee to get things going but prize money for enemy ships destroyed. Just make sure you agree ahead of time how much you are willing to spend, some folks can be surprisingly diligent in killing other pilots. It's also a great bonus if you can get some pilots to fly with the mercs to learn and help (not everyone will allow this - as always ask nicely).

What's really important though is that you deny the griefers what they want - i.e. limit the number of kills they get and make sure it's no fun for them. Like that they will move on to other targets. I would not advise to pay ransoms... bad idea generally.

Ideally find a way to have fun from this - if you can't you will fall apart, because wardecs will happen again.

Do indy characters really need to leave station?

To me it comes down to the whole oppertunity cost of "mining"

Although the traditional way of gathering resources exists, as of current it's really not the best way to go about it.
Rat in an afktar or run lvl 4's a bit, isk => minerals => (stuff)

don't fly expensive ships under a war dec.
don't do pve under a war dec unless you go to an out of the way place.
i prefered (when i lived in high sec) doing exploration during war decs esp finding wh's or relic/data. I went on trips to low and day tripped in wormholes.
sometimes i would get involved in fighting back and that was good. You need neutral scouts to check where they are and how many and then let a bait tanked ship fall into their trap and then spring your trap.
If they are present in numbers just stay docked or cloaked until they go.

Do NOT pay ransoms to make them leave.
Do NOT give them expensive kills.
You will just get more sharks if you put blood like that in the water.

If they get no nice kills and no ransom they will move onto greener pastures.
Also they won't tell their friends to dec you next week.

I live in null now and my alliance is fighting xxdeath + pets (the whole of geminate) they outnumber us 10 to 1 and drop more caps / BS onto tower fights than we can get people in fleet. (often 3 or 4 to 1) we enjoy the fights and usually win. It is doable to fight larger numbers but it needs experiance.
I actually ended up in null because of a wardec. I was frustrated no one would fight and so i got my scout alt to join a pvp training corp. That scout is this char and is now my main.
I couldn't go back to being a carebear now even though i have an indy alt that funds my pvp.

Good luck and mot of all find a way to have fun even in a war dec.
If you have fun even if you kill nothing then you have already won.

Wait, you live 100% of the time in null, and are worried about hisec wardecs?! You're kinda going about things backwards here, boss ... I mean, nullsec >>>>> hisec...

Somehow this just kept posting empty posts, I give up not rewriting it again.

There's your problem, and that's why they keep coming back. It's like you're putting out a huge saucer of milk for the stray cats in the neighborhood. They are getting what they want, so they are going to keep coming back. Use alts for hauling or mining.

Starve the cats, and they'll go away. War dec's are not free.

I am really fatigued (truly) at these constant r-tard posts like the OP's who without any real understanding on the responsibility of forming a corporation in the first place, fail to acknowledge their duty as corp leadership to protect their members...

That means if you aren't going to field your own PVP toons, then at least teach your guys how to avoid dying to wardeccers, which actually isn't that hard to do...

Then there are mercs, which any Indy CEO with half a F#()$ing brain can hire to deal with the aggressors and shut down the decs...

Failing that, you can always have 10 similar-named corps and just rotate players through them to shed wardecs, because the mechanic is broken and allows ducking by dropping corp. i.e. If 'MyCorp' is decced, just have all your guys jump into 'MyCorp2'. If 'MyCorp2' gets decced, move to 'MyCorp3'...

etc

etc

etc

In short...

If you can't learn how to protect your corp and your members, you shouldn't be running a corp in the first place, and rightly so ransomed and blasted from the earth..er...EvE landscape.

That is all.

F