EVE New Citizens Q&A

1. While I can't recommend a fit, stabs are the sin against the holy ghost for most ships, but as you point out, for ships that aren't intended to fight they can be situationally useful. Personally, after a long time being horrified at the idea of using stabs I've started using them on my trade alts Deep Space Transports.

Also bear in mind that Blockade Runners, the cloaky transport have quite limited space so ...

Rather than critique that fit, others will be more competant to advise you, I'd look at it a different way : can you get a corp mate to scout you in and out or is it possible to buy the ships you need nearby and just run the guns, modules and ammo in using a fast aligning frigate or interceptor / stealth bomber / covert ops?

2. Correct, sort of. There will be a player threat in .02 or .04 but it will vary depending on whether you are off in a dead end pocket, on a well-travelled route, near FW, near an entry system, near a well-known hotspot like Tama, Amamake, etc.

Dotlan and killboard research in addition to just living in an area will be your best guide to the local threat level.

3. In the Item Hangar, click on the stack, shift + drag to one side and you will get a dialog box that lets you spilt the stack.

4. Probably just randomness, I see all sorts of stuff in low sec though I'm not familiar with the FW zones. Perhaps someone else can chime in on this.

5. No idea. I have Station Environment on, maybe try clearing your cache, that seems to fix odd graphics and other glitches. Esc > Reset Tab > Clear All Cache Files.

HTH

There's two station environments, the hanger and CQ. That graphics option toggles both of them on or off. Just use the massive blue button on the station panel when the options it turned back on.

Other guys answered most of your questions so I will kinda jump in just to add my 2 cents.

1) Either base yourself of of a high sec system and deal with regular jumps high sec - low sec, or yeah - transport the stuff.

I regularly use high-low sec entries in Amarr-Minmatar militia and they don't seem so bad. Gate camps happen, but you might want to check out if the risk is manageable for you. Getting a frig thru a gate isn't really that much of a deal. I would probably just find a corp that would help me with the hauling for sake of my eternal loyalty :P

As to transporting your stuff - I wonder if people could comment on mwd and cloak usage. I like this trick personally however got only very limited verification (no gate camps so far thankfully). You align to your target and rapidly press MWD once and cloak. Your ship will be invisible while maintaining MWD bonus speed. After the MWD cycle comes to an end - you kill the cloak and have an insta warp to the target you're aligned to.

You basically use the fact that speed increase from mwd - speed decrease from using cloak = warp entry speed :D After you decloak having just killed your MWD you have optimal conditions to gtfo

2) gate guns tend to be stronger when the system has higher sec, so it might help you in theory. In practice I think people come prepared and tank the gate guns regardless.

4) look for plexes busied by the defending militia. Why? Because they care for their homes. FW control shifts in regular way - the various sides gain uper hand depending on situation. Currently amarr militia is defending. Systems no one cared about are already taken by minmatars. Active amarr and minmatar players won't bother to go there. They are used for farming by beginners (I used to pvp sometimes at that stage, but yeah - running was a much better option back then). Fights happen in systems still occupied by Amarr - they want to keep them at low contested so stay at their plexes, and minmatars want to earn some cash plexing / take the system so they will also be more willing to fight.

"When I'm flying alone" - be prepared to being blobed ;-)

If I was to give you an advice - look for a corp with a specific low sec activity and training program. Joining an FW faction corp would be ideal in my opinion but this is how I started and can hardly imagine ferrying better otherwise.

I didn't mean scouting - a good low sec corp should provide you with a cheap Jump Freighter transport. People use JFs to transport stuff regularly and should be willing to help a corpie out for a small fee. I wouldn't expect them to schedule just for you but accepting a relatively small Jita contract once a week should be ok.

Regarding hauling in corp, check your mail .

Also, if you do decide to do it yourself, don't forget to use and make bookmarks.

Instant Undock bookmark: You use this immediately after undocking your hauler. The bookmark is made in a location straight in line with where you exit a station at at least 150km away (minimum distance required to warp to an object). I recommend well over 150km though (think 500 +), I've gotten killed at one of my undock BMs because someone else had one very close to mine and I wasn't paying attention.

This bookmark is extremely useful for avoiding gankers, I nearly had a heart attack seeing how many people started locking onto my first hauler on the Rens undock last month; when you're in station, have your people and places window open and have the bookmark visible.
Click the undock button, then, while the game is loading, hover your mouse over the instant undock bookmark and the second the game loads, you right click the BM and hit warp to 0. This will put you into warp almost instantly (hence the term Insta-undock), and take you far enough away (if you set up the BM properly) that potential gankers won't be able to catch you before you warp off.

Haulers align painfully slowly when fit for cargo capacity, so swerving around like a drunken manatee on the undock trying to align to a gate with millions of ISK worth of stuff in your hold is a sure fire way to get killed.

To make this BM, fit a small frigate with a MWD, undock, and then keep going straight out with the MWD turned on. The problem is though, you never come out perfectly straight, there is always an angle. I've struggled setting up effective instaundocks on most stations, except the vertical Amarrian stations since you come out pointing straight down. Those are easy since you can just use the tactical overlay to "point" your ship in the same direction as the glowing white line.

If anyone has some effective ways of making insta undocks on all those other silly stations, I'd be grateful .

Yeah, what Cara said. I perhaps didn't explain it as clearly as I could have.

That thirty seconds of invulnerability though! I did not know that. And here I was panicking on the undock every time I had to haul my stuff around .

Consider something like this and learning the MWD-Cloak trick, which you can find explained on youtube. Practice in HS. (fill the empty slots as appropriate, if you downgrade RCUs you may need more). Warp core stabs are fine for hauling. Their penalty is reduced scanres which impacts your locktimes:
[Bestower, MWD]

Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
[Empty Low slot]
[Empty Low slot]
[Empty Low slot]

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
[Empty Med slot]
[Empty Med slot]

Improved Cloaking Device II
[Empty High slot]

[Empty Rig slot]
[Empty Rig slot]
[Empty Rig slot]