EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm only on my 2nd day playing EVE, but ive already subbed for a month via CC as i'm pretty impressed with it so far.

I played for a couple of months back in 07, didnt stick with it due to ( i think ) playing solo.

Anyway, i figured id give it another go so here i am.

Story so far? I did the combat tutorial, followed by the advanced combat tutorial which i just finished up so had 3/4 ships in my hangar and 1.5m isks which is ok for free i guess. Anyway after finishing it up i decided to go into the astroid belts and see if anyone wanted to fight, they didnt.
I picked a fight anyway in my new shiney thrasher i was just given by the tutorial agent.

Turns out shooting people is bad

Got a warning flash up when i was orbiting at 500m and i activated my web on this guy, said i was commiting a criminal act, ok fair enough i thought considering i was about to violence this guys ship for no reason. So, web on, grouped gatling guns on and quickly removing this strangers shield, then armour and probably 60% of his hull strength when all my own shields, armour and hull suddenly went red and i promptly found myself in my pod with some 15min countdown along with a lot of angry ( yet really quite amusing ) shouting and name calling in the local channel lol

Also recieved a security status hit, so now im at -.14 whatever that means.

WTF?!

I thought EVE was all about PVP?

After reading these forums for the last hour ive since discovered being a bad person in any space from .5 upwards is punishable by the super op gods of carebear.

My questions are, i presume doing bad things in .4 and below space is ok and wont be met with aforementioned demi gods of space?

What about the systems that have a negative sec status? the ones such a -.3 or -6 ect, what is the difference between those and the systems upto .4?

Lastly, this time round playing EVE i want to play with other people like me, by that i mean people who like fighting other players instead of fighting NPC's, having a reason to or not. After reading the forums ive discovered such places are called coporations, but on looking into the recruitement section, it seems i'm no use to anybody until i get at least 10 million skill points, which i would guess is going to take a few months

So basically, is my next step just a matter of finding something to pass the time while my skills train up to an acceptable level to be deemed usefull to corps?

The thing is, i dont fancy shooting NPC's for a few months, but then again, the 1.5m isks i had is now down to 600k isks after replacing my shiney ( now dead ) thrasher and guns, so fighting people all the time isnt a financially possible without earning it elsewhere, namely shooting NPC's. Catch 22.

Is their any corps out there that take new players with less than 10m SP? I dont want hand holding, i would welcome some guidence from experienced players with regards to ships and fittings along with isk making possibilites to fund any PVP that im involved with ect.

Thanks for any advice

Rox

EVE is a competitive sandbox. There's PVP in damn near everything that goes on, but not always randomly run-up-shoot-random-person PVP.


You started out in high security space. You cannot shoot randoms without getting CONCORDed unless you have kill rights on them for some reason, or you're in a corporation war against them.

In lowsec, CONCORD doesn't exist, but sentry guns are around gates/stations. These can be tanked, but its' hard and not really doable in a small ship, but there's plenty of combat away from these areas.

In nullsec (security status <= 0), there are no protections, no limits aside from what players create for themselves.



This is true for many corps, but certainly not all. It's not that you're useless until you have 10M SP..It's that they don't want to teach people very basic game mechanics. You don't need SP to be useful, though - There are plenty of corps around that accept newer players, and a few that exist primarily to teach newbies.

There are a few good ways to jump into cheap PVP. The first is faction warfare - you can either sign up with one faction's militia directly or join a corp involved in it. Any ships in opposing factions' militias are now fair game anywhere, even in hisec (though if you enter their hisec you will be chased by the faction navy). No CONCORD, no sentry fire to deal with. It's like a corporation war. My own corp is involved in this with the Minmatar side.

If you join the militia (the NPC corp for faction warfare), things will be rather disorganized and there won't be a lot of trust due to the wide presence of spies. For more organized work you'd want to get into one of the faction warfare corps. I'd personally recommend this.

there's also Red vs Blue - two alliances in a permanent war in hisec that pretty much just exists as an easy way to shoot at things.




You are correct that fighting people all the time isn't really financially possible. PVP is not a moneymaker. There's a fair few ways to make decent money, though, and things like rifters and thrashers are pretty damn cheap.

Thanks for the replys guys, very helpfull and encouraging!

I think im going to have to bite the NPC bullet to earn some isks until i have enough to cover the losses i'll no doubt rack up.

Regarding fighting in low and null sec ( as that comes with zero penalties excluding a countdown and gate guns ) are there many fights to be had for the smaller ships?
Obviously im only going to be able to fly frig/dest/cruiser for the foreseable future so would i have a fighting chance or will i just be free kills to more experienced players?

Good attitude for PVP. :)

What may have not been mentioned is to try to force others into PvP (even in high sec carebear land), or just tell them you going to zap them, is by declaring a war on a corporation.
Then you can (try) to kill anyone in the war declared corp without any penalties, except getting shot back, of course. :)

You need a bit of money tough and a corporation (which you can set up your self) to do so.



Good luck and don't forget to have fun.


Ugh, edit 2 forgot the link: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/War_Declaration

Shattered Crystal are indeed awesome. PLEX is fastest, but ISK doesn't buy skill or skillpoints, take care :P

Honestly if you're willing and able to get around in low-sec, even belt rats will give a nice chunk of isk for new frigates n cruisers. And you can get lucky kills/anomalies for nice items too.

Yeah i'll be sticking to rifters and thrashers for a good few weeks while i get the hang of everything.

But its not that i'd find making isk boring, i just dont relish the thought of missions via agents as i think i'd lose interest incredibly quickly, that said i am open to other suggestions as to making isk.

I dont intend to spend much real money on EVE, but being able to earn enough isks each month to buy my own PLEX from the market is a long way off, at least this way i can have some fun, learn from my losses and hopefully come away the victor before now and again while my skills tick away in the background.

Thinking out loud here, i'm presuming purchasing ships and fittings out in low/null is not as cheap nor easy as it is in high, so would my best bet be to have my med clone in or near jita to account for the innevitable loss of my pod, just to make it easier to re buy a ship, fit it out and head back into low null? Or does that sound too much hassle and i'd be better off buying as many rifters and fittings as possible, moving them to a high sec system that borders low?

Only asking as im not familiar with the sytems and regions within EVE yet so not sure how easy/hard it is to get into low/null.

Sorry for all the questions but your answers are really helpfull!

Rox

PVP in highsec where war declarations aren't involved largely consists doing things that enable other people to shoot at you without being exploded by concord. Once that person has shot at you then you're allowed to shoot back and destroy their ship. That pretty much means you find containers belonging to people and steal from them (container means literally any type of thing that contains items, it can be a cargo container, a wreck or a secure container). When you steal from someone you will get an Aggression Countdown which will allow that person and anyone in his corporation (but not alliance, and not other members of an NPC corporation either) to shoot at your spaceship without consequence for the next 15 minutes. As soon as they shoot you, you can shoot back and destroy their ship.

Here are some other points about aggression countdowns:

- Using any kind of attack module gives both the target and the aggressor an aggression countdown against eachother every time the module cycles, this means that as long as you are shooting or warp disrupting someone you will remain able to continue attacking them indefinitely.
- Corp and alliance aggression timers are handled seperately from individual timers. When someone shoots you because you stole something that belongs to their corp it gives you a NEW timer against that individual and the origional timer against the corporation will continue to count down seperately. So if someone shoots you 10 minutes after you stole from his corp 5 minutes later you will still be able to shoot at him and he will be able to shoot at you but the other members of his corporation will not be able to attack you without being destroyed by concord.
- Remote assistance conveys aggression. If you remotely assist someone with a shield transporter, remote armor repairer or similar module you will gain 15 minute aggression countdowns from every person they had an aggression timer from or are at war with.

Alternatively go to nullsec or declare war on people or something. Or join RVB if you want to play space paintball.

You should find a corp to hang with though, that would help you alot, lots of PVP corps will accept new people and everyone is always eager to blood their newbies.

Somebody in local suggested heading to Amamake for a fight so im on my way up there now. I dont expect to win any fights i might find, but im sure going have fun getting killed and hopefully learn something from it so i get that little bit better each time i do

Thanks for all the suggestions folks!

Rox

Hope so Phantom!

My venture into Amamake ended as expected, but brought with it a few suprises too.

First of all, i learned from it - always look up a pilot before piling in. 2 day old Vs 2005 pilot was never going to end well.
But afterwards a convo as struck up in local between about 6 of us, many giving advice which is welcome and 2 of them even said they admired my man danglies for coming into low sec at 2 days old and having a good attitude to losing. So good infact that i recieved 2 lots of 10million isks from 2 other players, one of them being the 2005 player in the Buzzard that i tried shooting!

Dispelled the generalised myth i got from the forums that low sec players were all asshats, they all seemed friendly enough to me.

So, another Thrasher down but 20m isks up! Result!

Back in a rifter this time and heading back out that general direction to see what i learn next

I am pretty sure that with an attitude like this, you will soon end up in an appropriate corp, skillpoints or not...