EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey guys, I've been an on and off again player since 2009 but I never really got into Eve as much as I would have liked. It's easy to say that it's a time thing, or a skill ceiling thing, but mostly it's just been my own motivation. I have about 8m skill points on this character that are spread around fairly evenly, but mostly in spaceship command and the general skills like Engineering etc at V. I also have an alt that has about 3m skill points that went right into mining and industry. In the past I first tried mission running to raise ISK which worked pretty well, then with my alt I wanted to try mining into an industrial which quickly proved boring.

tl;dr: I have two characters with enough skill points to be able to branch out pretty quickly.

The point of this post, is that I really want to experience what Eve has to offer in terms of PvP and emergent gameplay, I finally have the motivation to do so. I'm sort of at a loss as to where to start though.

I have a tempest that's tanked to to L4 missions, several smaller frigates and destroyers, a republic firetail I can sell for income to do something else, and about 50m in ISK.

I have 0 pvp experience, I'm a massive carebear. Should I just fit a rifter and go to low sec? I understand basic PvP mechanics from reading up on the forums and messing with fittings, but that's a poor excuse for real experience out in space. I have some experience with scanning and can find wormholes easily, should I rat in there?

Can I start faction warfare where I'm at now? Or would it be better to build myself up more? Would that be a good place to learn to PvP or would it just be better to join a corp and go from there?

I have enough of a handle on things that I don't think I need to go to Eve University, but I'm not quite sure how to go about joining a corp anymore. I read that using in game ads is a bad idea because those corps get war decs a lot, would the official forms be a good idea? Any recommendations for a good learning environment in small gang pvp?

More important tl;dr:

1. I'm worried I don't have enough capital to try to do anything PvP wise. If I lose anything I don't know how to make it back. I feel like losing my tempest would be a crippling blow, then I would have to scrape my way up from nothing.

2. Can I do faction warfare at the point I'm at and make more money than running L4 missions (I'm extremely slowgoing at L4 since drone AI has been changed and I keep losing all my drones)? Is faction warfare pvp? Or is it just another way to be a carebear?

3. Current plan is to get enough ISK through mission running and mining to get a Maelstrom and fit it out so I can do L4's faster. For my alt just run a salvage ship in my mission pockets. This seems like a bad plan to me. I'm open to suggestions on training direction and mostly what to do with my alt. What do people do with alts to make things more efficent?

A lot of the PVP will be "you lose", so I too recommend joining a corp, either a FW corp that accepts newbies, or a regular (non-FW) PVP-oriented corp, so that when you lose they can at least explain why and how to improve.

As far as money, as said, fly cheap ships (frigates, maybe the odd cruiser once you get some PVP experience). If you really want to feel like you're set for a long time, buy a PLEX with $20 (maybe less, I think they still have the holidays discounts going), go to Jita, claim the PLEX when inside the Jita station, and then sell it on the market for a cool 1 Billion ISK. So you won't have to worry about "income" for a long time, expecially if you only fly 400k frigates. Well, maybe after you lose 2,000 frigates in PVP, but that should take a while.

If you want to alternate between PVP activities and making some money from agents and missions, I would recommend installing some Jump Clones. Any station with medical services provides them now, and they don't require standings anymore. So you can install a jump clone at your missions hub (where your Tempest is), and then go PVP in lowsec or null or wormhole space (wherever your corp is), then teleport to your clone whenever you want, and teleport back to PVP. The only thing is, if your corp gets into wars (most PVP corps will), the war won't stop just cause you feel like taking a break for some PVE. Which is why it's better to just buy/sell the PLEX and have the billion isk in the wallet, so you don't feel the need to mission anymore.

Alts. To me, playing EVE with 2 accounts at the same time feels like work, not a game. So my alts are just partially-trained trading, hauling, and cyno alts. You COULD train one character for full PVP, and the other for full PVE, so that, even with wars, you can simply log off and switch to the other and be left alone. Or you could pause your second account for a while, and use the money you'd otherwise spend on subscription to get yourself a couple PLEX as reserve cash for the PVP guy.

Absolutely. And as for wardecs, if a corp is based in lowsec or null, those are basically irrelevant. Wardeccers these days, with the exception of a small few mercenary corps who still take themselves seriously and professionally, mostly just hang around the undocks of the major trade hubs to blow up easy targets.

In low, null, and WH space, it's a given that everyone not "blue" to you will try to kill you, so your first priority is to learn basic survival skills such as how to travel around using tacticals, safe spots, insta-docks and insta-undocks, etc. JonnyPew's video's are excellent for learning this stuff. Here's his insta-undock video:

https://youtu.be/AkBa57JL3Nc

And here's one about avoiding drag bubbles in nullsec:

https://youtu.be/SRI4jiMp10I

Many of his videos might be of interest to you as he also addresses making isk in low and null sec along with pvp and basics like the stuff I mentioned above:

https://www.youtube.com/user/JonnyPew

Anyway, good luck in anything you decide to do!