EVE New Citizens Q&A

I haven't played actively since something like 2008, and at this point I don't really remember the reasons I quit, but this pas weekend I found myself curious to come see what's going on in Eve. Perhaps it was the e-mail from CCP every now and then that kept me at least thinking about it.

Anyway, I had 3-4 accounts back then for various things, and was able to recover passwords and all that for all of them. I've even reactivated a couple. I spent most of my early time learning and messing around with mission running in hi-sec. I dabbled in research, industry and trading a bit with a hi-sec corp full of great guys that helped me out quite a lot. Later, I spent some time in nullsec with a couple of different characters, and at least got a small taste of the fun of PvP (mostly as a tackling 'ceptor pilot, or covert ops - I had that old way of scanning things down pretty well figured out, although I've long since forgotten how it worked).

My play time is limited now compared to back then, but I am hopeful that even with just a few hours a week to play I can find some enjoyment in the game. The exploration stuff looks pretty interesting to me, so I am currently polishing off some skills to work in that direction, as well as trying to read up on all of the many changes.

Most my ships seem to have changed (slots have been moved around it seems), so I've been too afraid to attempt a level 4 missions because I don't really know what the hell I'm doing anymore, and I have no idea if those missions are as easy as they used to be (I used to run them in a cruise missile or torpedo Raven, sometimes with an alt in a rail-boat to add dps). I have no clue if my old ship fittings are still good, or would be laughed at!

Oh, I have around 38M skill points and can fly most anything up to battleship sized, excluding some of the more specialized ships of my era, and of course not all this new T3 business.

So, I'll start with the following questions:

What's the least risky way for me to start getting a feel for combat again, and work my way back up to being at least not complete crap at PvE.

Are there 'fun' things to do that I could do with perhaps only 30-60 minutes to play in a given sitting? Or is it better to be able to devote a longer stretch of time (I have children now, so the potential for interruptions is very high).

Lowsec PvP meta is small ship focused and a good place to start if you want to ease into combat.

So either join FW, or just go as a neutral and use the ship limits of the complexes to control the types of ships you will come up against.

The cheapest would be to fit a bunch of T1 frigates for kiting (eg. Tristan) and focus on novice plexes and just go have fun losing them.

By kit g you can also join in other fights as s third party and work on manual piloting, which opens up more opportunities on gates, etc.

This one is easy to answer, fly cheap ships.

If you are just looking to PvE for now I'd start off with missions. It easy enough to work your way up in difficult as you regain familiarity. However if you like PvP I'd only use the missions to get comfortable with the game again. Once you feel somewhat familiar then you'll probably want to move on to something in low / null sec.

Someone mentioned the Sisters of Eve epic arc, and that's a great starting point, but I'd also check out the other epic arcs.

Epic arcs, briefly, are new chains of (somewhat) more interesting missions, with (somewhat) branching storylines and decent rewards at the end, including big standings boosts. The other big difference is that the missions never expire (great for when you only have a few hours a few times a week) but you can only run each arc once every three months.

The SoE arc starts off at about the difficulty level of a level 1 mission, but gets as hard as level 2 missions by the end. The pirate epic arcs are designed to be run in frigate sized ships, but are more challenging than usual frigate-sized missions. Also, they take you out to null-sec, which is fun. You said you can fly interceptors. That's perfect, because interceptors are now immune to warp bubbles, making solo trips out into nullsec much less of a Russian Roulette scenario.

As for the epic arcs for the four major factions, they're at least on par with level 4 missions in difficulty, so you should probably wait until you have your bearings back before trying them.

The daily rewards were there for a month and then removed. The upcoming Crimson harvest event is expected to drop skill boosters as a reward. I expect CCP will give us a devblog on this event since it will be new concept - you can choose sides. Also a good way to get your feet wet in PVE. Generally you will want a smaller ship for events - Gila is a good choice if you have decent missile/drone skills.

So I had some time off today and was able to play a bit. I noticed some guys in local talking about essentially making people pay them money to be able to do anything in hi sec. Apparently they had just gained a guy mining without their "permission".

If I attempt to run missions here are these guys going to be a problem?

if its CODE. then probably not, just fit an omnitank and ignore them.
if its just some mouthy edjits forward their corp name with where and when you saw them tome for ... reasons.

Yes, these particular guys were in CODE. (Gate Tax Collection Agency, I believe was their corp name).


Couple more questions:

I just discovered overloading and the skill "Thermodynamics" :\. Are there any other skills like this that I should pick up that I probably don't know about? :)

Since you're just coming back and are a bit worried about PvE and PvP I would recommend getting a Brutix fit for PvE (I have one, message me if you want it). That will be good for level 3 missions until you get the hang of things again and then get back into a battleship for level 4's. If you're not going to join a corp then do all of your missions in high sec for now. You should visit zkillboard.com and get familiar with the in-game map to see how many ships have been killed in the systems you're running missions in. Fly safe o7

So I've been reading up a bit about avoiding gate-camps in a covert ops ship, but most of what I'm reading applies to nullsec, where you have to deal with dictors, hictors, anchored bubbles and so on.

Anyone have a good link (or just time to write up something) discussing how to beat a gate-camp in low sec on the in-gate? I feel like I'm pretty well versed in the techniques for dealing with a camped out-gate (d-scan from nearby celestial, creating BMs 150km from the gate, approaching from unusual angles, etc.

Any more help is appreciated. I've definitely been having fun running around.

On a somewhat amusing note, I think that my R&D agents have been running the whole time I've been gone. I had six-figure RP totals on most of them.