EVE New Citizens Q&A

Ok, so I decided to take the plunge into PVP and while I've got skills to fly a bomber, I'm totally clueless for actual PVP. But I figure, what the hey, just jump in and see what happens. Well. I'm flying through a fairly barren (population wise) patch of lowsec and I'm about to hang it up when I come across these two rookie ships that are obviously flying together. I actually land right on top of them accidentally at an outgoing gate but my own commands had already been given to jump through. By the time I get back through, I see their names disappear from local one after the other and there's only one other gate they could go through so I chase them through that gate to only find one of them on the other side, his rookie ship is gone and he's sitting in a capsule just off the gate. I'm like wth, right? but a kill's a kill . . . so I target, scramble, a message pops up, the screen lights up and I'm in my own pod feeling a might foolish so I jump away and dock up as my top left screen fills up with all these timers. Obviously the gate guns took exception to me picking on a poor defenseless pod even though we were in lowsec. So here's my question: I hear about lowsec gate camps all the time. But how can they work when the gate guns activate and blow you away?

By the way, as foolish and dumb as I was to let myself get blown up by a gate gun, I will always remember this as the night I started winning Eve. I found prey, stalked it through a few systems and did everything I could to blow it up. I failed miserably, granted, but when my ship blew up I didn't have the same feeling as I did whenever the last time was I lost a ship, probably an exploring astero sometime last year. Back then it was grief, anger and hopelessness at losing my ship. Tonight it was a little shock, in all honesty, because I didn't expect it, but it was mostly, "Well crap, that was stupid, I won't make THAT mistake again!" So if you're a newbie reading this, whether to Eve in general or just to PVP, it's ok to lose your ship. It happens. Though do yourself a favor and don't lose it for a stupid reason like I did :-) But it's all good!

In a completely unrelated situation tonight I was trying to move ships to a new home and so on one trip back I was flying in my pod through high sec and as I come through a gate I immediately start jumping to the next gate. But before I really get underway I notice an ibis sitting on the gate I just came through and since I'm still learning what names go with what ships, I right-clicked for "show info" on it in the overview but above "show info" it had "board ship" but it was greyed out. Well at that point I had already started warping through the system but on my return trip, when I was actually in a ship, the ibis was still there! I right-clicked again and this time the "board ship" option was in white like the rest of the text. Well, I continued on my way but can anyone explain what that was about? Could I have actually boarded that ship in some way and stolen it or something? I'd never seen that before . . .

Pro-tip: A Stealth Bomber is a specialized ship that excels at applying pain on larger ship (cruiser is kind of the minimum target you are looking at).

The thing is... in exchange for its high damage a Stealth Bomber has the tanking capabilities of a wet paper bag. A normal frigate can potentially tank a Stealth Bomber (again, due to large weapons systems having terrible damage application against small ships).
This means that range, situational awareness, and choosing your targets well are your primary means of defense.


My advice is to go back to square one. Get a regular combat frigate and try your luck.

Like Solonius Rex mentioned... do not engage on stargates or stations (unless someone shoots YOU first or the target has -5.0 or lower security status (they should be blinky red on your overview)).



As for gatecamps... again, like Solonius Rex mentioned, people typically do them in tankier ships.

Now this is not to say that Frigates can't really fight on gates. If you have enough friends around you, you can "take turns" warp disrupting the target, applying some damage, warping off, then warping back in. Rinse and repeat.
It is very tricky... but it can be done.

Yeah, I was kind of aware that bombers weren't exactly all-purpose PVPers, but from my career in exploration I came to watch some of JonnyPew's youtube videos where he takes out other explorers with his own stealth bomber fit which I copied exactly (so rockets instead of torpedos, etc). I had just moved to a new section of lowsec and so was sort of doing a roam to see what kind of activity there was and to see if I could do the same (gank a fellow explorer) when I came across the rookie ships. I kind of figured that even if it wasn't really intended for general combat, if as stealth bomber can't handle a rookie ship or two then that'd be a REAL lesson learned and a hilarious kill for the rookie ships. Plus I have a decent PI industry with my main and two accompanying alts, so while I'm not exactly rolling in billions of isk, money isn't really a problem. I think I only lost 30 million isk in that bomber with its fit. That's hardly anything in the grand scheme of things.

But duly noted!

I believe that this story of yours probably is exactly why all of the PvP regulars in here tell new players not to wait to PvP.



The way that you capitalize "THAT" tells me that you understand there will be more mistakes to learn from. Again probably why we tell new players to start PvPing right away and to use cheap ships.

From a philosophical standpoint I have a very difficult time calling something a mistake that caused you to learn and grow. And really the only difference between a lot of mistakes and being "experienced" is more like the glass half empty or half full argument.

Being someone that has played this game for many years and does not have any PvP experience to speak of I can tell you that you could give me a great faction ship and full officer fit the thing and I'd probably still loose it just as quickly as you lost your bomber in this story.

The quick lesson for newbros to take away from all of this is if you are interested in PvP then start early and fly cheap.