EVE New Citizens Q&A

An AB is designed to be used always-on, for situations where you need a bit of speed to kite PVE targets with predictable behavior.

A MWD, on the other hand, will drain your capacitor fast, so it's more of an "oh ****, get out!" module. Burn towards the gate/wormhole so you can escape back through it, burn out of a bubble so you can warp away; these situations require the huge speed, and if you're not successful within a second or two, you're dead, so the capacitor drain doesn't matter.

Your ship is a probing ship. You'll be spending the majority of the time sitting, cloaked or not, with your probes out, looking at the map. Thus, you don't need speed (AB or MWD) to perform your main role of probing out sites.

Therefore, the MWD is a better choice than the AB because it offers you some PVP survivability, whereas the AB does absolutely nothing for you.

The warp drive's huge signature is a balancing effect that was added by CCP on purpose. I don't know if you realize, but giving a ship 5x speed (from MWD) gives it 5x damage reduction, because weapons and missiles can't track anything that fast. The MWD would make you invulnerable to damage while it moves you out of range, which would be too powerful for a module. So they added the huge signature penalty so your ship still gets hit by weapons at about the same rate; this way the MWD gives you the advantage of being able to get away from a situation, but doesn't also make you invulnerable while you do so.

EDIT: Warp disruptors do NOT turn off your MWD; warp scramblers do. Look at the range of a warp scrambler; 7.5 - 10km? Your MWD makes you go 2 km/s; should be easy to get out and stay out of a scram's range, no? It's a couple seconds of gamble / skill at playing the game, don't let the guy get close.

Trasch Taranogas,

I'm gonna say all of the info posted here is good, especially for more experienced players.

However advising you, a brand new player who is still learning the basics, to go into null or w-hole space is just plain wrong.


To find more exploration sites, look for high sec areas that are far from major trade and mission systems. Check star map and look for dead-end pockets and pipelines of systems with low amount of population (active players docked and also in system), low amount of jumps, low amount of ship / pod kills, low amount of NPC kills, etc..

Also be prepared to do a lot of traveling as an explorer. Set up various routes in different areas and have each route consists of 8 to 12 systems. If one route seems to be void of sites, travel to another route. Also run each route at different time zones to see when the best time is for each route. Eventually you'll know which route to go do no matter what time you log into the game.

Definitely train up your Core Fitting skills mixed in with ship support and career skills. Start with Tech 1 equipment and work your way into Tech 2 equipment. As an explorer the last thing you want is to be seen so speed, agility and cloak is your number one defense. I would not fit a MWD. It's a Powergrid / CPU hog that makes it very tough for newer players to do a good ship fit. Not to mention it inflates your signature making you much easier to lock.

Spend some time researching various topics of interest relating to your chosen career such as skills, ships, equipment and tactics. Doing google search and browsing the various Eve Online sub-forums here will help you gain lot's of good info. Definitely practice and build up experience with probing quickly, making Safe Spots and working with Directional Scanner before you attempt to explore high level areas such as Null / W-hole space.

Good luck to you, hope you have a long and rewarding career here.


DMC

One other detail, when you have the scanning window up, between where the probes are listed and the known objects in space, there are two little drop-down menus. The rightmost one is for your ignored objects, and then there is one next to it, 'filtered' maybe (I'm running from memory, not at the PC). For two hours I was flying around and could not find anything and I was getting really annoyed until I noticed that I had somehow accidentally checked off items in that list and could not see them. (I think there are hotkeys for it which is how I screwed myself up)

I mean Im happy!

This gave me something more valuable than loot.

Confidence.

One advantage of having a 'patch' of low activity space that you patrol is that scanning goes MUCH faster. Simply bookmark everything you scan down, using the first three letters of the sig in the bookmark.

For example: XYZ Gas Site

The next day, compare all the sigs that show up on your scanner to your list of bookmarks. 'Ignore' any sigs that you already have bookmarked, and delete any bookmarks that no longer have a corresponding signature (they've despawned). Now you only have to scan down the signatures that have appeared since your last visit!

This is so much faster than coming to each system blind, as you will currently be doing by dipping in and out of wormholes. This efficiency allows you to cover more systems in the same amount of time, increasing your chances of finding the kind of sites you want.

For lowsec exploration:
Hey if you want to be able to escape PVP encounters, fit 2 warp core stabilizers.

2 of these babies will help you warp away from 1 warp scrambler or 2 warp disruptors.

If you're quick enough you might escape the DPS without exploding.
Heck! They might even get you through some instalocking gatecamps!

I always fly stabbed ship when exploring and hacking. This has saved my ship several times from cloaky asteros magically showing up right behind me saying "BO!"

Inertia stabilizers / nanofibre internal structure relies on your reaction time. If you are busy hacking and dont notice that pesky pirate frig that just landed 20 km behind you - he will probably have time to active his warp disruptor and hold you. But stabbed - you can just warp out.

(PS, dont work against bubbles in nullsec)

Thanks for advices.

I meant to just take a quick peak around in a WH.

Forgot to bookmark WH after entry!!!!

Thats why I ended up on this "all over the universe" trip
with my Ibis.

None the less, it was a good ride. Being hypersuspicious I
bookmarked a lot of safespots and warped between them
while scanning down every system/WH I ended up in.

Found mostly more WHs and gas-sites. 2 relic sites and 1
data site. Didnt wanna pick a fight with a Heron over relic and
the data site I couldnt hack. Second Relic-site something called
"Watchmen" jumped me and I barely survived.

Sounds like you just met the locals. Some of us live in w-space full time.

Read about that, in some recruiting. Why would you wanna live in a WH?

For the game mechanics of living in wormholes, lots of isk too. Some people can't stand all the scanning but some of us love that you have to work for information.