EVE New Citizens Q&A

Why join CalMil of course!
Hmmm... kidding

Don't think it really matters which empire you go to, if your standings are okay and you don't roleplay your character too heavily.

Galmil will still take you if you want to pew-pew in lowsec.

Appreciate the informative response, Wombat.

No, I'm not big into PvP and will probably shy away from it a bit in EVE until I'm much further along. Missions, mining, and perhaps a bit of industry is where my focus will be for the foreseeable future.

Definitely not looking to make a full transition to Gallente in terms of ships and so forth. I'll just be living in Gallente space and looking to continue to do missions and grind forward without having to travel 16+ jumps back toward Jita, where I used to be based.

Thank you (truly) for mentioning a trade hub for Gallente space because I had forgotten to ask that in my original post and just remembered that as I read your response.

I was just getting used to the game when I last played and switching up my entire environment hasn't been much fun thus far but that's the cost I'll have to pay in order to play with more established friends.

If mining is going to be a significant part of your game time, NPC corp rep can be useful, if you plan to reprocess the ore you mine.

When you reprocess ore in an NPC station, the corp that owns that station takes some of your minerals and charges you a fee. You can reduce this cost by building up your standing with the NPC corp which owns the station. You can reduce the fees to zero but you will never get ore reprocessing to 100% in an NPC station, so you will always lose some of the minerals in the ore when you reprocess it.

More and more player owned "citadels" (a new type of player owned station) are being set up, many of which offer lower reprocessing fees than NPC stations. I'm not sure if they offer higher efficiency as well. Standings with NPC factions do not affect your ability to use a player owned citadel, or any fees the citadel owner may charge.

Manufacturing in an NPC station has fees attached to it when can be reduced with standings. The newest type of citadels which have come into the game have bonuses for manufacturing. Their fees will be set by the citadel owners, but since they are the newest type of citadel, there aren't that many of them around yet.

Finally, performing research on a blueprint to make it more efficient (use less minerals to make the item, and make it faster) has fees. NPC stations that offer all three services (reprocessing, manufacturing and research) are not common. I'm not sure if there are modules available for player citadels yet that offer research capabilities.

Selling ore without reprocessing it will have a market fee. Once again, buying and selling items is possible in a citadel, but a citadel needs a special module fitted to it to act as a market hub. Not every citadel has a market module. The market fees on citadels are set by the owner of the citadel and are usually cheaper than the standard fees at NPC stations. How much cheaper depends on the owner of each citadel that has a market module.

If you want to manufacture things just to supply yourself and don't want to grind standings with an NPC corp for lower fees, look for player citadels in the area you plan to stay in, you should be able to do things cheaper from a citadel compared to an NPC station where you have low or no standing. On the other hand you might also find some market opportunities to make items for profit by finding player citadels that have market hubs away from the main NPC market hubs. There are players who are prepared to pay a bit more for something if it means they don't have to travel as far to get it.

I suppose a lot of my concern stems from never having much direction the last time I played. As I've mentioned, I'm more of a PvE combat mission runner with interest in mining / industry later on. I'm not opposed to things like exploration and "hacking(?)" but some of that is currently Omega-only I believe.

As long as I needn't worry about faction-related issues (Caldari vs Gallente), I'm guessing I'll be just fine. I should definitely seek out some guidance on the forum for advice in overall character direction (based on current skills / assets) because at this moment, I'm lost all over again.

To be clear, it's not my intention to avoid PvP altogether. At this very moment however, at this stage of my character's development, I certainly would prefer to avoid it.

In fact, I've tried to avoid interaction as a whole with the exception of in-game friends and this forum after my initial experience with trolls and bounties that completely sapped my desire to play early on. I've partaken in a great number of diverse communities over the years but EVE's was hands-down the most unwelcoming and frustrating experience I've had to date. I'm not going to cast a sweeping generalization over the entire EVE community based on those early experiences but it's given me some serious pause when it comes to engaging others in chat or considering any form of PvP.

In short, I intend to wait until I'm in a better position to engage in any level of PvP. For now, I want to focus solely on character development before forcing myself into PvP situations that will likely just stunt growth.