EVE New Citizens Q&A

i don't know too much about this game but you should find a corporation which teach you basis of pvp. Do you have enough money? For sure you will lost many of yours ships before you will kill someone.

I hurriedly made my first post as I was running out the door. I just wanted to revisit the topic to add a few more things.

There are players who have come to this game and taught themselves PvP. That is most certainly the hard way and you need to almost get off to learning lessons the hard way. The way that I read your post you are not looking for the hard way. You appear to be looking for the easy way as are most new players.

The easy way is joining a corp that is PvP focused and newbie friendly. They often will give away free ships or at least have an SRP ( Ship Replacement Policy ). You will also have multiple chat channels full of vets to answer your questions and give advice.

I did not understand your point number 2:


I am not sure what you are saying here but joining a PvP corp is great advice if you want to learn to PvP and don't want to have to find out everything the hard way.

Again barring that you could watch a bunch of videos and read a lot of tutorials but you didn't seem to be interested in that either. If you don't want to have to learn the game and you are looking for a quick easy way to pwn then you are playing the wrong game.

I think part of the confusion with new players in this game is that so many other online PvP games have built in mechanics for very structured PvP with very set mechanics. In Eve your PvP basics are going to be very different if you are ganking in high sec versus stalking in wormholes versus roaming with large fleets in sov null. If this were Call of Duty or Battlefront or a WoW BG it would be fairly simple to walk someone through the basics. Here in Eve you will have to at least tell us what kind of PvP you are looking to get into.

Maxim 36. When the going gets tough, the tough call for close air support.

Only way to really know if your loadout works or not is if it actually works or not, though the most drastic way to improve your odds is to fly with people. I don't like wall of text advice. It usually makes unfounded assumptions on what the issues are. So the simple advice is test stuff out so you can ask better questions that will get you a useful wall of text. After all, it's a PVP frigate. It's going to die sooner or later whether it's a good fit or not.

If you want to PVP without joining a PVP corp, and also have some of the advantages of being in a PVP corp, factional warfare is a reliable way to get your feet wet, while still getting familiar with the EVE landscape.

The reason people say "join a corp" is because solo PvP is EVE hardmode, and doing it as a rookie with lower levels in the relevant skills is even more difficult. A more natural progression would be to mask your inadequacies with numbers in a fleet, build up your skills and ask questions, and then branch out on your own once you are better-trained and more informed.

Additionally, this game is a bit of 13 years old now and the mechanics of PvP have become more and more complex. It starts with purchasing a ship and fitting it for a specific purpose/fighting style. The three main styles of engagement are kiting (dealing damage outside of your opponent's effective scram and weapon range), brawling (going all in up close), and scram kiting (fighting at the edge of scram range (7-11 km). Which is most effective depends on your skills, your weapons, your modules, your ship's bonuses and slot layout. You then have an "engagement profile", the range of scenarios and ships that your fit can reliably take on based on the strengths and weakness of your skills, ship and fit. Sometimes switching between these styles on the fly is what it takes to win.

All that just covers deciding whether or not to even take the fight or to run. Haven't even touched how to use d-scan, intel, or probes to actually find and force a fight. Nor the various uses of specialized T2 ships.

Then you have to worry about maneuvering using the orbit/keep at range commands or good ol' manual piloting. When fighting against missile ships you want to range or speed tank the missiles, since within their effective range they will never miss and part of their damage formula depends on the velocity and size of the missile explosion (meaning if you're fast enough you can avoid the brunt of the damage). When dealing with turrets you have to maneuver in such a way as to minimize the amount of incoming damage while still dealing damage to the opponent reliably. Haven't even touched the benefits of T2 weapons and the specialized T2 ammunition they allow you to use.

And this is all before you consider the various e-war options, like stasis webifiers (slowing opponents to make them easier to hit), warp scramblers (which shut off microwarpdrives and prevent warp-outs at the cost of significantly lesser range as compared to warp disruptors), turret/missile disruptors, dampeners (decrease lock range), ECM (which break locks and prevent lock-ons for 20 seconds) and so on.

PvP is a complicated topic, and the answers to your questions, if left vague, will almost always be "it depends". I'm no expert, but I've learned a LOT of the theory by watching Youtube videos of players who record their fights and then edit in some commentary and "after action reporting". There's no real structured way to learn PvP outside of a training corp, and the freedom of EVE ensures that even structured training will not fully prepare you for the things that can happen out there. You will learn best by asking questions, learning from others, and then burning through your wallet by throwing yourself into the fray and learning by literal trial by fire.

You mentioned you were flying a Merlin. I highly recommend watching this video by TheBloodRaid in which some very useful commentary is provided for Merlin PvP. Getting inside the head of successful PvPers and understand how they make their decisions (from fit, to intended fighting style, to target selection/avoidance, to the actual fight itself and the self-assessment therafter) is some of the best stuff you can do besides just taking the plunge and figuring things out for yo

I don't know if you will find anybody quite like I did when I joined Eve University but I learn't alot from a few people who watched my fights and gave me advice as they progressed insted of stepping in and helping me win them. During a few short weeks over a series of engagements with War Targets, Suspect Baiters and Low Sec Pirates I learn't more about manual piloting, range control and a bunch of other handy tips than I did in weeks of classes. So my suggestion to you is to find another person/group ingame willing to teach, find a mentor and suck up all the knowledge they are willing to impart.

---SO MUCH THIS.

Don't be afraid to be an 'F1 monkey' at first. Just dont remain one. Use every fleet to learn, and very quickly you will see what makes a fleet and how PvP happens.

The other thing is you can specialize in a fleet. Solo, you are trying to do everything an entire fleet does-- all by yourself. You are FC, tackle, DPS, logi, EWAR, all in the same ship. How much success do you expect if you haven't done any of those things in isolation? In a fleet you can do one thing well, rather than several things poorly. These fleet roles are surprisingly deep, and you will likely find yourself a niche to fill. I prefer flying tackle or EWAR, but I know guys that are almost always in a Logi or Command Ship.


As always, my number one bit of advice is to just remember you are an immortal space god. Death matters not, so don't be afraid to die over and over. Ships are disposable, don't fret their loss.