Crime & Punishment

This. Psychotic Monk's Teamspeak server has no Xbox live style chat at all. Some of the things I've heard from people that have AWOXed mining corps or wormhole bear corps, however, would make a 12 year old Xbox warrior squirm. And that's before they've backstabbed anyone.

As for what to fly in solo lowsec PVP, I am a huge fan of t2 fitted Vexors if your skills align with the boat's requirements at all. As a bonus, even if you don't stay with the thug life, basically every skill you'd train for a Vexor (t2 medium hybrids, drone interfacing 4 or 5, tech 2 heavy drones, tech 2 webs, cruiser sized prop mods, etc) helps a Proteus.

For AWOX piracy you usually just want two accounts and any old ships will do.

You expected otherwise? Which particular profession is by far the lowest on all ranks in EVE? Miners. Which profession is most often targeted by induhviduals such as yourself? Miners.

You don't get symapthy from us. Especially when you're flying ships that we (miners) have supplied the minerals for in one way or another.

You're basically wearing and using things that could not exist without mining. Hypocrite.

here's a tip, you will NEVER get to pay the sub by isk. No way in hell unless you hire chinese isk farmers, or you grind isk literally 24/7 in which case you have bigger problems on hand. CCP would be losing money if a noob less than a month old could simply work his way to do that in a short time. The only people who claim to pay the game through isk are liars and psycopaths who never leave their chairs.

How about this, learn to love a T1 frigate (trust me, you can kill ships worth 20 times more than your frigate if you are intelligent). You will know you've made it when you've solo killed Kil2 or any other legendary veteran, only then can you move on to TechII frigs and cruisers.

It's dangerous to go alone... take this!

In all seriousness, I was a pirate for almost a decade before I came to CCP.

When you actually pirate, and actively look for targets rather than sitting on a gate or station blowing up rookies, its a very rewarding form of gameplay and can lead to some awesome experiences.

There are only three pieces of advice I'd give starting out:

The first is universal to EVE - Don't fly what you can't afford to lose. Even if you're a 150 million skillpoint character, if you're trying it for the first time then take something cheap and disposable out until you find your feet. T1 cruisers and frigates are by far the most cost effective, as well as the more recently added new line of destroyers. Once you're comfortable, you can expand a little and try more expensive hardware.You'll die a lot initially until you find your feet and become familiar with all the horrible bait tactics that big meanies use to catch you while you're innocently trying to ply your trade, but you'll start to learn their ways and kill them in the middle of the face pretty fast.

The second is common sense - Choose your targets selectively. You're going to need to initially when you're flying something disposable. Whether you're going for the kill and loot approach or the ransom, you'll need to be able to hold your own. In any of the ships listed above you'll want to start off with softer targets until you get used to playing the aggressor. Once you're comfortable, take the proactive approach and go looking for a fight to cut your teeth.

Finally, stick to your word. You ransom someone and they pay up? It's good business practice to let them go. Word travels quickly in EVE, and if you start screwing people over you'll end up with people telling you where to shove your ransom offer.


Regardless of how you approach it, Piracy isn't for everyone. I ran a pirate corp for 7 years or so as a player before I came to CCP, and I've seen all kinds of results. People who couldn't handle PvP losses, people who had a crisis of conscience and refunded all the stuff they destroyed to their victims, people who just couldn't earn a living, and people who got bored with having to actually look for targets rather than just getting an overview full of them during a fleet fight.

It's kind of a niche style of gameplay, sometimes it works for people, sometimes it doesn't.

Hope this helps.

The short guide to becoming a pirate:

Pick a ship, fit tackle, jump to lowsec or 0.0, start hunting (and getting hunted).

If you are in a corp that restricts what you can do, I think it's time to switch corps.

EDIT:



Don't you start telling people how to play the game

Yo OP, glad to see you're considering a life of piracy!

Agree with the dev on this being a niche sport. especially a pirate who solo roams in a frigate. There's a whole variety of piracy corps out there that have the strictest doctrines, or that care very much about killboard stats, who don't give a **** if you honor your ransoms or not. For the alliance that I'm in, it's basically honor prearranged 1v1's and honor ransoms or be kicked. Otherwise we are free to do whatever the **** we want.

My recommendations:

-Figuring out what you'll do ISK wise, piracy is expensive.

-Do you have an alt that can bring you ships to low sec? Hauling alts are cheap and easy to train; just under a week . Or bring it to a place like top station Teonusude, the Bosena gate is like an insta warp from there. When you're a flashy red, you gotta think of these things.

-You'll die a lot, and there's so much to learn. Some of my favorite reads ever was Wensley's Rifter guide (a bit dated now) and Azual Skoll's blog "The Altruist" under Know Your Enemy. He keeps that thing current and it's a great place to learn about how ships fly.

-Reading is one thing, but get out there and blow stuff up, even if it's yourself.. because experience is the best teacher in Eve.

I've been a pirate since 2004. I think I'm one of the oldest active pirates who is still in the trade. I'm not the best nor the worst, just somewhere in the middle it seems.

If you were to ask me, solo piracy is almost impossible in today's EVE. Sure, you can take any ship and solo fight someone until one or the other dies. However, that's not piracy IMHO. That's just 2 or more pilots duking it out in PvP.

CCP Falcon is about right. It's a niche trade for a reason. CCP has changed the game in a lot of ways that makes being a pirate much more complicated than before. Thus, a lot of guides kind of only focus on the combat side of the trade, which relates to pretty much any combat related trade in the game. It's very generic and very much not the heart of what piracy is again IMHO.

If you want to learn how to pirate in todays EVE, then I suggest you find a good pirate outfit who gatecamps or roams in low-sec space. They will be your best guide in the sense of training you in the art of sitting on a gate or roaming with that squad finding targets to hammer 5 on 1 for loot. Not too complicated, not too easy--anyone can do it.

Hope this helps.

Funny. i spend an hour a day mining and earn enough to buy PLEXes for 7 accounts.

Even though I also agree that he would be wrong in that way of thinking (gate camping is a form of piracy regardless of the targets), he still has his own right to his own opinion on piracy as a player. I know it's a hard concept for most games, but developers are (or were) players too. That's a good thing.

For the newbies, the reason why gate camping is a form of piracy regardless of the targets is because piracy is not about being fair or being honorable or even fighting strong opponents. It's about getting fat off the backs of the weak. If piracy was about fighting fair, honorable and strong targets, then as a pirate, you would be risking a lot. The idea is to minimize the amount of risk involved. Hence why roaming in gangs, gate camping, sniping from 100KM+ out or whatever is used as pirate tactics other than allowing your opponent every chance to get on fair ground for a good fair honorable fight where they can blow you up as opposed to you blowing them up.

So, don't get twisted. Anyone who says piracy is about fair honorable fights is likely not a pirate. They're just another PvP'er.

Oh, I'm sure you are. Just speaking in general. A lot of developers for other games are not players. It's just a game development job to them.