Warfare & Tactics

This is probably one of those cases where another new player is cursed by the default UI settings. The one thing CCP could easily fix that would have more impact on new player experience than anything else.

First, your overview probably filled up with their drones and your d-scan littered with objects that are of no interest, there were only actually 2 players that engaged you. Im sure someone can link you to the best advice on how to un**** your overview and best settings for your activities.

Second, spacial awareness. If im hunting for targets, i enter a system and do a full d-scan. This is the window that CCP saw fit to hide away to the left of your hit point gauge in one of the fancy 'more mouse clicks than ever' menus. Once the d-scanner is open (it should never be closed, btw) and a full 14.3 AU 360° scan is done you will see anyone in space within that range. Be aware that planets, gates and players further than 14.3 AU will not appear on this scan. In larger systems its often good to open the map and see which celestial are most likely to be central and yield a more comprehensive scan.

Once a ship has been found, its a trivial matter of using the range and angle slider to narrow down which planet the target is at. Its important to note that a 5° scan will show you a result relative to your ship from the perspective of your pc monitors view point. It makes no difference what direction your ship is pointed. Once arriving at the planet its once again trivial to narrow down the d-scan to a particular moon, belt or station. Though with experience you tend to know beforehand which of those your target is likely to be at.

Your d-scan will show any ship that can see you. UNLESS, they did all the d-scanning with a cloaky ship, and got the cloaky ship close to yo for a warp in. This way, if the hostiles start out of d-scan range they will arrive on your scan only moments before they arrive next to you and say hi.

D-scan is pretty much the be all and end all of both finding and evading other players. Once you have organized your overview, i would recommend getting your head around that. The rest of eve becomes a lot easier at that point.

Seen this tactic a few times, usually from the short end of the stick. Rat hunting in lo-sec, contact, then after I'm fully involved with the rats some guy shows up in a Vexor, or Harpy or something and it ain't long until I'm a naked corpse floating in the midst of what used to be a really cool ship.
OK, I lost the fight, no problem there, but my question is how do they know there is a Rat Fight going on? I can't really see somebody sitting cloaked in an asteroid belt all evening long in a low traffic system, maybe watching TV with a cold beer (or in the UK, that warm stuff they drink), whilst waiting patiently for some idiot to come exploring this desolate little system.
Is there some sort of detector that one can deploy from the comfort of a station, with maybe an app to ring your cell phone should there come a Rat Fight? Or are these guys just spending their evenings watching their cloaked ships watch for something that might show up, or not?