Crime & Punishment

Hey,

Might want to try your hand out in a PVP corporation that accepts noobs. Check the killboards in your area and look through the corp descriptions of the active PVPing corps. You might (probably will) find one that is recruiting and accepts noobs.

The people you are encountering for the most part have been in hundreds of fights, so death followed by death followed by death will continue to be a routine for some time.

All of the above.

Running with a fleet also let's you see how other players approach fights, and gives you people to ask questions.

Also obligitary red versus blue plug.

Hook up with Zappity.

Or join fac warfare. Most of your opponents will be in unarmed ships..:)

And always remember the Rules Of Low Sec!!!

RULE ONE
Thou shalt always watch local.

RULE TWO
Thou shalt watch d-scan, and know the difference from long and short.

RULE THREE
The official greeting is murder.

Don't get discouraged. Solo pvp, and solo frigate PvP in particular is about as hard a version of PvP as you can find.

Odds will never be in your favor.
Frig fights are virtually over before they start.
Most of the time they have boosts
When they don't have boosts they have a gang with them.

Doing it on your own is possible. You need to:

1) lose at least 100 ships before you start to understand what's going on

2) invest dozens of hours in reading anything you can find on the net about ships, fittings, combat and the solo metagame of hide-and-seek. eve-altruist blog is a good place to start, but luckily there are many, many other excellent sources

3) use FRAPs to record your fights, else you'll have NO idea of what happened at first


Joining a corp is obviously easier and also fun. But if you're determined to take the 'do-it-yourself' challenge, it's doable too.

Remember, your opponents aren't superbeings and even SP doesn't matter much, they just have months or years of actual combat experience. Incidentally, that's what makes solo PVP so engaging: experience is everything and there's no 'win' button.

Incursus and Tristan, not Imicus and Atron.

Also after six years of industry and missions, your wallet should be looking pretty healthy?

Good luck to you though, enjoy those initial losses by clinging to the fact thay (hopefully) you've learned something each time.

I use OBS as my recording software to better analyse my fudge oops. Free and way lighter than FRAPS, also on the fly compression so you don't end your roam with 100gb of raw film.

Advise I got, but can't honestly say I followed to the letter - pick a ship that suits your desired fighting style. Put effort into conjuring up a decent fit. Build as many as you dare to lose and have at it. You'll find that alot of people you go up against will be happy to share their view on how you lost.

Non-faction-warfare lowsec can be very quiet. Keep trying. Roam different places, and the same places during different time zones. Eventually, you'll find where the locals are hiding. Eve this way is very submarines in space.

Also, if you are after stuff that doesn't shoot back, just fit two warp scramblers on something fast. Enjoy the shock of that lazy venture pilot who thought he could just wander off when you show up on grid.



This is exactly how I learned, and am learning. It's very hard, but eventually you will see some success. It's helpful to over-tank your ship, so that fights last long enough to learn something from them. Your goal, in the beginning, is not to kill ships, but to see how other people fight in particular ships. Once you understand how other people fly specific frigates, fit to kill a selection of those.

I lost about 30 frigates over a month before I got my first proper solo kill. Now I lose a frig for every two or three I kill. The kills will come, if you are persistent, and pay attention.

Just having even one friend, by the way, will make this process much less painful.

edit: Another piece of advice. Avoid picking fights in the home systems of notorious pvp corps. Off hand, these are Ostingale, Agoze, Nennamaila, Ammake, Kamela, Houla. There are others, of course. They are pretty easy to recognize. You're not likely to get 'fair' fights in these places, if you care about that.

If you are serious about getting better get yourself a copy of FRAPS or similar program and record your PvP so you can watch it back later. Most importantly watch your losses as much as you may not want to, especially when you know you derped a fight hard when it was winnable before that.

The recording will allow you to effectively lose the same ship several times as long as you watch it in order to identify what you did wrong. Maybe you let your transversal drop against an arty ship or maybe you weren't watching your orbit close enough and got inside heated scram range. Any number of factors could get you and especially in frigates it can be hard to see it in real time. There will undoubtedly be some things you did well also, identify those things as well and make them habits. Having someone else who can show you where you went wrong can help a lot too. Don't sweat your mistakes too much though, everything is a trade-off and sometimes trying to stay alive and trying to land your dps are mutually exclusive goals and so one will have to be sacrificed for the other or each will have to be done sub-optimally at the same time to come out on top.