EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm almost four months in to the game. I'm no stranger to MMOs. But both CCP's games EVE Online and DUST 514 are absolutely draining me and I just don't understand why.

Just so folks know where I'm coming from, here's what I've encountered in the last few months.

There's no need to get in to the DUST issues. But when I first started playing EVE, it seemed to me that the best thing to do while training up my skills was to become a miner. It seems to pay well, it can provide a lot of needed minerals for all types of construction, the asteroids are easily found, ok. We'll get to mining. So, I get a Venture, some mining lasers, start training in skills for mining ships, mining upgrades, drones, and a few odds and ends like power recharging and such. Of course, after a few days, the wait period for real-time skill training is starting to hit week long periods. No problem. My mining abilities are fair. I'll just accrue ISK while waiting. But someone mentions to me that you can speed up your skill training with implants. Why not invest in a few? Implants are not cheap. And the best ones are a hundred million are more. Again, no problem. I may have to save a little bit but as I'm not buying anything, I have the ISK to get a few of the higher end implants. At most, they are taking off maybe 20% of the total training time. Still, seems like a decent trade off.

Time passes and I can get my hands on, and pilot, the next tier of mining ships. Since I prefer a good sized cargo hold, I pick up and outfit a Retriever. It's a good ship for mining. Around this time, I am inundated with both live and bot corp recruitment. Again, I'm no stranger to gamer guilds. My experiences in others games that have guild services have not been pleasant. I tend to avoid them. But I think, eh, it's a new game. Give it a shot. Boy, was that a mistake. The first corp I get in to decides to have some fun with the newbie. Inviting me to a fleet mining session, the fleet commander drops a bookmark for me to warp to. But when I arrive at said bookmark, it's in the center of a group of pirates that promptly destroy my ship. The corp gets a good laugh out of it. But for whatever reason, one member does not think they have done enough and follows me around destroying the next three ships I buy as replacements. The corp's CEO response is "It's the risk you take." It is little compensation to me that CONCORD opens fire on the guy each time reducing his standing in to "Kill on sight" status. Needless to say, I left the corp having taken heavy monetary losses in ships, equipment, and implants.

Once out of a player corp, it doesn't take long for the recruitment bots to start up again. Ok. I'll make my own corp. That will make the bots go away. Of course, the brilliant idea turns against me as someone war dec's me. I don't give it much thought until the person who declared the war finds me and pod kills me three times after using a locater to find me after I've replaced what was lost. The only way to put a stop to this is to disband my corp. The losses total almost one billion ISK. Someone suggests setting my CSPA fee to an outrageous number instead to deter recruiters. One million is set and it appears to work. For bot recruiters anyway.

Because the three million I can get from a full haul of Veldspar is not being profitable anymore, I dare risk trying to mine more expensive ores like Massive Scordite and Omber. These ores sell rather well. Maybe I can break even. That means space around 0.6. But if I take a few combat drones, pirates shouldn't bother me. Bounties if they attack me and free salvaging their wrecks. This was going well until I must have unintentionally looted a yellow wreck because a player drops in and pods kills me. I couldn't even tell you what I picked up if that is what I did. I knew that taking loot from a wreck you do not own makes you a Suspect. But I thought all I was doing was salvaging. This time, the death is a substantial loss as I had a few +5 implants. $344,000,000 total just vented in to space. When I ask the attacker why they did this, I was basically told "Because I can." Now, my training queues get just over 24 hours added to them. I'm going to need money to replace them. So off I go with yet another Retriever to a quiet corner to mine. Wrong. The player from the previous attack orders a hit put on me and two players swarm in and I'm dead in seconds. Too add insult to injury, the killers put a bounty on me. I find out this was the case by talking to a few influential people. One of which tells me "I think your EVE career is screwed." This guy also added "Don't count on ever being asked to join a corp now. You're a liability and no one is going to want to risk guilt by association by having you in their corp. I'd re-roll."

Is he right? Maybe. I don't have the funds to buy another Retriever and outfit it with even basic mining modules. And if I did earn enough ISK to do so, the EVE rule of "Don't fly what you cannot afford to lose" comes in to play and the Retriever would have to sit in a station unused. All I am left with is a Venture with a 5000 sized cargo hold and never leaving 1.0 space. Even that won't be much safer if "Frik and Frak" try to collect on the bounty they put on me. And rerolling means dumping three months of SP which is now over 3.5 million.

I guess what I'm asking after that rant is what now? Is there no way to play low-key in this game? Or is EVE not new player friendly and established players just do not let new ones do...anything? Perhaps this is just my bad luck. Got any advice?

And before I sign off, I fully expect to get "u suck nub," "kill yerself," and other interesting flames for even daring to post this. But advice is advice. Even if someone here tells me to "unsubscribe and gtfo."

Bounties are meaningless. Just ignore them.

Nearly all my characters have bounties, even the ones that never undock.

Things to do while mining:
* Mine in low population systems (get out of Caldari space). My rule of thumb is look for systems with less people in local than there are asteroid belts. There are a LOT of systems like this!
* Watch local count for sudden changes, or higher counts than normal (get to recognize what is "normal" for the system).
* Watch local for suspects and criminals. Note who they are, and set them low standing (or their corp) if you note they are regulars in the area.
* Figure out who the regulars are in the system (as opposed to those just passing through).
* Check employment histories of regulars. Note those that are very old, very young, and those that have a very active (long) history.
* Check killboards of regulars.
* Check security levels of regulars. Set negative standing on any that are -10 (in hisec), as they are gankers.
* Check security, histories & killboards of ANY other ship in the belt. Suspect them all. [Handy: http://evewho.com/] Move to another belt if possible.
* Check killboards for mining ships in your system. See who did it, and watch for repeat offenders.
* Try to keep moving when mining, preferably always moving towards something you can warp to (stargates, stations, celestials [moons, planets, sun], customs offices), but just orbiting an asteroid can help reduce damage.
* Try to keep as much distance as possible between you and other ships in the belt. Move to another belt if possible.
* Set your directional scan to 2 au or less, turn on the filter [overview should only show ships, use a separate overview tab that includes asteroids and use it when changing rocks, and another with things you can warp to called "GTFO"], sort by type, and watch for incoming ships. If your finger hurts pressing the dscan button, you are doing it right.
* When in doubt or suspicious, leave and find another belt or system to mine.

I've been mining over 5 years. I'm still using the same ship. I don't mine AFK (see above - there is much to do!) I don't pay extortionists for a "license".

Your bounty means nothing, if you don't have one you're the odd one out. Nobody is going to hunt you down for 20% of the value of whatever ship you're flying, unless of course you happen to fly a multi-billion isk loot piñata

You're also in an NPC corp so suicide ganking is pretty all you have to worry about while you remain in one

You look to be flying Retrievers, they should pay for themselves in a couple of hours. They get a huge ore hold but are fairly squishy as a result. They can be fitted so that they're harder to kill but it means sacrificing yield, and they're still a bit squishy.

[Retriever, Player 1]
2x Strip Miner I

1x Survey Scanner I

Damage Control II
2x Reinforced Bulkheads I

^^ Needs around 850 DPS (2 half decent Catalysts) to kill in a 0.5 before Concord roll up, you only get base yield though.

Look into the Procurer, the ore hold is half that of the Retriever, but in exchange it gets some serious tanking ability. It should pay for itself in a few hours and most gankers will go for easier kills if they're available.

Sounds like you had a couple bad experiences. Unless you are very hard to get along with, your player-corp experience is pretty atypical. Sounds like they were just jerks. However, this game was not meant to be played alone. I would highly recommend looking for another corp. Find one that specializes in mining, or look into some other activities. You don't have to mine forever. On looking for a corp, here is a good guide.

Getting ganked is part of the mining profession. There are some ways to minimize your risk. Keep a low profile whenever possible. Move your operations when space becomes hostile. Fly a well tanked procurer instead of a retriever (much harder to take out quickly but less yield). Many people just factor in their losses as a business cost. As long as you've mined more ore than your retriever is worth by the time it gets destroyed it has already payed for itself. Mining corporations can also add additional layers of protection. A good corp will help you replace your ships - not blow them up for laughs.

Finally, you should never lose your pod in highsec. When you are sure that your ship will be destroyed select a warpable object like a planet from the overview and spam click the "warp-to" button in the selected items box, while your ship is still in structure damage. As soon as your ship pops (which due to server ticks will be slightly before it actually shows that way on the screen) you pod will instantly warp (they align instantly). Normally, your pod will be warping out before your enemy can even see that your ship has been destroyed. They should have no chance to target your pod.

I am going to +1 the ignore the bounty advice above. I am also going to +1 the fly cheap advice above. We all did it, we started playing and thought "man if I could just get that very shiny fit I would be fine". A PLEX or two latter, your outfitted and rolling out in your shiny until you explode. Its part of the learning process when you first start. As you learn game mechanics, fly cheap and expect to explode fairly often.

Even better advice than ignore them is to join EvE University or Brave Newbies. I dont know who the "influential individual" was, but it sounds like they were trolling you. Unless you are personally very irritating / annoying / jerk as an individual (I doubt it), the alliances mentioned above will most likely not care at all that someone is putting a bounty on you and coming after you with one or two pilots. My guess is those alliances will look it as content generation and a chance to kill one or two pilots operating alone, that is if those alliances think about it at all.

On the implant side. Implants are great for helping you reduce your training time. Dont run around +5 training implants. As you found out, they are very expensive and will be lost if you get podded. Instead, may I recommend the +3 training implants. They are all +3 to your core attributes and cost 10 million ISK a piece. With a complete set your spending 50 million ISK. You get the majority of the benefits while only being out the cost of a fitted assault frigate if you go boom. The +3s are all named basic, for example "Ocular Filter - Basic".

HA! i remember that now
yeah, i think ISD Dorrim Barstorlode must have clicked in as i did, i was going to fling poo at the op for acting like a child but the thread was locked before i could post

Mail me that corp name.

I think I am going to play a bit with them and see how they enjoy it.

Despite what people believe or think, I am not an awoxer. I dont mind it either, so I understand if you want somebody to join your corp to kill that shiny deadspace/officer fitted ship joining your corp.

What I do despise, is those awoxing new guys just because they are new and if this is people I know or part of the group I share intel with. They will surely experience my displeasure of it.

Wow. OP is indeed a very special snowflake.

It is if you want it to be.

Well, I agree with Oraac vs Cara, you can play alone.

However Maeltstome has a point, it's not a solo game, no matter what you do, as soon as you log in, you are "playing" with others, if you want it or not.