EVE New Citizens Q&A

Discretion is the better part of valor.

I wanted to take a quick second to say thanks to everyone who has responded. I've taken the time to read each post at least once if not twice. If you have more advice, keep it coming.

FWIW, I double-checked my overview settings and T3 dessies were enabled. (All ship types were enabled.) So I'm going to assume I was careless and, as someone suggested, was not scanning as often as I thought.

In the meantime I'm working on adopting some new habits that are directly or indirectly results of advice on this thread:

- Every time I perform a significant action (Pulse SB, hit AB, begin engaging a target, activate salvagers), I turn that into a pair of actions, where the second action is to d-scan.

- Periodically abandoning wrecks during a mission

- If a yellow flashy shows up in overview, remove him. (Is it possible to remove him from overview but see his buddies if they are in the same ship type?)

I'm a bit nervous about increasing my scan range as a couple have suggested, because I am unfortunately running missions in crowded Caldari space. Last night I had a raven showing up on d-scan for a half hour with range set to 2.5 AU. I think the long-term correct solution to this problem, assuming I want to keep doing level 4's, is to put some time and effort into relocating and grinding for standings. Are there any other factions besides SoE that generally raise standings with most / all of the 4 main empire factions?

Also, if you yourself were a mission baiter, would you find it helpful if the potential target shot you a friendly private message along the lines of, "Hey, FYI, I have no intention of locking or engaging you. Take my wrecks if you want 'em." Perhaps it would cause you to re-evaluate the value of the next 5 minutes and move on? Win/win in this situation. I guess what I'm asking is, if you knew ahead of time there was a < 1% chance a mission-runner would fall for your bait, would you even bother with them in the first place - wouldn't you just pick the next potential target?

Honestly, I don't want to give up the MTU. It's not that I can't multi-task. It's that the missions I like to farm are the ones that generate a fair amount of targets past 40km, and I run out of stuff to kill within 40km before the far-out ships can slow-boat within 40km. (My on-board tractor range.). I make judicious selection of wrecks that I pull in with my own tractor so that the MTU tends to focus on the stuff > 40k out. Now, you might be able to convince me that it's not worth the extra 3-4 minutes in a pocket once everything's dead just waiting around for the MTU to pull in the > 40km wrecks, but I work really hard to get as many wrecks (large and med) in by the time the next gate is open. At most I'm left with like 4 mediums and a small, and that's in AE.

I apologize - some of these I admit are not completely noob questions, but I didn't want to try to move the thread, and honestly, I think reading about these kinds of mission questions and experiences can get noobs curious and thinking about what's in store in a couple months. So I guess I'm a carebear, not a noob.

Thanks again everyone - really appreciate the advice.

To answer your question, not unless you use standings. You can assign him "bad standing" for instance, and then filter out all pilots with bad standing. However, I really recommend you don't. It's important to know what is on grid with you, even if you do not intend to engage.


The two things which you can do which would most affect my decision to stay are 1) abandon wrecks and 2) scoop your MTU. If there are no wrecks to loot and no MTU to shoot, the baiter has nothing to "do" and so quickly gets bored. Abandoning your wrecks shows them you don't care about the loot (whether or not you do) so their chances of sufficiently provoking you by taking it are slim. Most likely I'll just leave at this point and look for someone with a shorter fuse.

You can try the convo, but it can be counter-productive. Now you've given the baiter something to "do" - talk to you - and they won't get bored quite as quickly.

On the flip side, if you are looking to really get under their skin, the best thing you can do is lock them up (without aggressing) and start raging (don't take my loot! I'll shoot you! I'll do it!) without any intention of actually fighting them. This makes them waste a bunch of time on you without getting a kill and will really tick them off, but there's not much they can do about it. Just make sure you don't accidentally aggress while having them locked or the joke will be on you instead!

I do hope you don't mean "smartbomb" when you say SB. If it's smartbomb, do not use those in highsec. If the AoE damage hits a target you aren't flagged to shoot your ship will be destroyed by CONCORD.

As explained by Cara you can use standings to achieve this. You can also use d-scan to figure out who's around you. Lastly you can zoom your map out, red icons are NPCs and white icons are other players.

Many players will disagree with my recommendation here though and suggest you keep the players in the overview. Personally I think the risk of accidentally locking and shooting a suspect is greater than the risk of somehow being screwed by newly arriving player(s) you didn't see on your overview.

It really doesn't matter if you can detect ships on d-scan as those ships can't do anything to you unless they are setting up a suicide gank. Look for Tornado, Talos, Catalyst and Thrasher fleets. If you see a group of them on d-scan, GTFO. If not don't worry too much. If you run away from every area that has baiters you'll be running away fairly often.

Generally better to keep quiet. The social interaction is part of the appeal for the baiter. If your words entertain him he isn't going to warp away.

Well you got to pick and choose what you want. The MTU affords you some benefits when running missions but there is risk in deploying it. That's just EVE being EVE. These kinds of choices are what make the game go round.

If you are running missions in an area where a 2.5 AU d-scan gets to cluttered to sift through then you are essentially a kill board statistic waiting to be claimed. Move to an area that has significantly less players in it and you gain a little more safety while your potential attackers lose a little of their advantage.

Running in back water, out of the way systems also increases your safety by a small margin since the lower number of potential targets make these systems less attractive to those who wish to do you harm.

These thing will not make you safe, they only make you marginally safer than other more populated areas.

Hello, this is moxide's other character (really)

Typically they dont really hunt down mission runners, because its easy to see em coming. Once you get inside the mission and have Dscan around 1-3 au or whatever and scan constantly, you WILL get a brief time to see "oh, a fleet of catalysts is warping in here" because they have to go through the gates first

You shouldnt have bastion enabled (assuming your tank is strong enough without it?) So you can just align to something and try to warp out fast (make sure to shut off your prop mod!) If you think they will catch you before you warp, MJD towards the thing you want to warp while aligning, and warp after your MJD cycle.

If in this case you dont scan/see them coming or have time to MJD/Warp, you should expect anywhere from 7-22 catalysts (unless they really hate you) putting out around 500-600 dps each once they get close to you. I usually orbit a MD in my mssion/ratting ship with 3 XLASB's in it to quickly swap out for more tank. Overheated with 2 resists, bastion and 3 XLASB you can get nearly a 10k dps omni tank which will be enough for the time concord gets there.They could also bring something like thrashers, talos, or tornados. On Dscan look for 3+ numbers of the same ship that isnt a mission ship. Why would a group t1 dessies/bcs be in your mission?

Remember, if you dont do anything to aggro them they have to gank you, and if they go for a gank, you can go ham with missles (or torps/cruise for that matter) if you swap to Xlasb fit you probably will drop your TP(s) so i dont think you will be able to killa lot of them but you can try

TLDR: orbit MD and have XLASBs for if you get ganked, try to warp out first, always dscan, but dont be too paranoid about it (even though this is eve) because code is too lazy to chase mission runners. If you see people slowly start coming in but not engaging, get out, they might just be waiting for reinforcements.