EVE New Citizens Q&A

Yes.

If your ship gets blown up, it gets blown up. Leaves a wreck and maybe some modules to loot. Buy new ship. Or use the free noobship you have infinite supply of... Granted, you do get an ISK payment from Pend Insurance that covers part of the loss (percentage of the base cost of the hull, but modules are not a factor. You can improve this percentage by buying insurance coverage - useful if you know you are flying your ship into a situation where it may get popped).

If your pod gets blown up (NPCs do not blow up pods but players usually do if they can catch you) you also get to re-buy a clone and re-buy any implants you had on your clone.

Death stings. Death has a meaning. Don't die. Don't fly a ship you cannot afford to replace. The first big hurdle in your EVE career is to understand this and get over it. You can't just "try and see what happens" unless you are flying something eminently expendable. Early on you should always fly something expendable.

There are plenty of affordable ships to fly in EVE. Stuff that you can replace with an evening of play even as a newbie. Do not get an uber-ship until you have enough excess ISK to buy 1-2 more just like that.

As an example, I currently do some carebearing on the side in a Tengu that costs about 900 million ISK to replace. I know I may lose it at any time due to personal fail (or suicide gank). However, I fly it because I have immediate ISK reserves to replace it. Four times.

Still makes me nervous to use the JF I have on my other account - that ship is 6 billion ISK to replace - I couldn't do it immediately should something unhappy happen to it. Only reason why it is an acceptable risk is because Jump Freighters, flown responsibly, are nearly unkillable and importantly, I use it for tasks that no other ship can do and it generates me ISK while doing so. ISK put at (minor) risk to generate more ISK. I consider the risk acceptable, even if a total loss would really really hurt.

EVE is not about hunting the best gear for your ship

EVE is about training and accumulating a set of tools for the job. You should not get a 5% better tool if it costs 10x as much if you cannot afford it (yet). Level 4 missions can be done in a battleship that costs 100 million ISK. Or they can be done in a super-pimped 2 billion ISK pwnmobile full of "purples" (expensive faction mods). The expensive version, while doing the missions faster, is nowhere near as much better as the price tag would imply.

The whole concept of "best gear" doesn't really exist in EVE. Only ships that really get pimped with heavy duty bling-bling are supercapitals and by the time you are worrying about something like that, you'll understand how EVE works. (Supercapitals are also the reason why some modules are so expensive - when you are fitting a 70-80 billion ISK Titan, dropping few more billion for couple of rare officer modules is chump change that is fairly irrelevant at that point...)

Don't worry so much about 1% or 5% better shiny things. Worry if your ship can do the job you plan on doing with it. If it can, its fine. If it can do it while saving 20 mil on the fitting, even better - not as much on the line if something goes wrong.

It is like World of Tanks, except that you get to visit a tank factory for a replacement...

Most players that PvP will have some source of sustainable income to help offset the loss of ships. They generally pay very close attention to the cost/effectiveness ratio when picking the ships and modules that are used, which is why you'll see a lot of Drakes and Hurricanes flown in PvP since they are at a pretty good sweet spot for most players. Really expensive ships are fairly rare and are often flown by people that are either very good at pvp/staying alive, too oblivious to know better, or have a ton of disposable income.

Unlike other games, everything in EVE can be purchased from the market or contracts, so all items are replaceable.

Ships are disposable tools, so don't get attached to them!

You don't have to run an instance a zillion times until an ultra rare bind-on-pickup item drops. Just visit the EVE market or browse contracts to purchase whatever you want.

Ship insurance can help take the sting out of ship losses.

A couple quick comments:

1.) Death has consequences. If you lose a lot of ships, you need to have an income to replace them. Hence the "fly what you can afford to lose" mantra. If you rarely lose your ship, you can afford to put pricier mods on it.... Something to note: paying 10-100x more for a module that is only a few percent better than the t2 variant will rarely save your ship, and more often than not just makes better loot.

2.) There are NO SAFE PLACES in EvE. Many players think staying in Hi-sec means they are safe... and they are wrong! Being in Hi-sec means an aggressor faces harsher consequences for blowing up your ship.... but they can still blow up your ship. If you make it profitable for them to do so, or just annoy them enough.... they will!

3.) The ideas of Best Ships and Best Fittings in EvE are moderately inappropriate. Finding the absolute best ship and setup for a task is not as important as using a good ship and fittings for the task. To give an example, the Malediction, Raptor, Ares, and Stiletto are all fleet interceptors designed to do the same basic task... quickly warp to, lock, and tackle a target so a gang and come kill it. Each one is a little different, perhaps faster, locks quicker, outputs more dps, or has a bigger tank, but these differences only matter under very specific circumstances. While different pilots have their preferences, each ship is very capable and valuable for their role. Then compare these ships to a rifter, which is 1/10th the price but can perform the same task at 70% efficiency. Sometimes you need that extra oomph, but more often than not you don't! And if your doing your task well in a rifter, no-one cares that your not in a stiletto!

4.) EvE is moreless a game in balance. Tank, gank, range, and speed are the primary attributes that ships fit around, and they can all be negated by EWAR. Bigger ships have bigger tanks and deal more damage at farther ranges, but are slower and have a much harder time applying that damage to smaller targets. There are no I-Win Ships (*cough* anymore --> Supercap nerf *cough*). Essentially, each ship has its own strengths and weaknesses, and being skilled in EvE means fitting and flying your ship to take advantage of its strengths and weaknesses, as well as your enemy's. It really is a Rochambeau match, where skill means you know how to avoid rock and engage paper when your setup as scissors.

Thanks for the help. I'm still at the stage where I don't know what ships are appropriate or useful for certain activities at different skill levels so I'll have to start looking at that next. Because I'm just starting out its hard to imagine being in a situation where ships become somewhat disposable!

Cheers for now.

Some people who play EVE and retain the traditional MMO belief that the end goal is to have the highest level character with the most purple gear. Those people die in shame. All that putting huge piles of expensive modules on a ship does is hang a big "I am an idiot" sign around you neck and paint a target on your forehead.

In EVE ships are expendable tools that you use to perform a task and when you fit them out you do so with the knowledge that at any point it is possible for some people to come along and cause your ship to explode. People who ignore that rule do so at their own peril and usually end up paying for it.

Perhaps these two quotes get to the heart of the leap of thinking that is required of me in EVE? In other MMOs I think in terms of my character and his/her bling gear. In EVE perhaps I have fallen into the trap of thinking of my ship as my character - to be fitted out with the best gear I can find. And as such, it's hard to imagine gameplay that allows for losing that gear every time I lose a PVP or get ganked going about my business. It seems that EVE definitely requires me to bust out of the gameplay logic that has become ingrained over so many years in other games. It is however, compelling for that reason and for others to...

To be fair CCP state most clearly that its a MMORPG so if its a mistake to think of it as such, then its an easy mistake to make.

Hey, Perpetuum Online supposedly is very much like EVE. To a degree that they have "paid homage" to CCP in great many things...