EVE General Discussion

Hello all,

I am a relativly new player, been playing less than 4 months. I have played most of that solo, or missioning with a friend.

I want to start doing some PVP, however, I do not want to do "Gang" or "Fleet" PVP. I want to be able to go out on my own, or with a friend and get into some trouble.

This however, seems counter to what everyone else does in this game.

Is this strategy just not valid? Am I looking in the wrong places ( I flew to 8 different lowsec areas in a four hour peroid, not one fight).?

Just throwing this out there, I cannot join most PVP corps due to the fact that I cannot use voice comms (no hearing).

Any advice would help, maybe this is just not the game for me?

Thanks!!

The pvp alone is not usually a good idea for a younger player. It's been my experience that that is a good way to lose a ship.

I ran a POS in a wormhole alone and you can get alot of excitement that way, usually people stumble into wormholes alone or in small groups. By the time you understand how to live in a wormhole the time to pvp can be choosen by you - not dictated by your enemies and you'll lose alot less isk.
Outside of empire pvp isn't done alone, like they say - if you get in a fair fight at least one of you has screwed up.

Todays words of wisdom - give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Solo PvP is really more about trying to avoid people looking for a fight and catching people who don't want to fight. Generally if a person is looking for a fight you are going to most likely be facing bad odds so solo activity usually falls into the realm of piracy.

1. Class 1-3 Wormholes: Probobly your best hunting grounds, generally speaking these types of wormholes are held by the less prepared. Camping a wormhole gate in a cloaked ship is oen way to go, gives you the element of suprise but just in general you can find some action suitable for solo in these types of wormholes.

2. Wormhole to 0.0 : Getting out to 0.0 solo can be a risky proposition as getting through entry points that are often camped can end your day before it begins. Thanks to wormholes (again) you can get out into 0.0 and solo roam. You have to really pick your fights here and agains stealth is the order of the day but the advantage you have is that wormholes that go to 0.0 can be in the heart of someones territory and you can often find ill prepared pilots doing stuff in "their space" under the false impression that they are safe.

3. Low Sec Mission Runners: Finding them unoticed can be tricky, so you have to be quick with it but a bit of practice can yield some good PvP and again, you are likely to be at the advantage since they will be rigged for PvE. Be ready to face some fierce tanks though and don't assume a PvE fit can't kill you.

4. Can Flipping: Eh.. this one can hardly be called a PvP op since you are effectively trying to goat people who don't want to fight into a fight. But its one way of doing it.

5. High Sec Ganking: Eh.. again.. hardly PvP, but can be an entertaining and sometimes profitable pass time, though more often than not you get the action without the rewards, especially when doing it solo.

Advice from a solo player: Use DOTLAN to plan your roam ahead of time. Use D-scanner like it's going out of style. Use gank fitted ships (max dps) - time is never on your side. If you see an opportunity to go for a kill, do not hesitate. Try to use long range setups too, as kiting lets you escape faster when the inevitable blob shows up to help your target.

If possible use a throwaway alt to scout gates. Do not fly super expensive ships. Only engage when you know you can win. I've successfully fought solo in all areas of EVE, but arguably 0.0 is the best place to try it - if you know where to go. Stay away from alliance HQ station systems (again, use DOTLAN). This increases their reaction time to your attacks. Have fun.

Solo PvP is the most enjoyable thing about this game (and tbh the only reason why I'm still subscribed) in my opinion, although it can be very frustrating at times due to not finding fights, people unwillinging to fight you without massive advantages, ECM, and people using tactics like instalocking gatecamps designed to destroy small solo flown ships. When you do get a decent fight, or catch and kill a guy and warp off as his blob lands, it can be super fun and adrenaline pumping!

My Advice would be, as mentioned above, start in the 1/10s in populated lowsec systems. You can get some good 1vs1s there, and due to the gated plex mechanic, you will only end up fighting similar ship classes to your own. You can also usually avoid getting ganged up on in the plex too because of the acceleration gates, meaning that you will see any other people coming in on the directional scanner, and if the guy coming for you is trying to bait you by having his buddy(ies) outside of scan range, chances are most frigates fights are over and done with by the time people can bring in more ships since they have to travel a decent distance (usually about 40km + a 15-20 second warp from outside scan range). You're also less likely to be baited in complexes with cloaked ships.

If you don't end up getting a fight you can at least come away with some relatively decent complex loot. Assault ships are fairly cheap too most can be t2 fitted for around 20-25mil. So losing one isn't the end of the world.

Here are some general tips.

The Directional scanner is your best friend. Learn how to use it, it's the best tool in your entire kit as a solo PvPer. It will tell you where people are, and is useful for hunting people down, it will tell you when backup is coming. I literally cannot stress enough how useful and awesome the Directional Scanner is.

Make sure you go to General Settings on the Escape Menu, and make sure that show session change timers is checked. This will help a ton if you jump into a gatecamp. Make sure you always wait out the session change timer before attempting to reapproach. (It will appear as a spinning circle item on the top left corner of the screen when you have session change, mouse over it to see how much longer your session change is). If you attempt to jump or dock while session change is still active, you will get "session change in progress" and will be unable to jump.

When you undock, and find a camp outside. (if you dock in lowsec/0.0). Press CTRL+SPACE to stop your ship. This will not break your invulnerability timer, and for smaller stations models will prevent you from drifting outside the dock range. then just wait out session change before attempting to redock.

Thermodynamics is by far the single best and most rewarding skill to train for PvP. +15% damage on your weapons, +50% speed on speed modules etc. Make sure you have it trained.

You can always save your pod in lowsec. When you are dying make sure you have something selected in your "selected items" window above your overview, and spam the warp button on the window. When you die this will cause your pod to warp instantly. It helps to have an overview setting with just planets, or just moons, or something. You can switch to it when its clear you're going to lose, click on something there and then spam the warp button on selected items.

Learn different ship match ups and weaknesses. It helps to play about with ships in EFT, but it helps even more to fly against them and note how your ship and setup performs.

I personally solo in 0.0. I find that it's more rewarding in general, although its obviously a lot harder since in general most people in 0.0 do not want to fight and most PvP there for me is killing interceptors that are part of a bigger fleet by baiting them away from their gang and or to planets, and finishing them quickly before the larger fleet can react. 0.0 can be kind of boring/blueball worthy if you don't find a fight, and it's further from highsec if you want to retire, and bubbles+gatecamps are more common. I recommend learning the ropes in empire first.

Avoid highsec station fights/PvP. Most of the people who do it have logistic alts or some kind of hidden advantage such as gang links, pirate implants or corp mates ready to help out.

No one has meantioned anything about what ships work well for solo pvp, so since i have some experience on this subject, ill give it a go.

Low sp, low isk, and for learning, you should really be going for the Rifter, its a great t1 frig. Buy a handful, try out a few fits and find your feet with it. The gallente route would be the incursus, again a great frig.

Slightly more sp, low isk, grab a rupture fill the highs with ac425's and stick a plate in the lows, ot go nano and fill the lows with damage mods, great ship and will be your first introduction to a half decent dps. Gallente side of things look to the vexor, more skill intensive to get the dps out of with the need for t2 drones, however as with all gallente ships, you put they sp into them, and they do repay you in the long run.

Other note worthy ships not far from a 4month old toons reach - Hurricane, fully skilled and nano gank fitted, your looking at nearly 850dps with 35k ehp, my personal choice of solo boat btw, also others such as vagas, cynabals, drams, ishkur, TARANIS.

Hope that helps get you going, theres some great advice in this thread, one thing i will say though, if you've been refused entry into pvp corps or alliances due to being deaf, i think we would all like to see you name and shame these corps or people.

Feel free to hit me up in game if your after any fits btw.

Try it. You'll like it.

You should be able to follow easy enough with broadcasts & someone copying relevant voice comms into fleet channel - some corps do that anyway once the fleet is big enough as people miss voice commands. Huge fleets will be a problem I'd guess.

As to solo - yeah you can do it. Finding fights 1v1 shouldn't be a problem for you at this stage of your character's life - once the character is a bit older and has more known kills then 1v1 turns into 1v2 etc.

If you can't find fights then move area - personally were I you then I'd ignore low-sec and just try npc-null regions. Yes there are bubble mechanics to deal with but the sentry guns don't fire at you which means you have a LOT more options. Oh and you don't take sec hits or have to worry how many timers you have currently running

Like we've been saying for years, we need a small region for solo people to hang out in; also, this guy needs to learn what he can already do solo, in null security.

Come to providence and you can get into a lot of trouble; we're NRDS, not red dont shoot. You become red to us, you got in trouble by attacking someone Then, let the games begin :D

Thread delivers nicely! Very useful discussion for a change.