I've had a lot of fun going through different roles and recently had my first solo PVP kill. GLORIOUS, heart pounding feeling waiting to see if he would get away before I landed on grid and got him tackled (grid = nearby space, tackled = certain modules prevent people from warping away), then hoping he didn't have friends. I won! I'm also heavily involved in an industrial corp with @Harudath. We are currently producing fuel blocks for a decent profit, and I recently came up with a plan to cut a huge chunk out of our costs. We're also working towards producing capital ships (some of the pricier ships in game). @BuddyJ already gave a great summary, but the game can really be as simple or complex as you want it to be. You want to blow up other people? Can be really simple: look up a fit, train skills, pilot ship and look for neutrals under the right circumstances. Can be really complex: work with team of cloaked bombers with an intel scout and use a cyno to drop in on unsuspecting prey several systems away from you. You can do insane levels of math for certain professions/market stuff or never touch it other than listing loot you don't want on the market.
I'd be happy to sponsor you into Dreddit (corporation) if you want that sort of experience, and there is A LOT of PVP content right now. It would be challenging for a new player, but the awesome part of being in TEST (the alliance) is that there are people on 24x7 and lots of "training" materials available on a wiki, forum and Jabber (out of game chat).
You can specialize to generate specific goals faster or there are lots of good "everyone should have these" skill plans out there to which I could link.
Cost: you can subscribe for the $15/month stated, less if you use multi-month subscriptions. The in-game money (ISK) can be used to purchase PLEX, which add 30 days of game time to your account. This is a nice option once you get setup and specialized. I would venture to say it would be possible to PLEX your account in a few months if you trained towards certain roles. For example, I can generate about 60 mil/hr in TEST space (this is player controlled null sec, meaning no police force and potentially lots of neutrals gunning for you) while shooting rats [NPC], with relatively low risk ... a PLEX currently trades for around 500-550 mil, so it would take around 10 hours of ratting only to accomplish paying for my account in game. This is a good way to earn money and save time while learning new skills for a different role.
Gameplay: as stated, it's relatively straight forward: aim ship in their direction, shoot at them when in range, run away if you are gonna die. There are lots of variations on how, what range, what gun, when to/if you can run away or prevent them from doing so, but that comes with experience and skills.
balance: it's a third person spaceship battle game, with lots of other options in terms of content for those less inclined to PVP (you should at least try it! you will die, sometimes gloriously ... for example, there was a battle a couple days ago in which over $23000 USD worth of ships were lost and any newbro [brand new player] could have assisted in that by tackling ships)
PVP: As @BuddyJ stated, there are rules depending on what part of space you are in and the game makes it perfectly clear when you are entering more dangerous zones from less dangerous ones, but you won't ever be 100% safe. If someone really wants you dead, they can kill you anywhere.
-Does IC have a gang/clan/group I can join? We are spread across different corporations (similar to guilds), so there isn't any one to join and get all of us. We should probably make an in-game chat channel or something though. Depending on what space you want to operate in, you might want to join different corps or if you want to specialize in a career, many corps are dedicated to certain industries. I like Dreddit/TEST because of their die gloriously culture + there are many opportunities to do something different. We recently got our standings with another huge alliance reset, causing all sorts of mayhem (good, more PVP content in null sec) so that is something to consider.
I downloaded it last night and may give it a bit of time this weekend. We'll see.
Call me on skype if you have questions/comments. The training mission do provide a decent overview of some of the options available to you, but real time, real person is always nice.
Call me on skype if you have questions/comments. The training mission do provide a decent overview of some of the options available to you, but real time, real person is always nice.
Played an hour or two today. The skill system sort of confuses me, but I'm slowly easing into it. Having trouble with combat, especially against several ships at once. I find it to be a lot of micro managing at once, but it's fun and so far I'm enjoying it.
1
JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
Played an hour or two today. The skill system sort of confuses me, but I'm slowly easing into it. Having trouble with combat, especially against several ships at once. I find it to be a lot of micro managing at once, but it's fun and so far I'm enjoying it.
For combat, the way to "think" about skills is to set a goal for a certain ship and fit (meaning, what guns/modules you use on the ship). What I typically do is find a ship I want to fly, then use EVEMon to look up the top rated fits and use those as a basis for my skill planning. Multiple ships gets easier with either bigger ships or repair/shield skills and capabilities. If you are in a frigate, part of your "tank" is going to be orbiting at your guns' optimal range (mouse over the gun, see optimal, then right-click on the orbit button and set the custom orbit distance to your optimal)
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
If I were thinking of taking a pirate type approach to this game (hitting those loners just cruising about, hitting supply ships with other "pirates"...maybe even dickin a few pirates over after the battle's done and taking what they have, etc...) are there any opinions/advice on ups and downs of this approach from you seasoned players? Is it even possible to do should be my first question. Can these types of players be part of a corp or is it frowned upon? Thoughts?
If I were thinking of taking a pirate type approach to this game (hitting those loners just cruising about, hitting supply ships with other "pirates"...maybe even dickin a few pirates over after the battle's done and taking what they have, etc...) are there any opinions/advice on ups and downs of this approach from you seasoned players? Is it even possible to do should be my first question. Can these types of players be part of a corp or is it frowned upon? Thoughts?
From what I understand, you can pretty much do whatever yo want. If you wanna go pirate, it's definitely possible. And there's probably corps doing this already.
If I were thinking of taking a pirate type approach to this game (hitting those loners just cruising about, hitting supply ships with other "pirates"...maybe even dickin a few pirates over after the battle's done and taking what they have, etc...) are there any opinions/advice on ups and downs of this approach from you seasoned players? Is it even possible to do should be my first question. Can these types of players be part of a corp or is it frowned upon? Thoughts?
From what I understand, you can pretty much do whatever yo want. If you wanna go pirate, it's definitely possible. And there's probably corps doing this already.
What he said, its a matter of finding out a system to do what you want, successfully, and using it. The easiest way to start pirating would be a small frigate or destroyer class ship, with a Webifier (EVE Crowd Control that slows a target down) and a Warp Disruptor( EVE crowd control that prevents most ships from being able to jump away) and what ever else you like, and hiting up the low sec systems looking for freighters carrying goods to and fro. BUT, this is just one possible way to pirate in EVE. LOTS of reading material at https://gate.eveonline.com/ , http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Main_Page , or http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Main_Page .
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
Thanks fellas! I'll be doing some reading then over the next couple o' days.
And edit to may previous statement, when I said freighter, I meant smaller, hauler type ship, freighters are beasts, and could not be bother by a single frigate or destroyer.
If I were thinking of taking a pirate type approach to this game (hitting those loners just cruising about, hitting supply ships with other "pirates"...maybe even dickin a few pirates over after the battle's done and taking what they have, etc...) are there any opinions/advice on ups and downs of this approach from you seasoned players? Is it even possible to do should be my first question. Can these types of players be part of a corp or is it frowned upon? Thoughts?
Pirate corps exist. I highly suggest joining the New Order group and participating in blowing up mining vessels who fail to comply with our rules. Hilarity ensues, and it's super easy to join.
If I were thinking of taking a pirate type approach to this game (hitting those loners just cruising about, hitting supply ships with other "pirates"...maybe even dickin a few pirates over after the battle's done and taking what they have, etc...) are there any opinions/advice on ups and downs of this approach from you seasoned players? Is it even possible to do should be my first question. Can these types of players be part of a corp or is it frowned upon? Thoughts?
Pirating can be very lucrative, but it comes down to a couple of things.
1) Pick your targets very carefully. You don't get rewards for killing PCs, so you need to be sure that they are likely to have on the ship is worth the risk of ganking them. Especially if you're in high sec as CONCORD will be coming to blap you for killing them (unless you can get them to shoot you first that is)
2) If you are going to do high sec ganking, which can be very fun, it's often helpful to have a friendly person nearby to scoop the loot they drop before someone else gets to it, as you will be getting blown up.
3) There's a lot of null sec corps that engage in piracy as a fun pasttime (funded by their normal nullsec activities). The squad I'm in is currently on an extended high/low sec ganking deployment just for the lulz. We also are following rule 1 here and picking high value targets (aided by some people who are skilled at using ship scanners to pick out the juiciest of the high sec denizens). So far we've made 2x what we have lost to CONCORD in loot drops. Good times.
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
You guys are awesome. @buddyJ and @ardichoke thanks for the ton of info about pirating and such. I'm very interested in this and will check out the links provided. I appreciate it and hopefully I'll see ya guys in game soon
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
If I were thinking of taking a pirate type approach to this game (hitting those loners just cruising about, hitting supply ships with other "pirates"...maybe even dickin a few pirates over after the battle's done and taking what they have, etc...) are there any opinions/advice on ups and downs of this approach from you seasoned players? Is it even possible to do should be my first question. Can these types of players be part of a corp or is it frowned upon? Thoughts?
Pirate corps exist. I highly suggest joining the New Order group and participating in blowing up mining vessels who fail to comply with our rules. Hilarity ensues, and it's super easy to join.
Read the whole site and see if it's something you'd enjoy.
Info overload, but completely awesome! So far what I'm getting is that catalysts are like suicide pilots that pretty much do the ganking and get reimbursed by the Order (which is really a fantstic read into their belief system ans such), is this correct? Because I'm not familiar with how the whole game works out is it possible to have a career as a Knight without constantly losing your ship or is that just "occupational hazard"?
Catalysts are also a ship type, so they may be talking about just using the Catalyst ship for suicide ganks. My corp does similar things with suicide Thrashers.
EDIT: I skimmed those articles and yes, when they say "army of suicide Catalysts" they're talking about ships. Basically that they have a stockpile of Catalyst ships ready to use for suicide ganks by their members.
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
I have so many stoopid nooby questions, sorry. Unfortunately at work my site visiting is limited by policy (lame). So, as a pilot I do have more than one ship, correct? Is there a max limit of ships a character can have?
You can have as many ships as you can afford to buy. Keep in mind that when you buy assets they are placed in the station the person selling them is selling them at. If you decide to move to a new station/solar system/region, you have to move any ships and assets that you want to take. Until you get to the point where you can fly something like a Carrier or a freighter, that will likely involve flying back and forth repeatedly to move all your assets (or just moving a small amount of your stuff and either selling or leaving the rest behind).
Because of this, I currently have assets scattered all over New Eden. At some point I should jump in my Prowler and consolidate as much of it as possible... :/
Catalysts are ships. They're awesome because they're very cheap to buy and they can be fitted with 8 blasters which do extreme damage at a very close range. The downside to a Catalyst is that it's very very easy to kill. When you're suicide ganking, however, this isn't an issue. Your ship will be blown up by the NPC police either way (hence the "suicide" part of the name).
There's no limit to how many ships you can own. The New Order members buy a couple Catalysts and go kamikaze them in battle. When they're destroyed, we are then reimbursed for the cost of the ships and can go get more. Rinse and repeat. The loot dropped from a destroyed mining vessel usually pays for all the ships used to destroy it, or comes darn close.
A good knight will lose up to 4 ships an hour under ideal circumstances (due to how the aggression mechanics work in the game), but that'll come from killing 4 big juicy targets. Losing ships in this manner is a good thing.
Knights can live without ship loss. There is always a need for someone to scout for targets and to scoop up the loot that drops when the targets are destroyed. This is a dangerous job because if you're caught by other players scouting for targets, they may try and gank you in return. This usually proves to be quite funny, but I mention it because the risk is still there. This guide explains how easy it is to scout for a gank fleet:
There is no max number of ships (well, maybe there is some total possible space you can occupy but that is well beyond the means of a single player to do in the total number of stations etc). I have 4/5 ships in my main station and others in key stations for use during ops or getting from one place to another. So many shuttles.
A suicide ganker could reship immediately and hit the same target if the medical clone and ship stock were close by.
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
Thanks a ton for the ridiculous amount of informative answers, you guys have definitely fueled my interest in this. @buddyJ after reading about the Order (SO MUCH INFO, lol), I'm totally in for this . It sounds like great fun. So, with the Order will I have to go through the whole "baptism through CONCORD" deal or no?
Now that I'm interested I just need to get in game and learn the basics of it all, lol! Ill post my name and all when I get setup between today and Friday. Thanks again.
Yes, you'll need go through Baptism by CONCORD. Welcome to EVE!
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
edited January 2013
Soooooooooo many questions @buddyj (ridiculous I know). If I choose to be a ganker to start would my chances to scout later on (security status based from what I'm reading) be eliminated? I'm guessing that scout to pirate is not a problem. Would I be correct? Or is it possible to raise your security status if you get to a -5.0? Tons of questions I know, but thanks a million for the answers
Ganker to scout would make it harder, but not impossible. You can raise security status. I'm checking on how, since I've not had any problems with that (killing in null sec doesn't affect security status, only ship killing/aggression in high sec or pod killing low sec.
EDIT: you raise status by killing rats (NPC pirates), but there is a "formula" for it. The post I see (which is older, so this may not be accurate) states that you get a .4% increase for every battleship killed, per 15 mins, per system.
The transition from scout to ganker is easy. Going from ganker to scout is harder because when your security status drops to -5 you get chased by NPC police, Grand Theft Auto style, and when you reach -10 status you're fair game for all players to shoot at you.
To raise security status, the best bet is to kill NPCs in low sec asteroid belts. You kill, then move to a new system and new belt, and repeat the process. It's not hard to map out a route of 8 or so systems to chain this in. Doing so is the quickest, most efficient way to up your status. It's a grind, however.
You might consider starting two characters. Get your ganker up and going, and then in a week or two, start a scout. That way when the need arises, you can log in to the character that's most needed. Your ganker can operate as an outlaw and your scout can keep a good security status. The added benefit is you can use your scout for shopping for gear and equipment without drawing attention and unwanted aggression.
(to expand: you can have 3 characters on a single account, this scout character can also be useful as a cyno character later but that is for a more advanced discussion)
Comments
I'd be happy to sponsor you into Dreddit (corporation) if you want that sort of experience, and there is A LOT of PVP content right now. It would be challenging for a new player, but the awesome part of being in TEST (the alliance) is that there are people on 24x7 and lots of "training" materials available on a wiki, forum and Jabber (out of game chat).
Careers example
You can specialize to generate specific goals faster or there are lots of good "everyone should have these" skill plans out there to which I could link.
Cost: you can subscribe for the $15/month stated, less if you use multi-month subscriptions. The in-game money (ISK) can be used to purchase PLEX, which add 30 days of game time to your account. This is a nice option once you get setup and specialized. I would venture to say it would be possible to PLEX your account in a few months if you trained towards certain roles. For example, I can generate about 60 mil/hr in TEST space (this is player controlled null sec, meaning no police force and potentially lots of neutrals gunning for you) while shooting rats [NPC], with relatively low risk ... a PLEX currently trades for around 500-550 mil, so it would take around 10 hours of ratting only to accomplish paying for my account in game. This is a good way to earn money and save time while learning new skills for a different role.
Gameplay: as stated, it's relatively straight forward: aim ship in their direction, shoot at them when in range, run away if you are gonna die. There are lots of variations on how, what range, what gun, when to/if you can run away or prevent them from doing so, but that comes with experience and skills.
balance: it's a third person spaceship battle game, with lots of other options in terms of content for those less inclined to PVP (you should at least try it! you will die, sometimes gloriously ... for example, there was a battle a couple days ago in which over $23000 USD worth of ships were lost and any newbro [brand new player] could have assisted in that by tackling ships)
PVP: As @BuddyJ stated, there are rules depending on what part of space you are in and the game makes it perfectly clear when you are entering more dangerous zones from less dangerous ones, but you won't ever be 100% safe. If someone really wants you dead, they can kill you anywhere.
-Does IC have a gang/clan/group I can join?
We are spread across different corporations (similar to guilds), so there isn't any one to join and get all of us. We should probably make an in-game chat channel or something though. Depending on what space you want to operate in, you might want to join different corps or if you want to specialize in a career, many corps are dedicated to certain industries. I like Dreddit/TEST because of their die gloriously culture + there are many opportunities to do something different. We recently got our standings with another huge alliance reset, causing all sorts of mayhem (good, more PVP content in null sec) so that is something to consider.
And there's probably corps doing this already.
http://www.minerbumping.com/p/blog-page.html
http://www.minerbumping.com/2012/12/how-do-i-join-knights-of-order.html
Read the whole site and see if it's something you'd enjoy.
1) Pick your targets very carefully. You don't get rewards for killing PCs, so you need to be sure that they are likely to have on the ship is worth the risk of ganking them. Especially if you're in high sec as CONCORD will be coming to blap you for killing them (unless you can get them to shoot you first that is)
2) If you are going to do high sec ganking, which can be very fun, it's often helpful to have a friendly person nearby to scoop the loot they drop before someone else gets to it, as you will be getting blown up.
3) There's a lot of null sec corps that engage in piracy as a fun pasttime (funded by their normal nullsec activities). The squad I'm in is currently on an extended high/low sec ganking deployment just for the lulz. We also are following rule 1 here and picking high value targets (aided by some people who are skilled at using ship scanners to pick out the juiciest of the high sec denizens). So far we've made 2x what we have lost to CONCORD in loot drops. Good times.
EDIT: I skimmed those articles and yes, when they say "army of suicide Catalysts" they're talking about ships. Basically that they have a stockpile of Catalyst ships ready to use for suicide ganks by their members.
Because of this, I currently have assets scattered all over New Eden. At some point I should jump in my Prowler and consolidate as much of it as possible... :/
There's no limit to how many ships you can own. The New Order members buy a couple Catalysts and go kamikaze them in battle. When they're destroyed, we are then reimbursed for the cost of the ships and can go get more. Rinse and repeat. The loot dropped from a destroyed mining vessel usually pays for all the ships used to destroy it, or comes darn close.
A good knight will lose up to 4 ships an hour under ideal circumstances (due to how the aggression mechanics work in the game), but that'll come from killing 4 big juicy targets. Losing ships in this manner is a good thing.
Knights can live without ship loss. There is always a need for someone to scout for targets and to scoop up the loot that drops when the targets are destroyed. This is a dangerous job because if you're caught by other players scouting for targets, they may try and gank you in return. This usually proves to be quite funny, but I mention it because the risk is still there. This guide explains how easy it is to scout for a gank fleet:
http://www.minerbumping.com/2013/01/ganking-101-scouting.html
A suicide ganker could reship immediately and hit the same target if the medical clone and ship stock were close by.
Now that I'm interested I just need to get in game and learn the basics of it all, lol! Ill post my name and all when I get setup between today and Friday. Thanks again.
Yeah the workday is REALLY slow today, lol!
Ganker to scout would make it harder, but not impossible. You can raise security status. I'm checking on how, since I've not had any problems with that (killing in null sec doesn't affect security status, only ship killing/aggression in high sec or pod killing low sec.
EDIT: you raise status by killing rats (NPC pirates), but there is a "formula" for it. The post I see (which is older, so this may not be accurate) states that you get a .4% increase for every battleship killed, per 15 mins, per system.
To raise security status, the best bet is to kill NPCs in low sec asteroid belts. You kill, then move to a new system and new belt, and repeat the process. It's not hard to map out a route of 8 or so systems to chain this in. Doing so is the quickest, most efficient way to up your status. It's a grind, however.
You might consider starting two characters. Get your ganker up and going, and then in a week or two, start a scout. That way when the need arises, you can log in to the character that's most needed. Your ganker can operate as an outlaw and your scout can keep a good security status. The added benefit is you can use your scout for shopping for gear and equipment without drawing attention and unwanted aggression.