One problem I have with this game (which I’m sure is just a skill issue) is I never know exactly what I can do (with some exceptions, such as mining and trading). For example, with ratting, how do I know what I’m actually capable of taking on without just sending my ships at them? Same goes for PvP. I want to be able to look at my skills, look at my ISK, and determine what ship would be better for my to try fighting other players with.
So many of my questions when googling are answered with “fly this ship” or “use this fit” without ever really explaining why.
So in general, how do you evaluate your potential?
Option 1: Just do it and see what happens. You already stated not to prefer that one so onward:
Option 2: Read guides / watch internet videos
Option 3: Play with other people and learn from them.
I agree with you about it being a skill thing. The more you do and learn, the more skill you get at determining what is needed (ships/skills/ISK) - aka “experienced”.
A miner is and will always be considered valuable in New Eden based on what you can do for your master either your corp or your princess.
They only respect the work you do if you keep sending them gifts.
But rejoice fellow miner as you know the feeling that you get when you mine something?
Yeah me too. It’s that simple to understand the feeling you get while mining, no matter if it’s only going to be spent on some future growth either via more mining or more being spent on gifts for the future.
That’s the true life to enjoy and not everyone can see great potential in your pilot just by looking at the history of which corps you had been a part of.
As much as I enjoy mining I definitely have to diversify my gameplay with this game lol which is why I have like 10 different accounts all geared towards different projects so-to-speak
I’ll look around some more at what guides are available for this game. I usually go to YouTube but to be honest I do prefer reading. Do any guides jump out in your brain as being exceptional?
Heads up on Pilot @Uriel_the_Flame holds various guides on their channel.
Link can be found in New Citizen’s Q&A and their link is well worth the look
Ps this is a pilot who taught me about Drone Mind
Which can only be done once per pilot or perhaps even just once per account so it’s somewhat different than mining though it feels great when you can potentially run that event on each of your 10 accounts you speak of.
In your own time of course as there are other great guides on YouTube for Eve Online
That is, be honest with yourself about the difference between ‘What I really like to do’ and ‘What I’d really like to do’.
They’re not always the same thing. I’ll use Mining and PvP as examples. You may like mining, but perhaps you have a nagging image of yourself as a PvP specialist. Be honest. Is it the actual PvP you’d enjoy or the experience of being a success?
Being a successful miner does not generally attract the kind of attention lavished upon skilled PvP pilots, but it can bring enormous satisfaction to those who have decided that it’s ‘their thing’.
That’s not to discount the importance of fulfilling your dreams in EVE. In fact, an awareness of your own characteristics will prevent you spending a whole heap of time and money on something which turns out not to engage you at all as you expected.
Once you have a better idea of what you (are) like, you are much more likely to devote to it the time and resources which the pursuit of your ambitions may demand of you. It won’t even seem like ‘work’!
Well, a lot depends on your piloting experience and level of skills trained pertaining to ship ‘Mastery’ (viewed in ship info box). The general line of ship hull to use for PvE can be approximated by the recommended ship hull class for Mission and DED Exploration sites. For ratting you basically need to determine the threat level of the engagement and then use the appropriate ship class.
For example, the only reason I know which T1 frigate can take out which faction frigate and punch up is because:
So:
For ratting almost any site doesn’t have warp scram / point so you can always just warp out when things get rough. Unless you are doing high class WH sites, simply trying and running away is fine.
Depends entirely what PvP you want to do. But the core is the same:
If you know the fits you’re gonna go up against, play with PyFa. Know your DPS and application at ranges with various ammos and your EHP versus their DPS and application with their various ammos and their EHP. Fastest one to dead loses.
I do know that some rats (Guristas) do sometimes warp disrupt your ships.
(I lost a T3C that way when I learned that. I tried to see if I could kill an Ishtar, got jammed and aggro from the entire site and found myself warp disrupted by one of the frigate rats. Those rats almost seemed to like being killed by the Ishtar.)
Personally I haven’t diversified my gameplay much. I have a few activities I like doing for ISK, and a few more activities where I have fun and occasionally lose ships. But lots of the game I haven’t touched yet.
There is no need to diversify if you don’t want to. But it can be nice to do multiple things. I just would start with one new project at a time, rather than 10.
For me, it’s a while ago that I wanted to see if I could diversify my gameplay: I wanted to see if I could get some solo kills in NS.
I looked up some of the fits of my likely targets (Ishtars) on zkillboard, simulated it in pyfa and figured some ships I would use. Loki seemed like a good choice. With fits of the Ishtars found on zkillboard I figured out their resistance holes and their strategy in the target region (apparently oversized shield booster stationary no-prop fits) which gave me ideas about my ammo, dps I had to overcome and fit.
Then I went out, caught an Ishtar, got surprised by the fact that rats in this region use ECM jams and warp disrupted me, and I died.
Trial and error.
You won’t know your potential without at least trying, and whatever reading and simulating you do in preparation won’t cover everything.
I then had another idea and figured I could use the warp disrupting frigates against my enemies, read up on the NPCs, brought a long range bomber instead and started shooting from far out of range whenever my targets got scrammed or pointed by rats. Fun trick and it got me a couple of kills.
Anyway, EVE is a puzzle and you’re not going to know how to play the puzzle if you aren’t trying.
You can play a part of the puzzle in the simulation window (or in Pyfa) in preparation, but eventually you will have to try.
Accepting that you need to learn is the first step to getting better so you’re already doing better than most people who just “follow some guide on youtube” showing what to do, but now how or why to do it, all while going “yeahyeah get on with it” and not learning much of anything to then fail and decide that hiding in a large alliance (being told what to do by an FC so they don’t have to think for themselves) is just easier. There’s a reason null alliances have so many members and it’s not because they want “amazing fleet battles”. This is shown in the current capsuleer day stuff, people yap a lot but when they need to learn something they haven’t done befor suddenly it’s scary, difficult, impossible and they have to wait for others to make a guide, probably filled with memes to soften the blow.
Actual capability in EVE is based on your knowledge and understanding of what you are about to do, understanding the game mechanics involved so knowing facts and details (something most people aren’t very good at), being able to come up with a plan that you can evaluate before you even execute it (to some degree anyway), then assess it afterwards to figure out why you failed and then adjust your knowledge. What ship to use really is one of the least important parts of this because if you’re just told what to do, but don’t know why you need it you’re… not really doing so well. the requirements for PVE and PVP are different in this regard.
PVE tends to be static and fixed/repeated so you need to know what setting you’ll be in, what npcs will be there, how much you need to tank, the damage types, dps, range and application for both them as you. To get better at this you need to learn how to actually fit ships (again something most people suck at regardless of what they say) and the best way to do so is to start using Pyfa (Pyfa - The Python Fitting Assistant) and stop using the ingame window, because it sucks. This allows you to figure out a known fit you got from somewhere, understand what it does in numbers for dps, application, tanking specific damage types etc etc.
Lets say that you fight a specific npc with fixed damaged types and application, and you found a fit that’s proven to work you can import it into Pyfa to see what it does at max skills (which you won’t have probably but that’s how it will be used by others unless specifically meant for newer players), set it to show how much it tanks vs the damage types, check its speed and sig radius and from that extract how much the npc actually hurt and how. You can then see what that ship and fit would do you YOUR skills and figure out if you can do it or not, or get a different ship that you can fly well and see if you can come up with a fit that will reach those requirements.
Import all fits you find, see what makes them work, toy with them, change them, see how they compare to others. The more you play with this the better you become at it and the easier it will be for you to figure out a fit without even needing pyfa at all because you’ll just run through it in your mind, you will start to recognise good and bad fits pretty much instantly and if it’s something that’s different you can then check pyfa again to see what you can learn from that one, if only to go “lol no”.
To git gud is a long journey filled with asking questions, figuring out, learning new things, planning, practising and then assessing. Rinse repeat. “Just do it, yolo” doesn’t work, the ones who say it does aren’t really that good.
For PVP it’s entirely different because you need to understand the rock, paper, scissors concept of PVP where you learn to realise it’s not so much about your dps and tank numbers but more so about countering your opponent(s) and making sure they won’t counter you. Not only do you need to understand YOUR ship but also the the ships you expect to encounter and that requires understanding strategy & tactics more than anything else, it’s also why “what ship to use” is the least of your issues here: “what to use, rock, paper or scissors” and the answer is… “depends on what your opponent uses” but some people will go “use scissors” and then you learn when people give you that sort of fixed answers they’re mostly wrong and clueless.
This means that to “learn pvp” it doesn’t really matter what ship you fly so it might as well be cheap and basic because you’re going to lose anyway, which is fine as you’re trying to learn not so much to win, the winning will come later… perhaps. You’re not looking for wins, you’re looking for fights. What also doesn’t help is flying something overpowered because it’ll mask your short comings and you will learn less because of it, on top of that you get less solo fights in OP ships so all you’ll really learn is “blobs suck” (until you learn to deal with those).
As said earlier, most people suck at all of this so don’t feel bad you suck for now, you’re not any worse than the majority of players. The more you put in effort to learn, practise and improve the more you start to outdo others and then you’ll quickly come to the conclusion that most people do indeed suck and they’ve been feeding you nonsense for way too long. The fact that you try to do better and are on an upwards path is good, with every encounter you learn more.
Learn the game mechanics involved, make a plan, make sure the plan is cheap because you’re bound/expected to die, execute it and be ok with failure (this is a step most people can’t get past) because, really, you’re just exchanging a tiny bit of isk for experience which is invaluable. Assess its performance and (probably) learn from the failure, improve plan, try again. Rinse repeat.
There are already some great answers here, so I won’t go into a lot of detail. The answer to the above is “time and experience”. There are many calculators and websites to assist with the detailed figures of EVE, but knowing what works where and when isn’t in them. That’s experienced based.
You only gain experience by “sending your ships at them”. But it doesn’t have to be “just” sending. In EVE, forewarned is forearmed. Almost every enemy type and activity is known and helpful advice is available. Learn to distinguish the good advice. “EVE-Survival.org” based mission info is better than random comments on Discord or Reddit for instance, although those can be handy as well.
If you want better explanations on things you need experience with doing EVE google searches to find better sources. Well written guides by experienced players are much more useful than watching the 5-minute video that pops up first in the search.
Although many EVE video providers are also quite good, for instance:
Long and short of it is, you need experience. To get experience, you need to send your ships at them. To survive more of those expeditions, you need knowledge. To get better knowledge, you need to be able to find the better sources.
And most importantly, you need to be not afraid to fail. EVE is about risk. If you aren’t taking risks you miss half the game. So line up your source of ISK, experiment and gain experience by flying cheap, let the cheap ships explode. Ships are disposable, the knowledge you gain is invaluable.
