EVE is not fair.
It was not originally designed to be fair.
Looking for a fair fight, or an even playing field is an exercise in frustration in EVE Online.
You share this game with thousands of other gamers.
The game promotes teaming up, with more experienced players, so you can learn to navigate your way around the game. That is why one of the most common pieces of advice given to new players is to join a corp.
The way I look at the game, and this is the article that enticed me into subbing initially, Murder Incorporated: ten months of deception for one kill in Eve Online | PC Gamer, is EVE is a game of wits, and it is survival of the fittest.
This was the new player faq thousands of vets read, when they started: http://web.ccpgamescdn.com/communityassets/pdf/EVE-Online-New-Pilot-FAQ.pdf
I read it after I started playing, but it confirmed how I viewed the game.
The game’s history, if you read lore, or news articles all describe a dystopian universe, where the character you play is effectively immortal, and the only losses to be suffered are financial and emotional.
Your character effectively cannot die, unless you chose to biomass, but it can be betrayed. It can suffer financial loss. You can be mocked, tricked, humiliated. And, you can persevere and triumphant over these disasters.
Or, you can lose everything you’ve worked for, simply by association.
This article best describes this: How EVE Players Pulled Off The Biggest Betrayal In Its History
This is not the first time this type of gameplay has occurred, nor will it be the last.
Nor is it the most heinous, either: https://imperium.news/inn-investigation-player-aid/
But, thousands of players play EVE, came to EVE, tried EVE for well over a decade, because of the very aspects of EVE you wish to reject.
EVE boils down to predator versus prey.
You can be an apex predator.
You can be a predator that is also preyed upon, at times.
Or, you can be prey.
If you simply wish to play the game with no interference whatsoever, you can play on SISI, the test server. You can do your corp recruiting on Tranquility and play on SISI. There are very few systems on SISI that allow non-consensual pvp, just avoid those. And should anyone try to bother you outside of those systems, report them.
But, if you play on Tranquility, as the game is currently regulated, you must be prepared to face opposition in many forms, i.e. market manipulation, trade wars, war decs, suicide ganks, emotional betrayal, revenge, etc because you share this game, and chose to play this game, with others, and they get to chose how they will play (within the game’s limited rules) just as you do.
EVE Online is triumph and tragedy all rolled into one epic story written by the actions of literally thousands and thousands of players over the course of 15 years, and you, too, are part of that story now.
Whether you have a happy ending to your part of the grand saga that is EVE is entirely up to you.
But, EVE is not, and was never, fair.
o7