LF advice on what to do after SoE arc

New Citizens Q&A
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I’ve narrowed my interests down to mining missions and lowsec gas mining.

Regarding missions, I have a few questions: Does lowsec pay exponentially better or only linearly? Am I better just sticking to 0.5? And is the reward based on the location of the agent, or that of the objective?

And about gas harvesting, my question is: is it decent isk for an alpha clone or too gimped by the restrictions? Also, any pointers about surviving lowsec are welcome. Especially on setting up BMs, I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet.

2

After everybody explains to you why those two options are bad, you might want to consider wormhole daytripping.

3

sorry but when i see your questions, it seems to me you are going to the wrong way: You focus on isk/h. You should focus on fun/H
Eve is a game, not a job to earn money
If you like gas harvesting or missions, do it. Because you like it. Not because of isks

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Hi, mate!

A lot of what you do depends on what you enjoy. If you love missions, try them in lowsec, they do pay better. I would make sure combat probes are on your descan window (Alt+D), and check it often any time someone else is in system with you. If you see combats, get out. They can scan your ship down with them, and get a warp in to your exact location.

Gas is good, but its variable in profit. Good for an alpha, but stick to lowsec for it. There are booster clouds located in low, that can be worth quite a bit. Look up gas harvesting on the euni wiki for which constellations have them.

Beyond that, a ship fit for combat sites in highsec can be profitable. The old Vexor can be a very good boat for that for well under 30 million. Tristan, Sunesis, and Algos also work. It’s a bit more hit and miss, but you can easily get 80-100m drops regularly, and do it at relatively low cost.

At any rate, experiment a bit. That’s how you find your happiness in eve :slight_smile:

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Well, I haven’t considered WH because as far as I can tell it’s got face-melting rats along with alliances that shoot on sight. What are the risks and rewards of WH vs. lowsec?

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One of the first things I did after the tutorial was take my Venture to some backwater lowsec space for mining missions. Gankers aside, the rats were cruiser-size and the rewards actually underwhelming. As much as I hate to say it, it’s far more appealing farming mining missions in 0.5 or 0.6 while doing PD or almost anything else. The drones even kill the rats on their own, so it all works out as a low-attention activity. Not the kind of gameplay I want, but it doesn’t matter when I can literally play another game in the background at the same time. I’m getting into gas mining today, so hopefully it’ll be higher risk-reward and more engaging.

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Low sec is not that much different from high sec. The rewards are a little better and you will get blobbed sometimes. Wormholes are much more interesting because they have no local. Most of the time they are completely empty, but you can never be sure, so they keep you awake. In other words, they are fun.

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  1. The isk from missions really comes from selling the things you buy from the loyalty point store of the entity you are running missions for, not so much the mission reward isk. So a bit more isk for mission rewards isn’t actually all that enticing.

  2. Don’t focus on isk anyway. Do what is fun for you.

Agreed that it seems you might like wormholes. If you do, it would probably be worth it to you to subscribe to the game to access things behind the paywall but fun such as cloaking devices. Gas “huffing” (mining) is fun in wormholes.

EDIT: In wormholes sleeper drones won’t show up in many site for some minutes so you have about 15 minutes to huff gas in them. Always know what the site is about before warping a gas ship to it solo/site uncleared. One fun thing is called “jedi huffing” (harvesting gas while you speed tank the sleepers), but it’s not for beginners (or alpha state clones)

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9

Gas huffing is totally doable as an alpha, but you have to do a few things first.

First is your scanning frig. Use a T1 scanner like a heron. Fit it with a 5mn MWD, scanning upgrades, probe launcher, and whatever crap you need to get it cap stable with the MWD on. What you do is jump the wormhole, bookmark it (very important), pick a celestial like a planet, and warp to it. In warp, drop a bookmark, so you’re not near anything. Warp back to the bookmark, double click in space, and turn the MWD on. Proceed to scan whatever you like, while flying along at 3000+ m/s. The reason for that, is even if someone scans you down, you wont be where they scanned you. You’ll probably be about 40km from their probe result, and still moving, which makes you VERY hard to catch.

Once you have the gas site resolved, bookmark it, and go get your venture, which needs to be fit with two huffers, and an MWD. As soon as you warp to the site, edit the bookmark with the time you clicked warp. You have about 10 minutes totally safe, then keep an eye out for sleepers. When they arrive, bail, and repeat the process for as many sites as you like til you’re full.

Heres a helpful site for figuring up the value of whatever you’re after. Makes life easier:
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/ore/gas.php

And if you’re omega and want to be a REAL dick, you can drop a bubble at the warp in point. That + sleepers can make for some fun killmails later…

Oh, and dont bother with the Ordinary Perimeter sites. The sentry guns are there as soon as you warp in, and hit about the same as an artillery fit tornado. Each. There’s 4 of them. You’ll die instantly.

Have fun getting high, maaaaaan.

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10

Thanks, all. I’ve been learning the ropes on gas harvesting and I’m pretty serious about it. I’ve installed a jump clone with a Venture lowsec so I can do that whenever I feel like it, plus another Venture in hisec when I want less risk/reward/engagement. WH are honestly scary, I’ve done a couple of expeditions and the first time i got a small heart attack when a Helios showed up on D-scan at like 60km. And as I understand it, ships with covops cloaks don’t ever have to be decloaked, even when warping? How do I protect myself from those? Should I be avoiding all systems with player structures in them, and what percentage of them are actually inhabited?

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Covert ships are sneaky by nature, but in a pretty balanced place right now. While they can warp around cloaked, only one class can decloak and instantly lock you: the Stealth Bomber. Fortunately, they’re usually pretty thin on tank, so you can actually kill one with a heron if its fit right.

Everything else has a locking delay of about 5 seconds before they can start to lock you. If you look on a cloak, you’ll see a stat called "Sensor Recalibration Delay. That’s the time it takes to be able to start locking any targets. With a venture, that’ll take most things a few seconds, giving you 6-8 seconds to run your little harvesting butt off.

The way cloaky hunters counter that is by bumping. If your ship isn’t aligned to its destination, it cant warp. So when my fat cloaky proteus decloaks on your venture, I’ll do it at about 4km, and immediately hit the overheated MWD. Before you can warp, you’ll get bumped out of alignment, and by the time you can realign, ill have you scrambled.

The best way to counter this (slightly cheesy) tactic is just stay moving. If you’re hacking or huffing, orbit the cloud or can with a prop mod on. It makes it a lot harder to line up the bump with a moving target. I only get it about 10% of the time on moving, vs 90% on stationary.

In any case, be aware, check dscan a lot, and realize you will die eventually. Just get used to it, and it wont sting as badly when it does happen. In between deaths though, you can learn a lot, and have a lot of fun along the way.

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