6 Month Review

Starwalker sat at the Neocom console and opened his journal. In the 3 Month Review Starwalker had focused on training skills, earning ISK and looking for a new corporation – joining R1FTA in June. Along with moving base the next months saw various war declarations and the first R1FTA kill, first solo kill and first losses.

Initial focus for targets was in hisec with various nefarious activities from looting wrecks, to can-flipping and ninja-salvaging. However, as time went on Starwalker decided to move to lowsec and his kill ratio went from 3:1 to close to 1:1. As always, it is the losses that prove most instructive and whilst Starwalker feels he is a better pilot now than he was three months ago he knows that he is still not very good yet.

Equally, Starwalker was aware that some of the lessons that he drew from his experience would be a pale imitation of the real truth but that would come with time, talking to other pilots and more experience. In summary so far, the top four lessons learnt:

1.    Ships - focus on a few ships and fits, suited to you, to learn to fly and fight. Only fly (and fit) what you can afford to lose and whilst taking risks is fine, try to avoid silly losses such as being destroyed by sentry guns

2.    Combat - maintain situational awareness and use all tools (display, local, overview...) and modules in combat and overheat

3.    Skills - focus training plan on particular ships, fits and skills needed. Be flexible and change the plan as needed but use the plan. Optimise that plan where possible such as using implants and a neural remap

4.    Base - select a small number of bases based on most important need such as central to roaming locations

Starwalker considered these lessons in relation to the 3 month review: training skills, earning ISK and finding a corporation. Training was ongoing and would remain so for many more months until at least the frigate level skills were maximised. The improvement was that training was much more focused now on key objectives. Earning ISK had taken a lower priority after using two plexes to fund frigate ships and equipment. Starwalker was a long way from being ISK self-sufficient. Starwalker was happy at R1FTA and had no desire to find another corporation.

Starwalker looked through the list in more detail and knew that the next logical step after this would be to take these lessons and make positive changes, in particular with ships and combat. But first things first, more detail:

Ships and equipment – focus on a critical few ships and fit:

·         Only fly ships that are expendable, in time they will be destroyed so expect that to happen

·         Select ships and fit based on personal preference in flying and fighting style

·         Fit ships to perform a specific purpose, to be fit for that purpose and for skills to be aligned to the ship and fit

·         Use Battleclinic (killboard), Failheap Challenge or similar to find ship fits to help understand either what you are flying or what you are fighting. Azual’s blog has a good series on Know Your Enemy

·         Focus on fitting to a ships strengths and bonuses and use EFT to help evaluate those fits

·         Select weapon type, ammunition, tank, range and speed based on flying and fighting style

·         Check ships are insured

·         Watch red GCC and avoid sentry gun fire or risk losing the ship

·         Avoid an online POS, which can easily overcome a single ship

Combat – use all your modules and overheat as needed

·         Maintain situational awareness and use the tools that will help do that, in particular display, overview and local. React as needed to changes or new information

·         Setup an overview that enables combat (ships and drones), travel and scanning. Overview can be used to select targets but the same can be done manually by selecting targets in space view

·         Use d-scan at 360 to see what is around and at 5 to find targets at celestials. Ignore targets not at celestials, unless you have the ability to scan those targets down

·         Most targets will be either be at an asteroid belt, customs office or planet or you will be found quickly at one of those

·         Gain as much intelligence as possible before the fight (pilot, ship, fit) and try to avoid pilots with lots of friends in local

·         In combat use all modules as needed, remember to scramble or point, use overheat to gain extra speed to dictate range or to apply more damage

·         Watch damage being received or applied and adjust range, ammunition or speed as needed

·         If winning try to get the pod by approaching ship/capsule to get a fast target lock and not drift out of range from the previous orbit

·         If losing, try to align out, overheat propulsion to get away and spam the warp away. Especially spam the warp away for the pod

·         Ensure medical clone is up to date – do not unnecessarily lose skill points if podded

Training skills – focus on key objectives, such as skills for a particular fitted ship

·         Train most combat and support skills to level 4 and then focus on level 5

·         Prioritise order of skills based on need for fitted ship, for example if mainly using a shield Rifter fit then maximise those gunnery, missile and tank skills rather than spreading skill training across multiple areas (exploration...) or ship types (battlecruisers...)

·         List skills and their trained level in EVE notepad and then train them in order. (I also include time to train next skill) Be flexible as needed, such as pushing some skill training earlier (thermodynamics...) and other skills later (rigging...) or to respond to changes such as new preference for armour Rifters rather than shield Rifters. But... have a plan and use it

·         Implants can be used to reduce training time and similarly a neural remap can achieve something similar. Use these as needed but note that implants are destroyed with the clone when being podded

Base of operations – select a small number of central locations for ships and equipment

·         Select a main base of operations that is central to expected main activities

·         Have some alternate secondary bases for ships and equipment

·         Prioritise selection criteria based on frequency or importance of application

·         Avoid obvious gate camp locations hisec to lowsec pipes or main lowsec to lowsec pipes

·         Keep a few ships fully fitted and ready to go

Starwalker sat back from the Neocom console, considering his journal, it had been an interesting time and life was very different in lowsec compared to hisec. Life in lowsec was harder, with Starwalker more often the prey than the hunter and running into gate camps and ganks. Knowing what to do in combat was much easier than actually doing it. Starwalker decided that over the coming months he would investigate combat and ways to help bridge the knowing doing gap. It was time to harden up or ship out.