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[Milo Caman]

Finally decided to get off my backside and publish this. (and hopefully finish it too at some stage) This guide was designed to imbue some of my paranoia into AI's newer players. It seemed to work fairly well too.

Disclaimer: This is how I do/arrange/suggest things. There are alternatives.

The 5 Rules of Lowsec

1 - Everyone is out to get you until proven otherwise
Believe me, this one is one of those 'better safe than sorry' things. Chances are, +1s will just pass through. However, if they hang around, there's a very good chance they're looking for a kill. It's worth safing up till you know what they're in and what their intentions are.

2 - It's a Trap!
Yes, yes it is. That Thorax fit with mining lasers in a belt? He's bait for the 300-man battleship fleet behind the next gate. Don't let this stop you engaging, but always be prepared to lose your ship if it really is a trap.

3 - D-Scan is your friend
Even if you've not got the hang of narrowing down targets yet, running a 360 Degree Scan at max range will at least give you a vague idea of what's in the vicinity. If your +1 is in something you know you can kill, you can probably keep on ratting. Additionally, when running missions and sigs (or safed up) D-Scan is handy for keeping an eye out for Combat probes, which will inevitably pop up if someone's determined to find you. [This XML Modification will make checking for probes a lot easier. It's been declared legit]

4 - Edges are bad
Avoid hanging around in systems that border highsec or lowsec. They tend to be crowded, camped, full of gankbears, or all three.

5 - If you fly it around lowsec, you will lose it eventually.
Yes, if you fly it in, or into lowsec often enough, you will eventually lose the ship. Period. This ties in with the age-old EVE rule of 'Never fly what you can't afford to lose'

Profit

Exploration

Probably the safest way to make ISK in lowsec Is exploration. This involves probing down Cosmic Signatures (Not Anomalies, we'll come to that later) and then running them. In order to do this, you will need:

Astrometrics IIII
Astrometric Rangefinding III
Astrometric Aquisition III
Your Favorite Probing Frigate (Imicus, Magnate, Probe or Heron, depending on your race trained)
Core Probe Launcher
10-20 Core Probes
Optional: Prototype Cloaking Device I
Situational: Codebreaker I
Situational: Salvager I
Situational: Analyser I

A Combat Cruiser with decent tank and DPS parked nearby. (Omen, Maller, Vexor, Thorax, Rupture, Moa, Caracal)

A really good probing tutorial can be watched here.

The general Idea here is to probe down the sites, bookmark them (I recommend including the Signature ID in the bookmark name, or writing it down, so next time you launch probes they don't catch it again) and then complete them. Either by killing all of the NPCs, salvaging, hacking or analysing all of the containers.
There are 5 'types' of site. These are listed below. The 'Type usually appears at around 40-70%.

Gravmetric: Hidden Mining Site. These are usually pretty rare ores, with some rats guarding them. Worth it if you have mining backup and a station to flee too with additional locals.
Magnometric: Archaeology/Salvage (Analyzer/Salvager) The rewards for these vary wildly. I've gotten lucky and snagged up to 200mil in salvage with these. Other times I've left almost empty-handed.
Radar: Hacking (Codebreaker) You usually get 7-15mil in loot +bounties out of these. They're not too hard, and well worth the reward.
Ladar: Hidden Gas Cloud Mining Site. I've yet to find one of these, but apparently you can make a quick buck with a Cruiser and some Gas Harvesters.
Unknown: This is your bog-standard combat site, or a Wormhole. The difficulty of these varies wildly. It's really worth checking out the name of the site on Evelopedia to check your Cruiser can handle it before going in. The great thing about unknowns, is that you tend to get escalations*, or Faction loot drops, which can mean big money.

Things to remember whilst exploring
- Always primary frigates if you've got group aggro. They're more likely to warp scram, and if stuff goes balls up, you need to be able to gtfo fairly fast.
-Watch D-scan for core and combat probes. Unlike Ratting or CAs, you don't need to leave with every local change. You do, however, need to get clear if you see either core or combat probes, because it means someone is looking for you.
-Remember when tampering with Mag and Radar Sites, that if you've hacked, salvaged, shot or analyzed anything, the site will despawn upon warping out, So go in prepared.
-When you're scanning for stuff, safe up and cloak. Remember people can still shoot you if you're in the map screen.

*Upon completion of a site, there's a chance you'll get an escalation. This will take the form of a pop up message and a bookmark elsewhere in your journal. head to this, complete the next site, and follow the chain to the end. Lots of bounties and Loot guaranteed.

Ratting

Ratting in lowsec is good fun, but dangerous. If you're not paying attention, it's a bit like doing a Skydive with a parachute that's not been checked over, or doing a bungy jump with a regular rope instead of a cord. Your potential for fun/Profit is fairly high, but it's easy to slip and die horribly.

You will need:
A Combat ship. Don't recommend anything bigger than a cruiser for GTFO Factor.
Optional: Salvaging Gear

So, ratting, what do do. Well, basically, you warp to a belt with a combat ship, kill the NPCs, loot their corpses, and move to the next belt.
This is best done at range, because getting caught in an asteroid's box and not being able to warp out as local spikes and reds land in the belt is really not all that fun.
Dropping Damage at range can be done by most combat cruisers, and a good deal of frigates/Assault frigates.
AFs make dream ratters, because they have the potential to trash NPCs horribly whilst running a PvP fit, Kill a lot of players that might land in the belt with you, and gtfo fast if stuff goes bad. Cruisers are your next best thing, followed closely by frigates.

The big rewards from ratting come with Faction rats. What you're looking out for here, is an NPC with one of the following prefixes in it's name. The prefixes are: "Dominion" for Angels; "Dark Blood" for Blood Raiders; "Dread Guristas" for Guristas, "True Sansha" for Sansha's Nation, and "Shadow Serpentis" for Serpentis.
When you find an NPC with this name, primary it, loot the wreck (Salvage if possible) and then drop whatever you find in it back at a station for pickup later.

Faction loot varies wildly in price, from the hundreds of millions, to the few million. Regardless, it's a good Idea to drop it off as soon as you find it Just in case.

The ideal systems for ratting are quiet, have a Station, and a lot of belts. Ratting with neutrals in local is a big no-no, because belts are what's known as 'public' grid. Anyone can warp to it, whatever they're in, whatever their situation. As soon as you get a non-blue/green/purple Player in local, you safe up, or dock up.
If you're not as paranoid as that, you can always get away from the asteroids (above or below the ring is good) and align out to a station with your hand hovering on warp. If something nasty lands, warp out, and wait for local to clear. Do not warp to another planet, belt or public grid. It's amazing how easy it is to follow someone's warp location through visual cues, and I've caught a good number of ratters in the past through doing it.

Things to remember whilst ratting
- Additional Locals? GTFO or align.
- Found some faction loot? Drop it off at a station before you continue.
- Avoid the asteroids themselves like the plague. Give them a lot of distance.
- Nobody likes a camper, staying in one belt for too long is liable to attract attention.

Salvaging

This is slightly different to what might be considered conventional 'ninja salvaging' It's riskier, done in lowsec, and requires a helluva lot more moving around. You will need:

-Salvage Stealth Bomber or Salvage Dessie with a Cloak
-Salvaging 4 Minimum, Otherwise it just ain't profitable
-Balls

At the end of the day, this boils down to finding people fighting (or finding where they've fought) and looting wrecks from under their noses.This can be seriously funny, especially if you nab some tasty loots from a player wreck after a big fight.
The real gold here, is 'Elite' Wrecks that have been left behind. These yield T2 Salvage (The tastiest kind) and the potential for a quick buck. The bigger the wreck, the better! Remember elite wrecks often take longer to salvage, so rigs and maxing out salvaging really helps here.

Things to remember whilst salvaging
- Always maintain at least 3000m from the wreck you're working on. That way, if anything lands on grid or shows up on short-range D-scan, you can cloak and flee.
- Actual salvaging mid-fight is inadvisable. It's better to run in, ninja the loot, and run away. Come back to salvage later on.
- Remember looting other people's wrecks means they can shoot you without sentry intervention for 15 minutes!

Preparation

The Overview.
Setting this is probably one of the most important things about staying alive in lowsecks. CCP's default settings are horribly lacking. Let's cover what your basic screen layout should be shall we?



Okay, so you've got that layout sorted. Let's cover how to make tabs! Tabs are an insanely useful thing. They allow you to flick between overview settings in the link of an eye. In order to create a tab, click the default one CCP has given you, and press 'Add Tab' Give it a suitable name, and repeat till you have 3 or 4.
I tend to have tabs for Fleet PvP, Salvaging, Scanning and everything else.

In order to set what shows under each tab, you need to go to 'Overview Settings'  This can be reached by pressing the little > arrow top left of the overview. This should open a drop-down menu with a number of options. Overview settings will be amongst them.
Alright, so we're in overview settings. First off, let's set colourtags and backgrounds so standings and corp take priority over trivial things like sec status. Go to the appearance tab, and move stuff around a bit. By the end of it, you should have something like this:



and this



Remember that the higher up on the list something is, the more things it overrides display-wise. Background-wise, it's worth right-clicking outlaw and war, and selecting 'toggle blink' There's nothing quite like a blinky target dropping onto grid with you to kick you into acting.

Alright, so you've sorted yourself to see peeps for what they are and not shoot flashy friendlies. Now the more important bit. Actually setting the ship to apepar on grid. Flick to the filter tab. you should see something like this:



Each Category covers a type of object you might see in space, see it a celestial, ship, or LCO. It's best to make a few settings like this. One with ships, Drones, Fighters n' such, One with wrecks, for salvage, the list goes on.
Another interesting little thing in overview settings, are states. For example, you can set fleet members not to appear on overview. This can be great in large fleet fights, to reduce scan clutter. States looks something like this. Each overview setting you make has it's own states section. States usually looks something like this:



Now, the interesting bit. It's possible to apply overview settings to specific tabs. This can be done through the last tab, and is fairly self-explanatory



Bracket Profile is what actually shows up in space, not overview. If you're smart, you'll use the a 'full data' bracket profile for most of your settings.

The Gear
Let's face it. Moving stuff around in low security space is fairly dangerous. Therefore, it's best to minimize this by having a good supply of ships, ammo and spare mods in your lowsec base.
The best time to move things in, is just after downtime. It's quietest around then, because all of the usual issues have yet to log on. Failing this, you can Nano a Hauler and get a friend to scout the systems ahead of you. Remember that if you're not an outlaw, frigates are really, really hard to catch on gates, and Cruisers are usually too much effort for what they drop.

Ideally, the best thing to do is make the majority of the stuff you need regularly in lowsec, so you needn't ship it in. To do so, you will need:

Blueprints (I'd suggest ammo and drones, as these are what tend to deplete fast)
Industry Level I (III will speed things up a bit)
A Station with a Factory listed amongst it's facilities
All of those bits and pieces you picked up from NPCs ratting or explorin' that aren't worth much!

1 - Select the mods you can't sell for much and don't need by using shift. Right click, and press 'Reprocess' This will put you through a series of steps giving you a mineral quota (standings and skill based, Don't worry too much about this now). At the end of it, you should have lots of shiny minerals in your hanger.

2 - Right Click the Blueprint, and click 'manufacturing' Pick an Installation, an empty slot and press okay from there.

3 - Select the number of runs you want the BPO to do. Note that 1 Run of Ammo is 100 Units. It takes twice as long and twice the minerals to do 2 (etc, etc)

4 - You should get another quote. Make sure you have the relevant minerals in hanger, then press okay. It'll say if you don't.

5 - Your ammo is cooking! Wait the time it gives, then go back to science and industry tab and retrieve your ammo and BPO. Zing! Free Ammo!

This can be done with just about anything ingame if you have the Blueprints and resources. If you're planning on  living in lowsec, the ability to quickly pump out some ammo for very little cost is really, really useful, especially considering the fact that there are almost always free factory slots in lowsec stations.

[Milo Caman]

Mechanics

PvP mechanics, Timers and tricks are some of the most important things you need to learn in order to survive in low security space. Knowing when, how and where you can escape a situation, as well as knowing when not to engage, are critical to your ship's continued existence in New Eden.

Mechanics to Remember

-When Jumping through a stargate, you have 30 seconds of 'cloak' time on the other side if you don't move or do anything. This is ample time to plan your next move.
-When jumping through a stargate, you have a 30 second timer until you can jump back, dock, or use another stargate.
-When Jumping through a stargate, you're usually dropped within a 15-20km sphere.

-When undocking, you have a 30 second session-change timer where you cannot be locked,bumped or redock. This persists for 30 seconds as long as you don't touch anything. This timer can be used to redock safely if you just spam redock and don't touch anything else.

-When attacking someone, there is a 60 second timer during which you cannot dock or jump. This is there regardless of your target's security status, shiptype, or flagging towards you.

Criminal Flagging

When you attack someone who isn't an outlaw (Below -5 security status) or flagged as aggressive to you, you will take a security status hit, and be flagged as a criminal for 15 minutes. The timer is listed in the red text that will appear top left of your screen. Warping to gates, stations or jumping into highsec will result in you being flagged and shot at by the sentries, and in the case of highsec, instapopped by the faction navies.
Docking, Logging off or aggressing another player will reset GCC. Additionally, logging off in space with GCC means your ship will be in space for 15 minutes until GCC expires, meaning you can be probed down, and killed.

Frigates and Cruisers are typically unable to tank sentry guns. They do something in the region of 350* DPS (With very high vollies). Battlecruiser and larger are typically able to survive under sentry fire for at least a short amount of time.

*Damage proportions are 18.18% EM, 18.18% Explosive, 31.82% Kinetic and 31.82% Thermal.

Security status drops, can be a pain if you engage in PvP regularly, but can be mitigated if you train Fast Talk in, Avoid podding non-outlaws, and rat regularly.The penalties are as follows:

-Players with -1.0 can have bounties placed on them.
-Players with better than -2.0 can enter any system
-Players with -2.0 or worse cannot enter 1.0 systems
-Players with -2.5 or worse cannot enter 0.9 systems
-Players with -3.0 or worse cannot enter 0.8 systems
-Players with -3.5 or worse cannot enter 0.7 systems
-Players with -4.0 or worse cannot enter 0.6 systems
-Players with -4.5 or worse cannot enter 0.5 systems

Players with -5.0 or worse are considered outlaws. They can travel the same as any player with -4.5 or worse. Concord will not intervene if you try to kill outlaws and killing them does not lower your security status. Note however that this has nothing to do with bounties. Bounties on players are put there by other players. If you succeed in killing the player, you receive the reward, regardless of the legality of your actions. CONCORD completely ignores bounties.

Note that players below -5 security status will be Popped by CONCORD in their Sov, as opposed to a faction navy. Additionally, if you have GCC and jump into highsec, you will also be attacked by CONCORD, as opposed to the faction navies.

Hunting/Running and PeeVeePee

Coming Soon™

Required Reading

Guide to Piracy: Covers some basic combat things, as well as decent coverages of aggression mechanics and timers.
Overview Guide: A Must if you want to avoid friendly fire incidents. CCP's default settings are laughably bad.
Ship Fitting Guide: Covers some basic tips regarding forming ship fits. n' such. Worth a look

Tools

EVE Fitting Tool: An Incredibly useful piece of gear used to put theoretical ships fits together. Nice for showing people fits for critique before you buy parts.
EVE-Mon: A Skill tracker and planner. Very Useful. Also Tracks Market Orders remotely.
The Test Server: EVE's 'Beta' Server. The market has been seeded with everything for 100ISK. Very useful for practising tactics, PvP stuff and trying out mad fits. Expect Bugs, It's a Beta Server.

[Alain Colcer]

Damn nice, ill convert this into a PDF and give it to everyone in Gallente Militia, cause people really don't have a clue there.

[Milo Caman]

Damn nice, ill convert this into a PDF and give it to everyone in Gallente Militia, cause people really don't have a clue there.

Sounds good. Just linking this might get Backstage a bit more visibility though, and it kinda allows peeps to ask questions too. Pretty sure I've missed some stuff somewhere 

[Senn Typhos]

<gives stamp of approval>

[Usagi Tsukino]

As a note, if you have a crimflag (red timer) and you jump into high sec, you will be CONCORDOKKEN, not Navy Swatted.

This guy was crimflagged and jumped into HS to try and deny us a killmail, but we got it anyway.

I've also had the misfortune of watching newer players in fleets misunderstand this mechanic and jump into high sec while still crimflagged (not to be confused with aggression flagged) or not realizing they were crimflagged and having CONCORD come and knock the stuffing out of them.

Code: [Select]

(notify) CONCORD Police Captain has started trying to warp scramble
"REDACTED [BULK.]<APEX>'fred's hulk'(Apocalypse)"
Anyway, evidence only supplied because the rest of your stuff was so right on I wanted to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass and I actually was right (checking for myself tbh).  

[Ember Vykos]

Awesome guide Milo.

[Milo Caman]

As a note, if you have a crimflag (red timer) and you jump into high sec, you will be CONCORDOKKEN, not Navy Swatted.

Danke' I'll add that. Also forgot to mention that if you're -10 and you burn through CONCORD Sov, you also get Concordokken'ed.

[Dame Death]

Also forgot to mention that if you're -10 and you burn through CONCORD Sov, you also get Concordokken'ed.

Yeh but if your fast it is posible to bonce safes and wait for it to go.

But by fast i mean triplle nanofibered dramial fast and who uses 3 nanos

[Milo Caman]

Naw, I'm pretty sure CONCORD Instalock and instascram. I recall someone losing a Nano'ed Claw to it when we chased him to a highsec gate a while back.

[Dame Death]

if you have gcc for shooting someone yes.

If you have gcc for getting agro in interbus/concord sov from npcs no.

I spent 1h+ bounching safes the other day m,ilo god dam agro kept reseting so I gave up and petained.


Got her back as well \o/

[Milo Caman]

if you have gcc for shooting someone yes.

If you have gcc for getting agro in interbus/concord sov from npcs no.

I spent 1h+ bounching safes the other day m,ilo god dam agro kept reseting so I gave up and petained.


Got her back as well \o/

Hehe, fair enough, Still not a smart thing to do though 

[Z.Sinraali]

When plotting a route, use the data on the star map to avoid systems where there are large numbers of recent ship/pod kills. Won't help if you're the unlucky first one to fall to a camp, but it's better than naught.

[April Knox]

Pretty good guide to be honest. I’ll add a very much needed chapter against the so called “Disco Battleships”.  Disco Battleships are basically Rooks / Phoons or any other battleship with plenty of highslots to fit a full rack of, ninety ninth percent the times, faction smartbombs.

Disco Battleships are usually sitting 10-15km from a gate aligned towards an incoming gate. The whole deal of them is to activate the srmartbombs and vaporize your little ceptor / frigate + Pod to death before you even exit warp. This mechanic is not considered an exploit by CCP and no point at all in petitioning your losses.

Disco Battleship pilots usually fly them over and over, and if you happen to die to one of them, it’ll be a good measure to add him to your hostile list (Plus Watchlist) so you know beforehand if there is a Disco Battleshipper in field.

To make things worse, since smartbombs don’t need to actually target a pilot to work, the “Disco Battleshippers” usually fit ALL their slowslots with Warp Core Stabs, so they can’t get tackled and killed. If you check battleclinic, you’ll see the top-ten scorers are Disco Battleship pilots, and for a reason. Plenty of kills and 9 WCs to keep you from being tackled + killed.

What to do against these pesky guys? Avoid them. Trust me. It’s the only way around. Create tactical bookmarks near gates that will let you warp to a gate from a different angle and just live with it. And start considering them as those huge Veldspard rocks you see on the belts.

[Milo Caman]

Pretty good guide to be honest. I’ll add a very much needed chapter against the so called “Disco Battleships”.  Disco Battleships are basically Rooks / Phoons or any other battleship with plenty of highslots to fit a full rack of, ninety ninth percent the times, faction smartbombs.

Disco Battleships are usually sitting 10-15km from a gate aligned towards an incoming gate. The whole deal of them is to activate the srmartbombs and vaporize your little ceptor / frigate + Pod to death before you even exit warp. This mechanic is not considered an exploit by CCP and no point at all in petitioning your losses.

Disco Battleship pilots usually fly them over and over, and if you happen to die to one of them, it’ll be a good measure to add him to your hostile list (Plus Watchlist) so you know beforehand if there is a Disco Battleshipper in field.

To make things worse, since smartbombs don’t need to actually target a pilot to work, the “Disco Battleshippers” usually fit ALL their slowslots with Warp Core Stabs, so they can’t get tackled and killed. If you check battleclinic, you’ll see the top-ten scorers are Disco Battleship pilots, and for a reason. Plenty of kills and 9 WCs to keep you from being tackled + killed.

What to do against these pesky guys? Avoid them. Trust me. It’s the only way around. Create tactical bookmarks near gates that will let you warp to a gate from a different angle and just live with it. And start considering them as those huge Veldspard rocks you see on the belts.

Cheers, I'll paste that in and add a note that you added it when I find ze time. Surprised I left this out actually, I've lost one or two inties to Disco Ships