Overview

Eve is a dangerous game and in it there are more ways to die than moons, planets and suns in any given region. The following guidelines are meant to teach new and old players how to be more successful at stayin' alive in Eve and specifically Nullsec.

The most important tool at your disposal is the Local Chat. While the chat can be ignored most of the time, the Member List is priceless.

Four reasons making it so damn awesome:

• Shows every single character as soon as he/she lands in system.
• Covers the whole system, not restricted by any distance.
• Can not be fooled by cloaking devices or any other ship specific bonuses.
• “Capsuleers in channel” allow you to quickly detect “local spikes”, many people entering a system at once (marked yellow in the image to the right).

Like almost everything in Eve there is one exception though, which is Wormhole Space. One of the reasons why Wormhole Space is considered dangerous, is because people will only show up in local when they used the chat. Considering how vital local is for survival, this is a major disadvantage.

Local is great, but to really make use of it, you have to set it up correctly first.

The first thing you want to do is set up your local window:

• Disconnect the local chat from any other chats you have. It should be open and in focus all the time.
• Tick “Show Compact Member List” under “Member List Settings” (marked red in the image to the right). This removes portraits from the Member List, allowing for more entries to show.
• Maximize the height of the chat window. Most players like to stretch it to a maximum on the left or right side of the screen. This allows you to see the full Member List most of the time, without having to scroll. Look at the image on the right side for good and bad positions of the Local Chat.

• Secondly, you need to change your Overview Settings to show the correct icon colours. This is part of Unfucking your Overview. If set up correctly it shows friendlies with blue and green, neutrals in grey and enemies in red or orange. This allows you to quickly gain knowledge how dangerous a system is by checking your Local Chat.

• Keep track of new characters to a system you are in by selecting a person in the Member List and clicking Ctrl+A. This will select all users in Local, making new ones easy to spot, since they are not selected.
• Look up the corporation and the killboard of neutrals on external websites. It allows you to guess what ship they are likely to fly and what they plan to do in your system; for example you might find that the guy likes to light cynos for PL.
• Multiple characters of the same corporation or alliance are most likely in a fleet and work together. While a single neut can be your death, fleets are much more dangerous. Be wary of that.
• Do not spend too much attention on the Chat. People may try to distract you by inviting you to a Personal Chat or asking you questions in local.

• Probably the second most important tool is the Directional Scan you have. It allows you to scan for objects in a 360° angle and a maximum range of 14.3 AU, which translates to 2,139,249,551km (so a whole f*cking lot). It is advised to keep it open all the time, so you don't have to take the extra step of opening it when you need it. Also, pressing the dscan hotkey (default v) opens the dscan window (if it wasn't already open) and immediately initiates a scan.

• Can be used both defensively (seeing what potentially hostile ships are uncloaked in scan range, scanning gates to check for camps, etc) and offensively (scanning anoms, popped moons, etc to find prey)

• You may want to use an Overview Preset (marked green in the image to the right) to filter for certain types (marked blue) of objects.

• Intelligence*, or Intel for short, is a great tool, but depends very much on others to work well. Since you are one of “the others” for another pilot you should try to contribute to the channel as well.

• It's important to know that the Intel Chat is one of the few taken very serious in Eve. If you post anything beside valid Intel or status requests you will attract the anger of others and you could even get banned from the channel (very bad).

• Some people like to have the Intel Chat in separate window, but it's also sufficient if you have it among your chat windows, if you keep it in focus when you are travelling.

• See the latter entries of the utilities page for websites and programs that present you data from ESI like ship/pod kills, rat kills and etc to give you more info on your surroundings.

• While you may be tempted to use Autopilot for those long trips, it is highly discouraged in null-sec. You will die 99.9% of the time because you cannot escape a gate camp by being AFK (not to mention the 20km warp issue).

• We all know these strategic roadblocks. In null-sec, gate camps can consist of several players, anchored bubbles, and bubbles from both regular and heavy interdictors (make sure to learn the difference in mechanics between the two ships and their bubbles). There are different ways to deal with camps depending on the ships types of both the campers and yourself, and if there are bubbles or not.

• Bubbles are the colloquial term for the fields created by Mobile Warp Distruptors (anchorable bubbles), Interdiction Probes (“dictor bubbles”), or Heavy Interdictor ship-based fields (“hictor bubbles”). They will impede the warping or jump-drive activation of any ship in their radius, and are a frequent tool for large-scale tackling in fleet fights as well as traps laid at nullsec gate camps.

• Unlike warp disrupters, warp scramblers will disable MWDs, MJDs, & MJFGs at the expense of activation range. They make burning back to gate in an MWD ship significantly slower.

Stasis Webifiers significantly reduces the velocity of the targeted ship. Makes burning back to gate difficult. Actually will decrease time for target to warp if not disrupted/scrammed.

Covert ops cloaking device allows appropriate ships to warp while cloaked. Non-covops cloaking devices can still be used for the MWD+cloak trick to escape gatecamps http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Cloak_Trick. Useful for warping to a safe and cloaking up until the coast is clear.

Slower velocity than MWDs, but easier fitting requirements and not shut down by warp scrams. There are also some ships that can fit an oversized AB. The **afterburner* skill and its related support skill, Fuel Conservation, significantly increase speed and reduce capacitor use.

Gives your ship a significant speed boost, but can use a lot of capacitor. Also can be shut down by warp scramblers and scripted warp disruption field generators. On smaller ships, *MWDs* will increase your time to warp. Related skills: Acceleration Control, High-Speed Maneuvering.

They give your ship a bonus of resistance to warp scramblers and disruptions. They will help you warp off if your attacker doesn't have powerful scramblers and disruptions. They will not help you with bubbles. The trade off is that your ship will take longer to lock its targets.

Essential for traveling around null-sec, *tactical BMs* can be the difference between arriving safely at your destination or dying in a fire. You can make them yourself (time-consuming), or you can check out the pre-made packs that several people have for sale on our forums.

• Safe spot* is a point in space that is not on any grid that be accessed through the regular overview. You can make as many personal safe spots on a system as you want or need. They are useful to hide from your enemy or as a safe location to re-fit your ship or scan anomalies and signatures.

• Many people have safe spots within 14AU the gates, so you can use your directional scanner to keep an eye on who is coming and going on the system.

• They are very easy to make following these steps.

1. Once you enter the system press ctrl+B. This will open the “add bookmark” dialog.
2. Warp to the sun with the “add bookmark” dialog open.
3. Mid warp (you can see the distance from your destination on screen) hit save, you can press enter or the submit button. It is important to note that the location will saved where you hit the submit location button and not where you open the dialog box.
4. Congratulations! you have just made a safe spot.

• Access your safe spot through the “people and places” menu. In that menu you will find three categories, contacts, agents and places.

In the “places” categories, it should be listed as “spot in the your system solar system”. You will want to rename that to something meaningful because during your eve career you will make hundreds of this spots around several systems. Naming this spot, Safe 1 will work fine. To do that you can right click on that location and hit “edit/view location”. This will open the dialog once again, you can rename the location, add notes and put it in a sub-folder to keep them organized.

• Keep your bookmark organized. Create sub-folder by region or constellation, everyone has its way, but you want to be able to find your bookmarks fast.
• Rename your bookmarks to something meaningful. “Safe 1”, “Safe 2”, will work, But better yet, “Safe 1. 10 AU from TVN-FM gate” this will let you navigate and keep eyes on your exits while being safe.
• Create a bookmark 150km (the minimum warp distance) from gates. You can warp at 100 form a gate a burn to 150km and make a safe. This way you can warp to this spot, take a look at the gate, see if its camped, bubbled, and make an informed decision.
• Have your “People and places” menu open at all time. with you bookmarks visible (hit the small “eye” in there) and ordered by ump distance. This way, your bookmarks in system will be listed on top of everything and highlighted in green. Useful, eh?

Once you learn to navigate through bookmarks and safes, your survival rate will increase notably, especially if you're mining or exploring.

*Perches* are BMs that are over 150km from your destination that allow you to scout it out before committing. These allow you to warp 150km+ above a gate or station to see if it's camped, then warp down to it to continue on your journey. Perches can also be used to avoid gate bubbles so that you don't have to slowboat to a gate.

Depending on the size/proactiveness of your Corporation, you may see tactical bookmarks already in existence for commonly traveled systems & stations. Simply right-click in space to see any available BMs. You can add corp BMs, but can only edit them if you have the “Communications Officer” role for your corp. Alliance BMs do not exist at this time.

• With the January 2016 patch, grid size was massively increased, from 250km to 8,000km. This has caused many off-grid, insta-undock, and safe spot BMs to now be on grid.

• Station docking radii vary greatly. Some stations you can undock and still remain in docking range for several km, yet on others you will be out of docking range almost immediately upon undock. This can be a problem when undocking around hostiles, as you can be bumped, webbed, or blapped before you are able to get back within docking range. Creating instant-undock BMs (or using corp BMs) can ensure you can escape a non-bubbled station camp. Insta-undocks must be over 150km away from and within a straight line of the undock. Your ship will instantly warp before the enemy can target you, and then you can safely warp off. Insta-undocks can also be used for scouting on the way to the station.

• Warning: for popular stations, enemies WILL have the location of the corp BMs, so warp to them at range or use your own when there are hostiles in system.

• The docking radius for a station varies depending on its physical model. It is possible to exit warp yet still be several km from docking, which can result in you getting blapped by enemies camping the station. In order to prevent this, create a BM (or use your corp BM) that is at 0km and well within the docking radius (but not inside the physical model, which could cause a bad bump). Now you can warp to the station at 0km every time, and safely spam dock.