I've been playing EVE for over a year now, the only MMO that I have successfully been able to play for more than a month consecutively. Why is a topic for another post. This post is going to talk about my adventure into solo PVP in EVE.
For those of you who aren't familiar with EVE, it is a space simulator game. There are three things that make EVE different from every other MMO on the market. The first is that skills train in real time, so you start a skill train, go to bed, and wake up in the morning and you're closer to finishing it then you were the night before. Which means that people who have played the game for longer have more skillpoints, and thus are 'better' at the game, being able to fly better ships and use better equipment.
Second, EVE servers aren't sharded. There is only one server that everyone plays on, which is probably the coolest thing ever. This allows for huge battles between players that even non-gaming people hear about. For example, in a recent battle in EVE there were upwards of 4000 people in one system in one fight. Awesome.
Third, EVE is a sandbox in a pure sense. Once you get into the game, there is nothing you are required to do, and there is very little you can't do. Want to attack someone in hisec? Go right ahead, but know that Concord is going to show up in a few seconds to blow you up, so you better kill your target before Concord kills you. Want to go and live in uncharted space connected only by wormholes, fighting for control of your system? Go right ahead and jump into a wormhole. These are only a few things you can do, and they're only examples of PVP. There are many, many more things you can do that don't revolve around killing other players. But I digress.
Now that you have a basic understanding of EVE, I'm going to assume from here on out that you are at least passingly familiar with EVE mechanics of High, low, and nullsec. If not, glance over this and come back.
Solo PVP. I first really got a glimpse of what it required when I read an article on The Mittani interviewing successful solo PVPers. The gist was that solo PVP was hard to start out, and you were going to die a lot. But you got to achieve an understanding of what fleet commanders see in a battle, and to command yourself, as opposed to just following an FCs orders.
When I read the article I didn't ever think I'd want to solo PVP. What changed, you ask? Wanting to be an FC.
You see, I've wanted to be an FC for a while, but I've always been scared of losing ships, and having other people lose their ships and blame me for it. I'm not sure why I'm worried about that, but it's how the chips have fallen. So, I decided that I was going to run out into hostile nullsec and die in a fire in a frigate a few times to get myself used to dying and stuff.
I set up a empty clone, a cheap Merlin, and set off into the reaches of the deep red space of Curse. (I live in Providence. Yay NRDS.) On the way I ran into a bubbled gate with a Sabre lurking around. Needless to say, a Merlin verses a Sabre, I died horribly. So mission success. I died and it was cheap so I didn't care.
Sneaky Sabre
Next day (I jump into the empty clone on weekends because PVP happens most on weekends.) I went out and did the same thing, this time I got past the bubbled gate of SV5 and into Curse. And jumped into a gatecamp of cruisers and interceptors. Needless to say, I didn't make it back to the gate again. Another successful mission, I died and didn't care. Then one of my corpies mentioned that it's usually better to solo in destroyers because you can usually kill something before you die. I thought this was a good idea, so I bought a Thrasher and fitted it up with meta guns and a t2 rocket launcher. (I'm Caldari but Caldari destroyers suck.) Thing gets like 300dps, so it looked good to me. Now to wait for the next weekend.
Next weekend comes around, and I jump into my empty clone again and head off to XX9 in Curse. I didn't know it was a staging system or suchlike for the residents there at the time. I managed to get around a gatecamp and bubbled gate, and found I was missing some kind of skillbook. So I popped up the market and saw there was one for sale in the system I was headed to, so I just kept going and docked up and injected the skill when I got there. Then I undocked and got instablapped by an instalocking Loki and Gnosis. Kinda surprised me, actually.
The next day, I hopped in a new Thrasher and set off to somewhere in Curse, but as I was passing through SV5 I was like, y'know, I should check out HED. There was just a major battle there a few days ago, so there will probably be some people hanging around.
I jumped into HED and saw there was an interceptor fleet on the gate. I reapproached the gate, overheating my MWD and barely made it to the gate and jumped out. Obviously some interceptors followed me. I tried to warp off, but right before I entered warp somebody caught me. So I was like, eh, whatever. And targeted the closest interceptor, which happened to be a Taranis, and started orbiting him. I was kind of surprised as he started to die, and I still had half my shield left. I hadn't expected this. Then he died, and I switched targets to another interceptor, this time an Ares. I got him down to half armor when I noticed I wasn't doing any damage. He had burned off 15k while I hadn't noticed. Had I noticed sooner I could have switched targets and probably killed another inty, but by that point I was already in half structure and died.
I had done it, I actually got a kill. This was my first solo killmail, and it kind of shocked me that I had killed someone at all. I found I liked it a lot, actually. Knowing that there is no other backup coming, you only have the firepower you brought and your own skill as a pilot. It was refreshing, and I decided to keep doing it. I also decided to write about my adventures. God knows I'm probably just going to explode a lot, but maybe I'll get some kills along the way.
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