Tips and Tricks

This page lists miscellaneous tips and tricks discovered by unistas which don't merit a more in-depth write-up.

Starting Out

• Focus- A key to EVE is getting a skill, or set of skills, trained up to level 4 or 5. Level 4 is typically a 20% bonus over no skill - with 3 or 4 overlapping skills you may have a 40-50% advantage (or disadvantage).
• Learn to fly a ship well, meaning figure out what it is designed for and train the skills & learn the gear that makes it fly well. The skills and technique you learn then transfers to your next ship. All ships (other than noob) have a role to play so you'll be back in this hull - understand it. And it is more fun doing something well.
• Check out the fits for each race on the front page of the Uniwiki (lower section of main page) - these are great general purpose fits. Then go to the Uni Forum and look at other fits. Tip: Use Advanced Search, Keyword= {Shipname}, Search in Forums 'PVP | PVE Ship Loadouts', Search Within 'Topic Titles Only', Display Results as 'Topics'. This gives you a list of excellent discussions for the ship you're interested in and WHY the fits are what they are with alternatives.
• Get your defensive skills up - these work across every hull you fly. Great offense is useless if you're into hull damage in seconds. The easiest way to do this is use Certificates and get your Core & Defense skills to Standard. Then branch off into other areas of interest. Read up on armor vs shield tanking and understand when each is appropriate (start with what a ship is designed for).
• When missioning, ask in one of our EVE University Chat Channels whether anyone has a spider or locust fleet you can join. These fleets are fun and you learn with no pressure how to participate in fleets and share in the work and reward. This gives you access to much higher reward agents and ISK potential than solo missioning.
• Just like learning a ship, learn the weapon systems you like. If you're into drones and drone boats train up the related skills. The weapon system will be much better in accuracy, damage and distance with the appropriate skills. For example with Drones, train up Drone V first. Don't stop at 4, that fifth drone is 25% more damage and Drones V is a prerequisite for Drone Interfacing and Sharpshooting. Get those next along with Drone Durability and Navigation to 3 or 4. You'll be far more effective and have more fun! If you focus you can quickly get excellent skills - if you jump around between drones, lasers, projectiles, and turrets you'll stay basic or average for a long time (and be frustrated in PvE and PvP).
• During e-Uni wars and/or lockdowns, consider training up an Alt character for a specialty; mining, hauling, trading, PI. You can do this with your primary but with an Alt when your primary can't (or you don't want to) fly, your Alt can. Your Alt doesn't have to be (and usually isn't) in the Uni, so it can fly when your main character can't.
• Get and use EveMon (for planning your skill training) and EVE Fitting Tool (EFT) (for planning your ship fits).
• Really explore the Uni wiki and forum. It is simply amazing the breadth and depth of info fellow Unistas have put here. A lot of true labors of love.
• Have fun! Ask questions. Join Fleets (not just PvP but mining and missioning too!).

Traveling

• When traveling lowsec frequently, especially in a hauler, keep warp core stabilizers in your cargo to refit if needed. Remember this wont help you escape Heavy Interdictor ships which are often used for gatecamps.
• ALWAYS keep local chat separated from the other chat windows and stretched top-to-bottom on your screen. This allows you to see pirates and wartargets appear more obviously, giving you vital seconds to make decisions. In crowded systems, set names without pilot pictures to fit more and press ctrl-a in the name list to highlight existing names and quickly spot newcomers.
• Be wary of your security status. If it falls below certain levels then Faction Police may shoot you if you enter a high enough security system. E.g. Sec status -2.0 or below means you will be shot in systems with sec status 1.0-0.9. Sec status of -5 or lower means you are kill on sight to everyone. Train diplomacy to remedy this a little.

Autopilot

• Don't autopilot in low-sec or 0.0, or even in highsec if you are carrying something valuable -- nothing attracts pirates and suicide gankers faster than a ship that shows up 15k from a gate and heads for the gate at normal speed.
• If you set the route to a system, the next stargate on the route will show up in yellow, so you can find it easily. (If you take a different gate, the autopilot will re-route automatically.)
• If you autopilot in a heavy ship, the time spent approaching gates from the 15km warp-in point can begin to dominate your travel times. Try fitting Overdrives to reduce this time. Alternatively, fitting Inertia Stabilizers will give your ship less of a speed boost, but will improve align times on the other side of the gate.

Bookmarks

• Leave a cheap item at stations you visit frequently. This will turn your assets tab (available on the left of the screen) into a handy collection of bookmarks.
• Make safe spots and bookmarks everywhere you regularly go, especially in lowsec and nullsec. Tired of the masses of bookmarks cluttering your People & Places window? Make separate folders for them. Right click this folder heading to get a window just with your bookmarks for ultra quick navigation.
• Insta-undock bookmarks are perfect for getting large ships, or ships carrying very high value items, out of the Jita 4-4 station without getting bumped all over the place (or scanned).
• If you use a bookmark a lot, and want it near the top of the folder, edit its name and put “ #” in front of it (“space” then “hash”), this will then push it to the top of all the other bookmarks
• An easy way to create safe spot bookmarks is to run some security missions in the system you need bookmarks in. If the missioning complex is at least 14AU (directional scanner range) away from all gates, bookmark it. At that spot, you will be safe from d-scan (but not combat probes).

Cloaking

• When you come through a jump gate, you're cloaked for 60 seconds, or until you move. If you jump into trouble, pause a few seconds to analyze your situation, let the panic subside, and decide what to do.
• If you have a cloaking device and you're in unfriendly territory you can minimize visibility by doing the following: 1. Jump through gate and pick destination to warp to. 2. Align to destination then immediately hit your cloak. Once aligned then warp off. (Some techniques use a burst of AB or MWD as well.)

Salvaging

• Destroyer class ships make great salvaging ships. Many are able to fit 4 salvagers and 4 tractor beams. Good cargo space as well. Now that small rigs are affordable, make use of them!
• If the wrecks are in large clumps many kilometers apart, clear one clump and bookmark the next set of wrecks, then warp away and warp back to the bookmark you just made -- saving you from having to slowboat all the way.

This works really well if the mission had multiple rooms since the warp point you can use is close by.

• Despite detailing in their description that they are for pulling in cargo containers, tractor beams CAN pull in wrecks also. Indeed, pulling in wrecks is the reason you want them. The description is left over from a previous release of EVE.
• Remember you can also bookmark mission locations, allowing you to hand in the mission and return to the wrecks, especially if you're running low on time for the bonus reward. If you're salvaging a level 4 when stuff is very far apart i.e. over 30-40+km then a MWD is a good idea. For anything less, you might find yourself overshooting your targets, as the mwd cycle has to complete. Make sure you bookmark every room in the mission if you want to do it this way, as warpgates vanish when you hand in the mission.
• While you are salvaging with tractor beams, you can drag the wrecks behind you and salvage them at the same time while you travel towards another wreck that's outside tractor beam range. This saves time.
• Use your tactical overview (one of the buttons on the left side of the HUD) to plot an efficient course through the wreck field rather than just moving to the closest wreck.
• If you are in a large wreck field you can jettison a can (right-click on an object in your cargo hold and jettison) and use a tractor beam to haul it behind you. You can dump the loot into the can as you go. When done, bookmark the can's location and come back in a hauler to get it all.
• Once you have saved up some ISK, getting a Noctis will make salvaging a snap, with a bonus to tractor beam range and speed you can pull in wrecks from as much as 70 km away. For more on salvaging, see the guide to salvaging.

Hauling

• You can fit an improved cloaking device to your hauler for some added security during wormhole ops. Ask the miners to drop the can some distance from the asteroid belt, and stay between 2000 and 2500 m from the can in the direction that you want to warp to. If trouble arises and you don't think you have time to align and warp out (or you're bubbled), you can instantly activate the cloak and head away from the belt in an open direction. The loot you save may even pay for all those dead Retrievers!

• Use EVE-Central.com to haul more profitably.

• Beware of pirates!

Exploration/Wormholes

• Learn how to use probes quickly with the help of this video.

Market

• Don't rush.
• Use the scroll wheel on the mouse to adjust orders by 0.01 ISK.
• Try to avoid updating your buy/sell orders at the same time each day. This keeps your competitors guessing.
• When buying from contracts read what you are actually paying for. Don't be the fool that loses all his money because he didn't read the contract's contents and the number of zeros in the price.
• When buying set market to Region (top left corner), and go to the settings tab and tick the box to avoid low-sec and/or 0.0 systems if this helps.
• Setting up buy orders for items you don't need right away will save lots of ISK over time.
• Remember, you don't need to sell straight away. If you set up a sell order for a 1000 items of x, and someone decides to sell the item at a stupidly low price, don't jump in and change your order to beat him. It might not sell this week, but it will eventually, and you will make much more ISK.
• When setting the range on your buy orders, check to see how far away the nearest lowsec system is. If you don't want to go to lowsec to pick stuff up, set the buy range accordingly.
• A day of very high volume or a trade at a very high price can cause the market graph's axes to adjust, making it difficult to read. Use the "Show Table" button below the graph to display the same data in table format.
• The relationship of the median price (yellow dots on the graph) to the day's high and low prices gives you a clue about the flow of the trades, whether the action is mainly selling (median is close to day's high) or buying (median close to day's low), assuming there is no overlap between the high buy order and the low sell order. In particular, for items that are dropped as mission loot but are not very useful (i.e. energy vampires) there will only be action on the your buy side (that is, you will only be able to buy them, not sell). If you want to buy these (and don't plan on trucking them extra-regionally), make sure you only pay up to the salvage value.
• Playing the .01 ISK game benefits people who like to play it. You don't have to play if you don't want to. Feel free to drastically slash sell orders or raise buy orders. However, unless you change the prices very dramatically you will get .01 ISK'ed just as quickly anyway. The only thing you have done in this case is make less ISK. Consider selling to buy orders or buying from sell orders if you need to buy/sell quickly.
• You can easily tell which buy/sell orders are yours by going to the market and selecting the "Settings" tab. Then check the option "mark my orders". All your orders will now show with blue highlighting.
• Be very, very careful typing your prices! Don't skip that decimal point!
• Shift + sell item/buy item opens the advanced sell/buy menu.

A long, long time ago...

It used to be possible to add anyone to your contacts and get notified when they logged on or off. This made it possible to add competing traders to your contacts to see when they log off. At that point you would then undercut all their orders knowing that they weren't checking the market. To counter this tactic people would leave their trade character logged on all the time. This is no longer necessary. Nowadays both players have to consent to see when they log on or off (buddy list).

Mining

• When you first warp to an asteroid belt you may be up to 70-80 kilometers away from the rocks. Bookmark an asteroid, then warp out and back to the bookmark to save time getting to mining range.
• If you have a really long belt, you may save time by warping between two sets of asteroids >150km from each other when changing rocks, rather than slowboating to the next asteroid.
• Crawling to a new spot in a belt is slow. It's faster to warp to a different belt. Save time later by bookmarking 2 or 3 places in each belt and building up a bookmark list for all the belts in the system.
• Use MLU's - Mining Laser Upgrades
• Have your mining drones go to the nearest rock you want to mine. Get as close to it as possible as they have to include travelling time there and back and are a lot slower than other drones.
• Don't mine someone else's rock, not only is it rude if you don't know them but if you are in a group it is terribly inefficient as when the roid is close to popping whoever's lasers finish first will pop the roid and get all the ore. Anyone else mining the same roid will get nothing, wasting up to 3 minutes. Use "Look at" before you lock on. Also this applies to solo mining, mine different roids with each laser.

Missioning

• Drone users: Make sure you have all the NPCs in a given group locking/attacking you before you launch your drones. Yellow boxes around thier icons indicate you are locked by them and red boxes mean you are being attacked. Aggro can shift away from you afterward depending on DPS and Ewar. Mission NPCs hate Electronic warfare even more than DPS so using Target Painters and Webs can help maintain aggro but is not a guarantee. If your drones get aggro, return them to drone bay and then wait for the ships to redbox you again before launching them. Refer to EVE-Survival for info on spawn triggers and the possibility of drones attracting the attention of other NPC groups.
• Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Look at the mission before accepting it: note the rat type (telling you what ammo to use and resists to fit).
• Usually, it's best to concentrate all your fire on one target rather than spreading it out, as this eliminates incoming DPS quickest.
• To get initial aggro from an NPC, you don't have to actually hit it. Lock the NPC and fire a shot. It might take some time for it to respond to your aggression but the NPC will come to you.
• Train up salvaging as soon as possible -- salvage can double your mission profit, and a team running high-level missions with a dedicated salvager can be much more profitable and safe than a solo missioner.
• Remember courier and mining missions: you can work up your standing just fine without shooting anything!
• Destroy small ships at range first, they can generally dish out damage but can't take it. NPC battlecruisers and destroyers in particular deal large amounts of damage for their size and can't take very much. Battleships, however, absorb a lot of damage, and deal damage that can be avoided more easily with speed.
• If your tank is being broken in a mission, especially if you're using undersized ships for the mission, move. Even if your battlecruiser doesn't move fast, moving makes it that much harder for the 10 battleships orbiting to hit you, and can sometimes pull your tank back up.
• T1 Exploration ships (particularly the Amarr Magnate) make excellent L1 and L2 Distribution mission ships. They travel faster than T1 industrial ships and have generous cargo bays.

Safety

• Never, ever fall asleep when doing a mission (a "quick mission" before bed after a heavy night boozing is a bad idea). You will lose your faction fitted CNR etc.
• Check the location of the encounter and right click it and set destination. Bring up the map and you can see what kind of space you will be traveling through.
• If the situation looks bad, align to celestial or safe spot, warp out if it gets worse.
• Do not align to the start of the mission bookmark. You can't warp to it, and you'll look very foolish when you try and end up in a capsule.

Ships and Fitting

• Fly a ship size appropriate for the mission. Lvl 1 - frigates, Lvl 2 - cruisers, lvl 3 - battlecruisers, lvl 4 - battleships.
• If you have the choice between light drones and medium drones and can't take both, always go for light drones. They can eliminate Warp scrambling frigates and webbing frigates much faster, which is critical if you need to do an emergency warp out to save your expensive battleship. They also will not draw aggro from larger ships.
• Buy a hull repairer when you move up from frigates. Keep it in your cargo bay and if you hit structure during a mission warp out, dock locally, fit it, undock and use it to repair your ship, saving you station repair bills. Remember to swap it back out before going back to the mission!
• Long range weapons are generally better for security missions than their short range counter-parts. Why? Because they give you the ability to eliminate lots of enemies before they get into their range, thus maintaining your tank more easily.

Fleets

• Aways make sure to ask before sharing mission rewards. Not everyone wants standings increases. Having no standings toward specific corps/factions has it's benifits (like E-Uni's Jumpclone services) and once you gain standings there is no way to undo it.
• If you mission in a fleet with somebody else and share the rewards, you'll get standings increases with that corporation. This can save you some grinding, as a couple of shared L3 or L4 missions will give the same increase as many more L1 or L2 missions. Many Uni missioners will be happy to have you come in with a salvage destroyer and do the salvaging on a shared basis, if you're not up to taking on L4 combat yet.
• Similarly, the E-Uni missioning channel runs spider fleets -- you join and run missions solo, but share the profits and standings with other Uni mission-runners. That can get you standings with corporations you couldn't access otherwise.

Saving Time

• Consider keeping a short summary of the missions your agent regularly gives you in your notepad. Important info : damage types/resists/webs/scrams/difficulty etc. Once you have them all, this can save a lot of time alt-tabbing if you're a full-screen user.
• After training Social to 3 and Connections to 3 you can almost instantly access L2 agents without the need to grind lots of L1 missions.
• On courier missions, always check twice before undocking to make sure you have transferred the courier items from your hangar to your hold.
• Always check you have accepted the mission before undocking.

Combat Techniques

• During encounter missions, take advantage of the fact you can centre your view over the enemy and look from behind them. double clicking in the direction they are travelling in is now easy as your view is locked on the enemy. Repeatedly clicking in the direction he is travelling will constantly change your direction to match his, minimising the angular velocity and increasing your chances of good hits. (Works best with large/medium guns against large/medium rats)
• When buying ammo make sure you look at its attributes to check its range bonuses and damage type(s), until you learn which ammo does what.
• Learn to use your size and speed to your advantage. Orbiting a target fast and close will mitigate a lot of damage and allow you to beat ships much larger than you.
• Learn manual piloting. Double click in space to fly. The orbit command AI is very exploitable and by piloting manually you can close on or get away from a faster ship which is using the AI.

Interceptors:

• Fly tech 1 frigates for a few months before you step into an interceptor hull. Once you fly a tech 1 frigate well, you should be able to fly an interceptor well.
• There are two kinds of interceptor: tackling and dogfighting. Tackling 'ceptors should always be speed fit and should try to stay out of heavy neut range. They have bonuses to disruptor range. Dogfighting interceptors should focus on tank and damage output before tackle.
• Don't be afraid of warping off, and know what you can and can't handle. Call out your points and make sure your FC knows if you need to get out.
• If you are attacked by Warriors (the fast-moving Minmatar light drone), don't freak out. You can survive them for a while before you need to get out. Neuts and scrams, however, can ruin your day.
• Never ever directly approach anything. Always approach at an angle, otherwise you will die. You should be manually piloting a lot of the time anyway.

PVP/Low/NullSec

• Choose your fights carefully. In pvp space you are a shark or a fish. If you can't avoid the sharks, then you are food. Learn safespots, gate scouting and safe undocks.
• Use your directional scanner to be aware of your surroundings (what ships are out in space) and to locate ships on belts, stations, and gates to either fight or avoid.
• Rat in lowsec or nullsec. Not for money, but to learn how to not be shark food while still being being able to do something undocked.
• When roaming, check the Starmap and set the statistics to "Average pilots in space in the last 30 minutes." This will let you know how many pilots have been flying around in each system. Avoid choke-points (high-sec to low-sec or low-sec to null-sec) with a large number of pilots in space, as it may indicate a gate camp. You may also use the Starmap in this mode to look for a route with active pilots to engage in PvP.
• If you jump into a gatecamp, don't panic. You have some time before uncloacking to react. One tactic to escape is to actually burn back to the gate. This makes it so that if the campers agress, they will not be able to jump back through the gate immediately to chase you. Obviously you should only do this if you think you can tank the incoming damage for the burn back to the gate (15km).
• Always overheat your offensive modules before a fight, especially scrams and webs. You may overheat by shift-clicking on the module. Overheating your scram and webs gives you a bonus in the optimal distance and may be the edge you need to get the target pointed. After you have your target under your grasp, you can stop overheating the those modules and overheat the guns for additional damage.
• Bookmark locations you use regularly - e.g at least 170km+ above (and/or below) gates you use/camp frequently, to allow you to warp up to it and back to the gate as you wish, yet remain on grid to see what’s happening. These are especially useful on 0.0 gates that lead to empire. These bottle neck systems are often camped and bubbled: if you arrive in system and there’s no obvious bubble on the gate but there are reds or neutrals in system, don’t warp directly to the next gate! Instead, warp to your bookmark 180km above it, this will stop you being ‘sucked’ into a warp bubble directly behind the gate and will allow you time to see if you should fight, run or just warp down to the gate and continue your journey. These bookmarks are also great for cloaky ships to sit at and give intel on general traffic or the enemy.
• “Insta-undock bookmarks” are great for haulers/BS's, use them. If in 0.0/lowsec try to not use the same insta-undock bookmark all the time – especially if the system is near a war front and has a few ‘reds’ in local, as one day someone might work out where you land, and will be waiting for you the next time you undock! Use a small fast ship to make these at a distance of at least 400km from the station - for safety they should not be on the same grid as the station you left from.
• During roams or when moving through unfamiliar hostile space, every now and then link your present location (drag the triangle that is next to the upper left system name) into your private player channel and hit return. After a while you'll have a perfect note of the reverse route home or to safety if things go pear-shaped, you'll also be able to guide your corp mates home if things get a little chaotic and the FC gets podded (lol).
• A very basic cyno alt: (use a fresh character) They need to be able to fly any race's frigates, as you never know what will be for sale in 0.0/lowsec, and this will require only racial frigate to level 3 for each race. Also you will have to be able to use and fit a Cynosural Field Generator, I recommend Cynosural field theory to L3 to allow 2 cynos worth of fuel in a frigate. FYI: 350 units of Liquid Ozone (LO) per cyno at L3, this equals 700 LO for 2 cynos, and 700 LO takes up 280m3 cargo space)
• For a much better cyno alt: (still use a fresh character) You can get a Cyno using alt that can cloak and use a MWD I with cap recharger I, The cloak is invaluable if you are doing a mid point cyno in the middle of nowhere, you can just get in position and cloak up until needed. If you train this 'better' cyno alt AND train for a bit of extra agility/speed too, you have a very useful and expendable character that will be able (with a bit of practice) get almost anywhere you need a cyno-guy to be put! Overall the benefits of having a cyno character far outweigh the training time used up.

Modules/Rigs

• Different versions of standard laser crystals (Multifrequency, Gamma, X-Ray, Ultra, STD, etcetera) all have different capacitor modifiers. If you're barely capstable with Standard crystals, you won't be stable with Multifrequency.
• You have to stop firing your guns before you can group them. You can group in the fitting screen, or whilst in space.
• You have to stop firing your guns to change ammo types during a combat situation, for example changing from short range to long range ammo or vice versa.
• Thermodynamics is a skill worth getting if you intend on PVP. Rightclick show info on a module to find out the potential increase in performance if the module is overheated. e.g. you may be able to increase warp scram range by 5km and surprise your enemies. (See here for more on overheating.)
• Overheating modules causes heat damage to them. They can be repaired in a station with the standard repair bay, or with Nanite Repair Paste in space. Once completely burned they can only be repaired in a station.
• Modules installed next to a module you are overheating will also be damaged. Make sure to put overheatable modules next to not overheatable modules to mitigate heat damage.

Overview

• Set up your overview according to the Overview Guide.
• Hold the CTRL key and left click on an entry in your overview to target it.
• Holding CTRL will also freeze the overview so things don't change position. This is useful for making sure you click the right thing in busy situations.
• Double-clicking on something in your overview will tell your ship to approach it. This only works with things that are on-grid with you.
• Export your overview! Just do it now! Save in safe spot. Overviews are notoriously frustrating to reconfigure if you lose your settings.
• You can zoom like a telescope to any location on your screen, just hold down right click and look at the area you want to zoom into, then hold down both mouse buttons and move the mouse up and down to zoom. (Start at bottom of screen for maximum control. With practice, you can see targets over 100km away giving a lovely movie-action shot of your guns pounding the enemy.)
• Moving stacks of things around your hangar or ship's cargohold etc : SHIFT + drag will bring up a box allowing you type a number to split out.
• Hit ESC and check out the options window. There are lots of options you can fiddle with, for example an option that allows windows to be immovable if pinned.
• An especially handy option to give a visual representation of the session change timer is available under general settings in the ESC menu.

Drone Usage

• The commands "All Drones: Engage", "All Drones: Return & Orbit" and "All Drones: Return to Drone Bay" can be assigned to hotkeys.
• In your drone window in the overview, don't forget to keep the tab under "Drones in Space" open, so you can monitor your drones' health and recall them in case they are attacked. This is especially important if you are using faction or Tech 2 drones, as they are expensive to lose.
• Amarr drones offer the best balance of speed and damage and have become the go-to combat drones. Gallente drones for sheer damage output in brawly setups. Minmatar drones for pure speed & fighting targets at long range. Caldari drones don't see much use outside PvE.
• Minmatar drones are strong against Angel Cartel NPCs and a good option in PvP, since they are fast and can catch the enemy. Especially true for Warriors vs. interceptors and Valkyries vs. frigates in general.
• Drone shields do not instantly regenerate when they dock to your ship.
• You cannot see your drones health whilst docked in your drone bay. Make a mental note about how long you should leave a drones shield to recharge if damaged.
• Recall your drones before warping. But if you forget to recall return to the original spot and they'll be sitting there. Right-click on your ship (or your capacitor) and select "Reconnect to lost drones", then order them to return to your drone bay. You can also scoop drones to your cargo bay if you get within 2500m. You cannot tractor beam drones.
• When getting jammed and losing lock try recalling your drones (if they are not engaging the ECM ship), setting them to aggressive and relaunching. If you're lucky they'll attack the ship jamming you, if you're unlucky they'll still be shooting *somebody*.
• Drones will pursue a target to the limit of your drone control range, which is determined by your drones skills and any Drone Link Augmentors you have fitted on your ship. This is true even if your drone control range exceeds your ship's targeting range - if the target runs away you will lose lock but your drones will continue to attack.
• If the target being engaged by your drones moves out of your drone control range, those drones will begin idling and return to your ship via their sublight propulsion (that is, not using their MWD). This can take a long time unless you manually give them the "return and orbit" or "return to drone bay" commands, which cause them to engage their MWD while returning.
• It is possible with high Drone Navigation skill, Drone Navigation Computers fitted, and/or light drones, for your drones' MWD speed to be too fast to properly brake around your ship, making them unable to return to your bay when given "return to bay" orders. However "return and orbit" orders will cancel this endlessly looping behavior.
• Similarly, very fast drones when ordered to attack a fast target will often become confused and begin idling instead of attacking if they cannot form a stable orbit. Keep an eye on your drones' status in your drone window when fighting Interceptors - spamming your "engage target" button may become necessary to keep them all fighting.
• Your drones will obey orders to kill each other! Be careful with your commands when using remote repair drones alongside combat drones.
• If your Drones are within 2500m of you and being attacked by the enemy, scooping them to your drone bay is a faster way to get them off the field.

Naming Conventions

• Name ships so you know how they are fitted or what their role is. This can be handy if you have several of the same type sitting in a hangar. Use a convention that works for you but is not obvious to others -- don't call your ship 'Low Armor Heavy Gank PvP Ship'.
• Remember that if you keep operating in the same area without altering your ships' names every now and then your enemies will begin to recognise you on scan.

Fleet Movements

• Aligning: you must be moving in the direction ordered by your FC and moving at at least 75% of your top speed to be aligned properly.
• Offensive Gate Camp: all ships are within jump range on a gate, ready to jump in and assault the next system. Cruisers and ships smaller than cruisers should orbit the gate within jump range. Exceptions are fleet interceptors and destroyers specifically fitted for fast locking, which can be at 0m with 0m/s and MWDs on. Large ships sit still.
• Defensive Gate Camp: all ships are within their optimal shooting ranges on a gate. Cruisers and ships smaller than cruisers should orbit the gate within jump range. Exceptions are fleet interceptors and destroyers specifically fitted for fast locking, which can be at 0m with 0m/s and MWDs on and drones (if deployed) assigned to them. You are all ready to defend your current system from ships jumping in through that gate.

Words of Wisdom

• Never trust a random player in local chat to help you or salvage for you in a mission. Chances are he will try to get you killed. If you need help, ask in your corp.
• Never ever trust players who say they will double or triple your ISK if you send it to them. It's a scam and so many players have fallen to this trap, be careful.
• If in doubt, ask! Your corp mates are there to help and answer questions, silly or not. You’ll be surprised how even in a small corp there will be experts on many aspects of the game.
• Don't fly something that you cannot afford to lose (sometimes known as the First Rule of EVE).
• If you don't know what something does, then you're probably not ready to use it. You'll learn what it does with time and training. You don't want to spend money to fit a ship that you cant maximize.
• Never attempt to rush your skills to achieve the next rank of ships.
• Certificates allow players to work towards certain specified certificate levels found under each ship's information window, in order to fly that ship well. Newer players should get used to using this system as a guide at first.
• Insure your ship using the Insurance button in a Station. The higher the level of insurance, the higher the payout if your ship is destroyed. (New pilots, insure ships the Uni provides you, as you will make a profit if your ship is destroyed. Don't go overboard and exploit this, though.)
• Whilst you are enrolled as a member of Eve University you must abide by our chat channel polices.

Alliance Chat - For forming fleets only. Only type here if you mean to start a fleet, or join one once your role has been called.

Corp Chat - For official corp buisness only, such as skillbooks, Mumble issues, questions on events/classes. please only speak here if you mean to.

For everything else, CHAT.E-Uni is your best friend! Keep all other chat in there.

• Read the corp mail. There is a lot, but it's very important stuff. Will answer a lot of your questions, and keep the directors from getting upset!
• EVE Online is a game for readers as well as thrillseekers. Read as much as possible to get the most out of your career!
• It may be very good for your e-peen to fly with shiny faction fittings, but ask yourself whether the benefit outweighs the costs.
• If what you are doing is fun, then do it. If what you are doing isn't enjoyable then look around for something else to do.
• Use the test server, especially before major updates. You will be able to test new features, new opportunities, and make horrible mistakes without any penalty to your real EVE characters. You will find bugs, and you should report them so you will be a part of making EVE better for yourself and everyone else.
• Using self-destruct (left click on your ship) on an insured ship will still get you the pay-out.
• Use the EVE Fitting Tool and EveMon -- 3rd party tools which help you try fittings out and plan your training. Very very useful. Ask if you need help on them.
• Like the game a lot? Think about a second account (not everyone can afford it, but you don't exactly have to be Bill Gates either). A second account lets you have a second character training at the same time. Focus him or her on another facet of the game that interests you. Main is a PvP character? Make a mission runner, or station trader, or an industrialist. Having another character to haul for you is great as well, especially in wartime.