User:Finno issier

Finno's cynical guide to NSC PVP, as learned the hard way over about 12 months.

While nothing that is written here is new to a bittervet, I hope this saves some newbies some months of frustration. I had a bittervet explain these things to me early on, but it took a long time for the knowledge to stick in my mind. Every time I lost a ship/capsule, I didn't follow one of these rules.

Summary points:

1. PVP outcome is decided at undock
2. PVP depends on countering doctrines correctly or choosing not to engage
3. EVE ISK faucet/sinks need to balance out (controversial)
4. sometimes it's OK to whelp

"PVP outcome is decided at undock"

That's a very cynical summary, but it is mostly true.

While it can be argued that many things come down to execution and tactics and FC and pilot skill, those things are secondary factors. The primary factors of the game of EVE PVP are akin to a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors. If you undock in a Rock and your opponent is flying Paper, you are screwed. if you're in a brawly armor cruiser, and they're in a sniping shield fleet, you'll never be able to get close enough to them to do any damage, and they'll never be in any danger as they kill you from afar.

Note that RPS is a zero-sum game. It is not possible for both parties to come out ahead. The best-case outcome with ships is that all ships survive. Worst case is all ships die. And the spectrum in between requires that there is a "winner" and a "loser". Often times this gets reframed by EVE players as "gud fites", meaning that even though they lost, they had a fun time during the fight. It is a useful attitude that helps the players cope with the agony of defeat.

So you can think of it as 90% of the effort is in deciding what to fly/fit against your target. And then last 10% is your execution and skill. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you're reading this guide, your skill/execution/decision making is probably worse than your enemy's and the best you can hope for is to undock in the correct ship/fit and chase them off.

Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojc8VAy7gVA

Common NSC problems: "couple of inties on gate!" A few people undock in brawly frigates one at a time and try to go chase the inties and get picked off one by one. "I'm pointed at belt!" NSC members show up one at a time and each die in turn. I have seen these things happens multiple times. You can just sit in station/Mumble and shake your head.

PVP doctrine counters

So now that you know that PVP outcome is decided at undock, how do you win at that game? The way you win at that game is figuring out what your opponent is flying and undocking in the sort of ship that counters their strategy. This requires mainly two things:

1. having information about what the opponent is flying
2. having the counter ships stocked and fitted in your hangar

information

The information you need needs to be accurate and timely. Often times, you only have about 60s to act on it. So you have to be able to act on whatever information comes in. E.g. "paladin just jumped into PC9 and is in the bubble!". You need a ship handy that is the right sort of ship to take a Paladin, and it needs to already be fitted, and you need to undock and warp to gate within 60s or so, and you don't want to be alone in doing that. So multiple people need to be able to do that at the same time.

idea: provide ship fit names as "anti-" so you can hear what ship we're trying to catch and just pick the correct "anti-" ship from your hangar.

PVP player strategy

1. Don't undock in a ship you would feel bad about losing. If you do, prepare to feel bad. Definitely buy max insurance. Definitely have another replacement ship/fit ready for when you lose this one.
2. You're in null-sec. You need to assume that every non-blue player is actively trying to kill you. If you see anyone on dscan or even in local that you're not exactly sure who they are or what they are doing, you need to run away. As you likely have a few seconds before they attack you and you die.
3. Watch local. You should separate the local window out from the other chat windows. Often times you can just ignore the local chat; you just need the local player list. A useful thing to do is to hit "Ctrl-A" to highlight all names in local. Then when someone new appears it will be more obvious. My experience with ratting in PC9 is if someone new appears in local, you can pessimistically expect them to land on your grid within 15 seconds.
4. Watch dscan. You should have the dscan window open, check your dscan/overview settings, and periodically (every 15s?) hit your dscan button. If anyone you don't expect suddenly appears on dscan, time to run. See next point.
5. Be aligned. Generally if you're out floating in space, have your next warp already planned and already be aligned and ready to warp. This can be tough while ratting/mining. So think hard about it. Or at least know how many seconds it takes you to align back to station and warp off.

Sometimes it's OK to whelp

Ultimately it's about having fun. And sometimes it's still fun to take a fight you're going to lose. So sometimes the FC decides to whelp. You go in knowing you're going to "lose", try to kill some high-value stuff, maybe you totally fail, maybe you find something redeeming in the outcome of the fight even when everyone loses their ship.

Whelping is extra-OK if the FC is new. It's good practice to just take the fight.