Kite Co. Space Trucking: Join Today!

A lonely breed... hard men, proud men... not too proud to cry or shed a tear. The living embodiment of the Space-American space-cowboy tradition. This Corp was founded to honor this great native Space-American son who gave his life for a cause so vital to us all, like so many great Space-Americans before him had. Us space-truckers, will forever be paying our respects to our lost comrade, the Enemy Kite, in our Space-Macks, our Space-Jimmies, K-Whoppers, Fruitliners, space garbage trucks, space dump trucks and even space limousines... Space Truckers all! From the covered space wagons and space trains to the space 18-wheelers that keep this space country alive... This controlled individualism made this cause so vital that I promise to take it to Space Washington and present it to the Space Senate myself.

- The Space Trucker Prophecies

EVE is hard. You may have heard of it before and you may have even tried it before. Was your interest piqued by the Bombcast or Patrick Dan Ryckert casually mentioning it? Are you ready to dive into space and find out what lies in the unknown?

You're in luck.

An intrepid new player has taken it upon himself to organize all the newduders in the Giantbomb community. The brand new "Kite Co. Space Trucking" corporation is open to all new Giantbomb duders! Apply in game today! Our in game channel has also been updated to "giantbombing" so hurry and join!

For any Giantbomb duders playing EVE (we do not recruit DUST players), we have a couple of people that hang out in the "giantbombing" channel. Players new and old are welcome and we'd love to help out new players. If you want a cool place to hang out while exploring the galaxy come check it out! I'm Tomiko Kawase in game, so stop by and say, "hi."

☆New Player Checklist☆

Your first few days:

1. 30 day trial: Extended trial
2. Join the "giantbombing" channel in game
3. Do all of your beginner tutorials!
4. Your skill queue holds 24 hours worth of skills. Always have a skill training (a skill point gained is never a wasted skill point).
5. If you're stuck ask someone in the giantbombing channel!
6. After the initial tutorials are finished you will be offered different profession paths. The military path grants free ships and is a nice starting point.
7. After getting your bearings, apply to "Kite Co. Space Trucking" in game! Ask in chat for help if you're not sure how!
8. JOIN FLEETS! (the most important step)
9. Don't forget to post who you are in this thread!

Giant Bomb. Please stop writing Giantbomb or GiantBomb. :( :( You're a Gold Member. Now I'm going to be sad all day just because of this. I need hot chocolate and a hug. And pancakes.

EVE is cool and its great that you're helping out. It is way too complex for me though. I'm a simple (and dumb) creature.

I'm going to be a dumb man and stand up to my mistakes: I just read the page description of Giantbomb.com and it does say GiantBomb without space. So fuck me, I guess.

EVE and intimidating are basically synonymous.

I wrote it as Giantbomb since that's the name of the channel in game and I didn't want to confuse anyone. Channels are considered player property so any other spelling would be someone else's (though I'm not sure who owns "giantbomb").

If anyone's finding the game too tough, we'd love to help out new guys. There are people that frequent all aspects of the game that hang out here!

I really wish I had the time and money to dump into EVE. I really do. I tried a 14-day trial years ago, and it seemed really cool. Nice to see that someone from our community can help those who do play it.

I tried it last year when I had a bad computer and was having frame rate issues in the character creator, yet alone the game. So didn't give it a fair shake.

Maybe I'll look into it again.

@Funkydupe said:

I'm going to be a dumb man and stand up to my mistakes: I just read the page description of Giantbomb.com and it does say GiantBomb without space. So fuck me, I guess.

Phew, I was gunna have to give you shit otherwise :P

Also OT, I really wish I had time or money to play EVE. Alas, I do not.

They have an extended trial that gives you 7 extra days on top of the 14-day trial. The link will give me a 30-day subscription item if you end up liking the game and subscribing. I'd be glad to give anyone 50% of the proceeds (~250m ISK, starter ships cost ~2-5mil), which should get you off the ground.

Edit: The price of the particular item I receive from your trial can fluctuate with the market. The price I have listed here is current as of this edit, but can be higher or lower depending on the market.

@Funkydupe said:

I'm going to be a dumb man and stand up to my mistakes: I just read the page description of Giantbomb.com and it does say GiantBomb without space. So fuck me, I guess.

Wait, I thought Jeff said it was two words. It was during a mailbag... Damn it, now I'm confused!

We've gotten a couple of new players over the last week so it looks like this is going well!

I'm going to try and jump back In if I can talk my wife into giving me a fat 20 for the 2 months sub time! lol

I feel like I'm missing out on something truly special by not playing Eve Online.

I can't anyway due to a lack of funds, and a computer to play it on.

I am on! I just started a new character in Caldari

My nick is Jade 'idBloc' Inatis

Hopefully I'll be able to participate in operations!

Awesome! I didn't realize you were a moderator. My advice is to finish the tutorials before anything else. After that you should look into picking a corporation to join. A lot of people quit EVE early on because they don't find a good corporation to join.

Tutorials all done.. I forgot about Eve's boring security quests :s

@idBloc said:

Tutorials all done.. I forgot about Eve's boring security quests :s

missions are a major source of income for people in game :\

@VisariLoyalist I think I am just doing it wrong and having a hard time wiping out pirates; I'll figure out eventually :)

@idBloc said:

@VisariLoyalist I think I am just doing it wrong and having a hard time wiping out pirates; I'll figure out eventually :)

yeah, it's just that missions are pretty awesome isk wise anyway if you get a battleship that can blitz level 4 security missions. Like an easy 25 mill an hour, which is great income for a newer player.

I wouldn't recommend missioning to anyone, personally. Some people quite enjoy it, but it does get monotonous.

The key is getting out of the NPC corporation as quickly as you can! Playing with other people is the key to having fun.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/11diq2/reve_job_fair_part_3/

Pretty good list of corporations to choose from. (IF ANYONE ASKS YOU FOR MONEY/SHIPS TO JOIN IT'S A SCAM)

If you want to take a serious approach to EVE then EVE University is probably your best bet. They will hold your hand through pretty much every step of the game.

@idBloc said:

Tutorials all done.. I forgot about Eve's boring security quests :s

Train up to the Drake and Raven for easy mission running. Shield tanks + missiles will take care of you up to lvl 3. You can solo lvl 4 missions but it can get crazy. Drones help too.

If I had the money and time I'd be totally down for coming back. I remember I had an Hyperion and a Megathron in my dock...character thing.

So much terrible advice in this thread, seems like half the people posting advice have never left hisec. Don't train for a raven, its a useless boat. You will never use it in PVP and its bad in PVE too. Don't join EVE University, the idea is good but they are terrible at the game and have too many rules for people to actually play and do their own thing.

Like KingGiddra said, join a real corporation as soon as possible. Preferably one in a "0.0 Alliance". Test Alliance Please Ignore, Goonswarm Federation, Nexus Fleet are all very new player friendly alliances. They will teach you the game, give you free ships for use in combat and allow you to feel useful from day 1, be it a roam of 10 people or a fleet of 500. You will also learn about critical things outside of eve like Jabber, Mumble/Teamspeak 3, if you are not already familiar with them. Of course there are dozens and dozens of other new player friendly alliances in the game but those are the first that came to mind. The best bet honestly is a group of a community you are part of (Reddit) or nationality (Fistful of Finns for example, are all finnish). They usually are always looking for more people and its easier to get in.

In my opinion it is critical to get a new player out of hisec as soon as possible, so he knows whats out there. I almost quit the game because I thought mission running is the only thing to do in the game.

heh i joined eve uni , it was ok , kept me interested longer than i would have , but as you said you need to experience lowsec/nullsec before "getting bored" heh .. i just never had the time to do anything.. and i had been stubborn and picked amaar an never decided on flying any one ship and just kept training up to the next ship and its required skills.

ONE DAY id like to get back into it , mabye just to kill boredom while waiting for star citizen ehe .. also yeah id like to have more fun than eve uni eheh , things like security lockdowns and the rules on even flying your own ship of chocie sucked but then again i never got attacked/podded when i followed their rules , then again the lowest sec i was in was 0.4 ooooooooh

@VisariLoyalist: problem for me was i just bought and sold some plex to get a nice starting nestegg and basicly spoiled the early game and any sense of reward for me eheh .. but in hindsight i know it was my fault eheh not the games

@envane said:

@VisariLoyalist: problem for me was i just bought and sold some plex to get a nice starting nestegg and basicly spoiled the early game and any sense of reward for me eheh .. but in hindsight i know it was my fault eheh not the games

IMO there is nothing rewarding about making ISK (unless we are talking real money, tens of billions) to pay for a new players skills, ships etc

The early experience in eve should be about making contacts and learning the game, not shooting NPCs.

EDIT: when I say "learning the game" I mean learning to fly ships in combat, dscan, basic PVP tactics etc not skilling up your character but the actual players skills.

Here's a pretty enlightening look at why new players tend to give up: http://themittani.com/features/why-newbies-quit-eve

It paints a pretty bad picture of a lot of corps in EVE and for good reason. If you're not getting help from your corp don't hesitate to leave and look for greener pastures. Also if you guys are having trouble with stuff you can always drop a line in the GB chat. There are a few veterans that frequent the channel willing to help.

From the comments:

The number 1 thing CCP could do at this point is to murder the fuck out of the Rookie Help channel (which is home to some of the worst shitty answers I've seen in my entire life) and start anew. A moderated channel with people that have /proper/ experience in the game answering the questions instead of the kind of self-fulfilling idiocy that comes out of Rookie Help at the moment.

I spent about an hour in there last week after starting a new account for a cyno guy, and saw the typical "null/lowsec is BAD they will KILL you", terminology issues, bad recommendations, fitting advice that'd be more likely to kill you than save you, etc., etc.

With that kind of "help" it's no wonder newbies quit.

is the channel still up? i might pop in. I'm a euro duder though.

@envane said:

@VisariLoyalist: problem for me was i just bought and sold some plex to get a nice starting nestegg and basicly spoiled the early game and any sense of reward for me eheh .. but in hindsight i know it was my fault eheh not the games

that's an odd problem because to be honest I won a player run lottery early on and won 1.2 billion isk and it did nothing but make my experience more rewarding. With a good nest egg like that you can do some pvp and not care about how many cheap ships you burn doing it.

@Nentisys: I thought that alliances in 0.0 wouldn't be interested in noobs because 0.0 requires strong human skills and human skills require time. I guess I am wrong, thanks a lot for the info!

@idBloc said:

@Nentisys: I thought that alliances in 0.0 wouldn't be interested in noobs because 0.0 requires strong human skills and human skills require time. I guess I am wrong, thanks a lot for the info!

Yeah. But the thing is (that many new players don't realize) that you will never learn those skills just running missions in empire.

One good option is Red vs Blue (http://rvbeve.com/forums/) for learning basic pvp. RvB is two corps (red federation / blue federation) that have war decced each other in empire and fight 24/7 in cheap ships. The problem with RvB is that its 99% frigate sized stuff and compared to 0.0 alliances you get zero benefits. 0.0 alliances give you free ships (or reimburse your lost ships), places to rat/mine and a large variety of operations.

EDIT: I want to add that part of the reason many 0.0 alliances are newbie friendly is that in the current 0.0 metagame numbers are king.

@Syndrom said:

is the channel still up? i might pop in. I'm a euro duder though.

I'm EU TZ too, it won't be completely empty. Haven't been logging in much though, holidays and all.

@Jams said:

@Funkydupe said:

I'm going to be a dumb man and stand up to my mistakes: I just read the page description of Giantbomb.com and it does say GiantBomb without space. So fuck me, I guess.

Wait, I thought Jeff said it was two words. It was during a mailbag... Damn it, now I'm confused!

It is, and you will see it as 2 words across the site. I assume most people just use giantbomb because they are used to the url and it is easier to type.

Just wanted to say hi here on the forums. I have been in the GB channel the last few weeks since I started playing the game, with the name Viggo Habalu. Nice people in that channel, would definitely like more to chat too!

@jozzy said:

Just wanted to say hi here on the forums. I have been in the GB channel the last few weeks since I started playing the game, with the name Viggo Habalu. Nice people in that channel, would definitely like more to chat too!

Awesome! Hopefully some of the 'old guard' of the channel come back soon. We used to have a couple people frequent it, but they kinda died.

So, I've been wanting more and more to get into this, but I have some questions. Guess this is the best place to ask, as I trust you guys.

First off, how hard is it to actually start playing for free. As in, how much work does it take to get to a point where you can buy PLEX wit your ISK (if I got that right).

I know it can't be easy, but I'd like to know if that is just something the really hardcore players do, or if it can be done for someone who can't dedicate their life to Eve.

Secondly... huh, I am sure I had more questions, but now I forgot them. Guess I'll just try it then! I'll use the trial link you posted @KingGiddra, so thank you for that!

Playing for free isn't necessarily easy to do at first, but given some experience it's quite feasible. The key point is that there are so many ways to make money in EVE. If you enjoy trading for instance, playing for free can be accomplished with relative ease. If you focus on running missions, dedicating a significant amount of time can also get you there. Keep in mind that "free" isn't taking into account the time you invest into the game.

Good luck!

I just plexed for the first time this month. I feel it was only possible because I can mine while I do my day job. It just takes a lot of time to get the isk.

Mining isn't generally a high paying job save for a few specialized instances. Most people do it for a "therapeutic" social activity in a group. If you're dead set on mining, your best bet is probably going for ABC ore. I'm not a mining expert, though.

--

I found quite the interesting article on scoutingfor fleets in EVE. I really feel like this article does a great job expressing the intricacies of the EVE metagame in a purely combat sense. Scouting is generally a very thankless job that when done right can lead to substantial victories as well as surprise kills. The article does get somewhat technical and at times deals with high level concepts in EVE. Despite this, I think it's a great article for a new player looking towards what EVE can provide.

Here are some relatively interesting articles and videos that help show off what EVE is really about:

http://themittani.com/news/enemy-gates-pl-dronelands

Here's a battlereport from a fight Pandemic Legion took part in a few days ago.

--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZywPsXPkEI

A video of a collection of fleets numbering over 1400 people. The audio was taken from a spy on enemy comms.

--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMFahR4wXTg

Rooks and Kings examining capital ship combat with extensive explanations.

--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhCrtwUrSmc

This helps show off the depth of small scale combat. There are a lot of advanced techniques at work in solo combat. Around 5 minutes in he switches to frigates, which are available to new players.

--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cYXanJ2pgY

Kil2, one of the commentators for EVE tournaments walks through his small scale PVP combat.

GUYS IT'S HAPPENING ZOMG GIANT SPACESHIP BLOBS WTF 2800 SHIPS IN LOCAL

Who needs a giantbomb corp anyway, we got a chat channel.

Eve is cool, come and play in space.

OK I was going to wait a couple of weeks to jump into EVE (want to finish the First Witcher first) but I've decided that I may as well re-up my sub now and at least mine and learn skills whilst I'm on The Witcher, utilise my time well, you know? I will certainly join the Giantbomb channel, is there a GB Corp that can be joined?

Thanks very much.

@SamStrife said:

OK I was going to wait a couple of weeks to jump into EVE (want to finish the First Witcher first) but I've decided that I may as well re-up my sub now and at least mine and learn skills whilst I'm on The Witcher, utilise my time well, you know? I will certainly join the Giantbomb channel, is there a GB Corp that can be joined?

Thanks very much.

Corporations pose a significant time and resource investment in EVE. Even the small ones require content generation or you'll lose your members fast to boredom or canceled subscriptions. Since many of the people here already have some obligations to their own corporations I chose to promote our Giantbomb channel rather than make a brand new corporation. You'll get most of the benefits out of a corporation through our channel, so it's a win-win for everybody. We'll help as much as we can to find you a decent corporation while you get your bearings.

Maybe sometime in the future we can start a Giantbomb corporation...

Since Dave waxes Eve for a while on this week's podcast just wanted to let everyone know about this chat ingame. Welcome!

Dave's discussion of the game on this week's Bombcast got me to bit on their 90 day re-subscription deal so I'm back on, just joined the chat channel. Now, if only we could get a GB corp going.

I think I might start today, waiting for an invite to the 21 day program though :P

@kinggiddra: So... the part he left out is if you sub he gets an item worth about 1/2 billion isk.

https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=ec484277-e092-4e9d-aae1-16f37d40c743&action=buddy

There's a buddy link. Contact me if you sub and I'll split the plex with you.

I mentioned that very clearly in this thread. The original post didn't include that link. I only added it after a week and we saw a bunch of people actually joining the channel after it was just a couple of us for a year.