Fleet Comms Discipline

When you are in a small gang, fleet comms discipline is not all that crucial as everyone basically has the same job of "get the enemy ship". But as fleets increase in size and distinct roles begin to develop, it becomes more important to respect comm discipline and understand when it is and is not appropriate for you to speak up.

First let's divide all the pilots into 5 groups:

Command - The FC / backup FC
Logistics - All the pilots providing reps to the fleet
Intel - scouts, spies
Mainline Offense - DPS ships
Auxiliary - Ewar, tackle, links, command dessies with jump fields

Command always has the gavel when it comes to being able to speak or interrupt on fleet comms. If the FC is giving orders, you should be listening and not talking. Prior to a battle, the Intel group is the second most important speakers on comms, followed closely by the pilots in logistics. During a battle, they swap positions with logistics being more important than intel.

Most of the time, Mainline Offense should be mostly quiet. When not in combat, they can use comms to ask quick questions or update on relevant info, but keep it to a minimum. During combat, these pilots should be silently broadcasting for reps or cap as needed, following instructions, and dying in silence as it may be. You die, type -1 in fleet chat and try to reship or whatever, but don't moan on fleet comms, it just muddies the water for the rest of the fleet. In smaller fleets, a simple " down" might be OK.

Pilots in the Auxiliary should be almost silent for the entire battle, exception being calling out important targets being tackled, jammed/damped, or jumped off.

Things no one should ever ask/say on fleet comms during a battle is "where are you?", "I lost my ship and I'm coming back", "what should I fly", "I'm dying!!!", etc.None of that is helpful to the FC or the fight (unless you are bringing back a carrier or dreadnought that can turn the tide singlehandedly.

If you can't find the fleet in system, use Warp To in the fleet window to warp to a pilot you know is in the fight, like the FC.

Follow Comms Discipline and you'll be welcome in most fleets. Don't and you will be THAT GUY.

Short Overview Exploration Part 2 - Brackets

Earlier this week I had a post explaining parts of the overview and commenter Rob Kaichin responded:

Any chance of an explanation on brackets? They're the main fustration and mystery to me, especially when I'm flying logi. Can't see who I need to see without showing them all, and can't remove the ones I don't want without not showing them all. Similarly with moons in space, how do I get the brackets to show up?
*tears his hair out*
You're my only hope.

 I'll see what I can do, but I'm a little concerned I don't understand his request, or we are mixing up terminology here.

What CCP calls "brackets" merely refers to the icons of stuff in space. I don't know why they are called brackets, possibly an early version of EVE they were square brackets around an objects location and the term stuck, much like how CCP calls the space where missions take place dungeons.

If you're flying Logistics and doing repairs on fleet members during combat, brackets in space should be your LAST concern, you should be working off your watch list for smaller groups or broadcast history for larger groups.

But if you are trying to get celestial objects to show up without having them appear in the overview, well, then I think I can help.

Tabs 

We talked last time how the overview can have up to 5 tabs setup with each tab having its own rules for which objects appear in the overview based on their Type and pilot State.

Types tab

You make your selections for the rules to determine when something shows up in the overview for the tab and save it, in the image above we called it "general" for my all purpose see-most-things tab.

On the main tab before "Tab Presets" is the "Overview Tabs" tab. On that page you set up the five tabs with names and the specific "preset" to use in the first two columns:

The third column is used to decide which Preset rules to use for figuring out which icons (or brackets) to show on the objects in space. There is a "Show All Brackets" option in which all objects in space that can be seen will have their bracket show whether or not the current tab shows them in the overview.

In my overview I have two tabs, one called "Default" set to preset "general" which shows most things, and a second called "travel" set to preset "warpto" which shows only things like gates, planets, etc.

Here what it looks like in space on my current Default tab:

general preset, show all brackets

In space you can see all brackets, so icons for things like billboards and sentry guns that I have turned off in my "general" preset. If I change to my "travel" tab:

warpto preset, show all brackets

My icons in space have not changed because it still shows all brackets but my overview is simplified.

Now if I go back to my "Default" tab and change the Bracket Preset to "warpto" we see this:

general preset, warpto brackets

We see the overview itself shows what I expect from the selections in "general" presets, but in space I see very little as it applies the limited selection of "warpto" preset. Conversely, switching them in the "travel" tab we get the opposite:

warpto preset, general brackets

We see a limited selection in the overview, but a larger selection in space.

And that is how you control brackets in the overview. Its worth noting that there are short cut key strokes to toggle turning on or off all brackets:

To be honest, I don't know what "Toggle Special Bracket Display" means.

And that's the scoop on Brackets.

Short Overview Exploration

Over at High Drag podcast Random McNally was complaining that he didn't understand anything in the overview settings and how it worked. I'm going to take a short post to explain some of the most complicated tabs in the settings.

Tab Presets - Types

You can have up to 5 tabs in your overview and what is displayed in each can be different, but the appearance of what is displayed has to be the same. In the Tab Presents tab, you control what things are displayed per tab.

In the image below, you can see me looking at the Types tab for my "general" overview tab.

These are straight forward on/off check boxes where you select the things you want to see. Often when a new ship or deployable object is added to the game by CCP, you have to come here and make sure it is checked or you won't see it in space on your overview.

Tab Presets - States

Things get a little trickier in the States tab of Tab Presets.

There are many states which are not mutually exclusive  that an object or pilot in space can have in relation to you. For example a pilot can be a criminal, in your militia, at war with your corporation/alliance, have a bounty, and a security station below 0. This tab allows you to control whether or not they show up in your overview at all, but not what they will looks like if there (that's governed by the Appearance tab and we will get there).

There are three options for a state:

Always Show - it will appear regardless of any other state it may have
Filter Out - it will not appear unless it also has a state which is set to Always Show
Show By Default - it will appear as long as it does not have a state which is set to Filter Out

This tab is useful for setting up overview tabs where you don't want to see "friendlies" in the overview so you only open fire on enemy ships, or the inverse if you are a logi pilot. Again, it does impact how the items will appear in the overview, only whether they are seen or not.

Appearance - Color Tag

The Appearance tab affects all tabs in your overview and allows you to tailor how an item in the overview is displayed assuming it was not filtered out by its Type or State in the Tab Presents rules.

The colortag is the little icon that gets attached to the overview icon in the overview and in space. Most familiar is the green and white icon for pilots in your corporation.

This is where things can get confusing. Let's say you are in space and a pilot arrives on grid with you who is in your militia, has terrible standing, and is a criminal. Which icon will he sport?

EVE figures it out by working down the list from the top and using the first matching one. This is the source of most "overview malfunctions" in Faction Warfare where a lot of pilots are a criminal from shooting neutral parties but are in your militia so should not be shot. This is addressed in this tab by dragging the "Pilot is in your militia" higher in the list above the "Pilot is a criminal".

Generally speaking, you want "Pilot is in your fleet" / corporation / alliance / militia to be highest on the list, followed by pilots at war and terrible / bad standing.

Appearance - Background 

The Background tab of the Appearance Tab is basically the exact same mechanism except its logic is for the background colour the row in the overview receives.

It has the same mechanic for picking the background (i.e. work down the list until it finds the first matching rule) and the same drag and drop for picking the priority.

The neat thing is that you can combine the tag and the background logic to do powerful things. For example, what I've done on my overview is have the colortag set show terrible standing higher than "Pilot is a criminal" or suspect or security status below -5, and the background has those higher. This way I can see on my overview easily neutrals I have bad standing with because I suspect they will attack, but also quickly tell at a glance when on grid whether or not I can engage them without getting sentry gun fire because their background flashes red. Prevents me from engaging neutrals with bad standing but high sec status and no criminal timer (usually).

That's it! There is my quick explanation of the overview setting's most confusing tabs.

How To Move EVE to new Solid State Drive

My computer is about four years old but it was pretty decent when I bought it and upgrades to RAM and video card have kept it pretty good for the gaming I do. Except the hard drive. The old IDE drive was so slow with the IO that some games took forever to load and I was beginning to suspect some of my mystery 2-3 second freezes in EVE were a symptom of this as well.

With SSD prices dropping lately and my wallet flush with cash from selling my soul, I decided to purchase one and add it to my computer to store my games. Here are my steps to how I moved my EVE client and kept the settings on my Windows 7 computer.

1) Install Solid State Drive - This means get it in the box with power and data connected, and formatted in Windows. If you don't know how to do this get someone to help you. On my computer my SSD is the E: drive

2) Copy your EVE client files to the SSD. For me, this was copying the folder C:\program files (x86)\CCP to E:\CCP so I could get both the Tranquility and Singularity clients.

3) Start EVE launcher from new location. Notice how it works but has lost all your settings, overview tabs, shortcuts, etc. It's OK, we'll fix that.

4) Go to your Appdata\Local\CCP folder, for me that was C:\Users\\AppData\Local\CCP. You may need to tell Windows Explorer to show hidden files in order to see the AppData folder. Under there you will see a number of folders like this image:

See how each client instance creates its own folder? The new one for my SSD client instance is e_ccp_eve_tranquility. Copy everything from your old Tranquility instance folder to the new one. For me this was from c_program_files_(x86)_ccp_eve_tranquility ro e_ccp_eve_tranquility.

All Done! Start up EVE on your Solid State Drive and see all your settings like you expect.

BONUS: I decided to move my AppData\Local folder to the SSD as well since most games make use of this folder for storing local settings and saves and such. In Windows 7 if you look at the properties of AppData\Local folder there is a Location tab, and in there you can select a new location. I suggest manually copying everything to the new location first and then just changing the location without windows copying them for you, but your mileage may vary.

Scouting

Scouting used to be one of my favourite activities in fleets prior to my goal to become a competent Fleet Commander and I thought I was decent enough at it after learning from many fleets in null and low sec over the years. But since moving to the FC role I've come to appreciate the differences between a good scout, a bad scout, and an excellent scout.

This post is intended to be a guide of what I want in a scout when I'm leading a fleet.

Movement

While the fleet is roaming or moving to a specific destination, scouts are often asked to fly ahead of the fleet to find targets to fight or hostiles to avoid. This is often referred as being the "plus one" as in being one jump ahead of the fleet. As a general rule of thumb, try stay ahead of the fleet enough so that they have warning time to evade a heavier force while at the same time trying to avoid getting so far out ahead of the fleet that there is room for something to get in between you and the fleet, i.e. being +2 or 3 jumps out. Preferably, my scout should be on the out gate and see the main fleet jumping in via local chat before he jumps into the next system; that keeps a chain of eyes on the systems between scout and fleet while giving the fleet a whole gate to gate warp range to react appropriately.

When in a system I don't need constant updates on where you are warping to if you are looking to scan a plex or a gate. But if you are going to check out a system not on the current route please let me know.

Jump In

When first entering a system, I like a concise report from the scout focusing on the closest things first and working outwards.
1) What's on grid?
2) Who's in Local chat? War targets, pirates, suspects, neutrals, friendlies broken down.
3) What's of interest on long scan?
And  if you can get a scan from where you are to some plexes or gates in the system, warp to a point where you can scan them and report from there.

And for faction warfare systems:
4) Number of open plexes, and if in scan range, what's in them.

Remember, you can hold cloak while doing all three of those things so if you jump into a hostile or neutral fleet, hold cloak and get those scans and numbers. The goal is to give the FC a complete picture as possible, as if they were there with you, so that they can make a decision about how to proceed properly. Incomplete information can lead to bad situations.

Handy Hint: Don't be afraid to drag characters from local chat into fleet chat (I keep them side by side for this reason) so that the FC can see who it is in that ship you just found, especially corp and alliance. Very useful for "neutrals".

Handy Hint: If there is a hostile on grid with you, check local for his corp/alliance mates. Sometimes neutrals are neutrals, sometimes they are backup for the bait.

The Hunt

When trying to find a target ship or fleet in a system, you need to give lots of information so the FC can keep up on the situation. A running commentary is not out of place; "Warping to XYZ gate," "see three Ishtars on scan towards sun," "trying the ABC gate now," "I got a war target in a Moa on the ABC gate at zero, nothing on scan, and he's burning towards me."; these are examples of a good scout report. The FC knows that there is three Ishtars in space somewhere and that the Moa might be bait, but that the Ishtars are not nearby.

When you get on grid with the enemy, remember that your role is Scout first, tackle second. Try to stay alive so you can continue to be the eyes for the fleet. Don't go in and get a tackle and then scream on comms for help, it will arrive too late most of the time. Coordinate with the FC and they can be ready or even send in a backup to help you out. Most foes won't bolt at the sign of one extra in local if they are geared to fight, but a second point to allow you to run is often all that's needed to allow the fleet to get there.

Report ranges and directions. If you have a potential fight at a plex, let the FC know how many AU it is from the gate to the system where the fleet is. If a target is on grid with you, number of kilometers and direction towards a celestial can make for a possible bounce and drop on the target for tackle.

Once engaged in a fight, remember your goal is to stay alive. If the target gets away because you need to burn off, that's OK. There will be more fights, but you might be the last good scout.

Also, sometimes the FC will ask you to do something that puts you at risk, like jumping into a gate camp or trailing closely behind an enemy fleet. Although your goal is to stay alive, the reason we use scouts is because its less costly to lose a scout than it is to whelp the fleet. If you die while scouting, make sure you let the FC know and go reship.

Handy Hint: Watch out for squirrel chasing. A small gang of 5-7 frigates might like to chase every war target and pirate ship they see, but a larger heavier fleet is looking for a bigger fight. Try to focus and make sure you and the FC agree before chasing after every possible target.

Communication

Sometimes a fleet will require multiple scouts, especially when searching multiple systems for a target ship/fleet. When this happens you need to continue giving clear and concise reports but also including the system name and your name, i.e. report in third person. For example,
"Kirith jumping into Deven, three in local, two war targets and one pie, names linked in fleet chat. Nothing on scan, two plexes, a small and a novice, out of scan range."

Later on, if you find a target, you need to reiterate who and where you are. As a bad example:

"I have a moa jumping through, following!"

Even though the scout might have said "warping to Suj gate in Nagamenmen" a few seconds ago, the context might have been lost by the time the FC got the recent message. Instead:

"Kirith, in Nagamenmem, on the Sujarento gate with war target Moa who is jumping through to Suj. Following..."

Now the FC knows the context and location and can respond appropriately, whether its calling you back or sending reinforcements.

Handy Hint: If you need to get the attention of the FC and quiet everyone else, say "BREAK BREAK!" followed by your intel.

Tools of the Trade

There are a number of ships that can be used for scouting with their strengths and weaknesses.

Tech 1 Attack Frigates - Fast and cheap, these are common scouts in low sec as they are hard to catch at gates and cheap to replace and easy for new pilots to get into. Very fragile.

Tech 1 Disruption Frigates - The Maulus or Griffin especially use their e-war capabilities as their tank and tackle unsuspecting enemies for the fleet. Advanced tactics, don't try this at home ;)

Tech 2 Interceptors - Fast with better bonuses to tank, damage, and tackling, as well as that handy immune to bubbles thing for travelling in low sec. Still fragile and expensive.

Tech 2 Covert Ops / Stealth Bombers - Fast, agile, and can warp cloaked! Very handy for spying on the enemy fleet without them knowing you are there, so can get good warp ins for surprise tackle. On the downside they are super fragile once uncloaked and don't have bonuses for pointing things. Also, expensive in comparison to Tech 1 frigates as well.

Tech 2 Recon Cruiser - Warped while cloaked like the Covert Ops frigates but far more dangerous and tanky. Plus, the Gallente recons have bonuses to warp disruptor and scrambler ranges for the extra surprise tackles! However, super expensive compared to frigates and their durability becomes moot if you get stomped on by a fleet of enemy ships (even a handful of good Tech 1 frigates can ruin you).

Bait Scout - Dual role ships in which the scout is also the bait! Accomplished by heavily tanked cruisers or bigger, they scout just like normal but instead of tackling the enemy directly they let the enemy tackle them. Then throw a point and web on the most expensive things you can reach and call in the cavalry. Slower than other scouts and no defense for when you get in over your head. And more expensive than frigates.

Anything - Basically any ship can act as a scout as long as its expendable and the pilot knows how to report good intel.

* * * * *

Leave comments for your hints and tricks for scouts.

Spatial Awareness

To the outside untrained eye solar systems in Eve can be divided into four areas: High Sec, Low Sec, Null Sec, and Wormhole Space. But to do so is to miss a lot of the variance in Eve's spatial landscape and I think its time we codified the actual areas of space and their expected properties. This post is an attempt to do just that.

High Security Space:
Population Density: High
Risk: Low
Reward: Moderate
Description: Filled with pilots looking to avoid risk while conducting industrial and trade related activities. Also small population of suicide gankers and serial war deccers.

Low Security Space:
Population Density: Low
Risk: Moderate to High
Reward: Moderate
Description: There are decent rewards to be found in this space through missions and mining, but the main residents are "pirate" and anarchist corporations who shoot everyone else but will band together to take down particularly juicy or tough opponents.

Warzone Low Security Space:
Population Density: Low to Moderate
Risk: High to Very High
Reward: Moderate
Description: With the four militias battling it out for control of this space, you have more pilots in each system on average and this attracts not only the opposing militias but pirates, traders stocking the militia staging systems, and null sec roaming gangs.

NPC Null Security Space:
Population Density: Moderate
Risk: High
Reward: Moderate
Description: NPC stations in null sec allow entities to live in the area without fear of being locked out of their own assets. This makes them difficult to evict without large numbers and/or conviction. The inclusion of weapons such as bombs, warp bubbles, and doomsdays includes the risk factor for the unwary.

Shallow Sov Null Security Space:
Population Density: Moderate
Risk: Moderate
Reward: Moderate to High
Description: The term 'shallow' refers to proximity to low sec or high sec, which means its more likely to see hostile roaming gangs or fleets. The rewards from ratting and mining are better than low sec but still require constant vigilance to extract, but intel channels help a lot in this regard.

Deep Sov Null Security Space:
Population Density: Low
Risk: Low to Moderate
Reward: High
Description: With active intel channels, jump bridges, and long distances for hostiles to travel to get there, deep null sec that is far removed from low sec or high sec is quite safe with some of the best rewards in the game. Its only dangerous during full on war when logistical lines can be threaten or the stations themselves in danger of being flipped.

Shallow Wormhole Space:
Population Density: Low
Risk: High
Reward: High
Description: Wormholes classified from C1 to C3 can be considered 'shallow' wormhole space due to their likelihood of having a static wormhole to known space. With no local, pilots have to depend on an obsessive need to to directional scans to avoid hostiles and even then that may not be enough. All that being said, the ores, planets, and sleeper loot can make one rich very quickly.

Deep Wormhole Space:
Population Density: Low
Risk: Very High
Reward: Very High
Description: Wormholes classified from C4 to C6 typically require long wormhole chains to get back to known space increasing the chance of detection by hostiles when doing logistical operations. In addition, the sleepers themselves are some of the toughest rats in these systems and require excellent coordination to take on. On top of that, some of the most proficient and deadly wormhole corps are your neighbours on a daily basis. But you can get rich, oh so rich here.

Comments welcome!

Carrier Group Movement Through Low Sec

Mynxee said in my last post:

I think it would be interesting for those who've never experienced it to read in a little more detail just how ones goes about moving such a large quantity of capitals so great a distance. Maybe an idea for a future post?

Well, here we go.

Moving capitals over a large distance is at once very safe and fraught with danger. Safe because a group of capitals is a very solid hard target; dangerous because high value target can bring frothing hordes of enemies down upon you looking for a capital kill mail.

The first step is to plan the route. If your going through low sec, try and pick systems with stations that have nice large docking rings and non-kick-out docking ramps. Also try to avoid high traffic border systems. If you have to use a system without a station, try and pick the most backwater isolated low sec system you can find.

Then you make sure you have enough fuel for every capital to make the trip. If they can't carry it with them for some reason, create a stockpile using blockade runners halfway through the trip.

Next get your cyno alts in place, one for every stop along the trip. They should be flying Tech 1 frigates as using a tech 2 ship is an invitation to get it ganked when its so helpless. The cyno ships should have enough fuel for two cycles in case someone gets left behind, and ideally more is always better.

When you are ready to start the trip, the cyno alt gets into place first. You want the cyno ship to be in such a position that the five kilometer sphere around the ship does not intersect with the station at any point, nor does it go beyond 2.5 kilometers of the docking ring. The capitals will pop into existence exactly 5 kilometers from the cyno so you don't want it to bump off the station and get ejected several kilometers out (prime target for ganking) and you don't want it popping up outside of docking range. Even a 1000 meters too far out can mean forever for a ship with a max speed of around 100 meters per second.

If the capitals are docked then the process goes like this: capitals undock en masse which starts a thirty second session change timer. Hit Ctrl+space to stop forward movement while not giving up the undock invulnerability. As the session change timer is nearing completion, have the cyno alt light the beacon (providing bad guys are not amassing in system). Then, all capitals jump at once.

Once in system, you have another thirty second session change timer before you can dock. When traveling with the supercarrier, the carriers would pump all their cap into the supercap's capacitor before docking and undocking (which replenishes cap). If no supercap is present, the carriers can remain docked until the next cyno pilot is in position. With the Wyvern present the goal is fastest travel possible to not let anyone have a chance to rally an attack force.

When jumping into a system without a station to dock at, the carrier group forms a capacitor chain, feeding cap on down the line to bring everyone up to jump energy as fast as possible. (You need 75% minimum capacitor to make a jump.) Its common for capitals to travel with a lot of capacitor regeneration modules installed to facilitate this process and limit the time exposed in hostile space.

The cyno alts, stuck in space for ten minutes and vulnerable to enemy attacks, are usually left to their fate. Using a fleet of billion+ ISK ships to protect one worth a couple million at best (mostly the cyno module) is just not logical.

Any questions?

Awesome Visual ECM Guide

Head over to Rifter Drifter and check it out.

Published

The Eve Tribune is a weekly newspaper put out by Eve players containing a mix of News articles, interviews, guides, and fan fiction. I joined the paper last week as a writer and my first article was published this week: Running Level Four Missions In A Rokh Battleship.

Bill's New Player Guide To Eve

When I started Eve, I already had a group of friends playing and experienced and they took me under their wing right from the get go. My Merlin and I were out fighting along side them and learning the ropes. It was good times.

But what if I had been alone? Just me and no one else to guide me? I think I would have floundered and suffered and struggled for a long time. Remember people, when I started new players got 5000 skill points, not 800K. It was a long haul to the Merlin with rails and missiles much less a cruiser.

So here is a new player guide for those starting in Eve without the benefit of mentors.

Phase One:

On your first day your goal is to create a character and play the tutorial. Seriously, do the tutorial. As for what race and bloodline to pick, the best answer I can give is that it does not matter. Anything and any ship you want to fly is available to you with training so don't get bogged down in questions like "who's the best for PvP?" and "I want to make things, what race should I be?"

The profession you pick when creating a character only determines your starting skill set. You are not bound to continue that profession when you start and you can switch professions (by changing what skill you train next) at any time. The best bet is to pick a profession in the military streams for combat skills so you can start killing rats.

When assigning attributes, there are two prevailing methods. The first is to balance your stats (with the exception of Charisma which many pilots simply ignore) so that your character can train any skill with the same ease. The second is to assign your attribute points such that you have two skills maxed out that you intend to train a lot of skills that benefit from them. (You see, the amount of time a skill takes to train is dependent on the ranking of the skill and two attribute values of the player, the higher the appropriate attributes, the faster the skill trains). Players intending to be simply combat pilots would stack points in perception and willpower while the industrial players would go more for intelligence and memory.

I prefer the former method (and I think ignoring charisma too much is not wise either) so that your pilot is never hampered should he decide to diversify into other professions. Allows players to keep the game fresh.

Additional "phase one" activities is to visit the eve-online forums and read the stickied posts in the New Citizens forum. In fact, for the first two months of playing Eve I visited that forum almost daily. Its almost like a second tutorial.

Phase Two:

OK, by now you should have a ship, know how to get around, target the NPCs (aka rats), and kill them for money (aka ISK), and check the wreck for modules and ammo to take (aka loot). Also, your tutorial agent should have given you directions to another agent to start your career. Go there, run missions.

Missions have three good things about them: they are challenging without being impossible, they give you ISK from the rat bounties, loot, and mission rewards, and they give Loyalty Points and standings with the NPC Corporation the agent belongs to. While running missions, you can train up some skills to get into a cruiser which will become your ship of the line for the foreseeable future.

Also during this time you should be getting a feel for the Eve lingo and ideas from the forums and forming ideas of what you want to do with your career in the game. Mission runner? Pirate? Corporate bodyguard? Miner? Near the end of Phase Two you should be comfortable enough with the game and the mechanics to be able to browse ship setups on the forums and have an idea of how that ship works in space and how you compare.

Phase Three

Eve is a multiplayer game. You will not last long by yourself in almost any endeavour. Even high sec mission running is dangerous simply from boredom. No, Eve is best experienced in the company of friends.

You should have been looking at player corporations and alliances by now and know the big names: Burn Eden, Band of Brothers, Goonswarm, Red Alliance, Triumvirate, and so forth. Some players make the big jump and try to get into the biggest alliances right off the bat. Personally I think that is crazy but it has been done and nothing in the game mechanics prevents you from doing so.

But realistically you are too green to be out in the Great New Eden War. Instead consider Empire based corporations willing to help new players get on their feet. There are some philanthropic corporations like Eve University and Agony Unleashed which exist solely to instruct new players in the finer art of piloting ships. And there are hundreds of other player corps accepting applications of new players, just view the Alliance and Corporation Recruitment forums and you'll see what I mean. And remember, just because you join a corp doesn't mean you can't keep looking for the right fit.

When in a corp, be friendly, chat up the other pilots, and make friends. Flying with other people is so much more enjoyable than flying alone and the most boring tasks are fun with good company.

* * * * *
And that is it. Once in a player corp you are no longer alone in the vast universe and you can ask corp mates for help and advice.

How long do the phases take? It depends on the player and his time playing the game but I would say within a couple weeks to a month you should be done all three phases and well into the game.