Druadan
Aristotle Enterprises
Chances of Misfortune
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Posted - 2008.09.03 16:04:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Druadan on 03/09/2008 16:08:46
I learned to pirate solo almost two year ago, against the rules of my corp at the time, by getting a thorax and heading out to my local lowsec to get into fights. I used safespots and got to grips with the scanner to locate targets ratting, analyze their movements, and meet them at the warp-in for the belt I decided they'd be in next. It didn't take long for me to start racking up the kills, and it served as a tremendous learning tool for the combat my corp would get into later in life, mainly at my behest as when my CEO noticed my sec status was just on the negative side of zero, he removed the no-piracy rule and I became our first fleet commander. Piracy back then was a pretty awesome profession, so it helped that getting into it was fun as well as challenging. Over the past twelve months, however, it has become something of a dying art due to the proliferation of fleets in lowsec, due to FW and outlaws fleeting to kill FW fleets, and the nano problem.
If you've got your wits about you, learning to fight is simple, and it comes down to the perfection of the art of staying alive long enough to find a fight you can win, which means perfecting the art of staying alive, and the art of picking your fights. I suspect what's going to hurt you the most is the prevalence of nano ships and large fleets, neither of which I had to contend with back then as the game wasn't nearly as overcrowded as it is now. This means you've got your work cut out for you on the staying alive side.
Nevertheless, practice makes perfect. My advice is to practice on a budget and start with a cruiser: thorax, vexor, stabber, rupture. Every time you fail, think about why you failed, and what you could do to prevent it next time. Make good use of EFT (I'd link it for you but I'm using Google Chrome and can't find the favourites =/), but remember that the proof of the pudding is in the shooting so no EFT fit is worth anything until you see it successful on the field of battle. Also, friends make PVP much better :)
-Dru
P.S.
On shiptypes, go with close-range stuff unless your game is fighting outside of the enemy's range and being able to stay there. Sniping is fine but if you don't kill your target before he gets too close for you to hit, you've lost the fight already. High-damage high-HP is a good way to go, so plated thorax, plated rupture, etc., or high-speed works too - a stabber can be nano'd decently enough for training in without needing to touch rigs.
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