Apo­lo­gies for the lack of updates recently. I’ve had some stuff to deal with in meat­space that’s unlikely to sub­side just yet, but we’ll see.

I want to state first, that I am aware that this will not apply to miners for the most part — gen­eric aster­oid belts in low-sec are com­pletely bonkered: Much more risk, and less reward than sit­ting in a comfy 0.8. The bal­ance is totally out of whack with that one, so I’m say­ing right now that I won’t try to apply this to miners.

Go live in low-sec for more var­ied game­play. At first it may not be obvi­ous. Its a well-known fact that the agents in low-sec dish out bet­ter rewards and isk, but what else is there to do? Well, for a start, the explor­a­tion sites are much richer, and if worm­holes float your boat, there’s a much higher chance of you get­ting a decent class 3 than if you were grind­ing away in Dodixie or wherever.

Also, there’s bet­ter static com­plexes. You don’t need any­thing amaz­ing to run a 2−3÷10. I lived in a nice little 0.2 sys­tem for about 18 months, and there were 2 static com­plexes within two jumps that res­pawned roughly every 1h 40m. Just cas­u­ally run­ning these in an assault frig or inter­dictor net­ted me about 100-200m a week for vir­tu­ally zero effort — and you could make a whole load more if you were ded­ic­ated. Yes, there were other people want­ing to do the same. Yes, you had to be quick off the mark after DT to estab­lish res­pawn times. Yes, you could (and will) get shot at: so shoot back!

“But there pir­ates, and probers, and loot thieves — oh my!” This is a com­plaint I hear a lot. For the most part, pir­ates can be avoided in day-to-day life. Unless they get bored, 90% of them will be camp­ing choke­points into/out of low-sec, which is why Ama­make, Bosena, Hagilur, and whatever non-Minmatar equi­val­ents have such a bad name for it. In some cases its unavoid­able. Tak­ing Ama­make as an example: its loaded with agents. The pir­ates know this as well as any learned mis­sion run­ner, which is why its garnered the nick­name of ‘Amagankme’. As a rule, I advise against such ‘hon­ey­pot’ sys­tems, since you are near-guaranteed to get jumped on by ne’er-do-wells at vari­ous points when you are totally unpre­pared for it.

So, what else was there? Ah yes, loot thieves. You have them in high-sec as well, they just nick your sal­vage rather than your loot. That’s (prob­ably) about 50% of the loot value for the entire mis­sion any­way. If someone does that in low-sec, shoot the bas­tards. Simple.

That leaves us with probers, which are a bit like loot thieves with teeth — they don’t want your loot or wrecks, they want your shiny fac­tion or t2 mods once they’ve blown you up and (option­ally) made you cry. Rarely they will ransom you like run-of-the-mill pir­ates, and fre­quently they have prober-alts who are very good at find­ing you for their mains to kill. Dir­ec­tional scan­ner is your friend, for obvi­ous reasons.

So the risk is high some­times, and you will at somepoint lose your ship. You aren’t fly­ing any­thing you can’t afford to replace any­way though... Right? Its good prac­tice to assume (at least a nag­ging feel­ing in the back of your mind) that you’ll lose your ship on each mis­sion — it cush­ions the blow if you do, and reas­sures you if you don’t. If you can afford to lose your boat in high-sec, you can afford to lose it in low-sec as well. The dif­fer­ence is you might lose it in an actual fight rather than to some really poor AI. I know I’d rather be beaten by someone who thinks and ana­lyses rather than tar­gets and sets to orbit. Its embarrassing.

Preparation

Pre­par­a­tion is half the battle. Scope out the local inhab­it­ants. If there’s good agents in the sys­tem, check out who runs mis­sions based on their stand­ings, then ask them if there’s an alternate-local chan­nel where friend­lies can chat. It might not seem like much, but if you can coordin­ate a group of mis­sion run­ners who actu­ally pay atten­tion to local and their scan­ners, you can some­times catch the probers at their own game — set­ting traps and scan­ning them down as well. If there isn’t such a chan­nel, make one your­self, and slowly bring people in that you know are there to make isk (without killing other peeps) like you.

Once you have this chan­nel, you can use it for passing intel, as well as form­ing up impromptu fleets when run­ning mis­sions if you’re unsure. This allows you all to warp to mem­ber (A) should they sud­denly start scream­ing that there’s a prober on their tail — which of course they’ll have an inc­ling off because they’re using the dir­ec­tional scanner.

Intel is so import­ant in this situ­ation. In low-sec you can sud­denly find your­self with many hos­tiles in local very quickly. This is usu­ally a cyno hot-dropping a fleet for some pur­pose. Make sure every­one in your chan­nel broad­casts some­thing like “friendly cyno” when they are bring­ing one or more things in so the rest of the inhab­it­ants don’t get spooked.

Take a PVP ship. This one throws people some­times. You need some­thing PVP­able in the area, so when the time comes you’re ready to hop ship into some­thing that you know will do a whole lot bet­ter than that shiny mis­sion ship. If you explore as well, chances are you can very eas­ily re-purpose that cov­ert ops frig you use to probe out pir­ates. I’d advise hav­ing a sup­port ship, and a dam­age dealer. What sort of sup­port is up to you, and may well be worth dis­cuss­ing with your local group.

For the more seasoned play­ers — and this is not really some­thing I advise, I just find it fun to do — Park a car­rier in another sta­tion in the sys­tem: Ideally one with no agents. Its unlikely to be ‘tube-tanked’ by any pir­ates because they see no logical reason for their care­bear prey to be going there. In addi­tion, make a jump clone there if pos­sible. This is fant­astic sneaky-ops, because when they think they have you pinned in sta­tion, you can hop to the other sta­tion, jump in some­thing big and scare the beje­sus out of them. They’ve already checked if you’re in sta­tion, and they haven’t seen you leave local, so they know you haven’t logged. Lots of fun!

There’s plenty more tips and hints I’m sure. Leave a com­ment if you can think of any, and if you want more spe­cific advice, see this guide by my friend Mori; From Care­bear to Were­bear.