EVE Online is the oldest, most layered, nuanced, and flawed space sim mmo to date. There are so many layers of complexity that planning and preparation are actually over half the experience of playing. You have to be ready for what space throws at you, because it can throw literally anything at you from its infinitely large bag of spacetricks.

When you construct your next spaceworthy vessel, spend a while designing it first. Make sure you’ve got a good philosophy behind the build; if it’s a scram kiter, make sure your primarly weapon has good range and damage. If it’s a brawler, ensure you’re got good defenses. 

Once you’ve deliberated and decided on a design, source your parts.  Due to the logisitics of ordering parts, contracting couriers, insurance fraud, ships can take days to build. Some of the parts your need might be exotic, and expensive. A lot of industrialists choose to integrate their processes and just build all the parts themselves. Don’t get me wrong, if you’ve got the Kredits, it’s the right move. But starting out, who’s got that kind of money?

Even if you brought all your provisions, your food and water for long trips, even your antibiotics for any infections you might contract behind the taverns and 7-11s of the galaxy, chances are you still forget something. Undocking can be a death sentence to the crew in any number of circumstances, and for many it’s rare to ever make it home in the same ship they left in. 

Increase your chances of survival with the few things that are actually under your control. Or, just get out there and fly around until something real bad happens. There are so many ways to die in EVE Online. Here’s a few:

Forget Your Ammo

Ah, yes. Now your ship is freshly constructed and brand new. You can’t wait to undock and show these clowns what’s really going down.

So you undock, slide through a wormhole, and flip on your cloak. Directional scanners pick up a nice, juicy, defenseless target, peacefully hoovering precious ores from an otherwise silent asteroid belt.

So you get a little closer…and when the timing is just right, you drop your cloak, lock the target and activate your guns…

but there’s nothing in them…

You get tackled by a procurer while reinforcements come. Before you know it, your hunting Machariel just got blasted on by a frigate with actual, functioning guns.

Don’t Do Drugs

Not doing drugs will get you killed quick. Never not do drugs.

Going through all the rigamaroll of building a ship and getting it to the battlefield without incident is difficult enough; remembering to take your pre-fight medications is a whole other level. Many of the most effective suppression and assault forces active today are heavily medicated and if you want to compete, you better be on that shit too.

Don’t Online Your Guns

Design it, source the parts, build it, bring ammo, take drugs, and forget to online your prop mod. Depending on a number of factors, you might be able to just idle for a while until your capacitor stores get back to 100%. If you notice it early enough, you can just dock up and use the station’s maintenance bay. 

If the station’s being camped, or there are other hostiles nearby, that might not be an option, and you might die before you even get to the mission. When you’re midwarp to a fight, it’s a little too late, unless you’re trying to call for backup.

Don’t Set Your Ranges

Logistically, you’ve done everything; you’ve got every piece, in its right place, and you’ve got an enemy in your sights. As you slide out of hyperspace toward certain glory, you check your ammunition one more time – and find it completely full. In a few seconds, you’ll have wished you checked if your guns were online again, so you do. Your music and recording software are running; the stream is live. Nothing’s out of place. Everything is ready. On the downbeat, you activate your warp drive, syncing the thudding of your warpdrive with the driven guitars.

But when you try to orbit at 500 meters, your ship zips out to 20 kilometers from the target instead, in a straight line. At around 23km, there’s a lazy right turn?!?

You approach the target head on and activate your thrusters, but it’s too late now. You needed to stay close and mitigate the range of the enemy guns with quickness; instead, you forgot to set your orbit to 500 meters and ended up eating 220 dps pulse lasers at zero transversal.

Even when you do finally make it to the right range, there’s too much damage, and that’s how you die by not setting your default “orbit” and “keep at” ranges.

Ignore Your Implants

Matchups become so specialized that a 2% advantage in a critical statistic could mean the difference between life and death. But sometimes you don’t get a fair matchup; sometimes the galaxy grants you a mugging instead. 

It’s not a big deal; death is just a part of life. But if you lose billions worth of brain augmentation implants, being jerkied in the vacuum of space and having your dry, cold, gamey remaining body parts ripped apart by artillery rounds actually stings. Sometimes it’s a little, and you slightly cringe when you dig into your wallet for another set.

Sometimes it stings alot, and you kill your capsuleer, permanently ending its life in EVE Online.