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EVE Online is a space boat (kesyblo in lojban) game that is pretty complicated. Moving around space is similar to Star Trek in that there is both warp and impulse navigation, though various sub-warp modules allow ships in EVE to leap short distances. (Micro jump drives are new since I last played way back when.) Warp is only possible within a star system, must go to a destination in that system that is at least 150km away, and your ship needs to be at a certain speed and heading more or less in the direction of the target before warp will engage (and to not be warp scrambled, not blown up meanwhile, etc). Travel between systems is more like Cowboy Bebop or Stargate in that there are warp gates, or more recently wormholes (2009?) and filaments (dunno when those were added) which are basically dynamic and random warp gates between systems. These alternatives help avoid chokepoints locked down by gate campers, though a filament or wormhole may put you somewhere worse. Or not! Only the RNG knows. Cynos are another way for portable jumps between systems, but require specific ships and modules you have to train up to, cost resources to use, and I have no experience with them besides "uh oh, cyno, everyone run, run away!!" so won't talk (much) more about them.
The basics of navigation? Uh, do the tutorial and career agent stuff, Sisters of EVE arc, hit up the EVE University wiki (or join that corporation and fly with them, if you're more social than someone who thinks that two is a crowd), maybe watch some videos? EVE probably isn't the game for you if you don't like memorizing large amounts of useless information. Or you could just mine somewhere and enjoy the vibes? You do you. (Mining and resource processing like everything else in EVE can get pretty complicated.)
Most experienced players will strongly recommend against the use of Autopilot as it will slowboat your ship to the next gate or station on the route after landing 10km off. Why is this bad? Players may want to shoot you, which can happen anywhere, and if you slowly travel into their optimal range this gives them plenty of time to cargo scan you, setup the attack, etc. The attackers will get blown up (eventually) in high security systems, or will take sentry gun fire in low security systems, but some folks don't care, or you are carrying enough loot in your ship to make it worthwhile, or they can tank those sentry guns. So, don't use Autopilot, never along common trade routes, and especially not when your ship is a loot piñata. Or you could get lucky and never be attacked.
However! There is still a use for autopilot. Here one sets up a route as usual, but manually travels to the destination station, basically clicking "jump" every half a minute or so to warp directly to the next stargate. At the last warp where one is going to a station, one instead warps to the dock bookmark, possibly hits cloak, and after warp is engaged then engages Autopilot. What this will do is dock more or less instantly when you land on the dock bookmark. The alternatives are worse: you could warp to the dock bookmark and then spam the "dock" button as quickly as you can. Mostly this works, but it's a lot of clicking, and RSI isn't good, and the game may decide that you never did click dock and leave you sitting there until you figure that out (complaining about the UI in EVE is as old as the hills). Yet another (the default) option is to warp to the station, and to hope that you land close enough that you do not need to slowboat into docking range. The warp takes you randomly 2.5km within the docking range, which might actually be outside the docking radius if you land short. This can be plenty of time for someone to target and destroy your ship. Now I haven't been shot at in high security, but then again I'm typically cloaked, typically use dock bookmarks on important stations, typically am not at war with anyone, and typically do not carry large amounts of loot. Another option is to use a very well tanked ship, which will make a gank more difficult. But at this point we probably need to talk more about bookmarks, as you might be wondering what a dock bookmark is.
Bookmarks are locations in space that you can save, share, and warp to. You can play the game without them, though there are various tactical uses for bookmarks, such as the dock bookmark that puts your warp destination always within the docking ring of a station, instead of up to 2.5km off the station and then you need to slowboat into docking range, which could be a problem if someone shoots you during that interval—you might never be shot if you only wander around high security, but EVE documentation often deals with worst case scenarios, like how not to Autopilot your Prospect uncloaked with a full hold of gas through Uedama on your way to Jita. A dock bookmark is created by manually flying "into" the station, close enough to be within the docking ring, but not so close that your ship bounces off the station when you warp to that bookmark. See above for how to use a dock bookmark with Autopilot.
Along with the dock bookmark comes the undock bookmark, which can be tricky to setup as your angle on undock is randomized, so it might take a bunch of tries to get a good line. A good undock bookmark will be directly in line with the egress port on the station. This allows for instant warp on undock. Without an undock bookmark a hostile player (or gang of players) could target and warp scramble you during the interval your ship attempts to warp somewhere else. Another option here is to use a ship and implants that allows for really quick warps, though you may not want to have those implants installed if there are good odds that someone will catch and destroy your pod (also those implants are expensive, and even when I had I don't know how many billions of ISK I was still frugal), and you may not be always flying a quick to warp ship. Opposing players can also try to guess (or observe) how far your undock bookmark is, and put interceptors there to catch you. So you might need multiple undock bookmarks, or to warp at random ranges, and so on. Having someone else tell you who is at the exit of a station is good; maybe you can bring out a different ship and try to shoot them, or your other player can try to draw folks off the station?
Yet another station bookmark is one somewhere off the station yet still on grid, where objects around the station are visible, but not so close that someone can easily speed over to you—at least 300km out, and not on any warp-in or undock line—so that one can observe the station: are there any hostiles camping the station, or maybe you are hostile and want to cloak up and observe who is undocking, where they are going, etc. Most stations will not need bookmarks, though bookmarks are important on trade hubs and other stations you commonly use, especially if your corporation is at war with someone, or you carry valuable loot that someone wants to shoot, or you are gank prone like that U.S. ranger who got hit by lighting, a lot. I've never been shot at in high security systems, so maybe I'm just lucky, or have never offended the gankers. Also haven't really ever done the war thing; scouts may be in random corporations to make them harder to associate with the fleet behind them whose corporation is at war with who knows who. Rote Kapelle used to have the same scout leading the same fleet at the same time so it was, like, oh, them again, get off the gate, and try to pick off stragglers after they go by.
You can play the game without bookmarks at all; a dedicated PvP player though may want some station bookmarks and bookmarks near to gates commonly camped so that one can take sentry gun fire, warp off to that nearby bookmark, then warp back. This apparently clears the sentry gun aggression (my lowsec combat experience is limited), but you ideally want a close bookmark and not something that takes longer to warp to and back from. Or don't use bookmarks, you do you. However, bookmarks are very important for scouts, who are usually trying to avoid (and maybe report on) encounters that PvP players are happy to wade into. A dead scout is not much use to a fleet, and bookmarks help you not get shot whilst figuring out what is what. Miners can also use bookmarks to put them at suitable distances to asteroid belts, or may want to have pairs of bookmarks they keep aligned to in turn in the event someone naughty shows up.
Scouts need the most bookmarks, especially if they are operating in a particular system, or have a typical route though low or null security systems. These include gate bookmarks where one has a bookmark at least 300km off the gate, not in line with any other celestial object, and ideally somewhere "behind" the gate so that one can warp to the gate at an atypical angle. This can avoid battleship smartbomb spam, though they can counter that by adding more battleships around the stargate. Typically battleship smartbomb spam only happens in commonly camped systems, Ahbazon, Tama, and various other low security systems that are shortcuts between the trade hubs (it's probably not a shortcut if you get dead, but you can manage your own risk tolerance). Unless you're involved in those places it's best to simply avoid them.
Another scout bookmark will be "near" some plant or gate; this allows the scout to warp to that bookmark and use their directional scanner to figure out roughly where something is without using the more visible combat probes. Warping directly to a planet can be bad, as you might run into a customs depot (and get decloaked) or into a hostile player (and get decloaked, locked, and killed). Or maybe your ship does not have a cloaking device, in which case you may want to be close enough to have a look with the directional scanner but not so close that they can see you and send an interceptor your way, or their scout can get behind you and have their fleet warp on top of you. Being some ways off a planet or gate may make it harder for someone to scan you down with probes, as you could have a bookmark at something like 14 AU away from, say, the Orvolle gate in PF-346, which places the gate within the range of the directional scanner (so you can see what, if anything, is there), but may take a bit of time for an enemy scout to figure out where you are, and you may have higher odds of seeing them fumble around with the combat scanner probes. A good scout with a good number of bookmarks can warp around and use the directional scanner to figure out where a ship is (assuming that other ship is not warping around or cloaking up to complicate matters) and then can drop combat probes where they think that ship is, make a bookmark, and then pull the probes off pretty quickly. Hopefully you are not going up against anyone that good with any regularity. Probably your ship should be moving if at a bookmark, ideally towards some other destination that can be quickly warped to. If you only have one off-grid bookmark, and that gets scanned down, then you'll have to warp to planets or moons or so forth, which is more risky.
Some systems are terrible, and it's difficult to make bookmarks in them, as the gates are really way off out there, and everything else in the system is more or less in line with the stupidly distant gates. One trick here is to drain your capacitor (warp, cancel warp, warp, cancel warp, etc.) so that your ship then runs out of energy and stops mid-warp. This is easier in a capacitor challenged ships (what is up with Minmatar ships having trouble warping through their huge systems? Rust buckets…) or you might put a sensor booster on a scout ship to help drain that capacitor. With any luck you can then create a bookmark within directional scanner range of the far-flung stargates to see if there are any camps, warp disruption bubbles, etc. Another option is to scout the system and make bookmarks when nobody is around, which may require playing at unusual hours for your timezone. Another chance is if you are near the system and there is a game crash; login quickly and make some bookmarks before everyone else shows back up. Also see if there are drones lying around that you could borrow, that's another good thing to check on after a server crash, or sometimes folks on missions get careless, and T2 or mutated drones can fetch a fair market price.
If you do need to panic warp, ideally do it toward a "cluster" of planets and whatnot so it's harder to pick out where you went. Ideally identify this in advance, maybe during scouting or during the 60 second timer on a jump into the system. Not all systems have such clusters to warp to, or the gate might be in the middle of said cluster so there's no clumps to warp to. If there's only Planet I with no moon and they see you warp there, worst case they send interceptors at 0, 50, 100, and may catch you. Warping to a bookmark, if you can manage it, is generally better.
A "line" bookmark is one on a line between two objects, usually two stargates. Your ship will appear to warp off to the destination (good scouts will watch and call this, "blah de blah warps towards PF gate" or something like that), when in fact you instead warped to the bookmark on the line. Line bookmarks might be handy if you are being chased and want to double back or to warp off somewhere else from the bookmark. Increasing confusion on enemy comms can be a good thing, and if their fleet does get split up it may be possible to pick stragglers off the tail. This will require good communication with your group, and good PvP players on your team who can pick off a straggler and get out in time, and good situational awareness ideally on both sides of the stargate involved. How well is the other fleet moving? Do they have stragglers, or is their movement tight? How not drunk is your team?
Off-course bookmarks are those not on a line with anything, ideally out in the middle of nowhere, so that only combat probes or a directional scan while in warp will reveal that a ship is out there (or someone in your fleet warping to you; not all fleet-mates are friendly, especially if you are in a spy prone corporation or alliance). These used to be easy to create back in the day (around 2010) with the "disconnect, and make a bookmark on login" trick, though it appears the warp distance on login is now pretty close to where your ship was, and not "buckets of AU way out in space" like it was back then. Not all systems support off-course bookmarks, though big systems with big distances and good spread between the planets and gates allow for off-course bookmarks (a good scout will know this, and directional scan from bookmarks they have made in typical "holes" between the planets and stargates, if they suspect someone is lurking, and they do not want to bring out the combat probes just yet). Another method is to find wormholes way out of the system, or sometimes missions will give you a spot out of dscan range of anything else. Use a bookmark near, but not at the mission or wormhole, unless you are certain nobody else scanned down you or the wormhole. One way to make these bookmarks is to keep the probe window open so you can see roughly where your ship is as it warps; it may also help to use a ship with a slow warp speed, though most cloaky scout ships tend to warp quickly, and may be modified to warp even faster than usual as a scout generally needs that mobility. Bookmarks probably should be made while cloaked, though burning around in an interceptor will get the job done in less time. A good scout who knows roughly where your bookmark is can be a problem, especially if you use that bookmark a bunch of times.
Gate navigation has some nuance; stargates come in different sizes (regional gates are the largest I know of) and this size affects gate camps; ships appear 15km from the gate after jumping to a system, but this may be 20 or more kilometers from someone at zero distance to the gate when that other ship is over on the other side of the gate. This means folks camping a gate may want to spread out around the gate while still being within 2.5km of it (so you can jump though if the FC calls for that). For a cloaked gate camp (I have no idea whether this is still done, given the addition of interdiction nullification modules; most of my EVE knowledge is from around 2010) you ideally want two cloaked sabres, one on top of the gate and another on the bottom of it; a problem with only one ship is that you can bounce off the gate when the target appears on the opposite side of the gate, which makes the tackle that much more difficult, as the gate bounce destroys your line to the target. Or the target might get decloaked by debris and be close and on a nice line and the target pilot has had a few too many beers. Those are the easy tackles. Some ships however want to be tackled; those are usually very well tanked and dangled as bait. You have scouts checking for local spikes or eyes on the other side of the gate, right? A good scout will also keep notes on what other players fly, whether they fly in gangs, their killboard record, etc. Did I mention the game can get pretty involved?
On the other hand ships spread out around a gate means that some ships may have trouble warping elsewhere in the system, as those on the far side of the gate may bounce off or get tangled up with the gate and will be slow to catch up with the rest of the fleet. A good fleet commander should be aware of this and will call for a spread around the gate when the gate will be camped for some time or to ball up for an easier warp if the fleet will be going somewhere else in the system soon.
This weird technique involves observing where someone lands at their bookmark (assuming they are warping to it and not at some random distance) and then slowboating a cloaked ship to that location and making a bookmark at roughly where they warped to. If they re-use the bookmark, you can then warp stuff to that location and hopefully catch them. Probably you'll need a sabre or fast locking interceptor and then support. The way this works is math; if you spam click at a target and then manually set your ship to full speed (otherwise your "nose" will dip and your ship will slow down when the target is no longer approachable) it is a simple matter of knowing the distance and how quickly your ship moves (presumably while cloaked) to put a bookmark roughly at the same point where theirs is. Yes, you slowboat your cloaked ship for distance equals rate times time. I had a CGI program where you put in the distance to target and your speed of ship to show how long to slowboat for. There might not be much else going on, and eyes might have not much else to do. This does work, though I only got one kill with it, and had to hustle to catch them: hey! it's that toon who always uses that bookmark that I think I've recorded! Go go go go go!
Another method is to figure out roughly where a gate bookmark is, and create a bookmark somewhere behind that, or in a line with some other celestial object (or other bookmark). Say there's a pesky ship hanging out at 270km off a gate; if a scout can get behind them a fleet on the gate can warp to the scout at a distance that puts them right on top of the target. This is why you do not want your bookmark to be in line with or anywhere near anything else, as a scout can warp in from that line, make a chain of bookmarks, and get near enough maybe fast enough. This sort of "bookmark near a bookmark" can be useful with warp disruption bubbles so that you can stage stealth bombers or snipers on a good line to the bubble while also having a good warp-out line to a celestial or ideally a bookmark on line with that celestial. Don't be too predictable with your gate camps? Someone may watch, learn, and then rock paper scissors you.
You can probably tell that my PvP in EVE mostly involves scouting and intel. PvP itself, even just the navigation for it, is another can of worms, or maybe several cans of worms. While some folks can hit F1 as the FC warps them around and calls targets, for others moving correctly against different weapon systems (guns, missiles, drones) under various roles (tackle, brawling, snipers, logistics, ewar) can get pretty involved. Even a "get to zero and melt them" brawler needs to keep an eye on distance, orbits, the situation, etc, as maybe complicated by flying two or more accounts at the same time, or anyways trying to (it's hard). Often combat can be a glorious mess where the winner makes the second to last mistake. Or you could be that fleet that put their fleet commander in the Thorax that got shot first, because of course you primary that squishy source of DPS. Poor choices were made. Since then, it looks like they've added dedicated ships for the FC to try not to die in.
Warp disruption bubbles are a thing in null sec, or these days sometimes also low sec if some story thing has degraded the system security—there is a story, if you pay attention to that sort of thing, I guess. Incursion? Trig invasion? Something like that. Maybe stay away from corrupted systems? What bubbles do is stop your warp, before (or beyond, for a pull bubble) your target. Bubbles do not work if you have a bookmark that allows you to warp enough off the line of any bubble so that it does not catch you, but on the other hand some systems might have totally bubbled gates to fly through. A lot of null sec is empty, until it is not. Bubbles also do not work if you fit and use the interdiction nullifier thingymabobber, and are flying a ship that can use said module.
Folks will often leave a player corpse or cheap drones or something at the front of the bubble where they expect ships to land (corpses unlike, say, drones have the advantage of usually not being shown on the overview, so can decloak things not looking for them) this will typically decloak anyone foolish enough to warp directly to a gate in nullsec. It's 2024, and folks are still doing that, as I observed from the bookmark I had made. Well, that's another dead Heron. You may want bubbles to appear on your directional scan (as well as ships, probes, maybe stargates and various other exotic things like filaments and cynos) so you can see if a gate has bubbles on it. This can be important if you do not have proper bookmarks, and might be good information to get to a fleet commander. Make those bookmarks when you do get a chance. Bookmarks make low- and especially nullsec travel that much more cromulent.
If you do need to manually navigate around bubbles, and you're in a scout ship, you probably want an overview that really does show everything (I'm pretty sure the default "All" overview does not actually include everything) so you do not get decloaked by some random thing. They keep making changes to the game, so you'll also need to review your overview settings now and then. What new ship? I didn't see them! Getting the overview and scan filter just right can take time, or there are standard overviews that folks have put together that you could copy. That's a totally different discussion, but it does tie in pretty heavily to navigation, the directional scanner, not getting decloaked like a rube, etc.
There are ships that can deploy temporary bubbles, interdictors (sabres, flycatchers) or heavy interdictors (too big for the gangs I flew with to deal with so we left those the hell alone). If they deploy a bubble before you hit warp (and you did not fire up your nullifier thingy) you may end up stuck in, or on, a bubble and with some nice folks coming over to have a nice chat with you. With a gate bookmark what you will instead see is a bubble and a sabre and you not anywhere near the action. Have I mentioned that I like bookmarks? Yes, they take effort to setup and it's annoying to warp to them instead of the gate and then down to the gate, but again a dead scout isn't very useful to a fleet, and having to fit a new ship and fly it back out again is annoying. They have made ship fitting easier with the "buy and fit thing", that's a nice addition.
Without bookmarks, you may be able to avoid bubbles (or battleship smartbomb spam) by warping off some planet, and then to the gate, ideally to a planet that is well off the line of the gate you are coming from. However, clever attackers will also bubble other lines to the gate from various planets, or bubble the planets, bubbles, bubbles, bubbles! Or the system is sucky and there's nothing good to bounce off of. It can happen.
Defensive bubbles can be used to screen off an inbound fleet; here a sabre (usually it's a sabre, though maybe they've re-balanced the interdictors since 2010 so the others suck less now? Our gang really only flew sabres) will burn out 50 or ideally 70 or more kilometers towards the inbound gate, bubble, burn and warp off; this will (hopefully) allow any work at the gate to conclude while the fleet is tied up on the bubble. This can also split a fleet, if there are heroic interceptors who want to tackle something while leaving the rest of the fleet behind.
露の世は露の世ながらさりながら
This dewdrop world—
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .
– Kobayashi Issa
Some of this also depends on what you fly; I'm usually in small things and mostly avoiding fights, others will treat bubbles as a good place for a brawl, especially if you have a nice fleet with logistics right behind you. Sometimes you'll need to send in a bait ship to try to draw out a cloaky, but they might have eyes on your fleet and won't go for it. Or warp the fleet in and primary the bubble, you do you. My tactics probably tend towards the excessively complicated and sneaky; the direct approach also works. There's a line about this somewhere in "The History of the Peloponnesian War", the gist of it was that all the complicated plotting was put to an end by simply sticking a knife into the opponent. We'll get him on tax evasion, and then transfer his lands to his cousin, who will arrange an exile that wi—arrrggghhh
This is a pretty well known trick where with a microwarp drive and suitable cloaking device (not the cheap prototype module) one "pulses" the MWD shortly after turning the cloak on. Align, cloak, MWD. When the MWD is about done with cycle, you decloak and warp. What this does is (if all goes well) aligns your ship, and cutting out the MWD means your speed is high enough from dropping off the MWD to instantly warp. Mostly this is used on slow to warp ships (haulers, maybe cruisers and battlecruisers used with cloaky gatecamps, mining barges, etc) that are very easy to tackle. Or have a buddy web you.
You can still be caught during a pulse cloak; one problem is if a billboard or some other debris around the gate decloaks you, at which point someone can maybe target and scramble you in time. The attackers may be too far away or on the wrong side of the gate, especially on big regional gates, so there are problems for the attackers as well. Another trick attackers can use is to spam click on you to get an initial line with an interceptor or Dramiel, then to right away manually set full speed so that they do not drift off the line when you cloak. A good pilot should be able to stop more or less right on top of you, or may get a decloak as they pass through where you are, allowing someone to get a lock. Really good pilots will try to follow your pulse line, though luckily I was only eyes for such pilots, and not being tackled by them. Countermeasures here are maybe to try to pulse back to the gate and jump through, especially if they aggress you and thus have a jump gate timer, though good and large enough gangs will have someone on the other side or some who do not aggress and can jump through. Still, splitting a gang up can make the odds of escape higher, as there are fewer points after you, more chaos, etc. Another countermeasure, typical in a ship that moves quickly under cloak, is to pulse but then change direction so that their line to you misses. If you can see the attackers you can probably figure out a good angle to go off on, but a fairly hard turn in some direction usually works. Downsides are that you probably won't be aligned to anything nor going back towards the gate if they do decloak you, but typically they expect an align to a celestial or gate, or for you go go back to gate, and may not be good at following someone into a cloak. Or fit an interdiction nullifier and simply warp out of the bubble? That makes things easier. Kids these days, back in my day we had to…
Explorers (and others) need to know how their ship moves; in particular exploration sites require the use of a microwarp drive to scoot around between the cans (or you could slowboat; you do you). This involves pulsing the MWD; leaving it on will typically drain the capacitor, or worse bounce or slingshot you off the can, and then you have to waste time getting back to the container. Here the trick is to learn at what distance to hit "stop" at so you land close enough to, but not at or beyond the target. Also you need to know whether the distance will involve one or more cycles of the MWD. Whether you want to be right on the can or a bit off from it so you can cloak up probably depends on your risk tolerance and how many other players are in the system. Collidable objects make some exploration sites pretty annoying; sometimes you can manually fly around the edges of the site instead of going directly from can to can. Stuck in the crud can be a bad place to be when someone else shows up. Maybe skip the site if you know the layout and it's too risky? But that loot…
The ability to stop at a target from speed also works well for a "smash and grab" where you shoot only that one Domination boss NPC, or whatever, loot the wreck, maybe get an escalation, and flee; to do this you need to stop on the target. Then if you're orbiting them when they blow up you'll slingshot off, unless you stop just before they blow up. Worse is if you MWD past the target, and then have to slowboat back while everything is shooting you. MWD, stop on them, go into a tight orbit (while locking and shooting) stop just before they die, loot, warp, done. If all goes well. Assault frigates are good here; use one with resistances that work with the rats involved. Interceptor pilots probably should learn the "keep the line and stop on target" trick for dealing with cloakies, as discussed above, which is pretty similar to what is going on here, except that NPC tend not to cloak up so are easier to keep a line on. Maybe practice hitting full speed manually so it becomes a habit?
A problem is that stopping distances depend on the ship, navigation skills, and implants. One way to practice is to anchor a can somewhere and practice zooming at it and stopping so you land on it, or just before it. Then add in "stop and then enter orbit while also locking and target painting the can" to add the other bits of combat, if need be. Practicing the parts in isolation should help, just as a piano player will get the right hand down, then just the left, then both together. As more becomes routine you'll have more time to think about your position, avoid tunnel vision, keep an eye on local and the overview and the directional scanner, etc. Escalate to NPC ships (which move, but fairly predictably) and then other players for more of a challenge, especially if intercepting other players will be your main diet, though note that zooming directly at a hostile player from very far away is a very bad idea when they have guns, or sentry drones. (A good opponent will also try to parallel your line, if you are trying to spiral in using a slower cruiser or destroyer. What angular velocity? Oh, you got shot? Maybe bring ewar next time instead of flying right at the Omen?) Revisit the "stop at or before a target" if you change the ship, fitting, skills, or implants, or just to keep in practice, as going rusty is a thing. Some ships are wild and no good at stopping while others fly pretty well, though there might be preference and opinion involved here, and you may need to roll up your sleeves and learn how to fly a problem ship better, if that ship and a fitting is well suited to a particular need. Oh, ship fitting? Yeah, that's another box of worm cans.