16. Hunting

There are several ways to hunt. You will have to try one or all to see what you like:

1. Scouts, scouts, and more scouts. Drop scouts everywhere and find out where people trade, get a bearing on what times they trade, then kill them whilst they are trading.
2. Scouts around major locations and banks. Try and catch someone banking their cash, or arming up a new ship, etc. I would say the bank is a decent place to get kills in newbies. This is especially effective with proper claok useage or IG useage. Who really examines all the 0/1 pods sitting at a bank?
3. Learn to use mines effectively. Trap people in mines then finish the job. This is not really a specific method per se, you can use this around ports or banks or however you want.
4. If you are good with your SMC useage, you can tell where people are trading by the experience they get. Then you do not have to drop scouts, you can just go try and kill them. Sometimes dropping scouts tips people off to the fact that you are hunting. I know vets that use both ways quite effectively. I prefer the no scouts, it makes me stealthy personally.

Then there are the non-hunting ways to get kills...

1. Planet bust to find logged off players. This requires alliance teamwork, and sometimes everyone but you gets a kill
2. PR a level 1 port and uno real fast and see if anyone comes to try and kill you.

There are several other ways out there that are either more complex variations of these basic methods, or entirely different (how is that for vague If you are working with a team, you can try all kinds of funky things. Good luck, see you in vet soon I'm sure.

All good strategies. It is recommended that you find an experienced wing man to tell you how to hunt in the beginning.

There is one thing though: Lots of people do the IG/bank thing. As far as it is known, the last to arrive in the sector will in top. That is why it is a good idea to check the top 2-3 when you bank. But it has been seen to work so it might for you too.

Just wanted to add a bit about choice of ship/weapons:

If scout hunting: use a jump ship (FW is great - HBC next choice)

If you use mines, you should choose an armor-heavy weapons setup since your mines will take out some/most of your targets shields.

So you died, a little upset along the way, makes for a better hunter, analyze how these other people trapped you, see what mistakes you made (if any), you can still die without making a mistake, just the luck of the draw (pardon the pun).

Don't despair, you'll learn more from your failures, ask yourself some questions, did I enter the sector to quickly and was seen, didn't I drop my mines fast enough, should I have fired first before dropping mines..

Next pick a ship and try out a strategy (see if you like it), you don't need anything really expensive, 6 mill gets you 2 of the most effective ships in the game, for early hunting, the Carapace and HBC, with these ships you use a mining stategy like Shesmu just described, they have scouts, so you'll know where everybody is....

Learn to use scanner and local map and look around whilst dropping scouts, you'll be surprised in a NG how many people will try to hide in a Dead End sector.... (bet you could get 5 kills that way alone)

1 more thing, perhaps your weapon set up is wrong, sometimes all the biggest weapons do you more harm than good, if you have a low xp, combining that with a low accuracy weapon is almost fatal... try a higher accuracy weapon with a lower damage.