Your ship is your method of transportation in EVE Online. This guide teaches you the basics of piloting it and becoming a more adept pilot with a more optimized ship.
Ship Movement in EVE Online
Sub-warp Speed
Your ship is equipped with a propulsion system that allows it to move at sub-warp speed. When your ship is floating in space, you can move at sub-warp speed by double-clicking anywhere on open space. You can also align to an object to move toward it.
Warp Speed
Your ship also is equipped with a warp drive that allows you to travel longer distances in a short time. You can right-click a distant object and choose to warp there.
Keep in mind that before your ship can warp, it must be aligned to the object that it is going to warp to. Therefore, there is typically a delay between the time that you choose to warp and the time when your ship's warp drive actually engages.
Jumping
In addition, your ship has a jump drive. You can jump to other solar systems by warping to a nearby jump gate in your current solar system, then right-click on the gate and choose to Jump.
Ship Agility
The agility of your ship is a measure of how quickly it accelerates, which also determines how quickly your ship can rotate. A ship with higher agility will have a smaller delay before warping. Be mindful of your agility in combat situations where you may wish to warp away quickly. A delay in such situations could be fatal.
You can increase your ship's agility with various navigation skills such as Spaceship Command and Navigation. There are also modules, such as inertia stabilizers, that you can fit to your ship to increase its agility.
Orbiting and Keeping at Range
Your ship can align to (i.e. move toward) objects at sub-warp speed. In addition, you can tell your ship's computer to orbit an object or to keep an object at a certain range. However, if the object that you are orbiting or keeping at range is moving more quickly than your ship's top speed, your ship's computer will be unable to maintain the distance that you requested.
How fast will my ship go at sub-warp? Can it go faster?
Your fitting window will tell you, on the right side, how fast your maximum sub-warp speed is. Here is a list of things that you can do to make your ship faster at sub-warp speed:
- Train the Navigation skill
- Fit an Afterburner to your ship
- Fit a MicroWarpDrive to your ship
- Use rigs like Polycarbon Engine Housing
- Use hardwiring implants like Eifyr and Co. 'Rogue'
- Use overdrives like the Alpha Hull Mod Overdrive Injector
Can my ship go backwards/in reverse?
No. Ships in EVE Online are not designed to move in reverse.
More About Warp Speed
You can find out your ship's maximum warp speed in its information window.
During warp, your ship will rapidly accelerate to its maximum warp speed, will continue to cruise at this speed until it gets close to the target, then will rapidly decelerate and then stop when it reaches the target. For more technical details, please read CCP Masterplan's dev blog Warp Drive Active.
If your warp engine is preparing to engage, you can stop by pressing Ctrl+Space. However, if you are already in warp, you can't stop until your warp drive disengages.
Keep in mind that enemies can disrupt your warp drive, preventing your warp drive from engaging.
Your maxiumum warp speed is determined by the type of ship that you have, and also by skills, modules, rigs and implants.
Warping requires a certain amount of capacitor power. If your ship does not have enough capacitor power to warp all the way to the destination, it will warp as far as it can, and then it will stop.