When I began playing ED around 18mths ago and due to the many posts on these forums on griefers etc I played in solo until I joined the Mobius group where I have been esconced for the vast majority of my playing time. This, I told myself was because I was useless at combat and much preferred trading and exploration. As my ratings in those options rose I would look with trepidition at my useless combat rankings and think I have to do something about that. As I became more successful trading and exploring I would occasionally build a combat ship and try it out. I built combat rigged versions of a Cobra MkIII, an Eagle, a Viper and a Vulture as well as others but they all ended in disaster one way or another. I never had any success until I got enough credits amassed to build an FDL, wow, what a ship instant love affair and suddenly I had that little edge I needed. I then went through the Engineers upgrade process with her and also with my other ships. The funny thing is though that now I had figured out the combat moves I felt just as much at ease in my Anaconda and Python as in the FDL. I gradually worked my way up to the 76% competent I am rated at today and am confident enough in my ability to know when to fight and when to run, and if I lost a ship now it would be through my own stupidity rather than being overmatched and panicking.
A couple of weeks or so back I thought I will try open play and have played open ever since. In that time I have never been accosted by a single real player, only NPC's. I thought perhaps this is because my home system and surrounds are out on the edge but I am only between 130 - 280ly from the 5 or so most used engineers systems and I see lots of real players in my travels to and from them so I can't be that far out of the way. Now I will say that I am not a pirate or other toerag type I never look for trouble and only ever retaliate on being interdicted and checking out the scan of who I am up against before I decide how to respond. I tried HiRes sites and compromised beacons etc and I did see a lot of real player action there and handled it pretty well but still found myself just floating around and scanning the same ships over and over most of the time, but normal space seems pretty devoid of all dangerous "griefers" for me anyway. For those of you who are really experienced, is this how you find it as well, that the vast majority of your kills are NPC's rather than other players and if so why do so many of us feel the need to be in a Mobius type group or play in solo?.
A couple of weeks or so back I thought I will try open play and have played open ever since. In that time I have never been accosted by a single real player, only NPC's. I thought perhaps this is because my home system and surrounds are out on the edge but I am only between 130 - 280ly from the 5 or so most used engineers systems and I see lots of real players in my travels to and from them so I can't be that far out of the way. Now I will say that I am not a pirate or other toerag type I never look for trouble and only ever retaliate on being interdicted and checking out the scan of who I am up against before I decide how to respond. I tried HiRes sites and compromised beacons etc and I did see a lot of real player action there and handled it pretty well but still found myself just floating around and scanning the same ships over and over most of the time, but normal space seems pretty devoid of all dangerous "griefers" for me anyway. For those of you who are really experienced, is this how you find it as well, that the vast majority of your kills are NPC's rather than other players and if so why do so many of us feel the need to be in a Mobius type group or play in solo?.
I bump into people in completely random systems fairly regularly. As a pirate, one learns where people hang out 
