Once you're able to PVP, you'll be able to take from others what they've worked so hard to earn. Base raiding will become integral as you progress, especially if you want to progress fast. Everything in the game is time locked, and mining parsteel, tritanium and dilithium are so slow as to be practically worthless. You'll get the majority of these resources from events, dailies, and of course, from other players' unshielded bases.
Step 1 to raiding is finding a base. I'm not gonna lie, this is a slog. Go system to system, find unshielded bases and click on them, click on reward and find out if you have the resources that you want. If they've got enough that you feel it's worth your while, you can then knock and see if someone is home.
There are three ways you can try to find players who aren't around. The first is to look around the system and see if any of their miners are on zero nodes. If they are, they're probably afk. Some people look for zero node miners then try to find the base, but that seems like a considerable amount of work to me.
The next way is you can just hit it with an small, quick to repair miner. Whenever you first hit a base, it automatically gets a 10 minute shield, whether the player is there or not. After 10 minutes, if the shield drops, the player may be away. The problem with this way is that sometimes players like to mess with attackers, letting them suicide against the base turrets and then repairing.
The last way is a little more clever. When you click on someone, and then click on their name to get to their profile, it shows many statistics about that player. Three of them are the most important, which is Alliance Help Sent, Damage Done to Players, and Damage Done to Hostiles. Make of note of where those three are at, either mental or physical, then close it. Open it again a minute later. If none of these have changed, they haven't really done anything in game. Now send your miner to pop their ten minute shield. The PVP damage will have changed, note down this new number. After 10 minutes, the shield will drop. Check the numbers one last time to see if they've sent alliance help or done anything else. If not, they're probably afk.
When you pop the shield, recall all your miners, ships, etc, and put their raiding crews on. Once the 10 minute shield has dropped, port your base next to theirs and move on to the next step.
Step 2 to raiding is of getting past all those turrets and ships in the base. Without a doubt, the best base cracking ship is the Saladin, though any ship can do it with more or less effort. The reason for this is simple -- in its firing pattern, it has an extremely large gun that fires in the first round (and then not again till round 4). This is important, because most ships won't survive past round one when hitting a base, and it lets us min/max our stats to take advantage of that.
So, crews. What officers can we use to crack a base? Let's find out what officers will help most in a one to two round fight.
| Officer | Captain Ability | Officer Ability |
|---|---|---|
| Kuron | 50% chance to hit twice with Kinetic Weapons | - |
| John Harrison | - | 60/70/80/90/100% Damage that would normally hit the shield hits the hull instead the first round. |
| Kati | 4% more critical chance to defense platforms | 15/20/25/30/40% more critical damage againt base |
| Khan | 50% chance of severe damage mitigation decrease of base | 1/2/3/4/5% cumulative increase to crit chance every time you're hit |
| Harcourt Fenton Mudd | - | 20/30/40/50/60% chance for all guns to shoot twice in the first round |
| Honorguard Word | - | 45/50/60/75/100% critical chance increase the first 8 rounds against players |
| Gabriel Lorca | - | 50/60/70/75/80% chance for hull breach (increase crit damage by 70%) |
| Kang | 80% chance of hull breach for first 3 rounds | - |
| Rom | Delays all ship and defense platform attacks by 1 round. | Increases number of shots when attacking a station by 50/70/90/120/150% |
The best crew in the game for cracking is likely Khan (captain), Harrison, and Honorguard Worf or Fat Mudd. The reason for this is simple, to maximize first round damage you'll reduce overall mitigation with Khan, shield mitigation with Harrison and Honorguard Worf or Fat Mudd gives you a chance to maximize weapon damage that first round. If all three proc, you will hit big and almost all of that damage will go to the hull of any ships docked there or to the station itself.
Why do this instead of using a epic tier 3 ships or a tier 4 ship for cracking bases? It's all about resources. The Saladin by the mid 30s is a joke to repair in terms of cost. If it takes you 20 Saladins or 5 Enterprises, you're going to win cost-wise.
Now you've broken through the base defenses, you want to get those resources are quickly and as efficiently as possible before they realize and repair and shield. How are we going to do this? Miners.
Now your miners don't do much damage, but they do have large cargo capacities. At low levels, your Botany Bay will likely be your biggest miner, and on top of that it has the highest impulse speed of any miner, so it is natural to use it.
Crews matter. A lot. You want to maximize how much you can steal with each hit, and there are three officers that will hugely increase the amount you can steal.
If you have all three of these on your miner, with Two of Eleven as captain, you've practically doubled your cargo space.
On slightly farther bases, however, you can gain just as much extra cargo by increasing the speed of your miner. 25% faster movement speed means 25% faster raiding as well (not quite since 5 seconds is taken up by the attack and that is not improved by this).
So other good officers for raiding are the following:
Looking at my pink ally here, there are several bases around the planet. The 25 base right next to him should probably be raided with your biggest miner alone, as there is no travel time there. The three 24 bases and bottom right 25 base you should use your 2 biggest miners.