Ships & Modules

Hi. I'm a new player, played for about a week in the trial and purchased game time a few days ago.
Currently I am doing lvl 1 missions with my Coercer, however I am a bit lost when it comes to fitting it.

The Coercer has 8 high slots, 1 medium, and 4 low, which I have fitted with the following:

HIGH:

*6x Dual Light Beam Laser I, Infrared S
*1x Modulated Energy Beam I, Gamma S
*1x Dual Anode Pulse Particle Stream I, Gamma S

MEDIUM:

*1x Small Ohm Capacitor Reserve I

LOW:

*1x 100mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
*1x 100mm Reinforced Titanium Plates I
*1x Overdrive Injector System I
*1x Small Automated Carapace Restoration

Most of the things that I have are things I've looted from missions. I would appreciate some inputs on what I should be fitting my Coercer, with a tight budget (which probably means to sticking to tech I gear). What should I put in high, medium and low slots, what kind of ammunition should I use, and similar. I am interested in fitting regarding missions, mostly level 1 missions for Amarr and Caldari corporations located in Tash-Murkon Prime.

Also, I am saving up for an Arbitrator. What should I fit it with to run level 2 missions? And what skills should I prioritize to train? Again, with a pretty tight budget. Thanks in advance!

You might want to look at the battleclinic (google it) for decent fits.
If I were you, I'd hold off on buying a cruiser. There are plenty of less than obvious skills that are needed to fly any ship effectively in EVE. Just being able to undock in one is not enough. There are skills that allow you to fit effectively by decreasing powergrid and CPU requirements, skills that increase your flying speed, skills that increase damage and tanking you can do, etc. Most of these will apply to any ship you fly and it's not wise to ignore them by training for a shinier ship first. To summarize, train to be able to fit and fly frigate hulls properly first. You'll be glad later.
But, as long as you are planning for a cruiser, I would not go for an Arbitrator first. It's a great ship, but it's damage dealing is in drones. Drones, like everything else in this game require skill points to be useful, and only a few Amarr ships use them as primary damage dealer. Train your gunnery first.
Maller might be a better and a safer choice for a newbie mission runner. It does not do a lot of damage, but it has one of the best (if not the best) t1 cruiser tanks in the game. Even though it kills slower, overall mission time and isk/hr is higher than many other cruisers. It generally can tank the whole room, so you can aggro everything, sit in one spot and kill them as they come close. Time saving comes from when it's time to loot/salvage. All your wrecks are in a tight ball around your Maller and you don't need to fly all over the system to collect them.
Hope this helps.

The pilot is one week old and running L1 missions, don't direct him to tech2 modules.


(1) For your weapons, fit all the same weapon unless you know exactly what you're doing. Do not mix and match weapon types or especially weapon ranges. You may not be able to fit a full rack of 8 guns on a coercer yet, due to low skills in Engineering and/or Weapon Upgrades. That's OK, you can leave a blank slot, or equip a salvager to pick and choose a few wrecks to salvage.

(2) Any fit without a propulsion module (afterburner or microwarpdrive) in a mid slot needs a serious look at why. For the coercer, an afterburner is vastly more useful than the cap recharger. If you're really having cap problems, then downgrade your guns, your crystals, or install a cap power relay in a low slot instead. In your case, the combination of cap recharger/overdrive injector is strictly worse than an afterburner/cap power relay. By a large margin.

(3) Do not use buffer fits (armor plates) for running missions. Instead, use an active armor hardener or two. Similarly, don't use two weak plates when one bigger plate (e.g. a 200mm plate) will get the job done. It's a waste of a low slot.

Here's a suitable fit for your coercer to run missions in Amarr space:

Low

1x small armor repairer I (some meta variant)
1x EM armor hardener I
1x thermic armor hardener I
--- open slot, can use a cap power relay for more capacitor or a damage control for stiffer tank, or overdrive for more speed ---

Mid
1x 1MN Experimental Afterburner I

High
7-8x (insert whatever guns you can fit here, good idea to prefer longer range beams for missions)
0-1x Salvager I

As for ammo, experiment a bit. Tech1 laser crystals are cheap and don't break, so carry several different varieties and experiment until you strike a balance of range, damage, and cap use that suits you. As your skills improve you will find that you can step up a grade of crystal for more damage with similar same cap use and range.

Your coercer should be more than good enough for level 2 missions. Don't wait for the arbitrator to start L2's. Instead, train your support skills: all those skills in the engineering, gunnery, mechanics, electronics, navigation, and drones categories. You need those more than you need to sit in a gimped arbitrator.

As for the arbitrator, it's a great ship, but it's a drone boat, not a gunboat. The lasers are purely supplemental. So don't even think about getting one until you have trained Drones V and Drone Interfacing III (or better). This takes about a week to train. You'll also need Combat Drone Operation and Scout Drone Operation trained to at least III. And don't use Amarr 'Acolyte' drones, they're awful, even against NPCs which are weak against EM. Use the Gallente 'Hobgoblin' drones instead.

Hey and thanks for the replies. This is all pretty confusing, so I am going to start off with some questions.
What are AB, tanks, nanobots and rigs? Why is a propulsion module a must? What's the difference between beam and pulse lasers? How do I know when to use different kinds of armor hardeners? I know that EM hardener might be a good idea against laser weapons, but what about the other kinds?

What skills should I get and prioritize to run a destroyer more effectively? Preferably skills that are also related to other ships. Here are some skills I have trained, and might be relevant:

Electronics III
Engineering III
Shield Management II
Energy Grid Upgrades I
Gunnery III
Motion Prediction II
Sharpshooter II
Small Energy Turret III
Weapon Upgrades II
Hull Upgrades III
Mechanics III
Repair Systems III
Afterburner III
Navigation III
Amarr Frigate III
Destroyers IV
Spaceship Command III

So what other skills should I train?

AB = Afterburner. There are two modules which use capacitor to give you a speed boost. ABs give less boost but use less capacitor. MWD give more speed boost, but use more cap, reduce your total capacitor size, and expand your signature radius while active and so make you easier to hit.


Rigs are modules that fit into the rig slots in your ship. All T1 ships have 3 rigs slots that are used to give slight improvements to various aspects of your ship. Nanobot Accelerators are a rig that improves the repair capability of armour repair low slot modules.

Tank refers to the ability of your ship to avoid destruction. Amarr ships typically use armour tanks, meaning they rely on either lots of armour, or have highly damage resistant armour, or use an armour repairir to constantly fix their armour, or a combination of these.

A propulsion module is a must otherwise you will waste lots of time trying to get into position to fight, or lose lots of time while slowly moving your ship to the item you need to pick up for your mission.

Beams vs Pulse: Beam lasers are longer ranged, but do less damage, and are less accurate against close-in fast moving targets,

If you google Eve damage types, there are lots of articles on which hardeners to use against which damage types. For armour-tanked ships, you also get Adaptive Nano Plating and Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane modules that protect against all damage types, but less effectively against a single type of damage as a dedicated hardener vs that damage type.

About turrets,

-Tracking
Every turret has a base tracking amount that dictates how fast an object it can hit. As ships move around in space they change their direction and speed relative to you. Angular velocity is this number. Your turrets must be able to move faster then the other objects angular velocity to be able to stay on target.

NPC ships have fairly easy to understand behavior, they approach you and orbit at a particular distance. Depending on the ship type it can be very close range resulting in faster orbits and a higher angular velocity, or at a longer range resulting in slower orbits. the larger the radius of a circle, the bigger the circumference is.

You as a pilot can dictate how the enemy moves to a certain extent. as the NPC's try to get to their proscribed ranges, you can move away from them, flattening out the angle they are approaching you from. this drops the angular velocity making them easier to hit. but this also means that their tracking of you becomes easier.

-Rate of fire
The rate of fire is how often your weapon discharges, Turrets like artillery have long cycle times in exchange for high damage. Autocannons are the opposite, with short cycle times and a much lower damage. however because of the huge difference in their cycles the calculated damage per second is fairly close.

On lasers the trade off is not in rate of fire as much as it is in range. but its important to note that cycle time is an important factor when deciding what you fit and for what. long cycle times means your enemy may have time to repair themselves before your second volley. or you may drop enough damage that they simply explode. repair fittings don't always have enough hp to cover a high volley.

-Optimal/Falloff
How far you can hit things. Inside of optimal range you have the best chance of hitting things at full damage, in fall off you have 1/2 the chance to hit things even if you are both stopped dead in space. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but as a general rule with Lasers, you don't have much falloff to work with and lots of optimal, so you shouldn't really be trying to hit things outside of your optimal anyways. Different ammunitions have different effects on ranges, take a look at the types of enemies you will be facing and the ranges they prefer. pick the best ammunition for the ranges you wish to fight at.

-Signature resolution
Size of the enemy that your turrets will track well. However, every turret can hit any in space object, but there is a damage amount translation that happens depending on the objects signature size. medium turrets do not do full damage amounts to small objects, but a relational amount to the turrets signature resolution to the objects. For the most part this isn't that important. as other factors influence damage much more.

Importance of dictating range
Many times you will find that letting your enemies sit at the ranges they like will mean that you have issues hitting them, Frigates at close range, battleships very far out, etc. It is also important for tanking purposes, If you sit outside the enemies optimals they will not hit you as well, so you can run your tanking modules less and be at a much reduced change of you exploding.

Beams/Pulse lasers
Beam weapons have higher fitting requirements and much longer ranges, they also use a significant quantity of capacitor. But because of the vast ranges they can hit at, you will often find yourself outside of the enemies range and can hit them at a nice flat angle as they approach you. Pulse weapons have lower fitting requirements and shorter ranges. but higher damage output then beams. When you get to t2 pulse turrets, Scorch (as many have said before) extends your range to hit most NPC ship orbits and is a great ammunition for missions.


Another good program, is PYFA or EFT , links to which i dont have on hand atm, but are easily googled. these fitting tools let you input your skills and fit ships without having to spend the isk to see what will fit in game.

I never had regrets about the time I put into training up to T2 drones. I used to run L3 missions before switching to PVP, and T2 drones made a big different in my ability to deal with frigates, esp scramming frigates, in those missions.

Remember than once you fit a rig, you can only remove it by destroying that rig. While they help, don't invest them if you haven't got the money.

The damage control doens't work if it isn't activated. It's capacitor use is very low however, just remember to push the button.

For low sec gate running, see this topic.

Dual light pulses (or some meta version of those) will do more damage since you can lose the fitting mods and equip heat sinks. Medium pulses/beams dont work on the Coercer.

Once you have access and money for TII weapons, you should fit dual light PULSE laser II and scorch crystals. In terms of rigs, most of them will carry a penalty aswell. E.g. a rig to improve your weapon damage will increase the grid that that weapon uses. The question you have to ask first is wether you have the spare grid to mount energy weapon rigs. If you have to grid, an energy collision rig or energy locus coordinator is nice.