EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello!

I'm new to EvE, yet not brand new, for I did my part and informed myself as good as I could about the game. My problem lies in the 4 Faction (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar ) you can choose as your starting position.
I do favor the Amarr but it would seem that they are “Capacitor Intensive “. I really can’t make a picture of what that would mean later on IG for all a rookie is able to fly is limited to a T1 Frig ( at least what I could test ) as well as:

• Ships are often expensive compared to other factions?
• Typically have small number of medium slots, meaning EW and AB/MWD usage is compromised?
• Often slower base max velocities than comparable ships of other factions?
• Often can't fit all their high slots with weapons - so damage output can't be maximized?

The Caldari on the other hand don’t use cap for there wep system. They can change ammo while the Amarr can’t if I’m not mistaken. But they have 1 ugly T1 missile boat, no destroyer… the Caracal ( Cruiser ) and Drake ( Battle Cruiser ) which I do favor. Yet these are 2 ships I could use and the BS class seem limited to the Raven only.

• Overall, Caldari ships are the slowest and heaviest, with few low slots to be able to compensate for this, making it hard to maintain range advantage
• Reliance on missiles has some drawbacks for PVP, for example hitting for much lower damage on moving or smaller enemies and having to wait between the launch and actual impact (as opposed to the "instant" damage of turrets)
• Fitting EW and AB/MWD modules reduces ability to shield tank, since these types of modules both use medium slot

Yet they seem to be excellent shield tanks and top PvE selection duel to their ability of selecting damage types.

The Gallente have the best basic for a female character creation if you ask me. They do focus drone boats and I don’t really see myself in this role not to mention some of their ships look like flying pumpkin heads. I am as well afraid that I would be easily kitted for they prefer close up combat.

• Some ships are heavily reliant on drones. Drones can be powerful weapons, but, unlike turrets, they can be destroyed, can be difficult to control, and are not particularly effective in long-distance hit-and-run warfare since they take time to travel to their targets. Drones also orbit their targets at close range and are thus vulnerable to smartbombs.
• Hybrid weapons use comparatively high amounts of capacitor and deal exclusively in thermal and kinetic damage.

The Minmatar remember me on some space pirates, like the Rippers from Serenity. They use from all a bit it would seem. Couldn’t really make an opinion on them except that they seem to favor speed ( hit and run )…

• Tend to have weaker tanks than other factions
• Skill-intensive. It may be necessary to train projectile weapon, missile and drone skills to obtain the maximum firepower out of Minmatar ships. Next to that, the range of Minmatar Artillery Cannons is often longer than their ships´ limited targeting range, which also requires extra skilling or using extra slots to extend the targeting range.
• Vulnerable to ECM jamming (use relatively weak LADAR-based sensors)
• Small capacitor reservoirs
• Tend to have very weak hulls

I am looking for at least one ship ( BS class) which is capable of tanking in missions or plexes. I prefer the option “tank and spank” if that can be applied to EvE. So sitting tide, capable of keeping myself alive, while cutting trough the enemy lines.
PvP vise I like to cripple my enemy, “debuff it” in a meaner of speaking. Making him unable to run away or be able to counter attack me, reducing his damage output or lowering his defense abilities.

As a newcomer or rookie I expect to be running missions for starters in High-Sec and/or Salvaging. In time I would like to do exploring.

Maybe I should as well mention that I’ll have a starting capital of around 500mil duel to sell of a PLEX via buddy invite.

Hoping that you could direct me or at least share some experience with me regarding the starting race, there ships and fits.

Best Regards Vanara Acad!

Often can't fit all their high slots with weapons - so damage output can't be maximized?
Not true, your fitting skills are likely not good yet. That said, there are some frigates that have (e.g.) 4 hi slots, but only 2 turret slots. Every race has stuff like this, with Minmatar doing it the most across all ship lines. Generally you'll use these "extra" high slots for utility purposes (e.g. a tractor beam, or salvager, or something else).


[Caldari] can change ammo while the Amarr can’t if I’m not mistaken. But they have 1 ugly T1 missile boat,...

You are mistaken. All the races can change ammo. Difference is Caldari/Minmatar can choose damage types (to some degree) whilst Amarr/Gallente are stuck to Therm/Kin(Gal) or Therm/EM (Amarr). Also, of the Caldari ships, I like the Kestrel's looks (they've got some really terribad looking ones too).

like the Rippers from Serenity
Merely a point of interest -- they were the "Reavers".

I am looking for at least one ship ( BS class) which is capable of tanking in missions or plexes. I prefer the option “tank and spank” if that can be applied to EvE. So sitting tide, capable of keeping myself alive, while cutting trough the enemy lines.
Tengu, Raven, Dominix, Gila, Rattlesnake (?) are all popular (or at least I hear about them a lot -- I hate missioning).

PvP vise I like to cripple my enemy, “debuff it” in a meaner of speaking. Making him unable to run away or be able to counter attack me, reducing his damage output or lowering his defense abilities
Falcon, Pilgrim, Ares, the other interceptors, among other ships that also do this ... I'm more the industrial type (though I can shoot people when needed).

Maybe I should as well mention that I’ll have a starting capital of around 500mil duel to sell of a PLEX via buddy invite. Bad news to tell people this, also as a rookie consider that 500m to be your "0" mark. Fly cheap, otherwise you'll lose your expensive pimp-fit ships to people wanting to profit off your loss.


Overall, what race you pick is up to you (at this point, it's whoever's backstory you like the best). There's no hard rule that says you as an Amarrian can't fly ships made by the slaves (Minmatar), or a Gallente or Caldari vessel if that's your choosing... however, it's best to stick with one race's ships for a little while (say cruisers/BC) so you can focus on getting the support skills in place. Once you have some decent support skills, then you can branch out (because you won't be so bad off)...

For example, most everyone uses turrets, so say you've trained up your Med Energy to L4 and are doing well in L2/3 missions (but no gunnery support skills). Jumping into a Gallente ship with L1 Med Hybrid, you'll feel really weak. Now, if you stuck with the Amarrian ships til you trained some of the "gunnery" support skills (motion prediction, surgical strike, etc) the bonuses they give will help offset the anemic damage you'd be getting by being 3 levels "short" in "Hybrid Turrets" -- you'll still feel "weak" (because you're missing ~15% damage from the amarrian stuff), but you'll still be hitting "well".

Each race has their strengths and weaknesses. Which one you pick seems to depend more on your personality than anything to do with the ships.

People who fly amarr like the idea of being part of an established tradition.

People who fly gallente are kinda libertarian.

People who fly caldari are bandwagon tools.

People who fly minmatar like to think they are scrappy underdogs.

That said, there's no reason not to cross train to get the best tools from each race.

I'm reasonably sure you mean the Reavers. You should look at Sansha pirate faction ships for a real resemblance.

As stated above, there is no "worst" race, and any price advantages that a race may appear to have are only due to the market at the time. Player driven markets cause fluctuations.

Other than that, some brief overview of races from someone who flies all of them:

Amarr

• Weapons: Lasers (favored), drones, short range missiles. Crazy range flexibility, cool looks, and good damage. Missile and drone ships usually have poor-ish damage, but great utility (Arbitrator, Malediction, Sacrilege, Pilgrim, Curse).
• Tank: Armor buffer (favored), active armor. Most Amarr ships can have very thick skins of armor. Some can actually absorb a ton of damage via constantly repairing.
• Mobility: Mostly poor. Heavy armor tanking doesn't do much for the mobility of the already slow Amarr ships. There are some of them which are fairly fast when built right, but nothing too spectacular. Great range flexibility in weapons mitigates the effect of this.
• Electronic warfare: Tracking disruptors (racial), energy neutralizers/vampires. TD's break enemy guns (but do nothing to missiles or drones), while neutralizers sap energy cap, and vampires maintain your own (sometimes necessary to make laser ships less vulnerable to neuts).
• Limitations: As you noticed, low numbers of mid slots. This means limited ewar and near-impossible shield tanks. Another limitation is the poor tracking of lasers -- they have trouble hitting fast stuff. The low speed of some Amarr ships should be noted.

Caldari

• Weapons: Railguns (favored), long range missiles (favored), short range missiles, blasters. The Caldari have some of the best long range ships in the game in both of their railgun and missile lines. Both of the weapon systems are fairly low damage, but hit well due to long ranges. The missiles are especially insufferable since they are very hard to dodge.
• Tank: Shield buffer (favored), passive shield, active shield. Caldari have massive shield buffers, but can also do well depending on the shield's regeneration, or on using shield boosters.
• Mobility: Mostly poor. Caldari ships' range prowess is offset by most of them being sort of easy to catch.
• Electronic warfare: ECM (racial), ECM, ECM. Also known as jams, ECM is the only electronic warfare the Caldari excel at -- but excel they do. ECM shuts down all targeting of the target on a chance-based mechanic, and is considered borderline unbalanced by some people.
• Limitations: The poor speed is not helped by low mid slots. Low damage, usually, with good utility -- but Caldari ships have to trade tank for utility from their mid slots. Missile travel times are suboptimal for some types of combat. Caldari ships are (in my opinion) best in groups of people, not alone.

Gallente

• Weapons: Blasters (favored), drones (favored), railguns. Blasters are the highest damage weapons in the game, and drones give very good, reliable damage and range flexibility. However, they can be shot down, leading to most Gallente ships having issues fighting at range. A few are good at doing that using railguns, but not many.
• Tank: Kitchen sink (favored), "damage" tank, active armor. With a few exceptions, Gallente ships aren't that good at tanking. They just fit some buffer that goes with the particular fit (shield or armor, whatever), in order to survive long enough until the enemy is dead due to superior damage.
• Mobility: Good-ish. Gallente ships need it for range management. Agility (acceleration/turning) can be a bit poor, but Gallente ships are usually quite fast.
• Electronic warfare: Sensor dampeners (racial), long range warp disruption/scrambling. The Gallente Ewar suite is considered by some to be the weakest, as it is very situational. Damps reduce targeting range or targeting speed. It and long range tackle are very situational.
• Limitations: Gallente ships are very vulnerable to anything that they can't catch that is hitting them from range. They also don't deal that well with overwhelming damage. Some ships can also have trouble staying at short range due to "slinging" past the target due to low agility.

Minmatar

• Weapons: Projectiles (favored), missiles, drones. Projectile weapons have great range flexibility without needing to swap out ammo, and they have damage variability as well via different ammo types. However, autocannons tend to do low damage compared to other weapon systems at similar ranges. At short range, they are outclassed by blasters. At long range, they are outclassed by lasers. Artillery does the lowest damage per second of any weapon system due to a really low rate of fire, but has amazing "alpha" strike.
• Tank: Kitchen sink (favored), active shield. Many Minmatar ships can do well with both shield and armor tanks. Choice is important in how the fit is supposed to work.
• Mobility: Great. Minmatar ships are very fast, and quite agile. They have a reasonably easy time with range control.
• Electronic warfare: Target painters (racial), long range stasis webifiers, energy neutralizers. The latter two are actually used more than TPs as TPs are only useful in limited situations. Neuts technically aren't a Minmatar feature, but many Minmatar ships get extra high slots on top of their weapons, which often are equipped with neuts.
• Limitations: Very few Minmatar ships can claim to be "durable". Flying Minmatar effectively can be easy in some ways, but hard in others. "Flying a Minmatar ship is like going down the up escalator in a wheelchair, dual wielding Uzis."

I'm just going to clear a few things up. You're cast-typing the races a little bit too intensively. There's much more variety than that.

Things I spotted in your post:

Amarr:

The Amarr aren't limited to lasers. They have several drone-intensive-boats (arbitrator and its variants, and the geddon has a rather enormous drone bay compared to say, Caldari battleships). They also get missiles on the Damnation and Heretic. And Amarr certainly can fill their high-slots with weapons. They have two battleships with 8 hardpoints. They are, however, the second-slowest race.

Caldari:

Caldari /do/ use cap for their hybrids. They're not exclusively missiles. They're 50/50. They also require more cap because they shield tank. The BS certainly isn't limited to the Raven for combat. There's the Rokh, of course, as well as the Scorpion Navy Issue, which fits quite a strong tank if we count faction ships.



Now, you don't need low slots to compensate for speed. Propulsion mods fit in the mids. Low slots are rarely used for speed tanking after the historic nano-nerf. You may occasionally see someone fit an overdrive injector, but it's not an extremely common practice.

Gallente: You're mostly correct about them, but they do have the second-fastest ships in the game. It's quite possible to run close-range blaster boats with them. While their guns do one type of damage, their drones can be switched.

Now, onto the minmatar:

This is entirely false. They have tanking options, but they're certainly not weak. The maelstrom, claymore, cyclone, and sleipnir currently have some of the strongest tanks in the game, due to ancillary shield boosters. They are a skill intensive race, but if you focus on turrets and shields you still have enough options to survive before training their "secondary" systems of missiles and armor.


HP isn't everything. Many of shots fired at smaller minmatar ships will be missing if you can avoid being webbed or scrammed. Think of them as evasion tanking.

Also, minmatar get a variety of ammo, like Caldari, though not quite as wide of a range.


In terms of tank-and-spank ships, your best options are the Dominix (Gallente), Navy Scorpion or Raven (Caldari), or the Maelstrom (Minmatar). The Rokh and Tempest can run missions, though it's a bit trickier. Arguably any Amarr battleship can run level 4s, but your damage-type is somewhat handicapping, and you'll be limited to certain regions of space if you want to be efficient.

( Blushed ) … an awkward moment …

Pardon me, I was speaking the words in error, I spoke with the absence of knowledge and the result was words of ignorance.

Well maybe, but I though it may help to direct me + this is not my buddy invite acc but merely a 14 days acc. It is a dif if you start with 0 isk or 500mil isk. But I am well aware of it, still thank you for your concern. The money will mainly be spent on skill books and possible implants.
( Is it worth buying implants as a rookie, for I’ll be in High-Sec so chances that I’ll be “podded” are small? )
For I am well aware on the Golden rules as well as its number 1 rule, never undock with a ship you can’t afford. Once you undock, see the ship as already lost.
There were however people who told me that if I’ll go Caldari I should strait train the Tengu. But a ship worth over 300mil I believe + fits, is something I don’t dare to fly + it would violate the above rules which is not to be recommended.

However I’m still not even a bit closer to decide what Race I should play. I would pref. the Amarr for I simply like the look of their ship. Yet I’m not sure that I’ll be satisfied with the option of character creation. I find it difficult to create a female avatar that would fit my requirements. So on a second though, the Caldari would be an option. For they have at least 1 Bloodline that would be acceptable.

If I would play Amarr I believe I would cross train the Caldari ships but if I would play the Caldari I would cross train to Minmatar for they seems to be close in wep as shield tanking.

Ofc my pref. character would be Gallente female, yet I don’t want to fly there ships and cross training from the start seems a bit of a waste.

I do realize that the Dominix is the most powerful T1 BS for its dps with drones which can go up to 1.7k dps. Yet I don’t like this flying pumpkin.
And about the Caldari Navy Scorpian, wouldn’t the Rattlesnake be better?

I do not want to use drones as main dps source… yet I would agree on the Myrm being one of the better looking Gallente ships, second place after the Tristan.

I could understand if the above questions are annoying some people but EvE doesn’t seem like a typical MMO where I would reach the top in maybe 3 months work and then simply make myself some other classes I always wanted to test and play. It’s a long time investment which means that it will go into 1 year or more before a character reaches the same lvl. That’s why I am asking an searching for the best possible balance.

Off Topic:

Exploration – I was told that NPC you encounter there are much much more powerful than the usual ones?
I was told that even a rookie could do it with some time spend on certain skills?
I was told to look for system without a space station, where the traffic is low ( safer )?
Are there only WHs or as well other PLEXes you can run with exploration which are profitable? Pref. with restrictions to small ships up to cruiser?

Thank you for your understanding, Best Regards Vanara Acad!

Rattlesnake is a drone boat... if you don't like drones, you won't like the rattlesnake.

In addition, it's a pirate faction battleship, so you can expect to double your training times in order to fly it. (It requires both Caldari and Gallente skills).

That was crash and I needed it for my Drake, man! Don't be hatin'!

Not much of an improvement. Spend the last day playing with the EvE Character creation tool, can't say I like it. Bit of a disappointment compare to other RPG or MMO game creation options. Still so far I can pin it down to Caldari or Amarr. Now it comes down to their usefulness in PvP as PvE.

Which one would you suggest? Faction standings Win/Loose/FW ( If I would join, was told it can be highly profitable )/Crowd control ( with it I mean how populated are the regions) ? Pros/Cons? Things that might make a change.

Note: I am aware of the already listed information’s in this topic connected to Caldari or Amarr faction.

I would as well appreciate if I could receive an answer to:

Hey, I'm back and I made up my mind, kinda.

I had to speed it up a bit since my Buddy Invite arrived. I was tending to start with the Amarrians but duel to there difficulty people keep mentioning about Capacitor need I decided that they might be a bit to much for a Newcomer and that playing Caldari ( missile ships only ) would be much easier since I have no urge to start PvP any soon rather first get a feeling for the Faction/Ships and environment while learning the basic while doing PvE.

If there is anything ales I should know, spill it out now! If you believe that the Amarr would be better suited say it now or be for ever silent.

So far I believe I'll go from frig to Cruiser ( Caracal ) then BC ( Drake ) and finally to Raven or CNS? Depending on the speed of learning/training time and changes that might be applied.

Any final words? Well if not you have around 24h to change my mind or give additional advice before I'll hit the character creation button and start my new life as a capsular.

Best Regards Vanara Acad!