Ships & Modules

If you are really flying with several other people, and those several other people are in missile BS like ravens, then there are a few things you could do to help, even with low skills.

Anti-frigate, anti-ewar support. Ravens will have trouble with this, and typically mission ships have to have an answer to ewar ships in missions and tackling frigs that are hard to kill and go after drones. It can take ravens an inordinate amount of time to deal with these, so a dedicated ship would be a big deal. If you fly caldari, a drake or caracal loaded with rapid light missile launchers should do well and have enough fittings left over on a low-sp character to fit a decent tank. Droneships are also good at this.

Target painting and webbing. If the ravens are using torps or fury cruise, having extra painters should improve their dps on all targets, including npc battleships. Webs require you to get close, painters have a long cycle time that can be annoying if stuff is dying quickly. The bellicose has a bonus to target painter effectiveness. However, if you really want a support ship, you should just use whatever has the most midslots, you'll probably rather have 2 painters than 1 with a minor bonus.

Other remote boost modules - remote sensor boosting lets those ravens lock super fast. Helpful if against serpentis, requires few skills to be effective. There's also projected ECCM, which will help if guristas are jamming your ravens. However ewar shouldn't be a major issue if you have several ravens doing dps.

Lastly, don't get a ship with the idea that you'll refit it as you do pvp and pve, even though support is a valuable role in pvp. If anything, the skills you train will overlap between pvp and pve, but if you're going to pvp in something, just get another ship thats better suited to that role, doesn't require refit or rerigging, and doesn't kneecap your isk-making if you lose it.

Fly a scorpion with an MWD, three webbers, four painters, an overdrive and two nanofibers, a DC2, and fill the high slots with tractors. Fit 5 salvage, light combat, and light shield rep drones. Fly out into the middle of a pack of ships after someone else gets aggro, web everything, paint the primary, and loot/salvage targets. Deploy your drones to help take out frigates or add a little bit of tanking if someone over-aggros.

If you're going to try to provide support in a situation where it's probably not really needed you should do it in an interesting fashion.

Conversely you could fly a destroyer. The new destroyers, especially the Gallente and, to a lesser degree, Amarr destroyers, look to make for some good anti-frigate/spider support in missions while also, in the case of the drone destroyers, being good zip-zoop salvage drone ships.

I wouldn't really fly a ferox in L4s as a "support" ship unless you're cross-training to another race's ships and weapons. The range bonus doesn't really mean diddly so fitting a ferox with pulse lasers or ACs isn't necessarily a bad thing. Going whole-hog to another race could force you to try to balance training new weapons and new ship skills, and this route would at least let you focus on the weapon skills first.

I love threads like these.

As a newb myself, it's always nice to see that no one can agree on anything, making the process of gaining a foothold in this game just that much more confusing.