EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello, I just started this character, and started doing the Military agent missions.

I'm at step 8, I got a Small Armor Repairer as reward, if I fit it on my Merlin, capacitor says it depletes in 2 minutes. Just the armor repairer, nothing else, no weapons, no shield recharger. I need some protection, I tried the mission just with Civilian Kinetic Shield, and almost lost my ship.
Am I doing something wrong? Also - the game did not give me the skill book for the armor repairer, had to buy it.

This is my second character, I have another one - Gallente nation, I played for one month one year ago, trained as a miner and got him a Retriever. I remember the starting missions were easier. Are the free skill books provided only once for one account?

Thank you :) How can you tell if it's a "shield tanked" ship?

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Nvm I get, it, the resistances are higher on the shield

That's the big issue with the tutorials. You are given an armor repper on a shield tanking ship.

Also that capacitor running out in 2 min takes in to account that you keep everything running, all the time.

Good stuff above, but I'd like to add a few things.

First, the fitting window in Eve itself is rudimentary at best for giving you full readouts and statistics for your ship's performance. This is mainly because you have no way to know what happens when only certain modules are active without offlining them completely. As such, I would recommend you look into one of the out-of-game fitting tools (EFT, Pyfa, EVEHQ, or others). They allow you to import your skills and simulate fittings without having to actually own the modules or ships.

So far as the capacitor draw itself, armor repairers are in general lighter on the cap than shield boosters, but shield boosters will be more effective on the Merlin. Another alternative is to just fit shield extenders, which increase the total amount of your shields, and also increases how quickly they regenerate (since regeneration is partially based on the maximum amount of shield you have). Some ships, like the Drake, can count on this type of tank instead of using shield boosters.

If you really have a ton of capacitor problems and you have a free mid slot and some fittings left over, you can try fitting a Small Capacitor Booster and injecting your cap now and then with a Cap Booster 200 charge.

Lastly, fitting an actual Small Shield Booster instead of a civilian mod will boost your durability by a ton. Civilian mods are really quite poor in performance.

Good luck!

Ed: I forgot to address this: each character gets the same "newbie" treatment via tutorials, free stuff, etc. regardless how many other characters the account has.

Like explained, the fitting screen shows what your capacitor will do when you run is constant on.

What you can do is just activate it when you need a boost in shield and then deactivate it again...

To add a little to what others said, cap-stability should never be a goal in itself. If you have enough cap to run all the necessary modules just when necessary that its enough. After that point any capacitor module will takes away a slot better used with a damage/tank/utility module.

Remember that missions are mostly a way to make ISK and not the actual objective of EVE*. And you want to aim for a good ISK/hour ratio. This mean that dropping a cap module(or even a tank module) for something that make you finish the mission faster (usually a damage module, but sometimes a utility module) its a good idea. in any case its your game and its up to you to decide when you are comfortable to get this step.



*except that EVE lets you to decide what is your goal. If you want to do mission in such a manner that you end up losing ISK go for it.

In addition to what everyone said above: You can increase your capacitor considerably via skills.

Energy Management increases your total capacitor by 5% per level
Energy Systems Operation increases the regen rate of your capacitor by 5% per level

I'm not sure what level newbies start those with but you probably want III asap in both.

Also, there are many skills that will decrease the capacitor costs for specific modules. For example, Shield Compensation reduces the energy cost to use your shield booster by 2% per rank.

These can often be the difference between capping out and being stable.