EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey all, not strictly a newbie (but not particularly experienced at two months of play either) but I'm looking for some advice on which racial ship type you would chose to train up for a lvl 4 mission runner. I went straight into PVP on my main account and have a firm grasp of why I'm so bad at it, but as I never really did much PVE I'm unfamiliar which way to go with my mission alt account.

My thoughts are that I want to train into Amarr battleships (on looks, mostly) but as I'm not experienced with them I want to be sure they're viable before wasting a few months of training down that path. Consensus also seems to be that Caldari missile boats are supreme for PVE, are they that much better?

Basically, if *you* were to start a fresh account just for mission running, which way would you go? The only race I want to avoid is Gallente hybrid and drone ships because that's what I'm using on my PVP account and the chance to try some new ship styles is part of my rationale for making an alt as well.

Thoughts?

Don't waste your time in LVL 4s unless you really enjoy doing them over and over. The ISK reward is not enough for the job.

To answer you question depending the space you are...I would say my favorite ship to fly is a Nightmare and it does a damn good job with Sancha

Caldari use shield tanking, which is a little bit less "dangerous" than armor tanking, in that if your tank fails you still have your armor to defend you as you try to align and warp out.

Missiles have two advantages:

- you can pick your damage type to hit what the NPCs are weak against
- no angular / tracking to worry about with close-orbiting enemies

Thus, for PVE, where the enemy AI is to MWD to you and then orbit at whatever range is good for them (typically close range), missiles are pretty good.

Gallente drone ships are still somewhat popular, too, and you can use them too once you figure out NPC anti-drone behavior. Drone ships (Amarr too) are typically versatile, in that you can put in weapons OR a hell of an armor tank, and they have nice slot layouts. But, the bigger reason for popularity is that, again, you can pick the damage type that your drones will do based on what the NPCs are weak against. Also, with drones on autoattack you're kinda missioning somewhat afk, so it's easy mode.

Otherwise, for the gun-based damage, each pirate faction is custom-tuned to be weak to whatever weapons the nearby Empire is using. So if you use an Amarr laser ship that does EM and Thermal, the missions offered by Amarr agents will be easy. But if you take it into Minmatar space to do missions there, you'll mostly see EM/Thermal resists, and Kinetic/Explo weaknesses, which may make it more difficult.

Personally Amarr ships are what I use and love (Navy Apocalypse for life), but with the upcoming battleship changes I think the Amarr battleship line may end up being one of the more difficult battleships to train for a new player to PvE with due to the extreme capacitor use of lasers (and thus need for higher cap skills than some other races). Previously, the Apocalypse had a substantial cap use bonus that made it relatively easy for a lower skilled player to fit it out without having to constantly run out of cap, but this bonus will be changed in Odyssey (to something that is helpful in it's own way and probably superior in PvP, but not so much for a new player just trying to run their tank and guns without gobbling cap boosters for missions).

This coupled with the general belief that shields make for better PvE boats would probably make Amarr the less than ideal battleship line for a new player. Shields give a new player a nice armor buffer to get out of dodge when their tank starts failing, and ships that use less cap are more likely to have a supply of 'warp out' cap available if things go bad. Also, if you think you may be interested in incursions I've been told that shield fleets are far more numerous at the moment than armor fleets.

Having said all of that, in the end every race will certainly be viable to do PvE missions, and if you really like the look and feel of the Amarr ships go for it (the Paladin and Nightmare are both very good PvE laser boats). I just believe that if you are min/maxing, the Amarr line will take longer to get to it's full mission potential than Minmatar or Caldari.

This is all really helpful, thanks guys. It's doubtful I'm gonna spend a ton f time missioning (incursions might also be fun), it's more a matter of my main account being small gang pvp focused without the money to replace shiney battleships and we're gonna e entering FW which means ill probably tank my faction status with half of high sec. I just thought it might pay off to keep a positive sec status, non standing hampered shiney ship flying alt around. I appreciate the input a lot, tiericide on the Amarr ships was a concern as they spud like they'll be awesome for PVP but tricky in a PVE role.

Probably gonna go Minmatar at this point. Should be a lot of fun and leave room to try incursions somewhere way down the line

EDIT: tank my standings as in make them go negative

I actually enjoy them. I do think they need a way big overhaul though. Take them up to lvl 10s where anything past a 3 requires a fleet of players to take them out. The ships have progressed, the game mechanics have progessed, the missions have barely altered other than revamps of rats from time to time.

CCP needs to spend a little time breathing new life into the mission catagory.

For fun you can use any race, they're all viable.

For efficiency, Caldari for pve

I'd use a fleet.

Two noobs in tackle, two logi, two battlecruisers.

Yeah, the isk/hour will suck, but we'll make an awful mess of any pirate, war target or ganker :)