EVE New Citizens Q&A

See this:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=211455&find=unread

Rifter is a good ship. Its a brawler meaning it likes to be close -- move fast and hit hard.

Base Core Competency then Standard Core Competency.

Eventually you want Tech II weapons, and Tech II "tank" be that shield (active or passive) or armor (active or passive).

Frigates don't make good PvE ships in my experience. The general PvE progression goes something like this:

Level 1's Frigs.
Level 2's Frigs (maybe) and Destroyer's
Level 3's Destroyer (maybe) Cruiser preferred.
Level 4's You aren't a noob anymore, but Battlecruisers are preferred.


Cheers

Generally speaking, as a newer player only train something to V if you NEED it at V, either to unlock another skill or because you literally cannot fit something on your ship without the last 5% of the bonus or whatever.

The only skills that you are going to find possibly worth training all the way to V in the first couple months are the 1x multiplier basic fitting skills that increase your ship's base stats. Engineering, Electronics, maybe some of the Capacitor skills (but not all of them).

As far as the Rifter goes, while you _can_ just keep shoving sp into frigates and small weapons and so on essentially forever, I would recommend as a new player investing a significant amount of time into cruisers. Cruisers tend to have a lot of fitting and modules to spare so that you can experiment and learn, where frigate fits tend to be "tight" and very restricted to a single role. Cruisers will also let you mess with L2/L3 missions, which are much better for figuring out whether you enjoy missions or not, and you can build them into "all in one" ships to try other things like exploration (yay) or mining (boo) without retraining into an actual specialist ship.

I would keep the frigate for PvP, though, in ship to ship combat the general rule is smaller = more fun and less boredom

That's great, thanks for the help :D

I got another question, is there any program/simulator where I can "Fit" a ship and then see which skillsI will need to use that ship and all the weapons and stuff? Oh, and I would need that outside of the game. I got some spare time at work and I would like to learn more and maybe create a ship to work on.

To expand on this,

OP, on June 4th (the summer expansion release) CCP is splitting the generic "Deatroyers" and "Battlecruisers" skill books into 4 racial skill books similar to the racial frigate skills (Amarr frigate, Minmatar Frigate, Caldari Frigate, and Gallente Frigate). As it stand right now, to fly the Thrasher Destroyer, you need Minmatar frigate trained to 3, and Destroyers trained to 1. After the patch, you will need Minmatar frigate 3, and Minmatar destroyer 1. While this does not affect you in any way if you only fly Minmatar (or any of the other races solely) it does mean that training into other races will take longer, as you will need to train 4 separate Destroyer skills (and their appropriate frigate prerequisites) rather than just 1 generic skill. CCP is give us the chance, however, to receive all 4 skills after the patch in the time it takes to train for one right now. The deal is this: if you have all racial frigates trained to 3, and Destroyers trained to at least 1, you will receive ALL racial destroyers at the same level you had generic destroyers at before the change, because you met the prerequisites for all, and if you can fly it before, you can fly it after. Link to CCP explaining it better than me: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-great-skill-change-of-blessed-2013/

Now, regarding what skills you should train early on to get a good foundation, I recommend the Core Competency Basic certificate as a very short term goal. Longer term goal, Core Competency Standard certificate. Also, search on the forums (using the search bar) Louie's Epic Skill Guide. It has a great list of critical skills to get trained up ASAP.

Good luck and have fun!

Certificates up to Standard provide a reasonable set of guidelines for skill training.

For PvP you'll want to check the following sections for ideas on skill planning
Core
Defence
Electronic Warfare
Gunnery or Missiles
Navigation
Drones

Try Battleclinic .. ignore the comments for the most part

they generally make eve's bitterest bittervet seem pleasant & friendly in comparison.