EVE New Citizens Q&A

The AI is a bit mean to drones, but this is far from insurmountable. By far my favorite ship for exploring lowsec DED complexes is the Gila, which has absolutely no source of damage outside of its drones.

For wormhole space, you will more than likely be using mostly sentry drones. These do similar damage to heavy drones, but stay close to your ship and fire from range. So, if by chance the NPCs start shooting at them, you can quickly pull them in, wait a second for them to switch targets, and then drop them out again. Drones require more micromanagement than other weapon systems, but are intensely versatile and very effective. Furthermore, they free up your hislots for all manner of utility modules.



The description is just fluff. The useful bits on the description tab of the info panel are the ship bonus. At the bottom you will see Gallente Cruiser Skill Bonus and Heavy Assault Ships Skill Bonus (or something like that). These are bonuses that apply to the ship per level of the relevant ship skill. The Ishtar has a substantial drone bay and bandwidth (as you can see on the Attributes pane) as well as ship skill bonuses to drones, which is what makes it a droneboat.

Amarr have some decent droneboats, but if you want to go as a dedicated drone player you'll want to train Gallente. Half of all Gallente ships are dedicated droneboats and the others, the blasterboats, still have healthy drone bays for their class.

Outside of that you have the Guristas pirate faction ships (Worm - Gila - Rattlesnake, though the Worm is pretty pants at the moment) and some Amarr ships (Sentinel, crucifier, arbitrator, curse/pilgrim, prophecy, dragoon).

I prefer the term "technobabble" to "fluff"

In the upcoming tiericide patches, the Armageddon is getting decent drone bonuses so you'll have drone+neut frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battleships to choose from. My favourite drone boats at the moment are the Gila and Rattlesnake, I just wish there were drone boats that received bonuses to webs or energy transfers!

Thanks for the reply. I do like how the gila has grav resistance which makes sense for a drone ship whereas gallente have mag or whatever. Maybe that is a good ship to go for. I'll be looking at all those ships you listed. thanks.

well i was fighting against guristas and felt the pain of being jammed. If I had to pull them in and redeploy while being jammed yeah im screwed unless put some distance. Not sure if wormhole enemies jam or not. I'm new so maybe I am looking at it the wrong way but seems to me grav would be the best sensor to build upon for drones. One thing I forgo to ask is there a site that will tell me the cost to build a ship vs what they sell for on market?


Well just read up on sensor stuff and I had it all wrong way I was thinking it worked. Thought different types were for different types of ewar. that grav was specifically meant for jamming. So its about matching the enemy to sensor type. Are all types found inside wornholes?

There's one solid line of drone boats at the moment, and another that's being built: the Gallente have a natural progression from the Tristan frigate to the Algos destroyer to the Vexor cruiser to the Myrmidon battlecruiser (my old favorite) to the Dominix battleship, while the Amarr have the Dragoon destroyer, the Arbitrator cruiser, the new version of the Prophecy battlecruiser, and the Armageddon battleship is about to be converted into a drone boat.

I think Sleepers in wormholes will throw anything and everything at you, including jammers.

The Guristas boats are more expensive than the equivalent Gallente drone boats, and their missiles are secondary weapons at best; their strength, aside from the heavy drone firepower/HP bonus, is in their shield tank resistances, allowing them to absorb astonishing amounts of incoming fire. For someone getting started, though, I'd advise against going straight into the pirate boats; familiarize yourself with the empires' T1 offerings first.