Ships & Modules

Since you are very new and people here are already suggesting Battleship class vessels I will give you some good advice.

Get your frigs and try them out, specifically the ones that better represent the weapons systems you are enquiring about.
Since you are caldari the merlin would be your rail or blaster boat and the kestrel for missiles or rockets.
Hopefully this would give you an idea of your play-style. And since training for small guns does not take long in a few weeks you can start using t2.

This is the good thing about eve, there is no superior weapon there are just weapon systems and set-ups that work better under certain scenarios. What you need to do is figure out how you want to fly and then fit accordingly.

It's even easier god dam !!

It's not an assault frigate or pirate thing that is going to kill you alone just because it pointed you, even then mwd'n it gets at least 200m radius and your cruise missiles should almost just one shot them, they'll run away as soon as they get shields off or half armour which should happen very fast if you do it right.

Put the painter on them and your drones will eat a 5k tank frigate and any frigate pilot will just run away beyond point range.
If you're already putting your cruise missiles on the pesky BC you'll eat it alive or at least you will save most of your important dps on ships that are really annoying (logis/recons having meh tanks).

I'm not implying this works all the time, it requires cold blood and thinking in action which comes with experience (believe me I'm horrible at pvp and will loose most of solo fights because it ends with several ships+OGB against me alone in my corner like a good naif)

As far as caldari pvp goes:

Their T1 frigates and assault frigs are very good. The merlin/condor/hookbill/hawk/harpy is arguably the best lineup out of any race. The interceptors kinda suck, although the crow is at least workable.

The T1 cruisers are pretty strong. Caracals see a lot of use these days and the moa is a good brawler for what you pay. The HAC's are kinda rubbish. The eagle has been terrible as far back as I can remember and the cerb has had its role taken by tier 3 battlecruisers. Falcons are still very annoying.

Drakes have been nerfed repeatedly, but the HAM fit is still viable. I'm not sold on navy drakes considering the cost. Ferox is okay. The naga sees a lot of use as a sniping platform in fleet battles. Tengus are still strong in a variety of roles and they are being used more and more in fleets with a HAM fit.

I'm not sure about the raven. It's always had problems applying DPS and used to have an awful slot layout and speed. Some of this stuff has been fixed but I'm not sure if it's worth throwing down 200 mil just for the hull.

Anyway, Caldari has a bunch of useful ships for PvP of various gang sizes. It's not like we're still living in the days where the only two decent ships were the drake and falcon.

Or that there are just better options for most situations using other races. Just because they aren't useless does not mean they are optimal.