EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello,

I have just taken up the mantle of EVE Pilot and was just wondering what the best starter Frigate for Minmatar was?

I currently have my starter Slasher and it is doing just fine running the starter missions. I've fitted it with three 125mm guns, an afterburner, a small shield booster, a small armour repairer. I know I shouldn't both armour and shield tank but I have nothing better to put in my low slots at the moment. Like I said, it does just fine against newbie rats but what would be the next step in frigates?

Also, what basic skills or certificates should I learn to improve my ship? This is like being thrown in the deep end... LOL. It can be daunting looking at all those skillbooks. So what basics should I be picking up as a combat pilot?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

And that new frigate of yours, are you going to fit it with shield and armour tank as well? I reckon you don't have nothing better to put on its slots either, isn't it?

Anyway, open your market window, go to Ships -> Frigates -> Minmatar (if you're going to fly minnies) -> Standard Frigates and right click-> show info on each frigate. Go to Description, and find Bonuses/Traits. There you can see bonuses to each frigate, and therefore you can rule out frigs with scanning/salvaging bonuses, frigs with remote repairing bonuses etc. You'll end up with two frigs, one is your Slasher, second one is ... well, that's your homework :) (although I believe people will happily spoonfeed you :( )

Slasher is fast frigate, the other one is pew pew frigate, if you want to upgrade your DPS, you may want to use the other one.



Open the info for frigate of your choice (Slasher or... the other one), and this time go to "recommended". Here you find a list of certificates you should follow to improve your pew pew and tanking/fitting/navigating/cap abilities.

The most newbie-friendly ship in a given race's lineup is generally the brawler, that would be the Rifter in your case. A good balance of firepower and tank without sacrificing too much in the way of maneuverability. High base stats mean you don't have to worry about fitting or maxing out skills quite as much, and it uses turrets rather than a secondary system so it gets you used to the more common and complicated damage system.

Now, that said, there's nothing _wrong_ with the slasher; in general, if you can get what you want done in the ship you're using, then it's fine. Be aware, though, that the slasher is a light tackle frigate, so it's designed around going really fast and pinning things down. This means it tends to lack a bit in things like damage and tank once fitting is taken into account.

As far as starter skills/certificates, there's always the good old "core competence". You don't need to max the cert itself, but if you look at the list of skills in there they're good things to start off with training to 3 or 4. More specifically, look for skills initially that increase your base stats, especially fitting stats like CPU and powergrid (and, to a lesser extent, capacitor), get your frigates skill to 4, and then look into anything related to your weapons and tank.

I would advise getting a bunch of skills to 3 or so before doing anything else: unlock some different weapons, get a broad base with everything that can be nailed to a frigate, maybe unlock destroyers. Start bumping things to 4 and 5 only once you have some idea what you're doing. Also, learn how shield recharge works and what turret tracking and falloff do so that you can understand WTF the skills are talking about.

Thanks guys,

Much appreciated ;)

Whatever, man, when I think random sci-fi spaceships in general I think of something like the rifter, because the double-hull plane geometry is very common in science fiction.

... but when I think of a frig hull in EVE the first thing that comes to mind is the good old fat boy. The Tristan's crazy rotationally symmetric solar sail looking deal sort of sums up what makes Eve different play-wise than other space sims... in other games you're flying a plane that happens to be in space, in Eve it's much closer to an actual free-floating ship that's never seen the downside of a gravity well and doesn't know what an atmosphere is.

Fitting and skill plans can be very intimidating. There are websites and sister programs dedicated to these tasks and they are invaluable.

Battle Clinic is a mountain of bullsh1t with gold nuggets hidden deep inside. Spend some tome sifting through fits to get a handle on what a good pve fit looks like as compared to a good pvp fit and why the mods are used. Go to the load outs and read the comments...READ THE COMMENTS. Do not take your fits from this section! These guys are the corn-capped peak of bs mountain. Instead, find a corp/alliance/player with a metric butt ton of kills or that just does the things that you want to do and sift through their losses to see what they fly and how they fit.

EVE Fitting Tool is sister program that helps you to theory craft ships before spending the ISk in game. There are others but this one is generally well liked and I have the link. It will read your API to give stats based on your skills. You can also export the fits that you make right into the game as well as import fits that your corp/alliance mates have given you in-game. This is the best feature. Build a ship and fit that you want to fly based on suggestions and your research then adjust all the relevant skills until everything fits now export that fit to...

EVE Mon is a skill planner. It will take the fit that you just theory crafted and turn it into a skill plan. Now toss in all your core fitting, tanking, navigation, capacitor skills and let the program optimize it for you.

This will help get you started but as a warning, don't spend too much time on theory and planning. You can read every guide and watch all the videos but if you don't go out and lose then you will still suck at EVE. The game is 80% experience based knowledge, 10% having good, trustworthy contacts, 5% luck & 6% trolls...

Welcome to the last game you will ever play. Good luck

I, as a fresh newbee, found out, that I lose way too much time trying gather loot after the mess I done in level 1 missions. From this point of view faster frigate is better option.

Don't bother using your frigate to salgave after any mission. It will be awhile before you can get a Noctis, the dedicated salvage ship. But a cheap and cheerful destroyer fitted just with TB and salgavers will rip through a mass of wrecks quite fast.

You won't be able to run a full load out of 4 TB and 4 Salvagers because of skill limitations, but you can quickly get 3 of each running.