EVE New Citizens Q&A

Honestly race isn't as much a determination of speed as role is. Interceptors are fast. Attack cruisers are fast. Combat cruisers are slow. Shield fit ships are fast. Armor fit ships are slow. Theres a huge number of different variables that go into ship speed.

The minmatar do have the stiletto and stabber, two of the fastest ships in their size category in the game. Instead of asking which is faster, you might want to be asking whether you want to brawl, kite or snipe. Gallente blaster brawlers have to be fast to get into range and apply damage. They have the highest damage of any ships of their size cateogries, but insanely low range. They may either fit a microwarpdrive if their optimal is similar to scram range (scrams turn off microwarpdrives), or fit an afterburner if they think that they need to control range once they are inside of scram range. Look into the incursus as a starting ship for this role.
Gallente rail kiters and snipers are much longer range and the speed of the ship depends much more on fitting. The atron is a good example of a starting rail ship.
Finally, gallente also have drone boats as an option. These can be fit in a variety of ways, either as immobile snipers with sentries, or close range brick tanks like the vexor. The big advantage of these boats is that you don't have to use your high slots for guns if you don't want to. They can fit energy neutralizers for cap warfare, different types of guns, drone control range modules, or a variety of other utility modules. Look into the tristan and vexor as beginner drone ships.

Minmatar use autocannons which have even shorter optimal range than blasters, but very long falloff ranges. This allows them to apply damage from a variety of ranges, but they will deal less if they are farther away. This means that they can get under the guns of bigger ships and fight at their own optimal, or kite against similarily sized or smaller blaster boats that they out range. Minmatar kiting ships also in general have more mid slots allowing for a propulsion module (microwarpdrive or afterburner), point (warp disruptor or warp scrambler), and one or two slot shield tank, some times even being able to fit a stasis webifier for more range control. The shield tank causes them to take more damage from having a higher signature radius, but they aren't slowed down my armor platings, and can use low slots for overdrive injectors and nanofiber internal structures to increase speed and agility. If you're interested in this playstyle, look into the stabber and slasher.

There are some minmatar ships that excel in a high damage single shot sniping role. These ships fit artillery instead of autocannons, to give a massive range boost, combined with very high damage from each shot, but at the cost of rate of fire. The overall dps from these ships is fairly low, making them excell in fleets with other similarily fit ships. Look into the thrasher and tornado for this role.

Mimitar brawlers actually function fairly similar to their kiters except with bigger tanks and less range control. Look into the rifter and rupture for this role.

TLDR: Decide what range you want to fight at instead of what speed you want to fight at. All races have fast ships and slow ships, and smaller ships will be faster.

EDIT: Read these articles for ship breakdowns. The site is dead, but the articles are only a little bit out of date, and are still excellent: http://www.evealtruist.com/p/know-your-enemy.html

The names they used were simply made up, same for their roles. They used it to kinda differentiate between them while balancing but in the actual game they have zero meaning. All that matters is how a certain ships with a specific fit works in a specific scenario, and whatever name CCP gave them doesn't really matter at all.

Yeah I was just looking at that right now. Basically what the ship is designed to do is based on the bonuses on stats and stuff. Which I'm starting to figure it out now. I know someone just said that their used to be T1 and T2 ships, but not they're no longer classified in that way. INstead ships just straight up have diffferent roles, but does that mean that for an example...

The Brawler Frigate ships in T1 for Minmatar would still be for an example a Rifter, while the T2 Brawler Frigate ships are still the Wolf and Jaguar? or has that changed in any way? Like are Rifters and Wolf completely different from each other in terms of having different roles.. or are the Jaguars and Wolf still the RIfter's bigger brothers?

I know people told me that The Rifter was once the best/fastest Frigate ship for assault but now there's a Gallante frigate ship that surpasses the Rifter and I heard that this changed after 2011. So I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this.

There used to be Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 ships. T1, T2, and T3 refers to Tech 1, etc.. Yea, it was somewhat confusing when someone misused the term.

Back in the days of Tiered ships, the ships were basically all the same but progressively better. So basically, once you finished the tutorial, there was no real reason to fly a Tier 1 or Tier 2 ship ever again when you could pay 300k isk for the "best" frigate.

Tech 1, 2, and 3 are very much still in existence. Tech 2 can be thought of as a more specialized version of a tech 1 ship. A Tech 3 ship is a highly adaptable ship, that will generally never be better at a given role than a T2 ship, but its high versatility makes up for that deficit.

Some ideas from other mmo's come over to eve but end up not playing identically. For instance rogue high dps, a blaster and shield tanked thorax or brutix would be high dps in your face to gank and run away but it doesn't cloak and can be taken down by a gang fast. The nature of pvp in this game is way different and a thorax or brutix isn't sneaking up on anyone either.

Each ship depending on fit is set to have a specific engagement profile. Each ship is more suited for certain roles but it can be adjusted for something else if you desire. Each race has different types of weapon systems too that are meant for different fighting styles. Kiters, upclose brawlers, midrange fighting, remote repair support, electronic warfare support, light tackle, heavy tackle, and such. Each part can functions as part of a fleet rather well if the fleet is setup propperly. For solo work you are further limited on what you can engage but there are ships that have larger engagement profiles than others. Kiters have the luxory of getting out if things go bad but if you fail at kiting you die. Brawlers make the fight go to completion at least but can't bail normally unless dual propulsion fit.

That being said, a solo cloaky blaster proteus (expensive and skill intensive for new player) can gank solo targets quite well but you are commited to the fight once in. If they were bait then you are probably going down so target selection is important.

One last thing, prop mods. Flying with only an afterburner heavily limits what you can engage. In fw space you will see a lot of afterburner fits though due to the way fw complex fighting works. It forces the person jumping in to land at a known spot so the person inside will be set at optimal position. Outside of fw complexes a mwd will help more often than not and dual prop if you can depending on ship is even better.

Sorry long post.

Minmatar frigate... Gallente frigate... sounds like you eventually want a Dramiel.

I bought one just because I could fly/afford it and it just looks so damn cool. Mind the Dramiel is a 'pirate faction' hull so that means it's rather expensive (60-65m or so), and requires quite some SP in the right places to fly efficienly (you will need to crosstrain Minmatar & Gallente frigate). Skilling up for the Dramiel will see you get proficient in both Minmatar and Gallente frigates and their relevant skills.

Remember, skills for small ship classes and weapon types usually take less time then those for bigger stuff. I would recommend to train both frigate levels to 4, and both Projectile and Hybrid turrets to 4. That should allow you to fly their racial frigates at a level where you can compete with others. A well-flown T1 fit can and will beat a T2 fit, experience and diversity in what you can fly is a greater, more deadly weapon then having maxed skills. These are more important to get the last few percentages of performance out of an expensive ship, like the Dramiel.

Worry about that later! Crosstrain early and try out both ship lines: whatever will become your favourite race to fly you will gain valuable experience.