EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey everyone,

I recently started playing eve, finished the beginner tutorials and am half way through the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc. However, on the 27th mission I died, and now I'm wondering what ship to buy. Previously I flew the Catalyst (Destroyer) though right now I'm thinking, would it be a good choice to buy the Naval Frigate (The Comet). I do like to fly faster ships but I'm not sure if flying a destroyer will make it easier to finish the Epic Arc.

Sooo, question:

Would you recommend buying the Naval Frigate or a Destroyer for PVE missions.

Thanks in advance,

Justin

As a general rule, considering that you're new like I am, the Sister's arc ends with a missions that for you will require more firepower than a frigate can effectively handle without sacrificing tankability. To that end you'll need either some friends to help you or you'll need a destroyer. I second asking how you died as that'll help with giving you a better idea of what could have been done different, i.e, warping out sooner, a different fit, etc.

how fast did your destroyer die? in the time you had looking back over what happened could you have switched targets and killed the ship that had you warp scrambled? (there marked with a warp disruptor symbol on the overview and are normally of frig size.

I tend to kill frigs by default on any mission as this tends to allow me to warp out in case of trouble.

Choosing a cruiser again depends on how you wish to fight. a Vexor is a nice ship if you like Drones but a Throax is good if you like to fly a little faster and hit you enemy's in the face in a hand to hand combat sort of way.

Arr ok this makes sense.

What was happening was the enemy's were out tracking your guns so you could not hit them. so consider changing your fit for more close range guns. Fit a Web to slow them down, consider a target painter to blow up there signature radius. all these things help in hitting smaller faster moving targets.

Another option would be to use light drones, there fast and 3-4 of them can make a mess of most NPC close frigs that circle you.

Consider the ship loss as a learning curve and try again armed with the knowledge of what happened and how can I change my ship to beat these.

A cruiser with long range guns will have the same problem as any other ship in this case.

or consider your recently lost ship (as it was working for you up to this point and your familiar with it but retro fit it for this mission. you don't need to fit all of the above but drones and a web = dead NPC frigs :) (remember the web only works about 10km range from the T1 versions

Destroyers tend to have similar dps to a cruiser which is good.
They have simialr sig radius to a cruiser and the tank of a frigate (both bad)
This makes them glass cannons.
Gallente have 2 main weapon systems.
Hybrid turrets is the first and come in 2 main flavours

blasters. shortest range , highest damage and best tracking system in game. Against rats if u can stay in range of something you will kill it fast. If they have short ranged weapons (like drones) then you will take a ton of damage.

Rails: longest range turret in game. poor damage and poor tracking. Against rats with short range weapons you can stay out of range of them and take minimal damage.

Drones. Generally the bigger the drone the more raw damage it does but the slower it moves. Large drones apply damage very poorly to fast small targets whilst light drones are very fast and apply damage well to small fast targets.
If you plan on flying gallente in missions i suggest working on your drone skills and going vexor to myrmidon to domi.
The last 2 do well with sentry drones (these don't move but have a long range)
Train the gun skills once you have drone skills to 4/5 along with cap /fitting/ tank skills.
If you plan on a more pvp lifestyle, or exploration /lowsec/ nullsec then this training path would need major revision depending on details of what you want to do.
The vexor will easily complete the arc and as long as you fly around with an afterburner keeping your transversal high and a reasonable distance from the rats you will be fine. Fit rails and do your best to shoot stuff but let the drones do most of the work.

For missions fit an afterburner. 2 hardeners and a shield repper in the mids. Use extender rigs (or cap control circuits) and
put 3 drone damage amps and a damage control in the lows.
Fit whatever guns you can in the highs and use a fitting mod in the lows if you need to (or a power diagnotic unit)
Fit Tech 2 where you can and use meta 4 for the rest unless it is pricey. Use meta 3 in that case.
Get scout drone operation to 5 asap as in June some of the drone skills are changing and the new ones will be based off this skill.
Hope this helps.

I would go with a Vexor and drones. You may not yet have the skills to fly 5 drones, but once you do the Vexor is a very powerful ship.

Facing a swarm of frigs the light drones will perform best as they apply their damage well and the travel time is lower between targets. The medium drones do a lot more damage and will be better against cruisers and battleships,
Worthy of note is that each race has its own flavour of drones. Any race drones can be used in any ship but they differ markedly.
The biggest difference is damage type as they each use their racial preference.
Thus caldari drones use kinetic damage
gallente drones thermal.
amarr EM damage
and minmatar do explosive.

Different rats use different damage types and have different resist profiles so if you are using gallente drones against a target with very high thermal resists you will do minimal damage (google the mission name and you will find an eve survival page relating to that mission telling you the best damage to use and what to tank against.

They also vary in damage output and speed.
Up until now people favoured gallente drones for pve as they have the highest dps and minmatar for pvp as they have the fastest speed and so can have a chance of catching very fast player ships.
In June drones are being rebalanced and we will likely see a greater variety of racial drones on display.
With sentries Gallente again have the highest dps but at the cost of the lowest range.
You will want to train sentries asap if you follow this line and kill frigs 1st as they come towards you (they have low transversal while rushing at you and you can blap them. once they are in orbit your sentries will likely fail to track such small fast ships.
The sentries will massively boost your dps though and quickly destroy cruisers /BC and BS.
If you train sentry to 4 you will get most of the benefits and you can buy faction drones that are nearly as good as the T2 versions. They are a bit pricey though.

Forget fighters and fighter bombers for a year or two. Those are a capital ship weapon. For now, train Drones 5, scout drone operation 5 and Drone Interfacing 3. Then use light/medium/heavy drones depending on the size of the target. Once you have decent tank and fitting skills, and are moving to level 3/4 missions, equivalent pve content, or cruiser+ sized pvp ships, look at sentries.

That mission is the most dangerous of all in the SoE Arc, more players die there than anywhere else.

There are two things to bear in mind: the drones are in two groups and some of them (as you discovered) will scram you.

The combat method to use is kiting - i.e. you run away from the drones, forcing them to chase you.

Fight only one drone group at a time. Use the tactical overlay to identify the nearest group, get aggro from them and fly away from them, drawing them away from the other group. Take out the 'Strain' drones in the group first - they're the scramblers.

When you've destroyed all the first group deal with the second in the same way.

You should be able to do this in a frigate, such as an Incursus.

Good luck!