EVE General Discussion

If you say so.

It's likely that I'm simply inexperienced (terrible) at fitting, but I've got to agree at least to an extent that cost is a huge barrier to PVP. It's only now that I'm pretty solvent ISK-wise (after lots of missioning, mining, and finally getting into PI) that I've even felt comfortable considering it. That might have been an erroneous perception on my part; I'll admit that, but if that's a wide-spread perception, maybe there's something to do to help kill that perception that so many seem to have. More people feeling comfortable jumping into PVP with both feet is a good thing, I'd think.

Along those lines: what would you all recommend as sufficiently cheap noob-friendly PVP ship fits, then? I'm just starting on the PVP road, and I'll admit, the most fun I've had in EVE so far was two nights ago when some corpmates and I piled into some cheap frigates (atrons) and went diving into null looking for trouble. I died twice, and it was glorious. But everyone is talking about 10M or more in ISK as being an outrageous amount for a PVP fitting, and my fit was actually closer to 16! (This was a fit that the FC requested we all do, so I assumed it was a good one.) Looking at the fit, I'm having a hard time understanding what I could have done without (or done more cheaply?) Any suggestions as to how to fit PVP ships for low cost that are still effective, both for solo and for fleets?

I enjoy rolling new chars and building them up into good, functional toons for various tasks, but combat toons take a long time to get "functional" for PVP. That's just a fact. Nobody wins fights in a T1 frigate with meta fittings because the guy you're facing has -- at least -- T2 fittings or has a pimped-out faction frigate with officer deadspace mods and whatnot. The reason is that your chances of coming up against a fellow noob in a fight ar minuscule -- you're far more likely to come up against a vet with millions of skillpoints.

EVE is inherently unbalanced against noobs because of the prevalence of long-time players. EVE is a mature game and the ratio of noobs (not newly-rolled alts) to vets is very small. PVP for your first month or two in EVE consists of dying. A lot. And spending the time you're not spending doing PVP grinding for ISK to buy the ships your losing in PVP. You get about 20% PVP fun to 80% ISK grinding.

Red vs Blue isn't really an option for new players either, for just the reasons I said before: noobs aren't skilled enough to win any fights. The RvB guys are pretty welcoming, but you're still going to lose a bunch of ships because your skills just aren't high enough. Eve University is a good stopping point for noobs, and I've always thought that CCP should have implemented something like this officially rather than (essentially) forcing players to do it. The NPE (New Player Experience) in EVE has sucked from Day 1 of the game, and it still sucks ten years on.

And null? HAH! That whole "you can be a tackler on day 1" is just such horse****. At best you'll be cannon fodder; at worst, you'll get laughed out of fleets. You might get the nod as a bait ship or a scout (yay fun!).

EVE is not a fun game for most noobs. It takes too long to skill up enough to be competitive against other players. And I don't mean even in combat -- that's true of market PVP, of Industry PVP, or even mining. Exploration can be fun for noobs, but it's hard to make decent ISK in hisec doing exploration. And losec/nullsec exploration for noobs is a lossmail waiting to happen.

EVE gets more fun as you skill up and are able to be more competitive. I remember the thrill I got when I got my first PVP kill -- but it took a lot of time and ISK grinding to get to that point.

I don't mean this as a complaint, really -- EVE is what it is at this point. It's not going to change much. It can be a very fun game still...if you're skilled enough to take advantage of the opportunities presented.

Thy salt is real.

It's called inflation. It happens because more ISK is being injected into the economy than is being removed. Ie npc bounties.

So wrong it's painful, here's a few scenarios.

- Lets say there's a player in an Enyo, harpy or the likes with short range weapons and that player has 150 mil SP and everything related to that AF maxed out. Now we have a month old character in a T1 frig like a Condor, Atron or even the Executioner and it's set up for kiting. Unless that AF gets backup or can deaggress and dock/jump he will lose to the T1 frig IF that pilot knows wtf he's doing.

- Dual prop scram fit Slasher, can be flown on low SP just fine, WILL kill a MWD cruiser (any kind) when caught unless it has neuts, double webs or is drone/missile based. If you catch a Cynabal for instance and he, for whatever reason, isn't packing neuts or AB you'll sped tank his drones enough to kill them and then kill the ship. Cynabal is ofcourse a bit silly without neut but simply stating that it's not about the ship cost, it's about having the right tactics for the scenario at hand. Said Slasher is also really good at dealing with kiting frigs which you see quite often.

- Low SP scram kiting T1 frig set up to work at 7km catches (or is caught by) another frig that has short range weapons and is able to maintain range will have a good chance of winning that fight


Stop whining, stop making excuses.


EVE PVP is rock, paper, scissors. A T1 rock will still kill T2 scissors.

low sp kiter will most likely cap himself out way before putting a serious dent in the Enyo/Harpy. If not, it will take such an absurd amount of time to kill plinking at it with 50 dps or even less (LOL) that make your point irrelevant. Heck, an harpy will almost (or even completely) permatank that by natural shield regen alone. I'm assuming full kite here, as in long point and long range weap system, since you mention the harpy and that ship hits into scram range no problem with neutrons and null.




A flight of warrior II will shred that noob slasher no problem, also, dual prop slasher is a pretty tight fit, doubt it could be flown by a new player. Also, the chances of catching a solo cruiser without multiple flights of drones and or web and or neuts are pretty slim tbh. If you don't think so, please do tell me where you live, i'll gladly come and blap some idiots



this is the only relevant point, really, and that's why i always suggets new players to go with a scram kite incursus or atron. On the flip side, unless you make it a decent fit (ie, not a 2 mils space bucket) your dps will be so anemic that most likely the player with better nav skills will catch up, even in a slower hull, or you'll cap yourself out (again, because low skills). Also, it only really applies to blaster boats, since the rest of short range weaps (rockets, lasers, AC) can hit at that range no problem and WILL out dps a cheap fit scram kiter flown by a low sp char.




true the first statement, mostly false the second.

Yes, a T1 frigate can kill a T2 frigate -- sometimes, occasionally, when the other player screws up. But this only works when the player in the T1 frigate has a level of skill and knowledge about ships and fittings that a noob is unlikely to have. And this presumes a straight 1v1 fight, furthermore, which few PVP engagements are. At minimum, you're dealing not just with another ship, but also the other player's logi alt or off-grid booster alt.

The point here is that these theory-crafting T1 fits that can kill a T2/faction/pirate ship don't work during actual play for one simple reason: player skills. Noobs don't have the skills to fly a T1 frigate very well, let alone a faction or pirate ship (even if they had the ISK to buy such a ship). And they don't have the game-knowledge to use the skills they do have to good effect, as a rule. (I'm in the middle of rolling up a new combat toon, and I'm always shocked at how bad the toon's tracking, cap management, navigation, etc. are compared to what I'm used to.) Like I said, it takes about a month to get a combat toon skilled well enough to do frigate PVP decently well and have a chance of surviving.

This is my main beef with the lousy Eve NPE (New Player Experience). It does almost nothing to teach a new player the ins and outs of fitting, faction/meta mods, and the differences between PVP fits and PVE fits. Passive vs active tank, the use of drones, etc. The game does nothing to prepare a new user for PVP, and unless the user joins a good corp or Eve Uni, there are precious few players willing to expend the time and effort needed to hand-hold a noob into the PVP world.

What other game have you ever played in your life that didn't come with a tutorial level or instructions to tell you how to play it? Eve is a *game*, not a second job. I don't think a lot of players understand that. It's supposed to be *entertainment*. It's supposed to be *fun* -- and fun for new players as well as existing ones. The players who stick around in Eve tend to be self-starters and self-learners, but that still doesn't speak well of CCP that they've neglected such an essential part of the game. (And they do make semi-annual oaths to improve the NPE, so it's clear that they know it sucks too.)

I'm all for making PVP a bigger part of Eve, but in order to do that you need to train new players how to do it. A lot of the risk-averse behavior you see in Eve stems from the fact that players are too scared to lose their pretty ships. (And by no means only new players or hisec players.) Losing should hurt a bit, granted; that's your incentive to learn and get better. But frigates, to a new player, should be as disposable as a tissue -- use it, get it blowed up, throw it out, get another one. Harden them to losing and give them a quick thrill at winning. Don't make losing too painful or winning too rewarding at first. It's got to be fast, easy, and cheap.

Red vs Blue has the right idea, I think, but that thunderdome is too far out of a noob's reach. They do their best to include newer players, but those guys are in it for the PVP themselves; they don't want to babysit noobs as a rule.

No NPE will ever get you ready for pvp as there is no AI that can symulate a player.

Also you are combat effective 30 min i to EVE.

Sure, if you don't mind being used as a scout, a bait ship or a cannon-fodder tackler in a fleet fight. I don't find that very fun, but whatevs.