EVE New Citizens Q&A

This format you're talking about is known as Faction Warfare. You do not have to be of that 'race' to join any faction. So long as you're docked in a caldari station, and don't have terrible standings with the Caldari faction, you can join the caldari militia even if you're a minmitar.


In hisec, there are many many varied forms of pvp, both consensual and no consensual. I suggest researching wardecs, which are corp/alliance vs corp/alliance where you can attack any member of the enemy corp/alliance without concord getting involved. You can also request to duel people for pvp, and if they accept, you may attack that person again without the concord police showing up.

For non-consensual pvp, I highly recommend you read up on topics like Suicide ganking, where you fit a ship purely for dps and attack a player's ship in hisec with the aim of killing them before CONCORD shows up. Suspect 'baiting' where you give yourself a suspect timer to bait someone in to attacking you in an inferior ship (usually baiting PVE players) is another form of hisec gameplay.



The beauty of eve is that no one tool is 'the best' in every situation. Long range guns are great when trying to keep range of another player, but if someone gets on top of you, you just can't hit them for crap if you're using rail guns (as an example) The issue behind this is tracking. Long range weapons have better engagement ranges, but usually inferior tracking when up close, so they hit better further, but miss a lot when close.

Close range guns are usually used by tanky ships to get in on an opponant's face and apply large amounts of DPS. This is awesome if you can hold the enemy ship in place with tackle, but if they 'kite' you by keeping at long range and you can't catch them, face melting DPS with for example blasters jsut won't help.

As you can see, it's very situational and really depends on who you're fighting, what they're in, and what you're best skilled towards (both in SP and play style)




Lore wise, the Caldari used to be part of the Gallente federation. This is why both iof them have bonuses towards hybrid weapons. The difference lsies in role bonuses.

Gallente ships tend to have bonuses to falloff and rate of fire. What this means is that your guns fire with decreasing damage out further, and shoot faster. This is usually great for short range weapons, less effective on long range weapons (debatable on this)

Caldari ships tend to have bonuses towards raw damage and optimal range. This means both the optimal and falloff are increased in effective terms, something that has a bigger impact with long range weapons (5% of 5000m is nowhere near as much as 5% of 15000m) As railguns are usually slower firing then blasters, you're more concerned with what's called 'alpha', the actual damage of each 'volley' rather then your overall DPS. Long range weapons tend to have lower DPS but much higher 'alpha' then close range weapons.

Gallente are heavily bonused to drones, and it is possible to use drones called sentry drones (drones that sit compeltely still like sentry guns) and use them to shoot pretty far. Max skills, and a bonused hull means you can shoot out beyond 100km with sentries like Bouncer IIs. When using long range sentry drones, it's therefore usually a good pair up to use railguns. A railgun dominix with sentries, for example, does very well in pve

In PVP you generally jsut rely purely on the drones (ishtars/domis) and use the highslots for ulitiy ewar like neuts etc, as the damage from the drones far outweighs the damage from any extra guns, so it's more useful to add other 'damaging' effects like energy draining.

This game is a full on PVP game (as opposed to other MMO games where you may have to flag yourself "PVP" to participate in PVP).

The galaxy map is divided into High-Sec, Low-Sec, and 0.0 Sec regions, as well as Wormhole Space that has 0.0 combat rules.

In High-Sec if you attack someone out of the blue, CONCORD police will appear at your location and destroy you. You can accept this and participate in "suicide-ganking", or you can avoid the CONCORD reprisal by joining a player PVP corporation and declaring war against other player corporations, participating in Faction Warfare PVP, setting up duels versus other players, etc.

In Low-Sec there is no CONCORD response, but stargates and stations may have sentry guns that will shoot you if you attack someone out of the blue. In addition, some of the capital ships that are blocked from entering High-Sec may be fielded here. So there is a lot more PVP, often with big ships involved. Plenty of pirates and mercenaries roam Low-Sec looking for targets, and you can also see Faction Warfare fleets, roaming war fleets, etc.

0.0 and Wormhole space are "anything goes" free for all PVP. A number of large alliances and player corporations have taken up the space (the game allows a mechanic for Sovereignty - claiming that the space belongs to your alliance), and these players are quite organized in defending their space with patrols and defense fleets, but you can still form your own fleet with friends and enter their space and take them on for fun fights. There are also periodic wars between these alliances for control of this Sov. space.


As far as the combat range, each race of ships gets long range and short range weapons.

Amarr have long-range lasers (beam lasers) and short range (pulse) lasers.
Caldari and Gallente have long-range (railguns) and short-range (blasters) "hybrids".
Minmatar have long-range (artillery) and short-range (autocannons) projectile weapons.

Drone range depends on your skills and range-extending modules installed on your ship. Or you can use "sentry" drones that stay near your ship but shoot far away.

Missiles also come in short range and long range varieties, though it's not always easy to tell from just their names, and you may have to look at their range stats.

Range doesn't happen by just installing long-range guns. You have to "fit your ship" according to your battle plan. Install propulsion modules so you can maintain your range, warp into the fight at the appropriate range, etc. Caldari have some ships that have bonuses to range, making a long railgun hit even farther, for true sniping distances. Gallente on the other hand have some ships that can install tough armor and thus may prefer blasters or just drones, so they can get in close and brawl.

There is some freedom to how you fit your ships, though.

1.1a: No. All that matters is your standings with a particular faction. If they "like you" by a margin of 0.5 (which can be gained through missions) then you can join Faction Warfare for that faction. Once in, you can use any ship you prefer... even if it is of "enemy" origin.
For example: My character is Gallente, of Gallente Ancestry. I was once part of the Minmatar Militia. I used Gallente, Amarr, Caldari, AND Amarr ships to fight.

NOTE: you can bypass the faction standing requirement by joining a player corporation enlisted in a particular militia.


1.2a: Everything is PvP in EVE. Not just in the ship-on-ship sense... but also in trading, building, hauling, and harvesting activities.
As for who to PvP... well... find a reason. Any reason. "Because that person looked at me funny" is usually sufficient enough.
And you can make money in any way you think. Building/Supplying stuff in remote areas, being a mercenary, the "old fashioned way" (running missions or harvesting), or even ransom/blackmail type operations.
Be creative.




2.1a: You might feel more at home using Caldari or (to a lesser degree) Amarr ships. The former specializes in Railguns (extreme range weapons, anemic damage) while the later specializes in lasers (which generally have large engagement envelopes with the right ammo).
That said... any race can be shoehorned into a "range" configuration. Gallente can also use Railguns, though with less range and more damage. Minmatar Artillery has relatively mediocre range compared to other weapon systems... but its volley damage is off the charts.


2.2a: Railguns full under an "umbrella" weapon type called "Hybrid Weapons." Both the Gallente and Caldari share this weapon system (for lore reasons)... but both races use them in slightly different ways.
Caldari gunboats typically have bonuses to range... while Gallente gunboats generally have bonuses to damage.


2.3a: Drones are a "unique" weapon system. For most ships, they are used for "point defense" and close range "supplemental damage." However, some ships are more specifically geared towards drones and use them as a "primary weapon system." Such ships tend to belong to the Gallente or Amarr.
In terms of range... that depends on your skills. With basic skills, drone will only engage targets ~30kms from your ship. At max skills this can be increased to 60km.
Generally... using drones as a "long range" weapon is a bad idea as the little things have to fly out to their target in order to engage. This puts them at risk because they can be destroyed (usually by the target itself) or left behind if you need to warp away ASAP.
The exception to the above is Sentry Drones. They are basically stationary drones (which do not move with your ship) that behave like guns. All other drones rules (except for flying into range) apply though.

Gallente ships usually have hybrid bonuses for tracking, for brawling with blasters.

Caldari railgun-boats usually have hybrid bonuses for optimal, for sniping.

Rails are much maligned, because in comparison, other long-range weapons can be made to perform similarly at long range (with the addition of modules / rigs / implants / etc.), but rails are lackluster in comparison with other long-range weapons at shorter ranges. i.e. rails are best at sniping, but less versatile than other weapon systems.