EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello all, firstly let me thank you for taking the time to read my post and reply.

I am not posting on my main, but my main is in a Null Sec Renter Corp(our home System is -0.2). I have roughly 7mil skillpoints and obviously that leads to me having some issues in Null Sec.

Presently I am at an impasse as to how to plan my training queue for the future. I was originally training towards Minmatar ships, hopefully getting to a Vargur or maybe a Machariel(not Min I know), but from the sounds of it those types of ships aren't going to succeed in Null.

I was hoping for some advice as to what direction I should plan my skill queue to be able to survive and thrive in Null. I have no interest in wasting my skill points for mining. I want to be capable of soloing the rats, and the combat anoms, or if there's Corp mates online, contribute to the group. Right now I can barely fly a Cruiser, so I am committed to just sitting in the POS indefinitely.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice? Should I work towards a Tengu? A Rattlesnake? Is it possible to fly the ships I want in Null(Minmatar)?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

Thanks for the reply, one thing I failed to mention in my post is that my Corp is a carebear corp, we are deep in our renter space and don't have to worry much about PvP. I am mainly looking to skill towards PVE capabilities.

Ok, right now I am training Cruisers/Battlecruiers to 4, and then following that medium gun skills, and some more advanced shield/capacitor skills.

You can belt rat in a cruiser just fine. A battlecruiser would be good for most anoms not the hardest ones however. You should not be sitting in the PoS shield with 7 million skill points waiting for skills to train.

Like has been stated you'll want to pick a race with strong damage type against the local rats and minmatar ships are ideal against angels. You can also do well against other races but for example with the EM weak bloodraiders and sansha the Amarr ships do much better. And since projectiles can't do kinetic as a primary high damage ammo anything weak to kinetic would be better done in a hybrid or missile boat. Keep resist holes in mind. Galente and Amarr have big explosive holes when armor tanking and Minmatar and Caldari have huge EM holes when shield tanking.

Also like Phig said I normally recommend avoiding Battleships early on due to long skill training times. Normally I would recommend getting into T3s for fast access to high damage ships for ratting but they just announced that T3 cruisers are getting a rebalance.

Belt ratting can be nice as about every 20 spawns you get a special spawn which will likely be a hauler or faction spawn. Big ships like battleships are painfully slow to warp for jumping from belt to belt. I usually use HACs for that but cruisers can handle it and faction cruisers do awesome in that role as well.

The best defense is a good offense so once you can fit T2 tank mods don't focus on that any longer until you have T2 guns and have your fitting skills trained up well. T2 guns can be a big difference depending on the situation.

Of course we've only covered combat so if you want to try out something else like exploration that's a different story but still not that bad to train into. Main thing is do what is fun.

Thanks for the replies, I will finish up battlecruisers to 4, and then work on refining my skills for the T2 mids/low/guns for those then move towards BS stuff.

We have Guristas out where we are.

Phased Plasma should do well against Guristas. Since the Guristas jam and Minmatar ships typically have the lowest sensor strength that might be a little less than ideal but it should work fine. With the Domi even when you get jammed your drones can still do damage so that could be a direction also.

Years back before bastion modules existed a friend of mine and I were running missions from the same agent when I would run them in my Vargur I'd get jammed all the time as spent more time jammed than not in some missions. He would run them in a Tengu and almost never get jammed. He explained to me why but I don't know if I understood it then and certainly can't remember now. Marauders are a long way off so watch the balancing details coming out in the next week or two. You might still be better off heading into a T2 or T3 medium ship than jumping into the long path towards a marauder.

My best advice is try stuff out, see what works for you and don't be afraid to change up the plan. The likelihood of you coming up with a skill plan now for the next year and not changing it between now and then are not good. I have multiple toons over 100 million skill points and I still can't seem to stick to a plan. I am constantly changing it and moving stuff around based on what I am doing now versus last week.

In this game the best way to learn is to try different things and see what works. This is not like other MMOs where you can go to some website and find what is the "best" class or best ship or best weapon or what ever for some specific task. In the end you'll have to find you own path, your own style, what works best for you.

No skills that you train will be wasted and guristas unlike angles or sansha can do well armor or shield tanking. It sounds to me like you are in an ideal situation to play around with a few different ships. Try a Hurricane maybe a cyclone. Give a vexor and / or Myrmidon a try. DPS wise the drake is a long way off from the tengu so I'm not sure if you can really get a feel for it that way but it's worth a try. Anyway try a lot of different ships and see what style that you like and what works for you.

One thing to note is that Ishtars are getting a nerf to sentry damage coming up here soon so if you like the vexor and or Myrmidon without sentries then the Ishtar might be good and because there are so many of them now they could get cheap post nerf.

Also if you do stick with Minmatar for the artileries the biggest ones usually aren't so good for PvE. So 1200's probably better than 1400's and 650's over the 720's for the mediums.

As said, minmatar have ships that will do just fine in guristas space.

I'd be a bit concerned if your not flying with your corpies though, even to make ISK.
Working together is kinda the point of a corp, but especially in null.

If your current crew don't want to help you out, your probably better off finding some PVP corp out there that has members that help each other out.

When I was new, I struggled with the rats too. Best way I found to discover those helpful folk was to squat in anomlies and take forever to try and kill stuff. Eventually someone would help out just to get you out of there :)

Edit: spell check has disturbing humor.

Hmz, renters, the people who only want the benefits without the downsides and want to min/max every possible income instead of just do what ever they have most fun doing.

*Me shrugs and walks away mumbling: Not worth my effort*

What I did laugh about, 7 mil SP and sitting in a POS.

It's just weird that when I had a fair bit less SP then you and I was doing PvE with my corp (yeah, together, you know...like as a group cause you joined a corp to be part of a group) as wel as PvP. So, you sitting in a POS is not a problem of SP, it's a problem of attitude and/or the people you are with.

well marauders are great for soloing 10/10 escalations, if your in blood raider space then the vargur is the best ship for doing it, vargur is definately worth training

machariel, also great ship for ratting so i dont know where you got that info from

ishtar is another good ratting ship or dominix