EVE New Citizens Q&A

Tldr:

I cant PvP cause the only thing I learned in EVE is if the FC says press F1, I press F1.

I have no knowledge on how to PvP solo or in small gangs and thus lose ships if Im not part of a blob.

Drakes kinda sit on the outskirts doing substandard damage (especially with heavy missiles). They are (were once anyway) an "ok" choice if you're doing mass scale F1 battles while you browse the web but in almost every other way i think new pilots are better off learning how to use turrets.

OP dies in seconds because his choices put him in the wrong place at the wrong time. This isn't his fault, in fact it's the only way he's going to learn where the right places to be are as well as what ships he can and cannot beat, and why. The size of ship isn't going to make any difference aside from the cost of each loss, since he still won't know what to do with himself and will likely be overconfident due to "bigger ship syndrome".

I can't believe people are genuinely suggesting learning to pvp in a battlecruiser or t2 cruiser first.

According to the OP he didnt start learning in a battlecruiser or t2 cruiser first. his first experience was in frigs and dessies and he expressed a distaste for pvp in those.

I didnt pick the drake because of the awesome dps it has. And being minmatar ( i think he was) he will likely be training everything anyway. Actually minmatar ships are not noob friendly at all as they do a little bit of everything or can do i should say so it can be confusing .

Anyway, the OP is frustrated with pvp and dying quickly...why say " your doing it wrong" and send him back out until he dies one to many times and quite just for the sake of learning? he isnt learning anything cause he dies to fast to actually figure out what happened to him or is happening on the field. all he knows is he shows up and in a few seconds he is dead.

So i gave him a different option. Why did i pick the drake specifically?
1) It has a good tank even with low skills
2) BECAUSE it has relatively low dps.

End result as any experienced pvper knows = drakes are low priority as primary. In fact they are often the last ship primaried.
So whats this do for the OP?
1) Allows him to observe whats going on in the battle and participate for longer periods.
2) Allows him to practice maneuvering his ship, use modules in pvp, see how a battle plays out, and generally learn what happens in pvp.


We dont care about his dps. He is still doing as much dps as a cruiser and smaller with a lot more survivablity.


And then he can move into other ships that he wants to pvp in once he feels comfortable he knows what goes on in pvp and learns some about how to fit for it, what to do in it and how to counter common mods and tactics.

I then recommended that he check out t2 cruisers as a goal. i never said start pvping in t2 cruisers. His skills obviously wont let him fly one little lone well. He obviously shows a disinterest in pvping in frigs and destroyers so why tell him " you have to fly ships in pvp you hate." for the sake of learning. He can learn in whatever he wants to fly. It doesnt have to be frigs and destroyers and it doesnt have to be faction warfare. He can fly a bloody procurer in pvp if he wants( and sometimes win)

Like the OP, as a newb i quickly got out of frigs ( destroyers really sucked back then) and into cruisers. I have rarely flown anything under a cruiser the last 8 years and im just now coming back to showing a bit more interest into frigs and destroyers( because ccp as made many of them better)

My advice to the OP: learn in what ship you want to learn in. Only one rule to this you should follow: never fly anything in pvp you cannot afford( or mind) losing.


Edit to add: and as a newb you want to stay out of ewar ships and tackle early on. Those are the first ships to get primaried. You got a griffon sitting 40-50 km out or whatever trying to jam and a hostile enemy tackle is going to zip out their smoke him and zip back before he can blink. Same with logis. Dps is always the best choice as a noob.

This. So much THIS.

My $0.02: EVE PvP for NEWBIES!

I've been flying frigates in PvP for most of my time in EVE. I'm looking forward to getting into something tankier, that's for sure, but I've learned a lot in frigates.

1) Minmatar ships are very newb friendly. You can use either kind of tank, you can use turrets as well as missiles, your weapons take no cap, they are fast, turrets have huge falloff so maneuvering mistakes are padded out nicely.

2) Drakes are expensive for a new player, he's going to lose a lot of whatever kind of ship he learns in. Suggesting learning in Drakes makes me think you probably learned PvP nestled in the middle of an F1 blob.

3) I'm not so much telling him to learn in ships he hates, rather telling him that with the correct plan and a little help from those in the know he may not hate frigs so much after all. In the right frig fit, you're going to be way more survivable than you would be in a drake.

4) Losing a drake a day is extremely demoralizing for a new player and hard to support financially. You need to have as many engagements as possible to learn PvP as quickly as possible, therefor it literally is a choice between losing drakes or losing something cheaper.

To conclude :

If you plan to join a large alliance who never field less than 20 ships at a time, you could potentially get away with learning in a Drake. That said you will learn a minimal amount other than pressing F1 when you're told to and how not to jump every gate you land on until told.

If you plan to fly with people your own age, your Drake will be primary because it will be the priciest killmail on grid. It will be too slow to react to any changes in the fight and completely incapable of dealing with enemy tacklers.

If you use smaller cheaper ships for learning and only field the drake when it is tactically sound to do so, you will learn faster and be able to make judgements about when to field the Drake without losing it sooner.

BEST ADVICE EVER :

Do as much solo and small gang PvP as possible, avoid being part of a faceless blob. This will teach you about fitting and the capabilities of the various ships of eve individually. If your tactics are not working, DO NOT instantly assume it's because your ship is too small. It's just a case of learning how to use the ships you can afford.

Feel free to drop me an eve-mail OP, I'll be happy to show you exactly what i mean ( genuine offer, not an EvE threat :D )

by number

1) Minmatar ships are terrible for newbies to learn pvp in. They have to be fitted and flown a very specific way because everything on them is mixed. mixed weapons, mixed slots. The fact that they have mixed slots makes them versatile and being fast makes them great speed tanks. They are the most horrible ship to learn to pvp in. They require high skills to fly decently well because you have to use skills and great fitting skills to make up for the fact they have no strong points outside of speed. None of which the OP will have. Starting out with minmatar for pvp is like elite veteran hard mode.

2) Well the op could keep buying frigs and destroyers, warping in, die in 30 seconds, refit a new one, warp in, die in 30 seconds, refit a new one, warp in, die in 30 seconds, repeat until ragequit. That seems like a lot of fun and he will be very proficient at death in eve. Or he could spend abut 7 times as much buy a ship he will last longer than 30 seconds and actually learn something about pvp.

He could fly something like a rifter which set up will cost 2.5-5 mil or so and ...

- Have very low dps
- have very low EHP.
- Lack of pvp skills means he wont be good at speed tanking
- have to park on everyone's windshield to be able to even hit them meaning he is right up in everyones optimal
- t1 frig - easy kill
- because he is an easy kill and has a high chance of having tackle, he will be one of the first to be primaried. Because you know people that fly in your face nano/speed frigs tend to be tackle and not some newbie trying to learn to pvp. And a ship like the rifter has a rep as good t1 tackle.

Result: survivability of about 30-60 second after warp in

OR he could spend 65 mil( current jita price set up) and fly this:

[Drake, Noob PVP]
Mark I Compact Power Diagnostic System x3
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I

50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Limited 'Anointed' EM Ward Field
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

'Malkuth' Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile x6
Drone Link Augmentor I

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Warrior I x5

Which( all with zero skills):
- has almost 70k EHP with ( that is about 20-30 times the EHP you will get out of a t1 frig
- twice the dps of a frig
- Almost a 40 km range putting him out of range of an easy tackle.
- an infamous reputation of a high ehp/low dps ship which is going to make him the last thing on the field to be primaried. Cause who wants to shoot through a 70k ehp tank thats doing ~ 100 dps when their are other ships on the field doing as much and more with much less tank.

So he could spend all of his time fitting frigs and doing a bunch of traveling or he could spend his time on the field.

3) I almost wet myself reading the last line of this. Anyone that PVPs and has a drone bay has warrior drones. Their base speed without skills is 4200 m/s. a rifter with max skills and set up for speed tops out at around 4400 m/s. A few drone skills will easily overcome even that speed. 10 warrior drones would chew through him in about 30 seconds...including time to reach him. Couple that with being on the short list for primary and you have exactly what he is experiencing.


4) You should last many engagements in a drake unless you have a bad FC. The primary goal of any pvp encounter is to survive it. the secondary goal of any pvp encounter is the other side doesnt. If your FC is good you will survive many roams in a drake. if your FC is bad you wont survive in any ship in the game. Frigs are the least likely ships to make it back from a roam. So it may cost more but a drake will definitely pay for itself in fun and ability to gain experience.

Conclusion:
In a large alliance you would learn the fundamentals of fleet pvp. If you pay attention to the interactions ( and you can do this since your not busy trying desperately to get away before the other 40% of your hull disappears) of the fleet and players in the fleet you will actually learn a great deal about how pvp works. If your in a larger alliance, you also do small gangs, gate camps, and various type of defense fleets.

If you fly with people your ( eve) age, you will never learn anything except dying sucks. You cannot learn from sources that do not have any knowledge/experience. you need to go out with experienced pvpers to learn to pvp...not newbs.

If you field smaller cheaper ships for learning you will learn the fastest route to jita, become an expert at using the market, and be able to fit ships blindfolded while mediating. you will learn very little about battlefield mechanics and you will learn as much in one encounter in a drake as you will in 10 encounters in a frig.

Worst advice ever: Do as much solo and small gang pvp as possible. Your not going to solo anything( even if you can catch it) and your small gang , assuming its not full of well skilled pvp pilots, will get smoked like a good ham.

Best advice:
1) join null pvp alliance
2) learn to do sites
3) make 50 mil( plus) isk an hour in a cloaky scan ship doing sites
4) go on roams and CTAs
5) Ship cost is irrelevant when you have good FCs and you make over 50 mil isk an hour. '
6) youre learning from real pvpers, not high and low sec gankers and war deccers that think they know how to pvp. You will have good FCs( because we dont let bad FCs FC in null).

It's also to make implanting a disloyal member more expensive.

Someone with 12m SP might still steal everything they can, but they won't usually have been created solely for that purpose.

Solo frigates are completely different to cruisers and up. Solo is completely different to small gang. And mid-large fleet is just as different from either. Try them all. I think my sweet spot is micro/small fleets where individuals' actions still matter.

While i have only played on test server a few times, so i dont have to much experience with it, this sounds like a good alternative. If i recall you make isk on the test server much faster. And the way it use to be set up is most of systems are consensual pvp only to allow people to test out different aspects without the fear of being ganked constantly.



I love it when people go here. This means " i have no logical argument, so i have to resort to trying to cut down your abilities"

I am going to assume you use zkillboards to check on me. Ill educate you on a couple of things

1) Im nearly 8 years old on this alt. the chances of me having other alts or accounts is extremely high. Its a good thing i didnt post with my high sec gopher, i think he is 0:0 for k/l, you would of really got excited about that one.

2) zkillboard ( or any killboard) doesnt show all my kills or losses. And its unlikely they do for you or anyone else. I have far more losses than zkillboard shows and they all arent to rats. Maybe 10-15 losses to rats.

Lastly i dont need to exercise my epeen. I use killboards to gather intel not to measure my epeen. It has typically been a rule of thumb for me to keep solo kills off KBs unless im required to post all kills by my corp/alliance. Why do i do this? Because anyone with half a brain that has spent any time outside of high sec uses killboards to gather intel on neuts in system to do a threat assessment. You come in my system with 15 to 1 kill ratio and the last few have been solo, I know that you are a solo hunter. I see what ships you fly and how you usually fit them. I see 2 or 3 pages of small gang kills i know its likely you are a scout/bait ship and your mates are just waiting to jump in. If you have only a few kills and a lot of losses in stupid ships like indies and rookie ships, i know you are primarily an indy alt and you have a very low threat level. If i see you have a lot of covert ops and explorer ships, i know your probably ninja-ing our sites.

Furthermore after gathering intel off your KB, i see that you actually have no pvp experience, on this alt. You are a high sec ganker. PVPing with the safety on. Anyone can blow up MTUs and kill highsec bears. Now you may have an alt that is top 100 killers of eve. i doubt it. Real pvpers tend not to mess with highsec carebears. There is no challenge and shooting defenseless high sec bears is about the same as bashing structures in entertainment value and skill level.

Let me know when you pull your foot out of your mouth.

Oh and the pvp lesson i just gave you...it was free. Your welcome.



Youre right null alliances have shifted in general it seems to " we will provide you with cheap t1 ships to go out and pvp in, if you will go out and get some experience with us" Use too you had to pay your own way in the school of pvp. Now it seems alliances are willing to give you cheap ships to learn the mechanics in. I also noticed that rather than have doctrines that require nearly all level 5s to fit that alliances are doing "newbro" friendly fits as an alternative. So if you cant fly that t2 or you dont have the skills to fit all that on that ship, you can still participate while you skill up for the better ship.

This.

Sorry Thorian, but I now plenty of new(ish) players (as in real newbies, not alts) that were very succesful in doing it the solo / small gang route.

You know the fun part, they can also work with fleets. Where as those F1-monkeys in null, if they are caught solo in a fight, they would even miss point blank on target. Mainly cause nobody is shouting "press F1 now" over comms.


So yeah, sure null-sec has it's pro's (SRPs etc) but also it's downsides (it CAN be quite boring for PvP. It's either all or nothing in terms of fights).

End result:

Solo =/= small gang =/= medium gang =/= fleet =/= blobfest


What you guys are doing are comparing apples, oranges, pears and banana's.

The only common thing: They are all fruits (and to me WAY to healthy)