EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello everyone,

I'm a rookie player, about one month of gameplay and enjoying this game very very much (much to study for it and I love to study)...

I would like to progress doing Pve missions and I began with leveling gallente ships.

So far I leveled drone Frigate ( Tristan ), Destroyer ( Algos ), Cruiser ( Vexor ) with a decent support skill up to tech II light drones and tech I medium drones, and I finished SOE epic arc and now doing level II security missions.

I leveled the basic skills for Battlecruiser ( Myrmidon ) and I can use it, but I didn't buy it so far, I want to level support skills to mastery II and it will take about one week.

My question is:

Planning to do level 3 securuty missions and hopefully arrive to level 4 security missions in a reasonable time of a bout 3 or three months from now, do you suggest me to keep leveling up tech one boats being able to decently fly a battleship (Dominix) and later leveling missiles up to a Rattlesnake, or do you think it's best for me to go to tech II cruiser ( Ishtar )?

I was tempted to reverse to caldary boats to learn missiles up to a raven ( that I've read it's the best ship for level 4 missions ) and I "lost a couple of days leveling some caldari skills, but it will take too long and I decided it's better if I stick to gallente, so what is best in Your opinion?:

1) Original plan: Tristan--Algos--Vexor--Myrmidon--Dominix--(Missiles skills)--Rattlesnake.

2) Alternative plan: Tristan--Algos--Vexor--Myrmidon--Ishtar--back to Dominix---(Missiles)--Rattlesnake.

I would be very happy if I can have suggestions from Veterans that ladded up security missions from level 1 to level 4, so I thank You all in advance for Your kind answers.

Lilith.

Missions are a reasonable way to train a character for PvP since virtually every skill that makes your character a better mission pilot will make them a better PvP character. Please note I am referring to your in game character here and not you as the actual game player.

I agree that you should get out and explore the various game play styles and options the game provides, I will point out that missions can be and are a great way to pass time in the game but that depends on your expectations and reasons for playing EvE.

Ships are roles, not levels.

This isn't your usual mmo, there are plenty of pvp circumstances where a frigate is abjectivly a better choice than a cruiser I.e. taking anything from further down the line is certain doom.

T1 ships give a broad tast of the role whereas t2 are very specific in what they provide.
Play around with the different roles, find one you enjoy and then think about specialising.

Thanks for your so kind and helpful answers so far, all of them are very very interesting.

Yes, I have the feeling that to do only missions can be quite boring on the long run, I plan to do also some exploration ( that I tried a couple of times in a Heron with basic skills in hi-sec. and also in low sec and null sec briefly ), and I like it very much too.

I was tempted by cladary skills because I navigated some Youtube channels and I saw some videos of PVP with little frigates in nullsec, very funny, but at the end I decided to stick to a Gallente skill plan because I feel it's a better choice to level skills to level four at least before changing to different skill branches.

My question was mainly related to PVE, knowing myself quite well I think I would not enjoy using expensive ships like a Ishtar for PVP, at least until my incomes are so decent to consider a Ishtar a cheap ship, that will happen much later on.

I think I will stick to my original plan going to Dominix first and aiming to a Rattlesnake for Pve, but still very very interested in knowing Veterans opinions about different skill leveling plans for PVE security Misssions.

My first suggestion would be to drop the concepts of progression or "leveling up". While eve does have skill levels and mission levels and such it is nothing like other MMOs. You don't "progress" through stuff or "level up" through things turning your back on what you've done and never returning.

As you play this game you will find that even years from now you will still be flying T1 frigates and doing things like running level 3 missions when you have the ability to run level 4 or 5. Also like other's have said missions are fine but don't have them be the only thing that you do and don't focus too much on them or any one ship line.

Low level skills train up much faster than higher level skills ( 5 times per level ) so you are much better off training lots of lower level skills than a few higher level ones.

Because of this I typically recommend that newer players try out lots of different things. Try all the different types of ships and tanks and weapon's systems as well as exploration or what ever else interests you. Then once you know what you like and what you will use the most you can focus on skilling up those skills. I would try armor tanking and shield tanking as well as speed / sig radius tanking etc... Drones versus guns versus missiles.... Also if you get bored you can try exploration, PI, industry etc...

With missions it is entirely possible that you will make more isk per hour running level 3 than level 4's until your skills are very high or at least that was the case for me. I jumped into level 4 missions right away and struggled for a long time. Finally went back to level 3s and found myself making more isk since you can burn through level 3 so fast. However this is a game and fun is far more important than isk per hour so if you are enjoying what you are doing don't let me convince you otherwise.

So further notes about skill training:

The "Training time multiplier" on the "Attributes" tab of the info UI for the skill book tells you how long training of a skill it is. 1 x skills like "gunnery" are the shortest training skills in game and 2 x skills take twice as long with 16 x skills taking 16 times as long. So literally if a 1 x skill takes you 10 minutes to train level 1 then a 2 x skill will take 20 minutes to train level 1 and a 10 x skill would take 100 minutes.

With the same above example if level 1 of a 1 x skill is 10 minutes level 2 would be 50 minutes level 3 would be 4 hours and 10 minutes. Racial Titan level 1 ( which is a 16 x skill ) would be 2 hours and 40 minutes level 2 would be 13 hours and 20 minutes.

The above examples are assuming that the compared skills use the same attributes or that you attributes for all skills considered are the same. However it shows you a general trend.

Skill levels and multipliers for comparison sake:
Skill muliplier

Frigate 2 x
Destroyer 2 x
Cruiser 5 x
Battlecruiser 6 x
Battleship 8 x
Light drone 1 x
medium drone 2 x
heavy drone 6x
small turret 1 x
medium turret 3 x
large turret 5 x

As you can see the bigger the ship the longer it is going to take to skill it up. Combine this with the fact that most of your skills are generic skills that you need for all ships and in my opinion you are better off sticking with small and medium ships until you get your support / generic skills skilled up a bit. If you try to jump into battleships too soon without the support skills and are trying to train up high level 6 x and 8 x skills while also training support skills you might struggle for a bit.

It's your game and there are no hard and fast rules so you have to play it your way. The only thing that I hoped to do here is add some context.

Just as a note I had put spacing in the list above to make it easy to read but the forum seems to remove it when I post or preview.

In general you are right, the skillpoints invested in security mission running ships are also valid for PvP combat. I'm glad you mention the difference between skillpoints and actual player skills, because PvE combat rules are different to PvP rules, so far, that PvE fitted ships are useless (means helpless victims) in PvP situations. On the other hand most PvP fitted ships are bad at doing PvE efficiently.

There are ships that can run PVE content while acceptably well being completely PVP fitted.

For a period of time I was probing down mission runners and messing with them by shooting MTUs, spawn triggers, and stealing mission objectives for ransom (the goal being to goad the mission runner into shooting me). For these purposes my ship needed to be able to run the missions itself.

This was possible with the Ishtar, Vexor Navy Issue and the Kronos (all active armor tanked), and I've seen other people do similar things in a normal Vexor (buffer armor tank).


Just back to the original question: Missions can be approached blind (i.e. without researching what you will be up against) or forewarned and forearmed (with a fit you modify for each mission). The latter is a lot easier.

Just make sure you are missioning for a purpose. They get boring fast.

There are alternatives to the frigate/dessie/cruiser/battlecruiser/battleship career route.

For example if you are dead keen on getting into a MJD sentry Dominix you could possibly skip the Battlecruiser and train T2 sentries with a Vexor/VNI then move straight to the MJD Domi.

Another alternative (though almost no-one does it for good reason) is to focus mainly on frigate skills with a view to focusing on burners. I would not recommend this for inexperienced players.

This is a tricky question because depending on what your long-term goals are the answer could be very different.

If you love missions, I would suggest going Tech 1 Caldari battleship (Raven). That will be the fastest way to make progress with missions and is the easiest. Missile ships like the Raven are more fire and forget, thus somewhat easier to manage than hybrid ships where range and ammo becomes very important.

Just as example, I recently put my old Level-III Vexor up for sale and I notice it had several different kinds of weapons and eight different kinds of ammo for different ranges and types of enemies. Its just much more complex to run a hybrid ship and more dangerous because you have to (or want to) get closer to the mobs, which means more jamming, more scramming, and more webbing.

Also, drone management is a whole separate set of skills, both EVE skills and player skills, involved. Raven is simple: push cruise missile button, pirates die. So, not only is the missile boat simpler to operate, but you train it faster: you train Caldari cruiser/bs, shields and cruise missiles. All around it is a faster, simple route to level 4 to go Raven.