EVE New Citizens Q&A

This is true, but other than the minmatar ship skills the skills that are relevant to them are part of the gallante combat archetype, armor tank, blasters and drones. Also the path towards them is lined with similar ships, the thorax and brutix are good examples of high DPS armor(usually) ships with 50m3 drone bays and the megathron is a armor tanked blaster boat with huge DPS and a big drone bay, there's also the navy megathron which is a good intermidiate ship between the megathron and vindicator that only requires the racial BS skill.

You rock, my good man! Thank you for that!

amarr have laser. thats all you have to know
(even if you lose you look cool)

I would also take issue with your assessment of caldari and the overtly positive spin you're applying here.

Smithers was spot on in his description of caldari as having some rather malignant and universal problems across the board. He also correctly pointed out the over-reliance on flying ecm. Looking at your own list, you can see that ecm ships dominate the accepted gang lineup and quite honestly I have no idea where you're drawing the conclusion that the cerb, kistune, crow, raptor, or rook are very good compared to the alternatives, because quite frankly they're all near the bottom of their respective classes and the EAFs/Force Recons in general are something newbies should avoid.

To put it more bluntly, caldari is essentially a game-stopper for all but the most dedicated long-view newbies. While the drake delivers a good hull early on, it quickly becomes apparent to anyone with sense that their combat options from that point are so completely bound up in cross training, that they have little choice but to do so immidiately. If they do cross train, they now need gunnery skills at the minimum, and probably armor/drone skills to boot.

So, while it can always be said that caldari has options for pvp and certainly has more options today than prior to the hybrid buff and the naga introduction, it cannot be said that caldari is in any way a good choice for an aspiring pvp newbie who wants to keep doors open and cheap pvp options available. For that they would most certainly be choosing minmatar, gallente, and amarr (probably in that order, but I think gallente/amarr spots are debatable).

Minmatar ships are by-far more forgiving on fittings. They get much more out of a weak tank, as it is their nature to speed/sig tank. They have best or second-best in class ships in every t1 class. With low skillpoints I would take a rifter or rupture over any other option.

tldr; in the long-run caldari have some contenders, but come up short overall. In the short-run, caldari comes up fast with the drake, but fails to deliver any followups worth mentioning. The merlin is the t1 frigate equivalent of the typhoon, skill intensive and hard to fly on the same level as a rifter that took 1/10th the time to train.

I'm really not sure what the issue with Caldari is.

They seem to have quite a few reasonably effective ships in every class. The Kestrel is a pretty awesome little t1 frigate..the caracal isn't much of a solo boat but is fantastic in support, the moa is a great blaster or rail platform post-buff, and all of their battleships are, to my knowledge, quite useful.

Caldari is only poor at solo PVP.

You seem to have it backwards m8. The kestrel is pretty awsome, I agree, as far as tier2 frigates go at least. Not really saying much there. The caracal is fine, not special, certainly not "fantastic," anti-support. The moa is far beyond it's old position as a joke, but still only a middling contender in a weak field, t1 cruisers, the arbitrator, rupture, thorax and blackbird, for obvious reasons are much better and used more often.

Caldari pvp, solo or not, is just fine. If you absolutely want to rp caldari, only fly cal ships, and shoot people you have options. You just have fewer legitimate options than other races do. Sure, you might argue there is strength in flying "underrated," ships or unexpected fits, but the subject matter here is newbdome. Newbs aren't going to be able to cram on the air-tight fits that allow merlins to wipe the floor with rifters or moas to compete with... anything.

I mean, I absolutely agree caldari isn't absent from the pvp scene, but if you're unironically trying to suggest there are half as many non-ewar pvp ships worth flying under the cal banner as compared to the minmatar one, you're nuts. And if you further suggest that those caldari ships are anywhere NEAR as newb friendly... you're clearly posturing.



Nah bro you got it all wrong. Any ship that can't camp amamake gates and sit in an orca or you're doing it wrong. o7o7o7o7o7

Hence why a lot of caldari pilots dislike their (lack of) solid non-ew choices. Especially those which can be competetive without a lot of sp.



The aml caracal is worth talking about, though i'm confident in saying hml/ham variants are off limits to newbs due to the caracal's tiny grid. I would hope the arbitrator comes to mind because honestly it solo's a lot better. In a small t1 gang, caracal gets the nod from me. That's a small role though and I would hesitate to call it "fantastic," at that role as it's too slow to really get a frig that knows what it's up against.



Firstly, you struck the primary issue head-on. Split weapon system. As I said before the argument is absolutely invalid that newbs coming into a caldari lineup are anywhere near on the same foot as those who start minmatar and this is reason number one (following the aformentioned ease of fitting and speed tank).

Yes, the kestrel is a nice easy tier 2 frigate to train and use, but please don't tell me it's a competetive pvp frigate. It does well as suicidal dps in a frigate gang, but it has very few targets to pick on solo and in a smaller gang it will be primary-pod in a matter of seconds. The cormorant is a goddamn joke. The blackbird, is ecm (I guess you missed the lead in to this debate), we've been over the caracal (decent), and the moa i'd rank just under the merlin for skill intensiveness due to it's unforgiving stats. Ever try fitting one without AWU?

Then you go over to the minmatar lineup with a play-down of the century: rifter, thrasher, rupture and that's it? You missed the greatest un-sung tackling hero of all time: the vigil. I mean, if you're going to mention the blackbird at every turn here, we might as well throw the vigil in too. Rifter, thrasher, vigil, rupture: all easy to fit with weapon upgrades 1 and deadly effective with a cheap t1 fit compared to their caldari counterparts with the same skillset. You could include the stabber too, but it honestly isn't on the same level as the above.

Expanding into t2? Well, given our (newbie) premise I think that's out of our bounds, but for the sake of argument, i'll admit the new harpy is a tremendously overpowered ship (though keep in mind it takes fairly good skills to get that MSB fit on). That said, the wolf and jag are both not shabby, probably right behind the OP harpy and gallente t2 frigs have always been good. In terms of EAFs, like I said, that's really a bum-fight i'd rather not see. Yeah, the hyena is probably worse than most, but really anyone flying a kistune is just a dumb. The ships are so easily killed it isn't funny and you can get 99% of their performance out of t1 variants in the case of both ships.

So no, I don't think you missed much, but given a competely honest comparison from the viewpoint of low sp, the evidence is clearly in my favor.

It's not that small of a role in a gang. Of course solo it's medicore but then again I never disagreed with the idea that Caldari is mediocre solo.


How is the Kestrel not a competitive PVP frigate? It does around ~130-140 DPS out to 10km and can fit a damn mean tank with an MSE. Of course a newbie will get slightly lower numbers but the principle is the same.

The cormorant is in no damn way a joke.

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That is a t1/meta-2 fit.

You are correct that the vigil is fantastic herotackle...that brings the number of newbie-friendly ships from 3 to 4.

I do not use the MSB fit. The blaster fit I use has about 17K buffer, and the rail fit has around 11K. And the point of flying a kitsune is that it's a frigate hull...which means it can keep up with frigate gangs. The blackbird isn't exactly fast...and it's not like t2 frigates are significantly more expensive than t1 cruisers once t2-fit.

Allow me to clarify further my thoughts about Caldari as a good choice for new players by highlighting the issues:

1. Limited viable ship selection. Really, this should be obvious. Yes, a pilot can have success in damn near any ship from any race, but that misses the point. We are not talking about trick fits and stunts. The main PvP combat ships (meaning non-ECM) are the AF’s and Hookbill, the Drake, and the Tengu. All are fantastic, but that’s a tiny list, and for a new player most are all but unobtainable in anything approaching a reasonable time. Let’s compare that list to, for example, Minmatar. Where the new Caldari pilot can reasonably train to fly the AF’s and Drake, the Minmatar pilot has his choice of the Rifter, Jaguar, Wolf, Thrasher, Rupture, Stabber, SFI, Hurricane, Cyclone, and Tornado. All use the same weapon type, all are easy to fit, versatile, and every one of them is arguably better than anything in the Caldari lineup.

2. To fully utilize the Caldari lineup --specifically the excellent (now) Caldari AF’s -- a new player must add hybrids and gunnery support skills to their training. Figure an extra month they would not have needed to devote had they simply gone with a gun race in the first place.

3. ECM as a dead end. To get good at this is going to take a month or more. A month that returns nothing for the investment beyond the ability to fly T1 ECM ships that they are almost certain to rarely use. That’s reality. A month to fly the blackbird sitting in your hanger well, or that same month as a Minmatar pilot gets you T2 small and medium turrets. It's a no brainer.

If the goal is to get new players into PvP as quickly and painlessly as possible, with the least number of missteps, Caldari is not the way to go.

I agree with the above poster.... and think the Merlin should be on the list too. While T2 fit merlins require a large investment in skillpoints, both to fit and to effectively use t2, the meta-fit merlins are easily accessible. And while the rifter gains more bang-for-your buck out of minmatar support skills, that doesn't make the merlin un-viable. I started PvP'ing in the Tristan... which has the same "drawbacks" as the merlin. Not surprising, the second solo'ing ship I used regularly was the Merlin. I had enormous success with both of those ships.. even with cheap, low sp fits.



There are two skills that directly relate to ECM.... Electronic Warfare and Signal Dispersion. It takes 2ish days to get SD III, and 5ish days to get to SD IV. The other EWAR skills typically benefit all EWAR, and training them is a WHEN, not an IF. Your are right, you can forego the ECM skills and be into t2 small weapons in about the same period of time. Advanced weapons will make you far more potent in the solo arena. If you don't join a Corp/gang, then your solo capabilities are obviously the most important.

However, PvPing in EvE is much more than solo activities. While you might claim no one will accept a brand new player, there are a couple newb-friendly PvP-oriented corps that take in aspiring new players... Once in the small gang arena, especially when flying with higher class ships, your elite weapon skills are often irrelevant. To fly the griffin effectively in any gang, you don't need any weapon skills at all... And while ECM is coming across as taboo, let's be frank about the roles a new player is pigeon-holed into. An elite t2 fit rifter pilot... they'll be tacklers.. A particular role that any race in the game can do well. Whereas, very early access to the griffin allows the pilot to fly ewar support. A two week old griffin pilot can punch way above their weight class, easily turning the tide of any small gang engagement; whereas that minmatar pilot, he'll get the occassional heroic tackle, but not much more.

I think it comes down to how you want to progress. Minmatar's progression is more linear, and Caldari's is split up across several aspects of the game. The linear progression makes skill-training deliver a bit more return on investment, and simplifies their skillplan. However, that doesn't mean Caldari is inferior or less viable. All races have decent low-entry combat ships, complete with their races strengths and weaknesses.