EVE New Citizens Q&A

You are aware that your starting race and faction choices are purely aesthetic right? You can train into anything on any character. Pick whatever race you find mot interesting aesthetically, or roleplaying wise and train into whatever ships you like.

There are useful ships in every class, as well as every race, if you focus on combat, PVE or PVP, you're going to be cross training at some point.

EDIT: Since skills and what to train for are giving you a headache take a look at this blog post, and this recently bumped forum thread.

http://blog.beyondreality.se/Newbie-skill-plan-2

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5510948#post5510948

The plan I linked is great for a newbie unsire of what kind of ship they want to specialize in initially, it gives you a broad base to start with at an 'ok' level, deviate and specialize to taste. The thread goes deeper into EVE's skill system and dispels some common misconceptions.

It's in your interest to cross train at this point.
train all the frigates, small/light weapon/drone systems, shield and armour skills to 3 (or at least the things you like the sound of)
have some fun and see what you like.
specializing takes time and I don't recommend it until you know you actually like the role.

Lasers in gallente space isn't all that bad. Thermal is most gallente affiliated rats' secondary weakness and EM generally the second strongest so you're at a small disadvantage but not huge.

Armour is preferred in larger fleets for a variety of reasons, ones I won't list them all but it's a well-known fact and has been practised over years.

As for stealth bombers, Frigate 5 is a short train and you just need that skill, plus the covert ops skill to fly a race's bomber.



Missiles aren't used in large fleet battles and rarely above battlecruiser sized ships. This is due to a variety of reasons as well, however missiles are extremely potent in the small to medium hull sizes and 90% of fights in eve will be using those hulls.




Missiles are great for pve, selectable damage types with the addition of not having to worry about tracking mechanics = truly new player friendly. Only downsides to it are basically making sure your application to small targets isn't too poor. This requires some ewar modules and specific rigs but it's really not that big a deal.

Lasers are great also, but obviously limited in the ways you're already aware of. They really do excel when you're hitting EM weak rats though.

Armour and shields both have their advantages and disadvantages. All have viable ships to be used with, most of the time it's obvious which one should be used, sometimes not.

Caldari ships are the "heavy shields" kind of style. You'll find that they're on the slower end but regularly have bonuses to shield resistance and in general have higher shield capacity than most other ships.

Amarr is the same but for armour, slow and heavy but very resilient.

Obviously exceptions are present, but this is the general trend.

Raven/navy issue: great pve boats, rarely seen in pvp due to large missiles being extremely slow and don't apply well to small targets.

Drake: fantastic starter ship, big hp means it leaves a lot of room for error.

Oracle, bit more specialised, medium hull with large weapons means a lot of DPS but very fragile tank. Can be used as snipers or just raw DPS if you feel you're safe.

Absolution, extremely strong laser platform versatile and powerful.

abaddon, limited uses these days especially now since battleships are less and less used.

talos, same thing as the oracle, however it's tracking bonus allows it to engage smaller targets comfortably

Kronos, rare to see one of these since other marauders are more useful

Any pulse laser boat. The Armageddon, for example.
You might want to look into the T3 destroyer, Confessor. I don't know if it's usually pulse fit or beam fit, but it's quite overpowered now and not a hard train.

Thanks again for replies.

Tau Cabalander - Lol Wow that is awesome that you know that.

My plan at the moment is to focus on Amarr ships so i can use them how they are meant to be used.

Once i feel like i have learnt everything for Amarr ships i will then work on my Stealth Bomber which i'm guessing will mean unlocking Ships for either Caldari or Gallente and increasing my Missile skills overall.
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Question:

Manticore or Nemesis? which is better at the moment.

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If anyone has anymore Opinion's on ships and weapons i would love to hear them.

(Not that is matters but i am a wallet warrior and ISK will not be a problem for me so if you wish to post Ship builds that i can copy and paste into word or somit for later dates that would be great. :) )

If you stick to small and medium and especially if you just stick to cruiser and lower you can train all 4 races in not too much time at all. Battleships and large weapons take a long time. I would stay general and try several different ships out. Once you figure out what you like then you can specialize. Level 3 is good enough for now.

Living in Gallente space, it will be slightly easier/cheaper to find Amarr-compatible gear than Caldari, typically, though not by a broad margin. On the other hand, it's usually slightly easier/cheaper to find Caldari _ships_.

Beyond that, I'd pick based more on PvE tanking than anything else. If you prefer active control/management of your tank go Amarr, if you prefer tanking based more on building stuff, turning it on, and forgetting about it go Caldari. Both weapons systems work fine in Gallente missions and PvP; you'll run into issues with lasers when Angels missions drop, but Amarr have missile boats as well for backup.

The Stealth Bombers are almost literally identical apart from favored damage type, and that's generally selected based on target and/or what you already have skill-wise.

Basically the short version here is flip a coin, you can always eventually train both if you later decide you chose 'wrong'. The important thing early on is that you pick one and stick with it a bit, not _which_ one you pick.

1. You will stare at your ship A LOT. So I decided the race by look of the ships and I liked most Gallente and Amarr. Caldari looks like Lego toys (partly fixed in last few patches); Minmatar like garbage, that is pulled together by adhesive tape.
2. If you aim to combat PVE you need to be able to put different kinds of damage. Drones is Gallente / Amarr way to do this , missiles is caldari / minamtar. But true drone race is gallente, true missile race are caldari. Mix of both gives you Rattlesnake - one of the very best PvE battleships.
3. Amarr weapons do not require additional ammo. That means instant adaption of range (crystalls swap in no time) and zero ammunition costs after you buy your first set of standard crystalls.

Those are best PvE battleships so far, IMHO:
Maradeurs (specialized for missions, but long time to train)
Machariel (close up brawler, very demanding for personal combat skill of the pilot; lots of adrenaline)
Rattlesnake (sniper fit with missiles and sentry drones can do up to 900 DPS at 100 km range even with not all V skills)
Dominix (cheap and versatile, very effective sniper platform)

Since expensive ships tends to be attacked even in high sec, I stay with Dominix. With its unique bonus to optimal range of sentry drones it can target and fire even from 150 km and it will still in optimal of Warden II sentry drones. You can put up to 3 tachyon beam lasers there so your drones do not need to switch to frigate ships so often. If frigate has to burn 150 km toward you even the limited damage and awefull tracking of unbonused large turrets can deal with them (they have papar thin tank any way)

Be aware, that there is no good amarr mission agents in gallente space, but quite a few caldari agents. If you ever decide to join PvP the only mechanism, that gives you at least illusion of match making is factional warfare. So it will gallente / minmatar or amarr / caldari space you will have to stay in.

just go caldari? cross train l8r

none of that is true