EVE New Citizens Q&A

Welcome to eve.

(1) The meta in eve is always changing - when i started playing everything was shield fit, then all of a sudden people wanted armor. Both armor and shields, each have their advantages and disadvantages. As a general rule - you pick the type of ship and then match your defensive systems (armor or shield or something else, i.e. speed, ecm, etc) to the natural bonuses of the ship. Of course this rule can be broken and you can fit a ship against type - but that is something that really is specialized and only for experienced players. TLDR: Pick a ship you like to fly and train your skills to fit.

(2) Only fly what you can afford to lose. Assume that every ship you undock is already lost. Start with cheap frigs and cruisers and fit them with t1 mods. If you keep the expense of your ship down then you will not have to do much if any pve to afford it. Keep in mind, bigger and/or more expensive is not better in eve. Big large and expensive ships are killed by small cheap ships all the time in eve. Dont be one of those unfortunate newbees who spend a plex to get the most expensive ship they can thinking that it is going to be an i win button only to see it assplode in a sec.

(3) There is no universal fit that is good for all situations and all ships. Basically, you pick the ship you want to match what you want to do then you try and fit it appropriately to perform the job you intend. Of course most pvp ships will fit some sort of tank - armor, shield, speed, ecm, - tackle - warp scrams, disruptors and webs, - and gank - guns, drones, etc.... Keep to either shield or armor - dont fit both. also dont mix guns - using two different types of rail guns and a blaster is bad, and just hurts my eyes. Other then that you would have to post what type flying and tell us what you want to do with it before any more constructive advice could be given.

Finally, the best advice is to make friends - join a corp - your corp mates should be able to tell you what they fly and help you fit your ships out. Not all corps are equal of course. There are some really good newbee corps out there. Brave and pandemic horde comes to mind.

What should I focus on more? Shields and armor? Or weapons?
You are a gallente pilot, therefore you want Hybrid Guns, Armor, and Drone skills
Priority should be a T2 armor tank, T2 drones then T2 Guns.

How can I get the most out of my ship and survive PvP encounters without losing my valuables?
If you are going to PVP, dont carry valuables. It would be nice to learn more about the condition where you died so that we can help. In short, dont run into Lowsec/Wormhole .

Being smart with your ship is the best way to keep it alive. You need to know what ships your current ship is capable of fighting, and that comes with experience and many many loses.

For a noob, how should I outfit my ship to get the most out of it and what should I focus on buying?
Frigates and cruisers are the way to go for PVP and even PVE (with the T2/T3 counterparts).
Focus on those, along with their T2 fittings. As mentioned above, you can use Eve University and other resources to learn what to fit to your ship.

One thing to note, PVP and PVE fittings will be different. In PVP, you need scrams and webs and neuts.
In PVE, you need strong guns and strong tank.

really apreciate the help. so far, isk isnt a problem for me, doing the career missions has given me quite a bit. lol but the market is kinda confusing with the bidding. guess thats one thing i should go look into more.

1. "How to properly fit ships" can be a long post; I'm sure EVE University has some detailed guides on it. I'll touch briefly on it at the bottom. "At least have a chance to fight back or run," however, is actually relatively easy: the ships in this game are set up in a rock paper scissors / queen beats rook beats pawn setup. Of course it's possible to win against all odds, but in general if you're flying one ship and you meet the ship that's designed to be your specific predator, you'll likely die.

So you want to create a ships quick reference for yourself, with your own annotations, so when you see "Arazu" in the overview, you can glance at it and have an idea how dangerous that ship is vs. what you're flying. And as you learn the game and read various guides, you'll be able to better evaluate your chances based on what you're facing.



2. High-sec safety settings. The game has 3 broad zones: High-sec, low-sec, and null. In null, anybody can kill anybody, it's full PVP. In low-sec, there are some rules of engagement, but mostly you just lose some standings if you attack anyone (i.e. no big deal). High-sec, in an effort to make it "safer" for newbies, has A LOT of rules, and the police (Concord) appear and kill anyone who breaks (some) rules. EVE University has a list of these aggression rules and the various flags you can get for taking various actions in high-sec.

Changing the "safety" from green to yellow to red is a declaration that you understand how things work and accept the consequences, whether it'll be a flag or Concord actually killing you when you shoot other people out of the blue. The game server will accept your new safeties and kill you without much notice, because "you know the consequences."



3. Mentors. Simply put, babysitting you in-game is an effort; it's somewhat pointless because there are so many guides out there, and because this forum exists and you can ask as many questions as you want, here, and it's also unrewarding because as a newbie you don't have a lot of money to pay for such services. Also, players in this game are allowed to scam, steal, kill, and otherwise ruin the corps/guilds they join, so "let's be friends" is always viewed with suspicion. Especially, I'm going to say, since you're a newbie who doesn't seem to need isk, which is more like what a funded spy alt would say.



4. Your newbie ship is a piece of crap. Each race offers a line of basic frigates that are pretty cheap (at 400k or so), and usually perform much better than the newbie ship. You can use the in-game Ship Chart to see what your trained skills allow you to fly, and you can also use the market as an encyclopedia to search for things and then right-click and Show Info. You can see stats, descriptions, required skills, etc. this way.



5. Ship Fitting is somewhat complicated, but the concept is simple:

a. Figure out what the ship is intended for, from its (show info) description. Also, its preferred weapons (also from description).

b. Decide if you want long range combat (where you can kite and dance out of enemy range), or short range high damage "this won't take long" combat.

c. Each weapon has long range and short range versions. For example, lasers: beam lasers = long range, pulse lasers = short. Fit all your high slot weapon racks with the same identical weapon, long or short range, whichever you decided on.

d. Fit mid slots with a propulsion (afterburner or MWD) so you can be faster than the enemy and dictate that range.

e. Fit some sort of defense (shield defense requires mid slots and typically includes a shield booster, shield hardeners, and / or shield extenders; armor defense requires low slots and typically includes an armor repairer, armor hardeners, and / or armor plates). Whether you pick shield or armor depends on the slot layout of the ship; some have a lot of mid slots, others have a lot of low slots. Frigates typically have very few slots and rely more on speed and agility than on actual tanking.

f. In any remaining low slots, fit damage modules that match the weapon you're using (heat sinks for lasers, magnetic field stabilizers for hybrids, ballistic controls for missiles, drone damage augmentors for drones). These increase your DPS.

g. In any remaining slots, fit utility: warp disruptors, stasis webifiers, target painters, capacitor rechargers, etc. These make your ship perform better, or crowd-control the enemy ships.

h. Undock.

You should get an off-line tool like EFT, pyfa, or o.smium so you can play with fittings without having to buy modules in-game just to see what they do. You should also look at various sample fittings for the ships on EVE University or whatever other guides you see out there.

This is a lot to ask of one person and probably not a good idea either. However it's not a lot to ask of a group. Also this is not a linear game it's a sandbox so having different perspective is probably a much better idea. Rather than looking for a mentor I think you should be looking for friends.

Make friends and join some pubilc chat channels. Lots of recruiting corps have public chat channels that you can join. You can join multiple channels and ask questions in different channels this will allow you an opportunity to see if the corp might be for you.

You typically don't want to be mixing tank types or weapons. Too much to really cover here you just need to learn more about ship fitting.

Due to the exponential growth in time frame for each skill level you typically should not be focusing on anything. You want to spread your skills around and bring things up evenly in most cases. That does not mean that you can't make a priority list just don't focus. At least not this early in the game and without finding your own playstyle. There are no inherent shoulds in this game so you need to come up with your own way and not blindly follow advice from anyone.

As far as shield versus armor most ships have one or the other that they are designed for. That does not mean that you can't fit it the other way it just means that in most cases it's not a good idea. However in Eve there are no ship fitting guidelines that are without exception. The best we can do is tell you what works well in most situations but not all.

Everything in this game is situational. The answer to this is dependant upon what ship you are flying, how you are flying it, who you are flying it against and where you are flying it. Again you need to just learn more about fitting in general so that you can ask more specific question. You can read up on this some but in the end you will need to learn through experience which means trying stuff out. This is where the friends can help a lot. You can get people to help you with specific fits and then play around with the base fit by switching out various mods and seeing how it changes the ship.

As far as surviving PvP encounters... In general I advise people to focus on the positive aspect of things. So don't say "without loosing my stuff" rather say something like "make it through with my ship intact".

Beyond that if you are looking to get good at PvP in this game you need experience. One way to measure experience is through ships lost, especially if you learn from each loss. So if you want to learn PvP it could be said that instead of looking to survive each encounter you might want to try going out and loosing a bunch of ships. Often when people set out to PvP it's not over until they've lost their ship. Meaning you often head out intending to not come back with your ship.

This question I feel has been answered by my previous answers.

There really is no reason that you should stick to Gallente ships just because your character is Gallente. If you like Gallente ships by all means fly them but the race of your character and the ships that you fly only need to be the same if you are a hard core RPer.

don't listen to players like ergherhdfgh because she is trying to corrupt you. I've already given you real money in game, which means I am waaaay beyond the simple wiles of such a Fhtagn nagh Yog-Sothoth, who probably has floppy tytxx whereas mine are sharp, sharp indeed-- and then there is the diabolical aspect of Wanting Stain, which you will have to fortense with Thyself a Monion, I mean, naturally, amirite? And then some. Anyhooh, m'lovespleet?

You nailed it.

I, too, have recently started and ISK is a problem. Make my wallet go flashy-flash plox!






Thank you, you too!




GL OP! You're in for a magical adventure...just hang on in there!

Aw, jee shucks


That's OK, I understand - Perfection is a dish best served like wasabi, after all.