EVE New Citizens Q&A

Im debating amarr vs caldari for my first ship specializations.

Mainly looking at frig/dest/cruiser until i can cut my teeth in pvp.

As i understand it, caldari really need to have missiles and hybrid trained to take advantage of their ships, which is substantially more training than amarr which only needs energy weapons.

Aside from that, are there any distinct benefits or limitations of the ships and weapon types for these 2 races?

Hey Dread Slurr

As already said, it really comes down to your preferences.
I'd recommend you check out Chapter 2 (fittings) of ISK The guide. It's very well written, and explains alot of the advantages and disadvantages of certain weapon systems, and tanking preferences.

Personally I'd go for Amarr, but that's just because I love space lasers

Hmm, well it's generally agreed that Amarr ships are better for PvP, and Caldari ships are better for PvE.

The problem with missiles for PvP is that they are slow. Also, hybrid weapons apparently aren't that great. I think range is mostly the issue here. Amarr ships can get in nice and tight for warp scrambling, Caldari ships are generally better off sitting back and lobbing their missiles from a longer range.

In PvP you have to pin your enemy down with a warp scrambler. Unless you can prevent your enemy from escaping, it doesn't matter how much damage you do so long as they get away with their hull intact.

Lasers do great damage. Since they use crystals, they don't require a lot of ammo to be carried in the cargo hold, they don't 'run out' of ammo (though they break sometimes). Also, the crystal types can be switched in a fraction of a second.

Hybrids need ammo which takes up space in the cargo hold, the ammo can run out, and takes a few seconds to reload. Also, it takes time to switch ammo types. This is true for missiles as well.

Amarr ships are armour tanked, which fills up the low slots. Caldari ships are shield tanked, which can fill up the mid slots. Unfortunately, the mid slots are also where you put warp scramblers and webifiers, which you need to peg an enemy down.

There are a few Caldari ships which really shine though. The Drake is a really excellent battlecruiser, so much so that people wanted it 'nerfed'. The Blackbird is an E-war platform which shuts down the enemy's ship, making it impossible to fight. The Caldari also have the only E-War battleship in the game.

In fact in PvP E-war such as target jamming is the Caldari specialty. So in some ways it depends on how you like to fight. If you prefer a 'karate' style of pounding out large amounts of damage on your enemy until their ship melts faster than yours, then Amarr is better for that.

If you like a 'jiu-jitsu' style of fighting which means you can attack your enemy, but they can't fight back since they can't get a target lock on your ship(!!!), Caldari is better for that. Amarr ships have E-war too such as tracking disruptors, which are good too but not as frustrating to the enemy as target jammers.

Also, some ships such as Khanid ships are like a fusion of Amarr and Caldari, which generally means missiles. There are also some faction ships, like the Succubus, which require both Amarr and Caldari to be trained.

I don't know though, apparently the ships have been rebalanced a little and the Merlin is as good as the Punisher.

Normally in these kinds of threads I would make a recommendation around different playstyles (Gallente favor close brawling, minmatar stress maintaining agility and working in falloff and damage type selection), but both Amarr and Caldari tank heavily, have really slow ships, and use a weapon system with a wide applicability range to just sit there and pound things 'till they're dead.

Generally speaking if you're restricting yourself to frigs and dessies you'll prefer Caldari for better flexibility and if you're going to focus on medium (Curiser/BC) more specifically you'll want Amarr. That's more a matter of specific ships than general trends in how the races work, though, and the ship specifics are currently being ****** with by the Devs, so that advice may not be valid in a month or two (or even now, some of the new frig designs are out).