EVE New Citizens Q&A

You got abit of info wrong.

The delayed damage on missiles doesnt give it "poor" pvp performance, its just something you have to keep in mind.

And railguns do NOT have selective damage type, its kinetic/thermal no matter what ammo you choose.
And you dont get in close with railguns, railguns are sniper guns, they have ****** tracking but long optimals.

Blasters are brawler guns, having very poor optimals, but damage to compensate for it. Though Gallente are thought of as being the blaster faction, but some caldari ships use blasters with great effect aswell.

The answer should come down to your preference in ship sizes.

Small and large rails have their uses, but medium rails tend to be pretty bad you see.. whereas heavy missiles are excellent.

Rails tend to have some tracking issues. At least the big ones do.

fail double post

It's much simpler than that from a new player's perspective:

Missiles don't miss, but their damage is scaled up or down pretty dramatically by characteristics of the target.

Turrets have a consistent damage distribution, but hit chance is scaled up or down pretty dramatically by characteristics of the target.


All the other stuff-- range, hit delay, tracking issues, etc can be altered or balanced by something that _you_ can do, training certain skills, swapping to a different specific turret/launcher, etc. Picking between turrets and missiles in general just boils down to that choice of whether you want to consistently hit but have people be able to lower your damage per hit, or have consistent damage (before resists, which affect everything) but have other players be able to increase your chance of outright missing.

As for railguns specifically, they have the longest range of any turrets in the game (on average) but fairly low overall DPS, so they're a lot less "general use" than missiles, as the extra range isn't all that useful in PvE and situations where that kind of range can be well leveraged in PvP are pretty specialized.

you're not goinng to get in close with Rails, that will get you killed, you'll need blasters for that.

Delayed damege is only a big problem with Cruise missles.

Heavies are most used in PvP, for more reasons than that they are good, but they can't be bad.

It mostly depends on style and what you want to do.

From a Caldari point of view:


Missiles will give you a fast means to do almost every facet of EVE, PvE, PvP, Low, 0.0, WH Exploration. (all these things are doable with turrets ofcourse, just not with Rails only)


Hybrid Rails will Take longer, but make it easier to step to other turret based ships, less usefull in PVE Missions and Exploration(which is in early EVE you're most steady income)

I'd advice you the following:

If you want to go pure PvP go for turrets, if you want to see and what EVE has to offer and do many different things, the Fastes way to accomplish that will be Missiles.

If you want to stay Pure Caldari at first take missles they cover more options, Exception is the Cloaky Recon (Falcon, though that one is doable without guns) and the long range big ships for big battles (Naga and Rokh), but all Navy faction ships are missile ships, and the Cross racial Pirate Ships of the Gurista's are missile Drone based.

No problem



That's 2 questions,

usualy battles with smaller ships are not fought out from a very long range, Battleships are usualy used in long range battles, that is when delayed damage gets a real problem because your losing entire vollies after a kill. at close range you won't because the damage may be delayed but only with seconds, normaly to short to cost you a volley. as long as it doesn't cost you entire vollies while with in the sweet spot of the attacker delayed damage sin't realy a problem, taking with you that the attacker needs to get to thatsweet spot first while taking quite some damage, from your always hitting missiles.

Yes you can kill battle ships with heavy missiles, If I'm flying a Battleship and know there is an hostile Tengu near, I start running.




Two reasons, one rails is the long range Hybride turret, so all Caldari Railships are build for long range combat, stay away from your enemies. Caldari Missile ships are build for both short range missiles and long range missiles, most do one better than the other, though the Drake and the Tengu can be deadly with both, so aside from always hitting, ammo that can be switched tofit the damage type, they have the shield HP to fight in close quarters, Powergrid to fit Shortrange launchers, and a relative hight CPU rating. Missiles don't use Capacitator power so all they have can be used on other stuff.

These things together makes them verry usuable for almost every line of stuff EVE has to offer, because you can adjust the fitting for it.

Rails have ships that have a much more specific role and are build towards that role.



You'll probably earn more ISK mining in a Ospray than running missions in a Frigate, though you can't earn more ISK than running lvl 3 missions in a Drake, or LvL4 missions in a Tengu, Nighthawk, Raven, CNI, or CNR.

While mining in a Ospray people will leave you alone, when getting to bigger ships mining can become quite dangerous on your own, even in High sec. Mining can be quite profitable though you need to get to low and 0.0.




I'm trying to explain this from a Caldari point of view, ofcourse there are very good PvE turret based ships, Hybrid Railguns just aren't that good in PvE, one of the problems is that PvE battles take quite sometime, usualy ending in Cap problems for the Caldari Hybride ships.

For a new player wanting to do PVE and soonish get into PVP I would suggest go missiles. The drake is a very forgiving ship and is used in every PVP corp/alliance out there, no matter how much the haters hate and it is a good PVE boat for HS, WH's, LS and null. Its also less player skill intensive as you don't have to worry about traversal, tracking, optimal, fall off, etc and still try and keep yourself alive.

I'll just make a resume:

Mining is very poor income compared to missions. Mining scale badly, missions does not.

Missiles are supreme in pve compared to hybrids. No discussion.

Hybrids (rails and blasters) find use in pvp, but so does missiles.

Training hybrids gives advantages when if you want to train other weapon systems (projectiles or lazors).

Rokh has become popular in null recently (guestimating from the killboards coming out delve) they are railguns.

Drakes are equally popular, they use heavy missiles.

In the end. Go with what you think is cool.