EVE New Citizens Q&A

Yeah and there's also using the Sisi server to test fitting and practice combat. Do your part, go on SIsi, look for bugs and increase your ability.

When you start playing Eve, you will quickly find that Eve is different in many ways from any other MMO you may have played in the past. In order to learn how to fit your ship(s) "correctly" you should:

1.) Download EFT (Eve Fitting Tool) Available Here

2.) Join a corp that is willing to teach you how to do the things you want to do in-game. Eve University is a great corp for new players that teaches PVE, Ship fitting, Mining, and other aspects of the game. There are PVP-oriented corps, such as Red vs Blue, that teach new players ship fitting, and other PVP related aspects of the game. There are even corps based in nullsec that welcome new players. This is a diagram showing the type of things you can do in Eve, so take a look at it, get an idea of what you might want to do, then find a helpful corp that specializes in that aspect of the game. If it turns out you don't enjoy that aspect of the game, no problem... just try something else until you find something you enjoy.

3.) Go to Battleclinic and take a look at fits that have far more positive votes than negative votes. There are many, many horrible fits on Battleclinic, so take what you see with a grain of salt. Don't copy a fit from Battleclinic exactly, but rather use the fits you see there to learn the concepts of Armor tanking, Active Shield Tanking, Passive Shield Tanking, Speed Tanking, etc.

4.) Come to terms with the fact that bigger is NOT always better. Progressing to a larger ship might not always be the best thing to do in some situations. For example, using a Battleship in a Level 2 mission is often slower than using a cruiser-sized ship because is moves slower (travelling from warp-in points to a gate in missions takes much longer in a battleship), or may not be able to hit the small, fast frigates and cruisers as easily. Additionally, "upgrading" to a larger ship before you can effectively use the appropriate sized weapons is not advised.

5.) Use EFT, combined with the concepts you learned from looking at Battleclinic fits to make a fit that you want to use for a certain situation (PVE fits are different than PVP fits are different than Wormspace Fits are different than Incursion fits).

6.) Ask questions in your corp chat (or other chat channels that are "New Player Friendly" such as Project Halibut) to figure out what improvements or changes you can or should make (and why those changes would make the fit better) to improve the fit you came up with.

7.) Go back to EFT, try out the changes were recommended. Notice how the changes affected the fit's stats (better tank, more DPS, increased cap stability, etc) and ask follow-up questions if you don't understand why the changes are better.

8.) Fly what you can afford to lose. When I started playing, I knew I would lose ships due to simply being in over my head, being impatient, not begin knowledgeable about whatever situation I was flying into, or simply taking risks. My personal rule was to never fly a ship (fit in such a way) that I could not replace it at least 3 times over. Meaning that if I lost a particular ship, I could replace it and all the modules/rigs/etc, and still not be broke. Over time, I learned more about certain situations, and flew more or less expensive ships accordingly. I learned that I could "risk" flying a more expensive ship in PVE since I understood what I was going to be facing in a particular mission. I learned that I could PVP in less expensive or smaller ships and still have ridiculous amounts of fun.

9.) Balance. Many players and many activities in Eve can be done in many different ways, you might want to do things that maximize the amount of ISK you earn per hour, or minimize the amount of effort, but eventually you will (hopefully) learn to play Eve in such a way that it maximizes the amount of FUN you have. It is ultimately up to you to decide how to fit your ship, what ships to fly, what to do in Eve, how much you play, and even what your goals are. People are always going to fit ships slightly differently than someone else, have opinions about the "correct" way to fit a ship, think that you have too much tank, or not enough tank, or that a fit costs too much...

... but, at the end of the day, if you had fun flying a ship fitted the way you want, that works for the situation you found yourself in, and that works for your own personal playstyle, then you are doing something right.

What she said.

1) Fly at your income. Rule of thumb is never buy a ship you cannot afford to replace. How much is that? I tell my rookies to only buy ships that cost about 1/4 of their average wallet ballance.

2) Don't fly ships you cannot afford to lose. Don't risk your mission running ships. Don't take them into low sec, don't try to PVP in high sec. Just don't shoot another player under any circumstances in high sec when sitting in your money maker.

When getting started, check both the ships description and it's corresponding recomended certificates. The game designers had specific roles in mind when initially designing their ships, and fitting them to serve that role will give you a lot of milage out of your ships. If it's a drone boat, try fitting drone augmentations, if it says its a combat ship, try tracking enhancers or tracking computers, missile boat? Give Target painters or ballistic controlls a try. And allways fit the same weapon type and ammo (swap later if you have to).

If you ship is really effective at a particular range, your job is to get your ship in position for max damage. If it has a mix of weaponry, you won't be completely effective at any range.

Be carefull with Battleclinic fits. A lot of players there will put negatives on bad fits and strange comments just to "Troll" those message forums. They also tend to put +1's on some really bad fits for the "lolz". Most of the fittings that have high rattings are expensive gank fits that a rookie pilot will have little hope of fielding propperly, and nearly every recomended fit assumes perfect fittings skills. But there are some good fits in there. Remember, on the internet a 13 year old punk has the same voice (or could be more vocal about bad ideas) than a 5 year veteran of eve.

As a rookie player, focus on surviving the battle first, and DPS second. For PVE this means strong active tanks, and for PVP this usually means large buffers. Put a Damage controll unit on every ship you fly, and unlock t2 DCU's as soon as possible. They will give you extra hull hit points giving you more time to get out of a bad situation.

Focus on your smaller ships and frigates first. Usually frigs do best when active tanked (active repair modules), and have a web loaded. The web will help you orbit at close range against larger ships and stay alive as you 'get under' the bad guys guns.

Once your skills start comming up, you can really start to fit your tank to match the ship types. General rules of thumb (exceptions allways exist though):

Gallente: Damage Control unit and active armor reps.
Minmitar: Speed Tanks (speed to 'get under guns' or stay out of range to prevent damage). Active shield tanks.
Caldari: Large Shield Buffer tanks / Passive recharge tanks
Amar: Armor Buffer Tanks (PVP), active reps with lots of cap rechargers and or a cap booster (PVE).

A lot of good tips here.

Having trained many, many pilots in how to fit ships and fly them and survive the harsh world of EVE-Online there are a few pointers I can give.

1 - Look at the ship description, and see what the role of the ship is and what bonuses it gets.
2- Look at killboards for successful alliances. Look at who their top killers are, and then look at those players' losses. Study the fits of people who are successful.

Early on in the game you may not have the skills to fully fit the ship of choice. That is ok. You may have to leave a slot empty for now. The main thing is that you fit to the ship's bonuses and fit what you can afford to lose.

NEVER UNDOCK IN A SHIP THAT WILL BANKRUPT YOU WHEN IT GOES BOOM

every ship you fly is a pretty blue explosion, it is just a matter of when. remember that at all times.

you don't always need t2 or faction gear. Look at named items such as 'Malkuth' or 'Fleeting' etc. here is a link to Warp Disruptor I description on evelopedia. on the right hand column of info there are variations. The T1 variations have different fitting requirements and if a vanilla flavoured warp disruptor won't fit, maybe one of the variations will.

Start with frigates, then move to a cruiser and then Battle cruisers.

Destroyers are an advanced ship type. Avoid them until your base skills are high enough that you can fully fit them. They are fragile like frigates and as easy to hit as a cruiser. keep that in mind.

Get in with a good player corporation and they will help you to fit to your skills. Even a 2 day old character is useful in a fight if their ship is fit properly.

Get out there and have fun! its only a game, and you will explode so get used to it

Go here. --> Worst Fits Ever

Never do these things. They are bad.

It's fun to play with EvEHQ or EFT for understanding how fitting works but in game it's not the same case when you lose a ship without any understanding on what happened. Ewar is too small and we don't have a real combat log. It will probably more interessting to have all informations clearly on screen for making choice during the fight. For me, playing PvP in EvE is simply estimate if I have a chance to kill, push few buttons and wait the result. having a tool like Combat Log Analyser will be fun too

Understand that your shields and your capacitor don't recharge at a flat rate.

They both recharge on a curve, that maxes out at around 32.5% or so. So if you're in a passive shield tank, don't worry when it falls. As long as it stays above the 32.5% mark (or so) your tank is fine. it's only when it blows past that you have a significant problem.

When using a active burst tank (big repair module that eats a lot of your capacitor. turn it on when needed), try not to use it when it'd drop your cap below the 32% mark (or so). Your cap regen at 10% is a lot lower than at 20%.

http://www.nada.kth.se/~ksig/myndir/figure4.jpg


Resist tanking vs hp tanking:
Yes, you can big plates and extenders on your ship, and boost your HP that way. But you can also use the resistance modules to adjust how much of the incoming damage you'll be taking. You have the passive ones (shield resistance amplifiers, resistance plating, and energized plating which is like resistance plating, but more effective at the cost of some cpu), and the active ones, the shield hardeners and armour hardeners. Armour gets a global resist mod for passive, shield gets it for active.
When you're in most missions, mission npcs will throw 2 types of damage at you. (there are some that don't. pay attention to who the mission is against). So you can set up resists against those, and ignore the others. generally cheaper with the active ones(cap wise) and more effective.

Resistances apply to the remainder of the damage you're taking. so if you have 2 50% resistance mods, the first will knock out 50% of the damage. the second will take out 25%. a further one would take out 12.5%. (and there are stacking penalties. people recommend damage controls because, A, they apply to everything, B are cheap to run, and more importantly, C, don't have stacking penalties). Play with the numbers in EFT or another fitting tool of your choice.

When in PvP, all bets are off. Going for even resists is your best chance. Especially against Minmatar or Caldari (who can change damage types easily)

For a new player, it's not only about what to fit but what to train to get the most out of any fitting.

Knowing what they want to do first (or a general idea) is a good start. And then go from there.

If all they want to do is mine or play the market, then it's a waste of their time training up Large gunnery skills.


Keep it simple to start with. Once they start to get the hang of what modules do what & what works best on what ship, then introduce them to EFT or Pyfa (which is better), EveMon, Eve Market, Mining Spreadsheets and the myriad of other tools floating about.

And I always make a point of telling new pilots that what looks good on paper may not be the case when playing Live.

Sandbox - where no fit is wrong but there are optimal ones which are preferred.

Not exactly about ship fittings, but related.

I see all the time a bunch of newbies (newbie != noob, keep that in mind) that get mad because they hear a lot of people telling them "this ship is the best ship in-game". But the truth is that instead of taking that information for granted, you should ask that person what makes he/she think that ship is the best and then taking that info into account, you double check with info you got from other people to see if it matches.

No matter what people tell you, the Maller isn't a DPS monster, and the Raven isn't the king of PVE.