Ships & Modules

Apparently missiles will be changed, so that they are affected by types of modules frequently abbreviated as TD, TE, TC, or TS, or something like that. Currently none of those affect any missile-type weapon systems, and since I'm a missiles-n-drones kind of guy, I've ignored those module types completely.

Apparently I should begin to pay attention.

But what to these various abbreviations stand for? I know what "BCS" means. It's the 6th or 7th word learned by any normal Caldari child. But all the new stuff... Which abbreviations are real? Which ones should I start paying attention to? Do any of them require skillz to train, or gain benefits from skillz?

Pay attention to this. Good advice.

Sure, everyone has their favourites, but cross training (racial hulls & weapons systems) is the smart thing to do.

Short edit: TD is the hostile Ewar effect you will see from any ship you engage from now on. It will fak you up son.

My apologies. After reading your initial question, I had you down for a newbie. I see that it's not the case.

Damn, you need to broaden your Eve knowledge-base.

Guns are no more complicated than missiles. Instead of explosion velocity they have tracking. Explosion radius = signature resolution (both work vs target signature radius).

Missiles are harder to work out your exact range because of target direction and velocity. With guns you need to think about your own direction and velocity for tracking.

Go and have a play with them. Best way to learn.

Edit: what's wrong with fitting webs? Were you not fitting target painters on your missile boats?

For Gallente, the Incursus comes to mind.

For Caldari, the Merlin.

Fit Blasters for short range and high damage or Rails for longer range but less damage.

OP, long post incoming. I woke up in a wordy mood it looks like.

Thanks for being honest here. It is an anonymous interweb place and sometimes people feel ok hurling the worst insults here that they would never dare to do in person. You risk some harsh derision. But you won't get that from me.

Guns are really not that complicated in missions. In pvp sometimes you need to understand quite well what is happening with tracking, but in missions the speeds and behaviors of the rats are frankly not as dangerous. That is why we kill so many of them afterall.

Basically some of the same behaviors you may have employed in a long range missile boat (it sounds like you didn't always sit like an op regenning brick in your drakes waiting forever to whittle down the rats) serve you well with a gun boat.

In missions I hardly ever used close range guns. Partly because when I did them you couldn't fit a mwd to close range faster and was stuck with the lackluster speed of an afterburner (which I did use a lot). Also because often the rat groups in a pocket have proximity aggro triggers, and motoring up to one group would set off another group. Also because if the groups are not proximity aggroing, sometimes if you aggro say group 3 then group 4 will aggro you, etc. And if group 4 is very close to group 3 in space it means that all of a sudden you are having to tank the full fury of two groups well within their highest dps ranges.

So I preferred to snipe/kite them with long range guns, arty, beams, or sentry drones + rails. You definitely need to read the mission guides at eve-survival mission reports (google it for the web address). It often tells you how far from the rats you will be dumped by the acceleration gate, the aggro mechanics, damage to apply and tank, and what the triggers are for respawns. Without this knowledge many missions might be very difficult. WIth that knowledge and since the rat behavior is so very consistent they can frankly become snooze worthy after a while (or to be fairer, less stressful and even relaxing game play, not that there's anything wrong with that :Seinfeld:).

At range the motion of the rats relative to your ship matters a whole lot less. It is very doable to snipe the tackler frigs, then destroyers, then cruisers, as the rats travel toward you. If some frigs have sufficient angular motion to get past your sniping, you will see miss notifications that you aren't hitting and it's time to change target. Don't panic because you should have a flight of tech II light drones of the appropriate damage type to take care of them as they buzz around you at 7km or less. Just work on ewar cruisers and BCs next. Rat BCs are usually weakly tanked but they do a lot of damage so those are high value targets for your survival. By the time you've dealt with all that, the rat BSs are probably close and you can start hitting them with your closer range higher damage ammo.

Early on in my eve career I trained the painter skill and the spec without having any good reason to, simply because I liked the idea and the look of the icon (sorta like an old adobe reader icon ). Painters are comparitively rather weak ewar for pvp purposes. But they really can help both turrets and missiles a lot in missions. So with my armor tankers often I was fitting a painter and an afterburner, a defensive ewar module (sensor booster against serps, eccm against guristas, etc), and then a cap mod in my four mids. With missile boats much of that would have to get shifted to low slots or drones. So sometimes light painter drones (as long as I still had drone bay for a flight of light tech II combat drones) low slot eccm or signal amp, and any cap mods would be PDU or CPR if it was regen shield tank. The painter helps both turret tracking and missile explosion dps to target.

I admit I never flew a Raven, so I never got into Cruises and rigors. I did fly a Typhoon (my fav, and sentry Domi). I cruise fit it and had a painter. I never had problems with cruisers because I didn't depend on my cruises to kill them. I reversed my target priorities somewhat. If I was able I would use my 2 or 3 arty and sentry drones on the normal route of frigs -> dessys -> cruisers . . . While my cruises would go BCs -> BSs, loop back on cruisers if necessary, and the arty could get reallocated to the heavy stuff if the remaining light stuff was getting under the tracking. The wonderful thing for me about the phoon was that it was a constant adjustment and target switching and as you can see sometimes splitting damage. It actually made missions fun for me when I was in the mood because there was a lot of thinking and adjusting (I also have level 4 missioned in Drake, arty Sleipnir, Geddon, Abaddon, Rokh, Hyperion, Absolution, and Domi and I'm still missing some ships that aren't coming to mind atm).

Anyway, a Raven as I said I would prossibly employ similar tactics as you can field a full flight of tech II mediums for cruisers and tech II light drones for frigs. I would prioritize the BC -> BS (avoid triggers) with the cruises and leave the smaller stuff for your drones to kill. Also, in any long range ships the best tactic if you land at range is find a celestial that you can align to and move toward, start sniping and thus kiting the rats racing toward you, rinse and repeat. This also has the added benefit that if somehow you screw up and your tank is breaking you are already aligned to a warp out point.

So short version, unless you are fitting short range guns and a mwd, tracking will become intuitive for you. You should have damage notifications switched on. You will notice that your guns are doing less damage or no longer hitting. You can either switch script to tracking speed in a TC or just switch to a better target or one within you reduced optimal if sansha are TDing your range. Forgot to mention TCs and TEs as definite mods for fitting against them.

PvP is a whole different story. And I do not pretend to be anywhere near the best with guns and tracking in that. You will want to see transversal or angular motion on your overview. And you then will have to practice with cheap losable ships to know how you can try to fly to overcome a pesky target. Eve Uni or one of the other training organizations in game might be the best way to go to learn that stuff if you develop an interest in it.

But again for missions you usually don't need to worry much. A tracking computer in a mid or a TE in a low will aid your tracking. Espeically against shansha. And a painter as I mentioned.

With the new missile mechanics it looks like the rat ewar won't be changing right away. So if you go up against Sansha in a missile boat you can continue to laugh at their TD for the near term future it appears.

As I said in my first post itt, Drakes and Tengus are it appears losing some pve advantages they heretofore have enjoyed over other ships. But on the flip side we probably will see cruise and light missile buffing. Ravens may rise to king of pve again, we simply don't know enough yet. Regardless, the new ravens, when the changes hit tranquility, may want to have a TE in a low

I read through your replies again, OP. You may want to continue with Gallente ships, vexor, Myrm, Domi and train drone and hybrid guns.

The reasons for this is you already have Caldari and missiles trained. With Gallente drone boats and drone training your goal could very easily be then a Rattlesnake. As for Hybrid guns, since you may be moving toward a rattlesnake I would not invest the time in tech II hybrids. It will be sufficient to get you through the vexor, myrm, and domi to have tech I meta 4 rails.

Another benefit of this is that if you want to use Caldari gunboats at some time you will at least have the hybrid gun skills, and can decide to then invest in tech II hybrids if you find you like those.

So for missions yes, move away from Drake for level 4s. That it could even do level 4s was always something of an anomaly. Either pursue raven kind (or navy scorp), or train drones and some gunnery and gallente ships to use gallente drone boats with an eye toward a Rattler, or you could make use in some missions with a Rokh.

The Rokh is not a good all around mission ship, small drone bay for one thing. But some missions it can do pretty well, such as gone berserk which is almost made for sniping and shield tanking.

Gallente and Caldari are a good combo for a character to have. You get access to the Gurista missile + drone ships, and the gunnery systems are shared, and drone skills (except for sentry drones) can transfer benefit to almost any ship you fly. I have two characters with this combo. Lili went minmatar and amarr, but she can fly a sentry domi as well now.

Lastly, if you get into pvp having Gallente and Caldari will give you options with either tanking system, or weapon system (guns, missiles).

Sadly, that is pretty much how I've run 99% of missions. Sit there in a Drake, Navy Raven or Nighthawk, and lob HML or CRM against the targets, and (especially when in the RNI) use my Light Drones to chew up rat frigates, especially ones that might do warp scramble or other ewar unto me. Usually my ship was moving, but that was always to get closer to a mission objective or an acceleration gate.

I like the idea of flitting around in a comparatively faster AB-fitted cruiser-sized ship (easily twice as fast as a non-AB Drake or NH), just to get a sense of being in an actual 3D space with positioning mattering from a tactical perspective (not so much the icky transversal gün-pertinent stuff), but I haven't gotten around to trying that yet.