Warfare & Tactics

Hope this is the right place to post this.

During my first few days of playing, I elected to go straight for a combat rather than economic roll and after a few low level missions and some ratting I quickly found my favored playstyle was railgun sniping.

Unfortunately I quickly found that among the Caldari ships the best platforms for this were far out of my means and after a brief attempt at mining for it I gave up and left for a few months. However I'm back and plan to sell PLEX or mine to raise the money needed for a Rokh or Naga (and the right fit of course).

My question is would it be wise to purchase a very expensive ship or two without any PVP experience, and limited PVE. Or should I pace myself and practice with a smaller, crappier ship before joining an alliance and jumping into the large PVP battles that I'm looking forward to. I'm worried that i would simply become an expensive and easy target no matter how good my fit.

tl;dr: What happens if a noob gets a fancy battleship after having skipped cruisers, battlecruisers and mid level PVE?

result: A destroyed Battleship and many tears


go your way up, class by class. learn how to fly with bigger ships and learn how to fit them.

A well fit Frigate or destroyer is better than a semi fit cruiser. Even if you have the isk you are better off working your way up till you are comfortable flying it and losing it .


If you are only at the Frig and dessy stage it isn't hard to cross train for Gallente Frigs and Dessys .

My skill isn't that low, I had plenty of time to let it train while i mined space pebbles for slave wages. I could actually fit an (apparently hated) ferox BC with t2 hybrids and fly it (might make a good blaster boat with shield tanking?). I'm just unsure about what sort of actual experience would be needed before bringing a shiny BC or BB in for sniping.

In case of PvE it depends on missions you are doing.

Level 1 missions - frigates/destroyers
Level 2 missions - destroyers/cruisers
Level 3 missions - cruisers/battlecruisers
Level 4 missions - Battleships

As you move to higher mission level, you will change ship class. It will take you time to get to level 4 missions as you need standings with corporation you are working with. Use this time to improve your core skills, gunnery skills and drone skills. If you are goin after Rokh, look at certifications tab at Rokh info page. It will give you basic idea what skills you should know to fly ship well.

In case of group PvP it all depends on group setup. Every ship has its use and you can't simply say this ship is the best. If you go as sniper, you need someone else to web and scramble your targets. Also t1 frigs and destroyers are paper thin. 5 light/medium t2 drones will eat you pretty fast. So it realy depends on situation and fleet composition. If you are new to PvP and you want to learn more, join one of R&B corporations. They fly max cruiser class ships and will learn you how to fight and what to do in combat situations.

PS: Don't rush. In EVE everything takes time. More you are in hurry, harder you will fall. Take your time. Move slowly from smaller ships to bigger ones. You need to know game mechanics (optimal range, tracking, angular velocity ect). And don't forget main rule of EVE: NEVER FLY WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE. Unless you have good income (not by selling PLEX), don't fly expensive ships.

Nowadays, a lot of PVP fleets use the Tier-3 battlecruisers as their core; in your case, that would probably mean the Naga (or the Talos, which is roughly equivalent, somewhat better at closer ranges). But if you're worried about the affordability of a single Naga (or a Rokh, which is something like twice as expensive for the base hull), then you should definitely wait a while. If you take a ship out in a PVP fleet - whether it's a battlecruiser or battleship - you should be flying it with the expectation that you're going to lose it.

And the Caldari heavy rail snipers aren't really good for PVE, either. The Rokh doesn't have the drone support to handle hostile frigate rats in mission environments, and the Naga's tank is about as robust as a beer can (plus which, the Naga doesn't have any drones at all).

The traditional advice was always to fit out a load of rifters, saddle up and go get used to fighting, being in fleets, using D-scan etc etc. The idea behind it is that you lose a lot, but they're cheap and you learn something every time.

I would still recommend doing the same thing, but nowadays use a condor.

Bigger doesn't always mean better.

Naga isn't a PvE ship,

Rokh has limited PvE use (Incursions)


PvP

Battleships are usualy only used in 0.0 PvP Fleet Battles

Battlescruisers are the Norm.


Secondly while you might be able to gain the minimal requirements to fly a Battleship pretty fast you'll have probblems with:
-Powergrid
-CPU
-Cap
-Tank
-Tracking
-Damage

Turning it in a rather expencive ire cracker.


In your case.

Caldari PvE -> Missiles
Want to stick to Gunnery (Hybrides) Go Gallente of Minmatar

PvP by 20 Merlins and go have fun, Join FW or RvB to be taught the tricks of the trade.

EVE rule number 1 : Don't fly what you can't aford to lose.

What people are saying sounds like good advice: get into small ships, work their core and support (gunnery, engineering, electronics, mechanics) skills for a while, until all 4 like my first toon, or all 5 like subsequent ones, then slowly work up to larger ships where the investment in support skills will pay off significantly. This way you don't die and loose all you isk tied up in ships/modules and while earning isk you gain a respect for the economy and valuation of actual items.

HOWEVER

When I was starting, a short two years ago, the standard cry was to pick a class either, armor or shields, and race to battlecruiser 4. This way you can handle any mission levels (4's become hard/impossible and inspire BS training) without breaking the bank on a hull. Most BC have enough slots to fit to deal with small and large ships and provide enough tank. Furthermore, the new tier3 BC's will give you something to immediately test out large weapon systems once trained for, without the need to invest isk/training into BS skills.
This is the route I took, and was pleased with the results. Infuse yourself from the sale of one PLEX (when I did that it was 334mil per plex lol), fit a mission BC, and try to earn the hull price (remember to subtract ammo costs). This will keep the cost/payout for missions relevant.

I decided PvE sucked and jumped directly into a nullsec alliance when I could fly a properly fit T2 BS (amarr born, so abaddon was my first). They usually have opportunities for people who are not ready for fleet-fit ship specs, although they may not be covered under ship replacement. Just go out and fly/die, listen to the FC, learn (for god sake) how to differentiate the words and buttans for "hold" "warp" and "jump" (its apparently harder than it sounds), and you'll have a good time. Plus null PvE can actually support your losses of BC/BS much faster imo than missions.

God my 2c grew to 20isk
I am good investor.

You will learn more about how PVP works and function if you go out in small ships that you can fit well and have good skills for than jumping into big fleets where PVP basically = press F1.

Once you 'know' pvp then you can decide at what lvl of pvp you are most at home with.