EVE New Citizens Q&A

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Missile_Launchers
http://eve.allakhazam.com/wiki/EVE_Guide_Weapons_101_-_Missiles
http://eveinfo.net/wiki/inde~318.htm

Read over these three links and you should be able to answer your questions.

In MY opinion... The most important missile skill for new players is to immediately switch training to GUNNERY. Here's a few reasons why:

Number One: Both gunnery and missiles have support skills. The support skills for gunnery apply to projectiles, hybrids, and lasers. In other words, every main weapon in the game except missiles. Missile support skills apply only to missiles, meaning that when you get ready to try something new, and you WILL, you will find yourself many months behind those who went gunnery in the first place

Number Two: Gunnery weapons are FAR faster to train than missile weapons. Assuming that you have the suppoprt skills for either out of the way, in the time it takes to train every short and long range missile weapon, from frigate to BS, all to tech 2 level.... You could have almost finished training on TWO complete gunnery weapon systems, every weapon, both short and long range, frigate class all the way to battleship.

Or you could have trained one and put the time you saved into something more useful.

Number Three: The main missile race in the game is the Caldari. Right now, when it comes to PvP at least, the Caldari ship lineup is laughably broken. They have some nice frigates, they have a nice battlecruiser, and they have a billion isk T3 cruiser that you wont be flying for a year or so anyway. That's it. Every other race in the game has a complete lineup of dozens of effective and deadly ships. If you go Caldari you wont have these choices.

Nor should you look for CCP to correct this anytime soon. People have already waited literally YEARS for this garbage to be fixed, and so far it hasn't happened. In fact, CCP has announced more nerfs to the Caldari weapons and ewar lineup coming this winter. Just switch and save yourself a whole lot of grief down the road.

There is NO reason to stick with Caldari and missile weapons, and many reasons to change. Do so and you will thank me later.

Just looks to me like someone very pissed off that CCP is nerfing HML drake/tengu cookie cutters.
But yes, missiles are faster to train into one spec than guns where you have to go T2 bottom to top, it can be nifty to spec one missile size range and train other stuff, but it's also more restrictive as the guy's rant showed since you end up locked into a very few specific fits with no versatility.
Guns take longer to train for the first category (laser/hybrids/proj) because you need to train all the support skills, but once you have them for one, you have them for all, though you still need to train T2 all the way up to BS-class.
However, missiles are main DPS for half the Caldari ships range, but also auxiliary DPS on other races ships and when you had to train large projectile for a phoon, it's kinda cool to not have to train for ages to fit missile launchers on it.

The topic is way more complex than just raw training time, guns take longer to train for the first category, but then it's a tad shorter when you already have the support skills.
If the support skills and prereqs are out of the way, to train Medium Energy Turrets specs, you train Med Energy(3x) and Beam Spec(5x) + Pulse Spec(5x), to train similar missile range with both short range and long range, you need to train Heavy Assault(3x) + Heavy Assault Spec (5x) and Heavy Missiles(3x) + Heavy Missiles Spec(5x). On the paper it's one more 3x skill, though you can train them without having to train rockets spec and light missiles specs to level 4 first, so in the end the difference is way more subtle when you have the support skills out of the way (Gunnery has four x2, one x4 and one x5, Missiles has three x2, one x4 and two x5).

Though blaming CCP when they nerf missiles because someone's locked himself into a pair of ships is just ridiculous, no one to blame but themselves.

Not to mention that he says if you train missiles first you will be a month behind on the starting gunnery guys first.

But could also be the other way around, say you maxed out all the gunnery skills and join a corp/alliance that mainly uses:

Stealth bombers
Tengu's (though not likely after the HML nerf)
Or (god forbid) Drakes

That means you will be a month behind all the guys who started training missiles first.

In the end: It's up to you and your personal preferences (okay, and maybe a bit what your corp/alliance wants you to fly).

But saying that caldari only have a limited range of ships that are used is bullshit.
What about SB (for any race), Basilisk, Falcon, Rook, Scorpion, Rokh.

And please list me the in your opinion huge list of the other races that are used as IMO it's just as short. Each race only has a narrow range of ships that are REALLY useful in PvP.

Amarr: AHAC (Zealot), Guardian and Armor BS for large grind fest battles.
Gallente: Do we even see them on the battlefield, okay maybe some T2 tackle ships and the capitals.
Minmatar: Canes, Tempest, Maelstroms, Scimitars, Fast tackle.

So basically the only one I can think of that has some larger amount of useful ships is Minmatar.

True on the SB for slot layout. Still means you have to train missiles though
And other then slot layout they are all just as useful when you decloak, throw a bomb, warp out.

As for the scimi, it's only preferred because of the ability to operate solo and don't need a chain (which can be broken) to work. How ever when you have a good amount of Logi ready in the fleet, basi's will be very usefull cause they can both rep shield and give cap if needed.

Not so much.

Guns are not "better" than missiles. Guns are a better time investment for new players. The return on investment isn't even close.




Before going to all the trouble of firing up EFT, try this instead...

Actually READ what I wrote.