EVE New Citizens Q&A

Alright, so at the moment either Amarr, Caldari, or Minmatar make acceptable mid-range sniper races.

Amarr -
PRO: Instant range swapping with crystal changes, ability to continuously fight well inside your max range because of the above. Lasers also have a high damage modifier to compensate for the pure EM damage limitation.
CON: Lasers only do EM (and a tiny amount of Therm) damage because... they just do. Lasers also take capacitor to fire with.

Minmatar -
PRO: You can vary your damage type by switching ammo. All projectile ammo has high damage in its accuracy falloff, though you'll probably be fighting in your optimal range.
CON: Changing ammo types takes 10 seconds. Projectile ammo takes up a ton of space in your cargohold.

Caldari -
PRO: Heavy missiles have impressive alpha (at the cost of firing speed), and you can swap damage type much like Projectile ammo. They also do flat damage inside of your range, period; so as long as you can hit the target at all, you'll do the most damage to it.
CON: Slow ROF to compensate for that high alpha. Fast-moving targets may also tank a good deal of your damage. Again like projectile ammo, missiles take up a lot of cargohold.

Other notes: A lot of people at the moment choose Drakes (Caldari) for their legendary tank mixed with those full-alpha-at-range heavy missiles. However, it's also heavily believed at the moment that the coming Tier 3 Battlecruisers will be far superior to the existing Tier 2 ships, like the Drake.

Personally, I think your best bet is to pick between Amarr and Minmatar - at the moment, Minmatar is slightly superior at range, but there's not telling where the nerfbat will land next - and go for battlecruisers and medium-size weapons to go with them. Be sure not to forget various Electronics, Engineering, and Mechanic skills to make your fitting easier and your general ship performance better.

Thanks for the replies.

Why didn't you mention pros and cons of gallante? I heard they are getting a buff pretty soon so I can also consider flying a megatron. BTW can you tell me ships that are used for long range sniping for each race so I can check them out ?

Just played around in pyfa really quick, and overall the Rokh (Caldari BS that uses railguns) is better than the Megathron as a pure sniping platform. Megathron has better DPS because of sentry drones, but Rokh has better range (by something like 20km) and better tank (511omni capstable shield tank on the Rokh, 395omni capstable armor tank on the 'thron).

1, Vexor would make a good level 2 mission cruiser, Myrm a decent BC for L3s.

2, I didn't rate the pros and cons of Gallente ships because where you are looking to do (stand-off, mid-range DPS) just isn't do-able with gallente ships, even with the upcoming changes - the buffs to Gallente vessels are almost all in the area of speed and agility, which makes it easier to get into point-blank brawling range, but does little to help the fact that railguns have incredibly poor tracking and blasters just don't have the range to fight beyond 20km or so.

Wow, I can't believe I forgot to mention that, lol. Some of us have been using it for so long we take it for granted.

Definitely get EVEMon, it's easily the best piece of software for planning out skill training and looking up info on individual ships/items quickly. Also get a copy of EFT and/or pyfa and start learning to use it, they're the two leading tools for designing fits for different ships without you having to spend the ISK on modules or time training skills (EFT is the defacto fitting tool, but pyfa has widespread use too).