EVE New Citizens Q&A

That's more because of the ship than because of the modules you're trying to fit.

Destroyers are "attack" ships, basically "glass cannons". People love to get into them, but the style of play for attack ships, kill before you're killed, is more suited to PVP than to the protracted, 1 hour long battles where you're facing incoming waves of enemies and have to stay put and tank them all.

There's a bit of a subtlety going on with the ships, too:

It's made obvious that you need the power grid, and either low slots for armor or medium slots for shield, to install your "tank". You also need capacitor recharge / juice to maintain the tank. A destroyer often has fewer of these slots than a frigate.

But what's subtle is that the destroyer is just slightly bigger (signature radius) than the frigate, and that matters with how easy they are to hit, especially by missile NPCs. A frigate can have 50% damage reduction against cruiser missiles just from its size, and a destroyer will often take the full brunt of damage of a Level 2 mission. With the frigate you get in close and orbit fast, use blasters to do the DPS that you can, and otherwise shrug the damage indefinitely because they just can't hit you. With the destroyer it's big enough and clumsy enough that you just can't do that; you get hit on approach for double the damage a frigate would take.

Try it. Jump in a "combat" frigate. Kill all the NPC frigates as fast as you can, then just orbit the cruisers at 900 with an afterburner on.

In any case, there are difficult level 2 missions, and you don't really get a warning before being offered one of them. A cruiser is needed for level 2's, especially for the hard ones, because the cruiser has the amounts of armor, shields, and defenses to actually take the damage, and even then it's difficult. You may have to decline the harder missions until you get in your cruiser and have the skills trained properly to fit it.

Pretty much what J'Poll says.

And alos, check out EVE-Survival on how to manage your missions.
You could inadvertently be killing a trigger ship, releasing the next wave of npc pirates before you are ready for them.
You don't want to do that.

Gallente ships are typically armour tanked, they're sometimes bonused for that and usually have more lows than mids. Stick with armour tanking until you know enough to know why you'll shield tank a Gallente ship.

For missions you often want rails, not blasters. Blasters are very, very, very short range weapons.

Atron's more a tackle frigate, fast and flimsy. Try an Incursus with rails or tristan with rails and drones for missions, should deal more damage and survive longer.

No plating, not for missions typically. Repper, hardeners (active hardeners best), maybe an energised membrane if you have a free low slot.

TRacking computer's a mid slot, so won't interfere with you fitting an armour tank (which is all low slots)

To the OP.. Download a fitting tool. Make yourself a API key so you can fetch your skills so it represents what you can and cant fit on your ship.

A fitting tool can help you decide and see what modules will help you and what are useless for what you want to do. If its PVE, google the rats damage types so you can accommodate accordingly

I spend a good hour a day sorting fittings out and updating them etc etc. its a good way to learn certain aspects of ships and modules

Manage characters > create new > import api

If you can afford to buy and insure a cruiser, I wouldn't be shy about taking one out for a spin in most level 2s. Blockade and Mission of Mercy are among the tougher ones that you might want to avoid. But the generous tank of a cruiser hull might be worth an upgrade even with support and weapon skills at 3.

If the hull offers a tanking bonus (resists, repair amount, boost amount) you're generally better off fitting for that bonus. There are some niche counter-examples like the shield-tanked myrm.

If a hull doesn't offer bonuses, a good suggestion is to look for the number of medium vs. low slots. Armor tanks tend to gobble up low slots. Shield tanks tend to gobble up medium slots.

For a cruiser hull in missions, I try for the following:

Resists: 70-80% in the primary and a minimum of 60% in the secondary damage type for the mission. Stacking two resist modules is good practice, but more than two is usually a waste of fitting slots. Some missions you might want more, many missions you can get by with less.

Heals: Armor: one Medium Armor Repairer, two if you expect high bursty damage. Active Shield: Medium Shield Booster or Large Shield Booster. Passive Shield: Large Shield Extender.

Stamina: Armor and Active Shield: You're turning capacitor into hit points, so you probably will want at least one capacitor module. Active Shield tanks should avoid Capacitor Power Relays. You don't need to be cap stable. Learn to manage your Repairs/Boosts around incoming damage and capacitor recharge. Passive Shield: Shield Power Relays if you're running capless weapons and have spare low slots.

Shoot for stable as possible. Cap stability depends on several things, Your skills, the ship and the modules.

Your skills affect it because there are skills that increase the cap recharge and capacity, also the ability to equip tech II cap rechargers and capacitor rigs

The ship, well, because each ship has their own capacitor charge rate and capacity

The modules. Some modules absolutely drain you cap such as armour reps where a damage control will barely scrape the recharge rate.

I can get an incursus, with a double rep, completely cap stable but I cant on a cruiser.

Cap stability:

First things first. Cap stability in the fitting window is a false readout. The status of your capacitor shown there will take into account that ALL modules will be running ALL the time. It doesn't take into account if you only use a propulsion module to get into range or that you only cycle your repper (shield booster / Armor repairer) when you need it.

Well. There will be 2 opinions here.

For Mission running. Stable is possible but it likely means you either drop some tank or gank to achieve it. But if you can still tank the mission and also kill the rats in a reasonable time, it's not a problem.

But you can get away with a unstable capacitor. You might have to manage your capacitor manually (so pulse reppers when needed etc.) but it also means you can get a bit more tank and/or gank out of your ship.


For PvP...Unless you plan on shooting a POS or other big structure, most fights are over within 5 minutes. So a stable capacitor there is kind of useless. In PvP you want to maximize tank and/or gank as much as possible and your capacitor stability is that you kill the guy before he kills you and after that you recharge your capacitor.

EFT is sweet, and a very very useful app. Definitely play with it as you learn the game.

For later, though, keep in mind that EFT doesn't reflect the whole "damage reduction because of speed / small size" thing. With your destroyer vs. frigate example, in EFT you're looking at straight DPS, tank hitpoins, resistance numbers, and the destroyer may appear better than those frigates, but in-game speed or size have an effect that EFT can't convey very well.

Ultimately, I use it to check whether I can fit all the modules, with my skills. Which is another thing you'll encounter in this game. Skills appear to only improve ships and your performance by small amounts, 2-5%, but that 2% is, for example, just enough power grid to put in another gun, which you couldn't before. And one more gun gives like 20% more damage. It's all about training until you get over certain thresholds and limitations, where suddenly the ship just works and is a pleasure to fly.

Engineering skill, Electronics skill, train them.