EVE New Citizens Q&A

the choice of race is mostly cosmetic. all the skills you get can be learned in under 24 hours.

edit: to elaborate some further, when people talk about ' gallente are good with drones', ' caldari is a missile race' etc. they mean exclusively the respective races' ships. there are more good drone boats for the gallente than any other race and there are more good missile ships in the caldari lineup.
when you create a character, the only thing you are deciding (apart from looks) is which races' frigate and weapon skills you have and where in the universe you start. both are insignificant factors that can be easily changed afterward.

This.

Keep your character, just train for a different race.

Its not that awkward or uncommon. Most people wont judge you on being a Gallente character who flies Minmatar, most people will judge you on your personality as a person and your skills at the game (dont mean in game skillpoints but actual knowledge about the game and what you are doing)

It wouldn't be awkward for the Gallente, heh. We are all about the individual's freedom to choose whatever he wishes, consequences be damned. If the Minmatar have good ships, train them. A large part of the Gallente Federation is Minmatar citizens, so there would be plenty of opportunities for you to network and find contacts, and good deals, among them.

You may even train some of the Gallente ships in the end, who knows. They have the best industrial (for hauling goods), and some of their ships aren't at all bad.

As far as drones, they are THE defense mechanism that big ships have against small fast attackers (big ship guns and missiles won't be able to track small fast frigates, and this is on purpose, to give newbies a chance to play against the veterans). So because pretty much every big ship (battlecruiser and above) needs drones, you will end up training them anyway, in the end.

Minmatar doesn't require a lot of training to become "viable", you can find viable ships right away, and continuing on up their ship lines. What happens is they are a jack of all trades, with some of their ships being so versatile that you could use shields OR armor, missiles or guns or drones, whatever you wish, and the ship would function well. So in order to keep ALL your options open, you'd want to train shields and armor and guns and drones and missiles; you wouldn't be able to use all of these at once, but they would be options that you can dock in a station and quickly re-fit your ship differently. But it's possible to start with just guns and armor and be viable, and go into shields or missiles later if you feel the need.

Other races:

Amarr are somewhat rigid in their ships always using armor, but they do have ships that specialize in lasers, some ships that specialize in drones, and some that specialize in missiles. Large PVP fleets (used by alliances in wars) typically all focus on armor repair so the fleet can be repaired efficiently, so Amarr ships are quite popular in PVP, especially large scale.

Caldari specialize in shields, and have some ships with hybrids (typically long range rails) and some ships with missiles. Because you can choose what damage type you do with the missiles, and because you still have the armor to defend you as you bug out when the shields are gone, Caldari ships are favored by players for PVE content, as they are "easy mode." Some of the group PVE content (incursions) is done with fleets based on shields, so the Caldari specialist ships (logistics etc) are preferred.

Gallente specialize in armor, and have ships with hybrids (typically melee-range blasters) and some ships with drones. Because the drones also let you choose what damage you do, and because drone ships can choose to not install weapons at all and instead super-size their tank, they're also easy-mode for PVE content. However, with the armor and the gunships, there's quite a bit of choice for you, and you'd be able to find choice ships for PVP and for PVE, whatever you wish to do.

Minmatar specialize in versatility and speed; as I said their ships not only can do anything, but you often have multiple fittings that are viable. They are very popular in PVP due to quite a few ships that are tuned quite nicely and have been very popular in the past (and still are). You'd be training in projectile guns, missiles, and some drones, and armor and shields if you want to keep your options open.

If you look at "best in class" ships, you will find that they are all over the place - each race has some best ships, especially among the specialist ships. Take, for example, the recon cruisers, they all do completely different things, and you may want to train multiple races to get all the abilities.

The game is like that; train whatever you want, no restrictions. You can read various guides about the ships on the internets, to get a better idea of what you may want to do. This is a long term game; I've been playing for years and am still training, expanding my choices of what ships I can fly if I so desire. Comes at a cost, though, increased fees when I die in PVP, which can happen A LOT, but that's the game.

Final advice, don't try to build the perfect character. It'll get "ruined" by PVP'ers or by a bounty or two, or by lowered sec. status, or whatever, and then you'll feel like quitting the game. Instead, just jump in, learn the game, train skills to see what they do, that's the point. Each skill is good at something; I have something like 180+ skills, all trained to different levels, and they're all useful. Even the corporation ones that help me defend my POSes. Your character should be a tool for you to find fun in this game, nothing more. Just like all the ships and equipment you'll buy and throw away in PVP fights, for fun.

As others have said the choice of race you make for your avatar is cosmetic for 99.99% of your gameplay. The only thing that makes a difference is the rookie ship you get when you dock in pod, at a station where you do not have ships. You will get the one belonging to your avatar's race. The rookie ship is such a small part of gameplay, it's not worth restarting a character for if you like the look of your current one.

This is called "brawling", and it's exactly what Gallente does best, and by best I mean Gallente brawls way better than other races. Gallente is all about high-tracking blaster damage. Extreme close range, highest damage, best tracking.

Yes, drones are the other Gallente racial weapon, which means that in the line-up there's a handful of drone-focused ships, and Gallente ships have often bigger drone bays and more bandwidth than others, but vast majority of Gallente revolves around blasters.

You might run into old information about blasters being bad, and blaster boats slow, but these are things of the past and blaster ships are among the fastest in game, their dps is in a class of their own, and range with T2 ammo is probably a bit more than it should be to be balanced.

Also, drones aren't automatic, you can't just launch them and sit back, they need much more attention than turrets. They work very well with blasters, extended the range of your damage.

Gallente has gunboats as well and you cant get more in your face and lets brawl then with an armor tanked blaster fit gallente boat. Their tech 3, the proteus is also the most aggressive damage dealing close range strategic cruiser around.
You can and will train more then one race either way and it's silly to just throw away your time already spent... Also all races use drones and all races have long range and short range boats.. would say out of all races gallente has the most real close range ships and that's mainly because of the hybrid weapons gallente ships use..
Same goes for tech 2 ships Kronos(gallente T2 blast BS) and cross trained (gallente & minmitar need to be trained for it) pirate faction BS like the vindicator, about the highest damage close range DD in the game.. While other races boast a lot of ships that depend on controlling fighting range, gallente doesn't have a single "coward" boat...

Longterm, Gallente also boast some of the best looking and most powerful capital ships around. Best tanked and fantastic damage. The Gallente dread (Moros) was so superior they had to nerve it, now it's still just as good but better looking then the other races. The Nyx (super carrier) is the best looking and boasts the highest damage out of all super carriers with a tank to match. Because of the armor tanks both Gallente and Amar are the best Titans in the game...

Compare:
Caldari: shield tanked (less hp) and citadel torps and missiles just suck unless you are shooting a POS...
Minmatar: Shield tank on capitals (very good subcap tho mainly because weapons don't require cap to fire)
Amarr: strong caps but leave much to be desired subcap imo because of the cap drain lasers cause.

For me Gallente is the best balanced race out of all. Having a dedicated drone boat line on the side just makes it all even more complete imo. One negative for me is that a lot of the gun boats get a bonus to active tanking (quite useless in fleets) instead of resistance/tracking/range/fire speed bonus. This makes them less popular in fleets but great solo/small gang boats.

In short, Gallente is as good a race as any and very versatile in playing styles. You made a good choice.. Long term you will cross train anyway so it doesn't matter which race you pick.. Gallente will train Minmatar just as fast and vice versa.


Edit: Also go look at some videos of the past EVE tournaments. You will see that in the small arena most tournament fleets are built around Gallente Battleships/battlecruisers just because of their high close range brawling potential. It's extremely difficult to dictate range in a limited size arena.

Depends on how ~elitepvp~ you intend to be any how many compromises you (or more likely, your corpmates) can put up with trying to shoe-horn a second-best (or worse) to the optimal race/ship combo for the role you're filling.

I've known quite a few pilots over the years who grudgingly stuck it out with one race and the results were mixed. Some of them found it endearing and immerse, others found it intolerable and it compounded all their other grievances with the game.

Similarly, some corps actively encourage purity (most for RP reasons) and/or will playfully "put up with," that oddball who won't train for the latest ship doctrine. Others will explicitly ostracize or get rid of players who won't train appropriately for their role(s).

EVE is a sandbox so there's no real right or wrong answer here. You simply do what you enjoy and find other pilots who are like-minded to maximize the fun you can have.

I've flown a non-gallente ship exactly once (I do have the skills) on a cheapo Trasher roam (we died in flames) in my two years of EVE, most of it spent in wormhole and lowsec PVP.

Gallente lacks null fleet doctrine line battleship, but has either the best option or a viable option for every other role.

I find that purposefully limiting your ship repertoire results in having excellent character and player skills to fly the ships. EVE training system of course ends up with everyone having perfect skills for every ship, but when you have less than 40-50mil SP, I'd rather focus on a working selection of ships than fiddle with everything with mediocre skills.