EVE New Citizens Q&A

Caldari traditionally use railguns instead of blasters (though the Merlin itself is arguably a blaster platform), but they really shine with missiles.

You can totally use railguns or missiles with Caldari, and there are a few blaster builds for some of their ships as well.

No need to switch races.

Double clicking in empty space will make your ship fly in that directionl.

Well that makes me happy. I thought the guy in rookie chat must have been wrong. If Caldari race only had bonuses to missles, why would one of their ships only have turret hardpoints.

But about my other question.....SHOULD I only train in missle OR say railguns? Will it be too much to train both? Because I was thinking about training both. Maybe one day I feel like rolling with missles, but then another maybe I feel like railguns. If I train both, then I have that option. My only worry is that it might not be viable to train both. I want my pilot and my ships to be "in demand" in various PvP scenerios. I don't want to be the guy last picked for teams in middle school dodgeball.....I don't want to be a ret pally pre-BC in WoW.....I don't want to be the "well he is better than nothing" kinda of guy.

Yall understand what I mean there? SO...by training both types of weapons, would that be a mistake?

when you say it will take longer....how long are we talking? just weeks or months right? Probably not years. hopefully not years.

This is primarily the case for the largest fleet engagements, where it might take up to ten seconds for your missiles to hit. You see, it is a common tactic to "Alpha strike" down targets in such engagements, i.e. dealing sudden bursts of damage to destroy a target before the enemy logistics ships can get remote reps applied. This "burst" is easier to apply with turrets, as they deal their damage instantly, whereas your missiles may land too late - the enemy may have survived long enough to be repaired, or it might already be dead, wasting your damage potential.

However, missiles are really good in most smaller-scale scenarios, where coordinated alpha strikes aren't so much of an issue. It has no issues with "tracking", so you are free to orbit your target at 500m no matter what size of missiles you're using. Especially Stealth Bombers - frigates that use the large "Torpedo" class missiles - can hunt large Battlecruisers and Battleships by orbiting closer than the Battleships can effectively track them, something no ship using large turrets could possibly do while still putting out damage.

In short, missiles have the advantage of not caring about how you fly, only how your enemy flies, and is therefore a much easier weapon system to understand and use. It certainly won't prevent you from getting into a corporation.

I recommend the Condor and the Corax if you're only flying Caldari, but I must say that I find the most fun missile frigate to be the Breacher.

You're missing rate of fire.

Light missiles do substantially more damage than rockets per volley. A scourge light missile does 83 kinetic damage at base. A scourge rocket does 33 kinetic damage at base.

A light missile launcher I has a 15 second cycle time at base.
A rocket launcher I has a 5 second cycle time at base.

So, at base, a light missile launcher will do 83/15 = 5.533 "paper" damage per second.
A rocket launcher will do 33/5 = 6.6 "paper" damage per second.

TBH, on most ships, for most PvE applications, long range weapons are preferable, but there's more to short range weapons than just their superior DPS - they're also typically easier to fit, leaving more room for a beefier tank, etc.

The ammo was the same, but probably not the launchers since I bought the missle launchers on the market and received the rocket launchers as a reward for tutorials. AND I didn't take rate of fire into consideration. See...I KNEW I was missing something.

So in PvP.....on a frigate.....would rockets or light missles be preferable? Also, how should I be flying with light missles? Like with railguns and rockets, I understand that orbiting is a decent way to do some evasive manuvers. and when closing in against an enemy with lasers I want to sort of spiral in to reduce my. I also want to be faster and in a tighter circle to make it hard for the guns to track me. But how do I fly if I am fighting with light missles? Do I just "keep at range"? Do I do some sort of crazy huge orbit? Or should I try to get in close? Do light missles lose some power if I get too close?

I am trying to figure out the best way to utilize my condor. Right now I just doing PvE, but I want to start planning for some PvP. I just want to wait until I have some experience under my belt and some sort of strategy.

I think its important to point out a couple of things others may have missed

Most people don't use destroyers for PvE because you don't need to train destroyers to train cruisers and there is nothin that they can do that a frigate can't, and if a site is to hard for a frigate then a cruiser will fit through the gate.

generally if a PvE target can shoot at you then you just want to be moving, in missions with a lot of rats I generally just pick a random piece of debris and orbit it at closest optimal orbit distance for the ship. Generally once you get your skills up rats pop to fast to bother with orbiting individual ships.


It is important that you understand that your character has no bonuses that you don't choose, all races can have identically skilled characters, when they say that the caldari have bonuses to missiles they are talking about the ships themselves not your toon, if you read the ships description you will see what the bonuses for the ship are, a condor for example has a bonus description of Caldari Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to light missile and rocket kinetic(scourge) damage 10% bonus to light missile and rocket velocity per skill level. The Merlin gets Caldari Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to shield resistances and 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret optimal range per skill level. And the Kestrel gets Caldari Frigate Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Kinetic missile damage and 5% bonus to EM, Explosive, and Thermal missile damage per level. So out of the combat frigates the Kestrel and Condor are missle bonused and the Merlin is Hybrid bonused in favor of blasters(it gives longer range to the short range systems.

Other races also have ships that are missile bonused. The Amarr Vengeance assault ship for example has Amarr Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Rocket Damage per level And the Minmatar Talwar Destroyer has a destroyer skill bonus (soon to be changed to Minmatar destroyer skill bonus): 5% bonus to explosive(nova) missiles damage per level and a role bonus of 50% increase in missile velocity.

Most of the fleet commanders only care what ships people show up in if they have logistics support, then they will call for you to bring armor tanked or shield tanked and only think you are that guy if you bring the wrong tank. In small scale fleet warfare weapon systems matter less although at long range missiles run into problems because they take time to travel from your ship to the enemy whereas turrets always hit instantly so you might fire a missile volley at an enemy at extreme range(100k+) and by the time the missile reaches the target they have gotten 3 gunnery volleys into you, missiles out range guns though so once you get skills to 5 and implants you can effectively be out of range of guns. Missiles also cause lag in large fleet engagements (1000+ships). Finally missiles don't fire straight at the target, they leave the launcher and then turn so you have to deduct roughly 10% from your paper range velocity x duration (viewable from the fitting window by selecting the launchers attributes, use the fitting window when it's fitted to the ship your flying as that takes your skills into account)