EVE New Citizens Q&A

Obviously, this is a question seeking -- to an extent -- opinion rather than outright fact. Different things are going to appeal to different people. However, were someone going to start a combat character from scratch, hoping to be helpful/successful in both PvE and, ultimately, PvP, would you encourage them to go Caldari with missiles, or Minmatar with projectiles? Yes, of course anyone can crosstrain other stuff later, but we're talking about months of work to get missiles or projectiles up to tech 2 standards with all the associated support/range skills at 4/5. Which direction would you suggest?

Projectiles are very popular for the reasons Lia Danna listed. I started the game with missiles and don't regret that decision. Unguided missiles tend to have a little better range than auto-cannons and you don't have to worry about tracking.

A few reasons you may not want to go with missiles:

You are stuck with Caldari and a handful of other ships. The missile support skills only benefit missiles, where as turret support skills will benefit all turrets.

Because you are stuck with Caldari, that means you are shield tanking, and shields generally take more skill points to get to the same level of competency as armor (this is a temporary issue until you get it trained up)

Missiles are typically not welcome in large null sec blob fleets, if that is what you want to get into.

For my first year I was exclusively minnie/projectile pilot, than I trained into missiles, then into drones. Meantime I trained all four races in various levels for ships I needed or wanted to fly. Thing is that even though I may have that little edge of level V in supports for those weapons I won't win fight simply because I suck at Eve and pvp especially. People are killing BS in t1 frigs not because they trained projectiles or missiles but because they are good at it. Ships and weapons and modules are just tools, anybody from my beloved R1FTA could kill me with civil guns just because they know what they are doing.

So I would say train little into different weapons, just enough to fit and use t1 equipment and try it in level 1 missions or duels with your corpies/friends. It is very possible you will simply fall in love with missiles and their trails leading to fireworks or you will discover touch of pride when your little t1 drones will viciously chase and kill those who dared to point their guns at you.

Play how you like and with toys you like.

Cruise missiles on a Raven are pretty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kED11aGobUk

Nothing at all wrong with choosing a ship you want to fly and training up for that based Purely on looks!. Of course it can backfire. My main was originally a Caldari, but after playing for a bit I decided I didn't want to ever fly a drake and I hated the paint scheme--Everything was black then with ugly red stripe. So I went Amarr because I liked GOLD!...Many of the ships seemed beautiful. But everyone swore Amarr were the red headed stepchild of CCP and would always be the worst race.

Then Trinity came out and they changed the paint and some of the models. Scorpion looks cool now, Only the Onyx has the old style paint, but it still looks better on the Onyx because of the improved textures.

Like the above poster said, don't fly based on today's meta. It is all subject to change. A few months from now they might nerf turrets to obsolesce for a year or so. Just make sure you like the ships you're training for and go from there.

Unfortunately, whatever corp you join might require you fly a ship you don't like. That seems to happen to me a lot. Each alliance has a doctrine, and if you fly outside that doctrine, they don't reim your ships at BEST, they might penalize you for flying out of doctrine at worst :(