EVE New Citizens Q&A

A webbed frigate will still take very little damage from a torpedo, unless you convince it to leave its MWD on and not move (i.e. it isn't a anti-frigate weapon). Generally speaking, bombs are how you kill frigs in a stealth bomber, and that's not terribly effective unless you have a group of bombers and a nice trap set.

If you really enjoyed exploration... then continue doing it. Keep training the core skills while doing it, and don't be afraid to branch out. What do you enjoy about exploration? Simply scanning? Hacking & Analyzing? Combat sites? Just finding stuff in space?

Inties are great for moving around quickly in a hard-to-catch ship. They are generally weak in terms of sustaining damage, but still quite capable for dps for a frigate hulls.

AF's are slower frigates, but offer superior dps and tank.

Covops offer scanning, and can run hacking & analyzing sites very well.

Stealth bombers are a niche attack boat... low tank, sluggish for a frigate, great dps to BC+ targets, great in groups, but generally not a good solo ship.

I'm going to not answer your question. Its something you'll need to decide for yourself down the road. Instead I recommend training into t1 versions of the ships you listed (well except for stealth bombers, they're cool but very very specific in usage). Train your racial frigate and cruiser skills up and your core skills. You've listed a few covert ops ships, but its not necessary to fly covert when a t2 cloak is also very good (and the ships are cheaper). Find a corp and try some of that stuff out with cheaper versions of the ships.

Agree with this.

There are a couple of things no tech 1 ship can do, but not all that many. And let's say you start with exploration and decide it's your favorite part of EVE - you won't be doing it 100% of the time you are playing, so some of the skills you train that are not used for exploration will serve you well in other areas.

If in three months you are spending most of your time running exploration sites in lowsec, a time will come when someone tries to muscle into your territory and beat you to the best sites - at this point, the ability to fly an assault frigate may help you set just the trap needed to send the upstart back to their clone bay. Likewise the ability to fly a (tech 1) logistics cruiser might help if you band with a few other explorers to evict a gatecamp that's been preying on you when you take your loot to highsec to sell.

So don't be afraid to spend a few days on skills you won't always use. You will find uses for them when you have them.

For one thing the spaceship command book required for stealth bombers and covert ops are the same book so by training one you train the other, the difference is whether or not you train torpedoes.

While it is not totally accurate to say this but in general you don't want to fire missiles at a ship that is smaller than the one that fits a given launcher. The obvious exceptions being stealth bombers which fit battleship sized missiles to a frigate in which case you only want to attack things much larger than yourself and rapid launchers which fit smaller grade missiles to larger ships making you good at fighting ships smaller than your own.

Unlike turrets, missile launchers do not have a tracking speed and so a frigate would not survive against larger missiles if missile damage application was consistent regardless of ship size. Frigates are able to survive on the field against turret battleships because those ships will struggle to hit against a frigate under most circumstances. That being said a single quality hit from a group of large turrets will one-shot a frigate. So missile damage drops off dramatically the smaller a target is and the faster it is moving, otherwise something like a Raven would kill a frigate with every shot.

So while a generalization of what ships you can hit well with missiles is not fully possible here are some guidelines for each type and the ships they will land well against:

Rockets: anything.

Light Missiles (including rapid light launchers): anything.

Heavy Missiles (including rapid heavy launchers): cruisers and larger.

Heavy Assault Missiles: cruiser - battlecruiser and larger.

Cruise Missiles: battlecruiser and larger.

Torpedoes: battlecruiser and larger.

This does not mean rockets and light missiles are overpowered though because their high damage application comes at the cost of raw power, so fit launchers appropriate to your ship. But you can see that bombers don't have a wealth of targets to hit as most ships you will find in PVP, particularly in low sec, will be cruisers or smaller and the smaller your target gets the harder it will be for you to do anything to it. Probes do have uses in PVP as well and covert ops frigates can make for good scouts with the ability to warp in on someone's safe spot by using probes to find them and if you like the exploration stuff covert ops is a good place to start, you'll learn the rest as you go.

EDIT: Last but not least if you do start down the dark path and get into PVP in this game and you start to feel guilty about blowing up someone else's stuff remember that this is what we log in for. You wouldn't feel guilty for punching a guy in a boxing match would you? For the most part it's not personal and we get it, I myself will fleet up with some people one day then attack them the next. Only fly what you don't mind losing and don't worry about it, it's all good and everything dies eventually.

PvP and exploration can go well together. A good scout with fast combat probes can create a lot of fun and be a large asset to the fleet. You could also train into the recon ships (douche move) but its pretty great :D.

Pretty much this.

Interceptors are fairly flexible and forgiving in what they can do and will teach you how to better survive unfriendly encounters much more so than most other ships. I would personally focus on this ship type first.

From there you can branch out to Assault Frigates (which trade in speed for tank and gank) and/or Stealth Bombers (which trade in flexibility against many targets for stealth and better destructive ability against larger ones).

Understand that MANY skills are not mutually exclusive to one ship type and can be slapped on to ships that are not necessarily focused towards it (ex. probe launcher on an Interceptor).


As for Thermodynamics... it's a "nice to have" skill but not absolutely necessary (I personally overload only when I am unsure about my chances for better or worse).

I strongly disagree with the person that said Thermodynamics is not a must-have skill.

Overheating your tank will save you if you screw up in PVE and has real PVP applications if you use anything other than a neut-proof armor buffer tank. Overheating your tackle will prevent many foes escaping. And overheating your guns is often the difference between killing a ship 2 seconds before it gets remote reps, or having those reps land 1 second before you would have popped the ship.

Also the main prereq for Thermodynamics is Power Grid Management, an absolutely essential skill.

Just train it to 2 or 3 now; 4 can come in time. (5 is extravagant and something to train in five years' time).

I seriously always forget to overheat. In the several years I've had the skill, I think I've only activated it once, accidently. I should use it more, but I've never been in a pvp situation where a little extra would make a difference. Except in PVE, and since it's stuck in my head that overheating is a pvp skill, I never use it there either.

On the flip side, I've almost always used the overheat skill in most engagements, unless they are a clear winner.

Thermodynamics 5, you'll never look back :)

Thanks to everyone for the replies, really helpful.

I figure I'll polish out a couple of my last core skills so I can fly the Slicer in FW, while doing that I'll go for scanning skills and Anathema. After that, thermodynamics. And whatever I'll want after that. Seems like I have a skill plan for now.