EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi,

I've been playing EVE for a few weeks now, and this is my second attempt at the game. I tried EVE the first time about a year ago I think, but it felt a bit too "heavy" if you know what I mean. I love the space though, the stars, the unknown, the cold, and it gives me chills just to look at the clear sky on a pitch black night, and I'm getting derailed here...

Anyway, I'm at it again, trying to get hooked on EVE, and this time I'm going to force my self to try most of the aspects of the game. I love the space, but I have to figure out what I want to do out there!

This thread is about guns though. Small guns vs. small ships, etc? That's what I've gathered so far. I bought my first cruiser, my biggest ship, a Thorax, and it was exciting (first time around I got only to destroyer size), but I noticed when I went to do a mission and these little pirates came in their little frigates, it took me right about the same time to kill them with medium turrets as it does with small ones. Though I had medium drones also out so in fact they might have done most of the job anyway.

Is there a secret to make bigger guns effective against smaller ships? Or should I just hold on to bigger ships until I get bigger missions? It's a bit of a letdown if I have to fit small guns into a big ship, especially when there's a limited amount of slots where they go. Any ideas? Tips? Suggestions? I'm all ears, thank you.

Some medium guns are anti-small ships (220mm autocannons, rapid light missile launcher). But in general, you lose a great deal of DPS against smaller ships because they're harder to hit.

You can slow your target down and increase their signature radius to deal extra damage. You should have some extra mid slots on your thorax; consider running a webbifier (decrease target speed, so you track batter), or a target painter (increase signature radius, so your turrets have a more similar signature resolution to the target). In the case of gallente ships, the web will likely do you more good.

Also medium drones wont tend to hit frigates very well. Quite likely you would do MORE actual damage to the small fast ships with Light Scout Drones.

Every weapon has it's own "Tracking Speed" which is the speed it can be rotated to follow a target. Drones weapons also have a limited tracking speed which tends to favour shooting things of their favourite size catagory :

Light scout drones for small targets like frigates / destroyers / fast cruisers
Medium drones for slow big cruisers / battlecruisers
Large drones for battleships and above

The DPS (Damage per second) figure represented in the fittings window assumes perfect hits which is very rarely the case. Just because medium drones show higher DPS doesnt mean you will get even close to that figure shooting at small frigates and the same for medium guns. You will likely find that a 130dps Destroyer does more damage to fast frigates with its small guns that can track fast, than a 300dps Cruiser that can't actually apply it's 300dps to such a small fast target.

Of course if you can work out a way to slow the target down to a speed better suited to the cruiser then it can work (WEB/s!), but i still suggest light scout drones for a good long while.

Every ship is a TOOL and nothing more. It does what it does well, but that will NEVER be everything. Use the right tool for the job and the job will go quick. I know it feels like every new ship at this stage is the 1 and u wanna be in it always, but try to knock a nail in with a sledge hammer ur probly gonna miss 9 times out of 10. Collect together a belt of tools for different things and start to learn which tool does what :)

OP if you'd like to come and fly with a group get in touch in game. Eve isn't meant to be "completely" solo o/

Find a good corp who can help you out. Its the best way to grow in eve.

On the drones,

A good rule of thumb is a flight of 5 is always better than a mixed flight. So if you have a 40m3 drone bay 25 bandwidth, better to have 5 smalls out, with 3 spares than 2 mediums and 1 small. You actually get more dps from the 5 smalls because they spend less time traveling between kills. Exceptions to this rule do exist, but they are situational.

Thank you sir for the offer, but I'll look around for a while and get hang of basic things, also there's still the "everyone wants to scam you and kill you and eat your beating heart while sipping white wine made of your tears" phase, so lets check on this in the future :)

That is the idea with rats. If they are smaller than you and/or you can outrange them fly right at them or away and let them chase you

It's against the EULA for me to scam you as a result of contacting you through the new players forums. Flying with new players / ironing out the initial learning curve is something i do regularly for players from this forum, and a little research will show nothing but good press.

And for info there is a special trick for hitting small things with large guns, you must reduce it's orbital velocity to something more in range of your guns. You can do this by being faster than your opponent and making them chase you in a straight line, while you shoot directly backward (no tracking required since target is essentially stationary, only moving toward or away from you).

Remember this when you are being shot at especially from range. Keep your orbital velocity of the target high, never chase directly or run away directly. Spirals are your friend when reducing incoming damage.