EVE New Citizens Q&A

I did a forum search on Combat Tips and was quite surprised when I got no search results. I've only been playing for really 2 days now. I played about 4 days of the 14-day trial before quitting for about a month. I then decided to subscribe, and created a new character which I've been playing for 2 days.

I'm looking for some simple Combat Tips. I don't want to read an essay about combat or PvP because frankly I don't have enough experience to digest all that I would be told in such a discourse.

What I'm looking for should be fairly straight forward to answer, so I'll pose a three main questions, each with some sub questions:

What is the basic sequence of events for engaging in combat in both PvE and PvP?
For example, I've basically been doing the following naive sequence:

1. Activate Shield Booster.
2. Lock 2 (max I'm allowed currently) targets.
3. Keep Within Range 2,500m (I have a missile launcher and a small turret, so I need to keep within range for the turret, as the missiles seem to simply have a max range, but can also be used close.
4. Activate Turret.
5. Activate Missile Launcher.
6. Blow up target.
7. Lock 1 additional target.
8. Repeat at #2.

• Is there a better sequence of actions that would be more effective?
• Am I missing any important steps?
• Am I doing a tactical no-no here?

How can I maneuver my ship tactically in space to evade incoming firepower?
I haven't been in any PvP situations yet, so I'm sure PvP situations might be a bit more dynamic. What I've noticed is that I find myself in a shooting gallery at times. For example, I was in a mission where there were about 15 drones in one area. When I set Keep Within Range 2,500m, I tended to sit right in the middle of all 15 ships, and not really move. So, they were just blasting me from all sides. Since I can't move my ship in a third-person WASD manner, I was unable to realize a method of maneuvering my ship to evade the barrage of incoming firepower.

• What are some good methods of constantly moving while in battle?
• Is there any benefit to constantly moving, like does it give a bonus to evading enemy fire?
• Should I be using Orbit instead of Keep Within Range?

How can I determine the strength of a target before I engage it?
Again, speaking from my PvE experience...I was unable to find any means of getting information about the target I was targeting. For example, in the mission where there were 15 assailants, I couldn't tell which targets I should target first. In my mind, the best strategy would be to eliminate the weaker targets first so that less firepower is being directed at my ship, thus giving my shield booster a chance to recover. However, with no means of determining which ships are the weakest, this strategy was rendered impossible.

• How can I determine the strength of a target?
• Do I need special equipment?
• Am I just not looking in the right place?

Again, not looking for any deep technical write-ups. Most of this should be answerable with a couple of sentences I think. Not looking for all answers to come from one person, unless you feel like doing that.

Thanks.

There are several ways to reduce the incoming firepower. For turret based weapons (hybrids, lasers, and projectiles) there are 2 main weapon characteristics that you need to take advantage of to reduce incoming firepower. Those are tracking speed and optimal range.

Tracking speed is how quickly the weapon can follow you. So when fighting against these types of weapons, you either want to orbit your opponent as close and as quickly as possible (mostly useful when engaging ships larger than yours) or you want to maintain range outside of your opponents weapon range (going to be more effective then close orbit for similar size ships).

For missiles, the amount of damage the missile does is dependent on how fast your ship is moving. When engaging missile based ships, its best to maintain a straight line directly at or away from the opponent to maximize your speed (reducing missile damage) and enabling you to hit them easier in return.


One tactical no-no you seem to be breaking is mixing weapon systems. Generally you want to stick to only using 1 weapon system so that all of your weapons are effective at similar ranges. Also, orbiting is going to be better than keeping at range in most cases especially for PvE. You can set a custom orbit distance by right clicking the set orbit button if you don't like the default options. You can also manually fly by double clicking in space. Manually flying will be much more important in PvP than PvE and is worth learning how to do effectively by looking up youtube videos such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT8VqVcLDqc

You could fit an afterburner/microwarp drive and a web or two.

1. Choose target
2. Kite just inside your missile range
2a. Try not to kite in a straight line if they have guns and you are within their range (Google angular velocity, transversal, and tracking for reason why)
3. Web if they get too close (inside 10km)
4. Blap him with your missiles
5. Switch targets
6. ???
7. Profit

For PvE this is a great site to give you an idea of what you are going up against.

yes yes yes.

Actually my first Dessie was a fully loaded armor plated shield extended brick of slow moving failfit.

Levels 1s were sooooo easy though.

On the idea of not mixing weapon systems: Should I just fit as many missile launchers as I can, and abandon the idea of using turret?

As far as I can remember from my play last night, missiles don't have any fall off within their 18KM range. If I can keep such an extreme range, and still get maximum effect, why would I ever even consider using a small turret, that has a very small range of effectiveness?

When is it advantageous to use a turret as opposed to missiles? From what I'm reading, it seems like missiles would be the way to go in every situation - you get extreme range and possibly comparable power. Maybe that is wrong, and I just don't have enough exposure yet to realize it.

Thanks everyone for the input! This has been much easier to digest so far than any of the numerous guides I've found through Google.

Yes, fit as many of the same type weapon appropriate for your ship. What I mean is that ships have bonuses for certain weapon systems and some even have bonuses for ammo type.

By using these bonused weapons/ammo you are maximizing the potential for damage. However, enemies may have resistances geared toward your bonus and you may find yourself using a different ammo-type than your bonused ammo type to break their resistance. You'll need to crunch numbers to determine whether it is feasible to do so.

As far as using missiles over guns, that also depends on your bonuses for weapon/ammo type. Generally, in my experience, I have used missiles in PvE and guns in PvP (Heavy Assault Missiles are the exception in PvP depending again on ship bonus, however).

With a frigate using small, fast missiles and quick tracking turrets, you won't notice much difference. When you get to very large weapons, things change quite a bit.


In general, turrets do much more damage to small targets, when you can hit them.
A Raven using Cruise missiles has mediocre DPS against battlecruisers and up, but it can actually take several hits to kill frigates unless you fit a target painter. A raven using torpedoes will have higher damage, but the radius of the missiles is so large you'll really only do damage to structures and other battleships.

A megathron using turrets on the other hand: If it's using railguns it will be able to do serious damage to anything at long range (including one shotting frigates), but will have trouble hitting anything at under 20km. With close range blasters, you can expect to one shot even medium-sized ships in PVE, but you have a narrow window to hit them in (between around 15 and 30km depending on your tracking and falloff).

You don't. It's more memorization than anything. Usually races are weak against the types of damage they deal.
Guristas/EOM/Caldari/Mordus: Kinetic
Angel/Minmatar: Explosive
Guristas/Syndicate/Serpentis: Thermal
Sansha/Blood Raiders/Amarr: EM

There are weird exceptions.
Rogue Drones do explosive damage but are weak against EM.
Mercenaries do omni damage but are weakest against thermal.
Sleepers aren't weak against anything.
Incursion rats will vary.

Well I've got to say this forum thread has been extremely informative. I feel like I might have enough knowledge now to branch into some of the other guides out there. I'm going to spend some time perusing that EVE University site now as well.

Thanks all!