EVE New Citizens Q&A

i'm pretty sure you do not mean the megathron. it is a relatively expensive battleship that is not suited for new players, especially not for learning pvp. you should start with frigate or destroyer class ships, then when you feel comfortable and have a few kills nder your belt move up to cruisers or assault frigates. in the beginning a 2-5 million ship (modules, rigs and insurance included) will serve you perfectly well. buy a few dozen of them and go out and lose them in pvp. try to learn as much as possible from each loss.

For new fellas, I suspect you'd be best served eyeing a cruiser hull, rather than a battleship. Particularly since you've expressed interest in Null-sec sovereign warfare, as the cruiser is the workhorse of war.

Tech 1 for disposable stuff, at roughly 20 mil, fitted out, or ~185 mil for a tech2 ship-of-the-line Heavy Assault Cruiser. Expensive, but usually covered by a null- alliance's Ship Replacement Program.

Prior to that, it's all about the frigates. Those wont tend to make your wallet sweat. 1 mil for a cheap tech1, or ~25 for a tech2 interceptor.

Whether or not any of that seems expensive is dependent on your level of income, which is different for everyone, and tends to grow over time.

I'd suggest looking away from battleship hulls. They are logistically problematic, expensive, ponderous, and practically fragile, due to their low mobility and vulnerability to light tackle. They don't get used that often in Null- unless it's a very large fleet on an uncommonly important op. You will tend to get very few opportunities to fly them in fleets. And it doesn't help that battleship hulls and their weapons take a lot more time to train, compared to cruisers. Focusing on battleships gets you a lot less bang for your time, and less action, and at a premium price.

Interesting. Okay so, when you say Cruiser, are we talking about Battlecruisers like the Talos?

Yeah, the income is something I'm going to have to figure out pretty soon I figure. I thought it was a bit too easy for me to make 1mil ISK and then I saw how much stuff cost.

Also, newb question, is EVEmail the private messaging on the forums here or is that the in game mail?

Also also, how exactly does the death and clone thing work? I know that you can buy a clone to cover X amount of SP's, but does that mean you have to retrain all the skills (potentially days worth) all over

EDIT:
Just looked at the price of the Talos and I don't think that's what you mean by Cruisers.

EDIT EDIT:
What is the difference of lowsec, nullsec, and highsec and how do you tell them apart in game? I'm assuming it's the amount of security (NPC) there is in that zone. Is this anything like a balance of good and evil though? Pardon the reference, but Alliance/Horde or Alliance/Empire?

0.0? Is that nullsec? How do you tell high sec from low sec? What is FW and Wh space?

Ship hull size classes in ascending order:
Frigate, destroyer, cruiser, battlecruiser, battleship
There are four more categories(dreadnought, carrier, supercarrier, titan), but are different enough that they don't belong in the above list's context.

Cruisers are, in my opinion, more than just a stepping stone, seeing as they're so widely used, powerful, versatile, and quite newbie-accessible. After playing for a year, I decided to specialize in cruisers rather than spending my training time on larger hulls. I haven't regretted it.
Tech1 examples: Vexor, Thorax, Omen, Stabber, Caracal
Un-fitted tech1 hulls cost roughly 10-15m each.

High-sec is 1.0 to .5, where you can expect Concord to respond to aggression. Players cannot practically own or control space. They belong to NPC empires. Nothing interesting happens here, a very boring place.

Low-sec is 0.4 to 0.1, where Concord doesn't respond to fights, but turrets around gates and stations will respond to aggression. Space is 'owned' by the NPC empires or smaller npc factions, and cannot be owned by players. It is possible to somewhat control the space, in a loose sense, if a group bottles it up with gate camps, and such. Fun PVP flourishes here, but the fights generally have no purpose beyond seeking action. If you cross from high-sec to low-sec, you can expect to see someone waiting on the other side of the gate, looking to pop you.

Null-sec is 0.0 to -1.0. The space is sometimes 'owned' by an NPC faction, allowing anyone to dock in those stations, but aggression is not responded to. Most of the space is owned by player alliances, and coalitions of alliances. Null-sec gameplay is, in my biased opinion, the essence of Eve.

The above three categories are sometimes called K-space(known space), when in the context of a conversation involving W-space(wormhole space). W-Space is... well I'm not a wormholer, so I'll just leave that alone. It's different.

Good and Evil don't exist in Eve, beyond what you decide for yourself. NPC factions might be decidedly bad - who can empathize with the Blood Raiders? - but the NPC narrative within Eve is so back-burner and irrelevant that it's not worth even one more sentence.

Some player groups like to crudely style themselves as good guys or bad guys. Most player groups like to style their opponents as bad guys. Feel free to fall for any of it, or not, but in the end we're all just gamers. Despite that, we've managed to make some pretty compelling history to tell.

a few comments:
- EVEMail is both the ingame mail and the messaging system here on the forums. it's pretty convenient when you need to close a deal or communicate with your ingame buddies while at real life work.

- good and evil do not exist as long as you keep it in the game. it's ok to try to scam other players out of their ISK, it's not ok to try and scam them out of real money. "i will find you and podkill you" is ok, "i will find you and kill you in real life" is not ok and will get you banned.

- one good starting place for a budding pvp pilot is faction warfare. it's mostly frigate and destroyer combat, it can be profitable if invest some time and effort and it teaches you the basics of lowsec life, especially if you join a decently active corp.

- the sisters of eve arc is a little long for my taste, but it does have a nice backstory, so feel free to spend some time reading the mission descriptions.

edit: oh, and as for wormhole space, it's a little like the next step after 0.0. there is not only no space police and no gate guns, there are also no jump gates and no stations. the 'local' chat will not show you who else is in system until they choose to talk (which nobody ever does obviously) and there is no formal sovereignty system; the people who 'own' a wormhole system are the people who killed those who owned it before and destroyed or took all their stuff.

the celestis is an electronic warfare ship. rather than doing lots of damage, it reduces the opponents locking range and targeting speed, which makes it harder for them to be effective.

the exequror is a logistics ship, a 'healrer' if you want.

the thorax is a traightforward gunship with bonuses to hybrid turrets (blasters and railguns).

the vexor is a drone ship. all races make use of drones, but the gallente have the most (and arguably the best).
that's for you to tell. us rich folks can lose a battleship a day and not care too much but for a new player even a 20mil cruiser can be above budget. you can try and estimate the price in real money. since a PLEX can be bought for $20 from CCP and is worth around 700kk ISK, a 7kk destroyer is worth about 20 cents. (btw: selling ISK for real money is not allowed and can also get you banned pretty easily).

edit: you can find info on ships and all kinds of other things on the EVE university wiki: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Exequror

...is awesome!

W-space systems are only connected via wormholes, which you need to scan for with probes.
Unlike gates these connections aren't constant. After about a day a wormhole connection will collapse and a random new connection will spawn.
This means your neighborhood changes every day!

Also those wormholes will collapse if too many ships pass through them. People use this to collapse them deliberately and thus change the connection to look for PvP that way.

Another major difference to k-space is: there are no stations in w-space. CCP originally didn't intend for those systems to be permanently inhabited, but of course people did it anyway.
We live in something called a POS, which is basically a big force field bubble where we store our stuff. No stations ofc also means that there is no market, so you can't just "fly to the next system to buy that skillbook". You need to haul everything in from k-space or produce it yourself.
Owning a system works by the simple principle of: if you live there and defend it against intruders, you own it.

Agreed.

Cruisers are not a stepping stone, they are a corner stone.

If you include both Tech 1 and Tech 2 cruisers, they are the most versatile class of ships and thus there is always a cruiser that will be of use.

From anti frigate support to high damage.
From E-War to logistics.

Cruisers can fill the roles.