EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm a relatively new player (2M skill points) who has played around with level 1 and 2 missions, PI, industrials, high sec ore mining and low sec ice mining plus some corp events. I've been trying to get a taste of everything to see what I find the most fun.

My latest goal is to do solo T1 frigate FW - focussing on offensive novice and small anomalies and 1v1 frigate PvP.

I started last night and lost two battles fairly quickly. I'd like to share my experience so I can get some tips from the community and learn from my mistakes.

Fight 1: I went to a defensive FW looking for a fight. I'd seen someone with terrible standing to my corp in local and assumed they were a ganker but hoping they were a frigate ganker and therefore fair game. I was in a Slasher fit with autocannons, warp disruptor, a small shield tank, AB and overdrive hull mods. No rigs. My general game plan was to burn in and orbit close. However was not to be. The opponent found me (which was fine), warp disrupted me (which was fine) then stayed at 20km range and pounded me with missles (not fine). I burned as hard towards him as I could but distance stayed the same. After popping I warped pod to station.

After match breakdown: I looked up the opposing ship and it was 175m isk faction frigate - Garmur. From what I can tell the "keep at 20km and pound with missiles" tactic is a standard fit. I suspect - and here is what I'd like feedback on - is there is no way I could have won that fight, or escaped, with my fit.

First question: I just selected "orbit 500m" and put on AB. Is there any way I could have closed the fistance to ~8k to use my ACs? Would a MWD work while disrupted?

Second question: Is there any Slasher fit I could have taken that would have beaten him solo? Or been able to escape? Would it be advisable to fit stabs?

Third question: After this I was careful to DScan potential targets and found almost every frigate in DScan in multiple FW systems was a faction frigate. Is this normal? Is it usually so hard to find another T1 frigate to fight?

Fight 2: I got home, switched to my Rifter. AC's, medium shield booster, AB, warp disrupter, damage control 1, tracking computer. I was concious the medium shield booster was contentious as it would burn cap in 15s but I was struggling to decide what else to fit as I couldn't fit a medium extender.

This time I went to a FW front line system and went to small anomaly. There was an NPC destroyer. I was doing about 40dps and he straight shield tanked me for minutes.

After a while a T1 frigate found me - we had a short tussle and I was destroyed and podded. I recall less about this fight as it was short. I was warp disrupted and scrammed. He was doing 300-400dps and I was doing 40 - again hopelessly outgunned. From the logs he was in a T1 skip (I forget which) but had all T2 modules. This time I was able to be in range and orbit close with AB on but he wanted that too and absolutely pounded me.

Fourth question: Is this normal? I feel I should be doing way more DPS. I have all my basic ship skills at ~level 4 and I was fitted with ~meta 2 modules. No rigs. Would I have eventually burned through the destroyers tank or was my fit/skills just poor?

Fifth question: Both fights involved being warp disrupted. I was thinking if I pack a nosferatu plus a way to burn cap like the shield booster would that be a good way to a) help shield tank and b) help get rid of the warp disruptor so I can escape? I've ever used nosferatu before so I have no idea how effective they are. I'm Minmitar so I don't need cap for guns.

Sixth question: Could I have fitted ECM or tracking disruptors in either fight as a better alternative to a rather weak shield tank? Again - I've not used them before so I have no idea if they are effective in 1v1 frigate PvP.

I'm not put off by this, I can probably afford another 20 ships before having to earn more ISK - my PI can probably cover this perpetually. But logistically how do I streamline getting new throwaway ships? I'm ~10 jmps from a trade hub and have T1 indys but I don't think they could take, say, 5 T1 frigates plus modules easily. Seems like the ISK isn't the issue but the logistics are.

Seventh question: What is the best way to replace ships? In trade hubs?

Eigth question: I have no experience identifying ships by name. Is there a good quick reference or easy way to learn all the different frigates to distinguish T1/T2/factional and to understand common fits? I'm thinking I have about 30 sec warning from DScanning someone at a novice/small anomaly to deciding when to fight or flee.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

I'm pretty new as well but I do know a few things that might help, for starters this website has been amazing and I link it to every fellow newbie looking to pew pew. Apparently the ship articles (which will help with identifying good/bad targets), are a bit out of date, but the principles are pretty much the same.

Question 1: I've attempted to fight a few Garmurs, it doesn't end well . I'm sure some more experienced players could, or have killed them in a Slasher, but I'm not quite there myself. What I can tell you is that they've all been fit for kiting. The bonuses they get just beg to be used as a kiting ship. The velocity bonus to missiles means they get longer range on their missiles, and the Scramble/Disruptor range bonus means they can keep their targets locked down from a very long way away. If the fight starts from far away and you're using an afterburner (125% speed bonus) and he's using a Micro Warp Drive (500% speed bonus), catching him will require some fancy maneuvering that I don't know how to do quite yet. Apparently something called a "Slingshot maneuver" can work in theory if the opposing pilot falls for it.

Basically I avoid Garmurs unless I have some kind of back up for now .

The rule of thumb to take away is that to fight a kiting ship, you either need to be faster, have longer range, better positioning, or better piloting skill. EVE Ship to ship PvP is an elaborate game of Rock Paper Scissors when it comes to fits, except instead of 3 variables, you have hundreds, if not thousands. That's what makes it fun though .

When it comes to logistics, I've found a few options in the last few days since I'm planning on moving a lot of stuff out to low as well. I've managed with minimal skillpoint investment to fit a Tayra (Caldari Industrial), filled the lowslots with cargo expanders, and rigged with cargo expanding rigs, to get about 30 000 m3 of cargo space. That's quite a few packaged frigates you can fit inside, leave some room for modules and ammo and you can bring out enough frigates for a little while. Of course, you have to be VERY careful when transporting your stuff in lowsec, but it's doable.
There's also Red Frog Freight, they will ship your stuff for a very low price, albeit only through High Sec, for low and null sec they have a sister corp named Black Frog, they are much more expensive though.

I hope some of this helps, and someone please correct me if I said something dumb.

Fly Dangerously o7.

Since you were in a Slasher, no. That fight was lost before it began. Garmur has 3 missile slots with 25% bonus to missile damage per Caldari frigate skill level (125% with Caldari Frigate on level 5) and 200% bonus to missile velocity.

Although Garmur is a powerful ship, its strength is not the only reason why you lost the fight. One of the big reasons is that you tried to apply a tactic of burning in close and orbiting on a target that is a missile ship. That tactics does not give you any advantage... it even gives your target an advantage. When fighting against missile ships, you should consider their weaknesses:

1. Their DPS drops with lowering your signature radius - shield tanking will not help you there, because shield modules and rigs increase your signature radius. It's not a major factor when fighting frigate vs frigate, but it contributes. The good call on your side was to fit an Afterburner instead of Microwarp Drive, because MWDs increase your signature radius significantly when active;
2. Their DPS drops with your speed, any speed - it does not really matter for this particular point whether you are orbiting at 1,000m or 10,000m. While ships with guns have an issue tracking the target once it passes maximum radial velocity of their guns, missile ships do not have this problem. As long as you are moving as fast as you can, you are decreasing the incoming DPS. Obviously, you biggest enemy for this point is your target's Stasis Webifier.
3. They don't have "Falloff range" as guns do. Once their missiles reach their maximum distance, they simply stop hitting you. - Keeping out of the range of incoming missiles is, obviously, a perfect solution here, but it's not always possible to pull off. More powerful missiles have shorter flight ranges, so you might be able to do this if your target is using Rockets.

Basically, the tactics for fighting against missile ships is to:
- move as fast as you can with an afterburner;
- try to keep out of range of their Rockets (this will require you to use long-range guns... in Minmatar case it's Artillery);
- keep your signature radius low (ideally, use an armor tanked ship, preferably with armor tanking bonuses);

That's for missile ships in general, but you should avoid (for a start) to get into fights against faction frigates (like Garmur) or Tech 2 ships, until you are comfortable enough with your tactical approach. Oh, and always put some rigs on your ship - they are not expensive and will provide you with significant advantages over unrigged ship.


Against Garmur, no. It's a very fast ship and if he has a Stasis Webifier on top of its speed, he will dictate the distance not you. For 1v1 frigate fights, consider fitting a Stasis Webifier yourself. It might help you dictate the range yourself, especially against targets that don't have one themselves. MWD is dangerous to use against missile ships, as it increases your signature radius (and with that the incoming DPS). MWD can be shut down with Warp Scramblers, but not with Warp Disruptors.


Very hard if not impossible to do it. If you are in a Slasher and your target is in a Garmur, your best bet would be to hope that your target really sucks at PvP.


Dedicated PvP-ers in FW tend to use faction frigates. Most notably Navy Slicers and Firetails. That's because they are easily obtainable (read: cheap) in FW loyalty point stores. It's common to get a lot of faction frigates, but they are not the only ones active in FW. For example, a lot of players are using an Incursus for FW, either to farm or PvP in. Griffins can also be seen in decent numbers, but you should either prepare your fit to fight specifically against a Griffin (by fitting your racial ECCM and increasing your Sensor Strength enough to not be jammed by the Griffin) or stay the hell away from them. They are easy to kill if you can counter their jammers, though.

Mixed tanks, either passive with active or shileld and armor are working if just a handful of situations and only if you have a lot of experience and know exactly what you are going to get by using the mixed tank. If you are worried about you capacitor on an active tanked shield ship, there are three options to consider:

- increasing your passive capacitor recharge by using appropriate rigs: Capacitor Control Circuit, Semiconductor Memory Cell or Core Defense Capacitor Safeguard (or a good combination of them). To determine which combination of rigs work the best, use a fitting tool like EFT or Pyfa;

- providing active capacitor recharge by fitting a Capacitor Booster. Just note that you will need to carry Capacitor Batteries as charges and that they may take a lot of space in your cargo hold;

- using Ancillary Shield boosters. Especially two of them. They only spend your capacitor when they are out of Capacitor Batteries as charges. With Ancies, you should use the smallest sized batteries that could be used in the module (regular or faction, which have lower volumes that their regular versions of the same size). Just note that reloading charges of an Anci Booster takes 60 seconds, so use it wisely (fit two and activate only one at a time if possible, disable auto-repeat and try to tank manually). Oh, and if you are using Ancies for active shield tanking, note that they don't receive bonuses from modules or rigs that modify the attributes of regular shield boosters (like Core Defense Capacitor Safeguard), but they do have much higher performance than the regular shield boosters;



From zkillboard.com, I can see that it was a Dramiel - another very nasty and very very fast faction frigate. It's the second fastest frigate in the game with a decent DPS with guns and able to deploy 4 small drones. It's not untouchable, especially if webbed and scrambled, but it's a pretty difficult target since you need to apply more DPS than it, fight his drones and try to dictate the range yourself. Far from impossible and you will be able to do it, even with a Rifter, when you get a bit more experience in PvP and train a bit more skills.


From your fit found on zkillboard, I can see that you have used T1 ammo with no damage increasing modules (Gyrostabilizers for Minmatars). Always use faction ammo for PvP. When you get to T2 guns, you should take a look at T2 ammo and their strengths and weaknesses, but in most cases faction ammo works best. Titanium Sabot is not a very good choice of ammo, especially against a Dramiel. Titanium Sabot is kinetic/explosive ammo, while Dramiels usually have resistance holes in either thermal or EM. Against a Dramiel you should use either Republic Fleet EMP or Phased Plasma. In general PvP, the most useful 3 types of ammo are: Fusion, EMP and Phased Plasma... Fusion for armor tanked, EMP and phased plasma for shield tanked targets.

And always use rigs. They are really, really cheap for what they provide. T1 rigs, of course (T2 still have limited advantages over T1 and only if you have enough skillpoints in related areas to utilize the difference).


Nosferatu will not provide you a way to escape. Other forms of electronic warfare will, but they work best on ships that have bonuses to those forms of electronic warfare.
- If you can dictate the range enough, a Sensor Dampener (used by Gallente ships, primarily Maulus) can lower the targeting range of your target and drop his lock on you enabling you to escape;
- ECM (also known as jammers) can break your target's lock. Note that jammers are the only e-war modules that are chance based and that you are not getting a jam every time. Griffins use ECM modules best;
- if you have a drone bay on your ship, you can use Hornet EC-300 drones. They are basically ECM (jamming drones) that have a chance of breaking your target's lock. They work, just not always. The downside, of course, is that you are lowering your DPS by using e-war drones instead of DPS ones. That's fine, if your tactics deos not require DPS from drones.
- You could, technically, use an Energy Destabilizer, but you must have enough capacitor to cover its cap consumption;

Thanks for the responses. I've read them with interest. I'm currently on my way to a trading hub and will load up on throwaway Rifters. My plan is to get to know my combat racial frigates well before branching out. Will try out a variety of new fits to see what...fits. More responses welcome as I've got a lot to take in.

Fitting a T1 ship for combat properly will often require you to already have an attack plan in your head, targets you will hunt, what scenarios you will be fighting in etc. Then the easy part is fitting your ship to pull it off.

In FW for example, you will be fighting in plexes a lot, so you can decide to be a scram DPS power house ( not recommended until you actually have skills to BE e DPS power house ), scram range kiter ( hang out
On the edge of scram range and use some ewar, TDs for turret fitted targets, raw speed or sig tank for some rocket/lml fits ) and do more damage to him than he can to you, or a long point kiter also using ewar, speed and distance tanking on shorter ranged targets ( probably easiest for a new player, since your ideal targets can't hit you even with max skills ).

Decide what you will engage, identify how you will exploit the target weakness then follow normal fitting advice.

You CAN kill shinies in a T1 frigate, but it usually depends on how much effort you out in before the fight starts.

Welcome to Eve, best of luck :)

Just a note on the gamur. Ignoring pilot skill they're almost impossible to catch in a close range ship without a perfect warp-in, or sitting on the acceleration gate in a plex. A dual point fit MWD Gamur will disrupt out to 40km or so, and scram out to 15km. Its fast enough that you will need a microwarpdrive to catch it, but if you get within 15km it will shut off your mwd.

Of course pilots can make mistakes. If you can get the gamur pilot to chase you instead of the other way around, you might be able to switch directions quickly, and get into scram range.

So it sounds like, given I don't have great skills or ships, I should do something along these lines:
1. Pick a set of T1 frigs as targets and Dscan for those specifically, stay away from others. Pick based on armour tank vs shield tank, turrets vs launchers, speed.
2. Fit specifically for those frigs. Include rigs and faction ammo. Fit around a specific engagement range factoring in speed of target, my guns, their guns and 5km plex warp in.
3. Find some FW systems where T1 frigs are more common. Dscan constantly.

Join a PVP corp. Get knowledge, get pew

Removed a link attempting to recruit. -ISD Dorrim Barstorlode

Huzzah! \o/

When it comes to overheating, I've started "pre-heating" my modules every time I undock or jump into a system, that way I KNOW my web will get out to 13km and scram out to near 10km at the beginning of every fight. Guns can be overheated for a long time compared to other modules. I lost a few fights when I first got the skill because I burned out my MWD or AB, so don't forget to turn off OH when necessary.