Warfare & Tactics

Yo, space pirates...

I'm dipping my toe in the PVP waters for the first time and could use some advice. I'll take any tips in general but my specific question this time around is a broad one:

What weapon platform is "best" for pvp and/or faction warfare?

I know 'best' is sometimes relative or subjective so please expand on your answer, if you have a moment. What I get from the threads I've read is that folks favor heavy missiles the most but I'm not sure why (no one really says). I lean Caldari anyways but I would like something that lasts through the 'midgame' of pvp. That is, well into training, I don't want to have to switch skills up. I planned of staying in a frigate for a while, if that helps. I'll be poking around Battleclininc and places like that as well.

Thanks in advance for your input. Links are welcome, thoughts and musings are welcome. Concise recruiting is welcome but keep the pitches very short, please, so as not to annoy everyone. In game mail is welcome but this thread is the preferred place to talk.

Thanks everyone! Fly well and blow some stuff up!

Deadround

Its all up what type of PVP you're wanting to get into.


If it's lowsec small gangs, The Vexor is a great ship to use for them. Using something fast and that is somewhat resistant to EWAR IE Drones, Usually Lowsec corps tend to have doctrines set up for you to use regardless, best thing I can say to that, if the FC is good you're literally going to be following what he says, Holding on gate, jumping on contact, primaries and so on so forth. Not that that is bad thing either, small gang warfare in my opinion is probably one of the best forms of PVP out there,

Solo work in Low is a bit different, you need to be up to date on what happening in and around, making sure not about to be hotdrop or ganked, know what you're about to land on and if you can't it

For Highsec, theres a lot of things you can do as well,

Station games is a fun little things is where you suspect yourself, usually in a ship thats able to take a pounding, and see who decides to take a shot out on you. If they do you either dock switch ships into something more powerful that can tank a Trade hub full of DPS, and kill the thing. Or you keep getting combat timers, and getting the to renew so the combat timer is running long after the suspect timer runs out.

Sometimes its a good idea to have a bump alt ready to bump who ever you have a combat timer with off the undock, and logi on standby to save yourself.

Personally if you're interested in that, I would head to Amarr to what a Player called TheWidower. It's pretty much all he does and you can learn a thing or two from watching him.

You can also duel people, but again you have to be ready for people upship you, but if you're just dueling frigs, they tend not to.


You can do Wardecs, Either solo or with a corp. They are pretty fun, it's what I've been doing for most of my EVE time, generally you get a lot of cannon fodder, but you can find a lot of corps willing to fight back, and tend to get really fun at that point.


Anyways Best of luck. o/

Eventually you will need to train them all if you want to be able to counter ship for fleet fights.

To start with pick which ever one you think looks the coolest, or ask your corp mates what they fly frequently and train for it.

Oh, and missiles.

Hey Dorie,

Great that you're using BC. I'd encourage you to pay attention to players who are pirating and check BC's killboards (and others) to gather intel. Look for ship loadouts, places they hang out, who their colleagues are, who their victims are.

Get EVEMon and plan your skills. I often do this by looking at ship loadouts I think I'd like to fly, grabbing the skill plan, and loading it up into EVEMon. Makes things easy.

Finally, BC's loadout area is built specifically to give you feedback on loadouts you create or have thoughts / questions about. Feel free to play around and upload fits and see what others have to say.

A short version

Missiles and Drones get you through pretty much all of the pvp/pve-content atm. Gallente/Caldari, those two weapon platforms and you can access near all the cool/OP ****, while also requiring significantly smaller SP-investment compared to turrets to be efficient:

For FW/null solo:
- Condors/Kestrels/Hookbills/Hawks/Worms
- BOMBERS NEED TORP SKILLS ANYWAYS

for cruiserish things:
- Ishtar/Cerb/Gila are absurdly good kiting ships
- Caracal is New Eden's superior bang-for-buck vessel
- Vexor is awesome solo roaming boat. Regular Vexor needs med. Blasters, Navy one does not

When you're going out solo into null, there is hardly any way around kiting. You will be outnumbered and you'll need to be fast, this way they can only catch up one by one. So fitting priorities for go to damage/projection and mobility. If yo're in a frigate, brawling with mwd works aswell though you'd better use enyo/claw/navy comet or similar since people will try grabbing you with ceptors (which die incredibly fast).

Just in general, one does not simply come up with a comfort pick for a pvp-fit, though you notice when you suddenly found it :D (i.E. a friend of mine just loves his flycatcher, I'm more of a sabre person and yet other people prefer most different heretic fits, and in the end we just poop bubbles anyways)

Where did you hear that heavy missiles are any good? Don't answer that and please avoid using this source for any information about pvp in the future.

Now being a novice, you are unaware that we just through decent changes to almost all of the ships in EVE.

Before that, most of the ships were not worth buying or undocking in the first place and now it is more of a taste thing.

My advice would be to stick to tech one ships until you feel comfortable with your surroundings and have more insight of what is going on and where.

From the small friagtes up to battlecruisers there is not shortage of things to try out and all of them are in a good place and it is up to you what and how you like to do things.

If you are unsure and you cannot make cash quickly you can also hop on SiSi, the test server and get paid for loosing ships.

Some things to consider,

- do not fly, what you can not afford to loose / replace

- range is your best friend at any time from now on until the end of time

- your fitting screen gives you all the information about the ship you intend to fly but can also lead to confusion

- fitting is and art and you should learn to min-max everything you can but wager between tank, mobilty, firepower (also referred to as the holy trinity)

- if something looks, feels or smells like a tarp, it will be a tarp - everytime!

- if something looks, feels or smells like bait, it will be bait - everytime!

Fly dangerous!

there is no endgame in EVE you can not ever be perfect on everything so there is always some new things and tricks to learn.

what comes to basic fit and tactics you should try something like kite condor about 18-30 km range, brawling 0-12km maybe rocket kestrel good for that. Those are good ones to start and learn some basics.

For frigs:
- lasorz are amarr and amarr has only 1 advantage - you can use scorch's range superiority to scram+web a brawler and kill him outside of his range while still maintaining some tank "just in case". Limits you do tormentor (which also needs drones) and slicer (generally expensive for being paper like...)
- projectiles - minmatars use them and they have only 1 semi good frig for shooting - RFF, which is the weakest but also cheap navy frigate. Price compensates... Slasher is supposed to be the best tackler evah but no one uses it so w/e.
-hybrids awesome dps. Awesome. The range is crappy so you need to watch out for scram + web + scorch/long range guys but hey - you can fly comet, merlin and incursus. To hell with them!
- rockets - lowest dps so any brawling gets you dead. Decent for kiting since you get condor and breacher which are kinda good and you need not to watch the range/tracking so much. Most of the missile ships use scram+web kiting trick when fitted for rockets since, as I said, you cannot brawl with this weapon platform. Well tanked breacher (minmatar frig) is scarry but kestrel can do scram+web trick well (400mm plate kestrel with an AB, 2x web and scram ;-))
- drones. Embarrassing to say but I've never used them in pvp. Drone boats get used extensively though. They have good damage application, decent dps and allow to fight at wide spectrum of ranges.I think them and hybrids make going gallante the best choice. Really - other races add some flavor but gallente is the strongest choice.

destroyers (shorter)
- drone destroyers are awesome. Algos and dragoon are scarry as hell since you never know from what range they will hit you. Drone pwn
- corax is a rare sight but I like it - can be decent and tanked. + 1 for rocket
- cormorant - sniper. Only that tbh but being able to shoot stuff from 90km + could be handy (it's not your standard combat boat though - skilling for something else could be better).
-talwar - see it used in blobs a lot (used to see it?) - good alpha and range, maybe could be a propless scram + web platform. Generally not aweful.
- catalyst - usual ganking boat which can be used the same way in pvp. You catch a target and shoot it till it dies or manages to outrange and kill you. Not a standard combat boat for me, but I guess there are people happy with it even in pvp (while still no 1 for gankers).
- thrasher - I see it a lot and am unimpressed. Generally the best ships for gate camps (high alpha) so if you plan to limit to that then... ;-)
- coercer - seen it only 2 times. Unimpressed. No saving graces aside for having skills for it when you try to get into dragoon anyway ;-)

Cruisers:
- I see gallente the most, a bit less amarr, and maybe some caldari. I generally hardly ever used them myself being effectively a 9 month old character (I had some time off the game).
- Drones + blasters seem to be good choice still.
- increased range of lasers mean you can apply the dps using your targets weakness (long range dude? use superior dps while going head to head with him. Short range brawler? out-kite and kill him).
- missiles? not so much sadly. Caracals and bellicose (minmatar) are used to eliminate frigates. They are great for that though.
- minmatars? Fast cruisers but I think they need good player skills since I see them fairly rarely

last comment - I think you might get it from what I've posted but weapon platforms don't matter as much as ships you use them with. Look at the ships as kiters, scram + web kiters and brawlers and you might get the idea of what is what. Gallente have tristan, coment and incursus. All very popular and good ships. I'd go for that.

Hope I helped (kinda chaotic I know but tried to explain everything I didn't get myself when I was starting)


edit:
Just remembered to say... Chessur (or whatever he's called :P) gave some excellent advice together with pointing to a very important thing. Spending time skilling for missiles will leave you with support skills useless for other weapon systems. It seem that going for guns will allow you to rapidly change from hybrids to projectiles or lasers since you will have stuff like sharpshooter already trained. I went the missile way and do not complain at the moment (I love using missile ships now) but hated the fact earlier since I could fly only a tight selection of ships.