EVE New Citizens Q&A

Good morning all, I hope you are enjoying your coffee/tea/what have you.

(there is a question to this thread I promise)

I'm new as you can see. Well not new per say, I played a few times in the past but never stuck with it for long many years ago (this is a newer account as apposed to my even older one). This time though I think I've finally "got" since a change with my frame of mind.

Any way I was perusing ISIS and came across the ship the widow. It has everything I want in a ship; heavy cloaking, missiles, torpedoes (even bigger missiles? If my assumptions are correct) drones and a cool name to boot.

Would it be viable (if I was good enough at it and had the funding) to fly a Widow as a pirate? I have an image in my head, and I admit it is 100% daydreaming as I know nothing about pvp yet, of warping into a system cloaked then scanning down a target and warping to them say, 30(?) KM away, uncloaking and unleashing a barrage of missiles and/or torpedoes for the kill. With appropriate warp scrambling etc of course.

Does or has anyone ever done this? I haven't checked the price on the widow but would it survive or is it just a juicy target that cost too much and is meant to be flown in a larger fleet?

I have this inkling feeling that it's meant to be in fleet warfare sitting at the back lines doing sneaky things and launching the occasional torpedo but a man can dream.

This is all VERY far off for me as the training just to sit in the ship is over 100 days long let alone be able to pull a trigger and do it properly. In the mean time I'm working on flying a frigate proficiently enough to have some fun in low-null sec.


PS. I'm a heavy lurker of the forums even when I was taking breaks from the game so I'll say this before someone points it out. Yes, I know this is not a single player game and yes I do plan on joining a corp so no I don't plan to ONLY solo in it, but I will often unless I can find people who play during my schedule (I work overnights).

PPS. The good news is I'm learning each day. I just took a frigate out to low sec for the sole purpose of getting blown up to ask whoever blew me up a bunch of questions. Exactly that happened and they were really helpful but I felt like I was taking too much of their time so I thought I'd bring this whimsical fantasy here.

Take a look at the pilgrim. its role is exactly what you are imagining as your play style: warping around cloaked trying to catch some careless prey.

Thanks for the replies, a little upsetting to find out it it's one of the less favored.

I'll take a look at that pilgrim and thank you J'Poll I've come to realize that haha. Just lost a second one not two seconds ago (station docked now debating my escape route back to my high sec station with all my equipment).

I think it's time to find a new system to practice in. There always seems to be people in this one with year+ old characters that come in and wipe me out. On the bright side I do believe I lasted a good four times as long as the last fight and I was able to lock target/orbit and get a couple shots off before being blown up. My warp scrambler/propulsion jammer weren't activating for some reason though but it was most likely just me spazzing because I was in the middle of trying to d-scan the very person down who got the jump on me.

Sounds like an excellent place to practise in. When you lose a fight, try talking to the guy who killed you, ask if they have ideas on how you might have done better. Most players will be happy to give you pointers if you show you want to improve.

In ISIS look at gurista pirates tab (missiles and drone focus)... now for pvp worm or gila might be the way you eventually want to go... That being said lose about 100 normal frigates first before considering a worm... learn how to fly in PVP then move up.

T1 frigate fit out about 5 million loss, t2 frigs (assault, interceptor, covert ops) about a 30 million loss, a worm over 100 million loss. And if you take a ship out in pvp consider it all ready lost, you just keep flying it on borrowed time.

The Widow is least favourite. That doen't make it a bad ship.

It has smaller cargospace but it's fuel bay is just as large as the Panthers. It will mainly affect the amount of cap charges and ammo you can carrry, which is less of an issue with Torpedos because their RoF isn't as high as, for example, autocannons. I know for a fact there's very little room left for fuel anyway, once I arm my Panther. So don't fixate on that.

It has better CPU then a Panther but worse powergrid. It has better max capacitor, targetting range and sensor strength. Wait... targetting range? On a Torpedo boat? That's right, the Widow is not a DPS boat. It has jamming bonusses of 30% per skill level. That is huge! It's primary role is to jam targets in a Blackops FLEET and with it's 8 midslots, it's a beast at that particular specialization.

In other words, if you goal is to act as support for a Blackops fleet composed of multiple Blackops Battleships and you like the look of the Widow, go for it. Not now, but once you have some more PVP experience and can fly a T1 Battleship in PVP with confidence. Just remember deploying that ship with a modicum of success involves:

1. Friends
2. Experience
3. SP (time)

EDIT: What you describe is basicly a cloaky pirate's endgame experience, apart from actually covert-cynoing in on your target, perhaps even refitting proper racial ECM, and jump along a bridge with your pirate mates onto the hapless target. Sure, you can always uncloak and murder a miner or ratter, but be aware of the targetting delay. Having a friend tackle for you is often the better option, then see if his friends suddenly appear and decide to uncloak and unleash hell. BLOPS works best in teamplay. I once heard someone say only a peasant lights his own cynos. As a BLOPS capable pilot in lowsec I can only agree with that statement.

Once upon a time widows were a thing. There were even folk using widows in solo work to some success. But times have changed. ECM isnt what it used to be. More importantly, Widows really run counter to the way BLOPs tend to work - in the typical hotdrop you either catch someone on a gate or near a station - you want the person you drop to stay aggressed so they cant use the gate or dock up, but if you use ecm they can lose aggression allowing the target to potentially get away. Also ecm boats tend to get primaryed because people hate ecm. Finally all that extra range the widow has on its ecm is kinda pointless since when people hot drp its usually right on top of the target.

You are making what I consider one of the most common mistakes of new players in Eve. I mean it's your game and you play it your way and if you are having fun doing it then keep doing it because it's all about the fun but if you are asking about efficiency then I'll give a little advice.

There are a lot of skills that are shared across all or many ships most of those skills are also the most important ones to have trained up so try to stick with those early on.

Small ships and small weapons train up fast and are very powerful and useful. Early on you should be sticking with smaller equipment as it trains much faster. You can be in T2 frigs fairly quickly and they can do pretty much anything a T1 cruiser can and in most cases do it better. T2 cruisers likewise can be as good or better than BS's at some things and T3 cruisers train very quickly and are most certainly better than BS at almost everything. So avoid large ships and large weapon systems early on.

You can easily keep your skill queue full for over 6 months with skills that will be useful now and not wasted no matter what you do in the future. By that time you will have a much better idea of what you like doing and what you want to do.

Feel free to make all the long term plans that you want, I used to do that a lot and enjoyed doing it. I'm just telling you that there is absolutely no need for you to get your panties all in a bunch worrying about what you will potentially be flying a year from now. Just play around with various stuff in game and have fun.