EVE New Citizens Q&A

You want to invest in some rudimentary drone skills.

Battleship-sized guns are often terrible at shooting as small, fast, frigates. What's worse is that once you start doing Level 4 missions, you will find some frigates warp scramble.

You'll need a flight of small/medium drones to take care of those, otherwise you'll be stuck in space - probably with many angry battleships beating against your ship.


I don't actually know why the Rokh is considered a bad PVE ship. Someone more knowledgeable should be able to explain it though.

people say the rokh is a dangerous long range ship, but I've only ever seen them fitted with a cloak and a full rack of smart bombs on a gate

Also unlike the Hyperion the Rohk gets a optimum range bonus rather then a damage bonus so it is great at snipping or shooting things at range and has a great tank but for mot people they want to hit a target with tracking and do it quickly with damage. Also for a long time most ship doctrines were pure armour, until alpha doctrines came along. So it is just an opinion and may work fine in level 4s with an mjd but drones are important for level 4s.

Rokh is Caldari.

The three Gallente battleships are Megathron (Hybrids), Dominix (Drones), Hyperion (kinda both). Mega Navy is, I believe, used in incursions along with the base Mega.

The key point is that most mission runners want to maximise damage because the quicker you kill things, the more money you can earn in a given time.

With that in mind the reason the rokh gets so much stick is because it has no damage bonus. The other large hybrid platforms its competing against in T1 battleship are the Megathron and the Hyperion. Both of those ships have a damage bonus built into the hull. They aren't as new player friendly as they lack tank compared to the rokh and the Hyperion really needs good sentry drone skills to maximise itself but in a straight up shooting race the rokh will take longer to complete missions.

That said, the rokh has a strong tank so you're less likely to lose one if things go pair shaped and the range bonus means it can use antimatter at longer ranges. It can do missions but in terms of time efficiency though, you're better off going Gallente.

A new player is always going to have problems with doing level 4 missions fast. But they wont be able to take it well if they lose their ship. Rokhs are great in that respect.

I don't think that anyone should be rushing into Battleships. They have very long skill training.

Most ships that you would fly in level 4 missions have a drone bay and the drone dps is nothing to be ignored. Not to mention that if any scramming frigs manage to get under your guns you could be asking in local or asking a friend to come get you out of your mission space. If you can't use any drones and have no drone skills I think that you might want to consider getting your support skills up before jumping into a BS.

Probably the fastest route into a level 4 mission ship is going with a T3 cruiser. The medium weapon skills and Tech 3 skills train pretty fast. I can't speak for all of them but I know plenty of people that have flown Tengus in level 4's and sworn that they are better than any battleship for running level 4 missions. I realize that's a missile boat I'm just saying that I know it works so maybe the proteus might be something to look into if you want to stick with hybrids. Or stick with turrets and cross train into projectiles or lazors and go the legion or loki route.

I just think that cross training into a different medium weapon system will be a faster training time than getting competently skilled in a BS.

Going tech 2 and sticking with medium ships might be an option as well but the only experience I have with that is the Ishtar which is an awesome ship definitely capable of level 4s but it's drone boat which you do not want. I can't speak from personally experience for any of the other HACs but I have to assume that there are others nearly as good as the Ishtar.

Just for a general overview Minmatar are mostly a projectile race and Amarr mostly lazors. They both have a few exceptions to this and both races BSs all have drone bays but their ships are predominantly based around their racial turret. Galentte and Caldari both share hybrids which would make one think that it opens up 2 races with one weapon system. However the Galentte have a lot of drone boats and Caldari have a lot of missile boats so if you want to make effective use of either of those race's ship skills you will need to train a secondary weapon system. So to make use of the weapon system sharing you would essentially have to train 3 weapon systems and 2 racial ship lines.

Minmatar and Amarr share a lot more weapons skills in common due to the common turret support skills. However Minmatar mostly shield tank and Amarr mostly armor tank so you split your training that way. However I think you can get compotent in a second tanking skill much faster than a second weapons system.

Another major consideration is that the hybrids only do kinetic / thermal damage so if you are going up against guristas and serpentis on a regular basis then that is a good thing however if you local rats have a high kinetic damage resist then you will have a much lower delivered DPS due to much of your damage being resisted.

In the end you'll wind up needing to train it all anyway so none of it will be wasted training. Further there is no wrong way to do it. I'm just giving you information here. Things for you to consider.

If you do decide to stick with the Rokh I would imagine you'll want to fit a MJD and range tank mostly. However my seat time in a Rokh is minimal and all of it prior to the introduction of MJDs to the game.

So there is all of my advice / disclaimers. Hope at least some of it was helpful.

Oh, you will probably see tear for years to come!

I am sorry of I gave the impression that I do not have any drone skills at all. I have indeed trained drones, mostly because in L3 missions my Battlecruiser can do nothing against frigates when they are too close. I can only field a gang of 5 light drones though, which was what I meant that my Drone skills are lacking. If I wanted to gain a good level of mastery for medium drones it would take me more time than all my other support, shield and gun skills combined. I can see the value of Drones, but I do not necessarily want to fly a ship that is so dependent on them for its DPS. I would much rather fly a ship where drones are part of my defensive arsenal (in other words, to kill the ships that gets under my turrets).

It is not that I want to rush into Battleships at all. I am trying fly them as soon as feasibly possible. I am not even going to buy one until I feel I have the skills to keep it from exploding around me.

If anyone was wondering, my support skills are as follows based on the ingame certificates:

Certificates at IV Mastery
Armor Reinforcement
Core Spaceship Operation


Certificates at III Mastery
Armor Tanking
Core Weapon Fitting (Training to Mastery 4 currently)
Medium Hybrid Turret
Navigation
Navigation Support
Shield Reinforcement
Shield Tanking
Caldari Target Management


Certificates at II Mastery
Large Hybrid Turret (Taking it to Mastery III after weapon fittings)


Certificates at I Mastery
All Combat Drones
Light Drones
Medium Drones
Scout Drones

Skills at level 5
Drones
CPU Management
Energy Grid Upgrades
Power Grid Management
Gunnery
Spaceship Command

Last week someone was kind enough to give me a character, and the above skills I quoted is for that character, not this one. he mentioned upfront that the character has alot of work ahead of it, and I am merely trying to choose a path that not only works in the short term (Level 4 missions) but also in the longer term (Incursions). My whole plan is to only start to do solo Level 4 missions (and incursions) once I have the Mastery 3 certificates in the ship that I eventually choose to fly.

I also need to mention that right now I do not have anywhere near enough ISK to fly a battleship (or fit it for that matter) so even if I was tempted to fly a Battleship, I wouldnt be able to!

Rokh for lvl 4 missions? Here's my views on it, even thought some of them may already have been voiced.

- Rokh does not have a tracking bonus which is really bad and massively affects the applied dps in many situations
- It lacks base dps so that's already bad, especially if it then also applies less
- there is no faction version to be used as a next step up and the Marauder is missile based, the Rokh is it. It's a dead end
- it's shield tanked which with MJD and the need to add tracking will cause fitting issues
- it has no utility high slots which is VERY annoying and, to me, pretty much makes it a non-option


If you stick to Gallente turret BS you do get a tracking bonus in case of the Mega, you do have a basic upgrade option in the Navy Mega and there's a longer term goal in the Kronos. They're armour tanked meaning room for MJD, tracking computers and whatnot. They also do more dps.


However cool the Rokh looks and however left field and funky it is as an option, it's also a bad option.

It is not bad for ratting (also PVE) if you do this against guristas or serpentis. Range bonus will let you use more effective kind of ammunition earlier on.

But L4 security missions require quite often to be able to do also EM (drones, amarr NPC, blood raiders) or explosive damage (angels). With only large hybrid turets you will be waiting ages to get through tank of elite cruisers in such missions. And missions are all about how much time you will spend doing it. Best ISK/time ratio for newbee is provided by Dominix. And only if you have at least moderate drone skills. Cause with sentry drones you can adjust your damage type to exactly what is needed.
Other way around is Rattlesnake - but it is expensive, requires missile skills and it is hard to fit it well for distances much over 100 km. Cause your drones will be of no help there. So you will rely only on cruise missiles. But when targets will come closer, than 80-90 km, your drones are there to asyst. Dominix will allow you to sit 140-150 km from target and hit it with wardens in their optimal (over 550 DPS). At 100 km it can use curators and unbounced large guns to get about 700 DPS... But Rattlesnake will do over 1000 DPS at that range.