EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello all!


As I was doing some T2 missions, I realized that at some point I was getting damaged directly to my armor, bypassing my shields. How is that possible?

Do you have the same "bypass" mechanism for armor?

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How do you get a better sense of what damage is affecting you? All I see on my screen are plain number such as "Hit for 52 famage". I would like to know if I get hit with explosion, kinetic, thermal or other types of damage...

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I looted some live stock ('Militants"). What am I supposed to do with those?

Also, you know Eve is a great game when you can loot strippers! Hahah. I showed that to my wife and she was NOT impressed. I kept them at my home base. I can't sell them...a guy always needs company!

Hahaha

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How can you get gate camped in a low sec sector just by passing through? I noticed that there are a number of guardian sentries at the gates. Is it only risky for those who actually venture through the system?


What experience can you share on the Myrmidon vs Prohecy?



As always thanks for the very helpful comments

A note to the post above.
While the Prophecy can fit a wonderful buffer tank, the whole buffer tank thing is not really well suited to missions as a whole, they will work just not as well as a good active tank.

We have given you this in several of your posts, use it, it will give you much information you seek.
http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=missionreports

NPC always shoot the same damage type, you mission briefing or the link above will tell which NPC you are flying against in every mission. Here is a link to another decent source of damage types.
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/NPC_Damage_Types

Now to some specific answers.

As mentioned above when you shields fall to 25% it is possible that damage can bypass your shields and go straight to armor.

A you move into level 3's and 4's knowing the NPC and damage types you will be facing in each mission will become more and more important so now is the time to make it a habit to check these things.

Most of the loot you get is just there as part of the "payment" if you will for running the mission. Many of the items you find are really have no value to the game but may to you or others. If it is something you like then keep it, otherwise sell it on the market for whatever you can get for it. There is one big caution here, read the mission brief, there are many missions where you need to loot something and take it back to your agent to be able to complete the mission.

Gate camping is really just a group of people hanging around at a gate looking to catch someone to blow up.
The guardians are called gate guns, combined with station guns are the only Concord presence in low sec. As loong as you are not shooting at anyone the guns will not shoot at you. Beyond that this is a very complex topic and best suited for it's own topic so please ask if you want to know more.

Myrm and Prophecy.
BOth excellent ships, both make good level 3 mission runners with a proper fit.
Both are armor tanked and they have approximately the same drones capabilities.
The real difference is in the bonuses they give, the Myrm gives a bonus to armor rep amount while the Prophecy gives a bonus to resistances.
The Myrm make your armor reps more effective but you have to repair more damage due to the lower resistances.
The Prophecy is less effective with the reps, but that is compensated for by the higher resistances so your reps have to repair less damage.

Now to another thing and that is skills, listed below are a recommendation for a base set of skills that will help you, if you have vets helping you have them look this over and recommend changes based on your skill now, your needs and they can help you with which order to train these in.

Do not train any of these to level 5 until you have most or all of them to level 4 you will get much better overall performance from your ship and weapons that way.

Please take note this list has not been updated in the last 6 months or so and some of these skills may have been removed or renamed.

Basic skills on which everything else is based.
Science 4
Engineering 4
Electronics 4
Mechanic 4


These help your ships to move as efficiently as possible.
And allow the efficient use of afterburners and microwarp drives.
Navigation 4
Afterburner 4
High speed maneuvering 4

These help you get the most out of your ships onboard power system.
Energy management 4
Energy systems operation 4
Energy grid upgrades 4

These are the basis for many of the ship upgrades in Eve.
Jury rigging 4
Hull upgrades 4
Armor rigging 4
Shield upgrades 4

These will help you get the most protection from your sheilds and armor.
Repair systems 4
Sheild operations 4
Sheild management 4

These help your ships mobility and other aspects of the propulsion system.
Evasive maneuvering 4
Acceleration control 4
Fuel conservation 4
Warp drive operation 4

These help with targeting.
Targeting 4
Signature analysis 4

Skills to help with your defensive tanking.
For armor tank pilots
EM armor compensation 4
Explosive armor compensation 4
Kinetic armor compensation 4
Thermic armor compensation 4

For shield tank pilots
EM shield compensation 4
Explosive shield compensation 4
Kinetic shield compensation 4
Thermic shield compensation 4

Gunnery or missile skills needed for your chosen ship and fit.

And just when you ythought there was a lot to train now we can get into a basic set of drones skills.
Drones 5
Light Drone Operation 4
Medium Drone Operation 4
Heavy Drone Operation 4
Drone Durability 4
Drone Interfacing 4
Drone Navigation 4
Drone Sharpshooting 4
Drone Avionics 4
Sentry Drone Interfacing 4
Amarr Drone Specialization 4
Caldari Drone Specialization 4
Minmatar Drone Specialization 4
Gallente Drone Specialization 4

these are of questionable benefit because unlike armor tankers who get resistances for their 'omni' modules, Adaptive Nano Plating and Energized Adaptive Nano Mesh from their compensation skills, adaptive invulns no longer benefit from these skills while not activated ( and don't have any effect while activated) leaving their effectiveness to 'passive' resist modules. In most circumstances, you will not have enough mid slots to fit these, and if you do squeeze one into your fit,you might be better served by using an adaptive invuln or a damage specific active hardener (adaptive invulns give 20/25% bonus to all shield resists, same as an unskilled passive does to a single damage type, active hardeners give 50% to one type)

are you sure your armour wasn't just damaged still from previous encounters?

Sentries in low sec are not concord, they do small amounts of damage that increase over time. it's very possible for a pirate to just tank them for a few minutes.

For what it is worth... okay, really because I have a slight case of OCD...

The hidden attribute that TSM skill affects is called shield uniformity. It starts at 0.75 and goes up to 1.0 at level 5 skill.

Re: TSM 5 debate - Only train to level 4 to enable T2 shield hardeners (or not at all if you only want to armor tank), as the skill is slightly detrimental (more-so for armor tanks), but more importantly level 5 is pretty much useless as it is very hard to maintain 1% to 5% shield for any length of time and survive in any ship other than a supercapital [I've managed it in a Drake battlecruiser vs. select C3 Sleepers for ~10-15 minute time spans, but this is a very rare & unique situation, and an extremely dangerous practice]. Finally, damage bleed is very random and a small amount; also note that bleed doesn't increase the amount of damage taken, just where it gets applied to. TSM level 5 skill just isn't worth the ~2 weeks of training.

As far as I know, armor also has a uniformity of 0.75 but no skill to raise it.

Note that damage bleed can also happen when hull tanking, but in this case anything fitted can take damage, even rigs.

Thank you for the additions, not sure how I missed such basic skills.


Interesting as EFT, EVE HQ and PYFA seem at first glance to disagree with you and the definition of these modules is to boost shield resistance to a specific damage type with no mention of limitations on what type of modules they apply to. I know that they considerably increase the tank ability of my passive tanked Rattlesnake as well as my Golem and CNR mission ships. Even if it has limited application the basic theory of anything helps could appply here and when training to level 4 these skills add very little to the train time required perhaps just 24 hours or so each.

As to your contention about mids, boosting resistances, rep amount and cap are in many ways the single biggest thing you need to do with mids in a mission ship especially one for a new player. Since the OP is specifically asking questions about missions I try to keep my answers dedicated to those things that really help mission pilots.


Now that you mention it, yes it is possible that you activated the overheating on the modules in question, if you did that would account for the damage to armor with no damage to shields.

This is likely the case. OP was probably in a fleet where the squad commander had some levels in Armored Warfare. When OP and the squad commander are in the same solar system and both undocked, he gets a boost to total Armor hitpoints.

Well, you didn't really miss them, you just took their old names.
Engineering - Power Grid Management 4
Electronics - CPU Management 4
Energy Management - Capacitor Management 4
Energy Systems Operation - Capacitor Systems Operation 4
Targeting - Target Management 4
Multitasking - Advanced Target Management

Soooo...

If I get it right, I should not have to be concerned with gate campers in Low Sec as long as I warp from Gate to gate without any travelling inside the zone. The CONCORD posted at the gates should protect me if I am aggressed.


Right?

Er... no.

In Low-sec (0.4 to 0.1 systems) there is no CONCORD. And there are no NPC "police" around to engage any hostiles.
NOTE: CONCORD and the NPC police are not designed to "protect you." They are purely a "vengeance" / "discouragement" type mechanic that forces hostiles to make a cost-benefit analysis... assuming the hostile(s) are interested in tangible benefit in the first place (sometimes they are more interested in "let's do this for FUN!") and / or are not suicidal.

In Low-sec... the only thing you have on your side are sentry guns... which are located around stargates and stations.
Sentry guns deal a decent amount of omni-damage... enough to two or three shot a frigate... or put a lone cruiser at a significant disadvantage.


What does this mean for you?

- It means you can somewhat ignore most SOLO frigates.
- Solo Cruisers are iffy (assuming you are in a ship capable of PvP)
- Any ship has back-up support (in the form of remote repairs (see: assisted healing) or other assistance) CAN tank the gate / station guns.


What can you do about this?

- be faster. Frigates with high Navigation and Spaceship Command skills... along with Nanofiber modifications... can jump to warp before most ships can lock on to them (we are talking about ~2 second align times).
This is still no guarantee though. There are some "high caliber" gatecamps which have enough gear, practice, and luck to lock on and pin most ships that come through.

- be stealthy. Ships capable of using Covert-Ops cloaks excel at getting through gatecamps. Just be sure to keep your cool, not double click the cloaking mod, and only hit the cloak button as soon as you see the text "Warp Drive Active" (this takes a little practice).

- take the "backwater" routes. The low-sec systems closest to the major trade-hubs (Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, and Hek) are often camped. Find the high-sec to low-sec systems that are less traveled and you will often find that they are not camped.

- bring friends in PvP ships. Gatecampers are often not equipped to deal with actual combat. To tank the gate guns often requires some specialist fits and tactics that are not that useful for brawling.