Science & Industry

Sell orders is the place for it, they go for roughly 11-14b and come with a long list of restrictions you probably want to read up on before buying. Among others you can't dock in it making the transactions harder(as you can't use contracts or market) where you typically want to employ a TRUSTED third party.

I wouldn't buy one without reading up on the details quite a bit. They're virtually useless without a supercapital fleet backing it up, meaning you have to be in an alliance and if you're in an alliance you'll have better alleys of purchase.

Don't mix up Carriers and Supercarriers.

The lesser ones are normal caps - can dock but can't go from system to system without using jumpdrives (which in turn means they are restricted to lowsec and nullsec).

Wyvern is a supercarrier. As in supercapital. Very expensive, cannot dock, effectively requires that your character forever sits in one (or you have another character which has the skills to board one and a POS where you can do the "eject from ship, another pod boards ship" transfer etc.)

Not a ship for noobs. NOT a "solopwnmobile" - lone supercarrier is just an expensive killmail that alliances like to harvest for lulz and tears, so it would be pretty much useless unless you were part of a large alliance. After the recent round of nerfs, useful only for shooting Sovereignty structures and other caps/supercaps (cannot use normal drones, only fighters and fighter bombers).

Normal carriers can use drones and Fighters.

Normal carriers can dock (but only in low and null sec, they cannot enter highsec)

Normal carriers cannot use gates. Only way to move them from system to system is by jump drive (which requires a second character in a ship (usually a throaway frig) with a cynosural field generator acting as beacon to jump in the target system. Oh, and you need liquid ozone to fuel the beacon and isotopes to fuel the jump drive - capitals need gas!)

Dreads... I haven't looked at the prices recently. They are in any case mostly useless. They have same limitations as carriers but have no drones and instead have capital class guns that are mostly useful for... shooting sov structures and shooting other capitals. Except that in large 0.0 brawls the fact that they have to siege ("be motionless, stuck for 5 mins") to do any reasonable damage makes them eminently vunerable to getting dropped on by a bigger fleet.

Pretty much the only capitals that do anything useful unless you are shooting sov structures or other capitals (=large scale alliance warfare) are carriers, freighters, jump freighters and orcas. Carriers are different mostly because they are useful in smaller scale gang warfare as extremely tough logistics ship that can pack some drone dps and I guess you could rat with one (at least until you end up as yet another ratting carrier comedy lossmail, but...)

If you don't know how or where to get one, or other key capital facts, chances are you're not ready for one.

Step 1: Join Eve
Step 2: Buy tons of plex from ccp
Step 3: Sell all for isk
Step 4: Buy old character
Step 5: This thread

Not that I'm complaining actually, driving plex prices down benefits me :D

Well, they were buffed in Crucible, so now they suck slightly less.

You used to be stuck in place for 10 minutes, now it's only 5 minutes for a siege cycle.
The weapon damage output with a T1 siege module was also noticeably increased (to compensate for the vanishing of drones) but they also introduced the T2 siege module with an even higher damage bonus, which means that you can dish out some impressive amount of damage during siege mode... and let's face it, dreads are quite cheap for the amount of DPS they can dish out, no matter how situational.

For taking out structures that are not actively defended by a player fleet (hitting them "out of the time zone" for instance) nothing beats a dread efficiency-wise IMO.
For big supercap slugfests, they can now be somewhat useful.
For everything else, they still kind of suck.

Trying to read between the lines here.... If I have this wrong forgive me.

Step 1: Joined Eve in 2003 played until 2005 took two years break back since 2007
Step 2: Never bought plex from ccp and always paid my subs every 6 months
Step 3: See step 2
Step 4: Never bought an old character but did sell one so that means ive trained a new one up who is at 76 mill sp at the moment so is not this character
Step 5: Only posting here as an alt because I am too embarrassed to post as my main because YES I should know the answer to these questions

There now you know the score.

Thanks for the advice and yes I could see that being a problem and more so with a Super seeing you can't dock the thing unless your part of an alliance and have the bits and bobs around you.

Ive decided not to go ahead at the moment with getting one. I fear it would be more of a magnet than help for the corp I am in who isnt very large. I have the skills mainly because I have taken the time to train up to fly a freighter and then a black ops. It didnt need much beyond that to get to the point I can fly a carrier much like a dread. It appears that capitals are for the more established pilot more in low sec or 0.0 space and part of a bigger corp or with alliance back up.

I have a great interest in flying one still but I kind of know if I get one it will be a big white elephant docked most of the time.

Thank you all for your comments and input it has opened my eyes wider.