EVE New Citizens Q&A

Harrumph. Well excuuuuuuuuuuse me.

Hi Sol [:D]


I know you will read this

Ships are tools in this game. First you need to decide what job that you want to accomplish then you can figure out what ship would be good for that.

Carriers can not be flown in high sec currently. Also they are big and slow. Further they have very little use outside of PvP. And they are getting revamped this summer or spring with an expansion set to change capital ships.

I would focus more on learning the game. If you decide at somepoint that you'd like a carrier to do something with then get one. However I think once that you see how big and slow battleships are you might second guess flying a cap.

Don't just pick a ship. Pick a progression of ships. There are some ships that are versatile, like the Rifter frigate, Rupture or Vexor cruisers, Dominix battleship, but they can't do "everything". They have evenly spread out slots (between high, medium, and low), so you can fit either armor or shield defenses, or PVP, or extra damage, and their weapon systems are versatile (drones, especially, as you can pick and choose what drones you use), but the name of the game is to min-max the ship bonuses to match your task.

So you'll need:

- An industrial transport ship, so you can move loot around. Most ships have 3-400 m3 space, specialized transports and freighters are the only ones that can get 10,000 - 50,000 - 300,000 m3 of space.

- A number of combat ships; the bigger you go the slower they are and the more you have to rely on actual defenses (armor, shields) rather than being nimble.

- Special purpose - scouts that can cloak (cov-ops frigates), ships with sensor and probing bonuses (so you can probe down and find exploration sites), mining ships (if you're into that).

- PVP specific ships - electronic jamming, remote repair, interceptors, interdictors - depends on what the needs are for the group you're hanging out with.

How to achieve it:

Buy skills from the market and train them. Skills can be categorized as follows:

- ship skills (in the Spaceship Command category) - unlock ships for you.

- weapon skills (Gunnery, Missiles, Drones) - train the weapons for the ships you've chosen. Minmatar ships, for example, use projectile weapons (small, medium, or large to match the ship size), missiles, and the larger ships use some drones for defense against smaller ships.

- support skills (Armor, Shields, Navigation, Targeting, Engineering, etc.) - these make all your ships perform better; clearly every ship will benefit from more armor, more shields, faster speed, more power, etc.

- non-combat skills (Trade, Social, Corporation, Industry, Reprocessing, etc.) - train as needed, for the side activities you're interested in.


Making money:

Most of the player-vs-environment PVE can make you money. It's recommended you go find the career agents and do missions for them because they'll shower you with about 10 million ISK worth of ships and skills, as well as teach you the game a little.

After that, you can do missions for cash and loot, you can explore (for hidden loot), you can lay down some Planetary Industry facilities (for product to sell for cash), you can mine (boring, don't do it), you can try your hand at trading (buy low sell high), or manufacture common things like ammo, missiles for sale. You can try to scam people, you can try to get them to give you gifts of money for ships (begging is an art form), you can infiltrate a corp and steal their stuff, or you can just join a newbie-friendly corp and they'll probably give you free stuff to get you started.

You can also buy a PLEX with RL cash (from the EVE Account Management website) and sell it on the market in Jita (go to Jita first, then redeem it, don't travel with PLEX in your cargo), and that'll set you up for a long while. People do this because the activities in game become tedious and more like work after a while, and it's simply easier to just work a RL job and pay 20 EUR for a PLEX; it takes about a month of daily effort to make the equivalent 1 billion ISK through in-game activities.

Slave ships:

If you read through the lore here, you'll see that ships do have crews. But since the ships will be yours, you can (roleplay/pretend to) crew them with paid crewmembers rather than slaves, even the Amarr-manufactured ships.

To reiterate an important point ... ships are just tools and expendables. What you do is, choose a task, profession you want to perform, and then select and skill for the suitable ship. There are some ships more versatile than others, which means they can be fitted in different ways efficiently to perform different tasks. Also it can be fun to fit a ship for something else than it is supposed to be used in order to surprise potential opponents.

Why is everyone manufacturing all these ships?
Mining?
Doing missions?
Exploring?
Planetary Interaction?
Scamming people in Jita?
Undocking their ships and flying around?
Spinning their ships in station?

It's a game.

Here's a war, explained.

EVE News 24.

mittani is biased, but it is also good reading :)

Howdy, from another Australian.

There's no such thing as a "girl's game" or a "mens' game". Two of the more ruthless pirates I know in EVE are women IRL.

This game *is* generally aimed at people that are willing to do independent research into complex mechanics, and aggressively optimize to the point of bending the rules.

If you are interested in the dark side of EVE - worming your way into people's trust then inserting a knife into their backs; joining corporations to fleece members; piracy; scamming - let me know via EVEmail, and I'll put you in touch with other e-assholes like myself.