EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi sir!
Seems a bit early to rat in null as a 5 day character.
You must have consumed some skill injectors or you are some alt if you are to survive.

Shield or tank, I have not to many preferences, but ship and skill will in my opinion decide. If you are only ratting, passive tank is relaxing. So if that is your preference, I would go for passive shield tank.

Just a reminder, tanking rats is you last worry in null sec. If you have other pilots in the system that is not "blue" to you. You will probably be hunted.

Your best way to null sec is joining a null sec corp. That way you can access null sec with "friends" and can filter out those who are a threat. And you are "Oscar Mike" to safe.

GL

Sansha shoot Em/therm( 70/30 i believe is the average) so a shield tanked ship, especially one thats not laid out specifically to shield tank is going to struggle. If you insist on a hurricane i would armor tank it. But if your planning on staying in sansha space awhile i would train up amarr ships. They are far better at killing and tanking sansha than minmater ships.

It also depends on your skill level. With barely any skills your going to struggle to stay alive in a BC. If you have good skills for cane and can t2 or faction fit it then it will be a slow go and some struggling.

Remember that some areas of null-sec are NRDS which reduces the risk from other pilots - at least the local ones. If you are not in a null-sec corp that may be something to think about.

As far as the skills and the age of the character are concerned, a while back I sat (cloaked) and enjoyed the show as a 2 day old toon in a Coercer ran a Sansha Hub. He didn't quite complete it, but he killed enough to take home several million in bounties. So, get a cheap ship, go out and have fun. The worst that happens is you die, and even that will teach you valuable lessons.

Drones used to be very good at a specific tactic, which was "send out the drones, set them to aggressive, and go have some cake for half an hour." It's a high-sec tactic, really; you won't be able to go afk in nullsec with all the roaming PVP gangs out there. And also, CCP got fed up with it and modified the AI of the NPCs to target drones; causing countless threads and complaints about "How do I keep my drones alive? Drones suck."

The current "meta" (the tactics that are preferred currently) is to have smaller, more agile ships, and rely on gun or missile firepower for quick kills. This works well because:

1. The NPC AI is programmed to just approach you and orbit closely; they don't kite, they don't pulse their MWD, etc. Because of this, you can kite the NPC easily if you wanted a long range setup, but the easiest is to let them come and shoot them up as they get close. And then the wrecks will be in range for looting, you don't have to fly all over the place to get the loot.

2. The short range guns (autocannons) do more damage than the long range guns (artillery) and require less power grid to fit on the ship, leaving resources to fit armor or shields.

3. It's easy to guess what resistances you'll need (EM, Thermal), so you can easily super-tank your ship to be able to take on a swarm of NPC enemies and just laugh. You don't need to try to stay out of range to "protect" yourself.

4. The "more agile" part comes into play because NPC's usually don't warp scramble you and don't follow you. Unlike players. So with some of the tougher rats, you can just shoot up a few, thin the herd, then warp out when you're in flames, repair a bit, then warp back in and thin the herd some more. Then for the final remaining boss, orbit fast and close so you get under his guns and avoid damage. Minmatar ships have speed / agility as their trademark, so you can use that.

minmatar ships are terrible at anything but pvp and killing angel rats. Sansha have very big orbits the Battleships will orbit at 40 plus KM( i think 1 or 2 types orbit at 20 KM). You will find most sansha ships orbit at around 20 km or more except the frigs with few exceptions. So in a cane your going to be either spending a lot of time chasing things down or a lot of time fighting in falloff( so you might as well cut your dps in half which makes the cane a poor choice again)

Angels on the other hand tend to fight close. Even their Battleships you can reach out the window and slap them. What ever pirate you are fighting their empire enemy is usually the best choice of racial ships to use against them with a few exceptions. Only newbs/noobs used canes to kill rats anywhere in null ive lived. Ive spent 7 of the last 8 years living in angel and sansha space and almost never have seen a cane ratting and for good reason.

Best choices in order for t1( considering effectiveness and cost):
1) Abaddon with pulses and scorch
2) Apoc with pulses and scorch
3) speed tanked Vexor navy issue( only using this faction because if the easy training and low cost)
4) Domi( slightly edges out raven because of tank resist and cheap)
5) Raven
6) Drake( long range, damage type selection and a brute of a passive tank when fitted properly but puts out relatively poor dps)
...
...
25) Armor tanked hurricane
26) any other tanked cane

Best ship for ratting(only for secure/safe areas): Deadspace fitted rattlesnake( cost 1-2 billion isk). It will tank god while mowing through rats like a lawn mower through grass. With a >75 KM range i can drop an MTU and just mow anoms down with it, grab a noctis spend 5 minutes( including travel time) looting and salvaging and move on.


Drones are good for ratting on certain ships. The rattlesnake vexor navy issue and domi are all drone boats and they all made the list of good or excellent ships to rat in. The vexor will always edge out the domi in ratting because its small and easily speed tanked leaving room for Drone damage amps in your lows. The domi has to be tanked leaving you with few to no lows for damage. Caldari ships tend to be the favorite race for general pve because they can apply all 4 damage types which means they can do 100% damage to the primary resist weakness. Since they are shield tanked most to all of your lows can be freed for damage mods. They also are ( or were) immune to tracking disruptors favored by sanshas.


You dont want to go to any null space you dont have permission from the locals to be in especially in a normal ship. You and your ship will quickly part ways. For example you would be considered extremely luckily to make it through HED-( the pipe system into catch from highsec) alive in a cane. And if you do your probably not going to make it more than a few jumps past that little lone able to actually rat.

You would have better luck in providence as the are NRDS. But you wont know who will and who wont shoot you. But you have a higher chance of surviving than catch or stain as long as you dont attack anyone that didnt shoot you first.

your best bet is to get in a corp that is in a 0.0 alliance. That will give you access to 0.0 stations/citadels and intel channels and a blue list which will exponentially increase your survival chances while ratting in 0.0 when used properly.

If your 5 days old, you dont want to be in null, unless you injected massive amounts of SP. And minmatar ships are " hard mode". They require good skills to fly even decently well, which is likely why angel rats are so weak. Eve already has a huge learning curve, minmatar only makes that far more complicated. Some minmatar are better long range some short, some shield tanked, some armor, some speed, etc all depending on what your doing with it and your skill level. I know you really want minmatar to be good pve ships, but they really arent. You need to tank a low amount of DPS for a long period in pve. They just arent designed for that. They are designed to be brawlers. He also knows nothing about velocities and tracking, making it even worse. He needs to be in a more forgiving ship.

You assumed that was a recommendation. I said what was better out of t1 ships for killing sansha . I gave examples in order of ships i would use. I could of stuck the Amarr BCs in that list but my point was moreso of how far down on a list of choices of just t1 ships a cane is rated for killing sansha. And nothing takes a long time to train. You can have max skills in 3 days of clickfest. Plus you never know he might of bought a character.


not if he wants to kill sansha for whatever reason he might want too kill that specific rat. If he was going to hang out in angel space, then fine, play in hard mode. Also in 5 days unless your injecting or you bought the character, you would barely be able to get in a cane. Which means he is going to die soon after he gets agressed, and if he gets tackled by rats his chance of survival is next to nill.

Again while this sounds good on paper, when you are new there is already a lot to learn. You need to stick to one weapon type and one tank type until you learn the rest of the game. No sense in trying to learn everything your first month. He needs to learn how to do one type of tank and do it well then move on to something else. Not have to switch tank types constantly and try to remember which ships to tank which way and how to use those tanks. Your trying to get him to do astrophysics before hes learned algebra.

IN which case i would tell him :
1) Dont go to null as a 5 day old pilot unless you like dying a lot.
2) Dont fly a BC unless you have all your core skills up, unless you like spending all your time fitting BCs
3) Dont rat in a cane in sansha space, thats just dumb.
4) If your insistent on killing sansha in null space( for example you have a friend that lives there), train gallente cruiser to 3 or 4, train up drones so you can use heavies, research speed tanking in a vexor navy issue, train speed tanking skills. Practice speed tanking in high sec anoms. then make an attempt at null. OR train up for amarr or caldari BCs and related skills. Or fly a cane and die a lot.
5) If your 5 days old with only 5 days worth of skill points, you shouldnt even be thinking about a BC. This game is NOT like other games. Bigger ships are not always better. You may think you are upgrading to a better ship but really your upgrading to going broke faster.

Again never advised him to train a BS, thats what you assumed. I just showed him how crappy of a choice a cane was for killing sansha. I would struggle in a cane or at least be very bored with how long it took me to eat through tanks and i have minmatar BC at 5 can use their t2 weapons and have 70 mil sp, 99% of which is combat related.

Really? Go back to your faction war, troll, and leave the new players be.

Op, out of all the advice you have received, definitely dont listen to this guy. Just because you "can" do something does not make it a good idea. And its a terrible idea to randomly fit a random ship and go roaming around eve like you own the place. You will be frustrated confused and broke for your very short eve career that will end in a "ragequit"

New players absolutely can succeed in null; but they should probably fleet up for most PVE, including sites that are commonly done solo by veteran players.

Once you've decided to fleet up, fitting strategies change entirely.

This is 5 year old information.

I don't want the Minmatar ships to be good anything. You are talking about some min / max, max level, best in slot gear mindset that has no place in this game. Your advice is not helpful for new players. This is the NC Q&A please keep the advice to that which is helpful for new players or go argue your min / max BS on some other section of the forum. We are here to help new bros so please keep your posts in that mindset.


This is a game about game knowledge not skill points. The way that you learn this game is by playing around with stuff not sticking your head in the sand. It does not take long to train skills up to level 3 which is more than enough to give something a decent try. I'm not advising him to become an expert at everything in the first month just get a taste of varied styles.

While I am sure that your advice is great advice in WoW this is Eve and in Eve you don't get good by learning "your class" you get good by learning what everyone else's ship can do. Your advice here pushes a new player towards a mindset that he needs to focus on getting "the best ship" and getting his skills "maxed out" which is just a terrible mindset for Eve.



The Goons built one of the biggest Empires that this game has ever seen by taking brand new players and sending them directly to null sec within minutes of logging on for the first time. Your advice is terrible please stop.

1) What's wrong with making friends? This is an MMO and a sandbox MMO that that. There is no max level, structured anything in this game limiting the number of players that can participate and thus encouraging the "Max level / Best in Slot" mentality. Fleeting up with people to do stuff is not only totally fine but completely encouraged. If you want to solo dailies all day go back to WoW.
2)Not at all true. If he's deep in blue space he will rarely even see reds and even when he does intel will let him know they are coming from many systems away. Honestly a new player can be safer from PvP in null sec than he would be in most high sec carebear corps. I've brought plenty of new players into very active NRDS space. Yes they loose a ship or two at first but then they get the hang of it and do well. I've taken several days old players and turned them into full time null sec residents that are still in the game years later.
3) I've watched characters less than a week old successfully solo double BS belt spawns in dessies and cruisers. They can also hack just fine. That completely leaves out all the fleet stuff they can do. I've seen players less than 24 hours old make millions from their fair cut of loot from a PvP roam. There are plenty of newbie friendly null sec corps that you can join and get free ships and then go out and roam and when you get blown up: get insurance payout as well as ship reimbursement from the alliance and make isk PvPing on day 1.

He's got the skills to do anything he wants in null on day 1. Further this is a game and the only thing that he needs to effectively do is have fun. However even just being in fleet and giving the opponents another target to have to cycle through is helpful not to mention the added dps or Ewar or logi depending on what he's flying.
4) dude this is a game. It's space pixels. "Because I can" is the only reason you need to do anything. The guy is not asking for advice on what to do with his retirement fund FFS.
5) Nat's advice is far better than yours.


Some new players need to take it slow. Some players like to dive right in to the deep end and figure it out as they go. Everyone is different. Stop making out like everyone is a carbon copy of you.

I am not sure where you get the idea that high sec is the take it slow path. Outside of starter systems high sec if full of gankers and scammers and people looking to war dec your "new player friendly" corp. I could argue that null sec is the take it slow path.


He asked how to tank his Cane and you told him that Amarr ships are "far better", which I think many players would agree is an over exaggeration.

Since all the ship balancing in recent years my main complaint has been that there just isn't much difference between the races any longer. All race's ship line ups can pretty much do everything very effectively. Your concept that Minmatar ships are only good for PvP predate the rebalancing and are no longer valid.

I don't come into the NC Q&A to forum warrior. I come here to help new players. However when I see bad troll like advice I will correct it.

Nat Silverguard is not my alt.