EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello!

Had some questions for more experienced pilots out there (which were probably asked more than million times, umm, well).

I've recently got a Heron frigate, glanced through fitting setups suggested by the EveUni and noticed that no exploration fittings have weapons. So Heron isn't suitable for at least hishsec combat exploration at all? I was thinking, maybe go with two drones and a missile launcher something in the high slot, is that feasible?

If no and I better use a combat-oriented vessel, what's your opinion, shall I either create another pilot and make him take military career, or can the current one train military? He is now pretty deep in mining, processing and exploration but can take some shooting lessons.

Finally, more general one: what do you think, is solo mining a good idea? I was thinking of doing maybe gas mining/wormhole exploration. I'm not talking about the money, since there are not many things to spend them on, but about fun!

Thanks in advance for your time and replies!

Arming a heron is sort of like taping a gun to a skittish puppy, dangerouss to fly with.
That didn't make any sense
but I haven't had coffee yet so **** it I'm going to go with it.

As mentioned , for data and or relic sight's you don't need guns, for combat exploration you're going to be considerably better off 8n a ship that takes a combat fitting well (hint: this is not the heron) and Specifically fit for purpose.

Yeah, me too.


Wow, that's a beauty. Stratios looks great too, I'll work towards getting one of them then, thanks for the tip!


Thanks for a vivid example, got your hint.

Ships in EVE are tools to be used for specific purposes, and often the purpose is very very specific. There's no one ship that can do everything.

Frigates in general are versatile, but you still have to sacrifice something in order to make the frigate work at the task you want it for.

Most of us use the Heron's bonuses to probe things out, then bookmark the location from the probe results window (instead of just going there), go to station, jump in a combat ship, then go to the bookmark and have at it. Then we often dock back at station, jump in a destroyer full of salvagers, and have at the wrecks.

You can train multiple ships per character, which means you can use multiple ships. You're not stuck in the Heron.

What is this space magic?

Ok, I'm going to contradict Tsukino a little bit. It is possible to fit a generalist ship in exploration, or at least a ship that does a few things well, not just one thing. The most versatile ships in Eve are drone ships. There is a reason that SOE ships are drone ships. With them you can generally be pretty decent at two things. Ralph mentioned the Astero, but I just wanted to call some attention to drone ships in general as a viable multi-tasking platform for exploration.



Evemon is showing the heron as having 15/mBps drone bandwith so it could drop 3 drones not two always drop the max flight. Don't bother with a weapon in high.

Here's why. When you fly a drone frigate in a combat mission you you don't fight toe-to-toe. Go in, get aggro, drop your drones, and then range tank. As a frigate, drones operate well outside any frigate's range. So you can have a couple hundred frigates all shooting at you and it doesn't matter because they have a max range of maybe 15k and you're sitting at 40k watching your drones eat them alive. Calling the drones back in when the rats retarget will add to your encounter time. This strategy will work in high and low, but not null or wh where the rats are smarter.

I used to do combat explo in lowsec in a tristan when I felt cheap and then an ishkur and that was my main strategy. But this should work in the racial exploration frigates too just a little slower. Another option is the drone dessys, drone cruisers, then drone BCs. Eventually, the SOE ships, or the T3 ships are your goal ships for combat exploration.

This is both right and wrong, it's a question of complementarity :
For example, i would not recommand to make a character both industrialist/trader also and fighter, because the skills needed are very different, and the situations are very different too.
But explo and fighting are working hand in hand. Another classical question we get is : I do some PvE, should i train another alt for the PvP ? The answer is usually no : you use almost the same skills. Again, they are complementary.
If you stay a bit longer in EVE, you will see that, soon enough, you will have enough SP to train a solo PvE fighter/explorer/scout/solo PvPer/Fleet pilot/Incursions pilot etc... because the skills are all in the same area and because your knowledge of the mechanisms and situational awareness will be the same useful in all these situations.

I don't think there's any harm in not specializing and just training like the ship comand skills to III with the corresponding weapons. That's how I started and got to get a feel for just about everything in the game. My first PVE ship was a Thrasher and I probed using a Heron

I think I'm in the minority where I don't really care about being a level V snob. It's far more important to learn the mechanics of the game, the in's and out's, and I think with your main character it's okay to be a bit broad. You can speclalize later and worry about deciding an alt is better for your main's playstyle or not.

Diminishing returns as they say.

If you're looking for fun, mining is almost always a poor choice.

CCP: Here's a great big universe. go forth, be whatever you want.

Miners: I... I want to be a digger.

Thanks everyone for your detailed replies, you're extremely helpful, I've yet to find such community elsewhere, including my workplace :D



Umm yeah, that's why I'm concerned. Almost all other activities require social interaction, I have a very tight schedule and guess would be of little use to alliances and such. Additionally, I'm not that good at interacting with strangers...

When I said fun I thought of wormholes exploration combined with gas mining, and maybe some drug manufacturing much much later... I chase them all day, might switch sides for a change.