EVE New Citizens Q&A

Picking a race could come down to your preference in which ships you'd like to fly and what types of weapons systems you want to use.
For Caldari, you will get skills for hybrids and missiles, very poor drone skills.
For Amarr, you get lazers, and some good drone skills.
For Gallente, you get hybrids and some good drone skills.
For Minmatar, you get Projectiles and I'm not sure about the drones.

Also, Caldari uses shields for defense, and Amarr uses armor.

Since I like the Caldari ships, and I wanted to have some drones that would be somewhat effective, I made a Gallente character. After their rookie training, and going thru the military career agents, they flew to Caldari space, to run missions. So now, they can use Caldari ships, use shields, used hybrids, and drones. They could have stayed in Gallente space and used Gallente ships, but I don't like them, and I don't like the armor defense.

-Kirst

The issue is that Alphas are limited to their racial ships; Omegas are not. And for Omegas, there are no penalties or bonuses for flying their race ships vs. other races.

So, a brief synopsis of the racial flavors:

- Amarr - armor defenses, lasers and drones for damage, and for electronic warfare they like weapon destabilization (makes the guns miss a lot) and energy neutralizing (if you run out of energy everything in your ship turns off). Lasers do not use ammo (they use a focusing crystal to affect range), but use a lot of capacitor energy, so you need to have good Engineering skills.

- Caldari - shield defenses, hybrid guns and missiles for damage, and for electronic warfare they have excellent ships that do ECM (which completely wipes out your ability to target-lock anything - and without targets you can't do much). Hybrid guns are called "hybrid" because they use ammo (hybrid charges) AND capacitor energy to shoot said ammo, though not as much energy as the lasers. Missiles, on the other hand, are very nice for PVE because you can always load a missile that does the type of damage that matches the NPC pirate vulnerabilities / resistance holes. For PVP, though, missiles take a while to get to target, so if you're in a group trying to shine on the DPS meters, target may be dead before your missiles get there.

- Gallente - armor defenses, hybrid guns and drones. Drones are like missiles, they take a while to get to target, but you can choose the drone that best matches the enemy NPCs. Unlike missiles, there are extra types of drones: jamming drones, mining drones, sentry (sniper) drones, remote repair drones. Also unlike missiles, drones do not use high slots, or power grid to install, so certain drone boats can put in oversized (battleship-size on a cruiser) armor plates or shield defenses, for extra tankiness. Gallente ships are generally very versatile, with multiple possibilities for fitting them differently for different purposes. For e-war, the Gallente use sensor dampeners, which can shrink your targeting range and force you to come in close and personal.

- Minmatar - some of their ships use armor, some use shields. Weaponry is projectile weapons and missiles. Projectile weapons use ammo but no capacitor, so you're immune to energy neutralization. Missiles, as above, offer versatility. Minmatar ships are also speedier than other ships in their class, which matters somewhat in today's gaming preferences that go for smaller higher-tech ships. For e-war, the Minmatar use target painting (makes the enemy easier to hit).


As far as ship tiers, Alphas only have access to T1 frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. There is one battlecruiser that was a Christmas gift and requires no skills to fly, and it's decent but somewhat expensive and usually a target; people find it an easy kill when flown by newbies with low skill levels.

T1 ships have versatility as their strength. You can fit them in different ways to achieve slightly different objectives (fit for damage, fit for speed, fit for tank, etc.).

Frigates are small, cheap, fast, and agile, and rely on speed and being small as a defense. You should almost always fit a propulsion module (afterburner or MWD) on your frigates, as that's part of their defenses.

Destroyers are designed to kill frigates. They're "attack" ships, many guns and few defenses, kill the enemy before you die type of ship. They don't have more armor or shields than a frigate, but they have lower speed and bigger size, so that makes them very vulnerable to cruiser weapons.

Cruisers are extremely versatile ships; you can do pretty much everything with a cruiser or two. They are too slow to rely on speed / size for defenses, so you need to install an actual "tank", either armor or shields, with damage resistance modules. Fortunately, most cruisers have enough fitting slots to allow this, but you need to have your "support" skills (armor, shields, engineering, targeting, navigation, etc.) trained to at least 3 to properly support your ship.

Battlecruisers are "attack" cruisers, similar to destroyers - many guns, fewer defenses. They don't have the same vulnerabilities as destroyers, because cruisers and battlecruisers don't rely on speed/size for defense, so the fact that the battlecruiser is bigger doesn't matter as much. Battlecruisers do, however, have powergrid and slot limitations that force you to choose between installing the full rack of guns that the ship was designed for, or installing some defenses but fewer weapons.

Battleships are slow bricks, basically. Most are able to install 7-8 big guns AND a full tank with resistance amplifiers, but the mobility is pretty much non-existent. Currently, they aren't favored in small scale PVP because other ships (T2 heavy attack cruisers, T3 strategic cruisers, some battlecruisers) can deliver the same amount of damage and tanking while retaining cruiser mobility and versatility.

T2 ships are super-specialized versions of T1 ships; they take one role to the limit, while making sacrifices and gaining huge vulnerabilities in other areas. As an example, interceptors are all about speed / tackling with anti-warp disruption, but they do pretty much no damage and are very vulnerable to damage. T2 ships are designed to be flown in fleets where the roles (DPS, tank, jamming, etc.) are split up and the pilots can do those roles properly without exposing their ships' vulnerabilities to the enemy.

T3 ships are advanced ships that have some gimmick. They can switch modes during combat or can be put together in different configurations like legos. You need a fleet to prep the battle scene so you can then apply your ship's gimmick, for these ships.

Capital ships are NOT solo ships; you can't even move them without cyno beacon alts or friends. They're designed to take out stations or other big capital ships, and are used by large alliances in wars.

I don't think it's even about the flavours so much. If you plan to be an alpha, and you plan to do a specific thing, look at the specific ships you'd use.

OP says he has desire to do null sec exploration/combat. For combat you've got a few choices, you probably want to look at the available cruisers. For those, the already posted advice on fighting styles & weapons is reasonable. But worth checking out the specific ships still. My not especially educated guess is you'd find a vexor or caracal (or their navy versions) the best options for null ratting with alpha skills.

For scanning and hacking, you're more or less stuck with 1 practical option per race. Amarr gets the magnate, a ship with just 3 mid slots. Caldari get the heron, with 5 mids, but just 2 lows. Minmatar & Gallente get explorer frigates with a 3/4/3 layout. For me, on an explorer frigate with alpha skills, I want a prop mod, a data analyser, a relic analyser, and a scan strength array. So I need 4 mids. Others may feel a cargo scanner is a necessity, want 5 mids, take Caldari as a result. I don't use a cargo scanner, and I use my low slots either for a faster align time or warp core stabs. You could also use the lows to fit a bit of tank. Having 3 slots gives more options than 2. So if I had an explorer alpha, I'd be choosing between Gallente & Minmatar.

Can I (Alpha) have multiple accounts on the same email address? And also 3 characters per alpha account?

Yes and yes. But I would do four accounts on one mail adress to get all races covered but only one clone on each account until you got 5 million skillpoints.

Amarr has better looking ships and lazors are purdy. Drones ftw.

Crucifier has been signifiantly been redone http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/eve/images/c/c9/Crucifier512.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090915064431 is the old look. The "new" crucifier look is very cool.

The executioner was redone just two patches ago, it now is a bit beefier looking and less aerodynamic. Prophecy and Arbitrator are two of my longtime favorite hulls for looks. Really, the Prophecy hull is sexy, a Chicken Hawk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lEuwh4RFoY