EVE New Citizens Q&A

I am thinking about buying a cruiser. There are three choices. Missile boat, usual one, and missiles+turret mix. What kind of gun is better - missile launcher or turret overall.

Let's say, new players that are peacefully mining in low sec. Fast, agile ships.

You mean, as targets? :D

Or will you be defending?

I honestly don't know enough about missiles to answer your question properly (I'm currently training into them myself) and there seems to be a ton of variables to them vs. turrets.

I can give you info on Hybrid turrets, as that's what I use mainly.

Hybrid turret damage is limited to Kinetic and Thermal only, so hulls with good resistances to those types will take longer to kill.

With Railguns on a cruiser you can get decent range (35km+ pretty easily, depending on ammo and various modules) but you will have trouble hitting things up close, and fast-moving ships can be a pain to hit if they're not coming straight at or moving straight away from you.

Blasters will limit your range (5-12k-ish, again depending on ammo and whatnot), but they hit better and you have the added benefit of being in range to use a warp scrambler and web. Probably preferable for killing destroyers and frigates.

I know very little about energy turrets and next to nothing about projectile turrets, so I will leave that for others to answer.

Drones are great against small ships, for what it's worth, and there are several cruisers that function as excellent drone boats.

The mining ships are frigates, or basically have frigate-equivalent defenses. Destroyers are designed to be frigate-killers.

But to answer your question:

- Guns: they hit instantly, short range do more damage and also let you tackle, long range allow you to kite but you need someone else for tackle.

- Missiles: you can load the missile that best matches the target's resistance hole, but they take a while to get TO the target. You still have long range and short range versions, and the damage is similar to guns, really.

- Drones: take a while to get to the target + you can pick the drone based on resistances. The big advantage of drones is they don't require power grid to fit, so a drone boat can oversize its defenses and be more tanky.

Because PVE rats don't run away and have resistance profiles published on the internet, missiles and drones are favored as PVE weapons. Guns are typically favored as PVP weapons because of their insta-hit, but there are certain ships like RLML Caracal and some drone-based brawlers that engage close enough to offset the "takes a while to get to the target" disadvantage for their missile or drone weapon systems.

Low-sec PVP can be about the approach / you may prefer ships that can use the covert-ops cloak so that you can sneak up or take the target by surprise. These ships can also probe targets out, typically, so that's a bonus. If you can't fly cov-ops or recons, maybe fleet up with someone who can; they provide the approach and the tackle, then you arrive to provide the heavy DPS.

Since you don't normally buy a cruiser to do the mining, either you want to shoot the ships doing the mining, or you are in a mining fleet which has an Orca or some other ship which you can store the cruiser in and switch to it when something worth shooting turns up.

Gun type turrets (lasers, hybrids and projectiles) can miss based on multiple factors. The range from you to the target, your speed, the target's speed, how much either of you are maneuvering. Gun type turrets can all be divided into two main groups, short range (pulse lasers, hybrid blasters, projectile autocannon) and long range (beam lasers, hybrid railguns and projectile artillery). The short range turrets mean you have to get closer to hit the target, but the turrets can stay locked onto the target more accurately. The long range turrets allow you to hit your target from further away, but they have more trouble staying locked on to targets that manuever a lot at high speed. As others have pointed out, when the turrets fire, assuming you hit the target, the target takes damage instantly. There are modules called "tracking disruptors" which can make turrets less accurate, and there are modules called "tracking computers" and "tracking enhancers" which can make turrets more accurate.

Laser turrets only do two types of damage, EM and Thermal. If the target has high resistance to those types of damage, it's going to take a while to male the target pop. Different laser crystals change your turret range and the proportion of EM/Thermal damage.

Hybrid turrets only do Thermal and Kinetic damage. The same caution about high damage resistance applies to hybrid turrets.
Different types of hybrid ammo change your turret range and the proportion of Thermal/Kinetic damage.

Projectile turrets can do all four types of damage. Different types of projectile ammo offer different types of damage, different range options and some types of projectile ammo increase the turret tracking accuracy.

Missiles don't have the accuracy limitations of turrets, if you fire missiles at something, as long as the target is inside your missile range, you will hit it. The target's speed can reduce the damage they take, more speed when hit by a missile means less damage taken. Unlike turrets, there is a time delay between launching a missile and when it hits the target. There is a module which the target ship might use that can interfere with a missile's accuracy. There are also some missile modules which reduce the effects of the target's speed. The target ship isn't slowed down, the modules change the way the missiles damage the target so that the target takes more damage despite flying at high speed. Missiles face exactly the same issues with damage resistance that gun type turrets face.

Missiles also have short and long range versions. For frigates and destroyers, rockets are the short range version, light missiles are the long range version. For cruisers and battlecruisers, Heavy Assault Missiles are the short range version, Heavy Missiles are the long range version. For battleships, torpedos are the short range version, cruise missiles are the long range version. Another point about missiles is that big missiles do not apply damage well to small targets, shooting frigates with cruise missiles does not do as much damage as you might expect. If you are setting up a cruiser to shoot frigate and destroyer sized ships, you'll probably be better off using light missiles launchers, the light missiles will apply their damage to small ships more effectively than Heavy Assault or Heavy missiles will.

What does loads of damage at short range?

don't mix guns. Avoid mixing guns and missiles the best you can (mostly because the modules that bonus one won't bonus the other.)

I have the feeling you're stressing about it too much. PVP? You're going to lose. Lots. Get good in a frigate first. Any frigate. Every frigate. Once you know what tactics work for you and in which situations, it'll become clear what ships you want to use.

People say "it depends" because "it depends on you and what you're good at" and then they put up a wall of text that won't mean anything since they don't actually know if you're good at anything, and if you're asking these types of questions, you probably aren't yet. :(

Tristan is a fun little frigate to learn to PvP in. It's where I cut my teeth and after using and losing more of these than I care to admit to this is the Fit I came up with. However there is no right way to fit this little guy just get an idea of what you wish to do in your head and tailor the ship to that task. Experiment and if you aren't 100% sure ont he outcome of a fight take it and learn

If you are shooting mining ships, just use blasters.