EVE New Citizens Q&A

Don't focus too much on any given specific ship hull. The game has a pretty deep ship fitting aspect to it and you'll find that you'll be using one ship in one area and then moving to another ship because it's more optimal in another part of the game.

If you like missiles, I'd focus on the base frigate/destroyer level of ships and work on your rocket and light missile skills and their support skills. Also work on your shield skills and basic core CPU/Powergrid/Cap skills as well. A fantastic "mid end" PvE ship that'll use all those rocket/missile/destroyer skills would be a Jackdaw. My alt flies one and it's fantastic for PvE in all sorts of areas. This would be a good long train to work towards as it'll focus on the smaller and more basic skills.

Past that, I feel like the next good PvE Caldari ship to work towards is the Drake. It's a heavy missile / heavy assault missile ship, cruiser level weapons, with a really solid tank. It can handle C1 wormhole sites and the higher level PvE missions. While you're working towards that you can use the cruiser skills to play with the various other Caldari cruisers.

A much longer skill train past that point might be the Tengu. It'll use those missile and shield skills and is a PvE beast. But this is a real long term plan.

You can also look into training hybrid guns and maybe thinking about Gallente ships. They use hybrids as well, but will require armor skills and drone skills. That'll give you 2 ship lines(Gallente / Caldari) with 3 weapon systems(missiles, hybrids, drones) and should cover many PvE and PvP options. Eventually, long long term, you could work your way towards Rattlesnakes which makes use of both Gallente/Caldari skills and is a great PvE battleship.

I know when I came to Eve I had this idea that I was going to plan everything out perfectly and do it just right. I was going to do all kinds of research and have the perfect skill plan etc....

The thing about Eve is that you knowledge of the game is far more important than your skills.

Further what you think you are going to like next week or next year and what you will actually be doing in a week or a year will be totally different things. As you learn and grow in the game your tastes will change, sometimes daily.

My best advice that I feel that I have for you right now is don't worry so much about getting just right. Keep yourself freed up to continually try different stuff and different ways of doing the same stuff. Don't feel that you have to commit to any one plan or playstyle and stay light on your feet.

It's possible but not recommended. Every ship has bonuses that it works with and Caldari ships are normally going to be hybrids or missiles. Ships that aren't that are probably going to be logi, support, scouting or ewar. So you really aren't going to see any situations where you fit projectile turrets or beams on those ships. You can fit rails though which are just as long range, just not as high first strike.

Normally you'd fit artillery on Minmatar ships or ships that have bonuses that aren't another high slot weapon system(like the Algos which uses drones).

Really it's not a big deal to train up to 3's in most everything and play around with things to see what you like. Once you find weapon systems you enjoy then you can get those to 5 and specialize. On the small/frigate side it's easy to specialize in multiple things. Once you get into the bigger weapons/ships(cruiser/battleships) then it takes lot more time to train up to 5.

As for implants +3's are fine, but be careful flying into lowsec or null as you can lose your pod. I personally fly with +2's since they're cheap to replace and I don't mind losing them. And I stick to flying what I'm comfortable with losing.

Op, reread Mkint's reply a few times, some very good information in there.

You shouldn't listen too much to what people say about ships that suck or are awesome. Most people are terrible at this game and are not capable of using someone else's perspective (yours, in this case) when it comes to what's good or not. They just regurgitate the ****** memes they've been told themselves, which they never questioned, and then speak from their own situation, not yours.

The corax doesn't suck, it's fine to use for PVE in lvl 1 and (some) 2 missions and works fine in combat exploration. The Oracle is an entirely different ship with an entirely different use that is almost exclusively used in PVP, so if you're a newbie asking about PVE and some clown goes "oracle has awesome range and dps" that person is indeed a clown and should not be listened to as the ship is pretty much useless in most forms of PVE, especially for a newbie.


The trick about missile ships for PVE is that they have really long range and as per normal longer range = less dps, but for missiles it also means that it does that dps regardless of targets being long or short range. This is both good as bad, it means that you can't switch to shorter range ammo to increase dps but it also means you don't have to switch and you won't lose out on dps at longer ranges. Most people compare turret dps with the short range high dps ammo and that gives some really cool dps numbers but when they have to switch to long range ammo the dps drops a lot and then the differences between turrets and missiles aren't that favourable toward turrets.

However, due to game mechanics and how NPC AI works it does favour turrets, generally. Turrets have trouble hitting small/fast stuff and lose applied dps if the target is moving at an angle to the ship, but since NPC that are at range move in a straight line towards the ship you can pick them off really easy. Missiles lose applied dps vs small/fast targets regardless of the angle. This means that at range, where the npc move in a straight line, turrets perform better but at shorter range they might have issues applying dps where missiles simply don't give a fck at what ranges they have to work at, they just work everywhere but lack an optimum where they perform best.

Both approaches work but missiles are indeed more boring to use because you have to wait for the missiles to reach the target and there really isn't a way to get better results by being a more active pilot. This means that it's great to use if you're a non-effort zombie and since most people kinda operate at that level they will tell you that Caldari is the PVE race and missiles are awesome. Best thing for you to do is to get both destroyers, Cormarant and Corax, do a lot of PVE with them and decide for yourself if you like missiles or turrets more.

Do note that most people use terrible fits which result in terrible low (applied) dps and mission completion times, this goes for both missile as turret fits but missile fits especially massively benefit from not using the fits 99% of the people tell you to use (because those people lack actual knowledge on game mechanics and are non-efforts).

Case in point: Drake, 99% of the people will tell you to use a shield regen fit with purger rigs for PVE. Doing that makes the ship terrible and low dps that underperforms like a bastard, resulting in super boring gameplay and super long mission completion times. Fitting a Drake correctly results in some 30-40% more applied dps in most cases with much more mobility, it does mean that you can't be a braindead zombie to use it (which is what most ppl seem to like and be) but it'll be better and less boring.


Try it for yourself, figure out what you like the most (turrets or missiles) and then make up your mind. Don't listen too much to what people say unless they've proven to have a clue on the subjects they talk about.

Yeah no one is doing 1000 dps in a Kestrel. Did you (they?) mean 100 dps? With an LML fit, that sounds about right. 1000 dps is unobtainable for most reasonably fit ships (those numbers are typically only found on battleships and up). There are some small ships like the polarized blaster Hecate that can reach that, but they are typically severely gimped in everything else (mobility, defense, control).

Since you're not going to be joining a corp or alliance anytime soon it's difficult to answer your question for long term. I just joined this corp so my training for the next 45 days or so is focused on this corp and their activities. I recommend (for now at least) you pick a t1 frigate from each faction and give projectiles, drones, hybrids, and lasers a try in pvp and just see what you like. That way you can train something you know you'll be happy with and when you do join a corp, start training towards things that they'd want you to train (or at least be happy that you're training those skills) like I'm doing. As for PvE I feel like I do not have enough experience with each faction at each security level to give solid advice.

Mostly the mastery skills for the ships you want to fly. They should be pretty well balanced and thorough, and I believe even cover the weapon support skills though I'd have to check to be sure. The masteries will also have overlap with other ships, the skills you train to get the most out of your frigates will be an absolute necessity in flying the bigger ships. Once you've got those core skills trained, most of your training time would go to unlocking ships and unlocking T2 weapons. Personally, as a general rule, I'll train a skill to 3 minimum. 4 if I plan on using it. 5 if it unlocks something else. Very rarely have I trained a level 5 skill for the bonus it provides alone.