EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi. I'm getting close to Level 3 to both Coercer/Corax and Omen/Caracal (according to Evemon). Skill plan durations getting longer so I must decide which way I should go. Could you give me some advice and guidance?

I have some close friends in my corp so usually be part of a small gang in nullsec, not interested in missions. I'm a long range man, prefer to stay 50km+ range, love missile animations but beam laser is not bad also so I can live without missiles, probably.

Do you recommend me Coercer/Omen or Corax/Caracal for Level 4 skill planning?

So you recommend me missiles instead of beam laser, right?

Missiles also take a while to get to the target, as opposed to beam lasers which are instantaneous. Both require your friends to tackle the target, because of your long range preferences. So I think it's a matter of whether you can afford to wait a bit before your damage gets applied (compared to everyone else in your PVP group of friends).

What Do Little is recommending is a larger selection of ship hulls to chose from. Only Amarr ships use lasers, so if you focus on beam lasers you'll have choices from the Amarr cruisers. If you focus on missiles, you'll have choices that include some Caldari ships, Minmatar, and pirate factions.

Also lasers do not have selectable damage type. You get a mix of EM/Thermal depending on the crystal you choose. Missile damage can be selected to target enemy weakness so you get better damage application even if raw dps is lower. On the flip side, lasers don't need ammunition though T2 crystals do wear out so you'll need to carry some spares. You can build a pretty good case for both.

As a new player I chose missiles because they don't need capacitor and they always hit their target - no tracking issues. As a PVE/Industrial player I have no regrets - Rattlesnake will practically run level 4 missions by itself!

I prefer the DPS graph of turrets over missiles.

-With missiles you either have long range missiles that don't do much damage, or you have short range missiles that... well, don't do much damage, except they also don't do it at useful ranges. Turrets on the other hand can tune the range with ammo, allowing you to apply much better DPS at whatever ranges you want.
-Yeah missiles can choose their damage type, except if you do you lose out on your hull bonuses, so, no, if you do anything other than kinetic, your bad DPS gets even worse.
-Caldari missile boats also miss out on drones, so even less DPS, less versatility, less flexibility. The only places missile boats start to suck a little less is on specialist hulls. T3 and pirates. The pirate missile boats end up using their drones more than their missiles, so at that point you'd might as well go Gallente and really get the best out of your drone skills.

Missiles do have a couple advantages.
-The range of long ranged missiles is long. It pretty much has to be. This makes them useful for kiting tactics, though sniping is a different matter entirely where the drawbacks start to negate the value of the range.
-They are easy to use. Except that might be as much a drawback as an advantage. Most of your opponents will have turrets fit, and it's harder to really know the limitations of turrets if you don't have much practice using them.

That's not a thorough pros/cons list, but what it boils down to is that even though they are easier to use, they feel like children's toys compared to a real weapons system.

RLML caracals are a common alliance doctrine, all 4 skills put it in a pretty good spot too. Although the corax seems very underused so I don't know that I'd want to put too many SP into it, although most of that SP can be used in other ships. The cormorant is far more widely used although that involves gun skills.

navy omen is a great ship although that seems like a longer term goal as it is more expensive and you will likely want t2 guns. The standard omen isn't that great but it doesn't seem that bad either. The coercer is a fun destroyer, but it doesn't really have any must have features that I would recommend it at this point.

caracal has 4,901 points in the last 7 days, according to zkill, where the omen has 497. (omen navy is at 2,840)

I think this is an over-simplification that confuses not only new players but veterans as well. I also think that this extends not only to launchers versus turrets but throughout the different choices within turrets.

As has been mentioned missiles pretty much always hit as long as you are in range. Turrets on the other hand can potentially hit for 3 times damage or completely miss. Almost always you will be hitting for reduced damage as there are multiple ways that you can have your damage reduced. It is not at all uncommon to have volleys completely miss or hit for very little damage with turrets.

The most obvious example of this that I have experienced in game is the 1400mm artillery versus the 1200mm. The 1400s look awesome on paper but in practice they have very limited practical use. Outside ganking stationary targets that you are trying to alpha or PoS bashing the 1200mm's are almost always going to be a better choice. The tracking on the 1400s is so poor that you have a difficult time landing anything but glancing blows on targets that are moving at all.

Another example that comes to mind is with lazors where the largest versions are so hard to fit that you are usually better off going with the middle choice just so you don't have to waste 3 rig and / or low slots just getting your turrets to fit on your ship.

So again for me the best advice that we can give to new players is try them all out and pay more attention to how the weapon actually performs rather than theoretical DPS numbers. Once you get a feel for how each actually performs rather than what you've been told or read, you'll be in a much better place game wise than if you just specialized in what someone told you was "better".

For me probably the best way that I have found to compare and contrast different weapons systems is through bounty ticks. It takes killing a lot of NPCs over a fair amount of time to come up with a decent sampling but if you are going to be doing it for income anyways might as well get some experience out of the deal.

Ah, my beloved Rattler... park it, drop sentries, drop MTU, ???, profit... not entirely hands-off having to cycle through targets and actually shoot some cruise missiles, but ridiculously easy. And they get bonuses to TWO damage/missile types, not just one. But GAWWWWWWWD, are they slow with no prop mods.........