Warfare & Tactics

Fly whatever race you enjoy flying. There are always threads about which race is the best but in reality in PVP its the skill of the pilot that makes the difference. Knowing the strengths of the ship you're flying versus your targets and either engaging or not. Rat's wont matter regardless of the race you fly since Ammo will dictate Dmg type and besides belt Rats die easily. Your focus will be not on the rats but rather the people trolling the belts looking for you.

Flying any race has its ups and downs, I am primarily Amarr focused and enjoy the wide range of ships available: Arbitrator/Maller for cruisers, Harbinger BC, Armageddon/Abby BS's, Curse/Pilgrim Recons, Legion can be very viable if flown and fitted properly. Armor wise Amarr are very strong and Crystals help with ammo use. Gallente also have great Armor boats. See what the new corp you join flies and if anything catches your eye go for it. My advice after that would be to stick with a direction till you are skilled up in it.

Again, fly what looks like fun to you and just get all your support skills for that races strengths up.

Hope this helps.

Ammo dictates damage type within the limits of the weapon system. Projectiles and missiles have no such limitations, hybrids and lasers do.


For ratting, you are correct that you will be at a slight disadvantage using Amarr ships against things that aren't Blood/Sansha, but I wouldn't bother crosstraining just for that.

This old thread should help you...

Racial Ship Philosophies.

train everything... that way you can always fly the FOTM, nerfing just means you fly a different ship, and you can already fly the buffed ship.

-DT

I have to agree with an earlier post; combat is just too fluid to ever say 'this ship/race is best'. No two fights are alike. But training does take a great deal of time, and you'd not want to waste skill points (looks at skill sheet, shudders at the points placed into mining ).

It is important to determine what style of fighting you prefer (they all have their place). Do you like to hit your enemies from a distance while they cannot hit you? Or jump in, get close, melt face? Slow, heavy-tanked combats or lightning-fast, one-screwup-and-you're-dead fights? Let these answers direct you to a class of ship types (frigate, cruiser, bc, etc) , rather than a selected race.

Select the one you feel you'd like the most and train it. Then work on another race's ship in that class, eventually covering all races. That sounds a bit harsh, but not only do you become nerf-proof, but you learn the strengths and weaknesses of the craft you generally face in combat.

Obviously, the 'lower' the ship class (i.e., frigates, destroyers) the quicker the skills for that class can be acquired. I am a big fan of mastering the small stuff before going on the the larger ships.

I went for what I thought was the coolest looking ships in my opinion. So I went Amarr. I'd say that they're a viable race for many occasions, and now have a nano battlecruiser in the Oracle. Minnies are good at a lot of things, but I haven't been afraid of a hurricane for a few months now.

Drakes are the FOTM currently, and that flavor will change with the BC dev pass that'll be happening sometime in the future. I've seen some pretty sick Gallente DPS tank setups recently that makes me worry about an enemy Thorax or Brutix much more than before.

So my opinion? Go with what you think is cool. It'll probably be a viable option in the near future.

Just a few general comments -

If you are really looking for PvP, skip the large weapons and large hulls (anything large than BC) because they are less common and/or much more specialized in PvP situations.

Feel free to get Frigate V in multiple races, it just doesn't really take that long.

Cruiser V is the doorway to any race's PvP ships.

Missiles are generally the least common PvP weapon (therefore somewhat of a bias against caldari), but they are used at least some by every race for some ships, i.e. Stealth Bombers. Same is true for drones.

Amarr seem to be the most straight forward training - focused on armor and energy turrets, as well as cap warfare.

Minmatar hulls cover a lot of ground, with combined weapons on the same ships (missiles + projectiles + drones on a lot of hulls) and some ships are shield tankers while others are armor tankers. If you want to have skills in a wide variety of ships, Minmatar will probably take longer.

Minmatar EWAR sucks for PvP (painters and tracking links, anyone?).

Caldari EWAR is the strongest (ECM).

Amarr and Minmatar seem to be the consensus favs for PvP, but I would not say all Minmatar classes are better - Recon and HAC seem to have lots of opportunities on the Amarr side, and the minnie hulls can be unforgiving if you screw up.

If you hate picking ammo and waiting 10 seconds to change it out, skip minnie :).

Minmatar is a solid choise. High speed allows for small gang applications, high alpha is good for fleets and sniping.

Start off with the excellent T1 gunboats (gunnery, shields, ecm drones):

Rifter
Thrasher
Rupture
Hurricane
Tornado
Tempest
Maelstrom

well i am totaly crosstrained and have some subcap masters in corp ....

.... start with frigs and dessies. one of my corpmates is eating all dessies and frigs in plated merlin. And one of excorpmates killed nanocane in rifter (Gorp was master of the rifter).

They are very situational, but can give u cheap load of experience. Later try kiting cruisers (rail rax, nanor ruppie, assault caracal). Later u will know where to go. BCs are very good, but u need all support skills in top notch to really shine.

if you go fleet work .... well ewar ships good too. Learn the gun mechanics (ie where to kite and whn to try to keep small transveral to hit max.

Doesnt really matter. Just make sure you're in a good pvp corp.