Skill Discussions

What is the best weapon for a new player to train up for? I am still doing lvl 1 because I am getting slaughtered on lvl 2s.

Are you an Alpha or Omega? Alpha characters play for free but have restrictions on what they can train for. Omega characters pay money to play but have no restrictions on what they can train for.

I had a quick look at your character's profile and saw you started the game as Amarr. If you are an Alpha character you will be able to train for lasers and drones the most. You will also be able to train only the most basic skill for missiles. You will not be able to train for hybrid or projectile weapons. Alpha characters can only train for ships from their starting empire, so you will only have access to Amarr ships, plus the Venture mining ship (the Venture is not specific to any empire).

If your character is Omega, ignore all that, An Omega character can train and use any ship and weapon system in the game, it will just take time to complete the training.

The "best weapon" depends on what ship you want to use. Not all ships can use all types of weapons. Each weapon system has it's own advantages and disadvantages.

Lasers don't need ammunition, but they do need "crystals". The basic Tech 1 laser crystals never wear out. More advanced faction and Tech 2 crystals do wear out. A disadvantage of lasers is that they drain power from your ship's capacitor every time they fire, and they can only do two of the four damage types in the game.

Hybrid weapons do need ammunition and they drain some power from the capacitor, but less power than lasers. Just like lasers, hybrid weapons only do two of the four damage types.

Projectile weapons need ammunition but they can do any type of damage you want. You just have to pick the right ammunition for the type of damage you want to do. Projectile weapons do not drain any power from the capacitor, but they tend to use up a lot of powergrid to fit them to a ship.

So far, all of these weapon systems are turrets you fit to a ship. Depending on the distance between your ship and the target you want to shoot, plus how fast your ship is moving and how fast the target ship is moving, you will not hit the target every time you shoot at it. Your shots will miss some of the time.

Missiles need ammunition, and there are missiles for every type of damage. Missiles don't have the same miss chance that turrets have, if the target is inside your missile range, the missiles will hit the target when you shoot at it. On the other hand, a fast moving target ship will take less damage from the missiles because of it's speed. High speed means less damage taken from missiles. Another detail is that big missiles don't do their maximum damage against small targets. Use small missiles against small ships, and big missiles against big ships.

Drones. These are basically minature remote controlled ships you carry and launch from your ship. Combat drones have two basic modes, passive and aggressive. In passive mode, drones will only attack another ship when you give the drones a command to do that. If you don't give them that command, the drones just fly around near your ship and do nothing. In aggressive mode, the drones will automatically attack any ship that attacks you first, and if there is more than one ship attacking you, the drones will keep fighting until all the ships attacking you are destroyed. Each empire has it's own set of drones that does one specific type of damage, so exactly which drones you should use depends on which NPC pirate ships you expect to fight in a mission.

Drones have several disadvantages. 1: NPC ships can and will shoot at your drones, destroying them if you are not careful. In PvP situations where you are fighting another actual person, they can shoot your drones if they want to, and you can shoot their drones if you want to.
2: Drones have to get within a certain distance of a ship to start shooting at it. There can be times when the drones have destroyed one ship, then have to fly a large distance to get close enough to shoot at another ship. During this travelling time, the drones will not be shooting at anything.
3: If a fight is not going well and you decide to warp away to get to safety, the drones cannot follow you, they will stay behind. Many players have lost drones because they finished a fight, then warped away to a new location, but forgot to recall the drones back into their ship. There are ways to get the drones back, but you have to fly back to where the drones are to get them back, they cannot come to you. You should check that your drones have been recalled back into your ship before warping away. In an emergency when you have to choose between losing some drones or losing your ship, it's cheaper to buy some new drones than to buy a new ship.

If you see some drones just sitting in space and there are no players nearby, someone probably warped away without recalling the drones back into their ship.

Different ships specialise in different weapon systems. Some ships have stats that make missiles more powerful (mostly Caldari ships and some Minmatar ships), some ships have stats that make lasers more powerful (Amarr ships), some ships have stats that make hybrids more powerful (mostly Gallente and some Caldari ships), some ships have stats that make projectiles more powerful (Minmatar) and some ships have stats that make drones more powerful (mostly Gallente and some Amarr ships). Most ships in the game can carry some drones, but only some ships have stats to make the drones more powerful.

There are also some "faction" and "pirate" ships that players can buy and fly, which also have stats to make certain weapons more powerful, but I won't list them.

Here's a link to a wiki page which has the stats on every ship a player can use in the game. just click the name of a ship to see it's stats, and from there will be more links to some recommended fittings for each ships. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Template:ShipsMatrix

I'm a big fan of drones for a new player. If someone was coming into Eve as an Alpha I'd tell them to go Gallente because of that.

The reason is pretty straightforward... more so than any other weapon system, Drones skills are almost never wasted when you change ships or up-ship.

Most larger ships have some sort of drone hold. While they may not be drone boats, those drone skills will not be wasted very often. Drones keep attacking when you get sensor damped or jammed an lose lock. Range might limit time until damage application... but that application will be uniform regardless of what range you're at. Large drone bays allow switching damage types on the fly.

I view drones as the most "forgiving" weapon system.

So... if you go Tristan->Algos->Vexor->VNI or Myrmidon->Dominix.... you can progress all the way up to lvl 4's without any real wasted sp... and use no weapon other than drones if you want.

But... that's my opinion.