EVE New Citizens Q&A

I've had somewhat of a strange relationship with EvE, having tried to get into the game 3 times over the course of 4 years, failing, but still following relatively closely its development. This time though I am here to stay, but I'm in a bit of a pickle.

See, in your typical DIKU MUD game (WoW, EverQuest, Almost Every MMO Ever Made) I pick elves and CC/Support/Mage. Since EvE is such a radically different beast though I'm at a loss. I fell in love with Amarr's stylish art deco look, but I feel Minmatar's fast paced style is more suitable for me (I never play tanks. I just don't find it fun). However in PvP I really wanna do CC since that's my thing, which means as many mid slots as possible, in other words Caldari. Caldari though are slow and that's a fat minus in my book. To top it all off being an explorer and archeologist sounds great to me and I have no idea which race would suit that.

So I'm quite perplexed. I know to experienced players all this probably sounds like someone who just wants to be good at everything but still, any piece of advice would be much appreciated.

Then your race of choice would probably be Gallente (freedom-loving vaporheads).
Minmatar is the equivalent of Orcs (uncivilized brutes), Amarr are the Dwarves (thickheaded traditionals) and Caldari are the Humans.

There is a general opinion, that Caldari ships are better for PvE whereas Minmatar are still the FotM for PvP.

As for special "roles", every race has the ships to support every role, for example, there is a logistics ship for every race, there is a cov-ops ship (scout) for every race, there is an exploration vessel for every race, etc.
Furthermore, support skills to fly ANY ship well (fitting skills, navigation skills) are the same for every race.

One fairly important difference is that Caldari use mainly missiles whereas the rest use Turrets.... eventually however, you will want to cross-train anyway.
As for EWAR - another supporting role, I guess -, ECM (Caldari specialty) is by far considered the best.... of course, that also means you will be the first to get targeted.

So, generally, I wouldn´t worry too much about picking the "right" race, the differences are small and you can always and with little time cross-train.


Hope that helps somewhat.

Very well. As a new player you should be more concerned with what corp to join then what ship to fly. Before you got the knowledge to min/max anything halve a year will pass. So leave that min/maxing to players who play the game for years.

You're wrong and right here.

Choice of race only changes some basic starting skills and your starting location, other then that the style you play your character is totally up to you. Again EVE isn't like any other MMO, you and others dictate how you play it, not the game itself. One of my characters is Minmatar from choice of race, but he only flies Gallente ships around for the majority of times (he can use minmatar, but he is more skilled into Gallente from the start).

Cross training factions can take days or months. Bid depends on what you cross train for.

If you want to fly both Caldari and Amarr battleships, yes then cross training will take a long long time (Both racial ship skills, both armor and shield skills, missile and turrets skills).

Then again, if you only want for instance Amarr frigates + Caldari battleships, the Amarr part will be only a couple of days (maybe 2 or 3 weeks) and you will be all set.

Cross training will happen once in your EVE life, but at start it really doesn't matter as the racial starting skills can be cross trained in just 2 days I believe (if not less).

Also keep in mind that the looks of a ship doesn't matter anything in EVE, wars are not won by the fleet who brings the best looking ships to it, it's won by the fleet who brings the best fleet in to win the battle. Like said before, in fights you usually are zoomed out, and only look at your overview and broadcast windows. Doesn't matter how you, your friends or your enemy looks, the only thing that matters is that you and your friends survive while your enemy dies.

And on your point of being the support role of a fleet (either Logi or E-war). They are always in high demand in fleets as the majority of the PvP pilots don't like to be in those ships but like to fly in the more DPS boats. But you will also be one of the first to die in a battle as in general the primairy list always consist of Logi and Ewar first, general DPS after they are gone. So if you are the support part, expect to die very often and very quickly into a battle.

If you like being the CC guy, every race has Recon class cruisers that fill the CC role.

The caldari have the most notorious CC type ships with their strong ECM, but if you don't like their aesthetics or speed or whatever, you can train Minmatar and be the guy who slows all the enemies' speeds to zilch, or train Amarr and be the guy who sucks all their capacitors dry so they can't use their modules, or train Gallente and be the guy who warp-scrams them all at obscene ranges to prevent them from escaping.

If you want to be DPS in "Gangs/Partys" Like a mage if your an incursion runner"raiding" Then you can achieve that through any race, how ever youll get "pugged" more if your flying A Battleship that packs a shield buffer and lots of damage mods, Easiest Cal and Minmitar, but not impossible via Gallente or amar.

If you want to DPS in PVP, Take a look at the Tier 3 BC. Glass canons that deal out serious punishment. Not unlike a mage. I feel like EWAR is more like a debuf class: in laymans"hack and slash", terms like a warlock or shadowpriest etc.

It will have a significant impact, yes. For a few hours, 1 day maybe.

After that the impact will depend on your choice of skills you made AFTER picking a race, and that choice is completely independent of your race.

Gallente favor close combat. Close-range blaster boats and such. Later on you will cross-train other races, but Gallente are fun...if you get in close :D. The ships are kinda cool and organic-looking, too.

dude, that's one sick analogy! very nice :D