Warfare & Tactics

Hope this is the right place to post this.

During my first few days of playing, I elected to go straight for a combat rather than economic roll and after a few low level missions and some ratting I quickly found my favored playstyle was railgun sniping.

Unfortunately I quickly found that among the Caldari ships the best platforms for this were far out of my means and after a brief attempt at mining for it I gave up and left for a few months. However I'm back and plan to sell PLEX or mine to raise the money needed for a Rokh or Naga (and the right fit of course).

My question is would it be wise to purchase a very expensive ship or two without any PVP experience, and limited PVE. Or should I pace myself and practice with a smaller, crappier ship before joining an alliance and jumping into the large PVP battles that I'm looking forward to. I'm worried that i would simply become an expensive and easy target no matter how good my fit.

tl;dr: What happens if a noob gets a fancy battleship after having skipped cruisers, battlecruisers and mid level PVE?