Skill Discussions

Both are solid weapon systems. Later in your career (15-20m+ sp) you will want to start crosstraining multiple races.

I would start with autocannons. It will serve you better in PvE as you get started and projectiles in general are great. It's called winmatar for a reason.

I personally would go with autocannons and minmatar ships, they just work well with so many different fleets.

Because most people don't understand falloff mechanics? Because people have it stuck in their head that the Machariel is a minmatar ship (it is in fact a pirate ship combining two races)? Because the number in EFT looks bigger? Because the guns use no capacitor, but there isn't any on those ships anyways?

Seriously, Minmatar is a good race, but it is no better than any other race, its strong point just happens to be popular at the moment.

its not really about which weapon system is the best, its about which one to use for starter pvp. i would say ACs by far, the reason is simple, hybrids have an additional support skill (to lower cap usage) and usually run on gall ships which are armor tanked, that not only means a different set of tanking skills but also rigging that needs to be at least lvl4, not because of t2 rigs, but because armor rigs have the most stupid drawback ever. yeah, cald ships use hybrids too, but with the recent update to cruisers, you don't want to get caught by a drone boat when flying a frigate... its a pretty one sided fight.

in the long run blasters make for different flying style, more fun personally. more about burst dive-in attacks, when compared to the ac's "web and stay at the edge of optimal" which can get boring after a while. the current incarnation of the Vexor comes to mind, that thing can go dual web, dual prop and have 32kehp... and that's without gang links! while delivering unholy retribution in the form of 500dps, up to 600 overloaded. it can get in range, and flee when necessary, with ease.

takes a lot of SP to pull that off, not only on gunnery, but also on drones... but you can fly it on an empty clone, so its a ton of fun to fly it recklessly... you can melt frigates and dessies with its downsized guns + lights. logi pilots will fear you, and T3Bcs will find you funny at first, not so much when you are under their guns and they cant shake you, not even burning mwd.

anyway, im sure someone will disagree with me and tell you to go hybrid, and if they have a compelling argument guess they cant be wrong. that's the thing now, with rebalancing at the current stage its never been easier to get into pvp, and no way of doing it is wrong.

im sure someone could make an argument for not training guns at all, and going for a T1 logi pilot.

this isnt a valid question.
the reason why is that blasters do well on blaster ships, ACs do well on AC ships.
there are no ships where you should be deciding between one of the other, with the sole possible exception of the myrmidon.

The Mach will win if he holds his range, and kites the Vindi. At worst scenario he would just fly away and warp off.

But if he makes a mistake... gets in to scram and web range, the Vindi will shred him in seconds.

How many people use blasters or rails on unbonused ships?

I could point out more problems with this post and your other one in this thread but cba. Obviously "winmatar" is a joke and in the end you want all races trained, but projectiles are a very solid first weapon system.

Damnit, as I was slowly reading your post I pictured a Myrm rotating in station and began to slowly begin typing my response until you cockblocked me at the end. =)

Edit - Apparently cockblocked isn't blocked, oh the irony, CCP.

I think you're the person who doesn't understand what falloff range that long entails. Say your Sleip does 800 DPS in optimal (you almost never fight at optimal but that's your base DPS to calculate from) that means that at optimal +1x falloff which is somewhere in the 40's you are still dealing 400 DPS, and that increases as you close range. The only other medium sized ships that gain that DPS at that range with short range weapons is a shield tanked pulse zealot.

Similarly a gank fit Mach will still be doing 600 DPS at 80km using autocannons, with over 1000 at closer ranges. You should plot a DPS graph on those ships for DPS at range, it's impressive.

Since you say you are new to Eve I would suggest projectile weapon 1st as they require less cap skills to be effective and can produce any damage type. They have higher fitting requirments than other weapon systems but if you are training correctly you should have most of the core skills you will need to fit them. Minmatar ships will server you pretty well as a newer player aswell as they tend to be easier to fit for pvp and have decent drone space.