EVE New Citizens Q&A

3) Small for frigates and destroyers, medium for cruisers and battlecruisers and large for battleships.

2) Bigger is not better in EVE. While a 150mm gun does more damage than a 125, it has poorer tracking and hits smaller ships worse than the 125. Also, you often can't fit a full rack of the largest guns on a ship without making several compromises.

4) Typically... guns/missiles, shield or armour tanking modules (not both), propulsion mod. That's the essentials (and some would argue that the prop mod isn't essiential, and then there are drone ships that don't fit many/any guns). Then you probably want damage enhancing mods if you can (ballistic control, magnetic field stabaliser, gyrostabaliser, heatsink, to match your guns), you will likely want or need some capacitor enhancing modules (cap power relay, cap recharger, cap battery or cap booster, depends). You may want to add a web or a target painter, but that's probably for later.

1) Items have a meta level. These describe how good the item is. There's meta 0-4 as Tech 1 items, meta 5 is Tech 2, above that are faction, deadspace and officer mods. In general, the higher the meta level, the better the item is and the more expensive it is. For starting out, maybe go for meta 3 guns. For autocannons that's the 'prototype'. Meta 4 if you can afford them.

Like Elena said...Bigger doesn't always means better.

So mounting the biggest possible gun on your frigate doesn't mean it will do its job better.

Specially as a new player (lack of support skills, lack of general knowledge - for instance about tracking vs transversal) that bigger gun (which usually also has the worst tracking) will miss more then the smaller one if the enemy comes close enough.

When they do come close enough they can outrun your gun, this basically means they are orbiting around you in a speed that is faster then your turrets can turn around their own axis (also commonly known as speed tanking).

To give you a simple example:

Say you have Turret A which is the smallest of the 2 but it can turn around its axis in 10 seconds.
Say you have Turret B which is the biggest of the 2 but can only turn around its axis in 30 seconds.

Now add an enemy (be it NPC or player) that is orbiting you. Say that making a full circle around you takes that enemy 15 seconds.

What this means is that Turret A can keep up with him as the turning rate of the turret is smaller then the turning rate of the enemy ship however Turret B won't be able to keep up with the speed the enemy ship has and will miss most of the time.

EDIT:

Also keep in mind that in EVE all weapon systems come in 2 versions.

Long Range: Artillery (Projectiles), Railguns (Hybrid), Light Missiles / Heavy Missiles / Cruise Missiles (missiles), Beam Lasers (Lasers)

Short Range: Autocannon (projectiles), Blasters (Hybrid), Rockets / Heavy Assault Missile / Torpedoes (missiles), Pulse Lasers (lasers).

Usually if you compare the same class (Projectiles for instance) and then the different weapon types in it, then the short range weapon system usually has a higher DPS and the Long range a higher raw damage / shot.

Thank you for all the replies!!

Just to get a bit of insight into how CCP balances ships:

1. You have a limited number of slots. For high slots, you have a limited number of turret or missile hardpoints. Then, the medium slots determine how much shield defense, propulsion, or electronic warfare you can install, and the low slots determine how much armor defense, damage enhancers, or utility things you can install. You pick armor or shields depening on whether the ship has more low slots or medium slots.

2. You are also VERY limited by the Power Grid and the CPU of the ship. There are only a couple skills (Engineering and Electronics) that increase the grid and CPU, and most people train them to 5 because of this. CCP balances ships presuming you have these two skills at 5. For example if they want a ship to install 8 guns and armor defenses, and you don't have the skills, you can put in 8 guns but no defenses, or put in 6 guns and your armor.

Power Grid limits the amount of weaponry AND shield or armor you can put in. You have to give up in the size of the guns if you want more defenses, and viceversa. CPU limits the industrial modules you can put on non-combat ships, and also limits electronic stuff like probing, cloaking, jamming others, etc.

3. PVP fights are fast, but a PVE encounter can last an hour or more, so you need to make sure you have enough capacitor recharge to maintain your defenses and guns forever. Capacitor Stable in the fittings screen. Use Cap Rechargers in the mid slots, Capacitor Power Relays (if you don't defend via shields) or Power Diagnostic Systems (if you do) in the low slots, and often rigs are necessary (Capacitor Control Circuit).

4. Module power requirements increase by orders of magnitude compared to their size. Frigate (small) guns require 8 grid each, Cruiser (medium) guns require 180 grid, Battleship (large) guns require 2500. Nothing actually prevents you from trying, other than the fact that your frigate has only 45 grid available. Sometimes you CAN put an oversized afterburner on a ship, if you sacrifice everything else in order to fit it, but most of the time you just can't. Tech 1 industrials don't have enough to fit the appropriate sized MWD, for example, which is why they are slow and easy prey.

5. The damage you do depends on the ammo you use. Ammo does 16 points of damage, it's then multiplied by the gun modifier (1.03x vs. 1.5x - this is where higher meta guns are better), by your gunnery skills, and by whatever damage modules you have in the low slots. Damage is then REDUCED by the target's speed (vs. your guns tracking) and by the target's size (vs. your gun's sig resolution). Some frigates (player and NPCs) are actually designed to be "smaller" than what frigate guns are designed for. And definitely NPC drones are smaller. So tracking and range and gun skills do matter.

Similarly, if your ship is fast and small, it will take reduced damage. It's called "speed tanking". A frigate orbitting closely to a battleship will probably survive. It won't have the DPS to punch through the battleship grade tank, but if it brings 4-8 more frigate friends, they will. The game is very carefully balanced around the speed, tracking, and distance parameters.