EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello everyone. I'm really new on the game, and a bit lost as well.

I've just finished the Military Career Missions, and really liked the game so far. I don't like to "loose" time doing things that doesn't worth it, because I have a stricted time to play on weekdays.

I'm a PvP player, and I really loved the possibility to kill other players and loot their stuff, so probably, this is what I will seek to do in this game.

With all that in mind, I have a couple of questions about a LOT of stuff:

1 - Missions
1.1 After finishing the military career missions, should I do the other career missions as well? Do they really worth it for new players like me?
1.2 Someone on the help chat told me to start the Epic Arc Missions from a Sister Agent right after I finished the military career missions, is that a good place to start?
1.3 Is there any place where I can find which missions have really good rewards, like ships, weapons and stuff like that? (for example, completing the 10/10 military mission gave me a new ship).
2 - Combat
2.1 While I like my new ship, I think that I need to use a lot of shots to kill an enemy, so I would like to know if I should invest my ISK right now on some better weapons/ammo, or if I should save to another ship.
2.1.1 My ship uses a Gatling Gun as weapon, and I have 3 equipped on it. Can I change it to something else, like missels or more powerfull stuff?
3 - Money
3.1 As a super new player, I believe that I won't be able to have a good income from PvP, because I will probably die a lot. I understand that, so, which are good ways to earn some good cash?
3.2 Also asked on 2.1, what should I do with my money at the beggining? Invest on weapons? Ships? Save? Should i buy all those expensive skill boots that I might need?

Well, sorry for all the questions, but would be awesome if someone could help me out with this.

Hi there! Welcome to EVE!

As said, do all tutorial missions. It will helps you understand some game mechanics. The agents will give you some modules for your ship or even ships, If you don't need those after your tutorial is done, just sell everything. Free ISK!

Sure you can do the Epic Arc missions, and you can do it every 3 months. These missions are good isk too for beginners. There is some mission where you will need (maybe) some help to destroy the last ship. Ask in local channel for help but be careful, someone can try to gank you or ransom you for the final loot.

You don't need to go to the bigger guns for now. Be more effective, like skilling up those guns and others relatives skills in gunnery. As Elena said, look at the bonus of your ship. Use all the same type of guns and tank shield OR armor. Don't go for both.

There is a lot of skills to learn but don't panic. Read forums, ask questions in channel, do the tuorial and you will be fine.

One step at a time.

Thanks everyone for all the answers. I will do then all the other carrer agent missions, so I can learn more a bout all the aspects of the game and also receive some mor ISK, skill books and equips.

As others have answered the first parts, I'll focus on the last.
There are many ways to earn money in EVE, so I'd suggest that you do something you love doing. If you like PvP, you should either join a good corp and/or faction warfare.

A good corp will give you good advice and allow you to participate in their PvP. You should get enough from their loot to finance your ships and the bigger corps often even give ships to new players.

Faction Warfare is a way to make money from PvP, as a beginner, it's probably even the best way. Join some fleets that run plexes from time to time and you should have more than enough ISK to replace your losses. It also gives you experience in flying in fleets.

You might also consider buying a PLEX - that's a month of game time that can be bought from CCP and resold in-game for ISK. One costs 20$ (17.50 if you buy more than one) and the current price in-game is about 520 million ISK. This should be enough for about a hundred cheap PvP frigates.

Definitely buy the skill books you need. And "expensive"? Most skill books are pretty cheap. (Considering that you a two month old char can easily make 20 million ISK per hour and some players even make as much as 100 million ISK per hour, a 250k skill book is dirt cheap.)

Don't spend too much on ships in the beginning - you will lose your ship - spending 50 millions on a battlecruiser really isn't the best idea - especially as you may not yet have the skills for it. Especially for PvP, stick to frigates. And don't be afraid to lose them.

With modules, learn what kind of fit (fit = all the modules currently in your ship) works well before spending millions on them. Also learn about meta-levels: every module comes in multiple variations - often the best variation is ten times more expensive then the 2nd best, for maybe a 5% increase in performance. In a tight fight this 5% might make the difference, but while you are still learning you should stick to lower versions. BTW, oddly the worst version is often more expensive than the 2nd worst version. That's because the "meta 0" version is manufactured by players (so its price is dominated by the material cost), while the "meta 1" version drops often from NPCs while doing missions and players are just trying to sell the crap they accumulated.

1.1: Yes. They will give you free skillbooks, some starting money and free ships (which if you don't need them can be sold for money).

1.2 Yes. More ISK rewards to fund your PvP. It also gives you a small tour through the 4 races space.

1.3 Other then the tutorial missions other missions don't give away ships. Some storyline missions give away implants or a blueprint. But in general it's just ISK as a reward. For mission briefing: EVE-survival.net

2.1 As you didn't mention which ship you are using, no idea. But keep in mind....Bigger =/= always better. And don't slack on your support skills. A frigate with good support skills will be much deadlier then a battleship with no support skills.

2.1 Again, which ship are you flying. Each ship has high-slots (except freighters). Within high-slots there is a sub division called hardpoints. There are 2 kinds of hardpoints: Gunnery hardpoints and Launcher hardpoints. These hardpoints will determine what offensive weapons you can fit on a ship. For example:

Ship A: 5 high-slots, 3 gunnery hardpoints, 1 launcher hardpoint.

This means it can have 5 high-slot modules. But not more then 3 guns at a time and/or 1 missile launcher. The last high slot is a so called 'Utility" high-slot for stuff like a energy drain or a remote repping module.


3.1 That also really depends on what you like to do (other then PvP). Missions are a nice stable way to get income, but you need access to level 3 and 4 missions for the good sustainable income stream. (station) trading also can give you a good source of money (or if invested in the wrong thing, loose you a lot of money). Scamming can give great boosts of money, but you first need to find someone who is stupid enough to fall for the scam.

3.2 Don't burn your money. Get an out of game program to help you guide your character without wasting ISK in game.

EFT = virtual ship fitting program. let's you build fits and look at stats without having to buy the ship/modules in game.
EVEMON = skill planning program. Helps you to monitor your skills.
Pyfa = Python version of EFT.
EVEHQ = "big" program with a lot of stuff build into it. Including ship fitting program and skill monitoring.

========

Additional advice:

Communicate....and do a lot of that.

Make friends in EVE
Ask others for help.
Get to know people and fly with them (either by joining a corporation or by joining public fleets - like Bombers Bar for stealth bomber pilots).

EVE is a MMO...don't try to play it like a single player game...you will loose as you will loose out on stuff but more important, your enemy likely DOES have friends to back him up.

"Should" is a slippery word in Eve. Nothing is _mandatory_, and you don't need to do them. That said, I would advise you to do as many of the training / advanced training missions and as much of the Blood-Stained Stars as you have the patience for, they're a much less painful way to learn a lot of things than the trial-and-error way.

Mission rewards after the training missions/epic arc take the form of a special currency called "Loyalty Points" which are tied to the specific corporation for which you are missioning. There is a "Loyalty Point Store" in any station owned by that corporation which will tell you what you can buy with them. Generally speaking you're only going to find advanced ammunition and implants worth your LP as a new player.

Things like ships and skill-books are usually better obtained through the market using ISK, which you also can get from missions.



Yes, you should do both of those things. Buy meta... let's say 3 guns (meta level is listed on the info page you can get from right-clicking) or at least make sure you're not using Civilian guns. Then build up enough "padding" that you can buy a spare ship if yours gets blown up.

As far as buying new types of ships and what weapons to equip, those are sort of the same question. As a new player, the things you want to focus on are ship bonuses (listed in info) and slot layout (listed in info and also visible in the fitting menu). Generally speaking the weapons you put on your ship need to be of the type that the ship has bonuses for (e.g. if you have "5% damage/level to projectile turrets" you should use autocannons or artillery), and more high slots = more offense, more low slots = more armor or turret/missile damage, more mid-slots = more shields or utility.

Fitting your ships is basically the core skill of the game, and there are a lot of little quirks and complications to it. Read a lot of guides and mess with it a lot and you'll eventually get the hang of all the numbers and what they mean (and how they stack).



The general rule of making money in Eve is that you want to balance your risk with your reward. The newbie-accessible money-makers in high/low-security space tend to be:

1. Missioning and Mining: If you stay in high-sec, this is the safest way to make money, but it takes a lot of time and you have to build up your skills and ship a lot to do it.
2. Exploration: Good money with a smaller skill investment, and probably more isk per hour overall, but there's a large element of randomness, so you may get a couple hundred million from one site and then basically nothing for a week.
3. Faction Warfare: Selling LP stuff is a lot of money for small effort, but there are other people there trying to kill you, so you'll lose many ships too.
3. Piracy: Very hard to successfully pull off, but when you do you're in the money.

As far as the beginning, your rule of thumb is probably going to be (given what you've implied you enjoy) that PvP = losing money and missions = gaining money. Find some balance between missioning and PvPing where you can pay for all the ships you're blowing up, is the easiest way to become self-sufficient. Start with the SoE epic arc and you'll have a reserve of a few million to spare while you experiment.

every time you say 'carrer', god kills a kitten.

Small projectile turrets.

If you look at the ships bonuses it says it has bonuses to Projectile turrets.

There are 2 forms of projectile turrets:

Autocannons (which are short range guns)
Artillery (which are long range guns).

So you can use either of them and get the bonuses listed in the ships description. Of course you don't have to do that, you can be creative. But in general ships are usually fitted to make use of their bonuses.

As for which of the 2 forms you should pick. Well that depends on your playstyle. If you like to be a close range brawler, it's Autocannons. If you like to kite and kill stuff from a longer range, it's Artillery.

To iterate on this:
You can find common fits on Battleclinic (but it's pretty terrible). As a general rule of thumb:
1. Don't mix your tanks. Either armor tank or shield tank) Armor tanks have the benefit of being slightly sturdier, in terms of capacitor usage and/or raw hp). However, armor tanking makes your ships slower if you're buffer tanked. Shield tanking means you can fit more damage mods (which go in low slots) and don't slow your ship down. However they use up midslots which are also used to fit tackle mods (which stop your prey from getting away in PVP) and can give you a higher signature radius, meaning you're easier to hit.

The above might not make sense at this stage, but you'll pick it up as you go along. There's also speed tanking i.e. using speed to avoid damage, but again, you'll learn it as you go along.

2. Don't mix guns. By this, I mean do not mix long range artillery and short range autocannons on the same setup. The reason for this is your applied damage will suffer. It may seem counter intuitive at first ("Why not be able to hit at all ranges?!"), but it's always better to be doing 100% of your damage at certain ranges which you can maneuver into, rather than 50% at any range you're in. As you train up in weaponry and RL PVP skills, you'll find ways to mitigate the lack or range on short range guns or lack of tracking on long range guns by fitting different ammo, or flying different etc.

Bear in mind the above is more from a PVP perspective, but applies to PVE as well.

Skills wise, I would suggest buying skillbooks for the 'core' skills at first. You don't have to get them to 5 right at the start, but a couple of levels in each would help you greatly. By core skills, I mean skills that are helpful on just about any ship you fly, such as more powergrid/CPU, more speed, more tank etc. These can generally be found under the Engineering, Electronics, Navigation, Mechanics skill trees. As a general guide, you can refer to the Core Competency certificate.

Hope this helps, fly dangerously and good hunting o/