Ships & Modules

New Player here! What's going to be better missiles or hybrids? I'm Caldari and I want to be able to use one or the other for both PVP and PVE. I intend to specialize in which ever one is more versitile and has better damage; I'm not as concerned about range.

missiles are very easy to use but they suffer from penalties hitting small/fast things.

Hybrids are great close range weapons (blasters) but limited to a set damage profile (mix between kinetic and thermal) they use capacitor unlike missiles so that's another factor to consider. Also they require you to know how to pilot your ship effectively, minimising transversal between you and your target increasing your chances of solid hits on them.

Either way, each weapon system has it's benefits and disadvantages but I really do recommend missiles for a new player.

caldari is alright they have hybrid boats if u would like to snipe and shiled tank as that is where most thier hybrid boni lie

also id take into consideration which boats you are looking to fly as a short term goal IE command ships battle ships etc....

once you figure where you wanna be plot your path and support skills accordingly

Missiles are more versatile and great to start with imo. However, dont ignore hybrids if you plan on some pvp.

My 1500dps fleetphone would like to settle the disagreement :p

Let alone the tank..
Caldari is only good at one thing, kiting. If you like kiting, caldari might be alright. All the ships are mediocre and cannot 1v1 similar ships.

My 1650dps hyper won't even notice both of you.



As for pve guns are still better because you one-shot small rats, can do critical damage, apply damage instantly and don't need to use painters.

Also, incursion fleets still do not take missile ships for obvious reasons.

Indeed, Faction Cruise missiles on a 3 T1 rigor rigged ship is 150 explosion radius a huge alpha and if you think about add TP and skill for that one you get a beast out of it, less good when it comes to pvp (buffer riggs > to dps riggs) doesn't matter you can do a bazillion dps like mega if you don't have the tank to live after the guys shooting far less dps but way bigger tank.

Fit Torps, ad TP, win. PVP again might have it's uses but niche atm

Fit ham's rig accordingly, win: awesome for pvp and pve -75+km with kin javelins 600dps for pve but again missile riggs only, for pvp without a single missile rig you have same ranges you can hit with other medium weapons and about same dps

Fit HM's pick the right ship rig accordingly: win -about same dps/range than other medium LR weapons (could use a bit more of alpha thou)

Missiles are good now, ships using them are getting much better. Hybrids are awesome but ships using them have many other issues to deal with: tracking/optimal, capacitor and a huge number of useless different ammo making your ship capacitor deplete faster.

Hybrids are awesome, missiles are awesome, can you do the same tasks in the same time with both? yes but differently, thus balanced, it's more about ships using those weapon systems where the problems come from and when you start stacking numbers.

Drakes are only good in numbers in pvp. I flew them alot before drake train hit. 1-2 drakes in a sea of harbs and canes. You were in the basement on killmails for damage dealing. You lived the longest only becauase most did not fear your dps and the tank was a pita to kill. Easier and smarter to kill the canes and harbs (less tanky, better applied dps as well you'd want to shut down). Lasers and AC's hit faster, kill stuff faster.

This would be why they are also not not liked in incursions. Guns drop targets faster. Incurision as I understand it are all about max efficiency. Drakes are tanky, its their main selling point.

Tengu is not a pve god ship. Its a good boat, but far from uber. I like mine because I jsut hate BS pve. I can do more faster in the BS's....I jsut hate pve with BS' lol.

PVP wise they have an edge over other t3's but the question is will your pvp have you roaming alot in them. I went 0.0 blob for example way back. Just as likely to bash structures as well as roam skirmish style. I in fact spent more time bashing....so guns became a no brainer training move. I x-trained out of caldari as while I like rokh, it has bonuses it can't use fully. Sniping is fun, gettting on grid warp mugged is not. If I am hovering with the pests and apocs to avoid the on grid warp...may as well run the pests and apocs for better damage my reasoning.

Either is fine, as both have advantages and disadvantages:

Missiles:

Caldari on their own gain more out of missiles and have some of the best missile using ships in game. However, missiles cannot score wrecking hits ("crit") and larger ones generally have trouble dealing damage to small, fast targets. As they also lack instant damage, they are usually passed on for fleet ops like Incursions. This makes ships up to BC size ok, but battleships generally don't fare that well. Their dreadnought is considered the worst in game due to missile mechanics.

Hybrids:

Caldari also have some of the best rail snipers in the game, which double as excellent blaster boats. For instance, Rokh's blaster fit can nearly match Megathron's dps (without drones), but can throw that dps considerably further. The downside is that it suffers from worse tracking, but as an anti-battleship platform, it nontheless performs admirably.

Unfortunately, Caldari also have no hybrid ship past Rokh - if you want to build on that weapon system, you'll have to build on another races, either Amarr (in which case you'll need to train lasers) or Gallente (in which case Caldari battleship training will be do nothing and you would have been better off going Gallente in the first place.).


Overall, as a weapon system, I like missiles more and most of my ships are missile platforms, but my absolute favorite ship in game is a very powerful blaster boat, the Vindicator. So all I can say is - train both. You won't regret it :)