Warfare & Tactics

I am fairly new to the game (2 weeks on trial) and just subbed. I created a new character because I messed up badly with my trial, which is the purpose I suppose. In those two weeks I tried different careers and while I enjoyed them all, none of them really grabbed me. I want the ISK making careers to be a secondary thing only. I do enjoy the game though and that is why I subbed for 3 months.

My main purpose is to get into PvP. Specifically the solo kind. My real life situation unfortunately does not encourage me to join with fleets. It has to be solo pvp.

Having given you my background I would appreciate someone recommending a ship for me to learn on and to become expert on. From all I have read and heard about this game the best way to do things is to focus. Because I have no skill training I would like to choose one frigate and learn the skills to master it while I fly it to learn it. Once I feel I am good at PvP and frigates then I would want to maybe branch out the bigger ships, but that would only be in a few months at the very least. For the next 3 months at least I want to fly a frigate.

I have done some research and I am considering the following ships:

Tristan:
Seem to be fun and has the advantage of the surprise factor. The upgrade to this ship is the Ishkur which seems to be an exceptional ship by everything that the people say. From ishkur I could move towards the Vexor or Myrmidon.

Incursus:
Seems to be a very good ship with a good balance between survivability and damage. The next step from here seems to be the Enyo and then the Thorax.

Merlin:
Heard that this thing is like a pitpull. Tenacious and nasty. Dont know much else about it though.

Kestrel:
Head that this is a very newb friendly ship with low SP. However I dont know about the advanced frigates or the bigger pvp ships.

Admittedly I dont know much the Caldari ships or the Amarr for that matter.

And as a bonus it is one of the coolest looking frigates!

I would love nothing more than to join a cool pvp corp. Unfortunately my RL situation just doesnt allow it. Unless I join something like Brave who doesnt need me to be active on TS.

Hit up faction warfare if you want solo pvp.
The complexes dictate which engagements you get, in your case, frigates.

The solo pvper mentality works if you put work into it, as in, asking and learning whenever you die and win etc etc.
Going solo is not the best way to learn but again,sounds like small gang pvp is for you, pvping solo teaches you a lot of things compared to a huge arse fleet where all you do is sit with your thumb deep in your intestines while you wait for the next primary.

Also, not all corps require you to form a massive fleet, there's the small corps that like small gang pvp, enough to keep you on your toes and you don't have to be a F1 monkey.

EvE is a social game, while we all like a little bit of peace every now and then, I find that being alone(corpless) for too long makes me want to cancel the sub.

You really should join a corp and fw is probably the best entry into this world.

About the tristan: you need to really polish your drone skills to see good returns dps wise, the incursus is just easier to get into in my opinion. You'll get better results early and can then train up for your drone skills. The neuting tristan is mean, can very easily just shut down other frigates that try to brawl it.

The kestrel is very opposite skill wise to the gallente lineup, being a missile boat. But it does lead into the caracool. If you go caldari militia you can turn a kestrel into a hookbill very cheaply via lp.

Amarr is pig disgusting.

My advice, fit a ship, go into low sec, and time how long it takes to get it blown up. If it takes you more than 60 seconds, do it again and see if you cant get something else to blow up instead.

This is actually the best possible advice. The only true way to improve at it is to actually engage in it. Go and lose 100 of each and you'll have learned a great deal about the ships and how to fly them by the end of it.

and the lone wolf **** doesn't work unless you aren't lone wolf because you have links.

My suggestion:

choose a FW faction, join the militia, have fun and you maybe find a corp there fitting with your needs ;)

Everything else has allready been said, get the frig of your choice into low and blow it up ;)

I wouldn't do that. Specializing in one weapon system has it merits, and, while tempting, spreading the skills too much will make him weaker. Sure - skilling for both incursus and atron at the same time will be ok (similar skills) but adding missiles to that will be a big mistake.

You basically have a couple of ships using the same weapon systems. Missiles are: condor, kestrel, breacher. Drones: tormentor, tristan. Guns: a bunch of them.

When you look at ships this way you will see that each weapon system with it's support skills allows you to not limit yourself to strictly one ship. You can experiment within that as training faction frig to 5 takes only a week, while developing a new weapon system with good support skills will take (imo - can't check now) about a month.

Just do mind that specializing even further, and playing only 1 race with it's dedicated weapon system will help you get good faster (ie. projectiles don't need controlled burst skill, and laser can live without the skill adding to falloff).

My personal advice - go for the gun ships in given faction, because there are more gun ships than missile ships, and drones are a good choice for anyone eventually.

Guns + drones (with saving your time by ignoring missiles for a while) will allow you to get into good boats for both pve and pvp.

As for the ships you listed: incursus, tristan and merlin are all as popular as navy frigs in amarr/minnie FW and it says a lot about them. Dunno how to remap well for gallente (since you want those drones eventualy) but maybe the skills forums will help you with that (ask for a gallente pvp remap for a fresh character and beginning player).