EVE New Citizens Q&A

First, can I say what a wonderful resource this forum is - I have so many windows open my lappy is close to overload!! Seriously though, a thanks from this noob!

Now to my question - I've just about taken on that everything is a consumable here and that I really shouldn't get precious over any one ship - so - just how many ships of a given type should I have?

I've got a limited set at the moment (apart from the well distributed flock of Ibis's) - one each of Covert Frig, Std Frig, Stealth Bomber, Cruiser and Battleship and so on, but not all at one location.

My plan is to stay with and concentrate on Frigs and Destroyers so does it make sense for me to get multiples of any given type - for example, buy 5 Kestrels and then fit them: -

• differently for different situations?
• the same as 'instant' replacements for a lost ship?

And do I buy multiples of whatever I'm kitting the ships out with?

I'm still confused by the big numbers, the billions and millions, so I very much get a twitchy wallet when I'm looking to buy and equip.

What's the best long term plan...?

All of them, ideally. I buy my PvP frigates in stacks of 50 though, along with everything I need to fit them.

How many ships you should stock up is based on need.

Typically during peacetime you can just buy more as needed, but if you're involved in a war or if you're in dangerous space, the enemy won't stop shooting you just because you ran out of ships and need more, so you need to stock up ahead of time.

I typically roam around from location to location; in each area I pick a base of operations, set up a couple of the combat ships there and a transport industrial to carry junk around if needed, and if it looks like I'm going to come back repeatedly in the future, set up a jump clone. This way I can just teleport myself to the location, and I'll have the ships I need already there, and if not, hopefully there's a market hub nearby and I can go shopping with the industrial transport.

In war time you can't go shopping like that, though, because there are enemies everywhere, so you need to build up a supply of already-fitted ships + spare modules for altering configurations, and do it at night or on the weekend or on Monday or whenever the enemy activity is less. You may also need to use the Courier Contract interface to have others ferry your ships from the market hub to where you are (thus, train the "Contracting" skill).

As far as fitting differently, some ships are versatile because they have many slots and a customizable weapon system (missiles or drones) where you can customize the damage that you do. But not all of them are; you can't really do ewar jamming in a purely-DPS ship (Kestrel), and you can't really do effective remote repair of others without a ship that has at least some logistics bonuses. Again, it depends on what your buddies need, but typically if you want to do different things you use different class ships, with each ship fitted to maximize its role.

To draw parallels to other games, sword-and-shield is versatile, but you can't function as an archer, and if your group is forming up into phalanx formation, spear and shield is better for that purpose.

Just my personal opinion based on my own experience:

When it comes to PVP, I try to learn a certain set of tactics around a certain ship an fitting. So while I am doing that, I keep plenty of "copies" of that setup fitted and ready to go. I tinker a lot until I settle on a fit that works for me.

As I've progressed, I now have several "set-ups" that I use for different things. I keep copies of those setups all fitted out and ready to fly so I can re-ship quickly and get back in a fight.

For other stuff, like exploration or ratting, I generally just have a single spare ship for that setup in case I mess up or get unlucky.

Hope that makes sense!

Personally, I keep my inventory fairly thin. I have a frigate (PVP), cruiser (Exploration and Level 3 missions), BS (Level 4 missions and ratting in null), a Noctis (loot/salvage free with the release) and a Gnosis (I don't use this, but keep it because it was an anniversary gift).

I can use all of the Tech 2 equip for each of these ships and tasks, but I can really only fit one or two ships at a time. I don't have ten Armor Hardeners for each damage type for each ship, only two hardeners for each damage type (eight total) and three EANM. I switch between the hardeners based on the missions I am running or area I am exploring. As another example, I think, I only have five or six Heat Sinks total. Ideally, I want three Heat Sinks per ship, which would be twelve total if I were to equip each ship.

I have all of my fittings saved and when I want to switch to another ship I just strip my current ship and fit the one I want to fly.

I won't say this is bad advice, but I have never followed it. I find that having a bunch of fitted ships lying around encourages me to make rash decisions. Going to the market to buy a new hull gives me time to reflect on why I died. What was to blame? The fitting? My engagement decision? Piloting errors? Situational awareness? You should be learning something from every fight. The fights you lose are much more likely to teach you valuable lessons than the ones you win, but only if you pause to analyze the fight afterward. Maybe there's an improvement to be made on your fit. As you are learning you should be constantly tweaking your fits to improve them. If they're already fit you'll probably just go "meh...I'll change it next time".

Even in the peak of my "lose 200 frigates" phase I only ever fit up 2-3 at a time. Any more than that was a waste of time because I wanted to change my fit by then anyway.

It really depends on how frequently you lose ships. I don't lose ships very often at all so I generally only have one of most kinds of ship in any given place. The type of ship I lose most frequently (once or twice a year) I keep two of.

That said I keep caches of ships of varying size in different regions to minimize the amount of distance I need to travel in large ships while I do my elite highsec pvp.

ROFL, well said.

Just remember that you don't have to go so far. If you are solo, the big ship stables aren't such a big requirement. Where it becomes critical is when you are in a corp engaged in warfare, or in alliance wars. A war might go for weeks, so if you're in an alliance that exposes you to this kind of warfare, you need to have enough ships to last the entire warfare period.

In these situations you might be in a fleet engagement and die. So you jump in another ship and try to make it back to the fleet to continue participating. This is particularly useful when the engagements are close to your base. But If I'm solo exploring far from home and someone blows me up, then I rage quit, fume, then log back in and buy a new ship.

Also, Joining a corp can help a lot because many corps have reimbursement plans, so if you lose a ship in a fleet engagement, AND your ship is fit according to whatever doctrine they have, then they will give you a brand new ship.

If you are starting out in solo pvp or small gang then try a 10 frigate stable at your main base and see how well that works out. You'll probably find out that it is beneficial to have small stashes of ships in strategic locations rather than all at one base.

1000 was a wee bit of hyperbole, although I did have 600 something of one frigate that I bought as a laugh pre tiericide when they cost ~28k at the time. current value is about 200mil, and I gave away a bunch at one point. so actually having 1000 ships isn't all that hard. note that none of them are/were fit

the number of ships that I use often, probably around 10-20, and that might include a few backups or alternative fits.

It depends. I mean, I do it pretty arbitrarily. If I expect to be losing a number of a certain type of ship with a specific fitting (I like to just go #YOLO around in FW in T1 frigs now and then, for instance), I'll just bulk buy and fit them. Beyond that, I tend to just get them on an as-needed basis.

I never sell ships (barring the rare instance where I build ships specifically for the purpose of selling them). As concerns go, this is pretty minor, imo.