EVE New Citizens Q&A

The tristan is a badass little ship, i have a buddy that would use it to kill battleships in pvp.

He also has a thing for the incurus( the one with a little "lance" on the front of it )

You can start pvping right now if you fancy, newbros are suprisingly dangerous with a little bit of guidance, shah's post above details this a bit more.
edit: here is some excellent reading courtesy of the mad git i learned from

This game is balanced so that newbies can go up against veterans and have a chance. There's none of that crap other MMO's have where you can't even hit the L60 guy if you're 10 levels below him.

This game's ships are balanced to be useful for veterans too. You'll see us fly the frigates you're flying, as well as other ships. You're supposed to accumulate a whole hangar of ships, and just jump into whichever is the best suited for what you want to do at that particular point in time.

That said:

Frigates - cheap, fast, agile, no real armor or shields. Well suited for scouting, electronic jamming, or tackle (if you don't use a warp disruptor on an enemy when you start shooting, they can just warp away and laugh at you). Most people use frigates as throw-away ships, because losing even 10-15 of them is not a big deal.

Destroyers - good for killing frigates, also cheap and relatively fast, but their bigger dimensions make them vulnerable to the weapons on bigger ships.

Cruisers - medium priced, slower, but can actually install a "tank" defense (be it armor-based or shields-based). A lot of the cruisers are extremely versatile, you just change the modules you've fitted to the cruiser and you can do something else with it.

Battlecruisers - more firepower than the cruiser, still somewhat acceptable in terms of movement. They're a bit glass cannon, as they can have more weapons than cruisers but not more defenses.

Battleships - slow, sluggish, serious firepower, and serious tank (you have room for several armor or shield resistance modules, in addition to the armor or shields). Most people prefer not to use battleships currently, because they can do the same job with the more advanced Tech 2 or Tech 3 ships.

Tech 2 ships are "advanced" versions of the above; however, they are super-specialized. They have high prerequisites for skills that must be trained, and they are expensive. They take one aspect of the base ship to the extreme, and ignore all the others. For example, interceptors go VERY fast, and can be used for tackle, but they are paper-thin, so if they get caught or if they stay still even for a moment, they're dead.

You're supposed to figure out what you want to do while you play with the base (Tech 1) ships, and then if you REALLY like a style of PVP, you can super-specialize into a corresponding Tech 2 "advanced" ship.

Tech 3 ships are even more advanced and more expensive; they have built-in special abilities.

Capital ships are NOT solo ships; you need another player to provide a beacon for you to land on, to even move the ship around. They are so expensive that only large corps or alliances can afford to give them to their members for use. They're used for the large scale warfare in 0.0 space, as they have huge damage, doomsday weapons, or other large scale abilities and attacks.

You should think of each ship as a tool that allows you to perform a role. You should ask questions, read guides, and train a little bit of everything, so you can figure out what you like. Once you've figured out, pick a few ships and train their associated skills to high level, and fly the ships to get experience.

This game has many skills. Unlike other games, where you have 20-40 main abilities (skills), in this game you can have 200-300 skills trained, and each skill gives 5% bonus here, 5% bonus there, with the idea that once you add up all the bonuses you get a serious boost in the performance of whatever ship you're flying at the moment, and its weapons, defenses, and special abilities. Here's a guide. You buy skill books from the market, you inject them into your head, and queue them to train, and they train in real time, even if you log off. Which is nice.

the general advice given is
From day 1, in a frigate.

you will however die a lot, an awful lot.

different groups favour different things
in Nul-sec (sov fights) it's called a Doctrine (eg all in Abaddons with Curse & Guardian support)
in random roams .. it can be kitchen sink fits
etc etc

until you've joined a specific group it can be hard to know which way to go.
for your pve goals I would suggest staying in faction until you can fit a battleship to a decent standard
for your pvp goals, initially I would say look into Tech 3 Destroyers as they seem to have replaced AF's for the most part in small gang stuff.
look into joining a player run corp when you feel that the time is right for you

Train any old frig to level V (should be about 7 days or so).

Train the appropriate small weapons to V, so that you get the benefits of T2 ammo.

At that point, you're ready to PvP: your ship will no longer crank out some mediocre 50 DPS but a whopping 150-200. You'll have decent tracking and range.

All you'll need is experience; once you get the hang of it, progress into other races frigs (for pirate frigates), maybe T3 Destroyers or cruisers, depending on where you live and with whom you roll.



Basic skills you'll always need are the gunnery support skills (to level IV is enough), those under the Engineering branch (especially weapon upgrades) and a few basic Navigation/Electronics skills. The modules themselves will tell you what you need; no reason to go beyond level IV at first as the V trains are long and not usually required for small stuff.



After that, you should have an idea of what you're doing and you'll figure the rest out from there.