EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello. I've been learning the game through the various tutorial agents and have moved on to the Sisters of Eve story arc where hopefully I can continue to learn the mechanics of the game. I'm looking for soem advice as to how to take the step up from "harmless" to "mostly harmless" (for those that remember playing Elite on the BBC Micro...).

Up until now a Rifter with a couple of 125mm guns and a Small Shield Booster has been sufficient for all the combat missions but a few missions into the SoE arc I'm up against a tougher set of NPCs.

I don't recall specifically the NPCs (Serpent Faction???...) but the mission asks that I take out their base and the defenders. They are a sudden spike in difficulty and I have had to emergency warp out twice to save myself. So, my first reaction was "we're gonna need a bigger boat" as I was thinking I need to take a step up in DPS soI travelled off to pick up my Thrasher as it has lots of turret hardpoints but am I thinking along the wrong lines here? Is it more about what skills I have rather than what ship I'm in? (I guess a combination of both). I have level 4 in my Minmatar Frigate skill so I guess I'm wasting that by hopping into a Destroyer. So is it more case of shopping for better equipment (and for the skills to use them)? If so, are there some basic rig setups that are standard for combat at my level that anyone could recommend?

Any advice on how to take my first step up from useless to slightly-less-useless in combat would be appreciated.

IMO you are doing it right to get into a destroyer or maybe even a cruiser. Keep in mind you need skills and a proper setup to use these ships in missions. (sorry, not a minny pilot so no idea on fits btw).

Also keep in mind you are talking about combat, in general in EVE this relates to PvP and not PvE (which you are doing). So what you need is a mission-fit for your frigate/destroyer/cruiser.
Couple of tips: look up the info of the ship you are flying (right click your ship and show info) in it's description it will list which bonuses apply to the ship, try to fit out a ship so you make use of its bonuses.
Also do some research on tanking (some ships are best armor tanked, some best shields, and also NPC ships do a fixed type of damage, try to build your tank towards the NPCs you are shooting (the type of NPCs you will be shooting is given in the screen you have to press accept to accept the mission.)

Here are couple of usefull websites for missioning and just general stuff:

http://www.ogrank.com/content/view/698/59/ = this one will list which types of damage all NPC rats do to you and which type of damage they are vulnerable to.
http://isktheguide.com/ = huge (over 700 pages) guide which explains almost all things you can do in EVE, including large part on how to fit ships (guns, missiles, tanking etc). And PDF is free to download.
http://eve-survival.org/ = contains (almost) every mission in EVE, so you can read up what to expect, how to tank it and which ships trigger the next wave of NPC rats out there to kill you.

And yes SoE can get bit hard to run in your frigate, believe all but the last mission (last mission is intended to do in a small group) can be done with a cruiser and some starting skills, and I've seen destroyers do them too.

btw, on your reaction on needing a bigger boat, I think in this case you are right. Just keep in mind in EVE bigger isn't always better. Large guns of a battleship size boat will have trouble shooting small, fast ships. You have to balance the ship you fly against the stuff you are going to shoot.

Nice guideline for future normal missions are:

Level 1: Frigates / Destroyers (Cruisers can do them but are less effective).
Level 2: Destroyers / Cruisers (Frigates can do them but have a hard time, anything bigger then cruiser can do them but less effective).
Level 3: Cruisers / Battlecruisers (Like before, smaller is possible but hard, bigger is possible but less effective).
Level 4: Battlecruisers / Battleships / T3 cruisers (see comment at level 3)
Level 5: Battleships / Groups of people / Carrier when in low-sec

EDIT:


BTW, Am I the only 'old' pilot here who sees the fun in this sentence.

I love this attitude towards EVE, +1 like

This, exactly! Rats can be stupid but they come in sometimes massive numbers so you have to be smarter to take them down.

At one mission, I think it was Downing of Slavers or sth like that, basically a lot of quite tough rats for my thrasher I just MWDed from a swarm and took a look at them. Rats are usually divided into a few groups and it is possible to limit their aggro only to one group. This way you have to tank only 5 ships shooting at you instead of 20.

In some missions it is possible to make a bookmark at 200km from a swarm and then warp in and out between BM and rats. Of course you can't warp to a rat but once you kill one of them you can warp to a wreck. That tactic was very good for a few missions I did where I could not handle all rats at once. But most missions I think have some kind of jamming that prevent you from such short warps strategy and you have to make actual warp out of a mission but wherever you can do near BM <-> swarm bouncing it will help a lot.

No you don't. The wheel of time will crash anybody over ... err ... time.

Navigation to 5 : 25% bonus to top speed,
Space ship command 5 : 25% bonus to Agility
Evasive maneuvering 5 : 25% bonus to Agility.
Fuel conservation 5 : -25% cap use from AB
Acceleration control 5 : 25% bonus to AB top speed.

These will all contribute to making any mini ship you fly faster and more agile with out signature radius penalties.

Also do you know what damage they were doing? Did you tank accordingly?

Not totally agree with this. Most lvl 5 people suggest only take a couple of days and they do help a lot with damage or the abilty to fit ships. Though if you want to be able to progress a bit quicker, level 4 in the skills will do, but I do suggest to get them to level 5 as soon as possible

If I can toss in 2 cents- Eve is actually rather well set up in it's intended path of progression for ships.

That is, at modest SP, you are MORE effective in a smaller vessel than in larger ones. The trend in PvP has been larger hulls and high alpha. So many people blow right by frigates and cruisers and 'learn' PvP in a BC.

Remember that for larger hulls you will also need Drones skills, as well as more robust skills overall to make tight fittings work.

Keeping with the intent of ship progression, you will do better actually taking the steps. I'm pretty new to dedicated PvP myself, and regret every fleet I've been in that I wasn't flying something small and fast.

You can, fairly quickly, fly highly specialized combat roles in small ships- which IMO is a lot more fun than generic DPS boat. Interceptors, as mentioned already, are pretty much the ground floor of the shiny T2 ships. Half the cost of a BC, requires actual flying rather than mashing Approach/Orbit.

As for PvE- I ran missions for-freaking-ever and hated it. I stopped at level 3's rather than buy another mission boat for level 4's- I started just doing a bare minimum of PvE to support PvP- which isn't much if you are flying smaller ships, naturally.

A couple friends I made in New Eden run worm holes together in BC's. With three of us, a few hours of beating up Sleepers left me with more than enough isk to have a hanger full of frigates for melting faces. WH are a way of life in and of themselves in Eve- you might get hooked. Scanning skills help but mine are terrible and I scan down WH pretty easily.

The biggest 'step up' in Eve, really any MMO, is finding other people. You'd be amazed what options are open to The Right Five Guys (tm) in this game.

Your thought process is correct!

Use a destroyer to deal with the SOE arc.
Some people even bring cruisers but destroyers can get the job done.
Using a T1 frigate is going to make things very hard for any player young enough to still get any use out of the SOE arc missions.

The mostly harmless part was funny.

That's more or less depending on the ship itself, some ships rule in being passive tanked due to their own bonuses and how the ship layout is (natural shield points, natural armour points, capacitor size and slot layout).

For instance the Drake, it's more or less the king of passive shield tanking but it 'sucks' at active shield tanks. So most of the fits you encounter are based on the natural advantages of a ship and most are found by trial and error by other pilots.