EVE New Citizens Q&A

Never underestimate frigates, T1 and T2, they're can be alot of fun.

You can get into a T1 PvP fit rifter in about a day for very little isk and cause no end of trouble in a gang (and with some training) or solo.

That said, I love manticores, something about stealth bombers just makes me happytimes.

Growing up I was a Rifter man myself. Less than 24 hours and like BlueMonkey said, you can really be an irritating little sucker :P I personally started out with the arty rifter and would always burn out of reach. Granted at the time they could burn FASTER, it was still fun.

Right now on this new toon I'm going Amarr, and the Punisher is a great little ship. Again, less than a day of training and you're a little bit of a trouble maker (though much more specialized than the Rifter *sadface* )

And of course you can never go wrong with a Kestrel. Those little sucks are MEAN.

If memory serves my first non-rookie ship was a bantam becuase I thought I could make some decent money from mining.
I quickly decided that mining was not for me and hoped into a merlin though. Difficult ship to work with on low-sp but it did the job and paved the way for a cormorant. Lost both in the SOE epic arc unofortunately.
Long story short; trained up to cruiser level with caldari/hybrids, then up to battlecruisers with caldari/missiles, then decided I didn't like Caldari at all and cross-trained to gallente and eventually onto minmatar (p.s. cross-training is both the best thing you can do and the worst thing you can do as a new player).

Never looked back, though I still respect the abilities and reliability of caldari missile boats.

My Incursus was the first ship I remember. I still prefer it in the T1 frigate class if we're doing a fun roam, or if I'm in highsec baiting or something.

Kestrel

From really early I decided to specialize in missiles and shield tanking even if I was Gallente. Kestrel is the only T1 frigate with 4 missile launchers and can give nice punch in missions. It can also have such a long range that enemies can barely hit it.

I later upgraded among missile path to bigger ships: First to Caracal then Drake and Raven. I also bought Navy ships like Hookbill, Caracal Navy and Raven Navy. I'm currently training for Tengu. But I still use Kestrel when I want to do level 1 missions for some reason (e.g. to help new player) and I don't want to overdo it. If I do want to overdo it I just get my Hookbill.

Much later I learned that someone had created perfect paint job for Kestrel. I know I am never going to fly that, but if against all odds CCP would actually add that to game, I would buy one and fly it even if it would cost billions.

You can allways dream ...

The Rifter - not necessarily the first ship I jumped into but easily the best of the ships I got for running the tutorial missions way back when. They're pretty decent ships and can be used for both PvE and PvP. Getting skilled up for the Rifter and the support skills is a good way to go for new pilots.

I cannot sing the praises of the vexor enough. Once I learned how to kite I was able to complete level 3 missions in one with relative ease with out having to warp off. Frigates are excellent little ships, but Cruisers and especially the vexor have the ability to grow with you as your skills increase. The Vexor I fly when I get my pvp itch works and functions far differently now then it did when I was only a few months old.

Drones are such a flexible weapons platform. Gallente ftw.

My first ship out of the tutorials was a Merlin. I had read the forums in the lead up to actually subscribing in order to figure out what this game was about. There was discussion at the time about running L3 missions in a Merlin: one side of the argument was that the 5 percent per level resistance bonus was worthwhile, the other side of the argument was that a Merlin just takes too long to kill anything.

This intrigued me, so I trained to fly a Merlin and used it exclusively to fly missions until one night I thought, "I wonder if the Caracal can do this L3 cargo delivery mission better"?

For the moment, my favourite ship out of my entire stable is the Manticore.

And the sad part of the story is that even as a Minmatar-born capsuleer, I still can't fly Minmatar ships particularly well. But I can fly a Hawk and Harpy (both based on the Merlin) as well as the Manticore (based on the Kestrel).

Over the years I've written about my love for cloaky frigates.

This.

Being Minmatar, there's a few ships that really stand out from the rest and the Rifter is one of those ships. I stayed in the Rifter for the first 9 months I played this game. I max trained up every skill related to the Rifter and then decided to max fit the ship. With Tech 2 rigs, Faction / Deadspace modules and all related skills maxed out, this little Tech 1 Frigate easily completed level 3 encounter missions within the bonus time limit. I still have my original Rifter complete with 'Large' rigs but the ship is mostly retired now. Every once in a while I'll use it to complete low level 'Hideout' exploration sites.

From the Rifter I went straight into the Hurricane since the majority of skills trained were applicable. After that I trained up for Covert Ops and got heavy into exploration with a Rapier. A very good mid level high security 'all in one' exploration ship that has served me well for a long time..

My first ship was a little Probe. I used it to go from asteroid belt to asteroid belt doing nothing but salvaging the rats the miners killed. At the time it felt like good money and I enjoyed the thrill of being a little bit naughty when I would see the occasional module worth grabbing and running with. I mean some of them were worth a whole 20,000 isk! The important thing though was that I actually enjoyed it. Also there was one time I pulled loot from a rat that was actually owned by someone waiting in the belt for a war target. He mistook me for the WT. It was the first ship I ever lost. I didn't cry any tears. When he figured out I was not one of his WT's he apologized. Instead of being upset I said it was part of the game and I knew the risk when I took it. Since he thought I had a good attitude for Eve he taught me a little about PvP and gave me a few million isk.

Since then I have flown everything from Covert Ops to Freighters. I still occasionally see the Probe when I am scanning the markets and remember the simple pleasure it offered as well as my first loss of Eve innocence.