EVE New Citizens Q&A

Frigates are great for small scale PVP primarily because of their low cost (you can lose tons of them and not care) and high agility (you can avoid fights from larger and scarier gangs). Petrus' (who will be responding shortly) and my corp specialize in frigate combat for this reason.


In general, frigates will lose direct 'fair' fights with larger classes of ships. This is because larger ships will often fit modules which fight the size/speed advantage of frigates. A cruiser with a stasis webifier, warp scrambler, and energy neuts will leave you moving slowly and without any capacitor energy to do anything. Against unprepared targets, or in groups, though, they become extremely effective.



Caldari have two basic ship lineups - missileboats and gunboats. The Merlin is decidedly a gunboat (note the ship bonuses; the vast majority of its damage will be coming from its guns). The other line is represented by the kestrel, which has a bunch of launchers. The type of weapons you want to fit almost always depends on the bonuses the ship gets.

You'll note that the Merlin gets bonuses to small hybrid turrets - so, railguns and blasters. If you don't put railguns and blasters on a merlin, you better have a damn good reason. These reasons exist for some ships, but in general follow the bonuses. Frigates will be using small guns/launchers, cruisers will be using medium guns/launchers, and battleships will use large guns/launchers.

The Merlin has the distinction of being probably the tankiest t1 frigate, and by a healthy margin. A good Merlin fit can reach upwards of 10,000 effective hitpoints (hitpoints modified by resistances), whereas other t1 frigates are lucky to hit 4,000. It's a bit slow, though. The t2 version of the Merlin is the Harpy, which happens to be my favorite ship in the game. It continues this line, being among the tankiest of all frigates.

I appreciate the responses, thank you both. I saw some posts about RvB, and I think I am going to check them out so I can learn the basics in PvP. One of my friends told me that missiles aren't used in PvP that often and are generally worse than other weapons... Is this true? Pulse Lasers seem to appeal to me, but that means I should train Ammar frigates right?

Lasers have two types: pulse and beam. Pulse lasers are the short range (and high damage) variant, while beam lasers are the long range (and lower damage) variant. They are typically only ever fit on Amarr ships because they have a very high capacitor draw to compensate for not using ammo, and Amarr ships often get bonuses to reduce the capacitor usage of lasers.

Pulse lasers are the longest range of the short ranged turrets (autocannons and blasters being the other two), but they have poor tracking so tend to miss at absolute point-blank.

Beam lasers are medium-range among long range turrets (artillery and railguns being the other two). Beam lasers are the highest DPS (damage per second) long range weapon, but they have a fast fire rate, which means that the damage per shot (or "alpha") is really low. Artillery has much higher alpha and lower range (but fires much more slowly, so has lower DPS), while railguns fire at about the same speed but are longer range and do somewhat less damage overall.

So... yes, if you want to fly laser ships, train Amarr, starting with the frigates. The Punisher frigate and the Coercer destroyer are both awesome laserboats.

Honestly some have had good luck with lasers on the merlin your already in. Its a bit cap heavy but doable.

T1 frigates are good for pvp and very cheap, fly with 4/5 others people in frigates and you wil get some kills for sure. Use ships like rifters, Incursus, Punishers and kestrels , when fly in wolfpack they can take down bigger targets pretty fast.

Jut roam low sec pipes , or go directly to Ammamake, you will find people to shoot at.

Dont bother with RvB, just fly with your friends, scramble flashy people in low sec, orbit, and shoot them till you die or they die
Rnse and repeat till you know what you re doing .