f13.net

Getting ready to get back into EvE, and had a few questions i wanted to ask:

When selecting your initial race group and such, there are no innate bonuses for just picking a race are there?  (as in, with WoW, each race has racial specific traits / abilities that only that race gets)

So for example, a Caldari character and a Minmatar character, assuming both had the same stats, and same skills, would be essentially the exact same character (other then the portrait?), and if you threw them in the same ship (remember, same skills / stats) would both pilot the ship with the same effectiveness?

Basicly im just trying to figure out if i can feel free to pick a race for Avatar appearance alone, without having to worry about potentially gimping myself in the long run.

Yes, a Caldari and Minmatar with the same stats and same skills would pilot a ship equally well in all respects.

However, when you create the Caldari, they start with different stats than the Minmatar, and by choosing the various backgrounds associated with each race, you may or may not be able to get both to have exactly the same stats.  The difference shouldn't be more than 1-2 points here and there, which is minimal after you apply all the bonuses from learning skills and implants, once you're in the game.

EDIT:  as far as I know, all skills are available to everyone, regardless of race.  The only difference, besides appearance, is 1-2 points in attributes distributed differently, and the fact that a starting character is likely to do the local agent missions, and thereby starting with higher rep with his own race, rather than deciding to fly half-way across the galaxy to do the starter missions for some other race.  Also, you get 800k skillpoints from the character creation screen that will apply to your race's ships, and if you want to fly some other race's ships (many people do), you get to start from 0, rather than from 3 or 4.

perfect. that answers one of my questions (I am rather fond of the minmatar avatars, and also kind of like their background lore, but their ships dont really seem as well suited to heavy missile / drone loadouts as some of the other ones).

Next question:

Would you reccomend maxing out the Learning and related learning skills quickly (with the intent to reap benefits from the reduced skill learn time more quickly), or is the difference not so great that training up other skills first wouldnt be a better idea?

You will be limited in the game by two things:  ISK, and the fact that regardless of how much time you spend logged in, those damn skills train so slowly, keeping you from unlocking ships that you already have the cash to purchase and use, sooner.

A newbie needs cash fast, which means he needs a way to make the cash.  The 800k skillpoints are supposed to help with this, by starting you off with the correct combo of skills to either fight or mine or work the market or whatnot.  I'd recommend the military school to start with; if you can fight, you can make money off missions, and it's a lot easier to get the skill to strap a mining laser on, than it is to train up the several skills required for fighting properly.

If you have a source that can give you about 5 mil ISK, you'll have enough money to buy learning skills right away, and survive for the 2 weeks to a month that it takes to learn them.  If you don't have cash at all, I'd recommend getting enough skills to jump into a ship and make some money somehow, then once you have a few mil, worry about the learning skills.

You need the learning skills, btw.  Basic to 4, advanced to 3, at the minimum I would say.  Plus, a +1 implant for each attribute is cheap enough to make it worth getting as soon as you have money for it too.  Doing this stuff will cut your skillup time in half, from then on forever, so it's VERY worth it.

Sounds good, pretty much thinking of doing a Brutor - > Military -> spec ops (for leg up on drones), then hitting up whatever i can for learning skills.  do a lot of ratting to make cash.

How difficult is it to move stuff between characters?

if i have a primary character specced for combat / mining (maybe salvaging instead?) and a second character trained up with Science / refining skills, how hard would it be to send that secondary character stuff to refine and then get the return sent back to my "main"?

Unless you're an alt with a lot of money to burn and don't really plan on playing too much for the first month, then I wouldn't recommend maxing out learning immediately.   There are advantages to going all-out on learning, but it's a soul destroying experience I wouldn't recommend to anyone who's creating their first long-term character.


IMO a better solution is to train the basic (cheap) learning skills to 3 within the first few days provided you have the available funds - this'll speeds up training times some without needing you to invest too much time waiting for non-fun skills to train.  Once that's done switch to useful skills which make the game more enjoyable for you, and think about training learning to 4 when you have some idle time or when you would like lower training times.

You can only have one character actually training skills per account so generally there's not much use in using an alt unless it's on a seperate account for stuff like that. You've chosen to make  Minnie which is good. Most of the ex-F13ers are playing in a corp based in Minmatar Space. Uh..called Miskatonic Industries or something like that.

Join the F13 chat channel once you've made it through character creation for more info. :)

You can send cash very easily by searching for your alt's name and right-clicking -> give cash. 

Items it's more difficult, you have to set up a contract specific to the alt's name carefully enough that it's not prone to someone else stealing your stuff, or you can make a corporation and put your main and alt in it, then transfer stuff via the shared Corp hangars.  Or, via anchored passworded cargo cans in (lowsec) space, or, make the alt on a second account, so that you can have both the main and the alt dock at the same station and exchange items via the "trade" pop-up window.  Painful whichever way you do it.

If you have an OK computer then you should be able to run two windowed clients for two accounts simultaneously.  Just saying, not suggesting that you eject valuables into space as a means of transfer.  I'd use a Contract, I think.

Generally it's very easy to move items & money between characters by using private contracts, or corp hangers if you're in a player-run corporation.

Personally I'd avoid alts unless you get an expert character straight out of the box - EVE has an interesting economy so unless you really want minerals, just sell the raw ore at a market rates and let the buyer worry about refining it.

This way you get to focus on your core skills, enabling you to become competitive with your peers (ie. income generation) as soon as possible, without taking time out to train a rather specialised alt.


Added;

For manufacturing, refining etc. the best option early on is to find friends and acquaintances who've already committed the serious chunks of training time to being pretty much the best they can be in those areas and getting them to help you out - that way you have access to high-end skills without having to expend the training times for them.

You can have a main specced in combat/ratting and also with sufficient skills to refine, put sales orders on the market, mine if needed, haul if needed, etc. 

Every character needs a core set of skills (the ones needed to fly ships), so there's no point in making multiple characters then doing duplicate training, when one character will do.  Make your combat char, and in the process of getting him ships, get him a tech 1 hauler too, and spend 3 days tops to get the mining skill to 4, and the refining skills if you want them, to 3 or 4.

In my opinion, people use specialized refiners, specialized science, whatever, because they want to maximize the output of those things, because a 5% loss matters a lot due to the huge quantities that they process for their corp or what not.  Unskilled refining, you get 87% efficiency in empire, maxed out skill you get 95%, and then you need to max out faction in order to get 100% (no tax).  Two points in Trade and two in Retail, you can put up something like 25 sell orders; good enough for selling off loot.  If you max out the trade skills, sure, you can put up more orders AND modify them remotely, but that takes days to train up.

Mostly, alts are for when your main must be anonymous or is a pirate with low sec and can't get into Empire to buy stuff.

EDIT:  oh yeah, contracts will NOT physically move items for you, unless you play a player to move it via a courier contract (and courier contracts are typically full of scamming).  So if your main is across the galaxy from your refining alt, someone must jump in the hauler and move something, either the ore or the resulting minerals.  It's not like WoW mail.  It's why it's better if your main can refine somewhat; you take 10% loss but you can refine right then and there, and then put it up for sale locally, then move on.

With the new skills setup for new characters, you don't need to work on your Learning skills right out of the gate. You should start out a with pretty good set already.

Remember, the goal is to have fun, not "win" by maxing out your learning skills before the other guy. I typically train learning skills when I'm comfortable where I am (while I make cash, putz around, go on vacation) and don't need to learn "the next best thing". I don't normally have the cash for the "next best thing" anyways, so training it is moot at that point. :)

Few more new newb questions:

If i wanted to go with a Missile boat / Drones combat setup, which race has the best ships suited to such a layout.  Im given to understand from my limited digging that Amarr are usually better set up for drones, while Caldari are better for Missiles?  Would either one be slightly better overall? (at, say, the Cruiser / Battlecruiser ship level?)

Also, regarding missiles: do i have to worry about fratricide when i am firing HUGE volumes of missiles at a single target simultaneously?

Generally, it's Gallente if you're looking for drones, I believe.  Amarr are generally geared towards armor tanking and beam weapons.

I don't know much about battleships, but if you're looking for cruisers with a drone/misslie mix, I don't know how your luck with Caldari or Amarr will be.  Amaar and Caldari ships have crappy drone bays (except the Amarr Arbitrator, which only has one launcher hardpoint), and the only Gallente cruiser with more than one missile hardpoint is the Celestis (with two).

You might want to give the Minmatar cruisers a look, though.  The Belicose and Rupture have three launcher hardpoints and a 40/30 (respectively) unit drone bay.

The one thing that I find alts veeery useful for is trading.  It might not be something you're interested in, but you can create a trading alt with skills in setting up lots of orders, decreasing your margin calls and cutting your transaction costs dramatically, right out of the box.

Gallente = drones and max damage
Caldari = missiles and range
Amarr = tank and ranged dps
Minmatar = rust and vroom vroom!

Typhoon is the Minmatar BS with a big drone bay and bonuses to missiles. It is also a bitch to train for a full T2 fit.
Raven is the Caldari BS with more missile hardpoints and some drones. Drake is the Caldari BC, same deal. These don't have super drone bays, but they do alright.
You can't actually go balls-out with missiles on Gallente drone boats. There isn't a ship with the hardpoints.
Huginn is the Minmatar recon with a decent drone bay and bonus to missiles. Still a bitch to train for.
Arbitrator is an Amarr cruiser with a drone bonus and single missile hardpoint. The Curse is a pretty sweet upgrade, but not for missiles.

There is not a ship which has, for instance, a bonus to drone damage and missile damage. The Typhoon is the closest.

Missiles only hit your target with no splash. If you use Friend or Foe missiles you can hit friendlies, but you'll only use those if jammed.

Gallente and Caldari BCs are getting the nerf bat in Rev 2, but at the moment they're reasonably pwn. I couldn't say post-Rev 2.

Vexor (Gallente crusier) is some good cheap fun, but no missiles.

Mostly the "good" T1 cruisers that get used by high-SP players are the ones that are suitable for gank setups (e.g. Rupture). These are probably not what you want.

I don't think missiles will destroy each other; they should just hit the target.

The thing about the big ships (battleships) is that most of them have token drone bays, so you can use small drones as an attempt to defend against frigates, which regular battleship-sized weapons can't hit very well.

However, drones and missiles are competing weapon systems; the skills for one won't help you at all with the other, and vice-versa.   And, you'll pretty much need all the help you can get with a weapon system in order to actually punch through the hardened (70% damage reduction) shields or armor that everyone flies around with.  Which means, if a ship gives you bonuses to a certain type of weapon, you want to use the biggest version that you can fit, in all the mounting points (which means boosting the ship's energy grid and capacitor to support this), plus with maxed out skills for rate of fire, damage, range, etc.

This is why people usually concentrate on the ships and weaponry from one race, to start with.  Missiles, hybrids, shield defense (Caldari).  Drones, hybrids, armor (Galente).  Lasers, armor defenses (Amarr).  The Minmatar ships can use anything; that doesn't mean that a ship has bonuses to everything, but rather you might find frigates that use Projectiles, Missiles, and Armor defense, and then cruisers that use Drones, Projectiles, and Shield defenses. 

Minmatar ships are considered "hard" to train because it takes a longer time for someone to level up the skills for all these different weapon systems to a point where they actually scratch the other guy's hardened defenses.

Finally, keep in mind that ships are "balanced" with the presumption that you have "good" support skills.  Engineering, Electronics, Mechanic, Navigation to 4+, plus the associated skills under those categories to 3-4.  If CCP gives you 5 gun slots in a Cruiser, you won't be able to actually install 5 cruiser-sized guns until you get Engineering to 4.  And even then, if you want the bigger damage versions of those guns, you have to gimp your defenses.

That said, keep in mind that having Drones as a secondary means of dishing out damage does not actually take away from your chosen primary means. They are not conflicting in the sense that they interfere with each other's function, but in that having a secondary Drone combat option does add a time requirement for the training of relevant skills.

I'll echo ajax though in relation to Minmatar ships. Stay away from them if you are a new player, as they have a tendency to be quite whimsical in their roles, and often hard to equip as they are geared towards being 'fast' and carrying a combined turret/missile loadout.

Solo-combat oriented pilots (both pvp & pve) have a tendency to gravitate towards either Caldari of Gallente, due to their ability to dish out huge burst damage, or possess a sustained dps tank, respectively

Thanks for all the info.

New question:  I decided to roll minmatar anway :P.  Havingfun shooting shit in a rifter, but was wondering.  should i actualy want to tank, what are some good options (for minmatar ships that is, probably at the cruiser level)?

 Also, I get the idea behind shield tanking (let it beat on your shields, boost with shield boosters as nessicary) but what about Armor tanking?  If it works the same way as shield tanking, isnt that kind of dangerous, as in order for them to beat on your armor, you have already let them beat down your shields, which are your first line of defense?

The minmatar have to train both armor and shield tanking skills.  As far as ships, my favorite cruiser was a rupture.

another new question:

Diversify or specialize?   Is it worth it to diversify a bit, like trying to go for skills in 2 different racial ship groups (minmatar / galente for example), and 2 different turret types (projectile / hybrid), for greater variety and versatility or would you save that for later on, and just specialize in maximizing your native ship / weapon types in early on?

We will talk about diversification after you get past 40M SP, now get that t2 skills trained. :evil:

It's always better to have one good ship (thanks to skills) than choice between two medicore ones.

I would say that in longer run it's better to have good skills in single tree (armor, lasers and amarr ships) - you might want to change ship class you use (like hop from interceptors to capitals) and all those auxiliary skills you have trained for given tree will come handy.

Specialize in one race.  Generally when people say specialize they are talking about a single type of ship (generally a tech 2 variant) or ship class (cruisers) examples of specializations being  Hacs, intys, or command ships.

There is 4 Minmater cruisers:

Skyth: mining cruiser.
Stabber: Fast, light armoured. Heavy tackler, useful for pirating.
Rupture: Heavy damager dealer/tank.
Belicose: crappy EW cruiser. Do not use.


It depends on the attackers damage typees, and you can usually equip better resists as you have more low slots compared to medium slots. Vs rats, you can always equip enough armour harderners to be able to take enough damage indefinatly (or have enough extra plates to be able to kill them long before you run out).

In PvP, armour tanks are better than shield tanks, on average.

If you armour tank, you think of your shield as an extra bonus, but nothing you need to worry about. There are low slot cap power relays that actually REDUCE the speed of your shield recharge, but if you're armour tanking, you won't care.

Minmater *generally* armour tank, but you do have some ships that shield tank in each class of ships (for example, the tier 1 BC is a shield tank, the tier 2 an armour tank), so if you end up not getting armour/shield skills, you'll still be able to fly at least one ship of the class, though the expense between them can be high. I found vs rats, I was always able to progress my skills in a speed that it didn't matter myself (except I'm at 13mil skill points, and still can't use tech 2 guns).

Next question:

I understand missiles, pretty strait foreward.

What about turrets?  Anyone got a moderately concise breakdown on the pros / cons of the different turret types?

There are two subtypes of each type of turret; one long range and one short range.

Projectile:  I believe (though I may be wrong) that Minmatar generally get the best bonuses in projectile turrets.  The short range ones are autocannons, and the long range ones are artillery.  Projectile turrets eat ammo, but they take very little capacitor to fire, which is handy in PvP if you're being hit in the battery.

Hybrid: Generally, I think, Gallente and Caldari use hybrids.  Short range variants are blasters, long range variants are railguns.  Hybrid turrets take a bit of capacitor and also require ammo to fire.  They're the "middle of the road" gun between projectiles and lasers; I don't use them much, so someone else can probably give more info on their specific pros versus the other types.

Laser:  Usually, Amarr have the best laser bonuses.  Lasers don't use ammo (they use focusing crystals instead, which don't need to be reloaded unless they break), but they suck a fair amount of capacitor to fire.  Short range lasers are pulse lasers, long range are beam lasers.  As I understand it, this is one of the things that is supposed to be looked at in the near future; an Amarr ship firing lasers and running an armor rep is pulling huge amounts of cap, and even with the bonuses, Amarr ships tend to run out of energy quick, and an Amarr ship without cap is unable to do almost anything.

This has been linked on this board somewhere, but there's a fairly detailed (if wordy) description of what the various turret stats do here. (http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g25.asp)

Minmatar: Can do all damage types at least somewhat. No cap use.
Autocannons: Close range, no cap use. Ok damage, poor optimal range,  great falloff range.   
Artillery: Worst optimal range of all three long range, best fall off.  Great alpha strike so-so damage.

Gallente/Caldari: Thermal and Kinetic damage. Moderate Cap use.
Blasters: omgwtf damage.  Closest Range of all short range weapons best damage I believe.  They use cap.
Rails: Middle optimal of the long range weapons.  Better Dps than artillery and better tracking than artillery, use cap.

Amarr: EM and Thermal Damage. High Cap use.
Beam: Long range laser weapon. Don't know to much about lasers although they can only do em and thermal damage which isn't that great a combo because all armor has at least 60% base em resist and lots of people armor tank, also large cap use (may be getting mildly changed next patch).
Pulse: Close range laser weapon.  Best optimal of all three close range weapons.  Getting a 25% tracking boost next patch I believe.

Generally if you're flying a races class of ships you'll be using their weapons with a few possible exceptions (some people use minmatar weapons on heavily tanked ships because they don't use cap)

Ok, Turrets have different things affecting how well they hit:

1.  Range.  With stationary targets, a turret will hit 100% damage up to its Optimal range, then linearly less, all the way down to 0% damage at Optimal + 2 Falloff.

2.  Speed/Tracking.  The closer and faster your target orbits you (transversal speed), the more difficult it is for the turret to track it and shoot it.

3.  Target size / signature radius.  A gun will put its ammo within a circle of a certain radius.  If your target is bigger than this circle, it will get hit, but if it's smaller, it might not.  Like trying to hit a radio-controlled toy airplane with battleship main guns.

The combination of these things results in pretty much a bell-shaped curve for "maximum DPS", with the peak slightly inside the Optimal range.  Some guns (autocannons) are designed to work outside their Optimal (they do max damage somewhat outside it).  And also, it is very hard to hit small ships with big guns, or fast ships (Interceptors) with big guns.  At the same time, using small guns against big targets won't dent their defenses, cause the guns don't do enough damage.

So, one idea is to install your main weaponry for that ship so it hits your intended target, and then warp in or otherwise control the range you stay at with afterburners or webifiers (slow the other guy down).  In addition, you use secondary weaponry (drones, missiles, smartbombs, smaller guns) to deal with emergencies such as a small target getting close to you to jam you or get under your main guns' tracking.

Incidentally, for missiles, the speed and size of the target also matter, but it's more of a cut-off, they'll hit slow, big targets plenty well, but if your target gets under the threshhold of the missile specs, it suddenly hardly takes any damage.  Target painters and webifiers help by increasing the target's size and decreasing its speed.



As far as defenses go, shields and armor are equally vulnerable.  You won't have enough mounting points on a ship to install both kinds of defense.  So if you install shields (shield booster, shield extender(s), shield hardeners, shield boost amplifier), once they get through your shield, your armor is like cheese, it won't last more than a second. 

Numbers aren't exact, but you take a cruiser with 800 shields and 800 armor, and you put a couple over-sized (battleship) shield extenders on it, 4000 shields, then a couple hardeners for 60% damage reduction (now you have the equivalent of 10000 shields) and then you fill the low slots with shield power relays (to increase the default shield recharge rate), and you end up with a ship where the main defense (shields) is about 12-15 times better than your backup (armor).

You can do the same stuff with armor defenses.  They'll punch through your measly 800 shields in like 2 seconds then get stuck trying to eat through your hardened armor (hopefully).  Armor defense functions the same way, you just use armor plates, armor hardeners, and an armor repairer respectively.

Both kinds of defense require power-grid and capacitor recharge like there's no tomorrow (this is where the Engineering skills come into play), and the only difference is that shields take up all your mid slots to install (and possibly a few low slots to boost), whereas armor takes up all your low slots to install (and a few medium slots to boost capacitor or repair rates).  So, really, how many mid vs. low slots a ship has will dictate what defenses it's suited for.

On the topic of learning skills training, I would highly recommend that you don't fall into the trap of feeling obligated to train them first.  Yes, in the long run it will save you immense amounts of training time, but in the short run you will lose.  Right out of the box, you will want to train those skills that will help you immediately, and having a shorter training time on a skill that only takes an hour to train isn't going to make or break you now or later.  Besides, is it more intriguing to you to get that ship operation skill or to be able to say, "omg charisma 5, FINALLY!"

I had a friend whom I turned on to EvE.  When he rolled his character, he had already spent several days researching and planning his skill development.  We had long winded discussions about it, and we agreed that going for learning skills right away is the more intelligent choice.  However, three weeks later he was still limping around in a baby frigate and I was blasting pirates from the sky with my cruiser and making decent cash.

Long story short: I finally got around to training my learning skills up while bringing hell to the enemy in my BattleCruiser, he has a tricked out character with level five learning skills and doesn't play anymore.

From my experience with some Minmatar ships, a lot of them work better with what is called a passive tank.

Since your weapons use no cap, and if you make a passive tank (using Shield extenders on a Vagabond) you can allow speed to tank for you.

I had a hurricane setup that had no armor repairer on it, but had a 1600mm plate on it.  I buffed the resists on it using energized nanos, and you have a cap free tank that CANNOT BE NOS'ed!! Some people underestimate this, but in so many fights there is a Curse there NOSing, or a NOS Phoon or Domi. Having those good resists and high armor can make for a cheaper, dangerous, and effective 1 on 1 pirate ship.

But like they said, I'd avoid Minny ships. Gallente are great PVP ships, just work Gunnery armor and drones.

I'm going to have to go back to training guns soon, but....right now my missioning/ratting set-up is 5 lights, 5 mediums (T2 Gallente versions -- can't recall which they are), 2 salvagers, tractor, remote armor rep, light nos. I've got a T2 medium armor rep, energized nano, 1600mm plate, damage controls, and a cap recharger.

My drones kill shit faster than I can target sometimes. They can kill at max range (I haven't trained the EWAR drone skill yet) and the bulk of my drone skills are maxed. I don't need guns right now, so I've been focused on learning skills and getting some base stuff to 5 (Mechanic V, Energy Management 5, that sort of thing).

Admittedly, I only fly a Vex. I plan to upgrade to that nasty Gallente drone BC (Myrmidion?) soon, and will probably be forced to mount a gun or three. My gunnery skills are decent, but nothing special. (I flew an Incurses with triple 150mm rails -- that was a blast).

Myrmidons are sick.

So is that lvl2 Caldari BC. God those things are nasty.

No kidding. I'm trying to build up enough cash to buy it, outfit it right, and be able to replace it. My experience with missions (and new ship sizes) is that it's a bit touch-and-go the first few missions with a new ship, especially if you're going up a level in missions. No point in getting a shiny new ship just to lose it and have to grind more before I can replace it.

But seeing the slots on that thing, the bonuses -- good lord. I've heard you can run a lot of L4s in that thing without sweating.

Yay Minnie! I only fly Minmatar. :)

A PvP Matari pilot's first priorities are to get T2 guns and level 5 in your spaceship command skill in the ship class of your choice.

There's 2 things you need to know about Matari guns. The first is that Barrage M pwns (T2 autocannon ammo). They second is that because your guns are naturally low dps, but you have ships with double damage bonuses to compensate. Moreover, your guns use no cap, so you can load up on gyrostabilizers to do more damage without screwing your cap (lol Amarr).

Blasters and rails are great dps even with best named and level 4 spaceship command skills. Drones are great in the same way, especially if you go ahead and get T2 drones (not that long a train). Missiles are uber at T1. Autocannons and artillery suck at T1 levels, and without level V in your double damage bonus you do subpar damage (level 4->5 is <5% for everyone else, >10% for you). This situation changes once you go T2 with good skills. I've already noted that Barrage pwns. T2 artillery and good gunnery is a great way to get the most damage on your gang's killmails. Blasters and rails get a nice boost going to T2 and max skills. Missiles don't, though precision lights are good for inty and dictor popping; rage torps do OK dps, but only against painted BS-sized targets. Drones with Drone Interfacing V are pretty pwn. Still lol Amarr.

Shipwise, the Minmatar have the best destroyer, interdictor, covert ops, HAC, T1 frigate, and T1 cruisers (Stabber is fun with good skills). Our assault frigs, recons, battlecruisers, command ships, and inties are good but not best in class. Our battleships and capitals suck. Yeah, Tempest alpha, but try training for that (T2 large arty, lvl V Minmatar BS).

If I'd known what I know now, I'd still roll Minmatar. I wouldn't fly anything I didn't have T2 guns in, so I'd roll a Soldier and get T2 small proj immediately. I'd pwn in my Rifter and Thrasher for a while (Thrasher is especially mean to enemy frigs; your BS gangmates will love you). Depending upon my isk flow, I'd either get into interceptors then interdictors (cheap), or do T2 mediums and cruisers (more expensive), with the super expensive option being arty Hurricane. The arty Hurricane is a thing of beauty, but if you are rolling in isk you may not want to train BC5 in favor of Minmatar Cruiser 5 and jump into a Vagabond or Huginn.

I've just about finished going down the path I just detailed. I'm going on vacation next week and when I come back, I'll have Minmatar Cruiser 5. My corp has a free interdictor program, so I have a Sabre for BS/capital ops and the Stabber/Rupture/Vagabond for cruiser/frigate ops. Eventually I'll get into a Sleipnir, but there's no hurry. It is likely I will never take my BS skills beyond level 3.

It's my understanding that with a little L4 experience and a good setup drakes and myrms are definitely capable of L4's - once CCP move the most difficult L4's to being L5's there will be even less reason to choose a BS for empire missioning.

Drake?

A little battleship rundown...

Megathron to me is the best PVP battleship. It can snipe, it can blast, it can tank, and it has 75 drone bay.
Domi's are great too...and all you really need is NOS and drone skills.
Hype's are cool, but ... meh

Ravens are nice. Scorpions are nice ECM boats or great tanks (if you get rid of ECM and just setup to tank due to being primary a lot).
Rohks drop some bombs...tracking sucks ass though

NOS phoons are cool, Tempests are nasty little DPS birds...and Maelstroms seemed over priced.

Armageddon is a great ship, affordable and a brutal tank for tier 1 BS - Apoc's are decent, Abbadons are a sick tank







Hurricane with T2 Autocannons is pretty sick too, I never did try the Arty-cane.

Ya, that's the one.



T2 Artillery set-ups are basically designed to annihilate anything one-size smaller. To the extent that if you have someone webbing/scrambling for you, it's ggnoreplzthxgw.

And i know you were posting a very broad breakdown, but never, ever mess with a Scorpion. Ever.

Every guy that I ever knew that flew a scorpion got smoked a lot. He may have turned the tides of some gang fights, but Scorps are just called primary so much. They are nice boats though, for sure.

Yeah, Megathron is the ship I was hoping Tempest would be when I first started looking into BS. Flexible and effective in a variety of roles. I guess the EANM nerf hurts the mega, but I still think it'll be pretty awesome post Rev2. No way am I going to train T2 large hybrid when T2 large proj seems doubtful, though.

One shotting ships is nice, but much harder to do with the HP boost from Revelations 1. The real strength of arty is in a gang. The DPS over those first first salvos is pretty epic. You don't need tank when you have friends. Basically, I could fly a tanked BC with ACs and be slow and expensive, or I can fly my arty Rupture and be nimble and still do just as much damage over the short term, plus it costs almost nothing.

You guys are going on and on but I wonder how many of those terms he knows/understands.  And don't tell me again that this is a forum for EVE connoisseurs, the thread was started by a newbie to the game.

Any excuse to talk about the pew pew.  8-)

I'm not a TOTAL eve newb.  I actually beta-tested it back in the day, and have been slowly researching stuff, trying to decide what i want to go for in terms of my early ships selections.  So here comes some new (more minmatar specific) newb questions:

I'm about to get mostly done with level 1 missions (hoping to pick up a level 2 contact with a good quality rating in the next day or two), and must make a decision:  Should i get a cruiser, or a destroyer?

I already have the ship skills need to fly either (optimally outfitting one is probably another matter entirely) so the question becomes: What should i expect to encounter in level 2 missions and would a Rupture / Stabber be better suited to taking them on solo or could i do it in a Thrasher?  Cash flow isn't really a problem as a friend lent me enough money to train / equip a salvager (holy hell thats good cash in the early game :P )

second to that, what would you recommend as a good general setup for the Rupture (Cruiser) and Thrasher (destroyer)

Oh, and to add a very noob question: Why are NOS so important?

--------------------------------------------

Edit to add: Just got my toes wet with the EVE Mon program.  Tier 2 weapons (of any sort over light), are going to be out of my skill range for a while (i if i was reading it right, tier 2 training for Meduim Autocan + Medium Arti would take me around a month and a half, if i ignore most of my other skills (like Engineering and Electronics inbetween)

Very, very basic breakdown of mission levels:
(Level = You need)
L1 = Frigate
L2 = Cruiser
L3 = Battlecruiser
L4 = Battleship

Now there are exceptions to this - the best ships of each type can generally run the eaiser missions in the next tier (best frig for each race can run easy L2s, and so on) but it's an adequate guide.

Destroyers have exactly one use in PvE - salvaging. They're really designed for fleet combat (to pop tacklers, etc). Get a cruiser for L2, especially at lower skill points.

Get the cruiser, fit defense and a combination of medium and small weapons.  With cruisers, you can't use speed and small size to survive, you're stuck there and need to be able to take it (they move slowly).  And, with L2 missions, you'll be facing an assortment of frigates (small weapons) and a cruiser or two (medium weapons), all grouped together.

NOS is important in PVP because everything uses capacitor energy, from shield/armor repairers, to webifiers and warp jammers (the stuff the enemy uses to keep you from running away) to weapons (lasers and hybrids especially).  Even warping away requires energy, so if they drain it, you are dead.  Combat is:  whoever loses their defenses first is dead, and sometimes it's easier to drain the cap than it is to punch through the armor.  Or, in the case of a fast interceptor circling your battleship jamming you, easier to drain them and turn off that MWD and the jammers (battleship-sized NOS vs. small ship capacitor), than it is to hit them at speed with your weapons.

In PvE, NPC's only have minute capacitors and don't rely on them, so NOS'es a lot less useful.

EDIT:  Also because the cruiser moves so slowly, I used to have a fast-moving frigate with 3 salvagers and one tractor beam, afterburner, and cargo expanders, for looting.  Kill everything with the cruiser, bookmark choice wrecks in each mission pocket so you can warp to them, then go back to station, report success (at this point all your loots drop from the "instance" back to normal space), jump into the frigate, warp to bookmarks, and loot / salvage away.  Gotta do it within one hour of killing, though, as the wrecks won't last more than an hour in space.

Are there tractors with a range greater than 10k? Or any skills to increase it's range?

Admittedly, my fighting style tends to leave clumps of wrecks clustered within 5k of each other, so I can fly to two or three clusters and suck everything to me and use the AB to get around between clusters.

Nos is so important because it ignores velocity and signature radius, which are the main defense a small ship has versus a large. Also, it is a dominant factor in 1v1 fights.

However, nos is undergoing a mystery nerf right now. I predict less suck, literally.

I don't know, probably not.  I had clusters too; during the mission I'd just bring in the cruiser and park it (0 speed, lined up to warp away), shoot everything that orbited me, then move off to aggro the next group over.  Often times I'd lock one 60-80 km away and just fire one shot, even though it was way beyond range, just to aggro them and get them to come orbit me.

The only thing is missions have different pockets, so you need at least one bookmark in each pocket.

New EvE noob questions:

Jump clones:  I understand the general idea behind them, but i have heard you need to grind standing with a faction to get them? or something similar? How does that work?

Research Agents: What exactly are they?  I know general corp agents (run missions for Fed Navy, or ORE mining or the like), but what are Research agents, what do they do, and where can i find them (or do i even need to?)

Exploration Missions:  Noticed I have an exploration tab on my journal.  What do i need to do to get exploration missions? or is that more of a later game thing?

For jump clones, if you are in an alliance that holds an outpost with a clone vat, they will probably let you set a jump clone in their station.  If you grind 8+ status with an NPC corp, or you are a member of a corp which holds 8+ status with an npc corp, then you can set jump clones in their NPC stations.  I did this with Caldari navy.  I also have jump clones with my alliance.

Research is trickier. in some ways.  As with normal agents, you grind standing.  As your standing gets higher, you get better agents, including research agents with corps like Lai Dai or Kaalakiota (sp?).  You instruct those agents to do research for you, and that slowly accumulates research points.  Those are "lottery tickets" for the T" BPO draw, but that is on the way out.  Also, you can trade in 50 RPs for a datacore, which is usable for T2 research (making T1 items into T2 ones).  You sell those for cash, usually, to industrialists.  Or, in my case, you arbitrage them on an alt.

To get research agents running, you need research V, Science V, Laboratory Operation V, Research Project Management (one level per agent), and specific areas that you want researched (like High Energy Physics, Electromagnetic Physics, Nanite Engineering etc).  The higher your level in the chosen research area, the more RPs you get.  The better the agent level and quality, the higher the RP rewards.

Some of that might be off: I did it and forgot it: all i do now is collect my passive income.

YEEEE, well, that effectively cuts research agents out of my agenda for the next month or two :P

Research Agents were the way to participate in the T2 blueprint original lottery.  Yeah they're phasing them out, replaced by the Invention system.   And yes the process involved grinding faction with the regular agents of a research corp like Lai Dai (most are non-combat agents - even more tedious) so that you'd have enough faction to access a research agent in that corp and set up a "research project" (effectively, accumulate points).  Then the Research agent would bug you every 24 hours with a "snag" that you had to reply to in some way:  either "continue as is" or "ok I'll do your little mission for 2x the points".

So when you say they are "phasing them out" in favour of the invention system, does that mean it is essentially worthless for a new startup character to bother working on rep with research based corporations? should i instead look into invention based stuff? or could i work on both, and eventually double dip the T2 BP pool?

IMO the only reason to work up the standing for an R&D agent now is for access to "free" datacores.  You've then got the option of using them to invent cheaply (since datacores are one of the biggest recurring costs), or selling them - either way researching which corporation will give you access to the biggest variety of datacores will certainly pay off in the long-run.

I just thought this quote was worth a bump.

Sort of on-topic, definitely fly more than you need on Missions until you know just what you are doing.  It is very easy to Lag-die if you are playing it tight, especially on the weekends.

Well, it's worthless to work on standings with any corp, unless you want what they offer. 

You can grind a few types of missions:

- combat missions
- hauling missions
- mining/purchasing (they want you to buy goods for them or mine minerals).

You do these missions for the rewards in the LP store, usually.  The only other things agents are good for besides rewards are:

- research
- locator services (you can track where players are)
- jump clones

For jump clones you need to build up faction with a corp that has stations where you want to go (some do have stations in 0.0 or close by, most don't).  Most combat-oriented corps (the Navies, f.ex.) have a Security division that has locator agents in it.  And only R&D corps have research agents.

Also worth mentioning that if you want to share standings within your player corporation (ie refining, jumpclones) you really do need to pick an out-of-the-way corporation no other member will touch, but with stations nearby  :-D  Standing at the corporation level is a total bitch in as much as it takes the average standing of everyone in the player corporation who's ever worked for the NPC corporation and uses this to work out an average standing.


In practice this means that if even one other member has low-positive or negative standings with an NPC corp that you're going to seriously struggle to reach the levels of standing required for the "good stuff" unless you get that other member to raise their standing to a similar level.

Does that mean that if i have, say 2 standing with NPC corp X, and I join a player corp that has 8 standing with NPC corp X, the overall standing of the player corp actually goes down?.  Or is that only factored in when they compute how much Standing you gain running missions for X?

Potentially the overall standing of the corp with an NPC corp could gradually drop from 8.0 to 5.0 if that standing came from just one player and you joined with a 2.0 standing towards that same NPC corp (8.0 + 2.0 = 10.0, split between the number of people with standings (2) gives an average of 5.0)

In the case of faction standings if your corp is small enough it's much faster to just temporarily boot low standing people from the corp, let standings rise to where you need for whatever good stuff your corp needs (such as launching high sec POS's) and then bringing them back into the corp.

The same principle applies to NPC corp standings for jump clones and there are one man corps out there that let you join them - establish your jump clones - and then leave.  As for refining, most people set it up that one guy can take care of all the corp refining.

When my little corp of 20 wanted to put up 4 high sec POS's I just booted 5 guys for a week or so.  Much faster than begging those 5 to mission grind for a month or two.

Thought i would touch back on this, as I may decide to try laying groundwork for some future research agent stuff: How exactly do you go about finding out which corp will give you what datacores?

I sort of figured out (by looking at an individual faction, like "minmatar", and going through their attendant corporations) which research corp belongs with which faction.  For example, Lai Dai is a Caldari corporation, and Boundless Creation is a Minmatar one.  But how do you figure out what datacores one corp might pay out over another?  Should i just take a drive to one of their bases and check the LP store? or does it work differently?

The LP store doesn't handle datacores: reserach points and loyalty points are different things.

There are a few ways to find out which corp offers what datacores.  I'm not at my Eve client right now, but I think you look up the corporation (say in standings, or via their faction), choose show info, then agents, then go to research and development agents near the bottom, and then right-click and show info for the agents.  Their info tells you what's what.

There is a site (Eve Explorer, perhaps?) which shows you a lot of info on this, although it's a little out of date after the last update.  if you're a goon then the forums have a big update in Raiders of the Lost Arkonor about all the new agents and how best to grind them.

So, if a research agent as the relevant skills "High Energy Physics 1" and "minmatar Starship Engineering 1" then does that mean that i have a change to get datacores related to those topics from that agent?

Not "a chance": if you satisfy the standing requirement, then visit that agent and tell him to research for you (ie you have all the neceessary skills) then you can buy datacores at one for every 50 research points.  There is no element of chance about it.

sounds good.

new question: Tier 2 BPO (origionals).  from previous conversations, i understand you get them from Research agents in a lottery fashion.  With the new Invention stuff, how difficult is it to Invent a BPO?   For example, if i buy a BPO for Tier 1 Nuclear Ammo, and do an Invention on it, will I end up with Tier 2 Ammo BPC or BPO or what?

From what I've heard, Invention results only in BPCs - never a BPO.

so you still need to play the research agent angle then

For BPOs, yes - for the time being. The BPO lottery is, if I recall right, being pulled out "soon", and Invention will be the only way to get tech2 blueprints for production.

As yegolev says, you'll only ever get a BPC, and it is waaaay more complex than that.  You need some very expensive stuff to get started.  My advice would be to find a good guide - google is your friend - and read up on it.  You'll need a lot of investment capital and catassish amounts of time.

I'm doing module invention now, and it does take a bit of work but it is doable and profitable.

For module invention the highest cost is the skills you need to buy. This will typically be in the area of 150-200 million if I remember correctly, and you need at least a 100 million extra capital to buy datacores and stuff you need. The skills take around 2 weeks to train to acceptable levels (level 4) to begin inventing.

It also really helps to have a small POS with a couple of mobile labs, since you will be doing a lot of blueprint copying. You CAN do that at stations, but there is typically a few weeks queue.

For ships, it gets more expensive, and the chances of success is also lower, so you need to invest in more attempts  in order to smooth out the random elements.

I've been wondering about how to turn my billions into more billions, and had thought about a highsec POS (I saw what happened to F13's lowsec POS).  How profitable is a mobile lab?  Or are T2 component reactions a better bet?

They're not all 50 research points.  I traded 46k Graviton Physics RP the other day, but the return was 1 core for 100 points.

I switched over to Mechanical Engineering instead, I only get about 66 RP/day instead of 130-ish, but the cores go for 10x the price of Graviton.  Haven't tried turning in any Mech E. points for cores yet, so no idea how much they cost.

Mech E is 50.

The cost is 50*n, where n is the multiplier for the number of research points you get per day.

We (i.e. me and my tiny corp) has had a small POS in 0.3 system for months now without anyone attacking it. We have some defense on it and two mobile labs. I think F13 was just in bad luck, or happened upon an area where someone felt the need to control the local POSes.

We haven't tried to hire out the slots on the mobile lab, so I don't know how profitable that can be. We've just used them internally for ME research, copying and invention. I haven't tried reactions either, but I think you'll need to find a moon with some fairly rare materials to get a profitable reaction going, and even then you need at least a large one and possibly more than one pos. This means bothering with lots of refueling. I don't know if you can even have reactions in high-sec.

The F13 POS wasn't an issue - it was just neglected.

I really like the idea of a POS to earn money, but not until they allow folks to use research slots on it remotely without having to be in the corp. Otherwise it just makes crap you have to try to sell on the market and haul a buncha other crap to feed it.

It would be viable to run it if you had several high-value BPOs (BCs, battleships, etc.). You could then use the research slots to crank out a high-ME version of the BPO and then make and sell large numbers of BPCs.

I love high sec POS's.  My small corp has 4 large ones up with 3 of them currently online.  TBH I haven't found them to be a pain to keep fueled at all.  Once a week I load the freighter up at our HQ with POS supplies and refuel them.  Takes about 15 minutes every 7 or 8 days as they are in the system we call home.  To stock our HQ POS fuel stash we pick up POS supplies and bring them back to HQ on return trips of taking goods to market.  No point in returning home empty.

We used to mine ice to help get fuel until we figured out that there are many other things we could be doing with that time that were more profitable, and then just buy the ice products with the revenues from our more profitable corp op (usually omber mining a mission).  I also set up some buy orders to let the less mathematically inclined players of Eve work and bring us ice and ice products for less than we could buy them off the market.  It never ceases to amaze me what people will sell their crap for.

As for researching and making money with the labs (I guess we have 30 or so) we crank out BS and BC BPC's for contract sale, and do ME research on raw BPO's and then sell them.  BPO sets that sell well: Ammo sets; complete rig sets; and low end ship sets.  You should also research and then sell individual high end BS and BC BPO's - Caldari and Galente especially.  Avoid Amarr BS and BC's.

The margins on tech 1 BPO, BPC, and ship production is getting thinner as more and more people put up high sec POS's.  It's still profitable, and always will be for people who know how to run an industrial operation properly, but it's no longer insanely profitable.

Thanks for that, Kamen: that's a ton of really useful help.  Do you need a freighter to handle the necessary fuel for a small POS?  I think I can take about 15,000m3 in a Badger 2 with T2 expanders, and more with rigs if needed: would that still involve soul-destroying trips to-and-from Jita with fuel?  I'd rather not blow the cash on the skill and the freighter (I have all the pre-reqs anyway), given how long it would take to make back.

Also, do you know if you can do reactions at a high-sec POS, with the right modules?  I know you can't mine, but how about the later stages of the chain?

Aside: Remedial (may his name be forgotten) used to sell bookmark sets with full sets of entirely valid instas, except for one busy gateway system in lowsec, where the BMs would warp the user to a moon where he had set up a POS, complete with shiny guns.  Pop.

I have an old newb question.  Years ago I was trying the trial and had just bought a badger (I think that's what it was called) so that I could move cargo capsules, I think they're called "cans".  Anyways I was in the newbie zone using my frigate to mine into the can and then coming back with the badger to scoop it up and sell the ore.  I clicked on anchor, and I tried to set a password but I guess those didn't work as some asshole came by and stole the can out from under me as I was mining.  I quit the game right there and never looked back.

How the hell was I supposed to secure that thing?

If all you plan on putting up is one small POS then a Badger II is more than sufficent.  Especially if the POS is in your "home" system.  Just buy a full load of one of the POS fuels whenever you are out and about and heading home until you have a stockpile you are comfortable with in your hanger.  Refueling the POS once a week shouldn't be hard at all.  If you like, you can also put up a corporate hanger array AT the POS to store the fuel you haul in and then simply transfer it to the POS once a week.  It would take about 30 seconds to refuel it if the fuels are available.  If you do put one up, snuggle it up right next to the tower so that you can open both windows and move the fuels from one to the other avoiding putting it into the hauler at all.

I don't know if you can do reactions in high sec, but I would be very surprised if you could.

Standard jettison containers (what you get when you eject crap from ships) are temporary (usually 1 hour lifetime), non-anchorable, non-secure containers. They hold 27,500m3 though, so they're popular with miners.

Secure containers ("small secure container", "standard secure container", ... "giant secure container") you have to buy on the market, are substantially smaller (up to about 3,600m3), and can be anchored (never disappear), if you have the Anchoring skill at the right level and are at least 5000m away from any other stationary object (i.e. station, POS structure, other anchorables, asteroids, etc.). If either of these conditions are violated, you should get a small error message.

If it's anchored, you can set a password on the secure container. But if someone scooped the can, then chances are it either wasn't a secure container in the first place or that you couldn't anchor it for some reason.

I'm sure it was secure, I did buy it off the market and it allowed me to enter a password.  I guess it didn't work because it was so close to the asteroids then, I was literally just mining and then transferring from my hold to the container right beside me.  Perhaps they didn't have error messages back then because I never got one.

Don't you have to train Anchoring I to do that?  I really don't know.

I always jetcan because I use another alt to immediately move stuff into a cargohold: since the badger can only hold a couple of cycles from my three strip-miners with upgrades and mining-foreman mad l33t skillz, it really isn't a big deal.  That said, I only mine when I have something else to do: staring at a POS on my main, reading, watching TV or the like.

Anchoring is a specific step, takes something like 60 seconds to complete, and requires anchoring I. You can jettison a GSC and enter a password without it, but the anchoring option will not be on the menu.

IIRC, you can't anchor secure cans in 1.0 and 0.9 space, either.  Not sure if that was the problem, but you said "newbie zone" so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Back to my earlier question however: Either way, being able to use reasearch agents is going to be needed if you want to do any kind of inventing, correct.  Either for the datacores you can get from them, or to get lucky with BPO seeding untill they pull that system out completely.

Time to go find out what skills will be usefull to get running research agents.

You can buy the datacores without running an agent. It is profitable to buy the datacores off the market, invent a BPC, then use the BPC to build something to sell on the market.

While invention is profitable and has really increased the T2 supply and lowered T2 prices, it's not actually that much fun. It can be frustrating to fail an invention multiple times in a row when the die just won't roll your way. Probably not something you want to do as a new player?

It is worth noting that it is even more profitable, if you log in a few times a day, to put up buy orders for datacores then immediately sell them, playing the spread.  nurse the orders and churn the cash several times a day.  Only try this in Jita, and only on high-volume, high order-count cores.  I did it for a while until I amassed the capital for bigger plays.