f13.net

Okay,  so I'm in now in a Caldari Caracal cruiser doing level 2 missions.  Where should I be aiming with equipment and what not?

Right now:

High:

5 x Assault Missile Launcher I

Medium:

2 x Medium Supplemental Barrier Emitter 1
1 x Medium Neutron Saturation Injector 1
1 x 10 Mn Afterburner (thinking of replacing with Microwarpdrive)
1 x Explosion Dampening Amplifier I

Low:

Not worth mentioning.



What should I be shooting for in Caldari ships?  If I want to shield tank,  what pieces am I really missing?  Or should I be tanking in another manner?  How do I max my missile damage?

You're missing "Ballistic Control System" in lows -- this increases your fire rate and missile damage. You should use 2 in a a caracal. When you have the skills, you may want to replace those assualt launchers with heavy launchers (they fire anti-cruiser missiles but do little damage to frigates -- so you may want to fit one or two for the cruisers in your mission). Cruisers can be identified by the larger red crosses. The larger the cross, the bigger the ship.

In the mids, you should have shield extenders, as many as will fit due to powergrid limitations and an invulnerability field if you can fit it as well. Active hardeners like your explosion dampening amplifier are good as well, but aren't really necessary for l2s and you may have capacitor trouble.

Forget the microwarp drive, they don't work in 'deadspace' which is where a lot of your missions take place in. Afterburner is all you get pretty much.

And your next PvE goal should be training up for a Drake (for L3s), and then a Raven (for L4s). They'll both share a lot of skills (shield skills, missile support skills) with what you're flying already.

Traina good spread of fitting skills. Stuff like Electronics (more CPU), Engineering (more powergrid), Energy Management (more capacitor) Weapons Upgrades (less CPU cost to weapons fit) and so on. A useful thing is to mooch through the skill browser in Evemon and check out the 'show me what this skill enables' option. A lot of skills that don't themselves seem to do much enable very useful kit or advanced skills.

Aiming for a cruiser is fine, just fill out a good spread of skills so you don't get into a ship you can't fit properly. You're better off in a well fitted frigate than a badly fitted cruiser mostly. T2 frigates are a nice target to aim for in the medium long term but don't expect to be piloting an interceptor or an AF with any degree of proficiency before you've filled out a lot of baseline skills first. The pre-reqs for those ships are pretty hefty but they are only half the story. If you can't fit t2 guns/launchers and t2 tank mods then you should probably stick to cheaper ships until you can.

You should be able to do any L1 mission and most L2 missions in a good frigate. A cruiser will make your life easier if you can fit it, otherwise it's just a way to lose money faster.

I'm fitting the following:

High:  4 standard missile, 1 heavy missile (malkuth ones - cheap, yet less CPU needed)
Med:  EM and Thermal shield hardeners, 3 large shield extenders (also named ones, the cheaper ones, also for less CPU)
Low:  I've opted for shield power relay x2 to regen my shields somewhat

That brings me to something like 8500 shields, hardened to 50% resists, and with good enough regen for L2 missions (and if they go too low I just warp out).  The DPS is crap but I can sit there and fling missiles till they die even if it takes a little longer.

EDIT:  cruiser just sits there.  I bookmark the loot and come back with an afterburned, cargo expanded, 3 salvager and 1 tractor Kestrel, for the loot.

You can't use a mwd in missions.

If I recall correctly, you were the guy who kept getting armor damage in level 2 mission while fitting 3 med shield extenders and a booster. If thats the case, you are taking way too much damage for a level 2 mission. Maybe you are aggroing too many groups at once?

Dont forget Energy Systems Operation. Cap recharge rate is basically huge for anything you do.

Its always good to work skills that help any ship you fly. Navigation, engineering, electronics...all should receive some degree of love. Get everything you can to at least three for the best bang for your time/buck.

Learning skills are no fun, but getting the normal ones to 4 and then the advanced up to 3 will help you out big time.

I'm already training up most things to at least level 3.  I have the basic learning stuff to level 3 or 4,  and I'm getting most of my important active/passive skills up to level 3 before I grind out the next couple of learning levels. 


That wasn't me.  I've been using the "run away and keep mobs at 20km while lobbing missiles behind me" strategy.  I've only been down through shields to armor twice,  when I got a bit mobbed on a mission (wasn't paying attention to distance).


Ballistic Control Systems was a great call.  I had completely missed that module,  and that should really help out the damage.  Good Afterburner info,  didn't realize I couldn't use MWD in deadspace.

Medium Supplemental Barrier Emitter is a Medium Shield Extender
Explosion Dampening etc is a passive resist module,  and I was under the impression that the Invuln. modules were active modules?


Is shield booster plus 2 shield extender and passive resist buffer greater or lesser than shit ton of extenders and active hardeners? 


I really should fit out a salvage boat.  What's the most (lowbie friendly) way to move your various ships to the station you're running missions out of,  since cargo cap is so limited on the smaller ships?  Do I just need to train and buy some sort of freighter to haul my shit around?

Edit:  I'll use one heavy missile launcher.  Right now,  the L2s are still giving me a huge amount of fighter/frigate mobs to chew through,  and a relatively small amount of larger mobs.

You should always have an alt with at least Level 1 (Race Type) Industrial for moving/buying bulk.

EFT will tell you specifically if a booster and passive is better than an active hardener. I suspect the active hardener is better.

In general, you always want one hardener of some sort, two are okay, and 3 are almost always a waste due to stacking penalties. A single invunerability field gives you a nice large boost to every single resist, so it's pretty flexibile in terms of missions. It is active, and you'll want to stick with actives until you actually get the passive skills to level 3 or so, or simply you can go with more shield with a shield extender/booster instead.

Passives kind of suck without heavy skills in them, because they contribute to the stacking penalty but don't give you a lot of resists in return. Active hardeners harden a specific amount (while active) and so I pretty much prefer them.

I zoomed through a caracal pretty fast and right into a drake, and I used 1 AB, 2 LSE, 1 invuln field, 1 active kinetic hardener. You can replace that invuln field with another type of hardener (probably thermal) depending on what missions you were running, or you can be lazy like me and get lesser across the board resists. Either way, I played like you and never got into armor so I wasn't overly concerned. You tend to kill stuff too fast to matter. It's not until you get into l3s and especially l4s that you are concerned about being able to tank. My emphasis is on DPS, because I can always warp out to recharge shields.

As for the hauler, there's not much I can tell you. You need one. The only question is which one to pick; the skillbooks are 450k a piece. I spent 4 or 5 days actually skilling up to fly a mamoth, which is better than caldari's badger (best T1 hauler except for the ieteron V which requires industrial V). Mammoth was a good compromise on space as it requires only indy IV, and, it gives 17km3 of space over the 11k of a badger 2 (caldari indy IV) or the 7k of a badger 1 (caldari indy 1)

The problem is that your lower level haulers that require 1 point in industrial really don't give you enough space to do much with -- with the mammoth, however, I can repackage and haul around shuttles and my salvager destroyer to easily move to a new area requiring only two trips -- one with my main ship and one with my hauler.

In like two days I got an alt into a Iteron Mk III , with 3 Cargo expander IIs in the lows. Something like 12500m3.

The Mark IV will have an additional low, so that will be like 16k. She's quite the looter now!

Fit a Catlyst. 8 highs -- so 4 tractors, 4 salvagers. Bookmark your mission site, go turn it in, then hop in the catylst and warp to the bookmark.

If you use cargo expander II's in the lows, you get like 800 to 900 cubic meters of cargo space. Fit a cap recharger in the mids, though -- destroyers don't have a ton of cap, and tractors and salvagers eat it up when you're running four. I think all you need is an AB after that.

I only use mine for missions with more than 40 or so hulks -- things like The Blockade or Damsel in Distress.

PS Amarr is the most cargo indy at L1 industrial, from there the 'stower quickly starts to suck ass though.

Badger Mk 2, 13k cargo with Expander II's, good enough to fit a packaged Caracal, packaged Kestrel, and weapons/modules/ammo for them.   I usually salvage with a Kestrel instead of the destroyer because I can't fit the destroyer in the hauler, and besides, 3 salvagers is enough for me.

A set of Expanded II's is more expensive, by far, than the Badger MK 2; I usually use Expanded I's for hauling junk / minerals around to sell between missions.  But otherwise, for a combat character like me, the Badger MK 2 is good enough and serves me well.

EDIT:  Oh yeah, and I felt the need to roam and haul my ships around because I wanted to give myself a way out of negative Gallente faction.  Figured I'd do Caldari missions, but before that, I made buddies with a Gallente Navy agent, so that even if my Gallente faction goes to crap, I can still go to my buddy and do L2 missions to repair my faction, if ever needed.

Yeah, let's talk cruiser tanking philosophy for a bit.  Just a bit of thinking out loud here.

Technically adding 10% resists is equivalent to having 10% more armor or shields.  Right?   I.e. 100 pts with 10% resist means that the baddy has to do 110 pts of damage.  This is an equivalence, so that means that 10% more armor = 10% more resists.  I'm not going to use real numbers here because it's just easier if I round things and I am going to talk armor because that is what I am more familiar with.

So, easy, low hanging fruit, gains to tankability are, I think, to initially add as much armor as possible.  For example adding 1600mm plate to my Vexor moved me from ~1500 pts of armor to ~5500 or the equivalent of having, across the board ~72% resists on 1500 armor.  The reason why this is an important distinction is that it results from 1 slot.  I know of no other 1 slot addition that has this kind of effect.  So, always add as much armor as you can fit if you only have 1 slot to dedicate to tanking.

Adding more armor is a diminishing returns though, if I could add another 1600mm plate (which I can't) my armor would go from ~5500 to ~9500, I would then have the equivalent of 84% resists, a < 12% gain.  In reality though I would be pushing it to add another 800mm which translates to only about 8% more.

So, what's better?  An EANM in the second slot dedicated to tanking or more armor?

An EANM adds 15% resists across the board, right?  Not really, it subtracts 15% of the remaining resist hole, i.e. if you have 60% base resist to EM then with an EANM mounted you will have 60% + (40 *.15) or 6% for 66% total, which doesn't sound like much.  However, if you look at explosive resists (base 10%) than an EANM adds 10% + (90 * .15) or 13.5% for 23.5% total, which sounds like a lot so let's examine this a little further.

So what's better for the EM damage?  66% resists on 5500 armor or 60% resists on 9500?  So 5500/(1 - .66) = 16,176 and 9500/(1 - .6) = 23750 (18,750 for the 800mm plate or even 16,250 for 400mm plate, so a second 400mm plate is marginally better than an EANM for a second slot mod for tanking).

So what about on the Exp resists (base 10%)?  Which is better more armor or more resists?  i.e. 23.5% on 5500 or 10 on 9500?  So 5500/(1 - .223) = 7078 and 9500/(1-.1) = 10,555 (8333 for 800mm and 7222 for 400mm, so, again, a 400mm plate is better than an EANM for your second tank mod).

And it should follow that kin and therm resists are somewhere between the two extremes.

To me this means that, if you have the cap for it, more armor, at least 400mm, is better than an EANM for a (non-Maller) CRUISER with relatively low starting armor.  However, 35% passive type specific resists are better than all but 1600mm plate even on the already highly resistant EM resists and 50% active plates are better in all cases, though I will leave that math as an exercise to the reader.  :-D

This holds true, though to a lesser degree, for armor tanking BS type ships (again ignoring the Amarr innate resist model).  I do realize that this doesn't work the same way for shield tanks which are more slot limited (it takes 2 large extenders to add as much as 1 1600mm plate but I have a feeling that the natural healing rate of shields plays a big part in making up the difference).

My next questions is, "So which makes better use of a repper?  More armor or more resists? And does size really matter?"

Resists make better use of a repper. It's damage not being done, thus damage not having to be repaired. You do 100 points of 100% Kinetic damage to my 0 resists 1600mm plate, I take 100 points of damage that have to be repped. You do 100 points of 100% kinetic to my 30% resistant plate, I'm only having to rep 70ish (or however it's calculated).

My typical rule of thumb is to add a single big plate as long as the "big plate" does more than the stuff that's like "10% bonus to armor", and EANM to boost resists across the board. That gives me a bigger damage buffer PLUS I don't take as much damage, meaning I've got the best of both worlds. I run damage controls now (which is a godsend if you're in structure and not bad in armor) but would probably swap that for rat-specific plate or harderners if I was having troubles. I prefer a passive or very-low cost active tank.

But I'm fitting cruisers and battlecruiser, but I think the "damage not done is better than damage done" is always a bit better, simply because you have to rep less to keep up with it.

I haven't thought about it much, yet, but there is a time component to repping which makes me think it's not that simple.  What happens if the DPS is >> the amount you can repair?  I think then, obviously, more armor is better.  If you can repair 30 pts/sec and you have 30% resists and they can do 100 dps then you are falling behind at a rate of 40 pts/sec.  It's linear so 110 dps means you fall behind at 50 pts a second and so on so the size of your tank does matter once your ability to repair is saturated.

There is a threshold there that is dependent on dps - resists - repair.  If you are under that threshold then you are indestructible, if you are over that then you are dependent on the size of your tank.  So, I think that it is unarguable that a repper is needed regardless of circumstance (if you are webbed and scrammed and taking 1 damage a minute without a repper you are still going to die, just very slowly).  My question really should be that for what value of resist and armor, given limitations to cap and slot availability, give you the MOST time and should you fit the largest repper you can even at the expense of tank or resists?  What about more than 1 repper?

The big problem with plate is that it takes a huge chunk out of your powergrid. If you're fitting something with a lot of hi-slots like a BC or a BS then you may have problems filling them all effectively if you have some thick plate fitted. Guns can be nice to have too.

Two reppers are a common fit. Either two of the size down to reduce fitting overheads (i.e. mediums on a BS) or two full size ones to get a ferocious tank (common on logistics ships). You get exactly the same amount of repair over time (53.3hp/s base) for a lower cap use, lower PG and CPU use. The downside of course is that you need two lows instead of one.

When tanking, resists nearly always trump raw HPs in most situations for armour tanking. The sole exception to this is really for burst damage. However, for shield tanking then raw HPs are better. The reason for this is because shields recharge over time and the recharge rate is not a fixed amount of HP/s like an armour repper would give, but is a set amount of time for a full regen. This means that if you increase the amount of shields that you have, you'll get more back per tick. Passive shield tanking is borderline overpowered.

I'd really only fit plate to a hauler because the chance of it being primaried and taking a lot of burst damage is very high. For anything else I'd fit for a fight and put resistance mods and DCUs for the most part.  If I had a spare low-slot on a bigger ship then I'd go for regenerative plate to get the HP bonus of plate without the PG cost and mass addition.

I just read somewhere that adding points to shields is good in that your recharge time is set, no matter how many points you have. So if your shield strength is 100, and your recharge time is 100 seconds, you get 1 per second. If you added 100 pts for a total of 200, it would be recharged at *2* points per second.

This is absolutely correct and something that should be taken advantage of.  For a shield tank, it applies to the shield regen and for an armor tank the cap regen.  So it makes sense to get max hps if you are a shield tank, but for armor, you really only care about how much you can repair and how long you can sustain the tank with the capacitor.  Adding more hps to an armor tank just means you have that much more to heal at the same rate.  Adding cap means that you can sustain the tank longer - indefinitely if you do the math right.

Yup, that is correct, same for capacitor (like GD said).

Things become complicated due to the stacking penalties (two or more modules of the same type giving reduced benefits), and ships and skills are usually balanced so that if you have good support skills (Engineering, Electronics, etc), it's sometimes possible to get over some threshhold where you can suddenly over-size a shield or a plate or something (but not always, and you sometimes have to give up firepower to do it).

In terms of defense, the "true hitpoints" of the ship matter when you're looking to survive alpha strikes (someone looking to gank you in 1 shot).  And how much you can repair (plus resists) figure into whether or not someone can "break your tank" (can they do more DPS than your ability to repair?). 

Also, one way to break an active shield tank or armor tank is to drain the capacitor, thereby turning off their repairer / booster plus perhaps the hardeners.  In theory.

In the post above yours probably....

I'm about to move to L3's in a Myrmidion. I want to know if this setup works:

Lows:
1600mm Nano plate.
Damage Control
2xEANM 2
T2 Medium Armor Rep
Power Diagnostic System

Med:
10MN AB
Fixed Parallel Link Capcitor
Medium Shield Booster (just for regenning shield rapidly after a wave, NOT for tanking)
Omni-directional Tracking Link
Drone Navigation Computer

Highs:
2x250 Railgun I's with AM charges
1xMedium Nos
2xSalvager
1xSmall Tractor

Without nos -- if the AB is off, I can run the guns, the repper, and the the damage controls for almost 40 minutes. With the Nos on, I can run the AB and the tank indefineatly.

Damage wise, I'm looking at 210 DPS from 5xHammerhead IIs and 154 from the guns. Something like almost 10k armor, resists at 75% (EM) to 61% (thermal, kinetic) and 46% (explosive). 5k shileds and 5k structure. I have a targetting range of about 67km.

I don't seem to gain anything by removing an EANM and replacing it with another repper (I actually lose about 3k effective HP). I could ditch the Medium Shield booster -- but replace it with what? I can fit a large shield extender on there and gain another 4k or so effective HP (better than an invulnerability field, in my mind -- and no cap). I can't really think of another decent mid-slot for a drone mission runner. Any ideas?

You could fit a sensor booster. You don't really need ewar for PvE, but being able to lock the enemy faster and the extra lock range is always handy. A target painter is another decent choice - you'll increase your actual DPS by a lot with one.

I think I'm replacing the Drone Navigation computer with a Large Shield Extender to begin with. I might replace the omni-directional link with a sensor booster. What sort of things am I going to be facing in L3's?

You might consider replacing dc, eanm's and pds with 3 mission specific hardners and a cpr.  Also I would get rid of the shield stuff in the mids and use cap rechargers if you're having any trouble with cap.  I wouldn't bother with shield booster even for just regening the shield out of combat it's kind of a waste of a slot.

I thought about the hardeners but I was under the impression that L3's really didn't need them, and it seems like a gigantic hassle. I'm more worried about whether my resists are high enough for a single T2 Medium repper to keep up with it.

I've already got a cap recharger slotted (Fixed-parallel link-cap is a recharger) and I can run the tank for almost 40 minutes with no NOS (as long as the AB is off), so cap really isn't a problem. That just leaves me with a single empty mid-slot and I figured a large shield extender gives me another 4k of HPs and faster shield regen times -- not much else fo rme to slot there.

I'm more worried about whether L3's introduce a lot of alpha damage or a lot of EWAR stuff. I really don't want to lose a Myrmidion on my first mission. I can't fit a large armor repper (I could fit two mediums) -- I'm just worried about whether my tank can keep up with the damage.

In L3s you're going to be facing cruisers and destroyers/interceptors with BCs as boss mobs. OTTOMH I can't think of any L3 missions that throw BSs at you.

Oh. Then I think I'll be okay, especially once I get Heavy Drones to V and can run 2/2/1 (My drone damage spikes up a LOT when I can run T2 heavies. Right now, my best is 5 Medium 2s).

Right now the focus is Covert Ops ships (3 days for Electronics Upgrade V!).

The only BS you'll ever meet is in the extravaganza bonus room I think.

For level 3s I'd stick to Hammerhead IIs. Heavy drones will have a problem hitting the faster frigates and T2 medium drones will still violate BCs in no time. Myrmidons don't have the bandwidth to run heavy drones properly.

By itself? Because I'm pretty sure it'd take forever for 5 medium drones (even mine) to chew down a BS, and I wouldn't like to try with other ships pounding on me. If it's just cruisers with BC bosses, I think I'm okay. I handle cruiser-sized rats just fine in a Vex, even multiples, and it only takes a few shots for my Hammerheads to pop them.

IainC: A Myrmidion can run 2/2/1 (just barely) but I think you're right. Probably better just to pack an extra wave of lights and mediums (huge drone bay!), since those bloody things do get aggro at times (for some reason, drones piss off rats from further away than I do).

It's a bonus room; it's not part of the normal mission, the mission is complete the room before. I've never actually gone into the bonus room, because it requires you loot a tag off of a mob, and generally by time I have the tag I'm already in my salvager with the mission complete.

Its not by itself, there are some towers and smaller ships. The total dps of the ships in the room is about 3 times that of the rest of the mission and everything aggro's at the same time.
There is a chance for faction loot from one of the buildings I think.

Any webbers, warp disrupters, anything like that? I'd probably try it if I had a good chance of warping out if things got bad.

Did one 3-part L3's last night, and netted about 3 million in bounties and rewards and about 10+ million in loot. Was fun, although I might try replacing one of my EANM 2's with a rat-specific hardener as suggested. Nothing even got 1/2 through my armor, but if I hit another wave with shields low then my repper couldn't keep up with damage until I kllled a few. (The worst was hitting 4 merc commanders at once -- 110k bounties, freakin' missiles from hell, and some nasty guns.

Should replay my Myrmidion, insurance, and fittings in a few days at most.

I did that mission a couple of dozen times easily and never once saw faction loot from the battlestation. It's only really worth it for the bounties and the additional salvage chances. Bear in mind that the gatepass is consumed and those suckers are a few million a time. I checked the mission guides and apparently there are 3 BSs, some sentries and about 6 web/scramblers in the room - linky (http://eve-survival.org/missions/angelextra3.html).

The incoming DPS is pretty savage. Even if you aren't warp scrambled you may be overwhelmed before you can align and warp out unless you have a hella tank going on.

Mercs are always bad news because they do all four damage types so the DPS getting past your rat specific hardeners can be crazy high.

It used to be like that but I did a level 3 a couple of days ago and the pass wasn't consumed any more, it was also very cheap and available all over the region. I don't know if it changed for the level 4's.

Right now for level 3s I run a Drake fitted like this:

Hi =
7x named Heavy Missile Launchers
1x small energy neut (can't really think of what else to put there, maybe a drone link aug?)

Med =
2x Large shield extenders II
2x EM resistance amp II
1x Kinetic resistance amp II
1x Thermal resistance amp II

Low =
1x bcs
3x named shield power relays

Gives me almost 12k shields with 66.1% em 57.% thermal 68.3% kinetic 64% explosive resistances, with 552 second shield repair time. DPS is horrible though, only 158, and that includes decent drone skills. Maybe I should switch out one of the spr's to another bcs?

I have a question regarding EWAR drones -- particularly ECM Drones -- and PvP.

Say I'm flying something with a decent dronebay (enough to hold and launch 5 drones) -- would it be worth it to fly a mix of 4/1 damage/ECM, or even 3/2 damage/ECM? I don't know how to calculate the numbers on breaking targetting with one or multiple drones.

I'm thinking in very small PvP, where things might be close, that 1 or 2 ECM drones might keep breaking a lock and doing damage. (Plus, frankly, protecting my drones from being shot at too).

Probably not, as the drones have very few points on them. The two most helpful will be the scrambler and warp disruptor drones, but they are big (only come in heavy size I think) and take a few skills. And even then I think you need at least two, but it's been awhile since I've looked at them.

I considered doing a warp and scrambler drone (1 each) for solo ganking but it didn't seem to pan out when I started planning it.

5x Medium ECM drones can seriously disrupt the DPS of a cruiser. You calculate the chance per drone by taking jam strength/sensor strength. I believe a Hurricane has a sensor strength of 16 and a medium ECM drone has  jam strength of 1.5. Chance for an ECM drone to jam a Hurricane is 1.5/16=9.3%. The chance five drones will successfully jam a Hurricane is 1-(1-1.5/16)^5=39%, which is a pretty serious damage reduction especially after you take time to lock into account. I like ECM drones when your turrets pump out a lot of DPS. I have never tried or heard of someone trying a mix of damage and ECM, but I suppose it depends upon your gang composition and targets.

If you don't need the drones for DPS then target painter drones will massively boost the damage that everyone does to a target. Other ewar shoudl probably be shipborne as the drone stats aren't all that hot.

I've just heard the ECM drones -- especially the medium and heavy ones -- are a really good choice for ECM right now, but I didn't really get why. (Something to do with jamming mechanics and some changes CCP made awhile back). There's at least some people calling for a nerf of them.

I'm still playing with possible support loadouts for a Vex in gang PvP. 5 mediums, 5 lights, 5 medium ECM, 5 warriors? (I think that's 150 m3).

For turrets, webs boost damage much more than paint. For missiles, paint is usually (but not always) better than webs. I suppose it is relatively straightforward to decide whether paint is going to boost your gang dps more than scout drones. Deciding between ECM and dps is more difficult. My rule of thumb is as gang size increases, you should leave ECM to the specialized ships. But the smaller the gang, the more a spare dronebay or midslot of EW can help.

Base multispec strength was reduced, but base ECM drone strength was not. I think that's the main thrust of the whines. However, EW drones trade off dps for hostile dps mitigation, and so I think they are pretty well balanced.

I'm personally of the school 'If I make them die fast I don't have to worry about tanking them'. Thus you pretty much always see me with 5 Hammerhead II's when I have a 50m3 bandwidth.

Not to say ECM drones aren't good, I just like pumping out stupid amounts of damage.

That makes sense. Well, I don't see any reason I can't carry a mixed loadout on a PvP Vex. It's got the capacity (150 m3) to carry both a DPS loadout and an ECM loadout, and still carry a set of spare scouts. Might as well have the flexibility, and launch what the situation calls for.

I am 100% certain that Vex has a 100m^3 drone bay.

It does.

The eve-o database (http://www.eve-online.com/itemdatabase/EN/ships/cruisers/gallente/626.asp) has it at 75m3 but I just checked mine and it's 100m3. I believe it was tweaked in the Trinity patch.

Dangit, I was thinking of the Myrmidion -- same bandwidth as the Vex, much larger bay. I'm getting my own ships confused.

It's worse that a couple of the Gallente ships have variable size drone bays that depend on skill levels (Ishkur and Eos, I think).

Yeah -- I want to fly both. :) The Ishkur (or is it Ishtar? It's the HAC) is +50 m3 per level of HAC, on top of the drone and armor rep bonus from BC's. It's got a 125 bandwitdh, so can control 5 heavies -- and starts with a 150 m3 drone bay. So with 4/5 you're up to Domi-sized drone bay, which is evil from a HAC.

(Yes, that's the fucking ship that was pwning me. THe more I read about it, the more droolworthy it is).

Ishtar is full of win.

I've just resubbed after a long hiatus, doing my storyline like a good rookie for my incredibly valuable +1 implant.

1st question

What's the quickest way to make money to pay for skillbooks as a noob with frigate?

Missions? low sec ratting?

2nd question

What's this nano HAC ships people are talking about?

Are these like T2.5 ships?

3rd question

What's the buddy program about? is that free eve time for a mate if they referred you and you paid for a sub?

Thanks a lot guys for making Eve sound so interesting again

1st answer

Ask in F13, some people are filthy rich and will hook you up, also, missions.

2nd answer

I think that's the minmatar heavy assault cruiser ? A Vagabond if I am not mistaken. Quite a lot of training to fly one of those.

3rd answer

No idea.

Well.

Had a bad mission or something,  managed to get my Caracal blown up.  That's a Good Thing (TM) because it forced me to look at the mods I was using again.

Went with 2 Large Shield Extenders and a therm and kinetic passive resist mods,  will maybe switch up to hardeners when I've trained them.  Much larger amount of shield,  regens quickly (especially with a shield regen mod in lows).

Got off my ass and got my salvager up and running as well.  Using a Cormorant, so I don't need to mess around with training up other races frigates/destroyers quite yet.

Nano HACs refer to a specific way to fit a Heavy Attack Cruiser (a Tech 2 version of a cruiser, they usually have good resistances to damage on their base armor/shields, so once you add a few resistance modules on top of that, you're almost invulnerable).  Specifically, they fit nanofiber modules in the low slots to make the ship very agile; add a microwarp drive and you can zoom zoom with what is otherwise a heavy slow ship.

Thanks for the rapid response guys!

I checked out Eve Fitting Tool and realised nanofibers don't give speed and agility anymore haha.

Does the Trinity client do anything besides provide new skins?

Is it more hardware resource intensive?

Thanks again guys!

See you tonight hopefully!

Dps tanks are the best tanks.

Honestly, since the HP boost in Rev1 HACs feel awful fragile compared to BS. A nano HAC is even more fragile because you must sacrifice tank for speed. HACs are not invulnerable, but they are definitely among the most fun ships to fly in Eve. Vagabond is the fastest HAC and a natural for speed fits, but Ishtar, Zealot, and even the Deimos or Cerebus have been known to get some overdrives and polycarbonate engine housings slapped on them. I once got dusted by a nano Vulture a year ago, even. Recons are also often speed fit, as they can't tank very well.

Trinity client repartitions the UI work, moving more of the load onto the graphics card. This is generally a good thing, performance wise. I think the responsiveness is improved on quality hardware, but I can't test it myself, being a Linux player (now supported after all these years).

I think salvaging is the best way to earn money as a new player. Some possible targets: other people's rats, other people's highsec wrecks, your dead enemies.

Edit: fo grammarz

Actually, let me be a bit more clear on the Premium Graphics client. It has new higher polygon count models for station exteriors and ships in addition to better textures and shaders. The graphics pipeline is also reworked so the UI transparency effects are rendered on your graphics hardware. It has options to run with HDR bloom or high quality shadows.

Currently, I believe that's all it does. No new effects, no new planets, no new station interiors, no new gameplay. But teh shiniez, oh, teh shiniez!

Ask in f13 for sure about some starter cash. 10 mil to an established player isnt much (half hour of NPCing).

Basically, nano fitting ships comes down to putting on 60 million isk rigs called polycarbons (basically nanofibers but better). There are cheaper ones called auxilary thrusters, but they are pretty meh.

Nanofibers do not increase speed UNLESS YOU HAVE YOUR MWD on. Most nano ships fit 2-3 Overdrive IIs as well as a nano and even an Inertia Stabilzer II (for insta warp). I'm currently running a nano rail Deimos, I only hit speeds of like 3500m/s but it is enough to disengage and warp off with the insta warp (I have a thin tank). The plus side is my damage output is very strong, in my nano gangs I am always top or near top in an even start gank.

Nano is all about being able to pick your fights, and the ability to fight two to one odds by picking off dumbasses that seperate from the blob.

... while using obscene damage, short range weapons (autocannons, blasters, pulse lasers, smartbombs), right?

Don't nano ships suck hard when facing a missile ship like the Raven? With the MWD multiplying your signature radius missiles & torpedoes will murder you.

The key to the way I use nano is keep them warp scrammed while orbiting at like 20km. My warp disruptor works from 24, so the orbit holds fine. Then I pick em apart with my high damage rails and Hammerhead IIs. My speed allows me to hold the orbit.

Nano ishtars basically do the same thing, but the drones do the raping. Getting up close is generally a bad idea, as normal people will be able to out tank you , web you, and own your face.

About the raven, no they dont. Pure speed makes the missiles have a hard time damaging you. (depends on their skills though, and T2 missiles and what not)

A lot of speed fits don't engage with MWD on in orbit because missile and drones tracking exceeds the tracking of your turrets. You take essentially zero damage if you go faster than 4.5kms (t2 heavy missiles), 6.2kms (light missiles), or 7kms (t2 light missiles +warrior II's). Destroyers can still hit you pretty well to around 8-9 km/s transversal velocity. Mostly you use your speed to escape, not to tank. Torpedoes are really easy to outrun, though.

My number one escape method is reapproaching the gate and jumping through. You need to accelerate to 3-4km/s in a couple seconds to reapproach with hostile Huginns on the gate. 2km/s is sufficient speed to get you back to the gate without sensor boosted webs on you. I haven't tried this yet versus hostile Hyenas.

The other important factor in escaping is staying out of web range, for which you will need to be faster than the other guy. Most poorly skilled interceptor pilots hit 4.5km/s. Once you're out of web range, you can burn out of scram range any time and then instawarp like Slayerik says.

How to make isk is a tough choice, an easy diku-mindset way would be to grind missions, which I actually endorse to a point.  You might as well work up standing with a few corps because for our empire wardec purposes it helps to have L3 agents who will track other players for you so we can gank em.  So yeah working up to L3 with a few corps is a goal that while grindy helps the pewpew in empire so even I'm doing it.

Salvaging has been well spoken of by lots of people, I wont get into full details but if nobody else is I'm doing missions and leaving all the wrecks/loot beceause I'm lazy and I just want the standing for the aforementioned locator agents.  I would enjoy the opportunity to give free isk to other f13'ers so if people have small wallets and can salvage evemail me (Elseix) and I'll start trying to give you bookmarks to wreck laden missions.

Mining is an option that not many take part in but its there.  You can always do some afk mining every time you log off to help supplement income.  Not helpful beyond the early newb days though.

I've heard people mention and I remember when you used to be able to take courrier contracts to fly things from jita to elsewhere for decent isk.  Might be worth looking into.

I suggest starting with missions and when that gets boring, just ask around for some additional ideas.  The eve-online forum is actually a pretty decent place to ask some questions in the new player board, market board, etc.

re: Nano Ships.
Don't worry your little head about those yet.  :-)

re: Buddy Program.
No idea, someone want to clarify this, because I'm still trying to get some other people to come play if I can give them more time free then the 14-day trial I'd like to know about it.

If you get your trial through Steam it's a 21 day free trial.

Did a relatively easy (in a vexor anyway) L2 mission last night that net me about 5 mil all told between rewards (~800k), salvage (~2M), lewts(~1.5M) and bounties(~700k).  So, yeah, missioning can net pretty good rewards without a lot of effort.

The salvaging and lewt collecting was pretty tedious though.

As of 4 days ago, when I started my trial, steam still said "Eve Online - Coming Soon".

I was going to do a few of the courier jobs, a few were listed at 10 million for about 12 jumps... and then I noticed that you needed a 1k+ cargo space, and I was bummed.

So as long as there's noob talk going on, somebody talk about aligning.  More precisely, aligning while doing something else.  I've seen people talking about how they were aligned while in the middle of combat, and a fuse pops in my brain whenever they do.  Whenever I'm in a fight, I'm usually going --> that way as fast as my afterburners can take me, orbiting my target, etc.  In order to be in the fight in the first place, I have to be moving all over space to acquire and keep targets.  If I could just park myself in alignment with something and my targets would obligingly come into range and impale themselves on my lasers, that'd be just great and all, but I don't see that as being too likely.

So, how do you pull off both keeping yourself in a fight and being aligned to warp if it goes south?

Well, frigates need to orbit, and blaster-based ships need to get in close, but cruisers and battleships are generally slow, long range ships (60km Caracal, 100+ km battleships), so I mean warp in at 60, target, activate weapons, and then line up with a planet. 

Hopefully the tacklers are keeping the target in place.  Or, if in a mission, you shoot one even if it's out of range, and it and its friends come readily enough.  Cruiser doesn't have to move an inch, in fact it makes salvaging easier if it doesn't.

I think this only works for ships who are so slow, that moving them around would not work anyway. They either have a falloff range that is so big that they do not need to chase their target, use missiles or drones.

If you are in a small agile ship, you do not really need to align yourself, since you go to warp almost immediately

Immediate my ass, it takes a solid eight seconds in my Punisher.  And that's with Evasive Maneuvering and Starship Command both at 4.

Industrials are fairly cheap -- I could just send you the money for the skillbook and the ship, and you only need a level of it. They're slow as shit, so you want to use "warp to zero". Do not EVER autopilot with one of those. Frankly, I'd avoid anything that goes lower than .5 in one of those, since you make get ganked on the off chance your sealed cargo is worth something.

I'm lazy, and I suspect there's a lot like me, so I habitually put up about 1500 m3 or more of shit to move maybe six jumps through high-sec -- all so I don't have to go get my Industrial, fly back, pick it up, fly it out there, drop it off. I tend to put a payoff of between 500k and a million on it, depending on the number of jumps -- and that's high sec.

What are you warping to? Generally if I need to bug out in my Punisher, I'll just rightclick on and warp to the closest object to the center of my screen. With frigate aligning speed it makes almost no difference in alignment as long as it's not behind you or at the very edge of your screen.

Just about anywhere.  From the moment I hit the warp button, it takes about eight seconds before the ship 'jumps' into warp speed, i.e. the moment that all of the surroundings go flying off into the distance.  It turns to face the correct direction very quickly, but then it just sits there for several seconds before the warp kicks in.  That warp tunnel graphical effect appears quickly, but the ship isn't really moving that fast for a while.

Don't you count as "in warp" once you are aligned and the "warp drive" is "active" ?

Do you have [big] plates fitted?


If you warp out with targets lock you should see the point at which you enter warp as it will be the point where you lose your locks (offhand I think its when your 'warping' speed hits 75%)

I have been pouring everything into Learning skills, except for a few really important other skills, but should be done, *finally*, with them sometime tomorrow or the day after. Thanks to the generosity of F13, I am doing okay for isk. After I get the most pressing PvP skills down, I will start moving toward the rest. Thanks for the offer!

To be aligned while doing other shit you have to maunally drive more. You basically pick a celestial that will keep you at your current range (of course, unless they rush you) if you are using drones/rails.  Blaster boats are harder to stay aligned in , as you have to be up in someone's face.

So I started the tutorial and screwed it up and lost the mission. Is there some reward worth restarting for or have things changed enough in the last year that I need to go through it? (If I stay I'll kill this character and reup my old account anyway, even if it's mostly barges and industry.)

And yes, i figured I'd never play again, but I am really bored.

Oh the new graphic engine is shockingly good.

if you lose the mission you can re get it again by talking to the guy. If you're doing the 10 mission chain it is very much worth finishing since you get something like 3 skill books, 2 frigates and 2 implants.

RE: going into warp, you must be going something like 95 75% of top speed to go into warp. you 'sitting there' even when aligned is likely your boat ramping up to this velocity. When you hit the warp button, the speed meter may say warping and show a pretty tunnel but what it's really doing is just turning on your engines (and, if you aren't aligned, rotating your ship to face the object you are warping to). When you actually go INTO warp, you'll see the meter reset to 0 and then flick to max. Then, things will move on screen and you will dissapear from grid. Until things vanish, you are still targetable.

In general, the "If you can see them, they can see you" rule applies.

Incorrect. Its 75%. I often aligned in a BS by going 75% of my top speed and when I hit warp I was gone instantly.

That falls under the 'something like'. I don't/didn't  know the exact number :)

Now I do! Edited!

You can see people arriving on grid who are still in warp. If you target them before they come out of warp, the UI will seem to begin to lock, but then your lock will fail as soon as the server tells you they are still in warp. It requires some frantic clicking, good timing, or both to lock an interceptor before he bugs out.

To shift gears a bit...

I've been doing a lot of reading on Salvaging and still have no idea of when it'd be a good idea of how to approach it or get started on it (although I understand it's pretty good money and all).  Is it something I fit an alt for mainly, use a second ship for, or something that's really not viable as a side-task to mission running until X level missions?

I usually have a destroyer outfitted for salvaging (cargo-extenders, cap relays, mwd/ab, 4 salvagers 2 tractor beams) sitting in the hangar of the station I am doing missions from.

Salvaging "The blockade" Lvl 4 brought me roughly 7 mill in salvage for about 15 minutes "work" (I warped out a few times so the wrecks were all over the place.

So if you are running missions, I definitely recommend it.

Hmm alright, that seems like a pretty decent near-term goal to shoot for that'll help in the long run. Something along these lines in terms of skills?

Skill plan for Cal Escaa

1. Mechanic II
2. Survey II
3. Science II
4. Energy Grid Upgrades II
5. Spaceship Command III
6. Destroyers I
7. Mechanic III
8. Survey III
9. Salvaging I
10. Salvaging II
11. Science III
12. Energy Grid Upgrades III
13. Salvaging III
14. Science IV

14 skills; Total time: 4 days, 5 hours, 24 minutes, 6 seconds

Plus, most of those skills are on the way towards things I'm aiming for anyway like Astrometrics (damn you Endie!).

You only need destroyers I if you are going to use them as a salvage boat. You also don't need science IV to start with the astrometrics skills but you will need it later on if you are going for covops.

The Science IV is for small tractor beams. You don't need destroyers 2; then again, it's what, 30 minutes to train?

Yeah, Destroyers II and III are about 15 hours at this point.  After I get this Cormorant off the ground, it's learning skills bonanza for a week.

Ah yes, I remember that being a serious pain in the ass. I waited forever to train that, now I wouldn't want to salvage without them.

OK, necroing reviving this topic instead of making my own newb advice one.

First - characters. I just restarted with a Minmatar Brutor built from the ground up according to the Goonfleet guide linked from here.  I do have a 3.7million sp character on the account, but he's got a goofy name and is from before the newbie experience revamp.  Also, with the older guy I concentrated on craftard skills, so I think I'm going to save a lot of time by starting right with the Matari.   Also, he can drive the big Gallente industrial so that'll be helpful even if he's not actively skilling anything.  I'm nervous that I'm making a mistake though, so I'm interested in opinions on that approach.

Second - training.  I'm starting relatively from scratch, so I'll need a cash flow.  I'm interested in covert ops though.  My questions - are covops ships any good for running missions or other isk-making endeavors, or should I skill toward BS/HAC for the high level missions before I shoot for covops? Also, are covops pilots a dime a dozen or are they relatively rare and useful in PvP or other ops?  I guess I'm mostly worried that if I go straight for covops, will it impede my cash flow to the point where I don't have a lot of breathing space if I get popped a few times in a row.

Thanks in advance - all the other info here has been great, particularly Evemon, which recommended a few learning skills that shaved 23 days off my prospective plan!

If you want a ship progression path for missioning effectively with relatively noob levels of skills then you will go Frig -> Cruiser -> BC -> BS for level 1-4 missions respectively. Forget the funky stuff for PvE, it only really works if you have uber skills otherwise it's unnecessarily expensive and gimped - you're better off in a bigger class of t1 ship than in a t2 ship normally unless you have all the skills to get the most out of your t2 vessel.

The good news is that you can get the skills to be able to afk through L3s and 4s reasonably fast and then the cash will roll in if you salvage and make the market work for you. Once you can do that you can back fill all the level V skills you'll need to be good with specialised t2 ships. Covops is pretty easy to train for - all you really need is the skill to fit a cloak and if you just want to be a warscout then it's low impact from a skills perspective.

Yup, you should already have Frigate; train Cruiser, Battlecruiser, and Battleship (along with the appropriate weapon systems for these ships, and upping your support skills as you go along).  You'll be restricted by your faction standings anyway; you can jump to level 2 agents by training the Social skills to 4, but after that it's a grind for faction (which will make you money as a byproduct).  Train what's required for Salvager I and Tractor Beam I and either pick a level of Destroyer to salvage with, or use a frigate with 4 high slots and a bigger cargo hold.

As for characters, if the Matari is the one you want, go with it.  3.7 million is about 3 months of training that you're losing, but oh well.  I've restarted from a lot more than that.  You could start the Matari on a new account so you can level him separately, then also continue to train the other guy to Hulk or something (couple months), then sell it for 1.5 billion ISK, and you'll have your cash too.