EvE newb with some questons.

[dwindlehop]

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.

[TheDreamr]

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.

[Slayerik]

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

Drake?

[Slayerik]

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.

[Megrim]

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

Drake?

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.

[Slayerik]

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

Drake?

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.

[dwindlehop]

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.

[ajax34i]

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.

[dwindlehop]

Any excuse to talk about the pew pew. 

[SurfD]

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)

[Simond]

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.

[ajax34i]

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.

[Morat20]

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.

[dwindlehop]

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.

[ajax34i]

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.

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.

[SurfD]

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?

[Endie]

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?)

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.

[SurfD]

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).

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

[ajax34i]

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".

[SurfD]

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?

[TheDreamr]

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.

[Vinadil]

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

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.

[ajax34i]

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.

[TheDreamr]

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.

[SurfD]

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?

[TheDreamr]

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)

[Kamen]

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.

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.

[SurfD]

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.

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?

[Endie]

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.

[SurfD]

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?

[Endie]

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.

[SurfD]

sounds good.

[SurfD]

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?

[Yoru]

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.

[SurfD]

so you still need to play the research agent angle then