Getting back into eve. Need some advice.

[TheWall]

I've been thinking of flying caldari for pvp but have heard that their ships are poor for it. Also people say that they suck at tanking in pvp. Can anyone tell me why?

[Simond]

Missiles - They have travel time between launch & impact, so if your target gets popped in that time you just wasted them. Every other weapon in the game is instantaneous in effect. So missles aren't bad per se, just...sub-optimal.
Shield tanking - Uses mid-slots. ECM, afterburners, etc. also use mid-slots, so you either fit a decent shield tank (and weak everything else), or decent support (and a weak tank). Armour tanking uses low-slots, so you can have both a decent tank and decent support abilities.

[LC]

The only real choices at this time are Gallente and Minmatar. Don't specialize in drones either if you want to participate in fleet battles.

[Sparky]

Missiles are useless in huge alliance sized blobs because the primary is popped before you get a shot in.  But in small gangs that's not such an issue.  Being able to customise your damage types, being effectively immune to jamming with FoF missiles, not having to worry about range/tracking and the low SP requirement are huge plusses.

[TheWall]

What about for solo pvp? As in what setup would work the best to hopefully achieve victory in a majority of situations?

Also, is it possible to fit both a shield and an armor tank?

[Slayerik]

What about for solo pvp? As in what setup would work the best to hopefully achieve victory in a majority of situations?

Also, is it possible to fit both a shield and an armor tank?

For solo PVP I recommend finding a good, (cheap enough) cruiser and go low sec pirating. You never want to shield and armor tank, ever. A better combination would be to use an Armor tank, and something like sensor dampeners. Some good pirates use Gallente Drone boats, load them up with NOS (or blasters) and fill the mids up with sensor damps. This destroys their tank and their ability to lock you. The NOS also keeps your cap up so you can run your armor repairer for a long time. The worst enemy of a setup like this is smartbombs, but they are rare to run into.

[dwindlehop]

Solo you need your own EW - scram & web at bare minimum, something else would be good. Add a MWD and maybe a cap booster, and your shield tank will be sad. You can solo in certain shield tanked ships, but they're pretty end-game: Sleipnir & Vagabond come to mind. T2 ship resistances really help.

Gallente is the best solo PvP in my opinion, but Minmatar have a few ships that aren't bad. If you haven't got high skills I'd prefer Gallente.

Sure you could tank both shield and armor. Everyone else will either be faster, or do more damage, or have more cap, or have EW, or a combination of the above. Anyway, you couldn't really hope to go solo and tank both shield and armor for the reasons I mentioned.

[dwindlehop]

Caldari aren't desirable for solo or fleet, but in <20 man gangs, they have a number of nice ships. Nobody ever said no to an extra Blackbird.

[ajax34i]

Yeah, most of the ships have bonuses to long range, and use missiles, although some are designed for EW.

However, if you're solo and have to do everything, you need to lock down the target so it doesn't run away (which will use up your medium slots, plus imply short range of less than 20km), defend yourself (armor defense, since you don't have the med slots for shields), and do damage (short range weapons since you're already forced to get close to tackle the target).  The best ships would be ones designed for armor defenses, bonuses to the damage of short range weapons, and a couple-three med slots for the EW stuff.

The Caldari ships have all the wrong bonuses for this.  In a group, though, where you can let others do the tackling, or do the damage, you can take in an appropriate Caldari ship to do a specialized job (either sniping, or EW stuff to tackle) while letting the other guy(s) do the other tasks.

[Slayerik]

Yeah, most of the ships have bonuses to long range, and use missiles, although some are designed for EW.

However, if you're solo and have to do everything, you need to lock down the target so it doesn't run away (which will use up your medium slots, plus imply short range of less than 20km), defend yourself (armor defense, since you don't have the med slots for shields), and do damage (short range weapons since you're already forced to get close to tackle the target).  The best ships would be ones designed for armor defenses, bonuses to the damage of short range weapons, and a couple-three med slots for the EW stuff.

The Caldari ships have all the wrong bonuses for this.  In a group, though, where you can let others do the tackling, or do the damage, you can take in an appropriate Caldari ship to do a specialized job (either sniping, or EW stuff to tackle) while letting the other guy(s) do the other tasks.

A ratting Raven (Caldari BS) is ridiculously good. You can choose the exact damage to do (by the NPC vulnerability) and have like 6 mids for tank (while using lows for damage mods and maybe a damage control). Ratting Domi's are good as well...Well this is PVE stuff but oh well.

[TheWall]

Do gallente and caldari use the same type of guns? As in will my hybrid weapon skills get ship bonuses from gallente ships?

[Slayerik]

Do gallente and caldari use the same type of guns? As in will my hybrid weapon skills get ship bonuses from gallente ships?

There are a few Caldari ships that use Hybrid guns (Gallente main weapon). Rohk is a great sniping battleship, and some even through blasters on it. There are a couple other Caldari ships that do the hybrid thing...

[TheWall]

Ok so a hybrid weapon is the same thing regardless of if you are flying a gallente or caldari ship. That's what I'm trying to clarify for myself.

[Slayerik]

Ok so a hybrid weapon is the same thing regardless of if you are flying a gallente or caldari ship. That's what I'm trying to clarify for myself.

Yup, you got it.

[TheWall]

Well I have gunnery and smally hybrid weapon both at 5 with my newer caldari character. I don't want to waste it by starting over so hopefully it won't be too much of a jump to get into a gallente assault boat for some good solo pvp.

Any suggestions as to what ship seems to excel in this area?

[ajax34i]

Yeah, blasters and rails are both hybrid weapons, so if the bonus is to "hybrid weapons" then both types of weapons get the bonus.  Usually, though, since Caldari get bonuses to range, they are oriented towards using the long-range rail guns, and Galente ships get bonuses to damage and are usually fitted for the short-range drone combat, so they tend to use the short-range blasters.

[Yegolev]

I never did much fighting but if you are fitting blasters, I love me some Thorax.

[Slayerik]

I never did much fighting but if you are fitting blasters, I love me some Thorax.

QFT

The Thorax may be the single best T1 cruiser in the game. 50m3 Drone bay, lots of lows for tank and gank, and enough highs to pack a real punch.

If you have the drone skills, the Vexor is another nice cruiser.

[Yegolev]

Yeah, if you are a Gallente noob with Drone skills out the gate, Vex is a good choice, but if he's Caldari then I suspect he would be better off with the Blasterax setup.  MWD to range and light'em up.  However I was a professional miner, 90% of my SP in industrial disciplines, so YMMV.

[TheWall]

Yea my main is caldari so I'm going to look into the thorax. I just wish half of my skill points weren't tied up in missile skills. 

Plus I'm guessing all my engineering skills won't help much with armor tanking either. Ah well, I'm not going to start a new character. I'll just pound away at new skills. At least I can pve well with caldari. 

[Slayerik]

If nothing else, the extra engineering give you a tad more pillow for your shield :)

[TheWall]

Looking for armor tanking tips. What modules do you recommend on the thorax? What support skills are needed? I've never even glanced at armor tanking so I don't know what I need to learn to do it well. Thanks!

[dwindlehop]

I like active hardeners on a cruiser unless you have the skills for Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II (Hull Upgrades V and good Ex/K/Th armor compensation), especially now that the CPU on hardeners is reduced. A lot of T2 frigates use energized plating to fill a resistance hole, but I think the extra resistance on an active hardener is worth using your cap for.

You won't have the cap to run 2x MAR, so 800mm plate and 1x MAR is a good bet.

[Megrim]

Looking for armor tanking tips. What modules do you recommend on the thorax? What support skills are needed? I've never even glanced at armor tanking so I don't know what I need to learn to do it well. Thanks!

As far as skills go, i'd recommend everything in Engineering and Mechanic trained to at least lvl4 

Possible fittings:

Thorax thread 1

Thorax thread 2

It's a good place, dig around.

[Morat20]

Looking for armor tanking tips. What modules do you recommend on the thorax? What support skills are needed? I've never even glanced at armor tanking so I don't know what I need to learn to do it well. Thanks!

Get your skills up -- Hull Upgrades, Mechanic, and Repair systems. My Vex manages to squeeze 1600 plate, T2 Med. Armor Rep, some EANM varient, and damage controls -- but I don't fit guns since my drones eat through L2s.

I'd suggest at least 800mm plate, a T2 rep, and either mission-specific hardeners or EANM II.

I prefer to passive tank my resists and just use my plate and reppers to handle it, but that's not a good long-term strategy -- it's not too viable in L4s and I'm sure it's totally unviable in the new L5s.

[Slayerik]

Looking for armor tanking tips. What modules do you recommend on the thorax? What support skills are needed? I've never even glanced at armor tanking so I don't know what I need to learn to do it well. Thanks!

Get your skills up -- Hull Upgrades, Mechanic, and Repair systems. My Vex manages to squeeze 1600 plate, T2 Med. Armor Rep, some EANM varient, and damage controls -- but I don't fit guns since my drones eat through L2s.

I'd suggest at least 800mm plate, a T2 rep, and either mission-specific hardeners or EANM II.

I prefer to passive tank my resists and just use my plate and reppers to handle it, but that's not a good long-term strategy -- it's not too viable in L4s and I'm sure it's totally unviable in the new L5s.

Use resistances specific to the missions. If you are ratting guristas , just load up a ton of kinetic resist and they cant touch you. Done correctly, you might not even need a plate. Thus bigger guns, and more ownage.  Maybe i can find the list for ya somewhere.

[TheWall]

How about for PvP? That's what I'm really looking to gear my armor tank towards.

[Slayerik]

Then look at those eve griefer links or morats advice. :)

[Morat20]

How about for PvP? That's what I'm really looking to gear my armor tank towards.

For PvP, you don't know what they're firing -- so EANM's are your best choice (wide array of decent resists, take no cap to keep the resists up). Damage controls can help with that once they're through your tank, and you certainly want as much armor (plate + skills) as you can fit.

I'm not sure what a Thorax's PvP tactics are, but a Vex's generally purposes is to web it's target, Nos it down (I'd ditch my tractors and salvagers for more Nos) and let my drones eat the crap out of it. With a Thorax, you'd do pretty much the same thing -- fewer Nos's though. Make sure you have your drones banging on it (free, cap-less DPS) and your guns shooting it, and hope to god your tank lasts longer than theirs.

[dwindlehop]

Ah, PvP in a Thorax. Sorted.

I like a big plate and no rep, myself. At least on my Rupture. You could do a cap injected rep which would also keep some neutrons going, but I guess it depends on your targets.

[dwindlehop]

PvP Thorax is all about the moar dps. With a full complement of Hammerheads and Neutrons with a few mag stabilizers, a Thorax does sick dps. Nos would cut into the Thorax's dps since it has 5 hardpoints and 5 highslots. People do it, but it seems like Vexor is better suited for that.

[Morat20]

PvP Thorax is all about the moar dps. With a full complement of Hammerheads and Neutrons with a few mag stabilizers, a Thorax does sick dps. Nos would cut into the Thorax's dps since it has 5 hardpoints and 5 highslots. People do it, but it seems like Vexor is better suited for that.

Admittedly -- I fly Vex. I'm honestly not sure what I'd do in a Vex if they shot my drones out from under me. In fact, I'm not wondering how much DPS my drones actually do.

Let's see -- DI 5/5, a Vex running Gallente Cruisers 3/5, 5 Hammerhead II's, and every other drone skill up to at least 4/5......how much DPS does that do? I need me math.