New player, a few questions.

[Daspied]

Hello,

I've started the game about two weeks ago, from the steam trial. Just had a few questions, looking at my future in eve. I created an eve-mon for my next year, and would like some feedback so I don't waste my time. My current training has been put into mostly learning, following the eve-mon on the time reduction. Before I did this I went to training a Rifter so I could tackle in pvp, and salvaging for some money. I'm looking to play a support role in combat, as I enjoy playing healers in other games. So naturally I looked to the logistics ships, and hopefully down the line to a carrier. Is this recommended, and are they really used?

I'm looking to pvp, and hopefully get out of this care bear corp. when i get some skills trained up, and have learned the ropes. Right now I'm a member of Red duchies flying legion, or something like that, who are a subsidiary of the Re-al alliance. They fight over some station m-m in the Wildlands. I've been once but the leader ship to be honest, sucked, there were two people trying to run the fleet. I haven't went back to the station, and was thinking about quitting then, as eve pvp seemed kind of dull. However I waited a few days, we went to war and then gate camped someone, I rushed in to tackle and was hooked. it was nice making 20 mill from the energized armor he dropped too.

My point of all this is my current route with the skill build the right one for a new player? Does anyone know a good corp., possibly pirate. I could join to pvp with, while hopefully not needing to pve. I only have about a year to play before I'm shipped off to basic. Various other questions, what dose 0/ mean? Also should I always have a fitted back up ship ready, or should I not worry about that until I have means of carrying the two around?

Thanks for any help you can give, I'll get a skill sheet up when the web site comes back online.

[MahrinSkel]

Just FWIW:

I won't try to critique your training, I never min-maxed mine well and I'm way out of date.  Support/healing stuff is not often well done in Eve, although there is a current place for "spider tanks", they turn more on everyone fitting remote repair/shield boosting than on specialized ships.  People who prefer that style of play often gravitate into Logistics work, moving the stuff from place to place that decides battles but never gets the glory.

Everyone needs an income, most of the players who never rat or run missions or do anything else to make isk, are either trading real money for isk via timecards, or they have a sugar daddy that does it for them.  But there are many ways to make an income, and some are less grindy than others.  My preferred method was to work the markets, which is hardcore PvP of a completely different kind.

--Dave

[Nerf]

Actually, with the introduction of wormholes, dedicated logistics ships are actually quite useful and necessary, moreso than another battleship with a remote rep.  Of course, if he does get in with a lowsec pirate operation, chances are he'll never set foot in a wormhole.

[IainC]

To be honest logistics ships aren't regularly used except for very specific fleet engagements. In general there are two major roles in fleets - DPS and tackling, if you want to train up for something other than the normal DPS progression (Frigate -> Cruiser -> Battlecruiser -> Battleship) then training for ewar and tackling would be a good move. Your progression would thus be Frigate -> Destroyer -> Interdictor -> Cruiser -> Heavy Interdictor/Fleet Recon all the while training up propulsion jamming and ewar skills.

In general you should have at least one spare ship ready to go, although if you're fitting frigates with common market mods it's not so important to begin with, if you do move it will almost certainly be a snap to just buy new stuff at your new home. You could join Eve University if you're looking for a newbie friendly PvP oriented corp, they absolutely don't do piracy but they do have plenty of PvP ops and they are specifically set up to get new guys into PvP.

[Pax]

OP has too much clue for a newbie.

With that out of the way, pirates worth their salt are VERY specialised and use VERY specialised ships as well, therefore they'll have little use for a Rifter pilot.

This shouldn't stop you from pvping till you can fly those specialised ships, of course, so fit 10 Rifters and roam lowsec belts. When you feel comfortable losing Rifters, fit 10 Ruptures and roam lowsec belts. When you feel comfortable losing Ruptures, fit 10 Hurricanes.
Even though you want to be a space nurse, you still need to have an idea of how combat works, how much beating a ship can take or when to bail.

[Viin]

The best support role for fleets/gangs is ECM.

But it's very much a support role, you can't do anything to harm an opponent directly.

[Jayce]

o/ is a person waving.  o7 is a person saluting.  vOv is a person shrugging (I can't really see that one, but vOv it's the convention).

If you're really only interested in PvP and being support, you might look into one of the NPC 0.0 areas and try to get on with one of them.  Stain, Venal, Syndicate, etc.  If lowsec piracy is good for you, I'd really just salvage your way into enough for 10 rifters, insure them and go try and beat up on the locals.  Sooner or later one may extend you an invite if they like your style.

For cash to avoid PvE you could also run skillbooks to maket hubs or other forms of transport.  T1 frigates and cruisers are pretty cheap and insurable so once you have enough for one, with insurance you shouldn't lose too much per death if you shop around.  So your money supply can be fairly low and you can still be effective.

[Murgos]

I'm looking to play a support role in combat, as I enjoy playing healers in other games. So naturally I looked to the logistics ships, and hopefully down the line to a carrier. Is this recommended, and are they really used?

Depending on your definition of combat the answer is yes.

Logistics ships are very useful in POS shots to keep the DPS ships in capacitor or in a battle to sit at a POS and operate as a pit crew and repair passive armor tanked BS.

Carriers and Logistics are in great demand for the work of rebuilding defenses after a POS has been saved as well.

[Daspied]

I've decided to take some of the advice given here and go for an interceptor first, after I get through with training my learning skills. I figured this will give me some combat viability when I'm not in the logistics ship, and it don't seem too skill intensive. E-war dosn't really appeal to me, having just come from Everquest 2, I never really enjoyed the crowd control in pvp. Albeit even if a good one is invaluable to the group. The worm holes seem interesting, but to me it seems like ccp wanted to give the people who stay in high sec all day a chance to pvp in 0.0 without having to go through all the gates.

As far as money goes, I've worked up about 20 million so far salvaging off my level 1 missions, although this urge to gouge my eyes out becomes quite clear after doing a few. I've also been running around to asteroid belts and stealing peoples wrecks. Changing to the subject of market trading, it seems kind of like the stock market. You can lose a lot, but you can gain a lot if you know what you're doing. So on that note, I'm going to stay away from it until I get a gist of what everything is worth.

I looked at the eve-university, and that kind of peaked my interest. Accordingly I will try to join them, thanks. This is the web site right http://www.eve-ivy.com/ ? I'm kind of at a cross roads as far as piracy is concerned. It seems appealing at first, but quite lonely at the same time. With eve already drab enough, not having hopefully a group of competent likeminded individuals would suck, and inevitably force me to quit. Given what pax is saying too, I don't know if becoming very specialized is the right course of action at this point.

The o/ things still make no sense to me. So I'll just hit them with actual english, "Hail"!

Take of it what you will, when you say I have too much of a clue. But note, not all new players are complete idiots. I have a saying, there is no rest, until you lie by the side of a grave.

As for my current current ship builds

Edit: forgot to say Thanks!

[Murgos]

As far as money goes, I've worked up about 20 million so far salvaging off my level 1 missions,

Train connections to III and get a cruiser and do lvl 2 missions.  Training connections to 3 will up you rep with the agents enough to get you out of lvl 1 missions and possibly even lvl 2 missions.

Even lvl 2 missions are pretty crappy for rewards though so as soon as you can train your racial battle cruiser and do lvl 3's while working to lvl 4's.

You can make 20 mil on a single lvl 4.

[Daspied]

Train connections to III and get a cruiser and do lvl 2 missions.  Training connections to 3 will up you rep with the agents enough to get you out of lvl 1 missions and possibly even lvl 2 missions.

Even lvl 2 missions are pretty crappy for rewards though so as soon as you can train your racial battle cruiser and do lvl 3's while working to lvl 4's.

You can make 20 mil on a single lvl 4.

That sounds like a better plan then the interceptor. I just went and looked on eve-mon to find a load out for the Myrmidon, was planing to go galante for the logistics any how. Here is the copy and pasted fit from Battle Clinic.
Its estimating that it will take about 8 days to get into, so probably about 14-16 more realistically, as i still have my bonus time. Is that a decent fit over all, or should I look else were?

[Slayerik]

I forget, but I think some people said with low SP sometimes a Cap Battery in the mids can help even more than another recharger. Myrmidon's are very drone dependant, so sometimes using a mid for a drone navigation unit isn't a bad idea, as it pumps up DPS.

If you have horrible drone skills, don't hop in one until they are plumbed up a bit. Even a day or 2 can be enough to make a difference.

Good luck. Spy.

[Phred]

I forget, but I think some people said with low SP sometimes a Cap Battery in the mids can help even more than another recharger. Myrmidon's are very drone dependant, so sometimes using a mid for a drone navigation unit isn't a bad idea, as it pumps up DPS.

If you have horrible drone skills, don't hop in one until they are plumbed up a bit. Even a day or 2 can be enough to make a difference.

Good luck. Spy.

I always found the drone control unit to be worth 1 high slot. Extra range is real helpful if you are borderline skilled.
At lower skill I'm not sure if you can fill all the high slots with guns anyway.

[Murgos]

Yeah, being able to work your drones out to 60 km is pretty useful.  More useful than having an extra gun anyway.

That fit looks fine to me, I used something similar for lvl 3's myself,  If anything you will be overtanked for 3's and may even be able to do some weaker 4's with that fit.  I only left one gun to use as a poking stick and put the rest of my highs to tractors and salvage until I could get a dedicated salvaging destroyer. 

The best bang for your buck will be to get into 5 x Hobgoblin II's ASAP though.  From there it's a short hop to a Dominix & heavy drones and running lvl 4's with ease which will make replacing pvp losses trivial, (well as long as you stick to losing cruisers and below).

[Slayerik]

I forget, but I think some people said with low SP sometimes a Cap Battery in the mids can help even more than another recharger. Myrmidon's are very drone dependant, so sometimes using a mid for a drone navigation unit isn't a bad idea, as it pumps up DPS.

If you have horrible drone skills, don't hop in one until they are plumbed up a bit. Even a day or 2 can be enough to make a difference.

Good luck. Spy.

I always found the drone control unit to be worth 1 high slot.

Sure, if you want to use another Fighter! I believe the item you refer to is a "Drone Link Augmentor" :)

[Daspied]

What is the best form of insurance to buy, meaning what is typically the best bang for your buck. Or dose it really depend on the risk you planing on taking? In the Rifter at least, it seems like the first one is the best one. 14k for a 130 million pay out.
Also, do most people have a Dedicated ship for pve, or would it just be better to use the same one that you use for pvp?

[Phred]

I forget, but I think some people said with low SP sometimes a Cap Battery in the mids can help even more than another recharger. Myrmidon's are very drone dependant, so sometimes using a mid for a drone navigation unit isn't a bad idea, as it pumps up DPS.

If you have horrible drone skills, don't hop in one until they are plumbed up a bit. Even a day or 2 can be enough to make a difference.

Good luck. Spy.

I always found the drone control unit to be worth 1 high slot.

Sure, if you want to use another Fighter! I believe the item you refer to is a "Drone Link Augmentor" :)

I haven't played in a year so sue me. Actually, that reminds me of a funny story, (for me anyway). I was heading home late one night after a day spent missioning and I decided I needed a new Augmentor, but somehow ended up buying one of those mothership/carrier extra drone bays for like 75 million or so. At that time I had a grand total of about 110 million in my wallet so this hit me rather hard. But, I re listed the one I bought at 84 million at wherever it was I was basing out of, and damn if the damn thing didn't sell in 3 or 4 days.

[Gets]

What is the best form of insurance to buy, meaning what is typically the best bang for your buck. Or dose it really depend on the risk you planing on taking? In the Rifter at least, it seems like the first one is the best one. 14k for a 130 million pay out.
Also, do most people have a Dedicated ship for pve, or would it just be better to use the same one that you use for pvp?

Insurance is calculated from the baseprice of the ship. Therefore a Rifter can never have a 130 million payout, since that's more than the insurance of a battleship, and you can get the insurance from self-destructing an unfitted ship. Always insure for Platinum (100%).

[Daspied]

Insurance is calculated from the baseprice of the ship. Therefore a Rifter can never have a 130 million payout, since that's more than the insurance of a battleship, and you can get the insurance from self-destructing an unfitted ship.

Thanks, don't know what I was thinking when I typed 130 million, you know what I was meaning though.

[IainC]

What is the best form of insurance to buy, meaning what is typically the best bang for your buck. Or dose it really depend on the risk you planing on taking? In the Rifter at least, it seems like the first one is the best one. 14k for a 130 million pay out.
Also, do most people have a Dedicated ship for pve, or would it just be better to use the same one that you use for pvp?

Always insure for Platinum, there's no reason to insure for the lower levels. Note that T1 ships will insure for almost the entire cost of the hull but the T2 variants don't. It's not going to be a problem for you for a while but getting a 60m payout on your dead 800m Black Ops hull is going to sting.

Most people have separate ships for PvP and PvE because they need different fits - there's no point having a warp scrambler on a PvE ship for example and your PvE ship will generally only need to tank 2 damage types while your PvP ship should be tanking them all.

[Numtini]

With that out of the way, pirates worth their salt are VERY specialised and use VERY specialised ships as well, therefore they'll have little use for a Rifter pilot.

I am not finding that to be the case. In fact, a bunch of us in frigs are in demand because the others don't want to be stuck in a tackle role.

On the other hand getting an invite based on flying a tackler alone would be pretty hard.

Or perhaps we're not up to the standards you're talking about, but we're making isk hand over fist and having a very good time.

[Nerf]

With that out of the way, pirates worth their salt are VERY specialised and use VERY specialised ships as well, therefore they'll have little use for a Rifter pilot.

I am not finding that to be the case. In fact, a bunch of us in frigs are in demand because the others don't want to be stuck in a tackle role.

On the other hand getting an invite based on flying a tackler alone would be pretty hard.

Or perhaps we're not up to the standards you're talking about, but we're making isk hand over fist and having a very good time.

Most lowsec pirating is done on the gates, and you can't really do that in a frigate.  Gateguns have infinite tracking and something silly like 200km optimals, your frig gets smoked too damn quick to hold a tackle.  If you're trying to catch missionrunners or miners though, frigs work great.

[Slayerik]

With that out of the way, pirates worth their salt are VERY specialised and use VERY specialised ships as well, therefore they'll have little use for a Rifter pilot.

I am not finding that to be the case. In fact, a bunch of us in frigs are in demand because the others don't want to be stuck in a tackle role.

On the other hand getting an invite based on flying a tackler alone would be pretty hard.

Or perhaps we're not up to the standards you're talking about, but we're making isk hand over fist and having a very good time.

Most lowsec pirating is done on the gates, and you can't really do that in a frigate.  Gateguns have infinite tracking and something silly like 200km optimals, your frig gets smoked too damn quick to hold a tackle.  If you're trying to catch missionrunners or miners though, frigs work great.

As we know from ganking though, getting that quick point before a warp off can be all it takes to be useful. Sure you are gonna go pop, but now the heavy hitters had their time to get a point. Also, frigs can be good for bumping cloaked guys. And since you spent jack on your frig, you just go grab another after the timer. Not my way to play, but still useful.

[Trebes]

I'm kind of at a cross roads as far as piracy is concerned. It seems appealing at first, but quite lonely at the same time. With eve already drab enough, not having hopefully a group of competent likeminded individuals would suck, and inevitably force me to quit. Given what pax is saying too, I don't know if becoming very specialized is the right course of action at this point.

You'd have to run it by the guys who actually play the game, but maybe you could try joining a Faction Wars corp for a while? I don't know how terrible this idea is, but it seems like a place you can get used to dying gloriously in your Rifter without people bitching at you for not bringing a sniping HAC or whatever. I never really bothered reading up on FW but I heard there are some sort of extra-special frigate niche.

On the other hand, there seems to be a strong general opinion that a lot of the FW crowd are terrible at PvP.

[Slayerik]

I'm kind of at a cross roads as far as piracy is concerned. It seems appealing at first, but quite lonely at the same time. With eve already drab enough, not having hopefully a group of competent likeminded individuals would suck, and inevitably force me to quit. Given what pax is saying too, I don't know if becoming very specialized is the right course of action at this point.

You'd have to run it by the guys who actually play the game, but maybe you could try joining a Faction Wars corp for a while? I don't know how terrible this idea is, but it seems like a place you can get used to dying gloriously in your Rifter without people bitching at you for not bringing a sniping HAC or whatever. I never really bothered reading up on FW but I heard there are some sort of extra-special frigate niche.

On the other hand, there seems to be a strong general opinion that a lot of the FW crowd are terrible at PvP.

And that's different from 95% of 0.0 alliances/corps how?

[Trebes]

And that's different from 95% of 0.0 alliances/corps how?

I don't know, man, I just read internet forums okay?

[Slayerik]

Just giving ya shit :P

[Setanta]

If you are bored with level 1 missioning (I hated it) rep up to join your local militia and go out with them. It forced me into lo-sec on my Miinmitar (less than 2 mil SP) flying rifters and jaguars. The level 1 militia missions are harder and the ratting on the way and the inherent dangers of being jumped keeps the adrenaline going. I've had fun fighting/fleeing and made a good amount of cash from people who jumped me only to find out it was a mistake against a passive tanked jag or wolf. Enough money to cover my own losses anyway :)

I ran the character straight to AFs and am now filling in the gaps as AF covers frigate/cov-ops/interceptor/stealth bomber in terms of direction with skills that overlap and complement (mostly).

I've only been playing 4 months and got bored until I started playing this char - it's prolly a noob approach but it's fun for me :)