Some medium term direction (noob)

[Kageru]

It seems like a large part of the challenge in Eve is setting yourself a goal and then enjoying the challenge of getting there. So my general tastes run towards shooting and looting things with the hope some of the skills might transition into PvP. Of course the game mechanics means a ship has to be at least somewhat disposable and my progression focused so it doesn't take 12 months of training before the fun can even start.

I've done a fair bit of reading and just want to check my understanding is vaguely correct. It looks like the T2 ships and capital ships violate the cost and time metrics by a sufficiently large amount I can write them off until far into the future. You can quickly train as a frigate tackler but it's a PvP only role. The other roles that look approachable and have a nice progression are long range DPS / E-war which scales well (more the better, cumulative) whereas tanking and a lot of the other specialised roles need a small number of really good and specialised ships (eg. stealth scouting, Interdictors, capital tanks and logistics). As PvP gets larger scale the flight time of missiles becomes a negative factor opposed to the instant flight time of direct fire weapons, though missiles are strong in PvE. And no-one likes T1 destroyers for what seam like good reasons.

So it looks like a good goal is a T1 cruiser, focusing on some direct fire weapon with a long range for PvP / PvE kiting.... Maybe a Moa with rail-guns for sniping / kiting and a blaster fit for doing missions? Shame it's so ugly though.

(Edit)

I guess the real question is where is the sweet spot between having a ship that is fun to fly, is considered useful by others you might be flying with, can be flown productively while all those long and high level skills are training and can generate the isk to fund its replacement. So even if someone offered me a titan for 10 isk its only real value would be to sell it. As I understand it is the definition of not that fun to fly, very role specialised, not something I could fly for many many months and useless for generating isk compared to its replacement cost.

[Reg]

Yup getting the skills you need to fly and do PVE with a T1 cruiser is a sensible first goal. That'll require you to train basic skills that will translate directly to PVP. Someone else can give you more specific Caldari advice. I'm space-French myself.

At some point you're going to need to devote several weeks to maxing out the learning skills. This is a really painful thing because the learning skills don't do anything but make the training of other skills go faster. So while you're maxing them you aren't making any visible character progress.  Some people have been successful just sitting in the station and training up their learning skills right off the bat. I find that far too boring. I think it's worthwhile getting enough ship flying and shooting skills that I could at least do something halfway entertaining while training them.

[Kageru]

I'm not neccesarily Caldari centered. I'm currently doing the Minmatar tutorial so they'll give me free ships to play with. The slasher they gave me is very sweet looking. And I'll definitely learn the skills for a rifter tackler.

Being able to fly something while the skills train also means I can start generating isk which is the other half of the equation. The pain of losing a ship is directly tied to whether and how many hours of PvE you need to replace it. I could see myself actually stopping at cruiser until much much later in the game. It's a huge jump in costs from cruiser to battlecruiser or anything T2. And I can imagine a cruiser could handle level 1,2 (and maybe 3?) missions to generate isk at a faster rate relative to its replacement cost.

[Reg]

I trained enough to fly a minimally skilled battleship to do level 3 missions before devoting time to the learning skill grind. A battleship for a level 3 is huge overkill but it has the advantage of being safe. So you aren't likely to lose that expensive ship.  Later on you'll find that you can do level 3s in a battlecruiser or even a cruiser but until you have all the related skills maxed out you're likely to lose a lot of ships.

Level 3 missions are way more profitable than lower level missions as well. So they're better for isk grinding.

[Stabs]

I would think about a battlecruiser if I were you. It's pretty quick to skill for and they're noticably better than cruisers. Also if you play with serious players most will accept you more in a battlecruiser, even the rather disliked Drake, than a T1 cruiser.

Your battlecruiser will be able to solo level 3 missions.

I've trained three characters to be able to use battlecruisers - Drake which is wonderful, Harbinger which was rather iffy in level 3s until I had a full T2 tank and a Hurricane. You can do level 3s with a basic fit Drake as it's so over-powered with the passive shield tank. Plus it's one of the best afk-friendly ships in the game.

They're around 25 million which is a lot more than a cruiser but you'll earn a lot more in one. If 25 mill seems a lot you can do the starting tutorials multiple times for a stack of skill books and other loot which will help early game cash flow. Here's the list, you can do the five missions at as many of the systems as you like
http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Tutorial_Agents

It's very useful to be able to sell your loot. Take time out from training your main to get an alt up to about 25 order slots (Trade 2, Retail 2, should only take a couple of hours). Then park the guy at Jita to sell your stuff. Cart your loot with your main character to Jita for him to sell for you. (You can transfer it to him with a contract). It's quite fun to log on each day and sell stuff for 10 minutes and this will keep you from getting bad prices. I actually got myself a dedicated Jita alt because I liked trading so much.

[Kageru]

The skills from a Moa should translate directly into a Ferox (plus it looks better). Once I've got a revenue stream and lost a few cruisers in PvP that sounds like a good goal. And it's still a lot cheaper than even T2 frigates and battleships. And thanks for the suggestion on the Jita alt.... not that I have that much to sell yet.

I can almost see myself keeping a set of ships:

Tackling Fit Rifter: I expect to lose this but at least you can participate and it's fun to fly.
Sniper Fit Moa: I might lose this, so fly what I can afford.
Training Ferox : I'm doing missions and hope I don't lose it.

And then one day when I've mastered generating isk, the needed skills and game experience start using the battlecruiser more. That'll be quite a while off though.

I'll probably do the combat tutorials for all the races, maybe the other ones too. It seems to earn decent isk and standing plus gives me new ships to get a feel for / sell. Of course at this point pretty much all that money is going into skill and learning books.

[Endie]

Nobody uses feroxes.  I think feroxes are lovely and I haven't used one in about three and a half years.  The moa is also a joke ship for all but a tiny niumber of novelty applications.

[Stabs]

If you're going Caldari it would be a shame not to learn to fly a Drake. They're very strong and you don't need great missile skills, level 2 or 3 is enough.

[Kageru]

(Stabs) I mostly picked Caldari because it sounded good and I had to start somewhere. Part of the reason I'm asking is because at this point I'm not too advanced in starship command and could change.

Aren't missiles considered to be limited in large scale PvP? That seemed to be what my reading suggested with rockets considered "broken", cruise missiles way too slow and missiles also spending too much time in flight? Whereas several threads suggested that long range DPS (admittedly from Rokh and apocalypse ships) was desirable.
 

[Endie]

Aren't missiles considered to be limited in large scale PvP? That seemed to be what my reading suggested with rockets considered "broken", cruise missiles way too slow and missiles also spending too much time in flight?

Missiles are not perfect in large scale PvP, but feroxes and moas are even less desirable in that context.  The good Caldari railgun platforms are the T2-fitted rokh (awesome), vulture (awesome) and eagle (edge case).  That is it (the falcon happens to be bonused for rails but that's immaterial).  Those are long trains.  There are other good caldari ships but they are not railgun platforms.

If you are keen on caldari then train the drake first.  If you are open to all then train minmatar, which contains great ships all the way up the train: rifter/vigil (frigates), stabber (cruiser), hurricane (battlecruiser), maelstrom (battleship, though all three are good), not to mention the vagabond, rapier, muninn, huginn, interceptors, scimitar, claymore, sabre etc etc.  Amarr has some really good ships but they tend to appear later.  Gallente have two really top-line subcaps (taranis, ishtar).  And a few more decent ones if you are really liberal and count the gimped lachesis and arazu, the hictor and stealth bomber (which are not terrible, though other races are better).

[Stabs]

Drakes are over-powered which mitigates the missile disadvantage. A drake can solo just about any other T1 battlecruiser or below without years of skills to support it. Missile specialisation skills (unlike guns) do not require the lower level skills to train.

For a while they were utterly reviled by serious pvpers but that attitude seems to have gone now. In an alliance I was in not so long ago someone pretty much insisted I cross-train to Minmatar when with hindsight I should have ignored him and stuck with my Drakes.

The other point is that while a Drake is arguably worse than a more offensive Battlecruiser such as Hurricane it's tons better to mission in. Not only is it easier to do level 3s but it's a much lazier playstyle which most people prefer. Instead of having to monitor your ship's health, capacitor level and decide when to use the booster you just passively tank. With the low shields alarm you can literally mission while doing something else like hoovering, wandering back to the computer occasionally to press one button (or to warp out if the alarm starts wailing).

A subtle pvp advantage (and I've always thought part of the reason serious pvpers dislike Drakes) is that if you are in a ship with a reputation for being hard to kill you get primaried last. So Mr Serious loses his tech 2 uber ship before they pick on you while if you were in something more pvp effective but fragile you'd get popped first. Not dying so often is one hell of a pvp perk.

[Kageru]

More reading... which backs up what Endie said. The problem with the Moa is that while it has a nice range it does poor DPS with rail-guns. I'm assuming the same is true of the Ferox.  On paper the Moa looks superior to the Stabber but the latter has +DPS bonuses and uses projectiles. It looks to me like rail-guns are roughly equal to artillery so I guess the ship bonus just makes that much difference, though artillery will have a much better alpha as well. I guess the Rokh makes up the difference by having more hardpoints.

So looks like the drake wins the utility award in terms of not PvP embarassing and very PvE capable. I assume this is also true of Caracal versus Moa as stepping stone ships. Though I'll keep the dream of one day flying (and being able to afford to lose) T-2 fitted Rokhs and Vultures :)

Once again, thanks. I want to focus both isk and sp so realising the Moa is sub-par before buying or training towards it is good stuff. I'll also look at the other ships mentioned.

[Stabs]

While a Drake won't win you medals in the long run it will mean you will be isk rich and pvp competent in under 3 months which isn't really true of most other routes.

With my Amarr character I really struggled in level 3 missions until I could fit a full T2 tank which meant training up several support skills to 4 or 5 while mapped to Perception and Willpower.

As for Caracals I liked them a lot. With an afterburner and a nice long range you can do some level 2 missions without even getting damaged.

[Amarr HM]

Ferox isn't as bad as people make out and the skills lead you to flying a sniper Rokh, but it means you've kinda cross trained Gallente. Bear in mind a lot of people who train Caldari end up cross training to Minmatar or Amarr for PvP. It would be worth looking at interceptors as an early goal, I've noticed T2 insurance payouts have been raised and T1 lowered, so there's a good argument for flying T2 these days.

[Endie]

If you check out the Goonswarm Newbie Guide, as created by a certain talented, attractive and modest Goonswarm director and his willing helpers, then you'll find a skill plan in there to take you to a drake, plus good pvp and utility skills in blackbirds, ospreys etc, in about a month.

[Amarr HM]

On paper the Moa looks superior to the Stabber but the latter has +DPS bonuses and uses projectiles.

It's the speed bonuses and inherent agility that make the stabber attractive. Mobility is key to survival in a lot of PvP scrapes, DPS on gallente type ships comes with the disadvantage of having to engage up close and personal. Moas suck don't even consider them, if you want to be useful and a jack of all trades follow Endies plan, if you want to go straight for the PvP jugular train minmatar.

[Kageru]

(Amarr) An interceptor is still 3-6 times the cost of a caracal and I doubt it's PvE competitive. And if I was doing tackling the sheer disposability of a rifter is impressive. I saw some interesting builds for blaster Moa's in my reading, or people mounting lasers on them, but as observed it's mostly trying to find a use for the ship rather than it being a ship with a clear value.

(Endie) It's on my desktop and I've read it many times, though it's packing a lot of information (and odd illustrations) into a small space. A fair bit also assumes you are in goonland. But I do see you have the sequence caracal -> drake.

[Amarr HM]

I saw some interesting builds for blaster Moa's in my reading, or people mounting lasers on them, but as observed it's mostly trying to find a use for the ship rather than it being a ship with a clear value.

Don't trust SHC for fittings  

If you are a more PvP oriented player then you should put the extra time into Minmatar or Amarr, if you are a PvE player who just likes to dabble in PvP then Drakes and Caldari all the way.

[Setanta]

And don't trust the Evemon (Battleclinic) builds either. There's a lot of chaff in there.

With the right skills you can run a Caracel in L3s with a range/speed tank. BUT... with less skills you can use a Drake and clear a room in less time.

If I were to make one suggestion, train the weapons system before the hull. Tank is very important, but killing things fast is a key tanking feature.

[Kageru]

Downloading and playing with EFT was fairly illuminating. The reason the Rokh is good and the Ferox / Moa are not seems to be because it has so many more mount points and can handle the power draw from railguns much better than both of those, which means it can actually use the ships range bonus. And that range bonus will actually allow it to be out of range of some return fire whereas the range on the smaller rail guns is less impressive when other people have bigger guns to start with. The Caldari blaster demands way too much power for the damage they do so doesn't seem like a great alternative.

The Minmatar auto-cannons are much better than the blasters in terms of power, and the ships have a DPS enhancing modifier, which explains the difference in efficiency. The artillery has similar problems to the rail guns in that they demand a lot of resources and you can't mount / support enough of them to compete with auto-cannons close or missiles at close or range. As mentioned the Minmatar ships have smaller signatures and higher speed. The Caldari missile boats really are in a sweet spot though since they can actually support enough launchers in terms of slots and power to do good DPS at good range while having a massive shield tank and the ability to control their damage type.

In all cases it was eye-opening to see how much difference the cumulative effect of stacked skills made. So I've taken the long way around to come to the default of caracal -> drake being the easiest progression while you play disposable tacklers and later sniping drakes or minmatar gunboats (while dreaming of flying a sniping rokh if it's a large scale action) in PvP.

(Edit)

Actually the Ferox can handle the power demands much better and actually compete with a drake... though the hurricane does even better out of it. So the best progression is probably more like Caracal -> Drake / Hurricane -> Rokh with the latter two more for large scale PvP. Basically the only good long range option for a cruiser is drones or missiles and my expectation that they'd scale (so if a Rokh is awesome a Moa is a small slice of awesome) doesn't hold at all.

[Stabs]

Sounds like you'll be teaching us soon

[Endie]

Yep, good analysis.  And you're right about the rokh: I ignore reimbursement fits (because I'll never lose them in a fleet fight unless I'm dumb enough to jump into half-hour-not-loading lag) and instead fit for a bit more range and tracking.  That means I can lock and hit with spike to 250, and there simply won't be enough people able to hit me back at that range to break my tank even if I'm primaried, 70km behind the fleet.  It also means that I can load caldari navy ammo and track smaller stuff a couple of hundred km away.

[Amarr HM]

Rokh particularly excels at range, but for sniping you would actually be slightly better off in an Apoc for a few reasons that EFT won't tell you. No ammo reloading, instant ammo switching and cheap ammo, unless of course you use faction. Look at Amarr ships aswell they are all the rage these days.

[Endie]

Maelstroms are, apparently, the new fashion, but every time I've flown one we black-screened and I either died or logged off and flew back later.

[ghost]

Is it possible to play this game as a crafter/manufacturer in solo fashion? 

[Kageru]

It must be. I entertain myself by looking at ships and pilots corporations. I'm in "starter" space and do see a fair few "we are a mining and manufacturing corp" descriptions. And the manufacturing skills, system and PvE support like invention hunting (as much as I understand it) would give you a fair few things to do.

[Stabs]

Yes it is but it is possible other players may find ways to victimise you.

For example if you travel with expensive blueprints someone might scan your ship and decide to kill you then grab whatever loot survives with an alt (see Slayer's suicide ganking memoirs thread). Or if you put up a space station people might declare war on you to force you to either defend it or dismantle it. (Usually this is done to extort money).

But there are certainly plenty of players who sit in the busiest system and just buy materials and craft. Or simply sit there buying cheap and selling high.

Eve is a good game for the crafting-inclined because like early SWG stuff gets destroyed. This means your customers always need replacements.

[Kageru]

That's pretty much the same for everyone though, and I suspect the solution is the same. Be wary, carry a big stick and try to find people you can trust to work with. Especially because I imagine the trading corps share knowledge and resources.

[tgr]

I usually ran stuff like BPOs in the corp hangar of my orca, while putting low-value stuff like trit or similar in the main hold.

[ghost]

That's my big thing with this game:  I love the ambience and the setting.  The idea that you might be picked off by someone to get your stuff adds in a bit of intrigue.  However, the combat just isn't my thing-  getting together in a big swarm to run around and gank people isn't that fun to me.  It's possible that I just need to get involved with a good corporation, but I never have made the effort, really.  I'm more of a solo oriented MMOer.  Corps probably need people that are interested in crafting.

[Phildo]

If you're going to try playing Eve solo, you need to be careful that you don't have the Yahtzee experience.  Make sure that, if nothing else, you're hanging out in a chat channel like ours where you can ask questions and get help figuring out the game.

[tgr]

That's my big thing with this game:  I love the ambience and the setting.  The idea that you might be picked off by someone to get your stuff adds in a bit of intrigue.  However, the combat just isn't my thing-  getting together in a big swarm to run around and gank people isn't that fun to me.  It's possible that I just need to get involved with a good corporation, but I never have made the effort, really.  I'm more of a solo oriented MMOer.  Corps probably need people that are interested in crafting.

I used to be exactly like you here in EVE, until I joined up with the goons.

But what Phildo says is true, even if you're going to play "solo", make sure you have a vibrant corp chat to hang out in. Going completely solo in this game will make you cut yourself. The corp you're in (both in what it does, and the people in it) matters so much it's not really funny.

[Pennilenko]

I usually ran stuff like BPOs in the corp hangar of my orca, while putting low-value stuff like trit or similar in the main hold.

Ahhhh, got ya, I'm going to start killing more orcas hauling just a stack of trit.

[Kageru]

I can see that a good guild is mandatory. For a degree of security, to allow you to have a stake in 0.0 but mostly because you spend so much time just tooling around in your ship you need the chat and sense of direction.

I did read one piece of advice I liked which was "Don't move to 0.0 before you can support yourself there"... so about what point should a character start looking for a good 0.0 corp?

[Pezzle]

Are you talking about stable NPC ability? 

If so you are probably looking at being able to handle a cruiser/battlecruiser well.  With proper skills you can take out most npcs in frig classes but that training takes time and dedication (it also takes longer to kill them).  A small portion depends on the npc types vs the race you fly.  Some cruisers are far far better than others. 

If you are talking pvp you are best off learning in a frigate.  They are cheap, easy to fit and you are in a better position to learn volumes about 0.0 quirks.