EVE complete ultra super noob beginner thread

[TheWall]

I can't access the official site from work unfortunately, so I was looking for some discussion of where to begin.

To help guide me, my goal in game will be to get into PvP just as quickly as possible. Some basic questions I have are:

1. What race has what advantages?
2. What ships should I go for?
3. What skills should I focus on first?

I have been reading a lot of the threads here but haven't come to any conclusions as to where begin. Most of the topics seem to give information if you are already playing. I'm still waiting for a Trial Key. Anyway if you can help I would be very grateful.

[Raging Turtle]

I can't access the official site from work unfortunately, so I was looking for some discussion of where to begin.

To help guide me, my goal in game will be to get into PvP just as quickly as possible. Some basic questions I have are:

1. What race has what advantages?
2. What ships should I go for?
3. What skills should I focus on first?

I have been reading a lot of the threads here but haven't come to any conclusions as to where begin. Most of the topics seem to give information if you are already playing. I'm still waiting for a Trial Key. Anyway if you can help I would be very grateful.

Honestly, I might wait a few more days and consider at making a character from one of the new Bloodlines that'll be coming out in the patch.  But you can't gimp yourself TOO badly early on.  Do the tutorial and the followup storyline mission.  Don't worry about which ships to use yet, you'll be in frigates for a little while at least.  Play around with the character generator to see what skills you can get from customizing - Starting with Frigate IV (by going the ship command route)can save you a few days of training time, but you'll need to go out and buy other skills in order to be ok at combat. 

Important Stats:  Perception (if you're going combat) and Intelligence, probably followed by Memory, then Willpower.  Charisma is the least useful stat, atm.
Mad Skilz:  If you want to do combat, play around in the gunnery skills.  If you want to do mining... um... I think that stuff is in industry.  You'll want to get your learning skills up to 3 or 4 rather quickly, as that will cut down on training time.  And remember, if you don't have a skill in your character sheet, that means you need to buy it off the market.  Join the F13 chat channel, we can answer questions, and the rookie chat isn't absolutely horrible either. 

[Merusk]

Races are by and large, just about customizing what you want to start-out flying/ shooting with.

Amarr ships are mainly Armor-based and use laser weaponry.
Caldari ships are mainly shield-based and focus on missile weaponry with Hybrid guns (railguns, blasters) as backup.

Minmatar fly ships that are Hybrid types (some favor shields, some armor) that favor speed and a "OMG WE NEED MORE GUNS" approach. Their main weapons are traditional projectile Machine Guns and Artillery mixing-in Drones/ Missiles later on.

Galliente (space french) ships I'm not too familiar with.  I think they're hybrid like the Minmatar, with some shield/ some armor.  Their main weapons are drones, adding-in Hybrid weapons llike the Caldari.  Their ships give bonuses to drones as well, so if you pick this race try and get as high in the main 'drones' skill as possible when tarting out.

[WayAbvPar]

The only problem with the rookie chat is that it scrolls so goddamned fast. The F13 channel is populated almost 24/7. so you should find someone in there that can answer a question.

I would like to 2nd the angry tortoise's suggestion to get your Learning skills up ASAP. Each level raises one of your attributes by one, which in turn lessens the training time for any and all skills that use that attribute as a primary or secondary. You don't need to do it exclusively (since that can get damned boring), but try to get them to level 3 or so- then you can use them as 'overnight' skills to train when you aren't playing; you can switch to your combat (or mining, or research, or trade...etc) skills to train while you are playing.

[Kashre]

No race particularly has an advantage over the others, at least for combat oriented characters.

maybe you want to avoid Gallente, who I belive have a higher than average charisma. High charisma is pretty useless for a combat player.

If you are going combat you want to have balanced attributes (except for charisma) as you always want to train for more ships (per and will) but there are a lot of very importnant combat skills that use int andd mem, like the various electronics skills and what not.

When you make your character (again this is all for combat related people, I have never done the mining/manufacturin/etc), choose the skill path that will get you frigate 4 in whatever race you are. I think its military / captains training / I forget.

Ship wise: just get out of your noob frig asap, and into a tier 3 combat frig asap. (tier 3 = requires frigate skill 3 to fly)

[Hoax]

The racial ship choice is very important, unfortunately you can't really make it until you've played for awhile.

Amarr-
High slots:  Energy turret bonus', almost no launcher hardpoints, often use NoS due to energy turrets using lots of cap to fire.

Med slots: Very Limited, therefore Amarr ships rarely make good solo pvp, tackler or EW ships and cannot shield tank.  Often these slots will go to cap rechargers, webbers and afterburner or Micro Warp Drive.

Low slots: Amarr ships will usually have the most low slots, this basically allows them to do two things best:  Armor tank or Gank-setup.  Because armor tank modules and turret damage modules both go in the lows.

Drones:  Amarr ships typically have average to high-avg. drone bays, so some skilling in that area is required.

Other stuff:  Amarr ships can have very strong tanks, or be setup to gank and also can make the best non mining specialist mining ship (8 turret Bship w/ the PG to mount the mining lasers).

Hopefully some others can give you write-ups of the other races, I would do it but my information would be lacking actually piloting experience.

[Yegolev]

I also think that you might have more race options if you wait for the Blood expansion.

There is a character builder out there, but I didn't use it.  I went Intaki (Gallente subtype) for the Int and Mem bonuses I had heard about, wanting to go a more intellectual route.  Anyway, the Space French ships seem to have bonuses to hybrid guns and drones only, at least the smaller ones do.  I'd say that they are slightly biased toward armor tanking over shield tanking, but not by a whole lot.  If you fly Galllente ships and don't concentrate on drones, you will be doing yourself a disservice.  Not the best choice for mining, I have discovered, but I don't feel like training another racial line would be efficient use of my time at the moment.

[Strazos]

Caldari - The "Americans" of EVE as some people like to call them.

High slots: Either Missile or Hybrid gun bonuses usually. They also have some of the best missile platforms, with some ships able to field upwards of 5 launchers.

Med: Caldari ships usually have a bunch of med slots, but theey are usually monopolized by different shield modules, as most (all?) Caldari ships use shields as their main defense. Even so, you should have some slots left to put in useful modules, such as target painters and/or webbers to help your missiles.

Low: Usually not too many. Low slots are more prevalent on armor-tanking ships, and as Caldari tank via shields, you'll be lucky to have 3 low slots.

Drones: not a big thing for Caldari - most of their ships perfer long-range standoffs, far beyond drone range.

Caldari ships can be made to have very large shield ratings. While maybe not as large as armor tanks, shields recharge faster, and for less.

Someone might want to add.

[TheWall]

This is a lot of really good information. Which of course has spawned many more questions for me.

What weapon types are the best against what armor types?
Why pick shield over armor tanking?
Do you want a lot of slots for PvP?
What is Cap?

I want to do some solo PvP because I have a scattered amount of play time and can't guarantee when I'll be on. Can a small fast ship take down a large slow ship?

Edit: What do these stats help in game?

 Intelligence
 Charisma
 Perception
 Memory
 Willpower

[Murgos]

What weapon types are the best against what armor types?

Missles can be good against all armor types, you can swap out damage on the fly.
Lasers are EM/Thermal and I think Hybrids are Kinetic/Thermal and projectile ammo I think can be all damage types too (but has very short range).

Why pick shield over armor tanking?

Depends on what you fly.  Caldari are natural shield tankers, thier shields start off larger and recharge faster than anyone else and they tend to have more medium slots to fit things that boost shield tanking.

Amarr on the other hand, have generally more armor than the other races to start with and thier ships have more low slots for extending armor bonuses.  Some of thier ships even have native bonuses to armor or armor resistances.

There is no 'best' tank or damage type.  It all varies on situation.

Do you want a lot of slots for PvP?

Err, yes?  I think you want a lot of slots in general regardless of activity.

What is Cap?

Capacitor, that life blood energy of your ship, it fires your weapons, charges your boostes and powers your drives.  More Cap=better, more Cap Recharge = Even Better.

I want to do some solo PvP because I have a scattered amount of play time and can't guarantee when I'll be on. Can a small fast ship take down a large slow ship?

Big slow ships are particularly vulnerable to very small very fast ships.  This is one reason why AF's and HAC's are so popular atm.

[Viin]

This is a lot of really good information. Which of course has spawned many more questions for me.

What weapon types are the best against what armor types?
Why pick shield over armor tanking?
Do you want a lot of slots for PvP?
What is Cap?

These are all best answered once you are in the game, as you can actually start looking at objects and see their stats.

It varies greatly. Each weapon type (laser, hybrid, missile, etc) has different types of ammo that have 1 type or a mix of damage types. For example, Iridium Hybrid Ammo does 3hp Kinetic and 3hp Heat damage.  Shields typically have great explosive resistance, good kinetic resistance, poor heat resistance, and non-existant EM resistance. Armor/Structure has other resistances, and these can be modified by modules.

You would pick shield over armor because your ship has more shields and/or you have better shield reparing modules. Same for armor, if your ship has great armor and good armor repairing bonuses then you will likely tank with armor. Or you can switch it up depending on what the bad guy is using on you.

A lot of slots is helpful, but you won't get a *lot* of them until you get bigger ships. The real limiter is your CPU and your Powergird. Each module takes some of this, so the more you have the better/bigger modules you can run on the ship.

Cap is your Capacitor, which you use whenever you run modules. Some modules use more (lasers, sheild repairers) while others hardly use any (missile launchers).

I want to do some solo PvP because I have a scattered amount of play time and can't guarantee when I'll be on. Can a small fast ship take down a large slow ship?

Not by itself. You can probably take out a cruiser if you know what it can do and how to counter it, but it'd take a lot of work. Anything bigger would take some teamwork. You can certainly take out other frigates, but you shouldn't do that in the high security systems that you'll start in, or you will become familiar with CONCORD and their lovely ships.

Edit: What do these stats help in game?

 Intelligence
 Charisma
 Perception
 Memory
 Willpower

Again, best seen in game or at least the object explorer on the EVE website. These help you train your skills, each one takes two of those and helps determine how long it'll take to learn the skill.

[Yegolev]

Edit: What do these stats help in game?

 Intelligence
 Charisma
 Perception
 Memory
 Willpower

The only thing that attributes do is affect the speed at which you learn skills.  In the skill info it will tell you which are primary and secondary stats for that skill, and the higher those attributes are the faster you will learn the skill.  I have a pretty respectable Int/Mem and an aligned level 1 rank 1 will take me about eight minutes to train.  Anything involving Perception or Willpower (most combat skills) will take me longer.  In the end, the attributes do not affect your effectiveness, only your skill levels.

[TheWall]

Is there a chart or something that I can look at with what skills take what stats to raise? I'm able to access the eve-offline site. I haven't seen it there yet though.

Sorry for all the questions, but just like college, you can get where you want to be much faster if you know the path before you start. 

[Yegolev]

All of that stuff in on the actual www.eve-online.com site.  Look under Item Database and drill down.

[Viin]

Is there a chart or something that I can look at with what skills take what stats to raise? I'm able to access the eve-offline site. I haven't seen it there yet though.

Sorry for all the questions, but just like college, you can get where you want to be much faster if you know the path before you start. 

It's under Databases: http://www.eve-offline.net/skill.dxd

[TheWall]

Where should I start so I can get into the F13 corporation right away? Or does it matter?

[Viin]

I think we have an office everywhere but Minmatar space. So just hop onto the F13 channel (there's a channel button on the left side) and ask for the one near whatever race you are and we'll send you a link you can use to autopilot to the system.

[Mr. Crick]

Hi.

Didn't know you guys played Eve. But anyway...

Stats.

Intelligence = Science and research skills
Memory = Secondary on loads of skills
Perception = Ships and guns
Willpower = Secondary on combat skills
Charisma = Some trade, leadership


In a nutshell...

Charisma is certainly the least useful. If you want to be a carebear, int/mem. If you want to be a fighter, per/will.
You allways want at least half-deacent perception, though.

(oh yes, who am I? Maya Rkell. 19 mil SP, 5.5 bil combined SP/assets. Known Claw pilot. Ex-alliance fighter, Ex-pirate. Currently in a Freespace RP corp...more than willing to help any newb unless they're in Gooncorp)

[Evangolis]

I'm thinking of playing this some.  I'm an indifferent PvPer, I can take it or leave it, but I'm only really interested in it if the people I play with are into it.  I don't much care if I get ganked occasionally.  I was a good strategic scout in SB, did the dull, long range runs that generally got nothing, and sometimes turned up golden for the guild, but I was nothing special in a fight.  That's me and PvP.

What I am generally interested is poking around the game world, looking at the odd and nifty pieces of the world.  I don't mind long trade runs, that sort of commercial activity, but I'm not a merchant type, either.  Not generally very social, I listen much more than I talk.

I hate having to take leadership in-game, but I can't tolerate the complete absence of organization, and particularly bickering, and will try to take charge in those situations, while loathing every second of it.  I tend to spend a lot of time on my own, although I will almost always drop what I'm into to help teammates who are doing something other than sitting around the home base trying to get organized.  My strongest strength as a team player is my ability to keep my mouth shut and follow orders.

With all that in mind, what is the best route for me to start with?

[Viin]

Sounds like you just need to hop in and try it out - there's tons of things you can do, so if you find something you like then you can specialize in it until you feel like doing something else .. at which point you can branch out.

The guild (corporation) is very informal, we kinda just do stuff as a group as we want to. There's no set play times or anything like that, and we typically all work together on things like mining - but 99% of it's spur of the moment. If we're chasing bad guys we typically have someone in charge of the group so we can coordinate our actions.

But that doesn't mean you have to do *anything* with the corp if you don't want to. We just ask that if you take assets from the common pool  that you also contribute to that pool.

If you want a 14-day trial key, PM me your email and I'll have one sent to you.

[Evangolis]

Thanks, but I've already pulled down a 14 day key from one of these threads, and have created an account.  About to do character creation, will probably use Skarn Tok as a name.  I figure I'll do the tutorial and then take a break for a couple of hours.

[Hoax]

For PvE:

I dunno, your going to need to find what you enjoy (if anything) from spreadsheet activities, market manipulation, research/building, ratting, mining, being a space-trucker, running missions for fun or faction ships or getting involved in the whole tech-II lottery and trying to hit the big bucks.  Whatever floats your boat there.

For PvP:

What you might want to start w/ is make sure you get Frig IV, and the skills to use the following mods:  AB, MWD, Webber & Warp Scram. that way even if you decide that pvp isn't your interest at all.  You can outfit a tackler (a ship that locks down an opponent from warping away and/or kiting) which is very needed considering almost none of us have solo-gank pvp ship's setup.

my 2isk 

[Evangolis]

Well, I've almost completed the tutorial, just the storyline mission left.  Interesting enough, but by the time I had gotten most of the way into the tutorial, anything in space was a slideshow, and menus were taking 3-5 minutes to open.  Not sure if it is my decrepit computer (1.1G P3 CPU, 512M Ram, ATI 9600 video), or being in 1.0 space, or a memory leak, or my settings, or DSL behaving badly.  I hope I find some work around, short of building a whole new computer.

[Reg]

That's very odd. Since last week's server upgrade I've been able get in and out of the over crowded newbie systems with no trouble at all. If you exit and come back do things improve for a while? Your system does sound a little underpowered but it's possible that it's just your configuration. Check the CDP forums and post a question about it in the tech section and maybe someone can help.

[Trippy]

Well, I've almost completed the tutorial, just the storyline mission left.  Interesting enough, but by the time I had gotten most of the way into the tutorial, anything in space was a slideshow, and menus were taking 3-5 minutes to open.  Not sure if it is my decrepit computer (1.1G P3 CPU, 512M Ram, ATI 9600 video), or being in 1.0 space, or a memory leak, or my settings, or DSL behaving badly.  I hope I find some work around, short of building a whole new computer.

You are probably swapping to disc. If you Alt-Tab out of the game you can check how much RAM it's taking. Don't be surprised to see it taking 350 MB or more of RAM.

Edit: Actually they released a patch right before I stopped playing which fixed some of the memory problems so it's probably not taking up 350+ MB anymore (I think I was running at about 200 MB or so when I stopped). However with only 512 MB RAM, even 200 MB for one program is likely to have you swapping if you have Firefox or Opera loaded (which will easily take up 200 MB+ by themselves, though Opera you can configure to take less) or lots of smaller programs running at the same time. Plus the OS usually takes around 100  MB or so all by itself if you are running 2000 or XP.

[Evangolis]

Logging and rebooting seems to have helped considerably.  I originally had 768M, but one of my sticks went bad.  Getting more RAM would probably help.

Did get basic learning and the preception bonus trained, took my Frigate III from 19+ hours to train down to 16+.  Looks like I'm off work today, so I'll spend most of the day running Skarn Tok on storyline missions in safe space while I get a feel for the game.  Oh, I'm an Amarr with a ridiculously high willpower, since that was the only setup they offered that had low Cha and didn't also screw Int, Mem, or Per.

[Rhonstet]

I used to play a lot of EVE, so I have a few suggestions I could make.  These tips may be a little dated, but they served me well. 

1) The basic rule of EVE is, never spend anything you can't afford to lose.  EVE is not like most MMOs: loss of a ship can be expensive. 

2) Never trust anyone.  Seriously, I wouldn't trust anyone outside my family in a game like EVE.  Communism is for chumps: figure out a way to run your corporation and any operations so that a single thief can't make off with all your wealth.

3) Never work alone (except for scouting and agent missions), but see #2.  Doing solo stuff isn't just boring, its often uneconomical.  A pair of miners, one running a mining barge and the other running an industrial hauler, make more money and work a lot faster then if the two were separate.  Some decent Leadership skills can make two PvE'rs stronger together then if they were separate. 
The trick is to find a way to make sure that both people profit from that work. 

4) Learn to use bookmarks.  This is the key to fast travel and fast movement in EVE.  I still can't believe CCP is letting people get away with such a game-buster, but EVE is a game that rewards people for taking the low road.

5) If you are considering making a jack-of-all-trades character, I suggest you create one character to do your fighting and another to do your commerce.  The higest skill tiers are extremely expensive in terms of time and the total point value to your character.  You may spend more time training skills at low level, but it costs a lot more money to clone a 12mil skill point character then 2 6s, and it takes less time to train two 6s then one 12.  Or at least, it used to.

6) EVE is a game that rewards you for gaming the interface.  Don't be afraid to keep second or third characters in newbie corporations to maintain a 'front'.  Learn how the interface works, and not just the way the helpfiles and tutorial say it works.

[Silus Fromme]

(oh yes, who am I? Maya Rkell. 19 mil SP, 5.5 bil combined SP/assets. Known Claw pilot. Ex-alliance fighter, Ex-pirate. Currently in a Freespace RP corp...more than willing to help any newb unless they're in Gooncorp)

Hahahah, I just noticed this.  You're that Maya, aren't you?