That might’ve been confusing… the Tier 1 learning skills all have memory as a primary skill, but the second tier learning skills like Clarity, or what have you, generally have different primary and secondaries, most often those ‘connected’ with the trait that they modify.
Hahahhaa, I never heard that one, that’s good.
Man, I love these threads. Every time I see one, I’m happy I’m an Empire-space pirate and that I got out of the 0.0 scene.
I mean, I love my sniper Maelstrom and all (OH NOES NOT LASOR) but it’s just so much more fun with small-gang (2-15) PvP where I’m the ONLY guy who has Command Ships skilled and an Assault Frig is a major player in the typical battlespace. When the emphasis is on hunt-and-maneuver rather than on major battle lines. When “skilled” means someone in a covert can sneak close enough to an enemy battleship than my T2/Officer AC fitted Vargur can warp in right on top of it (And I can tear open a T1 Apoc in about 45 seconds).
And then at the same time, I really WANT to take the sniper Maelstrom out to 0.0 and get in the battle line again. Ah, decisions. Maybe after I finally finish up HACs I’ll look out to the rim again.
A few things… fleet combat uses ships of the line firing for maximum DPS at 150+ km and DD tanked.
But not all 0.0 is fleet combat. For small to medium gang PvP, being unable to land proper warpins is not just bad, it’s death. And, honestly, even for fleet combat you need a proper warpin to put you in the right position on grid.
And no, an AF is never a major player unless your opponents are incompetent. Highsec, lowsec, of nullsec. AF’s do nothing properly. They’re worse tacklers than even many T1 frigates. They’re actually out DPS’d by a good 'ceptor. They’re slow. They tank horribly if they’re successfully engaged by anything… and so on. AF’s are pretty much one of the worst classes of ships in the game currently. For the cost of an AF you can have a cruiser that out tanks and out DPS’s any AF in space. You can have a frigate that’s 2 or 3 times as fast and much less expensive to lose, and can tank as well if not better. Or, of course, you could use an ideal ship to fulfill a specific role rather than a meh-of-all-trades-master-of-nothing.
Heh, I’ve found my primary use for the AF is naming it “Zeriel’s Rifter” and then annihilating idiots who’ll come after it in T1 cruisers. =P
Really, I’m sitting in it biding time because I’m a collector and I still have something like 20 days to HACs, and I uniformly loathe Minmatar T1 cruisers
Yeah, honestly I’ve had better luck in a Rifter than in a Wolf or a Jag. The lack of the Rifter’s tracking bonus kind of make the Minmatar AF’s weak.
Of course the Ishkur is the best of all Assault Frigates. I’ve been in fleet battles where I fit an ishkur for Tackle, no guns at all and still been in the top 5 DPS. Never underestimate the power of not getting primaried.
The nicest thing about EVE compared to other MMOs is that, generally, while you can hook up with a 0.0 Alliance and be bound by the rules in exchange for being part of a unit with known capabilities and proven tactical value, there are all kinds of niche spots and corps for people who want to play around with trying to discover the Next Big Thing.
For non-EVE players who might find the dogmatism offputting, I also point out with some amusement that it’s an ally who runs in 0.0 sometimes who most approves of the Empire-space assault frigate-as-part-of-wolfpack strategy, and has roundly praised another guy’s Hawk (Caldari AF) rocket-based fit. It takes all kinds, and figuring out what your strengths are and playing to them is probably the most important part of it. (As an aggressive non-conformist, I’m right at home in my loose alliance of Empire-space pirate/protection-racket semi-newbies, even though technically I have more SP than the next two guys down put together at this point)
For what I use the Wolf for, I don’t really need a tracking bonus, since mostly I’m using it to put disproportionately high dps on slower, less skilled targets (mostly indys/barges in Empire-space corps (declared wartargets, obviously) that are depleting the belts my miner alt prefers. =P)
Ahh, yeah, the Wolf is good for that. I wish it were a better frigate killer though. Having that tracking bonus would be mighty nice.
What alliance are you in BTW?
Oh and though I started this thread in jest I just wanted to point out that Wrath Cruise Missiles dropped in price because the core commodity Tritanium has dropped in price significantly. 
That can be painful if you produced a bunch at the higher price but that’s just how the market goes.
Sorry in advance for this hijack…
I’ve tried a number of times to get into Eve. Each time I played I ended up getting bored after a short time and then I wandered away. But I really want to enjoy the game. It looks like it has a lot of potential and I know I’m only scraping the surface.
Part of the problem is that I feel like I’m too far behind the curve. But I’ve heard a number of times, including in this thread, that you can still be effective without having five years of skills under your belt. So I’ll take this as given and move on.
Another part of the problem is that I play solo and there’s only so much fun you can have flying missions over and over. At low levels they require almost no skill, and a lot of repetition to get the standings to move up. I feel like the game plays itself half the time. Click ship, click orbit, turn on guns, go watch tv.
None of my friends play the game. I don’t want to actively seek recruitment because my time is fairly limited and I don’t know if I’m going to stick around anyway. I was once invited into a guild, but because I was new to the game I raised a lot of suspicions. I had to take a screenshot of my login screen to show that I didn’t have an enemy corporation alt (silly, really, I could have very easily faked that). Nonetheless, despite my assurances that I had no interest in spying, I was kicked out in a fit of corporate paranoia right before the first big guild battle.
A last part of the problem is that I just have no idea what I’m doing. The more I read about the game, the more I doubt my previous decisions, making me want to delete my characters and start over. Then I remember the long start up times and decide to just quit rather than restart.
Well, I recently started the game up again, but this time I made another account and created a minmatar character with a less than perfectly honorable profession. I rigged up a cheap rifter and have been flying around getting blown up for about two weeks now – in the process I learned the following life lessons (i) do not attack people near warp gates in low sec space; (ii) orange background does not mean free to attack; (iii) do not try to leave a station when you’re a criminal; (iv) orbiting a cruiser and looting all of his rat kills is a great way to get someone to attack you in secure space; (v) newish players spec’d for pve in cruisers and battlecruisers seem to have a very difficult time fighting small, fast ships; (vi) someone would rather self-destruct a 35 million isk ship rather than lose a fight to a five-day-old player; (vii) I’d make a horrible pirate in real life because I usually feel really bad after blowing up someone’s ship (I’ve sent in-game apologies); and (viii) actually winning a fight in this game is really fun.
In the meantime, I reactivated my old account and have been training my “main”, untarnished character for mission running to support my evil twin and with the hope of one day getting that character into grander pvp battles, whether that be solo or with a corporation if I decide I’m going to stick around. Unfortunately, after reading this thread, I once again have doubts about this character’s long term viability and have been having that nagging feeling again that I should start over. Before I do that, though, I thought I’d toss him out there for any advice one of you veterans may be able to offer. Any and all advice is appreciated.
First, my two goals:
- ability to make profit through solo combat (whether through rats, missions, plexes, wormholes (can they even be solo’d?), etc.)
- ability to participate in low sec pvp, either solo or as part of a team.
Second, my character:
I made a Caldari (which I always read as calamari – I have even started to see a resemblance to a squid in my portrait) character because of allegedly good starting stats – which I think is now moot with the ability to respec. I have been dishearteningly reading that their ships are terrible for pvp because of missile flight time. Joy.
Attributes:
Intelligence:15 (base 8)
Perception:18 (base 12)
Charisma:3 (base 3)
Willpower:16 (base 10)
Memory:12 (base 6)
Skills:
Analytical Mind=5
Instant Recall=5
Iron Will=4
Learning=5
Spatial Awareness=4
Drones=2
Scout Drone Operation=1
Electronics=4
Electronics Upgrades=1
Electronic Warfare=2
Propulsion Jamming=1
Survey=3
Targeting=1
Engineering=4
Energy Grid Upgrades=2
Energy Systems Operation=3
Shield Compensation=2
Shield Emission Systems=4
Shield Operation=3
Shield Upgrades=4
Tactical Shield Manipulation=1
Gunnery=2
Sharpshooter=2
Small Hybrid Turret=3
Weapon Upgrades=3
Mining=1
Hull Upgrades=1
Mechanic=3
Repair Systems=1
Salvaging=1
Defender Missiles=2
Missile Bombardment=5
Missile Launcher Operation=4
Rapid Launch=3
Standard Missiles=4
Warhead Upgrades=3
Afterburner=4
Evasive Maneuvering=5
High Speed Maneuvering=1
Navigation=4
Astrometrics=2
Cybernetics=1
Science=3
Caldari Frigate=5
Caldari Cruiser=2
Destroyers=1
Spaceship Command=4
Connections=2
Social=3
I just spent all of my money buying the second tier learning skills, but haven’t started training them yet.
So… am I wasting my time with him? Thanks for any help.
That’s the truth, although of course experience >>>>> skill points and someone with the knowledge will generally kick ass against other players. Also, don’t let the learning curve get to ya.
- Piracy is also hard, but doable if you pick your targets correctly, solo. It’s still much better to be part of a corp (not guild, corp.)
- Missions are boring and require little to not brain power at any level, at all. PvE sucks.
- EVE is, essentially, a social game. Even if the people you’re socializing with play sociopathic homicidal maniacs in the game. It’s always better to be in a corp you like.
- EVE is paranoia. Everybody who has a clue will try to limit their chance of having spies in their corp/alliance, and even then, perfect security is impossible.
- It sounds like you need to figure out if you’re going to stick with the game or not, and once you are, look to join a quality bunch of folks. Otherwise you’re playing EVE, The Single Player Game… which, let’s face it, sucks compared to games like Freespace 2, or what have you.
Ask questions in these sorts of threads. I personally would be happy to suggest a skill plan towards whatever goal you set for yourself.
If you want PvE alt then Caldari are fine (and yes, they’re called “squids” in game, too). Honestly if you’re lazy like me, then the Ishtar passive shield tanked or dual armor repping will be able to run pretty much all LvL 4 missions and won’t have you going back to base for ammo all the time, either.
Anybody can participate in PvP… squids just generally suck at it. With some exceptions. The Crow is a pretty good inti, as intis go. The Eagle is a semi-decent sniper (that fails when compared against the Muninn and Zealot), and, erm… the Rokh is pretty good bait. Yah… cross train.
- This is true. Missiles suck it. Caldari, also, suck it.
- It wouldn’t take that long to branch out into something decent. You could go for Gallente easily enough but, tbh, Amarr is currently the true ‘end game’ race.
Not at all. The Raven is a decent PvE ship (although, IMO, inferior to the Ishtar). His skills also aren’t really focused and ideal to any one specific ‘path’, but it’ll do. Don’t let it get you down, just set course for a better goal. And you can even start as a Caldari carebear and go on to PvP. Ineve.net seems to be down right now, but I can link to my char in a few once it’s up.
If you want to roll with some rifter gangs in game, let me know, we’ll see what we can hook up. PM Teth Soress in game.
As promised:started as a Caldari carebear when Achura was still leet. Tried PvP, loved it, decided not to do any PVE’ing unless absolutely necessary ever again. Trained Gallente as I already had some skill in rails. Trained Minmatar during the nano craze. Switched to Amarr since they’re awesome and I had some points in guns already. Just stick with it.
Finn posted effectively what I would have–every faction has been king for one reason or another at some point since EVE started.
Hell, even if the Caldari aren’t stellar for damage, I know a lot of guys who think twice about going after a Scorpion or two unless they have numbers on their side, ewar being the same kind of bitch it always was.
Link’s not working now, I’ll give it a shot later. I was somewhat concerned about cross training because of the clone cost for wasted skill points (for instance the 700k or so points I have in missiles which I assume I’d never have a use for if I switched factions). If I read you all correctly, I shouldn’t bother myself thinking about it and just start training another faction’s ships with this character?
If I wanted to go Amarr for pvp, is the skill path posted above a good start for me?
I will do that, but don’t feel any obligation. I know babysitting can be annoying.
Another question: I’ve been running Lv2 missions for the Caldari Navy and I noticed that I’ve been losing faction with some of the other races. Should I be skipping story line missions or also running missions for the other races to keep things balanced?
Sorry 'bout the link. Ineve is tempermental… but it’s up again. The contents of the link itself aren’t really that important…
It’s really just more to show you that even starting out as a Caldari PvE noob, you can get to some high level PvP skills. I started playing in late 2006 and by late 2009, I can fly just about every T1 and most T2 sub ships with T2 guns.
It doesn’t make sense to drop a character, especially if you’ve already invested in learning skills. Better to stick with the char. Also better to make a long (1 year+) plan in EFT, get its suggested learning skills, and have it calculate a attribute remap for that year+ of skills.
Correct. Once you get past the few basic clone levels, 700K skillpoints is a minor amount. And, anyways, you might find a use for them down the road. While missiles do suck, stealth bombers are actually pretty cool in the right niche for a black ops gang.
Yeepers. You can also add in the skills you’d need for a HAC, but Amarr battleships are pretty nifty.
With a halfway decent FC, it’s not allllllll that much babysitting. “Warp here, wait, tackle this, call points…” And worst come to worst, you can fly with Agony Unleashed in their PvP basics course to get your bearings.
Either way. Storyline missions significantly raise your standing with the folks who assigned them (and their allies), but they also lower them for all their enemies. You can balance them out by running storyline missions for, say, Gallente, or you can just skip them entirely.
Blargh. That should read “sub cap ships” not “sub ships”.
You’re over thinking it. Every race has missile hardpoints on their ships and if you ever want to fly a Stealth Bomber those points will come in handy. Also, 700k is less than a months worth of training. Don’t sweat it, they’ll come in handy.
As for cross-training. FinnAgain has a valuable point, but I would caution against cross-training until you get bored of the race’s ships you are currently flying. But, don’t think of it as like some kind of major switch you are going to make. For instance, I can fly every races T1 frigates. For me to get up to every race’s T1 Battleships and that includes cruisers it would take me all of 3 weeks. It takes a little over a day to train every T1 frigate. So really it’s not that hard. But you’re right about the support skills, that’s where cross-training can become a bear. I’d recommend becoming decent in one race before you cross train, unless you still aren’t sure what race you like. For me, I am pretty good with Gallente. I can fly all the T2 frigates, half of the T2 cruisers and am within hours of flying Command Ships (T2 Battlecruisers). I’ve got the itch to crosstrain pretty bad. The only thing that’s holding my back is that I am polishing up my support skills. In four days I will have every gunnery support at 4 or better. Then after that I want to move on to getting my engineering and electronics skills into the right shape. Like Finn pointed out, I could easily crosstrain all of the races because now I can use turrets really well. I wouldn’t want to fly a Raven, because it’s a missile boat, but I could fly a Rokh or an Apocalypse or a Maelstrom pretty well. If I cross train I won’t be able to use the T2 guns of that race, but as much as people love to tell you how great T2 guns are, and they are, the support skills are much more important. Getting a gun type to 4 and having good support skills will allow you to do monster DPS with T1 guns.
If you want to fly Amarr ships, then definitely make the switch now, if you’re sure that’s what you want to master. But I’ve flown in Minmatar militia fleets where we positively spanked the Amarr. So if you’re flying Minmatar already, it’s a pretty good PVP race. And as bad as Caldari is because of Missiles, in a gang their E-War more than makes up for it. The Caldari strength is as snipers and E-War. Minmatar are great for their speed (even still). Gallente are kind of all arounders, if you have good drone skills, good turret skills and good armor tanking skills your Megathron will be a damn hard target.
It’s not even like that, we could turn you into an useful member of the team in about half an hour. I love taking noobs out on PVP roams. You’d be surprised. We used to run gangs with Republic Military School noobs back when the universities were still segregated by profession, and we’d trash disproportionate shit with noobs. If what you said is true about fucking with cruisers and battlecruisers in a frigate, then that’s awesome. When my frigate pilot Teth Soress was on a trial account I was spanking 1 and 2 year old toons. One time to teach my friend how to fit his Thorax (A gallente cruiser) I kicked his ass in a rifter while my toon was still a trial. You can be amazingly badass in a rifter with a month’s training.
It depends on how you do it. If you are fighting the other factions in a mission then your standing will go down. For instance my main, Teras Menac is KOS (kill on sight) in Amarr space.
I’ve been flying the minmatar ships with a minmatar alt. First because I was planning on dying a lot, and didn’t want to lose my crappy implants and have to keep paying for clones. Second because I didn’t want to lose my security rating. And third, because I read that rifters were the most effective newbie combat frigate.
It’s true, but I should be clear that I have had way more unsuccessful battles than successful. Hell, I’ve been blown up by mining barges – although they were clearly prepared, I was scrambled and hit with an army of combat drones.
This is my minmatar alt:
Analytical Mind=4
Instant Recall=4
Iron Will=4
Learning=4
Spatial Awareness=4
Electronics=4
Propulsion Jamming=3
Survey=3
Engineering=3
Energy Systems Operation=3
Shield Operation=2
Gunnery=4
Motion Prediction=3
Rapid Firing=3
Sharpshooter=3
Small Projectile Turret=5
Surgical Strike=3
Weapon Upgrades=3
Mining=2
Hull Upgrades=2
Mechanic=3
Salvaging=3
Missile Launcher Operation=2
Rockets=1
Afterburner=3
Navigation=3
Warp Drive Operation=1
Astrometrics=2
Cybernetics=1
Science=3
Minmatar Frigate=4
Spaceship Command=3
I trained astrometrics because I thought I’d be able to scan for ships. I didn’t realize the difference between core probes and combat probes. Can’t even fit the probe launcher to my ship.
I also spend some time looting peoples’ garbage in 0.0 - 0.4, hence the salvaging.