EVE beginner

[RedImperator]

What benefit does belonging to a race confer? None of the races look all that appealing from the RP side of things. Usually races have some kind of stat bonuses or something.

So far as I know, there is no benefit or drawback to picking any race or class anymore. The only thing it effects is your picture and what rookie ship you get if you dock in a station in a pod.

Keep in mind, your character stats don't affect anything except your skill training anyway. All of your performance bonuses come from your skills and, optionally, implants or boosters (drugs which give temporary buffs; they're pretty rare because they're illegal in highsec and hence overpriced). You can train any character to do anything as effectively as any other character; the catch is the time you have to spend training to do it.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

The Amarr destroyer is the Coercer. It has a lot of potential with 7 turret hardpoints, but only one midslot is brutal. It does have four lows for a decent armor tank, but you'll almost certainly have to spend one of them on a powergrid mod to actually take advantage of those 7 turret hardpoints.

8 turret hardpoints, actually. I'm flying a Coercer right now, for running Level 1 missions. It's not giving me too many troubles with the powergrid, and as Red said, it's... really effective at taking on swarms of Frigates, which are really all you face in Level 1 missions.

RedImperator, I'm aiming for a Cruiser (Omen) right now, but should I stick with Frigates/Destroyers instead? Trial accounts can't get the skills for anything above a Cruiser, and I'm not sure if I like this game enough or will stick with it long enough to warrant forking out money for an account. And buying a PLEX seems out of the equation, since I don't think I'll be able to grind up 300+ million ISK in the 9 days I have left, not in high sec anyway.

[RedImperator]

The Amarr destroyer is the Coercer. It has a lot of potential with 7 turret hardpoints, but only one midslot is brutal. It does have four lows for a decent armor tank, but you'll almost certainly have to spend one of them on a powergrid mod to actually take advantage of those 7 turret hardpoints.

8 turret hardpoints, actually. I'm flying a Coercer right now, for running Level 1 missions. It's not giving me too many troubles with the powergrid, and as Red said, it's... really effective at taking on swarms of Frigates, which are really all you face in Level 1 missions.

RedImperator, I'm aiming for a Cruiser (Omen) right now, but should I stick with Frigates/Destroyers instead? Trial accounts can't get the skills for anything above a Cruiser, and I'm not sure if I like this game enough or will stick with it long enough to warrant forking out money for an account. And buying a PLEX seems out of the equation, since I don't think I'll be able to grind up 300+ million ISK in the 9 days I have left, not in high sec anyway.

I would say that, despite my complaints about the Omen, you should at least get into it just to see what flying a cruiser is like. An Omen is, in theory if not entirely in practice, a juvenile Harbinger (same general fitting and fighting philosophy), and an Omen will let you see if you like the straightforward tank'n'gank style. If I recall correctly, if you're doing Amarr missions you're fighting Sanshas, who die to lasers pretty effectively, so you should be able to handle level II's without too much trouble.

[Jaevric]

Thanks for the information. I'll probably sign up for a month or two and see if I'm still liking the game. Trying to get a friend of mine into the trial; he's one of those people who always made a killing playing the auction house on WoW and gets into the "number-crunching" side of games so I figure he'd have a blast with EVE.

[charlemagne]

Well the game used to set up your starting skills and attributes differently depending on what race, caste and profession you chose. This led to lots of angry newbs because you could end up with a "mining toon" that took ages to train into a proper pvp char, so they changed that up - all characters now start with the same basic attributes and skills (except the racial frigate skill), and the race selection is overall purely cosmetic and rp background now (the races and castes look distinctively different and you cannot make a Minmatar that looks like an Amarr for example).

I chose Gallente because it's US style "you WILL embrace our democracy" with a French twist IN SPACE

[Lagmonster]

I must be doing something wrong, because my weapon of choice has been the Amarr Destroyer, simply because I can load it up with guns and still have room for three T2 Smartbomb thingies, which seems to work miracles where I can sit perfectly still in those Pith storage depot deadspace areas, and every enemy in the room will hover around me like bees and die after a few seconds without me having to target just about anything, at which point I can sidle up to the various storage buildings and such and lowly chip them away to get to the sweet loot inside.

Am I *supposed* to be able to do that?

[Stofsk]

I chose Gallente because it's US style "you WILL embrace our democracy" with a French twist IN SPACE

Don't the different races have different weapons? Amarr have lasers, Caldari have missiles? What do the others have?

[Dartzap]

I chose Gallente because it's US style "you WILL embrace our democracy" with a French twist IN SPACE

Don't the different races have different weapons? Amarr have lasers, Caldari have missiles? What do the others have?

Gallante have Drones and Blasters, the Mims have Autocannons and, uh, nukes, lots of.

[charlemagne]

Don't the different races have different weapons? Amarr have lasers, Caldari have missiles? What do the others have?

Well yeah, but just with ships it's only a question of trained skills. Of course ship bonuses steer you towards the racial main weapon (Amarr ships will have bonuses to lasers, not autocannons), but just because you're an Amarr character doesn't mean you can't fire missiles or shoot autocannons.

[RedImperator]

I chose Gallente because it's US style "you WILL embrace our democracy" with a French twist IN SPACE

Don't the different races have different weapons? Amarr have lasers, Caldari have missiles? What do the others have?

Caldari also use hybrids; I'm pretty sure all of their gun platforms get a range bonus, so most non lolfits use railguns (I designed a sniping Cormorant in EVEfit yesterday that can hit at over 110km). Gallente use hybrids and drones. Minmatar primarily use projectile weapons--autocannons for short range, artillery for long--but a lot of their ships have mixed hardpoints and use missiles as well. Amarr use mostly lasers, but there are actually a few viable Amarr autocannon fits, and they also use drones on many of their ships for supplemental damage (they have a few dedicated droneboats, as well).

And you didn't ask for this, but I'll tell you anyway: Gallente and Amarr are armor tankers, some Minmatar ships armor tank and others shield tank (and most of them speed tank), Caldari are exclusive shield tankers.

[ArmorPierce]

well my ceo deleted his character and all the leadership abandoned ship. So I'm looking for a corp. Anyone in a active eastern standard time corp?

[Steven Snyder]

Finding good 0.0 US TZ corps is tough business, Atlas Alliance is the big US alliance.

A lot depends on what you want to do with your career and what you can do.

[Steven Snyder]

Incidentally, I have my learning skills at 4/3, and for anything other than a few year-long plans, EVEmon never suggests training a learning skill. Pushing learning skills to 5/4 will almost never pay off.

They will pay off if you play the game for a year or more, the breakpoint is somewhere around 9 months. The calculations I used showed a 2 million SP difference between the 5/4 and 4/3 learning skil threshold over the period of a year.

But seeing as how learning skills are on the way out, don't bother.

[Mr. Coffee]

Incidentally, I have my learning skills at 4/3, and for anything other than a few year-long plans, EVEmon never suggests training a learning skill. Pushing learning skills to 5/4 will almost never pay off.

They will pay off if you play the game for a year or more, the breakpoint is somewhere around 9 months. The calculations I used showed a 2 million SP difference between the 5/4 and 4/3 learning skil threshold over the period of a year.

But seeing as how learning skills are on the way out, don't bother.

Steve, I've been playing EVE for two years now and trust me when I say that training the learning skills past 4 (except for Learning itself) is a waste of time. I've actually done the "maths" on this in EVEmon with a training plan to take me from where I'm at currently out to flying an Avatar-class Titan and the highest rated battle clinic fit for it is 302 days without any learning skills and 384 days and some change with taking the time to train all the learning skills to 5. Basically if I did things your way and assumed (wrongly) that training learning skills to 4/5 would help if I was playing past 9 months I'd add 82 days to my training time. If you want to boost your attributes like that you're much better off taking the 10-14 days it takes to train cybernetics to five so you can use the improved grade attribute implants then you would be spending 80-100 days training all the learning skills to 4/5.

[Mr. Coffee]

Ok, while I'm at it, let me learn the new players (characters less than six months old) or future new players (character is still a hopeful gleam in the player's eyes) on the serious no-shit easiest training plan for your first six months that'll take you from day zero know-nothing nublett to rocking a T2 fit battle cruiser fit for PvP or PVE.

Step 1: Go to Battleclinic.com and download the EVEMon client. EVEMon is a third party tool that helps you plan and monitor your character/s training plan and skill progression. EVEMon can train you for specific ships with specific fits and even tells you the recommended skill certifications needed to rock your chosen boat at something resembling competence. If you have trouble figuring out the interface go download Skype, send me a PM (Or Red, he knows this shit too) and I'll walk you through setting this up.

Step 2: Go to the EVE Online website and get your API key info, load that into EVEMon to get your character loaded in, then create a new training plan (I'd call the plan something like "First Six Months", but you can call it whatever you want I guess...). Load the best battle cruiser for your specific race and weapon preference, add the ship, add the suggested certificates, and then add the suggested learning skills. Now find the highest rated PvP fit from the battle clinic loadouts (pretty much always going to be a T2 fit) and add the skills for that loadout. Follow this plan and DO NO FUCKING DEVIATE FROM IT UNTIL IT IS DONE. If you do deviate then you are wrong and should go play Puzzle Pirates or WoW or whatever else. EVE is a lot about patience and if you can't be patient enough to plan your trainign and then train your plan then this game ain't for you.

Congrats, now you've got a training plan that will get all your learning skills to 3/4, take your from frigates to cruisers to battlecruisers, and set you up with a full T2 fit(Guns, tank, support mods, drones, ect) and all the support skills needed. Now you're ready to rock out with your cock out in either PvP or PVE, though I'd strongly suggest finding a good alliance with a training corp to show you how to do the PvP thing (unless you like getting your ass kicked a lot, then hey, do whatever the fuck ya want, hero...).

[RedImperator]

I started an EVEmon plan to test the learning skills, too. To take a total nublet--brand new character--to competently flying an Avatar, EVEmon only suggested training one of the tier 1 skills to level V. It did suggest pushing the tier 3 skills to IV (except the charisma skill, of course), but this is a pretty specialized plan, and the only players you'd see using it are future Titan alts sitting in stations with a set of +5s in their heads. If that same nublet followed Coffee's advice and decided to train for a T2 fit Zealot (with all certificates claimed, by the way), EVEmon doesn't even suggest pushing learning to V, let alone any of the tier 1 learning skills, and only suggest one tier 3 skill be pushed to IV. If you frontloaded those learning skills, it would take you 8 days to train them, as opposed to the 38 days it would take to train to 5/4.

tl;dr: Stop telling nubs to spin their ships for a month. Just because we followed bad advice doesn't mean the players who came after us have to.

[Temjin]

Well, training up those learning skills good and early can be usefull.... if you know for a fact that you'll be playing for the next few years or so.

But yeah, I have no idea why the hell people still give that advice. I can't think of a worse thing for player retention than for everyone and their uncle telling newbs to train all their learning skills as soon as possible. Eve can already be boring enough without making it moreso

[Mr. Coffee]

If that same nublet followed Coffee's advice and decided to train for a T2 fit Zealot (with all certificates claimed, by the way), EVEmon doesn't even suggest pushing learning to V, let alone any of the tier 1 learning skills, and only suggest one tier 3 skill be pushed to IV. If you frontloaded those learning skills, it would take you 8 days to train them, as opposed to the 38 days it would take to train to 5/4.

This.

To expand the entire reason why my "Turn a Nub into a Death machine In Six Months or your Iskies Back (yeah, right...)" plan is set up the way it is is it front loads the learning skills and has them done to 3/4 in a little over a week thanks to the beginning player's accelerated learning rate, then it walks them through a lot of the core, offensive, and defensive certs, and get's them into being able to fly some pretty decent ships fairly quickly. I'd honestly recomend traing up to a t2 fit BC before going for a T2 cruiser of any kind though. The reason being if you train the T2 fit BC you'll have all the skills needed to rock the hell out of a T2 Cruiser hull (T2 tank, T2 gank, and T2 point) so that the only thing you really need to train at that point is your racial cruiser to five and a couple levels of HACs or whatever. THe other upside to this is if you want to cross-train to another race, the Battlecru8iser's skill is independent of race, so you can just train up the other race's frigs and cruisers a bit and you're ready to fly for the most part (barring not having the specific racial weapon systems, but that's a whole new trainign class subject).

tl;dr just do what I said to do two posts above this one and you're golden.

tl;dr: Stop telling nubs to spin their ships for a month. Just because we followed bad advice doesn't mean the players who came after us have to.

I seem to remember a few months back me and Stark beating that jackoff Blayne over the head about traing learnign skills to 5 being a waste of time. I'm starting to think this is gonna become a trend with EVE threads around here with someone swearing up and down that learning skills to five is the way to go before getting the ol' boot o' learning to the face from people that actually know what they're doing.

[Questor]

As a quick update, a couple of my friends are helping me out, and that - at least for me - seems to be the key. If I was going solo, I doubt that I would have kept playing, especially since the tutorial led me straight into (eventually) a mission with a ship that I couldn't even damage.

As for their advice on skills... Exactly the same as coffee. Get all the learning skills to 4/3.

One thing that I've discovered, at least at the moment is that it does wonders for my motivation if I set the skills up so that the long ones train while I'm offline. (I realize I'm not going to be able to keep arranging that for long.)

Also, EVEmon and EFT are musts. There's a darwine packaged version if you use a mac.

[Jaevric]

As a quick update, a couple of my friends are helping me out, and that - at least for me - seems to be the key. If I was going solo, I doubt that I would have kept playing, especially since the tutorial led me straight into (eventually) a mission with a ship that I couldn't even damage.

Yeah, I just got my Catalyst (Gallente Destroyer) and I'm getting towards the end of my trial and debating whether to put money into the game. My normal game buddies are opposed to even downloading the trial because the game's been out for so long and the other players are well-established; I'm trying to point out to them that the starting tutorials give you a huge leg up in terms of ships and skills. Besides, with the new planetary management stuff it seems like a good time for a new player to start making a niche for himself.

I've definitely had good luck following the advice on these forums, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how helpful the people in the rookie help channel have been as well. I wonder if it's the fact that WoW's learning curve is such a joke that people tend to be a lot more abusive to (admittedly, often stupid) questions, while EVE players seem to be consistently more helpful (when they're not shooting at you).

Though I'm completely baffled by how one person managed to "accidentally" shoot the starting space station, given the number of steps involved...

[White Haven]

Eh, if he primed a module to go active on the next target locked and then accidentally ctrl-clicked the station... Still dumb, but understandable, I've plastered wrecks that way before.

[Prannon]

To be honest, for those who complain that others are well established and that there isn't room for new entries in EVE, they don't really know what they're talking about. Every corp I've been around is always eager for new blood and there are training outfits out there for people who are new to the game. This game lives on new blood and recruitment at the high end. I'm about a year in, myself, and I kinda feel like I can roll around with the big boys because I'm already flying stealth bombers, recon frigates, assault frigs, and the Gallente strategic cruiser. That last one is the one that takes the cake, too, cuz that's half a billion isk minimum investment. Also got advanced medium hybrid turrets. All that in a year, and that's saying nothing about the tech one ships that I could fit and fly that a much lower SP pilot could have a go at.

[Molyneux]

I played for a few months not too long ago, but only one of my friends actually played the game...I do love EVE, but I just couldn't justify the time or money spent.
Maybe I'll give it a try again sometime; I didn't know so many people here played!

[Jaevric]

Well, I said to hell with it and signed up for a subscription. Look me up in-game as Aledris Toramas (Gallente) if you're interested in doing something (or shooting at me -- I carry lots of insurance). I'm usually screwing around in a Catalyst or an Incursus at this stage.

I've had a few people tell me I'm gimping myself by flying Gallente ships, but we'll see how it goes.

[RedImperator]

Catalysts are fun. I hero tackled (and almost solo-popped) a Sabre in one last week.

The problem for Gallente is mostly blasters. Since the speed nerf, blasters just aren't a very good weapon compared to autocannons or pulse lasers. They also have a crummy racial ECM. But their drone boats are nice--neutralizer Dominixes are nasty battleships.

Worst case, since Gallente armor tank and use a cap-heavy turret, you can crosstrain Amarr pretty easily. Probably the best combination would be Gallente frigs and cruisers, and Amarr battlecruisers and battleships, if you wanted to go that route. But there are decent ships available at all levels for Gallente.

Basically, ignore anyone who tells you, "Oh, race X sucks, don't fly them." Different races do better in different roles, and admittedly some have fewer viable ship choices than others at a given level, but all four races have effective ships. Most of the people who dismiss an entire race's ship lineup have never flown outside their favored race, or have a preferred style that doesn't work for that race.