FoH guide to EVE Online

[Antarius]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

Dunno, if you're not interested in making more isk while you train you can just log off and wait I guess. With no social though I'm starting to see the picture...So, really up to you, get the stuff trained, should only take you a couple days to get up to connections 3 from social 0 I think (I don't have any connections trained myself but I did have social and for whatever reason I didn't find the l1 grind to be too bad). Keep making isk and gaining faction by running L1s or take a couple days off, up to you.

Hmm, are you running the highest quality level 1 agent you can? A higher quality agent will give you a bigger faction hit than a lower quality agent.

Run missions for a single agent until you get the storyline mission from him, and then switch to the highest quality agent that you've "unlocked" from those missions.

Also, if you can find a station with 2 agents of the same level, it's a great place to mission at.
Even if one of them is low quality, the time saved from having to dock half as often will make up for the slightly lower quality of the 2nd agent.

I just recently factioned up with a 2nd corp (my primary being Caldari Navy) and it only took me about 3 storyline level 1s to be able to do level 2s and about 4 storyline level 2s before I unlocked level 3s.

But by that point I was so frusterated with the low amount of isk/hour I was earning in the game I said "FUCK GALLENTE FACTION" and I went back to doing level 4s for Caldari, although it only took me about oh 2 hours before I remembered why I wanted to switch off Caldari in the first place (Motsu/Sailia lag)

Low Level mission running sucks, it's horrible isk/hour but imo it's more fun than mining, and you gotta make enough money to get into decent mission running ships somehow. (A drake fitted to run level 4s is going to cost you about 70 Million in modules/rigs in addition to the cost of the ship itself).

The one thing you can do though, is make sure to specialize before generalizing your character.

Probably the fastest skillpath to being able to run level 4s would be a skilling up for a drake, since it "only" requires Battlecruisers 4, Caldari Cruiser3(frigates 4), all 3 shield skills at 5 (Management/Operation/Upgrades), engineering/electronics 5, and basic rigging skills and you'll be able to tank any level 4 no problem, and then for the dps to break the tank of battleships you really just need heavy missiles 5(standard missiles 3), 3 or so in all the velocity/flight time/damage secondary skills to be able to get your missiles out to 65k or so, along with being able to field 5 light drones.

A slightly longer skillpath would get you doing level 4s in one of the decent battleship mission runners. (ie: Raven) where you'd cut out things like Heavy missiles 5 but then having to train up things like Missile Launcher Operation 5 instead.

And you definatly do NOT have to train missiles to be a great mission runner, There are plenty of good PVE ships that use guns, and you'd just focus on those ships and skills and mostly ignore your missile skills. A Moa will completely rape any level 2, a ferox will completely rape any level 3 and a Rokh does just fine in level 4s.

Edit: You should definatly train up social/connections if you plan on making your money from missions.

[Cad]

Good info, thanks.. Social 3 is training as we speak.. and the Connections book is waiting.. I'll train that up to 3 as well. I'm pretty happy with missiles ATM, but I'll probably cross-train guns once I'm stable doing level 3 or 4's. Being versatile is good right?

[Fog]

Originally Posted by Cad

Good info, thanks.. Social 3 is training as we speak.. and the Connections book is waiting.. I'll train that up to 3 as well. I'm pretty happy with missiles ATM, but I'll probably cross-train guns once I'm stable doing level 3 or 4's. Being versatile is good right?

Being versatile is great! The most fun thing to do is always to try all kinds of new ships and setups.

[Cad]

At this point I'd just be happy to do level 2 missions, the level 1's are so trivial it's irritating.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

You're getting sucked in by the Caldari Devil >.>

Thing is when you get on that mission-whoring path your missile skills become important to you. If your goal is to just be able to run L3s (good enough cash to fly small ships in PVP) you won't have to invest too much, maybe a mil honestly, but if you want to run L4s you're most likely going to need a fair bit more...and of course shield skills and...

Well you *can* pvp in Caldari ships as has been pointed out, and if you like the idea of interceptors of course the Crow is a missile boat and considered the #1/#2 interceptor for the vast majority of purposes (exception being alpha locker), the Drake is fine for gate camping and baiting and is of course a missile boat...the raven...does...things...

I'm just saying. On one hand it's not totally a dead-end street training caldari ships (blackbirds!!11) when it comes to PVP, but on the other hand be aware that if running L4s is your goal, and you're training Caldari...you're going to invest a fair amount into your missile and shield skills, and rarely them outside Caldari ships. Just a warning!

[Cad]

So what ships should I train? I'm open to suggestions.

[Fog]

Train whatever you want. You can PvP in Caldari ships, and you can run level 4 missions and rat with any race's battleships. Don't feel compelled to train something if you don't like being the same ship as everyone else / don't like how it looks / don't like the sound of it. No matter what race you train, it will be useful, so just train whatever race you feel like.

[Bottle]

Well shield skills are not that bad. The Pest and Sleipnir work fine as shield tankers so if you have a pile of sp in shield tanking. Cross train to Minnie ships when you're ready to pvp.

[Fog]

What's the "pile" of SP you guys are all putting in shield tanking, anyway? I have Shield Management 4, Shield Operation 5, and Tactical Shield Manipulation 4. That's what, a week and a half worth of training, and now I can tank a raven. Plus, two of those three skills are useful in any ship I ever fly.

I don't see the specialized investment here.

[Bottle]

Originally Posted by Fog

What's the "pile" of SP you guys are all putting in shield tanking, anyway? I have Shield Management 4, Shield Operation 5, and Tactical Shield Manipulation 4. That's what, a week and a half worth of training, and now I can tank a raven. Plus, two of those three skills are useful in any ship I ever fly.

I don't see the specialized investment here.

No it really isn't.

One of my chars only flies Gallente and I still have the shield skills to IV on him.

I just wanted to help combat the impression new players might be getting that shield skills = pve

[Cad]

Well, I definitely want to PvP at some point, should I just cross-train now and go for cruisers with another race's ships? Minmatar? I don't have Frigate 4 with Caldari yet so I'll have to train that one either way, and getting to 3 only takes a day. So if I'm going to make this choice now would be a good time.

[Dildo Faggins]

Originally Posted by Cad

Well, I definitely want to PvP at some point, should I just cross-train now and go for cruisers with another race's ships? Minmatar? I don't have Frigate 4 with Caldari yet so I'll have to train that one either way, and getting to 3 only takes a day. So if I'm going to make this choice now would be a good time.

Min frigates are definately all around the best when it comes to pvp, the rifter especially. Its excellent speed and versatility make it good at any roll you want a frigate to fill. Rifter is definately a great ship to start pirating in. Its cheap and good and fast, and perfectly capable of taking out larger ships that arent ready for pvp.

[gavinrad]

Well, im in the middle of cross-training into minmatar from caldari right now. I have a decent investment of missile and shield skills, but not so much that I feel parts of my character are wasted.

I've got 10.5m SPs all over the damn place, and even though I spend most of the time only using a small amount of those skills, I'm still happy to have most of em. If I could respec I would, but only to tighten my skills up a bit, not to completely respend them.

[Dildo Faggins]

Originally Posted by gavinrad

Well, im in the middle of cross-training into minmatar from caldari right now. I have a decent investment of missile and shield skills, but not so much that I feel parts of my character are wasted.

I've got 10.5m SPs all over the damn place, and even though I spend most of the time only using a small amount of those skills, I'm still happy to have most of em. If I could respec I would, but only to tighten my skills up a bit, not to completely respend them.

Plus missiles arent wasted on minmatar at all. Almost every one of their ships has missile slots, and good setups will take advantage of that.

[Cad]

Can someone give me the cliff's notes version as to why Caldari ships aren't good for PvP? I'm fine with that, I'm willing to cross-train, I don't have any particular loyalty - I just want to know the why.