FoH guide to EVE Online

[Tripamang]

Have they made level 2's considerably more difficult? I ran every single level 3 in my Caracal with 3 million'ish SP. Never had any issue ever with a level 2 mission :P (other than it was slow going).

I use a passive tanked nighhawk for level 4's now :P Damn thing is invincible.

[Fog]

Not really, they are really easy. How do you lose ships when there are no warp scramblers?

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Fog

Not really, they are really easy. How do you lose ships when there are no warp scramblers?

Being really dumb.

[gavinrad]

or just not paying attention. I lost a caracal in a level 2 because I didnt actually look at how much damage i was taking.

[Erronius]

Sounds like this is coming from players who have more than 900k SP too.

If there is one thing I've noticed, its that the old players look at things differently and tend to forget how things were. I had a lot of ship setups suggested to me, and guess what? I couldn't fit any of them. It all comes down to skills, and people tend to forget that. I don't care really, but people forget that it takes time to train up Eng5, Elec5, WU5/AWU5, and a ton of other skills just to get what many think of as 'baseline'. Without those integral skills, you simply are much less effective and can't fit modules for shit. Last night the FOH channel had the argument about the necessity of Eng5, along with other skills, and Caldari players were saying "Oh, I don't need those to fit my launchers, its easy". Too bad not everyone has that 'problem', right?

Also, people failed to mention to me that Caldari were easier to mission in overall, and that missiles generally get better results when you have low SP. I've noticed a LOT of people saying "such and such are ez, what is your problem?" only to continue on by mentioning they ran whatever in a Caracal or a Drake. I'm playing Minmatar, so whats my advantage, speed? That doesnt do much when you warp into a shitload of ships within 6k meters in something like a Blockade and get destroyed before you can even align and wtf warp out. It's wonderful too not being able to fit arties because of powergrid problems, and having your AC's miss or glance nearly every time. Hell, a lot of the time I run 5 projectile turrets and 3 various launchers (max number of launchers I can fit) - and often as not those 3 launchers do as much DPS if not more than those 5 turrets. If I could run 6-8 launchers on Min ship I would. People have come right out and told me that I wont be as effective with projectiles until my skills get better, and I dont have the luxury of being able to pilot some ezmode missile boat.

Like Tripa saying he ran 3s in a Caracal with 3m SP. I lost the cruisers when under 1M SP (hell, wtf, I'm doing 3s/4s at 1.5M!), and I am not Caldari. IMO thats a huge fucking difference. I'm also surprised that the 'experienced' players can't realize that regardless of everything else, sometimes you just lose a ship. I'm pretty sure that if I had DOUBLE my current SP or more than TRIPLE what I had when I lost the 2 cruisers (900k then, 1.5m now, versus 3m), and was Caldari on top of everything, that yes I'd be able to do 3s in a Caracal.

Besides, both cruisers I lost were on the warp-out anyways, with me running like a bitch. Both times I ended up well into a warp thinking I had got away with like 10% structure left only to suddenly be in a pod halfway back to a station in the middle of the warp tunnel. And in one of those Blockades I got stuck warping on an asteroid and didn't bounce clear until I was nearly dead.

One thing to mention perhaps is that I've basically been doing only missons so far. I've already got Republic Fleet faction high enough to have all the Lvl4 agents unlocked, and I've just went back to do RSS to level 3 agents so far. So when people say they did missions with something like 3mSP, I can only assume that people weren't hitting up missions right out of character creation like I have been doing. I would have been able to do fleet Lvl4s at about 1.2M SP had I wanted to iirc; my going so fast through missions levels at such low SP was probably a huge factor.

[Xequecal]

I started running level fours in an Abaddon at around 1.6M SP. I had to skip a lot of missions, but it eventually worked out. The extra PG and CPU means you can fit what you need even with low skills, and after doing a few missions I had enough ISK to install cap charge arrays to eliminate capacitor problems.

On this note, I don't know how people fit the loadouts they do sometimes. With Engineering IV, I BARELY have enough powergrid to put 8 Mega Pulse IIs and a large repper in my Abaddon now that I can finally use T2 guns. I see people claiming they have 7 Mega Pulse, a heavy NOS, AND a large repper in their freaking Armageddon, and I just don't see that working.

[Nako Mistako]

Stick with it, when you start hitting the T2 minny ships you will be very happy. Then, if you want, cross over to Gallente and you'll have even more ownage available to you.

[Gamblor]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

I started running level fours in an Abaddon at around 1.6M SP. I had to skip a lot of missions, but it eventually worked out. The extra PG and CPU means you can fit what you need even with low skills, and after doing a few missions I had enough ISK to install cap charge arrays to eliminate capacitor problems.

On this note, I don't know how people fit the loadouts they do sometimes. With Engineering IV, I BARELY have enough powergrid to put 8 Mega Pulse IIs and a large repper in my Abaddon now that I can finally use T2 guns. I see people claiming they have 7 Mega Pulse, a heavy NOS, AND a large repper in their freaking Armageddon, and I just don't see that working.

Amarr battleships pretty much require Advanced Weapon Upgrades IV or V for most builds.

[Khorum]

Need eng5 at least. In fact, some jackasses were making fun of a new pilot for not having Eng5 on the foh channel last night, he was caldari so he didnt prioritize it like an Amarr pilot would, but it's practically required. Still, it was a pleasant break from the usual plushgasming cockvore shit that pollutes that channel.

[Chinaman889]

Caldari are fuckin eazymode bitches. To all my fellow Minmatar brothers and sisters - stick with it.

Granted, my miner is Caldari....hehehe

I posted this once long ago - but WU and AWU are just too kickass to passby and train later. Get those and Eng/Elec5 asap and alot of your fitting problems will go away.

[Tripamang]

Originally Posted by Chinaman889

Caldari are fuckin eazymode bitches. To all my fellow Minmatar brothers and sisters - stick with it.

Granted, my miner is Caldari....hehehe

I posted this once long ago - but WU and AWU are just too kickass to passby and train later. Get those and Eng/Elec5 asap and alot of your fitting problems will go away.

A fleet of sniper tempests is a beautiful thing :P

[Sancus]

Caldari is "ezmode", but there's a lot more to it than that. Caldari are the easiest thing to run missions in with low SP, however...

Once you get more SP, Caldari ships are somewhere between mediocre to just plain bad for most pvp, and your missile skills do jack shit for you in fleet battles, and are nothing more than mediocre even in small gang pvp. Burn Eden aside(and I've heard absolutely nothing about their setups that can't be duplicated even more effectively with rails or artillery, cruise missiles don't have incredibly impressive dps, alpha, or range) most people who fly Caldari ships in pvp do so because they trained them for their early-bird PvE ezmode capability.

So, as fun as it is to complain about Caldari ezmode, it's really kind of bullshit, because EVE is a pvp game, you pve only so that you can afford to pvp, and having advantages in pvp is more meaningful than having them in pve. I fly Caldari myself, and I would give anything to switch all my missile skills into gunnery and my Caldari ship skills into Gallente. I have roughly 8M SP, fwiw, which is a lot more than a noob, but isn't exactly massive.

Caldari would make a lot more sense if their hybrid-weapon based path was viable, but it's not, the only good Caldari ship that uses rails is the Rokh, and while it's a good ship, it doesn't help Caldari pilots who have trained missiles at all, and Gallente has a much smoother hybrid-based path with more ship classes that can use them without totally sucking.

You really have a choice, whether to take a more difficult path at the start of missioning, so that you don't waste SP in things that aren't great for pvp, or to take the ezmode path and then end up with mediocre pvp skills.

Of course, there's a "middle" path, where you train Caldari ships and just T1 missile skills, then train gunnery skills, but that does waste a significant amount of SP, at least for a noob.

[Chinaman889]

A fleet of sniper tempests is a beautiful thing :P

Amen.

[Erronius]

Just to clarify, I wasn't wanting to lob things at you Tripa - you just mentioned some milestones and I ran with it.

What I typed wasn't directed at anyone; it was just general angst. Just so no one thinks I was out to attack anyone specifically, /shrug.


I will say I don't understand Caldari in general; I was surprised to hear that Caldari are pimp for PVE and not so much in PVP. I expected something different I suppose when I started, and I assumed there would be more balance than there is. I honestly don't know that if I knew what I knew back when I was starting my character, if I would go Caldari or not. I'm a bit tired of seeing 90%+ of the BSs in highsec are either Ravens or Domis, and thats in Minmatar space mind you. I'm sure those are mostly people doing Lvl4s, at least thats my assumption.

I'll just keep telling myself that I'll have a foot up being Minmatar when I hit PVP, and am in a covops or intie.

[Khorum]

Well don't look now but word is the caldari Rokh is the best sniper BS in the game.