Greetings my fellow corp men, women, & blog readers!!!

***Disclaimer*** This guide represents the way I go about scouting out Wormholes.  The loss of any ship while attempting what is discussed below will be your own damn fault.  It also assumes you know the basic mechanics of exploration scanning. (Exploration Guide & Exploration Tutorial)  Any reference to a noob is merely tongue in cheek reference to the author’s own repeated mistakes.

So now that you have some of the basics of wormhole scouting… how do you put it all together?

Step One – Find a Wormhole

Warp to it cloaked, and bookmark it using the wormhole (right-click in overview, Bookmark Location) and not a spot in space, this insures a warp to 0m bookmark that lands inside the jump range of the wormhole.  When you warp to the wormhole, land far enough away that you will not become uncloaked.  It is not uncommon to land on a wormhole and find a ship sitting idle beside it.  Just like a gate in Null or Low Sec you have to consider what is on the other side?  You also must take into account what kind of space are you currently in?  High sec allows the benefits of chasing someone in and offering an easy escape route if things go south.  This easy escape route can also be used by a potential target.  Pilots new to exploration often like to hug the wormhole like a safety blanket.  Upon entry into a wormhole a ship will be generally within distance to immediately jump back out of the wormhole. (***Warning*** Jumping through a wormhole begins a 4 minute timer.  During that timer you will only be able to jump through that wormhole once more, and will be unable to jump again until it expires.) There will sometimes be a small window of opportunity that may allow you to bump (MWD or AB) into a target to shove them off the wormhole.  This usually occurs when they uncloak immediately having driven off the wormhole or they are too busy looking at the system map while scanning.

I used this exact tactic by following an Orca pilot into wormhole space.  The bump did two things.  It kept him from aligning out, and got him out of jump range.  This allowed me time to get a target lock and point him.  By making continues runs to the wormhole then back into him I kept him out of jump range of the wormhole, and I pounded away at his shields and armor (I told you my T3 “Anathema” has teeth).  Lucky for the pilot I was in a generous mood and stopped at structure, and let him go (think of it as a form of catch and release).  As he departed, I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind if he could tip me for being kind?  The happy pilot, now safely back in High Sec, tipped me 100 million ISK.  He was very relieved not to have to explain to his corp how he lost their Orca loaded with POS fuel.  If you get the same chance, you could be looking at a 500 million ISK ransom or more.  If the pirate ransom thing interests you, I’d suggest you check out some of the pirate blogs on Crazy Kinukz blog pack.

If there are no targets sitting on the entrance to the wormhole, check the wormhole’s status and signature (you may want to do this prior to chasing a target into a wormhole).  Things to consider; what kind of space does it enter into, are there any signs of traffic (i.e. has its mass has been effected), what are the mass limitations of the wormhole?  You don’t want to have your battleship gang show up, if the wormhole will only allows BCs and smaller.  You can determine all of this information by reading the information from the wormhole (right-click Show Info).  Using a wormhole web application you can check enter in the wormholes signature number.  This will tell you the mass limitations that can enter at one time (size of ship) and the maximum allowable mass that may pass through the wormhole. (***Warning & Advisory*** You will never know the exact amount of mass that has passed through a wormhole, unless you are certain you are the first person to pass through it, and keep eyes on it.  A wormhole will collapse when the total mass that has passed through it has reached or has surpassed its limit.  Having armored plates increases your ships mass.  Taking such modules offline prior to passing through them will reduce the impact of your ships mass on the wormhole.  A MWD increases your ships signature radius, and may prevent your ship from going through a smaller wormhole when it is active.) If you are hunting mass isn’t as much of a concern, but if you are scouting it is vital information.  The key word in all the descriptions is “critical.” If you see this word it either means that the wormhole’s life span or total mass has fallen below 25% of its starting limits.  The wormhole is relatively fresh if you see in the wormhole’s description, “This wormhole is beginning to decay, and probably won’t last another day.  This wormhole has not yet had its stability significantly disrupted by ships passing through it.”

If you are in a ship that is a scout, you need to insure your gang has the bookmark to the wormhole.  One of the most frustrating things that can happen… You finally find some targets, but because you didn’t pass on your bookmarks to your gang you have to de-cloak and jump out to get them.  Only to return to find that your targets spotted you on their Directional Scanner while you made one of those jumps, and now they are safely sitting in a POS force field.  I recommend that your gang always have the bookmarks up to the wormhole you are working in.  For you fleet types… operate as a +1 scout in wormhole space.  This +1 recommendation only applies if you are actively scanning wormholes.  If the routes have already been scanned down, bookmarks should already be available to the fleet, and you can scout farther ahead.  Having a corporation storage can for wormhole bookmarks is a MUST for wormhole operations. (***Reminder*** Be sure your corp mates know how to take & make copies of bookmarks from a can.  BTW you can only copy or move 5 at a time!)

Step Two – Jump In

There are a few things you need to do immediately after jumping in.  They need not be done in a specific order, but all should be done before your initial jump in cloak is gone.  Bookmark your entry wormhole (your People/Places tab should have already been open noob!) Don’t worry about the name you can change that later, when you’re safe.  Look to see what is on or around your wormhole?   Scan the system using the Directional Scanner (it should have been open too… gawd you noob!)  Insure you don’t have “Use Current Overview Settings” checked.  Yes this will show everything in system such as moons and planets.  You want to know if all the planets in the system are within range of your location.  If they are, you will know immediately if there are any player owned structures or uncloaked ships in space (Assume there may be some cloaked).  If there are planets missing from the scan then you know you must make additional warps to get them scanned.  This is what I like to call, “passive eyes on” the entire system.  I do this prior to launching probes.  Finally, begin to burn away (MWD/AB) from the wormhole, and activate your cloak.

Step Three – Get Passive Eyes on the Wormhole

Check to see if any custom offices are present.  If, on your initial directional scan, you have not observed all the planets in system, then warp around the system cloaked until you have.  Be sure your directional scanner is set to maximum distance of 2,147,483,647km (or simply fill the Directional Scanner Range box with all 9s and it will default to the farthest range).  All signatures spawn within 4 AU of a planet.  Any potential targets should be within Directional Scanner distance of a planet.  The Directional Scanner should be used on the entire system, before you attempt to determine the location of any targets currently in system.  Why?  Because situational awareness is critical!  In known space (k-space), a pilot has local to determine how many other pilots are in system.  In wormhole space (w-space) you do not.  The last thing you want to do is engage a target only to have 5 of his buddies land on top of you.  It is not unusual for a group of ships doing multiple sites at once, particularly in class 1&2 wormholes.

A check of the entire system, with the Directional Scanner, will also help you determine if there are any POS’s in system, and if it is online (the Directional Scanner will show a force field present if it is).  By locating all POS’s you can do several things.  First, by clicking on the POS you can see which corporation is present, and by checking their information tab you can see its member strength.  Second you can determine the most likely location your targets will run to when you engage them, or in that rare case that they are able to determine you are in their wormhole.  If they don’t run back to the POS, odds are that they ran back to the wormhole that they entered from.  With miners, the POS will be the location where their hauler, Orca, or Rorqal will most likely be.  Solo miners will have to jump back to swap into a hauling ship, otherwise the hauler pilot will be sitting idle inside the force field.  The POS is also the likely location for any AFK pilots as well.  By putting eyes on the POS and bookmarking it, you will be able determine this type of information.  In the case of miners, I will often watch to see how they are collecting their ore.  If you are working in a gang with access to your own hauling ship, you can time this pick up run, then walk away with a killmail and a full can of Arkonor or Bistot as well.

If no ships are observed on the passive scan of the wormhole, then it is time to probe out all the Cosmic Signatures for another wormhole to hunt in.  You should also be using the Directional Scanner.  You can get one to two directional scans while you wait for your probes’ results.  Be vigilant of your surroundings at all times! (Unable to scan down wormholes with combat scanner probes?  Skill up noob!)

Combat ships with wrecks or mining ships with cans are what you are hoping to see on the Directional Scanner.  It is now time to go find your prey.  To this end the directional scanner is still your friend.  By reducing the angle of the scan and the scan range we can determine which planet our target is closest to.  (***Tip*** You can use the F-11 Key to Open the Map Browser.  Four displays will appear.  The solar system display will show your location in the system and the angle your Directional Scanner will be scanning.) Be sure to use a pvp tab in your overview and check the “Use Current Overview Settings” box in the Directional Scanner window. (***Reminder*** All signatures will be within 4 AU of a celestial object.)

The following is general guide for AU distances:

1 AU = 149,597,870km (150,000,000)

2 AU = 299,195,740km (300,000,000)

3 AU = 448,793,610km (450,000,000)

4 AU = 598,391,481km (600,000,000)

5 AU = 747,989,351km (750,000,000)

6 AU = 897,587,221km (900,000,000)

7 AU = 1,047,185,092km (1,050,000,000)

8 AU = 1,346,380,832km (1,350,000,000)

14 AU = 2,147,483,647km (2,150,000,000) *Max Directional Scanner Range

If the target is a combat ship with wrecks we can still passively attempt to locate the ship using the System Scanner by conducting a sensor scan without probes (this will take 30 seconds per attempt).  All Cosmic Anomalies within 4 AU of your ship will appear.  We can then warp to each anomaly to see if our target is present.  If the target is not in an Anomaly or if it is a mining ship then we can be relatively certain our target is in a Cosmic Signature and we will need to use combat scanner probes to locate our target. (***Advisory*** Do not attempt to use core probes for this function.  Using Scanner Core Probes may result in multiple Cosmic Signature hits, and does not look for ships.  We want to find the ship not the signatures!)

Step Four – Probe Out Your Target

Before you drop probes attempt to use your Directional Scanner to determine what direction and range from the planet the target is.  Having a direction will tell you where to move your group of probes to scan.  When it is time to uncloak and drop your probes, the best location would be off of a planet outside of Directional Scan range from your target.  This will help you remain hidden. For smaller systems a location closets your target will make for short warp times to the target.  From there you can move your probes to the general location of your target.  Because you have a general idea of your target’s location you can start your scan at .5 to 4 AU range.  With luck you can have a 100% signal strength hit on your target with one maybe two scans.  Once you have 100% signal, bookmark the location and warp to the target at range.  Remember there could be a lot of debris you will have to negotiate to get to the target.  Additionally, once you have a 100% hit either recall your probes or move them to conduct a scan outside of your target’s Directional Scanner range.  If you are lucky, the target might have been lazy on his Directional Scans, and has not seen your probes during your probing attempts.  Once you have eyes on your target, I have three things that should dictate your actions:

Be bold… Be Brief… Be Gone!!!

One last tip before I go.  It is not uncommon to land 150km or more from your target.  It may not be possible to slowly move across the site cloaked in time to engage your target. (The target may be finishing up salvaging the site’s wrecks, and only have one or two more remaining.)  You can right-click in the overview, and bookmark the wreck.  This will allow you to warp out, and then return to an optimal range of that last wreck your target is about to salvage. (***Disclaimer*** Not that I condone you wait until the last wreck is salvaged, to increase the possible loot drop from your target’s wreck.)

Fly Safe… Stay Profitable…

Next Report: To Be… or Not to Be… such is the way of pvp

Greetings my fellow corp men, women, & blog readers!!!

***Disclaimer*** This guide represents the way I go about scouting out Wormholes.  The loss of any ship while attempting what is discussed below will be your own damn fault.  It also assumes you know the basic mechanics of exploration scanning. (Exploration Guide & Exploration Tutorial)

Ok so you want to put your exploration skills to the test?  There will be few things that you will need before you decide to venture into wormhole (WH) space.  The first will be the skills, second is the hardware, third situational awareness, and finally how to use all three to your advantage.  Lacking in anyone of these can only lead to the loss of another ship, and end up with an immediate clone jump back to your chosen station.  Depending on whether you are simply scanning (exploring) the wormhole or hunting (pvp) greatly affects how you need to go about the task.  I will explain in each section as to the difference, but stressing more of the aspects of hunting.

First the skills:

Astrometrics – Allows one additional probe in space per level.  At level one you will have the ability to use four scanner probes, at level five you will have the ability to field eight.  There is a lot of debate on how many probes that are needed to efficiently probe a signature down.  I have found that there is very little need to have more than 5 probes on field in either role of hunting or scanning.  While scanning a lot of folks feel that a five probe setup (1 central probe with 4 probes forming a box around it) helps to quickly identify the type of signature.  I have found that a simple 4 probe box setup to be the quickest way to get probes out AND scanning.  After launching the first probe the Expanded Probe Launcher has a reload time of 2 seconds and the Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher is 1.5 seconds.  This means that it will take you just over 4.5 to 6 seconds to attempt your first scan.  During this time you are visible on grid, and possibly have your ship identified on the Directional Scanner.  If you are only scanning a wormhole this is not a factor, but if you are hunting you would like to limit the amount of information the target has and limit the amount of time he has to react.  In other words the more probes you put out, the more time you are visible on the Directional Scanner.

Astrometric Acquisition – 10% reduction in scan probe scan time per level.  The faster your probes can finish the scan the better!  The ultimate goal is to scan down a ship with one maybe two scans.

Astrometric Pinpointing – Reduces maximum scan deviation by 10% per level.  The reduction of the scan’s deviation reduces the error in the signal’s position.  This limits how far that small dot that represents your target’s position will move between scans, and allows for you to quickly shrink down your box of probes and their AU radius around the target.  This can reduce the amount of attempts it takes to scan a target down, as you won’t have to back out to a larger AU radius because your dot just turned back into a large red ball.

Astrometric Rangefinding – 10% increase to scan probe strength per level.

If you want to hunt with probes all of these skills are vital (level 4+).  Additionally when you get them high enough with the appropriate equipment you will find that you can scan down 99% all wormhole signatures without ever having to launch a single core probe, and if your target is hiding in one of those sites, you’ll probes will find the ship.  ***Clarification*** This does not take into account if the ship is setup to avoid probes.

Cloaking III – Allows the use of the Improved Cloaking Device II.

Second the Hardware:

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II – For hunting this is the only cloak to have.  If you can’t warp while cloaked, you will find it hard to get to your target before they are gone.  For scanning any cloak will do.  Want to scan with no cloak?  Safe spots and aligning is all I got for you.

Expanded Probe Launcher I (Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher) – Required to use Combat Scanner Probes Rate of Fire 2.0secs (Sister Variant Rate of Fire 1.5secs & 5% Scan Strength Bonus)

Combat Scanner Probe I (Sisters Combat Scanner Probe) – Required to scan down ships Base Sensor Strength 20pts (Sisters Variant Base Sensor Strength 22pts)

Ships – The classifications of ships that can fit a Covert Ops Cloaking Device are:  Covert Ops, Recon, and Strategic Cruisers fit with the Covert Reconfiguration Subsystem.  IMHO the only choices for this role are the Covert Ops Frigate or the T3 Strategic Cruiser fit with the Covert Reconfiguration & Emergent Locus Analyzer Subsystems. (My links are Amarrian examples, as that is what I fly)  The frigate is the best choice if you are scouting for a gang.  If, you want to hunt solo, then the Strategic Cruiser is the only way to go.  I like to think of my current setup as an Anathema with teeth…  really large teeth!

Implants

Of all the equipment needed for scanning these are the least critical, however if you are one of those people that want to have the absolute best… then start saving now.  You will be looking at well over a billion to plug these things into your head.  Additionally there may be other implants that may serve your play style a lot better and a lot cheaper.  This is what I am working towards for my wormhole scanning/scouting clone.  It won’t be used to go on the random Providence pvp roams.  This implant setup represents the “officer faction fit” for scanners!  Dare to be bold pilot!

Slot 1 Low-Grade Virtue Alpha

Slot 2 Low Grade Virtue Beta

Slot 3 Low-Grade Virtue Gamma

Slot 4 Low-Grade Virtue Delta

Slot 5 Low-Grade Virtue Epsilon

Slot 6 Low-Grade Virtue Omega or Poteque Pharmaceuticals ‘Prospector’ PPF-2 (to be honest there is no choice the Omega improves the entire Virtue set)

Slot 7 Poteque Pharmaceuticals ‘Prospector’ PPG-2

Slot 8 Poteque Pharmaceuticals ‘Prospector’ PPH-2

Situational Awareness

Let’s face it… you just didn’t enter wormhole space to look around at the pretty stars.  You are out looking for a fight.  Either you are looking to reap the lucrative loot of Sleeper sites or you are out hunting for other pod pilots.  So it is safe to say if you encounter Sleepers or other pod pilots you are going to get shot.  The Sleepers won’t give up their spoils without a fight, and the other pilots are there for the same reason you are.  So you are either the hunter or you are the prey.  Which of the two you are, will be determined upon your skills to choose the time and location of the fight.  Sun Tzu said it best, “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”  This is the essence of wormhole hunting.  When you operate in wormhole space the more you know of your surroundings the more secure you will be.  To this end you have many ways to get that information; the directional scanner, the overview, combat scanner probes, visual identification, and webpage applications.

Visual – Getting on grid with target is just the first step.  Once there you’ll need to gauge the best approach and best time to launch your assault.  Most attacks will be launched in wormhole sites.  When you land on grid you’ll be able to see the terrain.  Often you will land way outside of targeting and warp disruption/scrambling range.  You will need to navigate in, avoiding Sleepers, wrecks, asteroids, and debris.  (***Advisory*** How well you are able to see these things will be directly related to how you have your overview and overview brackets are setup.) It also is the way you’ll identify what classification of wormhole you are about to enter, and how much time you’ll have until the wormhole collapses.  A wormhole at the end of life or critical on mass is less likely to be the entrance point for other pod pilots.  A worm affected by mass, but not critical yet is a sign of traffic and possible targets.

Directional Scanner – The directional scanner is one of the primary ways to identify ships in wormhole space.  The “absence” of local keeps characters from appearing in the chat box unless they type in local.  To catch a ship may require the spamming of the scan button (every three seconds).  This can often produce the appearance of a ship with a cloak as it launches probes, enters or exits wormhole space, or accidently gets too close to object in space.  More importantly the directional scanner is a quick way to see what is in system.  Everything within 14AU will appear on scan.  This will be one of the primary ways of seeing probes in space.  The greatest reason to use the directional scanner is that it is passive in nature.  A cloaked ship can jump from celestial object to celestial object scanning, and be able to get a good idea of whether or not there are any available targets, player owned structures, etc.  In essence you can know what is in system without ever making your own presence know.  The appearance of sleepers wrecks usually means targets are in system.

Overview – The overview and its tabs are one of the most complex and frustrating things to learn to setup.  Just as missions running and pvp require their specific setups so too does wormhole exploration.  The most useful use of the overview is to assist you in your approach to a target.  You will need to see ALL the objects in space.  Getting to within 2,500km of any object will only result in you de-cloaking.  This can make for a cluttered overview, so I suggest that you setup one overview tab as an approach tab, and another for the actual fighting.  You should know that each tab has overview and a bracket profile setting associated with it.  The overview profile sets what icons you will see in the overview window.  The bracket profile determines what you see in space.  I prefer to have those things which I can collide with in the brackets profile, and players’ ships and drones in both profiles.  With the addition of Planetary Interaction you will now find custom offices on planets that are being harvested.  Be sure to add them to an overview.  Nothing better says… “Wormhole occupied!”

Combat Scanner Probes and the System Scanner Tab – Having discovered a possible target in space, that cannot be found using the Directional Scanner, it is now time to move on to the System Scanner tab and possibly drop some combat probes.  But before you go launching probes which can be seen by the target’s Directional Scanner, you may be able to find them in a Cosmic Anomaly.  By clicking the same button that causes probes to conduct their scan, so too can you use the ship’s sensors to do the same.  The scan will take 30 seconds, and will only find the Cosmic Anomalies within 4 AU of a planet (so you will not find any Cosmic Signatures or ships).  So it is possible to identify all Cosmic Anomalies in a system without launching a single probe, by jumping from planet to planet.  Used in conjunction with the Directional Scanner tab is nice way to totally surprise an unaware target.  If the ship is not in an Anomaly then you will have to drop combat scanner probes to find the target.  An additional advantage of combat scanner probes is that they can be used to scan down most signatures, and not just ships.  With my current skill levels I have no need to use any other set of probes to hunt in a wormhole.

Webpage Applications – There are few different websites out there that can be used to collect intelligence regarding the activity in a wormhole.  One in particular Wormhole Explorer works pretty well.  By using such sites you can see how many jumps have occurred into the system, and approximately how long ago ships, sleepers, etc have been killed.  So in one quick step you can tell how much activity has occurred in the current wormhole and what hours the inhabitants like to operate.

Now that you know what you’ll need…  in Part Two, I’ll go into how to go about using all these things to catch some targets.

Fly Safe… Stay Profitable…

Next Report: Agatir’s Guide to Wormhole Hunting… err I mean Scouting (Part 2)

So…As i said, you might have heard it already from the podcast but back then it was a rumor. So now that it has been confirmed it is my honor and duty to inform miners in wormhole space that if you are depleting Gravimetric sites in W-space within the first day you trigger them then you FAIL!!!It seems that most of the gravimetric sites that are inside W-space have the unique ability to spawn an extra asteroid on their second day of existence. Yes New Eden you heard me right!

To explain it in details. For those of you who don’t know that already, W-space Gravimetric sites have almost all kinds of minerals, unlike what happens in normal space. That means lots of money since there is always Arkonor, Bistot, Crokite etc in those sites. Now the thing is that the signature will stay up for 3-4 days. But if you got a couple of exhumers or barges you are awesome and you can clear it within a day. But you shouldn’t…

It has been confirmed that leaving a couple of asteroids untouched will force the server to spawn a new asteroid of high quality Ore after the next downtime. I don’t think that any miner out there would mind having an extra fat Spodumain asteroid that holds 75.000 units (that showed up in one of our Unexceptional Frontier Deposit sites). Though you should remember that you should clear the whole site but you must leave an asteroid there. Not the whole rock, just a couple of units are enough. What we do is we leave 30.000 units of Veldspar or something of similar quality so we can spend the minimum time possible on it the day that our “present” form CCP arrives.

Other examples of extra asteroid spawns we have encountered are an extra Mercoxit with 45.000 units on it which spawned in a site called Exceptional Frontier Deposit. I cried that day…It was awesome… An Omber with 200.000 units in it, that was inside a Common Perimeter Deposit . We have also confirmed that the extra asteroid that spawn are random. So if you get an Exceptional Frontier Gravimetric don’t necessarily expect that you will get an extra huge Mercoxit.

Anyways, I hope that info was helpful and you guys put it in good use. GO GO MINERS!!!

CrazyKinux’s EvE Online Guides Collection

Now also sporting a link to our guides as well

Thanks CK for organizing and updating this awesome list!

And as such I decided to write an introductory guide for all the new players out there (hey we love the newbies) regarding their first steps in spaceship mayhem.

Introduction

You’re only human, but what you’ll be spending most of your time in is your ship. This guide is an attempt to get you acquainted with your ship. What it is, what you can do with it, how it works and how to optimize it and customize it to your liking.

The first thing you need to know is that the bigger (and more advanced) the ship, the more skills you need to fly it (and even more to be efficient in flying it). You start small, where you’re able to fly nothing but the smallest ships, the Frigates. Frigates might look like tiny and puny ship, but what you will learn with experience is that every ship has its purpose. Later in the game you will find out (probably the hard way) that frigates are deadly opponents in the hands of a skilled player or as parts of a well coordinated fleet.

As you progress into the game and train up your skills, you will slowly upgrade your flying skills and eventually you will fly bigger ships. The logical order of ship progression is based on 5 hull class archetypes and is as follows:

• Frigates
• Destroyers
• Cruisers
• Battlecruisers
• Battleships

In between those there are the advanced (Tech 2) versions, that have specific roles (and also need a lot of skills to be flown) as well as special types of ships. After the Battleships the ships get a lot bigger, and very difficult to acquire and fly (Capital ships).

Things you can do in a ship

Travel

The most basic thing you can do in a ship is travel. You can travel around the solar system, or through solar systems. There are two methods of travelling. The first is by using your impulse engines for sub-warp speeds, and the second is to use your ship’s warp drive which helps you cover ludicrously large distances in very small timeframes.

Sub-warp speeds are used for precision movements and when you need to cover distances shorter than 200km. You can use your mouse to doubleclick somewhere in space. Your ship will then turn/align to that point and start accelerating. You can also define your ship’s speed by using the jog dial on the bottom of your screen. Alternatively, you can select any object visible in your screen or your overview panel, and click eiter the approach or the orbit icon. Approach will make your ship align to the item and then accelerate towards that object, until your nose bumps on the object displacing it a bit, if it is not anchored. Orbit will cause your ship to perform a continuous orbital move to a certain radius from the object. Sup-warp speeds are measured in meters per second and a typical speed for a stock frigate is about 300m/sec.

Warping is used to make your ship travel to a point in space that is greater than 200km away, and is 99% of the time used to reach destinations that are many light years away. Warping can only happen when the destination of the ship is a tangible/celestial object (a moon, a stargate, an asteroid, another ship, etc…) or a set of bookmarked coordinates. In order for the warp to initialize, the ship first needs to align its nose towards the target object, accelerate to a certain degree and finally start warping. The warp procedure will then start to accelerate your ship to ludicrous speeds which can reach 3 or 4 Astronomical Units per second. Some ships can even go as high as 9 AU/sec. (Just for the record 1 Astronomical Unit = 149 598 000 kilometers)

Move things around

Your ship has some storage space, in which you can store items. It’s called the “cargo hold” and its capacity varies from ship to ship. Often due to necessity (or due to performing trade actions) you will need to store items into your ship’s cargo hold, in order to move them from one station to another one (most probably in another solar system). This process is called “hauling” and quite often you will find yourself hauling expensive cargo around, cargo that other players might find lucrative and try to destroy your ship to loot it if you are bold enough to haul it through low security territories.

Engage in battle

The real fun with your ships begins when you start blowing things up. While in space, you can select a hostile target in space and lock onto it using the “Lock Target” icon on the overview. The target locking procedure will take a few seconds (the locking time is dependant on a lot of factors). Once the target is locked, select it and then click on the appropriate weapon appearing next to your jog dial on the bottom of your screen. The gun will fire, and according to various factors (such as your distance to the target, both of the ships’ speeds, the gun type, the ammunition type etc) your shot will either hit or miss. If your gun(s) land(s) a hit then the damage caused is also calculated according to a myriad of factors. In order to destroy an enemy ship, your guns will have to cause sufficient damage to penetrate three layers of defenses. The enemy ship’s shield, then its armor and finally its hull. Once the hull has been completely damaged, the ship explodes and its pilot will eject in his or her pod into space. Of course, the same thing can happen to you, which brings us to the next topic…

Withstand incoming fire

Similarly when you get incoming fire you have three lines of defenses. Your shields, your armor and finally your ship’s hull. Shields are electromagnetically projected energy fields that have a tremendous capability of absorbing or deflecting explosive and kinetic energies. As shields are pure energy, each ship regenerates a portion of their shield over time. An enemy will have to do more damage to your ship’s shield than what your ship can regenerate in a specific time frame in order to get deeper into your ships defenses. There are modules which can expand your shield’s capacity, increase its regeneration rate or even boost it at your ship’s capacitor expense. Shields are by design vulnerable to Electromagnetic and thermal types of damage.

Once your ship’s shield is gone, any incoming damage will affect your ship’s armor. Armor is comprised of heavy physical alloy based plates that are designed to take the damage instead of your ship’s hull. Unlike shields, armor does not regenerate. There are however modules that make use of nano-technology to perform instant repairs to the armor plating. Armor is very resistant to thermal and electromagnetic types of damage, but they are by design susceptible to explosive and kinetic types of damage.

When both the shields and armor are gone, any damage taken will eat away your ship’s hull. Hulls offer absolutely no resistances to damage and they go down fast. Usually when your ship starts getting hull damage, it’s a clear sign that you should make a quick escape from the battlefield.. or pray to whatever entity you believe in as your ship is about to explode.

It is safe to assume that when you engage in a dogfight (against other players or NPC’s) you will be hit, and damage will be registered on your ship. Your goal is to configure your ship as such so that while still being able to cause damage to your opponents, you can sustain your enemy’s hits either by being able to take more damage than your enemy and shooting them down before they shoot you, or by constantly repairing your armor and/or shields (a technique which is called Tanking) while at the same time trying to break your opponent’s tank by doing more damage than what he/she can repair.

Go for mining

For some people endless pew pew is a way of life. Other find that the road of manufacturing and more peaceful activities are the way to go. The most popular of those is mining. Mining is the process of extracting ore from asteroids through the use of a mining laser and storing it into your ship’s cargo hold. Ore can then be refined into minerals in a station, which then can be used to produce ships and other items. In order to mine an asteroid, fit a mining laser on your ship, got to an asteroid belt (there are plenty in each solar system all over the place), find an asteroid to your liking, target lock it, approach the asteroid to the mining laser’s optimal functioning range and fire the laser. The laser will mine the asteroid for a complete cycle which lasts about a minute. Once the cycle is over, the mined ore will appear in your ship’s cargo hold.

Assume a supporting role

There is a plethora of things you can do in a ship. You can use your ship to perform reconnaisence and gather intelligence on enemies and enemy territory while being cloaked, you can engage in electronic warfare where your object is to disrupt your enemy’s targetting, offensive and defensive capabilities, you can fly a “tackling” ship that its purpose is to slow enemies down and prevent them from running away when they are about to be destroyed and much more that will be covered in the advanced concepts section.

What a ship is made of

The slots

A ship is comprised of 4 basic layers. The external layer, the internal layer, the structure layer and the core layer. On each of those layers each ship has sockets (slots) that affect your ship’s performance and capabilities.

The sockets on the external layer are called the “High Slots” and can accomodate modules that need to have physical access to the ship’s exterior (such as guns, missile launchers, smart bombs, scan probe launchers, remote shield boosters, remote armor repairers, energy transfer arrays, energy vampires, salvagers etc).

The sockets on the internal layer are called the “Med Slots” and can accomodate modules that have to do with energy management and signal emission and in general modules that have to deal with the ship’s exterior but which do not need a pyshical exit out of ths ship such as shield extenders, shield boosters, shield hardeners, capacitor related modules, electronic warfare related modules, propulsion boosters etc.

The sockets on the structure layer are called the “Low Slots” and can accomodate modules that deal with the ship’s structure and core systems, such as armor repairers, hull upgrades, hull repairers, armor hardeners, cpu and powergrid upgrades, hull modification modules, cargo expanders, inertial stabilizers etc.

Finally the sockets on the core layer are called the “Rig Slots” and they can accomodate specific rig modules that alter a ship’s performance in a fundamental way by augmenting a ship’s specific feature while at the same time penalizing another.

While modules on the high, med and low slots can be inserted, swapped or removed freely, rigs are permanent additions to a ship. Although rigs can be removed from a ship, the process results in the destruction of the rig.

Each ship has a different number of slots on each layer, and the number of slots determines mostly the roles that a ship can take. For instance, a ship with meny med slots can fit a lot of modules that augment its shield resistances, thus allowing the ship to become a potent shield tanker. Similarly a ship with many low slots is better suited to become an armor tanker.

High slots have an additional categorization. A ship has a specific number of Turret hardpoints and/or launcher hardpoints. This determines what is the maxium number of Turrets and/or missile launchers a ship can fit. If for instance a ship has 5 high slots, and 4 Turret hardpoints, even though the ship has 5 slots, it can only fit 4 Turrets. If the ship has 5 high slots and it has 3 Turret hardpoints and 3 Launcher hardpoints, it can fit 3 turrets and 2 launchers, or 3 launchers and 2 turrets maximum (assuming that the pilot wants to fit offensive weapons on all 5 slots). Salvager modules, smartbombs, probe launchers and other non-offensive weapons do not abide to the hardpoints rule.

The juice

It’s the years 23341AD, and humanity has solved many energy problems. As such your ship does not need fuel to power its circuitry. It draws the energy needed from mysterious sources (or some sun). However, a ship’s battery cells cannot provide unlimited power. Thus each ship has 3 numbers that dictate what can and cannot be fitted to a ship, as well as what can or cannot be operated even if fitted and for how long. The numbers are the CPU power, measured in Terraflops (Tf) per second, Powergrid, measured in Megawatts (MW), and Capacitor measured in GigaJoules (GJ).

Each module requires a constant supply of CPU and Powergrid to function, and once installed and put online, it consumes that particular amount from the total output the ship can offer. Some modules rely mostly on Powergrid, some on CPU and some on both. A ship cannot have online modules that cumulatively consume more Tf and/or MW than it produces, and as such, if a module is installed that brings any of the two figures above its threshold cannot be brought online. A ship can fly with such modules while they are offline, and while in flight the pilot can bring one module offline to release the CPU and/or Powergrid needed for another module to be brought online, however the process is time consuming and it will be explained in the the Advanced guides.

Finally, there are ship modules that in order to be activated they require a huge jolt of power. That power is being provided by your ship’s capacitor. Even though 21 thousand years have passed, it seems that future capacitors haven’t changed at all and they do exactly what today’s capacitors do. They charge up and store power for whenever its needed, and they tend to charge faster when they’re half full rather than when they’re almost empty or almost full. Each module that works by being activated, consumes a portion of your capacitor’s stored power. Most modules work in cycles, i.e. when activated they draw some capacitor power, perform their effect which is either instantaneous or lasts for a specific amount of time, and after that amount of time the module repeats the cycle. At the same time, your capacitor keeps recharging. If your activated modules consume more power than what your capacitor can recharge, then at some point your capacitor’s power will be depleted, at which point your activated modules will cease to function, until your capacitor has enough power again. In general you should either be careful with your activated modules usage in order not to deplete your capacitor by having unnecessary modules activated, or invest into modules and rigs that boost your capacitor’s recharge rate so you can find the equilibrium point of your capacitor (called “Cap Stable”) where both your capacitor and your modules can function indefinately.

There are modules which can increase the output of your CPU, Powergrid and your Capacitor. Through the use of these you can redefine the role of your ship, or augment certain of its capabilities by fitting module combinations that otherwise would not fit on a particular ship.

In general, modules come into 4 sizes. Small, Medium, Large and Capital. Their power, cpu and capacitor requirements dictate what ships they can be fitted (or operated nominally) on. The rule of thumb states that small sized modules are intended for Frigates and Destroyers and a bit of Cruisers, Medium sized modules for Cruisers and Battlecruisers, Large sized modules for a bit of Battlecruisers and Battleships, and Capital sized modules for capital ships.

Signature Radius

One very important aspect of your ship is its signature radius. Your ship’s signature radius has to do with your ship’s size, as well as your ship’s ability to mask its energy signature produced by its shields and internal circuitry. In general, the larger your ship’s signature radius, the easiest it is for your opponents to hit you, and the more accurate their shots are (causing more damage). There are ships such as the Interceptor which have a smaller signature radius and there are also modules (Target Painter I ) which artificially increase an enemy’s signature radius.

Targeting

In order to interact with objects and other ships in space, you first need to acquire a target lock on them. Four of your ship’s characteristics affect the way you target other entities. These are the maximum targeting range, the Max Locked Targets, your sensor’s strength and Scan Resolution. The maxium targeting range is the maximum distance you can have from the target you want to lock. Attempting to lock a target further away will fail. Any locked target that moves further away from your ship’s maxium targeting range will result into loss of the target lock. There are modules that can increase a ship’s targeting range. The “Max Locked Targets” attribute dictates the maximum number of targets that your ship can lock on to at the same time. The Targeting and Multitasking skills increase the number of the maximum concurrent locked targets you as a person can have. You cannot lock more targets than what your skill allows you to, and you cannot lock more targets than your ship’s maxium locked targets capability. There are modules which can increase your ship’s max locked targets. Finally, your sensor’s strength combined with the Scan resolution dictates how fast your ship can lock onto another target. The smaller the resolution and the higher the sensor strength, the less time it takes for your ship to lock onto a target. Additionally, a ship’s signature radius affects the time needed for another ship to target it. The lower a ship’s signature radius is, the more time is needed to be targetted. Therefore, a frigate can lock onto a Battleship in a second or less, while a Battleship will need more than 8 seconds to lock onto a frigate. There are modules which can decrease the time needed for a ship to lock onto a target.

Cargo Capacity

Fighting is one thing, but reaping on the spoils of victory is another. When you find yourself victorious, you’ll want to loot and/or salvage the wrecks of the ships you just destroyed. This way you can find better modules for your ship, or sell them for precious ISK. The problem with loot is that it takes space, and the only space you have available in flight is your cargo hold. Cargo capacity is measured in cubic meters (m3). The more capacity you have, the more loot you can carry before you need to head back to a station to unload and return for more. There are modules (Expanded Cargohold I ) and rigs which increase your ship’s cargo-hold at your ship’s speed expense.

Speed

When flying a ship into space, the two most basic things you can do are accelerate and turn. Obviously, the bigger your ship’s speed is, the faster you will get to your destination. The more agile and maneuverable your ship is, the faster it will turn in space or align itself to any object in space. By design, the smaller your ship, the faster and more maneuverable it is.

Speed is measured in meters/second (thank whatever power you believe in that space measurements are always in metric), and distances in EVE are vast. In general it is always good to have a fast and agile ship. The first and obvious reason is to cover distances faster (and you’ll be doing that a lot) so you can get to that precious loot drop, or within targetting/firing range from your enemies. Having a good speed will also help you withstand a lot more enemy fire, as the faster you go, the tougher it is for your enemies’ guns to aim well at you. Finally, having an agile ship will help in its turning/aligning time. Being able to align your ship for warp before the enemy ships can lock on to you, is what makes the difference between life and death in EVE when you’re on the run.

Drones

Besides the cargohold, a ship may have a drone bay. This bay can accomodate small remotely controlled vessels called drones, which can engage your target and perform various operations such as firing upon them, using electronic warfare on them or logistics (repairs) for friendly targets. The bigger your drone bay, the more/bigger drones you can carry with you. Drones come in 3 sizes. Light, which take up 5m3 each, Medium for 10m3, and Heavy for 25m3. A drone bay of 100m3 capacity, can carry 4 Heavy drones, or 10 medium drones, or 20 light, or any combination of drones whose volume does not exceed your total drone bay capacity. You can scoop abandoned drones into your drone bay while in-flight and use them as your own. Drones are mostly favoured by the Gallente and there are ships which give bonuses to drones and the ship’s drone bay capacity. Additionally a ship has a total drone communication bandwidth measured in Megabits/Sec. Each drone when deployed, takes up from that bandwidth. Light drones take up 5Mbps, Medium 10Mbps and heavy 25Mbps. You cannot deploy drones that exceed your ship’s maximum bandwidth.

Special Bonuses

Ships have extra bonuses, which further defines their roles. In general the bonuses are mostly related to the type of ship and the race they’re intended to be flown by. Bonuses on Amarian and Gallente ships are prone to favor armor tanking, while Caldari and Minmatar get shield tanking. Similarly bonuses for amarian ships favor lasers as offensive weapons, gallente favor hybrid weapons and drones, caldari favor missiles, and Minmatar favor projectile weapons and overall speed. Bonuses are usually tied with the skill needed to fly the particular ship. For instance, the Incursus (a Gallentean frigate) has a 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret falloff and 5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret damage per skill level of the Gallente Frigate skill for a maximum of 50% bonus to the Small Hybrid Turret falloff range, and 25% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret damage at level 5.

There are ships with bonuses that further define their role. There are ships that give bonuses to mining and they’re ideal for mining expeditions. Other ships get bonuses to their cargo hold capacity and make them ideal for hauling.

Ship Roles

Obviously the primary role of every ship is to get you from point A to point B, while at the same time shooting enemies. In PVE missions, that’s mostly the role you’ll be looking for in every ship. However, when you get deeper into the game and you discover PVP and teamplay, each ship type gets a very defined and significant role.

Frigates

Frigates rely mostly on their speed and cunning use. Frigates outrun most ships by far, and are very hard to target and hit. Their damage output is small, but their low scan resolution and usage of light weapons makes them ideal against smaller targets (such as other frigates and drones). Additionally, their superb maneuverability and strong sensors makes them ideal as electronic warfare ships, which can catch-up with larger ships, inhibit their movement, jam their warp capability or disable their targeting capabilities among other things. Tech 2 frigates can even be used to infiltrate enemy teritories while cloaked, perform stealth attacks from afar, scan systems for anomalies, and even pack some really massive damage while sustaining some as well. Frigates are the first ship a pilot learns to fly.

Destroyers

Destroyers are small agile ships which pack a boatload of high-slots and have relatively big cargo holds. They are very effective against frigates as they pack a lot of small guns or launchers, and they are very accurate. Their vast numbers of high-slots and big cargo hold makes them also ideal for salvaging operations, as they can fit a lot of salvager modules and tractor beams, and carry quite some loot before they need to go unload. Tech 2 destroyers (Interdictors ) are used to set up interdiction bubbles, energy fields that disrupt the warp drive of anyone passing through them. Destroyers act as the intermediary step for a pilot, aiding them with early missioning and earning some starting ISK before they move on to Cruisers.

Cruisers

Cruisers are not as fast as frigates, but can sustain a lot more damage. They also do pack quite a bigger punch and a couple of them can prove to be deadly in a fight. Just as frigates though, they do rely on maintaining high velocity in order to avoid being hit. Depending on their bonuses, cruisers make excellent choices for various roles, from all out attack to logistics. Especially their tech 2 counterparts are hard nuts to break. Many run in fear when faced by a Heavy Assault Cruiser or a Heavy Interdictor. Cruisers are the logical step up from frigates. A pilot will spend quite some time in them, and it is always a good idea to train skills that enhance the performance of cruisers, as there are a lot of cruiser hull based tech 2 ships.

Battlecruisers

A significant notch above cruisers, lie the battlecruisers. In general slow ships, but they can sustain quite some damage, especially if they are fitted with an afterburner which allows them to avoid some fire from medium and larger guns. They have significantly higher CPU and powergrid outputs and they can fit quite a few module combinations. This makes them ideal for many roles ranging from dedicated tanking ships, to high damage output boats. The famous Drake of caldari design has been written in history with golden letters for its monumental shield tanking. Battlecruisers are also the ship of choice for fleet commaners, as they can fit gang link modules, which greately enhance the capabilities of the whole fleet. Their t2 counterparts are heavily used in fleet battles and they are total beasts with legendary tanks and damage outputs. Battlecruisers are the next step after cruisers. Their cost is relatively low so setting a BC up and running is almost always easy business.

Battleships

At the top of the ladder of standard issue ships stands the Battleship. A total powerhouse and behemoth. Battleships have an abudance of slots, tons of CPU, powergrid and capacitor, and they can pack serious firepower, while at the same time sustaining massive amounts of damage and exiting unscathed from battles. They are ideal for a multitude of roles. Major attackers, heavy tankers, logistics, and they are even very potent mining ships. Their huge size make their speed laughable, but most of the times a Battleship will stay still, as getting through a carefully fitted battleship’s tank is no easy business. Tech 2 Battleships are feared across new eden. Their capabilities are stellar, while their cost is high up in the ISK ladder. Battleships are the biggest combat ship that you can fly into high security space and thus its going to be the ship you’ll end up flying the most.

Is that all?

Far from it. First there are ships with dedicated roles that you can still fly in high security space. Most of them have to deal with mining (Mining Barges, Exhumers) or hauling (Industrials, Freighters etc). These ships are extremely useful, but are beyond the scope of this tutorial and they are ships that you’ll spend the least amount of time in (unless of course you follow a miner’s or trader’s path which reverses the odds). Furthermore into the game, you will want to move to low security space where opportunities (and risks) are biggers and the profits grow. In these areas you’ll be able to pilot even bigger ships like carriers and motherships or even titans (ships the size of Long Island).

But for the moment, we suggest you jump into your frigate and start experimenting.

Closing words

It’s a fact and we know it that you’ll name your ship affectionately at some point. Even more you’ll become emotionally tied with your ship. Our advice is Don’t!. Don’t even think for a second that you’ll never lose a ship. Each day, thousands of ships are being lost to battle. Eventually you’ll lose yours. When that day comes, don’t think about it a lot. Yes we know it’s a bitch, and that feeling of loss stings like a bitch. And the notion of quitting eve every time you lose a ship, is a notion that we’ve all gone through during our early days and sometimes we still do. Just get another ship and continue, and think for a moment.. has your ship helped you make more ISK than what you spent to buy it? If it has, then by all means it has served its purpose.

And always remember the no 1 EVE rule:

Never fly what you cannot afford to lose

Recently we had a few new members join our ranks. Now there are many nice guides for new players out there, but quite a few months ago I took the time to write down some points for leveling up during your first few weeks that turned into a bigger guide in time, and then it grew even bigger and bigger… so I thought I’d refine it and share it with the community. So here it is.

Here is a link to Part 1

This is Part 2. Part 3 will follow soon ™.

QP

In Part 2 I will continue the talk about the various aspects that you can train for in this game. As in part 1, I will be presenting multiple skill plans as an example to what to train for in each aspect.

As a reminder:

There is no such thing as a "Perfect training plan" nor such thing as a "Power Gamers’ Plan" to help you in training your skills.

I came across a couple of links in the wiki that I missed linking in the first part.

Take a look, they are quite informative.

Ship Fitting Guide

Skills Guide

Now let’s go meet the rest of the Offensive skills. In Part 1 I discussed the Drones Skill Group. In Part 2 I’ll talk about the Gunnery and Missile groups.

Offensive ( Drones / Gunnery / Missiles )

The Gunnery Skill Group.

Guns are simple.

You load them with ammunition and you shoot at your targets. The more skills you have in the Gunnery group, the more damage you should be able to dish out, and the bigger guns you should be able to fit to your ship. If your tanking skills (more on that in Part 3) are just as good, you will be able to survive long enough to be the last man standing. That is always a good thing.

Guns are simple.

However it doesn’t seem that simple when you first look at that Gunnery Skill Group. Now apart from some odd skills like Tactical Weapon Reconfiguration that I am not going to discuss in this guide, we saw 2 of the skills in this group being used in enhancing your ship’s fitting in Part 1 of this guide. Weapon Upgrades and Advanced Weapon Upgrades will reduce the amount of CPU and Powergrid respectively that your ship’s weapons use. I will not discuss them further here.

Also note that by training the Weapon Upgrades skill you will be able to use some low-slot modules to augment the damage and Rate of fire of your preferred weapon system. These modules are Heat Sinks (for Energy Weapons), Gyrostabilizers (for Projectile Weapons), Magnetic Field Stabilizers (for Hybrid Weapons) and Ballistic Control Systems (for Missile Launchers). To use the Tech 2 versions of those modules you will need to train Weapon Upgrades to level IV.

Before you play with guns, read this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071223162431/www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g25.asp

Now you got your mind wrapped around concepts like Optimal, Falloff, Tracking Speed, Signature Radius, Transversal Velocity and so on… You will need to understand how these concepts work (it’s not hard if you have some basic math/physics knowledge) and how they are introduced in the game mechanics. Then you will be able to fit and fly your ships more effectively.

If you want to see how your fitting would work in some dogfights you can use the great ship fitting tool included with EVEHQ (http://evehq.net) called HQF. In there is a Damage Analysis tool (similar to that one in page 4 of the guide above) that will allow you to position your ship and a target and set speeds and range and take transversal velocity in mind and all that… go play!

Also, it’s highly recommended that you read the Missile section of this guide (see below) to understand how these two weapon systems work in the game and make your choices wisely. There are a lot of ships that can support both Guns and Missiles in the game and that might be the way to go for you!

Types of Guns

The first thing I should mention is that every Race in the game has it’s own ships and each type of ship is optimized to use different type of guns. Take a look at ships like the Harpy or the Jaguar for example. Or the Abaddon. Each of these ships gives bonuses to different type of weapons.

There are 3 major types of Guns in the game. Energy, Projectiles and Hybrids. Each of these types has 2 variants, one for close and one for long range. Each of these come in 4 sizes. Small, Medium, Large and Capital (or X-Large).

So you have a total of 24 different types of guns…

…and you bet there is a different skill for each

Of course you can mix & match but if you don’t know what you are doing, you should better stay with your own race’s type of guns. If you think you know what you are doing – why are you reading this guide for then? :-p

Also it is very important to mention that you should not be mixing different type of guns in the same ship. You either go for short/close range or try to stay far away. You don’t put Artillery and Autocannons in the same ship. This is one of the most common mistakes you can do in your first fitting attempts.

Everyone has done it and even if they don’t admit it, they had at some point a ship fitted with different type of weapon ranges. If however they do admit it and feel proud about it, then nod and walk away… slowly. Then go to read this: http://www.dontmixguns.com

Last, but not least, make sure you fit the correct size of gun to your ship. Small Guns are for Frigates and Destroyers, Medium are for Cruisers and BattleCruisers, Large are for Battleships and Capitals are for Capitals

So let’s see what we have for each race:

• Amarr: pew pew lazorz

  • Amarr use Energy weapons (also known as teh Lazorz) as their main offensive force.

  • Beam Weapons that are best for longer ranges, have medium tracking and do good damage and Pulse Weapons that are best for shorter to medium ranges, have good tracking and do very good damage.

  • Lasers don’t use ammo like other guns, but use Crystals that once you load into your gun, you won’t have to reload for a long-long time. Of course at some point the crystal will be destroyed and you will have to buy a new one, but usually you will be swapping different crystals based on the range of your opponents. Crystals do EM and Thermal Damage.

  • Energy weapons are the most capacitor greedy of all, so make sure you have great capacitor skills if you want to keep your guns firing during the whole encounter!

• Minmatar: ratatatatatattttatttt

  • Minmattar use Projectile weapons as their main offense.

  • Autocannons are for short ranges while Artilleries are for longer ranges.

  • Projectiles use ammo and by changing the type of ammo you use, you will get different Optimal & Falloff range as well as damage. Projectile ammo can do all types of damage, however each type of ammo does two types of damage. So you can swap ammo in order to match your opponent’s weakest defenses. However note that projectile ammo is consumed in large quantities – especially in autocannons.

  • Projectile Guns don’t use capacitor, which is a great bonus!

    • Read this excellent guide from Letrange if you are looking into more details for Minmatar weapons: http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2009/12/projectile-ammo.html and http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2009/12/artillery.html

• Gallente: “Launch Drones.. I mean.. Fire!”

  • It’s true that most Gallente pilots consider Drones to be their primary weapon of choice, however they share the same love as the Caldari for Hybrid Weapons.

  • Hybrids come in two choices, Railguns for superior snipping range, moderate damage and bad tracking and Blasters for up close and personal massive damage with good tracking.

  • Much like the projectiles, they have ammo to swap for changing their effective optimal and falloff range. Hybrid guns use ammo that does a mix of Thermal and Kinetic Damage.

  • Hybrid weapons use capacitor but are not as demanding as Lasers. Still you will need to train some capacitor skills to compensate.

The Path to Bigger Weapons

So let’s assume you want to get into a Battleship, and you will need Large Guns. You will need to train the following skills:

Gunnery III
Gunnery IV
Gunnery V
Small XXX Turret I (20.000 ISK)
Small XXX Turret II
Small XXX Turret III
Medium XXX Turret I (100.000 ISK)
Medium XXX Turret II
Medium XXX Turret III
Large XXX Turret I (2.000.000 ISK)
Large XXX Turret II
Large XXX Turret III

Total time: 9 days, 10 hours, 47 minutes, 42 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

• Where XXX can be your choice of Energy (for Amarr), Projectile (Minmatar) or Hybrid (Gallente & Caldari)

Gunnery Support Skills:

Much like the Drones and Missiles, there are some skills in the Gunnery Group that will affect any type of guns you use. It’s good to train them soon because the give good bonuses to your damage output. Whether or not you are going for Tech 2 Guns, you will have to level up some of these skills faster and further than others. But more on that bellow.

At a minimum, you should have the following skills trained to support your guns of choice:

Controlled Bursts I (70.000 ISK)
Controlled Bursts II
Controlled Bursts III
Motion Prediction I (60.000 ISK)
Motion Prediction II
Motion Prediction III
Rapid Firing I (40.000 ISK)
Rapid Firing II
Rapid Firing III
Sharpshooter I (80.000 ISK)
Sharpshooter II
Sharpshooter III
Surgical Strike I (1.000.000 ISK)
Surgical Strike II
Surgical Strike III
Trajectory Analysis I (100.000 ISK)
Trajectory Analysis II
Trajectory Analysis III

Total time: 5 days, 4 hours, 53 minutes, 20 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

If you are to invest more on support skills, besides the two needed for T2 guns, Rapid Firing would be the one to maximize first, as it is a Rank 2 skill (can get to V less than 10 days) and gives 4% bonus to the Rate of Fire of your guns per level.

Going for Tech 2 Guns

Tech 2 Guns are better. Bigger, faster, stronger.. take your pick. You want them just because they exist. Let’s see what’s needed for you to get them.

First of all, you will notice that you not only need to get some of your Gunnery Support skills first to higher levels (Sharpshooter for the Long Range versions / Motion Prediction for the Short Range ones), but also you will need to have all the smaller sized gun skill to level V and it’s specialization at IV before you can train the next one in size.

Let’s assume you want to go for the Long Range variant of your weapon of choice, in order to fit for a Cruiser-sized-ship that will be snipping targets from far away. Here is what you’ll need to train:

Sharpshooter I (80.000 ISK)
Sharpshooter II
Sharpshooter III
Sharpshooter IV
Small XXX Turret I (20.000 ISK)
Small XXX Turret II
Small XXX Turret III
Small XXX Turret IV
Small XXX Turret V
Small YYY Specialization I (1.000.000 ISK)
Small YYY Specialization II
Small YYY Specialization III
Small YYY Specialization IV
Gunnery III
Medium XXX Turret I (100.000 ISK)
Medium XXX Turret II
Medium XXX Turret III
Medium XXX Turret IV
Medium XXX Turret V
Medium YYY Specialization I (3.000.000 ISK)
Medium YYY Specialization II
Medium YYY Specialization III

Total time: 37 days, 12 hours, 35 minutes, 50 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

• Where XXX can be your choice of Energy (for Amarr), Projectile (Minmatar) or Hybrid (Gallente & Caldari)
• Where YYY is: Beam Laser (for Amarr), Artillery (for Minmatar) or Railgun (Gallente & Caldari)

Now let’s say you want to go for the Short Range variant, so you can get into a fast Frigate-sized ship and orbit at close ranges, dealing pain to your opponent.

Motion Prediction I (60.000 ISK)
Motion Prediction II
Motion Prediction III
Small XXX Turret I (20.000 ISK)
Small XXX Turret II
Small XXX Turret III
Small XXX Turret IV
Small XXX Turret V
Small ZZZ Specialization I (1.000.000 ISK)
Small ZZZ Specialization II
Small ZZZ Specialization III

Total time: 8 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes, 20 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

• Where XXX can be your choice of Energy (for Amarr), Projectile (Minmatar) or Hybrid (Gallente & Caldari)
• Where ZZZ is: Pulse Laser (for Amarr), Autocannon (for Minmatar) or Blaster (Gallente & Caldari)

Tech 2 Ammunition

Tech 2 Ammo can only be used in Tech 2 Guns. I am not going to discuss Tech 2 ammo here, but what you should know is that Tech 2 ammo comes with higher DPS or higher ranges but also with a disadvantage to your ship. Either increased signature radius (you become easier to hit) or reduced speed or reduced capacitor recharge. You will have to weight the Pros and Cons when deciding to use Tech 2 Ammo.

You can however, use your Tech 2 Gun together with normal Tech 1 Ammo or use Faction Ammo (can be quite expensive sometimes) for extra damage without any drawbacks.

Things to note about T2 guns:

• As you can see above, if you want to go for T2 guns, you can’t go for the Large Long Range version unless you also train the Medium and Small Long Range versions first.
• That means that although you might be able to use Large T2 Pulse Lasers (Amarr Battleship Close Range weapons) chances are you won’ be able to use Small T2 Beam Lasers (Amarr Frigate Long Range weapons).
• This is drastically different in the Missile Group, where as you can see below, you only need to train the appropriate size to level V and then the specialization for it.

The Missile Launcher Operation Skill Group

Missiles. The domain of the Caldari. Also a nice supplement to both Amarr and Minmatar pilots. They always hit their target with constant DPS, are not affected by transversal velocity, don’t have tracking speed issues but also do not hit instantly like guns do.

I need to point out at this stage that I am primarily a missile user so I’ve come to love and hate missiles at the same time.

Love because they have a much simpler training plan than guns above. Love because they put constant DPS on the target without worrying about orbiting speeds or tracking speeds or transversal velocity. Love because I can chose what type of damage I do based on what the weakest resistance on my target’s tank is. Love because they use no capacitor at all.

Hate because their DPS is usually lower of that of a gunboat. Hate because they have long reload times and low ammo capacity on their launchers. Hate because it takes time to reach their target and that’s bad for PVP. Hate because I don’t have an animation whenever I fire a missile (rather than a pile of smoke coming from the center of my ship) compared to awesome looking Turrets tracking their targets on gunboats.

Before you play with missiles, read this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071231134111/www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g61_3.asp

Now you got your mind wrapped around concepts like Explosion Radius, Signature Radius, Explosion Velocity and so on… You will need to understand how these concepts work (it’s not hard if you have some basic math/physics knowledge) and how they are introduced in the game mechanics. Then you will be able to fit and fly your ships more effectively.

If you want to see how your fitting would work in some dogfights you can use the great ship fitting tool included with EVEHQ (http://evehq.net) called HQF. In there is a Damage Analysis tool (similar to that one in page 4 of the Gunnery guide above) that will allow you to position your ship and a target and set speeds and range and take transversal velocity in mind and all that… go play!

Also, it’s highly recommended that you read the Gunnery Section of this guide (see above) to understand how these two weapon systems work in the game and make your choices wisely. There are a lot of ships that can support both Guns and Missiles in the game and that might be the way to go for you!

Types of Launchers

Launchers are a bit less complicated than guns. Their main distinction is that of size.

• Rocket Launchers and Standard Missile Launchers are for Frigates and Destroyers
• Assault Missile Launchers, Heavy Missile Launchers and Heavy Assault Missile Launchers are for Cruisers and Battlecruisers
• Cruise Missile Launchers and Siege Launchers are for Battleships
• Citadel Cruise Launchers and Citadel Launchers are for Capitals.
• Bomb Launchers can be used only on Stealth Bombers (Tech 2 Covert Ops Frigates)

To avoid Confusion:

Don’t try to find any “Standard Missiles” to be used with Standard Missile Launchers, nor any “Assault Missiles” to be used with Assault Missile Launchers. They are called Light Missiles, and their respective skill is called Standard Missiles.

Light Missiles like the Bloodclaw Light Missile are the only type of missile that can be used in two different type of Launchers. When used on a Frigate/Destroyer they are launched from Standard Missile Launchers, while when they are used on a Cruiser/BattleCruiser they are launched from Assault Missile Launchers.

Torpedoes are launched from a Siege Launcher. Don’t try to find any “Torpedo Launcher” cause there isn’t one.

Did I mention the Missile Skill group isn’t as complicated as the Gunnery group? Well.. I lied. :-p

Types of Missiles

Rockets are used in Frigates/Destroyers that want to have a very close orbit (usually less than 8KM), are fast and have high RoF but have very low damage. The Rocket Launchers have very low CPU/Powergrid requirements however so they can be fitted in a ship much easier than Standard Missile Launchers.

Light Missiles when used on a Frigate will have great range (can reach up to 40KM), higher speed than rockets (will hit faster moving targets like Interceptors and Drones), higher damage, but lower rate of fire. When used on a Cruiser will have much higher rate of fire, but it’s more common to use Heavy Missiles or Heavy Assault Missiles in that ship size. If you want to have the perfect anti-frigate missile ship however it’s a Cruiser with Assault Missiles.

Heavy Missiles have great range (up to 90KM or more), good damage but slow rate of fire. It’s the weapon of choice for PVE Cruisers like the Caracal and BattleCruisers like the Drake.

Heavy Assault Missiles have low range (can reach around 15KM) lower damage per volley than Heavies but much higher rate of fire, hence better DPS. They are mostly used in PVP Caldari setups.

Cruise Missiles can reach massive ranges (150KM+), pack a great volley damage with moderate DPS. It’s the weapon of choice for one of the most used ships in the game, the Raven.

Torpedoes have low range (up to 25KM), have massive volley damage and great rate of fire for high DPS. They can also be used in Stealth Bombers and are ideal for anti-Battleship setups.

Based on the type of ship you can fly, essentially you have to choose between the long-ranged Guided missile but lower DPS version (Light, Heavy, Cruise) or the shorter range un-Guided, high DPS version (Rockets, Heavy Assault, Torpedoes).

Special Types of Missiles:

Bombs are a specialty, since only Stealth Bombers can use them. They don’t require a lock on the target, only your ship to be facing the target, will travel 30KM away from you and explode doing massive amounts of damage to everything in a 15KM radius. It takes about 5 seconds to cover that distance and your target might have time to warp out by the time it reaches them. The respective skill decreases the time it takes to be able to fire again with a bomb launcher. Nice to level up if you plan on spending a lot of time in a Stealth Bomber.

Defender Missiles are rarely seen in-game besides some NPCs and are used as chaff, to hit and destroy incoming missiles. Don’t bother training this skill at all.

Friend-or-Foe (FOF) Missiles can be used if you become jammed (unable to lock targets) by use of ECM from your enemy ships. The missiles will launch and hit the first available target in range. Useful, but not really needed. Train this if you don’t have anything better to do.

Path to bigger Launchers

Let’s assume you want to equip your Raven with the appropriate set of tools for the job. The weapon of choice is Cruise Missiles. Here is what you’ll need:

Missile Launcher Operation I (20.000 ISK)
Missile Launcher Operation II
Missile Launcher Operation III
Missile Launcher Operation IV
Missile Launcher Operation V
Standard Missiles I (20.000 ISK)
Standard Missiles II
Standard Missiles III
Heavy Missiles I (100.000 ISK)
Heavy Missiles II
Heavy Missiles III
Cruise Missiles I (350.000 ISK)
Cruise Missiles II
Cruise Missiles III

Total time: 9 days, 17 hours, 20 minutes
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Stealth Bombers

As mentioned earlier, there is a special type of Ship, called Stealth Bomber that uses some special type of weapons, called Bombs. These lovely toys are used together with Torpedoes to make this small frigate a feared opponent to any Battleship that has no smaller ships around to protect it.

Bombs can also be used to one-shot enemy Frigates, Destroyers, Industrial ships or even poorly-fitted Cruisers and all of their Tech 2 Variants. There are also special type of bombs available that can do nasty things besides damage, like remove the capacitor from the enemy ships or break their target locks.

Here is what you’ll need to use both a Bombs and Torpedoes on a Stealth Bomber:

Missile Launcher Operation I (20.000 ISK)
Missile Launcher Operation II
Missile Launcher Operation III
Missile Launcher Operation IV
Standard Missiles I (20.000 ISK)
Standard Missiles II
Standard Missiles III
Heavy Missiles I (100.000 ISK)
Heavy Missiles II
Heavy Missiles III
Torpedoes I (400.000 ISK)
Torpedoes II
Torpedoes III
Missile Bombardment I (80.000 ISK)
Missile Bombardment II
Missile Bombardment III
Missile Bombardment IV
Bomb Deployment I (8.000.000 ISK)

Total time: 6 days, 58 minutes, 32 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Missile Launcher Support Skills

Just like the rest of the Offensive Groups, Missile Launcher Operation has some skills that give bonuses to all other Missile Skills.

Well not true.

There is a skill, Guided Missile Precision that only gives it’s bonus of 5% decreased factor of signature radius only to Light, Heavy and Cruise missiles. That means that this skill does nothing for your Rockets, Heavy Assault Missiles and Torpedoes. Besides that however, it’s a great skill to train, because it will increase your damage to smaller targets when using Guided missiles.

Here is what a decent Missile Launcher Support skill group should look like:

Missile Launcher Operation I (20.000 ISK)
Missile Launcher Operation II
Rapid Launch I (40.000 ISK)
Rapid Launch II
Rapid Launch III
Target Navigation Prediction I (60.000 ISK)
Target Navigation Prediction II
Target Navigation Prediction III
Missile Bombardment I (80.000 ISK)
Missile Bombardment II
Missile Bombardment III
Missile Launcher Operation III
Missile Projection I (100.000 ISK)
Missile Projection II
Missile Projection III
Missile Launcher Operation IV
Warhead Upgrades I (1.000.000 ISK)
Warhead Upgrades II
Warhead Upgrades III
Missile Launcher Operation V
Guided Missile Precision I (500.000 ISK)
Guided Missile Precision II
Guided Missile Precision III

Total time: 12 days, 53 minutes, 20 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

If you can spend more time training up your missile skills, Rapid Launch, Target Navigation Prediction and Missile Bombardment are the skills to level up first. You can leave Warhead Upgrades last because it only makes a difference if you are using Cruise, Torpedoes or Capital missiles.

Getting to Tech 2 Launchers

Let’s see some training plans for T2 Launchers.

First, let’s assume that I want to equip a BattleCruiser like the Drake with T2 Heavy Missile Launchers so that I can clear some of those Level 4 missions faster. Here’s what I’ll go for:

Missile Launcher Operation I (20.000 ISK)
Missile Launcher Operation II
Missile Launcher Operation III
Missile Launcher Operation IV
Missile Launcher Operation V
Standard Missiles I (20.000 ISK)
Standard Missiles II
Standard Missiles III
Heavy Missiles I (100.000 ISK)
Heavy Missiles II
Heavy Missiles III
Heavy Missiles IV
Heavy Missiles V
Heavy Missile Specialization I (3.000.000 ISK)
Heavy Missile Specialization II
Heavy Missile Specialization III

Total time: 31 days, 6 hours
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Next let’s say I want to equip my fast-moving Interceptor class Frigate like the Crow with T2 Standard Missiles. This will allow me to hit my target with decent DPS without worrying about my tracking speed while keeping a really high transversal and orbit speeds in excess of 4.000 m/sec:

Missile Launcher Operation I (20.000 ISK)
Missile Launcher Operation II
Missile Launcher Operation III
Standard Missiles I (20.000 ISK)
Standard Missiles II
Standard Missiles III
Standard Missiles IV
Standard Missiles V
Standard Missile Specialization I (1.000.000 ISK)
Standard Missile Specialization II
Standard Missile Specialization III
Missile Launcher Operation IV
Missile Launcher Operation V

Total time: 22 days, 22 hours
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Tech 2 Ammunition

Tech 2 Ammo can only be used in Tech 2 Launchers. I am not going to discuss Tech 2 ammo here, but what you should know is that Tech 2 ammo comes with higher DPS or higher ranges but also with a disadvantage to your ship. Either increased signature radius (you become easier to hit) or reduced speed or reduced capacitor recharge. You will have to weight the Pros and Cons when deciding to use Tech 2 Ammo.

You can however, use your Tech 2 Launcher together with normal Tech 1 Ammo or use Faction Ammo (can be quite expensive sometimes) for extra damage without any drawbacks.

Coming up in later parts:

Please leave a comment if you liked the guide and suggestions / improvements are always welcome.

EVEMon was used during this guide to show learning trees and skills suggestions. No pets where harmed while writing this guide (at least to my knowledge) :-p

QP

Recently we had a few new members join our ranks. Now there are many nice guides for new players out there, but quite a few months ago I took the time to write down some points for leveling up during your first few weeks that turned into a bigger guide in time, and then it grew even bigger and bigger… so I thought I’d refine it and share it with the community. So here it is. Parts 2 & 3 will follow soon ™.

EvE Universe Rule(s):

1. Never fly what you cannot afford to lose
2. NEVER fly whey you CANNOT afford to lose
3. NEVER FLY A SHIP YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO LOSE
4. Never …
5. …you get my point

Please leave a comment if you liked the guide and suggestions / improvements are always welcome.

QP

Scope of this guide:

I will be introducing you to some of the basic concepts of the game that have to do with your character’s development and skill training and then focus on the various aspects of the game and note what are the skills you should train first for each of those.

…but first some basics!

Things to know about Skill Points

1. Your Character in EvE grows stronger by accumulating Skill Points (SP). The more SPs you have, the "stronger" your character is. Skill points are accumulated by training skills. Just to give you an idea, our dear CEO Luminus has about 42M SPs. You, as a new player has just started the game with only 35K SPs. Why is that huge difference? Skills are trained in real-time, and the more months you have into the game, the more SPs you will accumulate.
2. Skills Points are accumulating as long as you are training any skill, in real-time, even when you have logged-off EvE and you are off to work, school or even holidays (yep Luminus is known to logging off from time to time to get some beer). The good news is that you, as a new player, get a special boost to your training time until you reach 1,6M SPs. Once you reach that point you continue training your skills normally like the rest of us.
3. Every skill in the game has Levels. From level I to level V. For each level of the skill you have successfully trained you get the designated bonus. You don’t get any fraction of the bonuses by having trained your next level to 92%. Only when you get to 100% of a new skill level you will get the designated bonus. For example the skill Spaceship Command gives your ships better Agility per skill level. More agile ships mean faster turns, faster align to warp and faster and tighter orbit speeds. Faster is always good – right? So this particular skill gives your ship a 2% bonus in Agility, so when you reach level V you will have a total of 10% bonus to your Agility score for each ship you fly.
4. All skills have Ranks, from Rank 1 (fastest training time for starting skills) all the way up to Rank 16 for using the mighty Titan. For each Rank the skill has, it multiplies the training time by it’s rank. For example, the skill Rockets being a Rank 1 skill, will take you around 5 days to train it from level IV to level V. The exact amount of time needed to train is calculated based on your attributes (more on that below), but let’s assume it’s 5 days. Now if you want to train Heavy Missiles skill, being a Rank 3 skill will require you to spend 3x times more time to get it trained from IV to V, so about 15days.
5. To learn new skills, you will use books and "inject" them into your clone. You get Skill books either by direct purchasing from the market or by completing missions for agents. Your tutorial agents gave you a few books to get you started. You have a very useful tool to use for learning new skills called The Skill Training Queue. Use it wisely so you don’t have to wake up early to change a skill or even worse – miss training time!.
6. Skills are grouped in Groups and you should start by taking a look at what is available for you, but also what skills you can learn. Spend some time playing with tools like EvEMon or the in-game skill window and you will soon get a feeling on what is important and what not. You will soon realize that you will need to have some specific skills called Required Skills in order for some more advanced ones. Take a look at Cruise Missiles for example to see quite a few required skills and their required skill level.
7. Each skill group has one “major” skill that by taking it to higher levels will “unlock” the training of the rest of the skills in this tree. In my notes for each skill group (see below) I will be highlighting the major skill in each group and the skills it unlocks. You should consider

Things to know about Attributes:

1. Your character has 5 basic Attributes. Attributes control how fast you can train your skills. The higher the attribute, the faster the learning time. Simple – yes?
2. You can increase your Attribute scores by doing 3 things: 
        a. You train the appropriate learning skill (more on that below).
        b. You train the Cybernetics skill that allows you to use Implants to increase a specific attribute.
        c. You use the Neural Remapping Tool to change your base Attribute scores once per year.
3. For new players, you get to use the Neural Remapping Tool 2 times, so you can afford to make a mistake, or to optimize your training plan Talk with others and don’t choose your attributes without planning and consideration because you can only change them once per year. I will talk more about Neural Remapping in part 2.

Planning your skill training:

There is no such thing as a "Perfect training plan" nor such thing as a "Power Gamers’ Plan" to help you in training your skills.

You will train them based on what you need, what you would like to do, what ships to fly and what modules to fit. Generally it’s better to start off by training the basic skills (most are Rank 1 so you train them fast enough) you will need, like flying ships and basic fighting skills.

It’s very important to note that even if you choose to become a Trader or a Manufacturer that you will spend most of your time doing research or trading and not flying in fleets doing massive tons of damage (like normal people :-p) you will need to have some basic fighting skills as you must get some missions done to get the game started and your income to flow.

Now rather than going through every skill in the game and explaining what it does, I will only point out the “must-have” from each Skill group, but grouped in one of the following aspects.

• Learning
• Ship Fitting
• Offensive (Gunnery / Missiles / Drones)
• Defensive (Armor & Shield Tanking)
• Exploration & Wormhole-specifics
• Electronic Warfare
• Fleet Support & Logistics
• Other Useful things

Note that the times (days) training for the suggested skills below are if you start a new character and train nothing else besides those skills. Hint: Train those learning skills first

The Learning Skill Group:

1. The Learning skill group consists of 11 skills, each increasing one of your base attributes by 1 point for each level of the skill.
2. This group is one of the first that you should consider training, as it will dramatically decrease the training time of your other more "important" skills you need for your career in EvE. It may seem to be really boring and a total waste of time, but trust me, it will pay off.
3. The main idea here is to train the Rank 1 skills in this tree ASAP to level IV and then train the Rank 3 skills to level IV as well. the Rank 3 skills cost about 4,5M ISK each so you might not be able to acquire them when you initially start the game, but it should be one of your first real investments.
4. If you would rather spend your 100% training time bonus on actual training for “useful” skills rather than learning skills, it’s still highly recommended that you train the Rank 1 learning skills up to level III and then proceed to your normal training routine.

Below I have two examples. One is for a character who wants to spend all their 100% training time bonus to maximize learning skills (why waste more time on them later?) and the other is for the minimal amount of training needed to speed up the rest while you train your preferred skills.

Option 1: Max Learning

Cybernetics I (75.000 ISK)
Instant Recall I (50.000 ISK)
Analytical Mind I (50.000 ISK)
Learning I (35.000 ISK)
Instant Recall II
Analytical Mind II
Learning II
Instant Recall III
Analytical Mind III
Learning III
Instant Recall IV
Eidetic Memory I (5.000.000 ISK)
Eidetic Memory II
Eidetic Memory III
Analytical Mind IV
Logic I (5.000.000 ISK)
Logic II
Logic III
Learning IV
Eidetic Memory IV
Logic IV
Learning V
Iron Will I (50.000 ISK)
Iron Will II
Iron Will III
Iron Will IV
Spatial Awareness I (50.000 ISK)
Spatial Awareness II
Spatial Awareness III
Spatial Awareness IV
Empathy I (50.000 ISK)
Empathy II
Empathy III
Focus I (5.000.000 ISK)
Focus II
Focus III
Focus IV
Clarity I (5.000.000 ISK)
Clarity II
Clarity III
Clarity IV
Analytical Mind V
Instant Recall V

Total time: 20 days, 15 minutes, 56 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Option 2: Minimal Learning

Cybernetics I (75.000 ISK)
Instant Recall I (50.000 ISK)
Analytical Mind I (50.000 ISK)
Learning I (35.000 ISK)
Instant Recall II
Analytical Mind II
Learning II
Instant Recall III
Analytical Mind III
Learning III
Iron Will I (50.000 ISK)
Iron Will II
Iron Will III
Spatial Awareness I (50.000 ISK)
Spatial Awareness II
Spatial Awareness III

Total time: 20 hours, 38 minutes, 29 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Note: on both suggestions, first is Cybernetics at I. This will allow you to use +3 implants right away that will shave off lots of your training time. The cost of +3 implants is about 10M for each.

Ship Fitting Skills:

Now if you have come to a point where you want to fit that 4th Launcher in your Kestrel or you want to add a bigger plate to your Rifter but you don’t have enough CPU or Powergrid, look no further.

Ship Fitting skills will allow you to use better (bigger) modules and maximize the efficiency of your ship.

Again I present two suggestions here, one for maximizing the ship Fitting capabilities of your ship, the other with just the bare minimum you should train in your first few days.

Option 1: Maximizing Ship Fitting

Electronics IV
Electronics V
Electronics Upgrades I (100.000 ISK)
Electronics Upgrades II
Electronics Upgrades III
Electronics Upgrades IV
Engineering IV
Engineering V
Energy Systems Operation I (40.000 ISK)
Energy Systems Operation II
Energy Systems Operation III
Energy Systems Operation IV
Energy Systems Operation V
Energy Management I (170.000 ISK)
Energy Management II
Energy Management III
Energy Management IV
Energy Management V
Energy Grid Upgrades I (79.000 ISK)
Energy Grid Upgrades II
Energy Grid Upgrades III
Energy Grid Upgrades IV
Weapon Upgrades I (80.000 ISK)
Weapon Upgrades II
Weapon Upgrades III
Weapon Upgrades IV
Weapon Upgrades V
Advanced Weapon Upgrades I (500.000 ISK)
Advanced Weapon Upgrades II
Advanced Weapon Upgrades III
Advanced Weapon Upgrades IV
Hull Upgrades I (60.000 ISK)
Hull Upgrades II
Mechanic III
Jury Rigging I (60.000 ISK)
Jury Rigging II
Jury Rigging III

Total time: 116 days, 22 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Option 2: Minimal Ship Fitting

Electronics IV
Electronics Upgrades I (100.000 ISK)
Electronics Upgrades II
Electronics Upgrades III
Engineering IV
Energy Grid Upgrades I (79.000 ISK)
Energy Grid Upgrades II
Energy Grid Upgrades III
Energy Management I (170.000 ISK)
Energy Management II
Energy Management III
Energy Management IV
Energy Systems Operation I (40.000 ISK)
Energy Systems Operation II
Energy Systems Operation III
Energy Systems Operation IV
Weapon Upgrades I (80.000 ISK)
Weapon Upgrades II
Hull Upgrades I (60.000 ISK)
Hull Upgrades II
Mechanic III
Jury Rigging I (60.000 ISK)
Jury Rigging II
Jury Rigging III

Total time: 9 days, 3 hours, 17 minutes, 12 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Offensive ( Drones / Gunnery / Missiles )

The Drones Skill Group:

If you’ve chosen Gallente as your race, you will be using drones as your primary weapon, as most of their ships have special focus on drones. But even if you are not Gallente, you will learn to respect your Drone tree if you want others to fear your drones.

Drones are a very important source of DPS and although you need quite a few skills to make them effective, you will be using drones in almost every ship you fly with. So even if you fly with Frigates, Cruisers or Battleships, having good drone skills will be invaluable to your total damage output.

Similar to the other offensive skills in Gunnery and Missiles, the Drone group has 2 types of skills. The ones that will unlock more powerful set of drones and enable you to use their T2 variants, and skills that will augment your drone’s abilities and firepower.

Let’s see what you’ll need in order to use Tech 2 Light and Medium Drones (assuming Gallente Drones).

Drones I (20.000 ISK)
Scout Drone Operation I (40.000 ISK)
Scout Drone Operation II
Scout Drone Operation III
Scout Drone Operation IV
Scout Drone Operation V
Drones II
Drones III
Drones IV
Drones V
Gallente Drone Specialization I (9.000.000 ISK)
Gallente Drone Specialization II

Total time: 15 days, 28 minutes
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Of course you will need to augment those drones with some decent support skills:

Combat Drone Operation I (50.000 ISK)
Combat Drone Operation II
Combat Drone Operation III
Drone Durability I (50.000 ISK)
Drone Durability II
Drone Durability III
Drone Interfacing I (500.000 ISK)
Drone Interfacing II
Drone Interfacing III
Drone Navigation I (100.000 ISK)
Drone Navigation II
Drone Navigation III
Drone Sharpshooting I (150.000 ISK)
Drone Sharpshooting II
Drone Sharpshooting III

Total time: 3 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, 20 seconds
N.B. Skill costs are based on CCP’s database and are indicative only

Of the Drone Support Skills, Drone Interfacing is the most valuable one, as it drastically increases the DPS of your drones, so you might want to train that first to higher levels than the rest of your Drone support skills.

Coming up in Part 2:

Coming up in Part 3:

• Complete suggestions for various races with sample skill training plans

Please leave a comment if you liked the guide and suggestions / improvements are always welcome.

EVEMon was used during this guide to show learning trees and skills suggestions. No pets where harmed while writing this guide (at least to my knowledge) :-p

QP

Granted, the first post had some bad information and calculations – but the theory is there, the practice shows us that this is the way to go vs Sleepers, so I had to dig deeper and actually learned quite a few on how Resistances / Tanking works

So sometimes you post, or sometimes you post, you get feedback, you edit, you get more feedback, admit you are a total newb, cry for hours and then repost…

Major thanks goes out to gsputi from battleclinic.com forums and our very own Vessper (/bow) and Luminus for their feedback and comments.

Battleclinic.com threads:

Proteus Class 5-6 Utility Ship

Armor Tanked RR Wormhole Fleet Raven

If you are looking into ways to maximize your fleet effectives vs Sleepers, I hope you find this post useful. If you do, please do post a comment

QP

——- Updated Post follows:

The question we need to answer is:

Effective HPs by adding Buffer tank? – or by increasing your Resistances?
Which is best for Sleeper PVE engagements?

Q: Which is better? A ship with 70% omni-tank and 15.000 Armor HPs, or a ship with 95% omni-tank but only 2.500 Armor HPs?

Let’s see what we have here:

Armor HPs: Base Armor HPs, including plates or not (a single 1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plate adds 4200 HPs)

Armor Resistances (omni): The % Resistances you have on your setup. Obviously, you don’t have the same resists on each type of damage, but we are trying to prove a point here, so we assume all are the same % and we don’t split between different types of damage.

Sleeper DPS: I assume that in a Class 5, Sleepers can do about 10.000 DPS on a 0% resistances target. I’ve seen 4 Sleeper BSs bashing a 85% omni-tanked Dominix with 75K EHP in just 15sec from full shield to structure… so yeah that sounds about right…

Reaction Time: This is how long you can hold before you pop – unless you get the below number of needed Remote Repairers to compensate. Your fleet members holding the RR have this time to start healing or you die.

Single RR HP/Sec: With related skills at V and using LRAR II that is about 85,4 HP/Sec

Single RR Tankability DPS: The amount of Tank (in DPS) each LRAR II’s will add to your ship, taken into account the resistances of your setup.

# RRs to Compensate: The number of Remote Repairers needed to out-heal the Sleeper DPS, given the tankability from above.

Notes:

For ease of calculations, and not trying to be realistic, I assume that Sleepers in Class 5 encounters can do 10.000 DPS on a 0% resistances target. This is not very far off the real DPS 4 Advanced Sleeper Battleships can dish out in a Class 5 btw This guide post has that in mind, but it might be different tactics needed in Class 6 wormholes and if you can shed some light in this please do!

I tried to keep up the same reaction time for reference. 5 sec is not too much but not too little either for your PVE Fleet. If you feel you need more reaction time, then see the below mention, but given that the cycle for LRAR II’s is 4.5 sec I think that 5 sec should be enough reaction time.

Verdict:

The more Resistances, the fewer RRs you will need to get in order to survive. If you can withstand the Alpha strike (not taken into account here) you should be fine as long as your teammates are not slacking.

Other Things to consider / Ways to improve your setup:

If you could add plates, or any other way of increasing your Armor HPs, but without lowering your Resistances – what would you accomplish? Well it wouldn’t change the DPS you receive, nor the Tankability of the RRs, not even the # of RRs you need to balance the incoming fire. The only thing it will improve is the reaction time for your fleet members. So if you have lots of lag when you fleet up, or your teammates are known to go AFK without warning you should consider adding a Plate. But if you are low in resistances, try to buff up your resistances first and work on your reaction times!

For doubling the reaction time to 10 sec you would need to double the amount of Armor HPs without sacrificing any resistances!

It all came down to getting the information you need, and EvEHQ was there to automate the process. I decided to post a quick guide since many of you might need to use it for a similar situation. This is the first guide – of what we hope to be more in the future – send us your feedback on what you’d like to see!

Things you will need : EVEHQ – http://www.evehq.net – the only tool you’ll need

You also need to have an account with Director level access and use their Full API key to gain access to corporation assets. Of course if you have all the assets in question in your personal hangar then you don’t need corp key.

For this example, I am using SI Radio’s Planet Risk Wormhole System and the assets there-in to grab the T3 Proteus Hull BPC and see what’s my profits there. Some information have been classified as need to know and thus omitted from the screenshots. We take security seriously… ahahahahaha… ahem… right… back to EvEHQ

Disclaimer:

It’s critical to note, that this process will take into account the prices of the raw materials and finished goods that exist given the current prices from the region you configure! It will not – and should not imho – include any costs you might have attached to that if you have been buying stuff from the market at different prices than current etc… Also, it does no include the costs for your investment (like POS, Fuel, Labs, Assembly Arrays etc) but it can add the costs of skillbooks needed.

Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Fire Up EVEHQ and configure the market prices tool. You need to go to Menu option Tools –>   Market Prices. The above configuration is what we use to get our quotes from but your mileage might vary. Note that the prices you setup here will drastically alter the profit margins. Since we want to compare prices vs selling the item in the market, I’ve setup the tool to download all prices from The Forge Region (Jita) on the Min Sell Price – that is the price you would pick if you where to directly go and buy this item.

2. You will need to update the prices given the settings you’ve put in step 1. To do that go to the  “Price Snapshot” tab and click the buttons.

3. You will then need to download the API key details. Please note that unless you use a Full Access key that won’t work. You will also need Director level access to see the Corporation owned assets (like POS Towers, anchored structures, Corp Hangars etc). You need to fire up the tool called EVEHQ Prism and from there click the Download API button. It will take a while, but you will be able to get the Assets for your corp needed for the next steps.

Note you can only refresh the Assets List once per  day as per CCP API key limitations.

4. Once you have downloaded the current assets you can click on the “BP Manager” button within EVEHQ Prism. From here you can select the Owner: <your corporation> or yourself depending on when your BPO/BPCs are stationed. Make sure you click on the “Only Show Owned BPs” if you want, and also the “Update BPs from Assets” and “Get BP Info from jobs”

I need to note here that these two buttons require that you populate your assets using step 3. If you skip that step, you will need to manually enter your BPO/BPC details – which can be time consuming if you have lots of BPs. Now the coolest feature is to grab all the BPs from your Assets along with Get BP Info from Jobs. Always use these two together, because CCP does not include info on the Assets API key – whether it’s BPO or BPC. However, since you can see that info from the Jobs API when the BP is installed somewhere, EVEHQ can work around that limitation from CCP and as long as you put your BPs in good use,  you will soon have all the BPs correctly updated in your asset list. Please head here and bump Vessper’s request to get a fully functional BP API key

5. You can browse to find the BP of the item you need using the dropdown boxes above, or just type in some letters of the item in the search box. Let’s see the Proteus Hull. Once I find the item in the results pane, I double-click that and the BP Calculator window appears. Some really cool features here. Firstly, you can select whether you do your Research / Production for that BP at your own POS or not, so that it can add the associated costs in the Bill of Materials. Secondly, you can select the character that will do the Research / Production so that his skills affect the results. Now let’s see the other information boxes in more detail.

6. You can already see (here in green font since we have a profit) the amount in ISK that you make if you produce this BP given the conditions you specified. What it does is that it calculates the prices of the raw materials (what you would get if you set them up as the lowest sell order in Jita based on our configuration in step 1), then adds the correct amount based on the total quantity needed, (including waste products where applicable) compares the total with the price of the finished product (again, the lowest selling price) and gives you the profit from that deduction.

In many cases this can be way off your actual profit. Why? First of all, you might have to buy some of the intermediate materials instead of building them on your own. Also, the prices for some raw materials constantly change in certain markets – like T3 for example, so what today shows a profit of 100Mill tomorrow could show 65Mil and 2 weeks ago could be 35Mill. It’s pretty hectic market so far in T3 so at some point you could see that stabilize.

Let’s look at an alternative way to calculate your profits.

7. Click on the “Use Standard Costing” button. You will see prices change, and you no longer see the raw materials, but only the intermediate ones. That setting does not take into account the prices of the raw materials, but instead the prices of the intermediate components used. In our case, half of the overall profit comes as you can see from the profit of making the intermediate materials.

8. Also note the “Ideal ML” column. That is the ideal Material Level you should research your blueprints of intermediate steps to reduce your waste factor and thus increase your profits. I need to point out that for the T3 BPOs out there CCP does not affect the waste factor on any lvl of ME you reach – so unless they fix this you will always get the same waste no matter how much ME you put  in there :-/

9. One of the coolest features in EVEHQ Prism and the Blueprint Calculator is the ability to quickly see how many runs you can produce, given your current assets. You just go to the “Resources Owned” tab and select in the Asset Selection where your raw materials are and it will tell you how many units of what material you will need to complete the runs.

10. Pay a visit to the EVEHQ Forums and thank Vessper for this great tool and also give him feedback on features you would like to be included in future versions!