Let’s just face it. Eve is a game with boatloads of community generated literature. The game is vast and deep and new (or potential) players need all the help they can get in order to get themselves rolling as quickly as possible. For me this  has been most apparent coming from a radio station that even though caters to EVE Online on occasion is not solely dedicated to the game, as a lot of non-eve players who express interest about the game ask more and more questions.

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