A fitting guide

[elitatwo]

This is hopefully a collection thread and some general information on how to fit a ship. This topic comes up so often that I felt the need to give some general pointers on how to do so.

Some of you readers may have noticed over a long period of time that one my standard answers to that question is that you buy the ship, some modules and dock in a station.
Then assemble the ship, open your fitting screen and drag your modules on said screen.

That may sound condescending and rude but I have noticed that even that step may not be known by everyone.

Why do I even bring this up?

Fitting a ship to your needs cannot be answered by looking on third-party websites and only leads to bad decision making in the process.

First, you need to ask yourself the right questions before you can ask for advice. So in this thread I will collect those questions for you and add some according to your input.

Please do not post any fittings here since it is more for information gathering and giving at least some most asked questions one of many answers.

Let’s begin with some questions, you need to answer yourself, not us:

What do I want to do with xyz ship?

How do I fit xyz ship?

In any and all cases, please read the ‘traits’ of xyz ship since it gives you valuable information what kind of ship it is and what would be a good idea to fit like what guns, what tank, which propulsion or any propulsion at all.

This gives you some more questions and fitting can be an adventure on its own.

Let’s fit an example ship and for this thread let’s assume by guns I mean turrets, drones and missiles alike.

After reading the ‘traits’ on this example ship, you know it has a bonus for guns and is a plain regular tech one cruiser class ship.

In most subcaptial ship classes there are four different ways to fit a combat ship:

The long range gun, active tank
The long range gun, buffer tank
The short range gun, active tank
The short range gun, buffer tank 

What you need to know as a noob is that not all of those combat fits are a good idea to fit for all available ships. Only very few ship can fit all four different variations and some don’t make sense at all.

Another rule of thumb is that you have to pay close attention to the slot configuration on the fitting screen. This configuration can tell you if you would want to have a shield or an armor tank and in most cases more medium than lowslots mean, you want to fit one of two shield variations.
More lowslots than med-slots mean that you would want to fit one of the armor-tank variations.

There is currently an increasing number of hull-tanks, which I will leave out for now, since it isn’t something new players will want to do.

If our example cruiser here does fit a shield or armor tank is not decided by the slot configuration you see on your fitting screen.
We have two options available for shield and armor tanks, with up and downsides and which one is the lesser evil for you, I will let you decide.

In general active tanks mean that you have to micro-manage more active modules in space while are in more or less stressful situations and the one obvious downside is that those consume a ton your ships capacitor.
That means for any active tank, your capacitor is your ships life!

Buffer tanks have downsides too but they are also very different from one another. Shield buffer fits are the most forgiving fits for newer and more experienced players but armor buffer fits are much less forgiving.
The reason is simple here, shields do recharge over time and armor plates do not. So an armor buffer needs to be repaired each time you dock again and shield buffers only need time to regenerate.
But as offset to shields and armor, armor plates give your much more ehp and shield give you less ehp but do not let this discourage you from trying both at some point.

Another case can be made that you can mix armor plates and active armor reps but in no case you should mix shield buffer and active shield tanking fits.

Everything I told you so far is only a rule of thumb, and there are only very few rules on how to fit a ship and which modules are allowed and which ones are only to fit on one special ship.

Now let’s dig a little deeper and start with the high-slots:

Those slots usually fit guns and or utility modules but let’s focus on the guns first. The ‘traits’ tab should have given you an idea which of the guns you want to fit on our example cruiser so let’s do that and continue with the medium-slots.

Medium slots:
Here it get’s a little tricky because you will have to have made up your mind if your ship should be fit with shields or not. But don’t freak out just yet.
Remember that I just told you that your fitting screen will have made that decision for you according to your on screen slot configuration.

But now comes the most difficult decision part and the point where you have to make trade-offs with your fit.

Your medium slots a limited and have to share not only your tank or not but your propulsion, capacitor management and electronic warfare or not.

Let us take the Moa as an example and say we want a shield buffer-fit. So we would have fit 5x heavy neutron blaster II’s and want to have a microwarpdrive, since moving fast can decide a win or a loss.
So we fit an experimental mwd and 2x large shield extender and Aura starts to yell at you!

You don’t have enough powergrid to fit all this

This is your first tradeoff. In order to fit that mwd and the shield extenders, you have to make a choice, do you ditch the mwd for an afterburner (naaaah) or do I ditch all the guns and take the smaller versions?
Let’s not be so quick to dismiss the most wanted modules on your ship just yet and keep it on.

So after fitting heavy ion blasters, you will have enough powergrid to please your needs to keep Aura happy - yeay

Now you still have 2 more slots to fill here, maybe go for the strengths (which you also find in the ‘traits’ tab) and build on that. So to even strengthen your shield buffer on that Moa, you decide to fit an adaptive invulnerability field.

But now you only have one more slot to go and so many options

In my case I decide to fit a warp scrambler in this last medium-slot - there is no escaping my Moa and you would want pin someones ship and prevent it from flying away from you.

In case of a Thorax, you have to reconsider for an active armor tank and have more options to fill your med slots to either put more electronic warfare on your target or make his guns almost useless - up to you but consider that active tank need tons of your capacitor so you may want to consider at least one module for capacitor management - a capacitor booster which in addition to your guns also need ammunition.

And let’s go to the last row - the low slots.

Here you need to make some more trade offs, depending on your tank-configuration.

Your low-slots and only so much and here you need to share either propulsion upgrades, weapon upgrades, armor repair modules for an active tank, armor plates for an armor buffer or a mix of the two.

In case the Moa, you don’t need any of armor modules to consider but in all cases consider the most wanted modules for all ships - the damage control system.

I cannot stress enough on how important this module is - in 99.9% of all cases you will want one on your ship.

But remember, in case you fit an armor ship you need to share your low-slots with said damage-control-unit, armor resistance modules, weapon upgrades and or armor plates and or armor repair modules.

Now for the last case, you will have different options: pve (mining or ratting or missions or exploration or hauling)

I put ratting and (combat-)missions into one category, since you want to shoot stuff but it is optional and in most cases only to fill your wallet to buy ship and modules.

When you do missions or rat (combat anomalies or shooting Guristas in an asteroid belt) you do not need to have electronic warfare, since NPC’s ship only want to shoot you and do not care much if you disrupt their gun tracking or damp their targeting locks down.

In all my time in EVE I only succefully jammed two NPC’s in my Rook and they just flew out of the ECM optimal range and came back to shoot the ship after failing said jam.

You may have guessed by now that for those purposes you may want to add more tank or consider a more capacitor stable setup or even both.

The only ‘bad’ thing you can do here would be to loose your ship - in that case your fit has failed to deliver.

So take your time to ask yourself the most important question first:

What do you want to do with your ship?

Modulecide

A while back CCP started this little project called tiericide which helped to shape the landscape of our beloved ships to the state where they are in now.
Then a little later they also started a project called modulecide which can be better explained by looking at our history.

When we first entered New Eden, we had some modules and ships and the gods let us play with them and see what we could come up with.
The combination of ships and modules allowed for some very creative thinking which later inspired some new ship classes.

Anyhow, some of the modules weren’t really “good” and for a very long time some of them had a label called “meta”.

Those “meta modules” used to be like this:

Meta 1: basic
Meta 2: a little better than basic
Meta 3: a lot better than basic
Meta 4: OMG use this and forget the rest

There are still some of them in the game which haven’t gotten the “modulecide treatment” but I spoke to CCP Lebowski yesterday and he said that he would pass it along that I do like what they have started and would want them to continue with them.

The idea is that we don’t have any “useless” modules in the “meta drops” anymore.

And just for anyone who doesn’t know, whenever you shoot an NPC like Blood Raider, Serpentis, Guristas Pirates and the like, the remains may contain one or more of said “meta modules”.

With that out of the way, let me talk about the modules that have gotten the “modulecide treatment” and start with a few basics to refresh your memory.

With the “modulecide” came a renaming of modules with mixed reactions but the naming of them is important for this and there are keywords to look out for.
Modules with those keywords have the same purpose, so I list them here.

Modules with a

• “Compact-” in them all have better fitting requirements than the other meta modules, meaning they require less CPU or powergrid or both.

• “Scoped-” in them will have more range than the other meta modules

• “Enduring-” in them will require less capacitor when operating them

• “Restrained-” will have one attribute which positively impact the operation of the ship as a whole

Let me give an example with the most important modules you can fit - propulsion.

I will only talk about microwarpdrives here but you will get the idea:

• 5 / 50 / 500 mn “Compact Microwarpdrives” have the better fitting requirements I talked about earlier giving them use for when your ship won’t care about the other attributes as much but still needs to be positioned

• 5 / 50 / 500 mn “Enduring Microwarpdrives” will use less capacitor than the other meta modules, meaning you can burn for a little longer with them. It is probably the most used of the bunch.

• 5 / 50 / 500 mn “Quad Lif Restrained Microwarpdrives” have this tiny but important feature which will pair really nicely with interceptors, interdictors, HACs and certain sleeper cruiser subsystem, nobody ever uses anyway.

Those shipclasses have the same role bonus, a reduction in signature radius per level.

For those who don’t know, EVE is not a simulation but an M$ Excell sheet and our clients just put those database entries into a cool looking spaceship game.
For this database our ships are nothing more than a “bubble” with a direction and when your “bubble” (signature radius) is smaller, it makes it more difficult for turrets, drones and missile to hit this “bubble”.

Now what am I saying? When you fly an interceptor or just got one or you are planning on getting one, go dock at your home and open the fitting screen, then on the left go to the new simulator and choose one interceptor that speaks to you and do look at the signature radius attribute on the right in the “navigation” tab.
Now go to the left and put a 5mn Enduring Microwarpdrive on and see that your signature increases but not as much as other frigates because you have the bonus.
Unfit the “Enduring” mwd and fit the “Quad Lif Restrained” one instead and see that your signature radius even with a mwd on will be smaller.

If you are unsure what is what, use the “compare” tool, which you find on most modules in the “variations” tab on the bottom.

If all goes well, we will someday have only useful meta modules like this one.

Happy fitting!

[Peta_Chieve]

GG OP

[Mo_Skor]

Nice write up. Could use a lot of proofreading though. Difficult to read through.

[Vala_Azar]

Good with a guide!

Many popular pvp fits use buffer + active rep/boost and some are really good.

[Lady_Ayeipsia]

Good guide. Only thing I would add is a reminder that in general, buffer armor ships are slower due to the effect of equipping plates. I have seen people try speed/armor buffer tank and wonder why it doesn’t work.

I would also add some comments speed tanking as a concept and a reminder that nanos decrease hull hp.

Lastly, add a reminder that shield extenders increases radius too.

[elitatwo]

Right, my bad, Lady Ayeipsia,

Though my idea was that everyone can add or ask and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Just please keep any discussions out of this. This is just a guide and information gathering which I copied over from the old forums for everyone to read.

[Blade_Darth]

I got shorter guide.

What is this ship supposed to do?
-fit accordingly
-idk I just threw on some random junk I found in an asteroid belt

Does it have bonuses?
-yes, Im somewhat following ship bonuses
-yes, but I don’t care
-what are bonuses and how do I activate magic potion?

Does it look good in fitting window/ pyfa?
-looks like a decent fit
-looks like and corp members are private convo’ing me with death theats if i undock it

Follow this guide, 10% of the time it works 100% of the time.

might also look into:
-dps tanking (have so much dps your own tank don’t matter)
-range-tanking
-signature-tanking
-speed-tanking
-smack-talking (try to deconcentrate the enemy by -talking in local chat)

[elitatwo]

@Blade_Darth

might also look into:

Blade, I kept special cases out of this, so that everyone, new or not new will come to learn at least the standard fits by themselves, at which time they will have learned how each of those cases will behave or not.
This is to teach them how to fish and not feed them for an evening.

[Lady_Ayeipsia]

Yeah but I would cover speed/Sig tanking to some degree. I’m not saying go into full details. Still, an explanation, focused more how that speedy frigate evaded all the guns on a BS might be helpful, especially to new players who may foolishly assume that bigger is always better.

[elitatwo]

Maybe I should write a new text entirely focused on tanking? Well it would be two of them, one for pve and one for pvp then. What do you think?

[de_Obliviator_Preon]

When you will discuss hull tank, mention that DCU will give you more protection than to the other type tanks.

[Arcturus_Ursidae]

Nice post.

My only comment would be on your example, the restrained microwarpdrives best feature is its reduced cap penalty, this can make it almost as efficient as enduring when considering other cap draw and especially where you are intending to brawl and it will end up being off during the actual fight.

Try looking at a fully fit thorax or laser boat where cap can be an issue.

[elitatwo]

@Arcturus_Ursidae

the restrained microwarpdrives best feature is its reduced cap penalty

Not quite, the devil is in the details which get overlooked by many. I think you meant the enduring mwd, since this one is the one with the cap draw. The restrained one is best suited for interceptors, command destroyers, interdictors, assault frigates and HACs, where you have the signature radius penalty lowered.

And as a logi pilot, you may want to use the restrained ones too whenever you have to fit a mwd.

[Arcturus_Ursidae]

Have a closer look.

Enduring uses less cap when active, restrained has a smaller total cap reduction penalty.

[elitatwo]

I did. The enduring has lower activation cost per cycle.

[Oreb_Wing]

With turrets, smaller versions of the same size give you more tracking but less dps and range. Besides having less fitting requirements.

Missiles are different in that each has a different class, focusing on rate of fire, range, and damage. If a target is within range, the explosion radius and speed is the launchers version of what tracking is for turrets.

Armor fits are generally penalized in speed, high PG fitting requirements, and lower dps.
The opposite for shield in that they have enlarged signature radius, lower ehp, high CPU requirements.

This makes fits somewhat predictable in that you can expect armor to have holy trinity of mids and nearly always have prop, full tackle scram web and supported cap with boosters.
When you see heaviest weapons and stiff tank, mobility has likely been compromised.

For shield, you find poor range control against enemy mobility but high dps or speed.

Know your ship. Success comes often to the consistent and the lucky.
The rest of us do the battle arithmetic and play against likelihoods or brave the odds.

Even the most cunning pilot can be gamed by resourcefulness, timing, and ingenuity.

[Oreb_Wing]

T2 ammunition always has some penalty involved.
Faction ammo is favored by many in its high comparable range and/or dmg, without penalties, but is considerably more expensive than t2.

Being ABLE to apply your damage is the most overlooked factor in ammunition choice, imo, with higher damage always being far more enticing than supportive mid slots or non-dmg/RoF modifiers.

[elitatwo]

@Oreb_Wing

Armor fits are generally penalized in speed

That is not entirely true but subject to more experienced pilots.

[Oreb_Wing]

It’s hard to deny the armor rig drawbacks and agility hits with the mass on plates. Active rep might take a glancing blow, but then dps would suffer with speed mods. 'Tis true, I say!