Im curious about Capital ship builds. Currently im around 4 - 6 mil SP and trained up to Battleships with the eventual goal of getting to Dreadnought level on my main and purely Sub capital on my alt. Would any experienced players be able to give me your opinions of various big decks(capitals). I am a Gallente Drone/Failgun build(Drone skills at 4 - 5, Failgun skills trained to 5) currently but my ultimate goal is to be able to switch between long and mid range combat at will. What Capital ships in YOUR OPINION feel better at long - midrange combat. I am trained up to 4 in every subcap weapon class at the moment and 3 - 4 at everything else gunnery and armor/shield related.
Im not just asking about STATS or Costs, thats irrelevant to me as i know from previous experience with EvE neither really means shi*t when you are a solo player VS 7 to 150 well fitted suicide gankers.
Also what is one of the fastest speed builds you have encountered or used and how did it FEEL in combat?
What in your opinion or experience is a HORRIBLE ship fit/ch build?
Note: Im not asking about just a drone build here. ]
Okay, so… here is my opinion on capital ships.
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they are not cost or time effective. By this I mean that they generally see little use outside of gang/fleet operations.
The reason I say this is because they are not particularly adept at defending themselves against multiple foes… subcapitals especially.
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In a capital ship, you can never expect a 1v1 or anything close to that. As soon as someone sees you, they will call their friends and attempt to dogpile you as quickly as they can.
Now you may ask "what else is new?"
Trust me… you will see very different responses between flying a faction fit Ashimmu and a Moros.
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A frigate can pin a Dreadnought down and literally laugh at the capital ship until help arrives.
FAXs, Carriers and Supercarriers can somewhat defend themselves, but have trouble against multiple, smart opponents.
Supercapitals have largely the same issues, but can escape from all except dozens of hostiles or am Interdictor / Heavy Interdictor.
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Titans are just terrible for solo or small gang players. As soon as you get one, you will be on the shitlist of every person in the general vicinity (because everyone desires a Titan kill on their records).
Make a mistake or piss off the wrong person off and someone WILL betray you and carve their name in your ship.
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Capital warfare ranges from tediously slow to “Jezuz Christ… I died how quickly???”
(see: repping or supporting friendlies while sweating about dying to being primaried by 50+ capital ships.
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In a Dred or Carrier, your job will be to support fleets of subcapitals or be part of larger capital forces… which tend to be extremely anal retentive about what, where, when, and how you perform.
In a Supercap… well… you are assumed to have some degree of experience and risk aversion. And if you don’t, you will receive neither pity nor help from no one.
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I get that much as far as being time or cost effective. no one in their right minds would expect either but thats not the point of capitals. Its to project force, intimidate, strategic use just like in the actual military. An arleigh burke class destroyer can sink a IOWA class battleship with relative ease and can also take down a foreign carrier class vessel with torpedoes and tomahawks depending on the skill of the crew and the situation at hand.
It also makes sense that a frigate can pin a Dreadnought since i know from previous experience about the horrors of shitty turret tracking. And you cant kill what you cant hit.
Since ive never piloted a dreadnought since ive played eve whats the difference in response between a Moros (what ill likely be in since im gallente) and an Ashimmu?
The difference between an Ashammu and a Moros is that the former has a MUCH wider range of potential targets it can reasonably engage.
A Moros (or any Dred, FAX, Carrier, or Supercapital) is pretty limited in terms of what it can engage and what people (and what KIND of people) it attracts.
An Ashummu will generally attract hunters-killer types. They may blob you with superior numbers, but in relative terms the numbers can be managed if you plan accordingly (because it is only a ~200 million ISK cruiser and calling for reinforcements over that is silly).
A Moros on the other hand is a capital ship… and only dumb or baiting people fly capital ships solo.
The safest course of action is to assume is part of a larger force. So it must be killed with overwhelming power as soon as possible and there must be backup ready for “just in case.”
And unlike real life, any ship in the game can pretty much “sneak up” on a capital ship regardless of class. Either through superior speed or via cynosaural fields.
(see: in real life, a large ship can see far enough away and to have time to adjust tactics and/or find a way to be prepared for what is coming since there is no “magic” way for ships to transverse large distances in an instant. In EVE, you do not have that luxury and should expect to be hotdropped by a larger force the moment you arrive on field… with minimal preparation on the enemy’s part).
I should also add that capital ships are not intimidating.
If someone sees a lone capital… a suicide mentality takes over.
Expect the person who caught the capital ship to be screaming in their respective chat channels for help.
Anecdote:
Back when I was in Faction Warfare, everyone in militia received word from some random guy that he had pinned down a carrier in an asteroid belt… in a frigate.
No one quite believed him because…
- No one was stupid enough to fly a carrier into an asteroid belt.
- No one was stupid enough to fly a carrier solo.
- There were plenty of spies in militia chat channel (fun fact; our enemies confirmed with us later that they thought we were baiting them).
About 30 minutes later the same guy made the same plea for help.
So my group sent a scout over to confirm.
It took less than 2 minutes and… holy ■■■■, the guy was not joking!
About a minute later we had our own capital ships ready and lit a cyno field on top of said carrier.
We even had a large amount of subcapital and supercapital back up just in case this was part of an elaborate trap (we could not confirm if there were hostile capitals in the area).
The carrier died in under a minute.
All because of one stubborn frigate pilot.
I still wonder what was going through that carrier pilot’s head to this day.
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Basically a dreadnaught is something you use when you just NEED insane amount of damage (and you can make sure you can apply that damage to the target). They are useful for 2 thins mostly: Taking down other capitals and taking down structures.
You really need to be in a good corporation that has a plan on how and when to use capitals. Doing it solo or in a small group (outside of some VERY specific circumstances) will 99,999% of the cases mean you are going to lose that capital.
Dreadnaughts do one thing very well: They do insane amounts of damage. The issue is, getting that damage applied to the target. So if you want to kill something big, a dreadnaught is usually one option to go for.
Theres really only 2.5 uses for a dread, 1: knocking down structures, 2: massive fleet blobs in nullsec, and 0.5: Ratting (Carriers do it better).
I feel that a carrier would be a better option for you, you can better defend yourself from small things, you can use it for ratting, and if you know what you are doing, you can use it for solo PvP as well.
@ OP
You have at least a year of training left before you waste your time and isk in a capital ship. How many of your support skills are trained to level 5? You feel that railguns suck- it’s because your gunnery support skills aren’t good enough. MP:V + at least a 3% tracking implant is basically mandatory to get a reasonable hit rate vs player ships.
At under ten mil sp I’d stick with flying frigates and cruisers. I felt BSs weren’t very effective until I had hit ~30 mil SP; had maxed core fitting skills (including advanced weapon upgrades 5) + the ability to fit T2 tanking and damage mods, and at least skill level 4 in each turret support skill. Caps may seem easier to fit due to the huge amount of cpu, grid, and cap they have, but the reality of the matter is they require the most amount of SP to be effective out of any ship size.
You fly caps when you have the SP and are a member of an alliance that can actually fund your cap, as it is generally an alliance asset rather than a personal one.
I know I seem like I’m shitting on your dreams here, but I want you to understand your toon still has a fuckton of training left till you hit your goals (at least a year without injecting), so it might be a better idea for you to plan your training so you also have some common fleet doctrine fits you can fly effectively while you wait for jump drive skills to finish cooking.
If all you want to do is fly dreads (I felt the same way ten years ago), train for the naglfar; due to citadel warfare and void bombs being the meta you will want a dread that can still fire on an empty capacitor; which leaves the naglfar and the phoenix, but the phoenix sucks ass, so it really just leaves the nag.
Ten years ago I felt the same way you do; I wanted to fly dreads. A few years in, I realized I liked flying frigates and cruisers a lot more than flying a BS in fleet operations. If you are in a larger alliance, see if you can pilot a BS on a POS/citadel bash as it will give you some idea as to what being a dread pilot is like (being a f1 monkey shooting at large immobile objects). If it is fun for you, cool, keep training for dreads. If not, then you can do the same thing I did and just focus on subcaps.
You can fly every t1 cruiser at a max skill level before you can fly a single capitol ship with imperfect skills- think about it for a while. I think one of the reasons I’ve lasted so long in eve is because I can fly every single subcap with maxed skill levels so meta changes can’t reasonably bother me anymore.
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You’re asking purely from an armchair EVE career planner point of view, and honestly capitals aren’t like that. It’s ok to train up for “all frigates”, “all cruisers” or “all ewar cruisers” or whatever generic subcap category, because they have somewhat equivalent roles and performance, but more importantly they’re cheap enough that nobody cares.
But capitals are expensive. They’re usually flown in an alliance, with ship replacement programs (so you can get another one if you lose it during an op), so basically the question becomes “what capital do you guys need me to fly” once you’re in the alliance. Experience with the game, and with PVP, and not having a reputation of being a complete clueless newbie in combat, especially with your capital ship, are MORE IMPORTANT than training the skills to fly the things.
So, if you’re already in an alliance, ask them, or look at their doctrines. Keep in mind that they may not trust you enough to let you into the capitals or supercaps group, because awox and spies are a reality. Work on trust first, then the skills.
And if you’re not in an alliance and are just planning to fly capitals without an actual group that would benefit from them… well that’s like training for some super-specialized CNC machine when you don’t even have a job or experience or references. And then buying one of the things, for at home. It just doesn’t make sense.
Im loving the responses so far. I havent played since 2006 - 2007 and even then i only flew up to cruisers. ive never flown a Cap and ive always wanted to so thats my current goal. I dont have any illusions about what being in a cap is like, ive seen them in fleet ops. i already have a BS for baiting purposes but i never actually use the thing in real PvP, i stick to my cruisers. That said this is the first toon im designing to be a Cap - Supercap pilot and i wanted the input and opinions.
@Nikea_Tiber I want to blow up a Keepstar class citadel like in the citadel trailer so Dreadnought for me 
@Netan_MalDoran Noted. i am a gallente droner so ill take a look at carriers.
Keep the advice coming guys
Ok, so what you need to do is look at the prerequisites for the ships and for the weaponry / modules. You will have 2 “long training” periods, one to get all the required prerequisite skills trained to 5, and one for training the relevant capital ship skills to 5.
The prerequisites are listed in the show info stat pages, so that’s not a problem. The “relevant” capital ships have to do with maximizing the performance of your ship, because it’s freaking expensive, so you want:
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maximum jump range / minimum jump fuel - CCP has limited the jump movement of capitals to prevent getting to the other side of the map almost instantly, and as usual they over-nerfed, to the point where you need the jump drive skills at 5 for “normal” operation.
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you want T2 defense modules, obviously, and T2 weapons.
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a lot of capital fleets will only want capitals that can install the T2 siege / triage / whatever module, as the T2 module gives a significant boost over the T1 module.
So, basically you can take the first “long training” session to train prerequisites for ALL the racial capital ships (the prerequisites are somewhat universal), as well as the jump drive and siege / triage modules and T2 defenses (also universal), and then pick which specific racial capital ships you want and train the ship skills and the T2 weapon skills (as the second “long training” session). This will let you use the capitals with T1 weapons and ship skills while you train for T2, but you’ll still have the T2 triage etc.