Sorry this might get dense, but I have info overload which I don’t handle well in general. I followed the eve uni training plan to raise my core 14 to 4/5s, then support skills to fit 2s, now that is finishing up I’m ready to pick some t2 ships, but it is really frustrating that I don’t see a straight path to follow. It’s like I might have to do frigates in one race, destroyers in another, possible cruisers for 2.
So my favorite ship in the game is the tengu (which I think I am 9 mo - 1 yr away from, and the Caldari stops along the way don’t seem to great.
I have excellent drone skills so the Ishtar seems like the next best ship for me, but it feels wasted since I don’t want to fly the proteus and read it can’t run the sites I want to.
My favorite thing is explo so I am leaning towards doing Amarr / Gallente frigs and cruisers to push astero and stratios, then the legion, but don’t know what I would rat in for consistent income.
My corp doctrines are mostly Minmitar and Amarr. I like drones and missiles (just for flavor) but play style really do like brawlers. I’m interested in stealth bombers bc boom and already have cov ops frigate / cloak from explo.
I want to explore and run npc explore sites, rat when needed, and pvp over territory respond to people coming into corp space.
I like things neat so not seeing a good bridge of train this which leads to this, frazzles my brain. Would Amarr and Gallente let me cover this? Minmitar ships seem amazing, but I don’t see a good ratter. I’d be sad missing out on a tengu but don’t see a good bridge to fly in the mean time.
Thanks for any input. I have 1 week left till all my support skills are done.
To answer your question : if you want to focus on exploration sites (data & Relic), a CovOps frigate is the best you can get. It’s fast, gets strong bonuses to scanning and hacking strength, and travel very easily thanks to low align time and cloak.
Since exploration sites never have rats (except some legacy sites you should avoid), you don’t really need bigger ships that’d be slower in sites to complete them.
If you want to run combat sites in nullsec away from your corporation/alliance systems, the Tengu is a great ship. You can train directly for it by the way, unless you want to use another ship first like the Ishtar you mentioned. However be aware that HACs aren’t suited for most nullsec sites or lonely nullsec travel while PVE fitted.
The astero is great. Its a great exploration ship with good drone coverage, great scanning, etc. Very commonly used for exploration by a lot of players new and old.
Tengu is a good ship, but so is the legion. I love my legion. The strat cruisers, though, are a bit expensive, so i wouldnt go with them unless you are comfortable with losing them. As with any ship, you must be able to lose it with a smile, or atleast a mere biting of the lip and a roll of the eyes. No ship loss should make you rage or get angry.
You seem to be very reliant on ship reputations. Now, don’t get me wrong, community wisdom is useful for helping newbros to pick ships, but I also don’t want you to overlook otherwise good ships just because they aren’t popular.
Just because some ships have reputations as being good ships, that doesn’t mean everything else is hot garbage. Truth is, ships exist on a spectrum. Of course, you might want to pass on ships with bad reputations when starting out, but don’t think that S tier is the only viable tier.
Flying less popular ships can give you an advantage in PvP, as (1) there are less people flying counters for them, (2) people have less experience fighting them, and (3) it can cause people to underestimate you.
The community can sometimes overrate and underrate ships (which is great if you’re flying an underrated ship).
The meta is ever evolving. The most common fits/ships that you encounter can change, and players will sometimes develop new tactics.
Sometimes unpopular ships can be really good at specific things. So don’t forget they exist when doing your theory crafting.
You might be happier choosing something that fits your play style, rather than choosing whatever is the most popular.
The game is in active development, so balance passes, mechanic tweaks, and new content can sometimes have a large impact on the performance/usefulness of a ship.
Anyway, if all you want to fly is the most popular ships, then yeah, you’ll be training stuff all over the place. However, your best bet will probably be to just pick a race that fits your play style. You’ll probably have more fun, and I guarantee you that you’ll find great ships in every race’s lineup.
Case in point, my second favorite HAC is the Deimos, but it doesn’t even appear to be on your radar (and you specifically mentioned that you like to brawl and were thinking about training gallente).
Anyway, it sounds like gallente is a good first race for you personally. They have some great brawlers, and have good overlap with the pirate factions (Angel, Gurista, Serpentis, and SoE). The problem, however, is that your corp doctrines are Amarr and Minmatar. So, out of those two, I’d imagine that you’d be happier with Amarr. Pulse Lasers are pretty kick ass, and their skills are also required for the SoE ships.
Check out the Gila, it’s a tremendous ship on your way to the Tengu. It uses drones and missiles which sounds like you are pretty into. You’ll be flying into all the combat and exploration sites with one and it seems to work out well in a bunch of situations.
thanks, this is a good post. I will say my preferences is not wanting to waste training time. The unique amount of training is overwhelming when new, and the last thing I want to do is spend 1 month training something and it not do what I want to.
Like I read that Proteus can’t run NPC explo sites. I’m less focused on the pvp rep and more concerned if I can complete the sites I want to go to.
We have to sort out what’s T2 and what’s pirate faction first.
To answer your initial question, all links given to EVE Uni show which skills are needed to enter the ship at minimum.
For T2, you need the T1 skill of the race skilled up to V - for a Tengu, it’s Caldari Cruiser V. Actually, strategic Cruisers are even considered to be T3, HACs and HICs are T2…
Also, for Caldari Strategic Cruisers you need Shield Operation V, Power Grid Management V, Missile Launcher Operation V, Navigation V and some training how to switch modes effectively. There, Tactical Destroyers like a Jackdaw are much cheaper to train and learn, you “only” need Caldari Destroyer V.
For exploration, the Buzzard is the Caldari type. There you need Caldari Frigate V and Electronics Upgrades V, and at least Cloaking IV.
Astero and Stratios are Pirate faction ships though, so there’s much less skills needed to board the ship, so is the Gila. But of course you should skill cloaking and learn how to use it.
In the end, I recommend to have all of the magic 14 up to V before even thinking about buying and flying a Tengu. And if you want to keep losses cheap, keep on doing exploration in an Imicus/Heron and get your scanning skills like Archaeology and Hacking as high as possible.
You might be interested in my skill point and training guide, as it offers several strategies for improving your skill training rate. Unfortunately, it has a high information density, and you mentioned not being good with information overload. So, maybe pace yourself or something. And feel free to ask questions if needed.