So I’m a returning player, and decided that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with my previous character and decided to create a brand new one just to experience playing through and building up my skills once again.
One thing that I was always curious on was regarding ship-fitting, though - is it absolutely important to follow the ship-fitting meta for whatever vessel I’m flying or does it really matter? If I want to be competitive, should the meta be followed or has EVE allowed enough flexibility on player builds to allow viability with anything?
The meta usually just follows the bonuses of the ship. So ignoring the meta is ignoring the bonus, which would be stupid. Fitting light missile launchers on your raven, would be stupid.
There are smaller things you can do that aren’t as damaging though, like using armor tank on a traditionally shield ship. Again, depends on the bonuses for the ship though.
Fitting depends on use and scenario. A fit for PVP is useless for PVE. A fit meant to to run 0.0 anoms is not necessarily any good for running lvl 4 missions. A fit that works really well vs target A doesn’t necessarily work vs target B. So in that respect meta is fairly meaningless.
However, overall meta generally exists for a REASON: it’s the most optimised and most logical fit for the ship. If you want to be a snowflake then don’t let anyone stop you but when someone tells you “that’s not a good fit” it probably means “you’re not getting the full performance from your ship” and some people have the “don’t tell me what to do” reflex to that. Their loss.
So the question really is: do you want to improve or not?
You’ll be gimping yourself pretty hard. The metas are more like guidelines that you adjust to your individual playstyle over time, they are not hard rules except when picking right ship, damage type etc. for the right job. Everything in Eve is about matching your ship and fit to the situation, it is how the game works, if you don’t do this you will end up with many losses or be unable to do what you set out to do in the first place.
Awesome replies, so very much appreciated; one question I want to ask, then, is on where I can read up on meta-builds so I can make sure I’m getting the right skill training done ASAP.
Look through zkillboard at loses for a ship pick the most common fit you see and then work out the skills you need ingame per ship and modules obviously the higher the lvl of skills the better it’ll perform but some skills are more important
First you need to establish some goals. For example, FW frigate / destroyer PvP, or combat PvE, or mining / indy PvE, or beginner explo etc.
You will find many ships, fits, guides in their respective forum sections. Obviously PvE for PvE, PvP for PvP, indy for Indy etc. Once you have something more specific in mind with some specific targets / activities, you can ask there in more details and simply look up videos on Youtube.
Eveuni is a great source, but… beware a lot of info on it is greatly outdated and no longer applicable because it has been around for a very long time and many things are not updated to keep up with changes in the game which may steer you in the wrong direction.
Most ships have some flexibility but the designers had a role in mind. You can often deduce that from the bonuses. I believe you’re usually better off selecting a ship that matches what you want to do rather than use a sub-optimal fit for a ship designed to do something else. An exception would be the T3 cruisers that can be reconfigured for practically any non-industrial role.
As a newer player, I would avoid fits that rely heavily on engineering mods to increase CPU, power grid or capacitor. If you need more than 1 or 2, you’re not ready to fly that ship - give your skills a chance to catch up!
