Some more questions

New Citizens Q&A
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… but first. I was minding my own business mining in 0.4, looking out for any one else in system, d-scanning and for several minutes i was all alone. Then I looked at some paper with a list of ore to decide where to go next and some guy who HAD to have know I wasn’t looking at my screen came along and blew me up with something that sounded horrible. So he cheated in EVE, how could he know i wasn’t paying attention!!!

With that said, Is a destroyer like a Thrasher good for venturing to low or null sec or should a cruiser or bigger be taken?

Once you get a destroyer whats the point if using lower ships except for mining or exploring? And even then, is the bonus for analyzers worth it to have a weaker ship?

I wanted to buy a shield generator (or something close to that name) and some said they were just for capital ships. What constitutes a capital ship?

That weapon that makes the horrible sound. Is that the thing that slows me down or prevents warp or target painting or an actual weapon?

Turrets come in small medium and large. How can I tell if my ships can fit large or medium?

How do you use drone for protection? launch and l then tell them to attack a target if one shows up? Can they be automated to attack?

Thanks!

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I can’t answer all of these, but in terms of ship fitting, small/medium/large is indicated in the icons on the first or second (I forget) tab of show info for that ship. Mouse over them. One will tell you what module and rig size.

Generally:

  • Frigate and destroyer is small.
  • Cruiser and battlecruiser is medium, as are mining barges and industrials.
  • Battleships are large.
  • Capitals are extra large, though the Orca, which is technically a capital, would need Large mods.
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Let’s find out what happened: https://zkillboard.com/kill/84112398/

First of all: Your fit is great for Lowsec, because it is cheap.
Honestly, you didn’t lose anything valuable, so no problem at all. But of course you could fit a Shield Extender, a Survey Scanner, and a Damage Control for tank or Inertia Stabilizer for speed tank or Mining Upgrade for yield. Also you should fit two mining lasers of the same type, so you always have the same range and duration.

You had no tank at all, so in a t2 fitted Harpy it’s 2-3 seconds to kill you as soon as it’s in range. No time to react if you don’t see him coming. No cloak, but there was no need for a cloak, for you were at a public asteroid belt, so he just hopped to each belt until he found you, align, mwd, lock, fire, dead. I’m pretty sure he was less than 10 seconds on grid before your Venture exploded.
With some training you even can evade him, that’s good news. Ventures have inbuilt core stabs, which make you harder to be warp scrambled.

Don’t see any hint for an awful sound, but all the alerts would be there within the same seconds, and the blasters are powerful. A web doesnt make a sound.
Drones wouldn’t have helped you there, they are just for killing harmless but annoying belt rats. They would have automatically responded when set to “aggressive”, but there was not even enough time to shoot once.

Fit: Only number of slots, power, and CPU limitate your fitting. Try and find out, simulate ships and wildly fit around. For example you can fit a medium shield extender to small ships, but then you have to be careful with other modules, no MWD for example. But all ships have special treats, so read the info about the features of your ship, and you see what is most powerful.

Never forget: The bigger the ship you fly into Low, the more you gonna lose. There are fast frigates, sturdy frigates, ewar frigates - much to try before losing cruisers which cost 20 times more and are slower. For learning how to gtfo, a fast Frig is perfect :slight_smile:

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Thats cool. Didn’t know you could look that up. Is there a way to see what the other ship was equipped with? Wondering how long i could have lasted if i was in my destroyer.

I didn’t mind the loss, i even used a civilian afterburner. I don think extra shields would have helped. the plan was to run as soon as anything came into the system, but like i said i started reading. lol. Only loss was my time.

5

That dirty rat bastard.

Destroyers trade DPS for survivability. You’re becoming bigger and easier to hit but not really gaining alot in the way of HP, resists or slots when compared to a frigate. It’s really just a paper thin slow oversized frigate with 8 guns. There are loads of reasons you might want survivability (small fast frigate) over raw damage, even in combat and especially against larger ships.

The really big ones. Generally they will have a Jump Drive and not be allowed in Hi-Sec. The couple of exceptions are various kinds of freighters and the Orca which are generally considered sort of caps but can use jumpgates and operate in Hi-Sec. Caps include Carriers, Dreadnoughts etc SUPERCaps include Supercarriers and Titans.

I haven’t turned the sound on in years I have no idea what anything sounds like.

You can set market to only show what you can fit currently, but as a rule of thumb : Frigs - Destroyers will be Small, Cruiser - Battlecruiser will be Medium and Tier 2 Battlecruisers (Talos / Tornado etc) - Battleships will be Large.

Yeah you can set em to Passive or Aggo depending if you want them to auto attack the last thing to shoot you or not.

Look through the aggressors killboard for any losses you might glean information from. You can also scan someones ship to see modules and cargo if you have the right modules fitted. That said the person who killed you has a decent record and would likely have killed you in the Destroyer too. A previous kill shows a Destroyer being killed by same person who just flew a T3 Cruiser instead of the Harpy that was used to kill you.

Good. That’s the attitude you need here. Every loss is a lesson, and you wanna get real good right? :darkbeerparrot:

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thanks for the answers. I’ll need to compare the speed of my ships verses hit-points. Still having 7 turrets going is all I need against NPCs in combat anomalies.

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I’d highly suggest sending the guy a message next time. I have only been playing a month myself and been PKed three times. Each time I sent the person a message, they responded with great advice. One even sent me isk, (another offered I declined). The advice they all gave was invaluable though. Even had a situation this morning that I escaped from with the knowledge I got from the advice that was given.

If there is one thing I have learned, just because you got killed by somebody, it doesn’t mean they are a bad person, its part of the game. Most people are more then happy to offer advice to noobs like us.

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Perhaps he was using smartbombs (which really should be called energy burst weapons or some such).

Smartbombs don’t need a target lock, but they are very short-range.

https://www.eve-piracy.com/smartbomb/

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Smartbombs

…and the guy probably wasn’t cheating. Probably looked for signs you might not be paying attention at that moment (such as a lone venture in lowsec not warping out when a combat ship landed on grid with it) and/or maybe he simply got lucky.

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A thrasher is fine for lowsec roaming. So is a cruiser. Destroyers tend to be good against frigates because of their small guns with higher tracking speed. Cruisers tend to be a good option against larger ships like other cruisers.

Bigger is not better. Frigates are smaller and faster and good at getting under the guns of larger, slower ships. Many a foolish mission runner has discovered that no, his shiny mission battleship is not effective against a well-piloted assault frigate. Ships also tend to be specialized, like you mentioned for mining or exploring. A destroyer is unlikely to be effective at either of those.

I’m not sure what you mean by shield generator. Do you mean something that would increase your shield hitpoints? Those are available for all ship sizes. Shield module sizes are weird, because people usually ignore small shield extenders and fit mediums to small ships (destroyers and frigates) and larges to medium ships (cruisers and battlecruisers). Capital ships are big ships that can do a lot of damage and take a lot of damage, but are ineffective against small ships. They also have jump drives that allow them to use a kind of fuel to teleport to a fleetmate with a certain module called a cynosural field generator active. Generally capital ownership is for more advanced players with multiple accounts (don’t train caps on your main).

I don’t know about any horrible sounding weapon. It’s possible that was your own ship sounding an alarm due to low shields/armor/hull though. Warp disruptors prevent warping, warp scramblers do so at a shorter range but also disable microwarpdrive propulsion modules, stasis webifiers will slow you down, and target painters increase your signature size which makes you easier to hit.

You could look at your available powergrid compared to the turret’s powergrid need. Powergrid costs on larger-sized modules tend to increase exponentially, so a medium turret will be almost impossible to fit on a small ship.

Drones can be set to aggressive mode, which means they will engage anything that attacks you. You can also lock a target and press F to order your drones to attack. For a venture, I recommend carrying two Hornet EC-300s. They won’t do any damage, but if a hostile player shows up they have a chance of disabling his targeting equipment for a short period of time, which should buy you enough time to warp out.

Oh, and I doubt that your attacker knew you were AFK. More likely he found you in a belt and shot you because the vast majority of players outside of highsec (and some even in highsec) will attack you unless you’re their friend.

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Not exactly, you only see the ship type and the main weapon used in the very incident.
Many times you can find hints in his loss history if he has already lost a ship of that class in another fight, but this guy never lost an assault frig yet.

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actually there is a mean, it is called using ship scanner during the fight, but it will occupy one slot. What will OP trade for it?
or just ask to the guy who killed him. many of them are nice guys happy to discuss about pvp
or kill the guy and check his killmail to see his fit

should i suggest OP to join a corp?

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To expand on this:

Realistically there is no way to know how a ship is precisely fit before a fight begins.
Sure, you can slap on a Ship Scanner but…

  • they take a little time to spool up (time one does not have time in the heat of the moment)
  • are not 100% correct (they will usually “miss” something)
  • they take up a precious fitting slot which can be better used towards… well… actually doing things

HOWEVER…

With enough experience one can infer or guesstimate how a ship is likely to be fitted.

Here’s how my thought process would work in a given engagement:
(note: This is assuming that I am also hunting for targets. If you are not, your first impulse should be to run as soon as something appears on D-Scan within 0.5 AU of your location)

(ship warps in)

  • Did it warp in up close or at range?

  • At range:
    – Probably a scout or a long range attacker… both mean that it is lighter in terms of defense, but high in speed. Damage is questionable.
    – If a Minmatar ship (or any ship with artillery fitted) then it is time to move fast and away on a perpendicular trajectory. Artillery deals very high volley damage, which means (depending on what ship I am in) that it needs only one or two hits to nuke me. By moving perpendicular, I throw off its ability to track me well.
    – Am I fast enough? If I have decent speed, I can maybe get in range and kill it… or chase it off at the very least. (note: DO NOT approach “head on”)
    – Check D-Scan. Are there “friends” inbound? Might want to think about running.

  • Up close:
    – How close is it EXACTLY?!
    ----- If within scram range (9- 10km) then either I should quickly pull range or be ready to fight regardless of the circumstances (see also: “suicidal mentality”)
    – What ship type is it?
    ---- If small and speedy then it is there to “intercept” and hold me down until help arrives. Try to escape ASAP or (if escape is impossible) overload everything and try to nuke it (then escape).
    ---- If larger/more “robust” ship then it is there to kill. (Note: Any seasoned player will attempt to fight something that they think they have a reasonable chance of winning.

I should also add that it helps to have a bit of a memory in this game.

Certain ships favor certain fits over others because of their bonuses towards certain tanking styles… their weapon specialties… and inherent stats.

For example:

Caldari ships tend to have more medium slots than low slots and generally have bonuses either for missiles or hybrid weapons.
Shield modules use medium slots.
Damage and speed modules use low-slots.

This means that Caldari ships are typically…

  • Shield tanked
  • Either super close range or super long range fighters (for their class)
  • Usually employ speed tactics

Now this is all an oversimplification of what will actually happen once you gain more knowledge and experience out there.
But the key is that you ARE gaining more knowledge and you ARE going out and gaining experience.

Every ship you die in is another opportunity to refine your knowledge and build up your experience!

edit: I would like to apologize. I checked back in on this thread and realized that I went off on a tangent and did not really touch on the intended subject.

(glares at the bottle of wine)
You made me do this!!

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Perpendicular to what?

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Perpendicular to the trajectory of the hostile ship.

The was tracking works in a nutshell is:

  • If you and the target ship are flying straight at each other, tracking will improve.
  • If you and the target ship are flying parallel to each other, tracking will improve.
  • If you and the target ship are flying perpendicular to each other, tracking will suffer.
  • If you and the target ship have too much of a gap in terms of speed (relative to each other), then tracking will suffer.

Essentially, jink “sideways” relative to the direction the target ship is moving in at top speed.

If one wants to go after the target ship, then the ideal method is to “spiral in.”
This means heading in the general direction of the target in a large “corkscrew” pattern.
It does make approaching a bit slower so if speed/time is of the essence then you can narrow down the “corkscrew” or make a direct beeline and hope for the best.

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I understand all that, Shah, I just wasn’t sure if that was what you meant.

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Fair enough. :slight_smile:

This is the newbie section of the forums, so it is important to be clear on things.

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