Original ship - upgrade or dump?

baldmanpuke · May 2005

As a new player, I'm looking for advice - is it worthwhile to upgrade the ship (Reaper) you start the game with, or would I be better off saving the ISK for a new frigate? And if I buy new, is what race offers a frigate with the best balance of mining capablity and offense/defense?

dakilla666 · May 2005

The worst possible thing you can do is keep your newbie ship since it is kind of lacking everything. The possibility for upgrades is very limited at best since most can't even support two weapons nor have the speed/cargo to do serious mission running/mining. If you fly matari ships, I would suggest looking into a probe, they are quick, can fit a few weapons or a few miners and have very good cargo/speed. On top of that, they only require Minmatar Frigate level 2 to fly and don't cost much, a very good ship to start out with.

Lt.Deadend · May 2005

Its hard to Mine/fight/upgrade/explore in the Newbie ships.Ill agree that a probe is ok,But if your going to be a frig fan Ill have to say the "punisher" Is the best for a newbie to settle down in.With 4 low slots you can have alot of options,Low slots are Key to making small ships strong.It allso has 3 turret hard points,so its a good npc hunter or miner,.It allso has the best cap for a T1 frig,But it cant use missles.

Note: I had to edit this so it dont look like Im nerfing other ships,Most of the ships have there ups an downs,A probe is good and so is a punisher,But others will say a "Rifter" or a "kestrell" is the best and they all can do vary well,just depends on how you play and what you like.

Cenn · May 2005

yeah, there are a number of very cool T1 frigates

Punisher is my favorite too - its the toughest of the frigs, and can pack a mean punch and decent ranges. Best with lots of lasers

Rifter is another cool ship, fast and decent firepower w/ 2 projectiles + 2 missiles.

Kestrel is caldari missile boat, very very powerful but limited to missiles only - Merlin is sorta like a slow version of the Rifter

Incursus is a awesome close in gunship - easily the most firepower when properly equipped, but you have to get really close to do it.

baldmanpuke · May 2005

Upgraded to a Rifter today, with 4 weapons in the high power slots - it's a rush! Great for hunting npc pirates.

TarEcthelion · May 2005

Get yourself a decent frig, but aim to get into a cruiser as soon as possible. Osprey is a good mining cruiser with its mining yield bonus, Maller is an awesome tanking ship, probe is pretty good agent runner and a thorax is just scarily good , but most importantly, go with what you feel comfortable in, ignore all those who go for the best ship for this or that, as it will only get nerfed in one way or another at some point, so go with what you like and have as much fun as possible.

P.S. Remember to insure, insure, insure .. ohh and upgrade your clone too

xEntriq · May 2005

Go buy yourself one of the Elite Frigates if you like frigates. Such as Interceptors, Assault Frigates, Covert Ops, or even one of the extremely exotic Stealth Bombers.

Everything on my Stealth Bomber costed me about 85mil.

Everything for my Ass-frig costed be about 27mil.

Interceptor - 16mil

Knightblast · June 2005

Originally posted by xEntriq
Go buy yourself one of the Elite Frigates if you like frigates. Such as Interceptors, Assault Frigates, Covert Ops, or even one of the extremely exotic Stealth Bombers.
Everything on my Stealth Bomber costed me about 85mil.
Everything for my Ass-frig costed be about 27mil.
Interceptor - 16mil

This is great advice, but for a newbie! Intys require frigs V and Evasive Manuevering V and AFs require Engineering V, Mechanics V and Frigs V ... a lot of training for a newbie.

I will chime in, however, that working towards elite frigates is a great medium term goal. Interceptors are great, fun little ships -- fast as hell, well-moddable, and the perfect tackler ship. Assault frigates are also great, very hard in terms of armor and armaments, yet still maneuverable like a frigate (although slow compared to interceptors ... but once you get used to flying an interceptor, *everything* is slow).

Cruisers are a good next ship once you get out of Tech I frigates, but beware ... they are slow, very unagile and not *all* that much tougher than frigates are. In general cruisers are the orphans of EVE at the moment, with some notable exceptions (thorax for close-in blaster/drone combat, blackbird for electronic warfare, caracal as a missile platform, etc.) ... so in some cases if you train up your module skills (ie, gun skills, missile skills, nav skills, power skills etc.) you can do almost as well in a tech I frigate as in many cruisers ...

dakilla666 · June 2005

Whoa Whoa Whoa, don't be talking about cruisers like they weren't worth the ISK they cost. Yes, the major problem with cruisers is that they can be destroyed by just about everyone but, they can very tough opponents to strike down. With the right setup, a cruiser can be finely tuned to take out an ennemy no problem. The major problem is, you have to limit yourself to one ship class and choose your battles (not engage whatever your not setup to kill).

A cruiser with a 2x web and 1x 20km scrambler setup can kill just about any frigate in the game (only exception would be an Assault Ship that is tanked against your damage type). With that setup, you would only hunt frigates and leave everyone else alone since webs aren't great against other cruisers and battleships.

With a tank setup, a cruiser can take fire from a battleship for quite a while and could be very useful in group combat. Since people that are under fire tend to try and eliminate whatever they can (people often panic when they see a group of hostiles show up), cruisers are very often the primary target. Using this to your advantage, you let them fire on you. Either stay very close and orbit them at your top speed or stay far away so that they have to use low damage ammunition on you. If you are tanked properly, you should be able to hold their fire for quite some time before needing to warp off by which point (if you are ganged with some frigates) your gang should of had enough time to either break the battleships tank or blow them up all together.

As for cruiser vs cruiser, a varied setup has to be used. If you are both tanking, odds are that no one will be able to kill one another and it will just be a pointless fight (same applies for alot of tanked BS vs tanked BS fights). However, if you mix in tanking with a little bit of damage mods, if could just favor the battle on your side enough to beat down your ennemy.

I realize that cruisers aren't the fastest nor the best tanks/gankers in the game but, they do everything fairly well and can be of great use in gang fights. Not just blackbirds for jamming and mallers for tanking, but pretty much any cruiser can be utilized to make a fair amount of difference in a fight.

Knightblast · June 2005

I agree with good skills cruisers can be useful, but for a relative newbie they're harder to manage with fewer skills and less versatile (which is important for lesser skilled folks who may not have a lot of money). I think many people jump into cruisers too quickly simply because they can train the cruiser skill, but cruisers are much less versatile and less easy to manage than a good tech I frigate for a relative newbie player, and when you factor in the cost and replacement factor ... it's often not the best approach for that level player, even though many/most take that path.

dakilla666 · June 2005

You can say that sure but, you have to add that probably over 95% of people who get into Battleships are doing an even bigger mistake because they don't have the skills to use them properly. Hell, I know tons of BS pilots who don't even have advanced drone skills. If you wanna talk about difficulty in handling and cost of replacement, a battleship is about 25 times worse to lose since each module is costing you a good amount of ISK and the insurance itself is over 20M for the cheap ones.

Cruisers are a good next step IMO, easier to use than destroyers (which cost about 50% of the price of a cruiser) and can be fitted to survive against NPC rats with much more ease. They are also great for mining and still have enough speed to adventure around if you strap an afterburner on them.

Until battlecruisers came out, they were my favorite ship class, countrary to you Nova, I think they are probably the most versatile ship class in the game. You can mine, tank, gank or make a speed demon with pretty much all cruisers in the game.

Besides the fact, it is a logical next step for any frigate pilot. Industrial ships are pretty much useless until you get a cruiser (if you mine alot) unless your running missions that require one. Destroyers are more pvp oriented ships and have balancing issues which don't make them very good for fighting anything but frigates. T2 frigates cost WAY too much and represent a huge loss if you lose them, not to mention the fact that they require alot of trainings to even use.

Howdy, Stranger!

Original ship - upgrade or dump?

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Original ship - upgrade or dump?

Comments