Corvettes

Little more than slower, armed shuttles, corvettes (formerly known as "rookies", "rookie ships" or "noobships") are the basic ships that new pilots start with. You can acquire your faction's corvette by clicking the "Board my Corvette" button whenever you are docked. It will be fitted with a civilian weapon, a civilian mining laser, and a civilian afterburner. If you already have a corvette in that structure, you will board that one, and its fit will be the fit before you entered it. While corvettes aren't suited for serious combat, people field fleets composed entirely of corvettes, more for their comedy value than for their effectiveness in battle.

Corvettes can be used to move around - they are better than flying just in a pod.
There are only a few other ships that have only a role bonus and no bonus based on a skill. You can fly them with minimum skills.
They are good only for the beginning of the tutorial - you should use other ships immediately when you get them and do not look back to the corvettes.
Corvettes have the same assembled size and repackaged size as frigates. Replacing frigates with them doesn't save cargo bay space.
Corvettes have very poor speed and align time. Despite they look small, they are in fact very slow and frigates are better options for travelling.

All four corvettes can carry at least one light drone in their dronebay. The Gallente Velator can carry two.

There are four standard corvettes, provided by "Board my Corvette", you can get infinity amount of them for free.

There are also five Special Edition corvettes, and not available from "Board my Corvette". Despite they have slightly better stats than standard corvettes, they are extremely expensive and only collection value.