Caldari Basic Ship and Skill Overview

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The Caldari Basic Ship and Skill Guide is intended to give fitting and skill recommendations for Tech 1 Caldari ships for Player vs. Environment (PvE) and Player vs. Player (PvP) encounters.

This is a work in progress, and the guide's Discussion Thread is on the Eve University forum. Please direct comments, suggestions, and corrections to that thread.

Rookie Ship

The rookie ship is the first ship you start with. If you are Caldari, it will be an Ibis. A new rookie ship is given whenever you dock at a station where you do not have any ships.

Destroyer

Cormorant

Destroyers are ships slightly larger than frigates. They use the same sized modules as frigates, have more high slots. They are often used in pve for level 1 missions. They are rarely used in pvp, as their DPS is not impressive without high skills, although they sometimes fill the role of anti-interceptor.

Flying destroyers is not recommended for PvP Uni fleets. There are some exceptions, like Thrashers for a specialized Hit & Run fleet.

Ammunition, Range, and Kiting

In PvE you are likely to be using missiles, since missiles have some advantages over turrets in PvE, especially for new pilots. One of missiles' advantages is that each kind of missile comes in four versions, each of which does one of the game's four damage types.

This means you can always target the weaknesses of NPC enemies by selecting the missiles which will damage them most. You should select the missile that will hit their weakest resistance (so, for example, explosive missiles against the Angel Cartel) unless you're in a ship (like the Drake) which has per-level bonuses to kinetic damage. If you're in a ship with kinetic missile damage bonuses and you have the relevant ship skill (Battlecruiser, for the Drake) trained high enough then kinetic may do more damage.

If you've chosen to fight with hybrid turrets you should carry 3 types of ammo during missions, and switch when required. Use close range (antimatter or plutonium) ammo by default. If you are taking too much damage at close range, switch to medium range (lead or thorium) or long (iron or tungsten) range ammo and fire from further away.

Guns can suffer from tracking issues, so try using the 'keep at range' option instead of the 'orbit' option. With the amount of enemies in missions, orbiting is less likely to mitigate the total incoming damage from rats. Even close to optimal, when orbiting and using close range ammo, guns can sometimes have difficulty tracking enemies. Enemies should be kept close to optimal, this should keep angular velocity low to avoid suffering from tracking issues, and as long as enemies are within optimal there will be no reduction in damage.

To find out your optimal with ammo, load ammo in your guns, then right click and show info. The optimal displayed in the attributes will be adjusted for ammo and skills.

Tech and Meta Levels

These fittings were made mostly using Tech 1 Meta 0 modules, or Tech 2 for larger ships. This is partly to avoid confusion with higher meta names. Also, this insures that ship fittings are relatively cheap to get into without spending too much for new players with cash flow difficulties. And during war, pvp fittings using Tech 1 Meta 0 modules are provided by the university.

Higher Meta items up to meta 4 will often be easier to fit. Tech 2 is Meta 5, and harder to fit. Meta 3 and 4 are expensive, often more expensive than Tech 2. Meta 1 and 2 will often be less expensive than Meta 0, due to supply and demand on the market.

Drones

Small drones should be used against frigate and destroyer sized enemies, medium drones should be used against cruiser and battlecruiser sized enemies, and heavy drones should be used against battleship sized enemies. Sentries are mostly meant for battleship sized enemies, but if smaller enemies are far enough that tracking isnt an issue, they can deal relatively well with those.

Never use Amarr drones, due to their low damage multiplier, they are useless even against enemies who's lowest resistance is EM damage. Gallente drones have the highest damage multiplier, and thermal damage is the best or second best damage to deal against most rat types. For level 1 to 3 missions, gallente drones are fine to use exclusively, although switching drones will make more efficient runs. At level 4 missions, it is strongly recommended to always fit the best drone types to match rat weaknesses.

Drone aggro should be watched. When arriving in a mission room, aggro should be aquired by approaching enemies and shooting them with guns. If a new wave of enemies arrives and the drones catch aggro, they should be recalled to the drone bay, and released only when the enemies have targeted your ship. Under normal circumstances, you should never lose drones when using proper aggro management with rats.

Hot keys are recommended for drone management. They need to be initially launched manually from the drone window, though hot keys can be set for attack and return to drone bay.

In pvp, Gallente and Minmatar drones are used almost exclusively. Gallente drones for their damage potential, Minmatar drones for their speed and explosive damage which armor tankers will not always patch.

Tank & Gank

Different rat (NPC pirates) factions have different damage type resistances, and deal different damage types.

Drones and hardeners should be switched around based on rat types.

Damage type resistance and dealt by rats can be found in the NPC Damage Types article.

Mission-specific damage profiles can be found on Eve Survival.

All EHP in this guide is given with EFT calculations, not in-game EHP.

Salvaging After the Mission

Salvaging boats are usually used to clean up rooms after missions are complete. To do so, make sure you bookmark one wreck for each room in the mission, since the acceleration gates will disappear after the mission has be turned in at the agent. Once the mission is turned in, the MWD can be used to propel the salvaging boat within tractor range faster.

For level 4 missions, many players switch from the destroyer to a battlecruiser. Unfortunately, the Gallente battlecruisers have 6 or 7 high slots, instead of 8 like for some other races. The hurricane is well liked as a salvaging boat for its speed (for a BC sized ship) and 8 high slots.