Tutorial - New Player Experience - until Aug 2018

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Drones

Subcapital combat drones

Light drones:

  • Use 5m3 space and 5Mbit/sec bandwidth
  • Move and track targets very fast
  • Are the best drones to use against frigates and destroyers

Medium drones:

  • Use 10m3 space and 10Mbit/sec bandwidth
  • Move and track moderately fast
  • Are the best drones to use against cruisers, and are also good against battlecruisers

Heavy drones:

  • Use 25m3 space and 25Mbit/sec bandwidth
  • Move and track slowly, but do lots of damage
  • Are good against battleships, and can handle battlecruisers

Sentry drones:

  • Use 25m3 space and 25Mbit/sec bandwidth
  • Cannot move in space
  • Can hit targets at long ranges, but have poor tracking, and so will have difficulty against close or fast targets
  • Most effective against battleships and battlecruisers, but can also hit smaller targets if they are far enough away

Each race has their its own light, medium, heavy, and sentry drones, and they each primarily do one damage type (marked in the table below as "primary damage" - for instance, all Amarr drones do EM damage).

Faction comparison
Faction Light Medium Heavy Damage Damage Speed
Amarr Empire Armageddon.jpg
Acolyte
Armageddon.jpg
Infiltrator
Armageddon.jpg
Praetor
EM damage damage 1 damage 2 speed 1 speed 2
Caldari State Raven.jpg
Hornet
Raven.jpg
Vespa
Raven.jpg
Wasp
Kinetic damage damage 1 damage 2 speed 1 speed 2
Gallente Hobgoblin Hammerhead Ogre Garde Thermal damage Kinetic damage
Minmatar Warrior Valkyrie Berserker Bouncer Explosive damage Kinetic damage
All combat drones do the primary damage type. 'Integrated' and 'Augmented' drones also do the secondary damage type.

Each drone type has its own skill (Icon skillbook2.png Light Drone Operation, Icon skillbook2.png Medium Drone Operation, Icon skillbook2.png Heavy Drone Operation, Icon skillbook2.png Sentry Drone Interfacing), which is needed to operate the respective type.

Faction comparison

Within a drone class (e.g. medium drones), each faction's drones have strengths and weaknesses compared to the other factions'.

Light, medium and heavy drones

  • Minmatar drones are the fastest drones (50% faster than Gallente drones), and so excel at chasing fast ships. However, they do the lowest damage.
  • Gallente drones do the most damage (23% more than Minmatar drones), but are the slowest.
  • Amarr and Caldari drones fall between Gallente and Minmatar drones in terms of damage and speed (Caldari drones do a little less damage than Gallente drones, but are a bit faster; Amarr drones do a little more damage than Minmatar drones, but are a bit slower). Additionally, these drones orbit a little further away from their targets, making them apply their damage more consistently, and are a little tougher (+25% more hit points, compared with Minmatar and Gallente drones).

Therefore, the four race's drones represent a sliding scale between damage and speed (the percentages in the table below are relative to the worst-performing drone family):

Race Damage Speed
Minmatar +50%
Amarr +8% +37%
Caldari +15% +13%
Gallente +23%

Sentry drones

  • Caldari drones have the longest range (about 150% more than Gallente drones), but with the lowest tracking and damage.
  • Gallente drones do the most damage (21% more than Caldari drones) and have the best tracking (200% better than Caldari drones), but have the shortest range.
  • Amarr and Minmatar drones fall between Caldari and Gallente drones in terms of damage and range (Minmatar drones do a little more damage with better tracking than Caldari drones, but have less range; Amarr drones have slightly more range than Gallente drones, but worse tracking and damage).

Therefore, the four race's drones represent a sliding scale between damage and range (with short-ranged drones having better tracking). Note that, in the table below, range is given as "first falloff" (i.e. the optimal range plus 1 falloff); Amarr and Minmatar drones both have the same optimal range, but the Minmatar drones have a much longer falloff range.

Race Damage Range Tracking
Caldari +143%
Minmatar +7% +115% +60%
Amarr +14% +29% +130%
Gallente +21% +200%

Drone variants

In addition to the basic Tech 1 drones, there are four other variants of drone within each race's light/medium/heavy drone lineup:

  • A Tech 2 drone, which is more powerful (better speed, damage, and hit points) than its Tech 1 counterpart, but requires additional skills to use.
  • A Faction drone, available from LP stores. They don't require additional skills to use (beyond those required for the Tech 1 drones). They have a very large number of hit points, but slightly lower damage than their Tech 2 counterparts.
  • 'Integrated' and 'Augmented' drones, which can be thought of as enhanced Tech 1 drone and Tech 2 drones, respectively. These drones are produced from the components found in NPC rogue drone wrecks. They need the same skills to use as Tech 1 and Tech 2 drones, respectively, but have slightly improved stats. The damage they do is split between the race's primary and secondary damage types (unlike all other types of subcapital combat drones, which deal only the race's primary damage type). However, they are fairly rare and therefore very expensive.

Sentry drones also have Tech 2 and Faction variants (but no 'Integrated' or 'Augmented' drones):

  • Tech 2 sentry drones have better range, tracking, and hit points (compared with their Tech 1 counterparts), but need additional skills to use.
  • Faction sentry drones have (compared to their Tech 2 counterparts) the same range, but many more hit points. They don't require additional skills to use (beyond those required for the Tech 1 drones), and are available from LP stores.

Note that, for sentry drones, the Tech 2 and Faction variants do not have higher damage than their Tech 1 counterparts (although the damage of Tech 2 drones can be further increased by training the racial drone specialization skills).

Capital combat drones

Fighters

Fighters are frigate-sized drones that do cruiser-sized damage and can only be fielded by carriers and supercarriers. They are capable of warping, and will pursue a target into warp - the only escape from fighters is to jump system or to dock[1]. They need the same amount of bandwidth as heavy drones (25 Mbit/s), but compared to them, fighters are a little faster, do a little more damage, and are much tougher.

Each race has each its own fighter, and their damage is split between the race's primary and secondary damage types, but otherwise they are very similar to each other. There are only Tech 1 fighters (no Tech 2 or Faction variants). In order to use fighters you need to train Icon skillbook2.png Fighters (which also improves the damage of your fighters).

Fighter-bombers

Fighter-bombers are anti-capital-ship drones, and can only be used by supercarriers. They launch torpedoes (which are integrated into the fighter-bombers; you do not need to carry ammunition for them!) which do tremendous DPS to very large targets, and can be very dangerous to slow battleships. However, they pose little threat to smaller ships, because their torpedoes have very slow explosion velocities and very large explosion radii. Just like fighters, they can also enter warp.

Each race has its own fighter-bomber drone, but aside from the different damage types, they are very similar to each other. Additionally, there is a Sansha faction fighter-bomber (the Shadow), which does slightly more damage than the Tech 1 fighter-bombers, but is ludicrously expensive. Fighter-bombers need the Icon skillbook2.png [[Skills:Fighter Bombers]] skill (which also increases their damage).

A Tech 1 fighter-bomber costs about as much as a battlecruiser.

Race Fighter Fighter-bomber Damage
Primary Secondary
Amarr Templar Malleus EM damage Thermal damage
Caldari Dragonfly Mantis Kinetic damage Thermal damage
Gallente Firbolg Cyclops Thermal damage Kinetic damage
Minmatar Einherji Tyrfing Explosive damage Kinetic damage
Fighters do both damage types, while fighter-bombers only do the primary damage type.

Using Drones

Drone choice

Depending on the difficulty of the PvE encounter, you will want to bring:

  • Level 1 and 2 missions: light drones
  • Level 3 missions: medium and light drones
  • Level 4 missions: heavy or sentry drones, and light drones

Rats from each of the pirate factions in EVE are vulnerable to different damage types. There are drones from all four empire factions available to you; not only does each faction's drones do a different damage type, but they also have different stats (e.g. Gallente drones do a lot of damage but are slow, while Minmatar drones are fast but do less damage). The table below summarises which drones are most effective against which NPC enemies:

Faction Light/Med/Heavy drones Sentry drones
Primary Secondary Primary Secondary
Angel Cartel Caldari Minmatar Minmatar Gallente


Incl racial and type (size)

Lights, Mediums, and Heavies:

Angel Cartel: Caldari > Minmatar. Minmatar slightly better against battleships and elite cruisers.

Blood Raiders: Gallente > Amarr. Amarr slightly better against battleships and elite cruisers.

Guristas: Caldari > Gallente.

Serpentis: Caldari > Gallente

Sansha (non-incursion): Gallente > Amarr. Amarr slightly better against battleships and elite cruisers.

Rogue Drones: Gallente > Amarr. Amarr slightly better against battleships and elite cruisers.

Mordus: Caldari > Gallente. Gallente slightly better against frigates.

---

Sentries:

Angel Cartel: Minmatar > Gallente.

Blood Raiders: Amarr > Gallente

Guristas: Gallente > Caldari by damage (+10%), but prefer Caldari except at short ranges.

Sansha (non-incursion): Amarr > Gallente.

Serpentis: Gallente > Caldari by damage (+10%), but prefer Caldari except at short ranges.

Rogue Drones: Amarr > Gallente

Mordus: Caldari > Gallente. Gallente better (+20%) against cruisers or smaller, but Caldari have much longer range are are far more effective against battleships.

General note about low-tracking sentries

Source: http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=83255

Racial Drones and NPC Resistances

Each NPC faction does and is weak to certain damage types. As the article on drones explained, each race's drones do a particular damage type:

  • Amarr drones do EM damage
  • Caldari drones do kinetic damage
  • Gallente drones do thermal damage
  • Minmatar drones do explosive damage

To complicate matters, different races' drones also have different damage modifiers -- Gallente drones have the highest damage modifiers, and Amarr drones have the lowest. This means that there are some cases where the higher raw damage from Gallente drones will beat the fact that another race's drones hit your enemy's weakest resists. (You will see from the table below that thermal damage, the type Gallente drones deal, is almost never NPCs' strongest resist.)

File:Drones.jpg
Different light drone damage outputs on different faction targets -- Serpentis have the same resists as Guristas

The chart to the right provides a calculated example of the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of light scout drones (taken from this post).

Since Gallente drones are rarely the worst choice, you can get away with using them against everything if you're lazy. When you reach higher-level missions with more pronounced NPC resists, or if you're relying on drones as your primary source of damage, you may want to start using drones to hit your enemy's weakest resists.

The table below indicates which racial drone damage type should be most effective against which faction:

Faction Name Weaknesses Best Drone Race
Angel Cartel Ex/Ki/Th Minmatar
Blood Raider EM/Th/Ki Amarr/Gallente
Guristas Ki/Th/Ex Caldari/Gallente
Sansha's Nation EM/Th/Ex Amarr/Gallente
Serpentis Ki/Th/EM Caldari/Gallente
Rogue Drones EM/Th/Ki Amarr/Gallente
Mercenary Th/Ki/Ex Gallente
Mordu's Legion Ki/Th/Ex Caldari/Gallente
EoM Ki/Ex/Th Caldari

References