The Road to Yarrr: Minmatar

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By now, you should know exactly what's coming next.  An in depth look at the first two weeks in the life of a Minmatar pilot.  So strap in (do Rifter's have seatbelts?) this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Go on over to BattleClinic and download EVEMon.  We'll be using this program to plot our skills for the next couple of weeks.  You can then follow this link to download a plan crafted for a brand new Minmatar character in EVEMon.  By the time you're done, you should be right where you need to be to get your start in Lowsec Piracy.

Intro

Good news and bad news time.  The Rifter is the clear choice for which ship we'll focus on, but which Rifter is a much harder choice.  Playing to the Minmatar's strengths, there are a lot of different ways to fit a Rifter.  My personal favorite is the Shield Rifter, but the traditional school of thought is to active armor tank.  In researching this project, I went through and built both for the two week character, and found that the Shield Rifter just couldn't pull it off in under two weeks.  For a Medium Shield Extender to fit, you have to have both Engineering and Shield Upgrages to V, which can be achieved in about two weeks, but it leaves you no time for training anything else.  These power grid requirements can be overcome with Ancillary Current Routers, or Micro Axillary Power cores, but you'd be sacrificing a lot to put them on.  So while after day 1 we'll be focusing on the Armor tanking version of the Rifter, I'd encourage anyone to take a hard look at the Shield fit at about the one month mark, because with the right skills it will perform remarkably well.

Phase I

Our first step will be remapping our skills to better suite the needs of this plan.  Changing Perception to 27, Intelligence to 21, and all other skills to 17 will make for the fastest training times.  You don't have to worry about this remap too much, since new players start with 2 remaps you will still have another one to set to another long term plan.  Once our attributes are remapped you should find yourself in the following after less than a day.

[Rifter, Minmatar Day 1]

Overdrive Injector System I

Damage Control I

Gyrostabilizer I

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Medium Supplemental Barrier Emitter I

125mm Gatling AutoCannon I, EMP S

125mm Gatling AutoCannon I, EMP S

125mm Gatling AutoCannon I, EMP S

[empty high slot]

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

The fit leaves a bit to be desired (I'm looking at you empty high slot), but by the end of the first day it'll be performing as follows.  Of note, this is the same fit I would recommend for anyone wanting to fly a Shield Rifter.  Simply add an Energy Neutralizer into the empty high slot, upgrade everything else to Tech II and swap out two of the EM Screens for Core Defense Field Extenders.

Effective Hit Points: 3,569

Top Speed: 989m/s

Damage you can tank per second: 10

Damage you can deal per second: 39

Damage you can deal per volley: 105

Your capacitor will last: Stable at 52%

Damage you can tank after that: 10

Total Cost:  588,278isk

Skillbook Cost: 380,850isk

The fit doesn't work without the Rigs, but thankfully they don't drive up the cost all that much.  You can squeeze another couple hundred raw EHP by using the aforementioned Core Defense Field Extenders, but they cost 10x as much as the EM screens.  You've also got to overcome the speed advantage of another player with a web, but anyone against another Rifter trying to kite you Barrage will be disappointed in how poorly it works against your shield's resists.

Now more important than ever will be Wensley's Rifter Guide to Solo PvP.  Still check out Skira's Piracy guide for some excellent pointers on surviving out there in lowsec, and begin to ply your trade in your new ship.  You can learn a lot during your first week while flying a ship that's more than capable of pinning down ships and peppering them with autocannon fire.  Once you're ready, move on to...

Phase II

After less than a day spent on on your shield skills, you'll be switching gears into an Armor Rifter.  After a week of training for it, you'll be able to fly the following.

[Rifter, Minmatar Week 1]

Damage Control I

100mm Reinforced Steel Plates I

Small Armor Repairer I

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

Small Nosferatu I

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

Small Projectile Ambit Extension I

Small Projectile Ambit Extension I

Spending our time focusing more on offense than defense has allowed us to upgrade to Tech II guns, and after one week will now perform as follows.

Effective Hit Points: 2,417 (32% Decrease)

Top Speed: 887m/s (10% Decrease)

Damage you can tank per second: 17 (70% Increase)

Damage you can deal per second: 71 (82% Increase)

Damage you can deal per volley: 184 (75% Increase)

Your capacitor will last: 48s (Infinite Decrease?)

Damage you can tank after that: 7 (30% Decrease)

Total Cost:  3,258,800isk (454% Increase)

Total Skillbook Cost: 1,848,150isk (385% Increase)

While the Armor fit has lower EHP and Speed, it can tank slightly more for brief periods of time.  In a frigate fight, this will turn out to be more important than the numbers seem to reflect.  The gains from Tech II guns not only dramatically increase your damage potential, they also allow for the use of Barrage S.  While your raw damage output will be reduced to 57 with Barrage, your optimal more than doubles and falloff increases by a third.  This allows this Rifter to fight at the edge of Scram/Web range while keeping away from his opponents guns.  You may not kill your target quickly, but you can kill a lot with this tactic.  Just as importantly, you can disengage from opponents when things aren't going your way.  Any fight you can walk away from can be counted in the win column of my book.

Phase III

By the end of week two you should have gotten the hang of your Rifter and it's tactics.  Not much of that will change with our final fit, but you will find yourself with a bit more staying power in fights.

[Rifter, Minmatar Week 2]

Damage Control II

100mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Small Armor Repairer II

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

Small 'Knave' I Energy Drain

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

Small Projectile Ambit Extension I

Small Projectile Ambit Extension I

Effective Hit Points: 2,867 (19% Increase)

Top Speed: 959m/s (8% Increase)

Damage you can tank per second: 27 (59% Increase)

Damage you can deal per second: 78 (0% Increase)

Damage you can deal per volley: 184 (0% Increase)

Your capacitor will last: 51s (6% Increase)

Damage you can tank after that: 11 (57% Increase)

Total Cost:  4,004,000isk (481% Increase)

Total Skillbook Cost: 2,059,650isk (441% Increase)

Since the fit now differs so much from our day 1 Rifter, there's little point in comparing any of percentage increases/decreases and so I'm instead broken from convention and compared this one to the week 1 fit.  Having already had Tech II weapons, most of the increases came in the form of our tank as well as increases in both speed and agility.  If your applying the proper tactics and orbiting far enough out to be deep into your opponents falloff you should find pulsing your armor repairer is more than enough to mitigate damage while your Barrage slowly takes them apart.  With this fit and your skills at the end of a trial, you should be able to successfully engage a wide range of targets.  We're still a little light on our Navigation skills at this point though, and the Rifter will only benefit from being even faster.

Closing Thoughts

The Minmatar race benefits from the versatility of its ships.  Unfortunately for me, that means that writing a guide to just one possible way to fly one of their ships feels like I'm doing them a disservice.  While you'll have some basic armor skills, you'd do well to also train your shield tanking skills to retain the maximum flexibility in every Minmatar ship you undock in.  Keeping your enemy guessing as to how your Rifter is equipped can be the biggest advantage you have going into a fight, so don't neglect it.  After spending time in the seat of your Rifter, you'll be well prepared to step into a similarly fit Thrasher, Rupture or Hurricane with just the Spaceship Command and Medium weapon skills missing in the case of the Rupture/Cane.  Regardless of the ship and fitting you go with, the same Player strategies of staying at range while maximizing the advantage of the long falloff of Projectile Weapons will serve you well.

And with that, we come to the exciting conclusion to a look at Pirating in your first two weeks of EVE.  I feel like I've just written a term paper on the topic to be honest.  Actually, that's not true...I put a lot less time into my term papers than I did this.  I hope you've taken something away from all of it, or at least enjoyed the read.  Feel free to drop a line in the comments with any critiques of anything that I've said over the last couple of weeks.  Next post should be getting back to my regularly scheduled antics of exploding in embarrassing ways.

Regarrrds,

FNG