I am a new player just starting up in EVE.

What I am looking for is beeing a pilot of a small ship. (Easy as I am new). But what I wonder is, are there any use for small ships in combat? A small ship aimed to do more dogfighting style action? Or maybe a small fast ship that just is packed with some rockets that you quickly dart in, fire off the rockets, then get out of there?

Cheers

Auxer

ps. helpful with any other pointers you can give to make this dream of a dogfight / small ship combat pilot has.

 theres always use for small ships... theyre used as TACKLERs.

It means, youll fly small, fast, small ships are longer targeted by big ships, use MWD to come close and asap scramble or warp disrupt them, to not run out of field. Bad is, small ships are easy targets for drones,and theyre dying fast and often.

What time estimate you give a new player before I can contribute to a cause in that way? I mean time in training / getting the ships and mats needed. I understand if its hard to estimate, but want to know what I am dealing with about.

about 2 hours.

Originally posted by Xennith

about 2 hours.

Really?

So what is it I need to do and what skills are requierd?

Regardless of what race you decide to start out as, train skills for a Rifter.  Argueably one of the best small frigates with great speed and firepower and can be used in a strong tackling role as well.

Thanks for all answers. Makes me hopeful that I might be able to contribute to something if I apply for a corp.

Try this:

http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Recommended_Skill_Training_Guide

Follow this and you will be useful. 

you need:

a frigate, a warp disruptor and maybe a web. and the skills to use these (racial frigate 1, propulsion jamming 1).

oh, and a corp.

It's not so much development of your character skills but more about development of your player (real) skills when it comes to PVP. Any new player can get into a frigate and with minimal training learn how to tackle effectively for a gang to apply their DPS to the target. My suggestions would be to join a corp and learn to how fill a role. Smaller ships and bigger ships all have a role, and learning to fill that role properly is the best way for a newbie to learn the game (Bigger does not automatically mean better).

Also, it's a lot cheaper and easier to learn in a smaller ship than to learn in a slower bigger ship. Although the bigger ship will allow slightly more leeway in terms of survivability, flying a smaller ship will make you learn to how to react properly in a combat situation, plus the loss is no big deal and easily replaced compared to losing a more expensive ship.

For small ship combat, all races have good starter frigates, with minmatar and gal leading the way for solo PVP and caldari being more gang oriented.  If you're interested in dog-fighting style of combat instead of sitting in a BS/BC slugging it out, my advice would be to get decent with t1 frigates while training up for an assault frigate or interceptor as a short-mid term goal. Once you have decent support skills like cap, gunnery etc, set a longre term goal IE t2 cruisers etc.

Good luck and fly safe 

Small ships are useful, even when they aren't tacklers. Look at Faction warfare, it's full of small ships, because people are tired of 1000's of battleships, pounding at each others for hours.. :P

Just train frigates, assault frigates, eventually interceptors. Eventually go destroyer, heavy attack cruiser, recon and so on.

Or train for t3 ships. They're harder to get your hands on, though.

Hmm, makes me want to test the game out this. Just to be a lil ship that goes boom early on in fights, but still atleast took some bullets from my friends.

It's possible to specialize into small ships, they're oft-maligned but very useful when flown by skilled pilots, especially in areas where they can fly without worrying about sentry fire, such as factional warfare (though that has some issues lately, but I digress...) or out in roaming gangs in nullsec.

Initially, fast-locking tech I frigates make good tacklers and they cost virtually nothing.  A good corp will shovel them at you faster than you can blow them up and nobody in their right mind is going to cry about trading a Rifter for a Battlecruiser, or even a tech I cruiser.

Assault Ships are small DPS ships.  They are slow compared to other frigs but their extremely small size makes them very hard to hit by larger ships, allowing them to take on ships many times their size.

Interceptors are specialized tacklers.  There's two versions for each race - one that, in addition to tackle, is also a fast dogfighter, and a pure tackler version that has big range bonus to warp disruptors.

Electronic Attack Frigates are small electronic warfare platforms.  While not as powerful as their cruiser counterparts they are much faster (as all frigates are), and thus more suited for fast roaming gangs.  Some are better than others (the Kitsune is really good, the Keres not so much)

Covert Ops frigates are great for scouting ahead and finding people located in deep space and not near any warpable object (usually refered to as being 'safed' or 'off-grid'.  These people are critical but hardly ever get on killmails so it's not a popular role.

The bigger your gang size gets the less viable most frigates get - interceptors are still nice and you'll still need one guy in a covops but in a big blob the advantages of the frigate class are really marginalized - if 50 BS decide to shoot at you you're still going to die even with 99% damage reduction.  Small ship specialists tend to fly alone or in very small ( >5 ) person gangs.

As a specialized frigate pilot your biggest worries are...

1. Undergun fits (putting small guns on a big ship - makes them crap against same-size targets but godly against the gun-sized targets.  Actually fairly common on some ships, like the Thorax)
2. Energy Neutralizers (no cap = no speed, no rep, you die)
3. Bonused Warrior II drones (unbonused Warrior IIs and other drone types can usually be dealt with quickly enough to avoid going boom)

Originally posted by Auxer

I am a new player just starting up in EVE.

 

What I am looking for is beeing a pilot of a small ship. (Easy as I am new). But what I wonder is, are there any use for small ships in combat? A small ship aimed to do more dogfighting style action? Or maybe a small fast ship that just is packed with some rockets that you quickly dart in, fire off the rockets, then get out of there?

 

Cheers

 

Auxer

 

ps. helpful with any other pointers you can give to make this dream of a dogfight / small ship combat pilot has.

I might have this and that number of skillpoints...

Regardless I still fly my trusted Incursus in fleets. Tackling, webbing, and if possible also providing guns. Last time I had time to play I did 30% of the damage done on a Drake kill (well I got a decent headstart).

If I feel for it I take my newly polished Enyo out of the hangar. Not to often I don't want it scratched.

I have actually not lost an Incursus in a fleet since I started again last year.

That incursus setup would take someone abit over a week to train. T2 guns, and some other T2 things aswell.

As for a tip. Browse through EVE-Mon/Battleclinic fittings, read up on the forums to get the motivation for that setup. Or just learn by doing.

...

You should look for a good corp too because they will beable to help you with more of your questions.

Small ships can be really useful as others have said

Good luck to you

Where do you get hold of the intelligence and learning skills?

I enjoy using Frig sized ships more then anyother.

From my Ishkur (assualt Frig) My Helios (CoV Ops) Even my Nemesis (stealth bomber).

All are viable ships and real fun to fly.

Small ships may seem like a newb choice early on but I know quite a few that stay in Rifters and Punishers for a very long time since both of these t1 frigs are rock solid for pvp.

you could get into Bombers, Inteceptors, Assault Ships, Electronic Attack Frigs (Ewar), Covert Ops (scouts/Exploration)

Seriously you can stay in nothing but frig sized ships for years if you wanted to.

buy the learning skills from the market as you would any other skillbook. open the market window, click on the browse tab and go down to the skills drop down menu, then click on the "learning" category. the pane to the right should show a list of all those skills and a brief description of them and their approximate price.

If you want to fly combat frigate size ships, forget any others and train up for interceptors - the most(only) worthy frigs among all.