Merlins...?

This is my EVE log. It's different from my other one because people who read about my life probably won't care about EVE, and people who read about EVE probably won't care about my life.

That being the case, we can probably skip the part where I explain in detail what EVE is. The short version is that it's a game; an MMORPG occurring in space. I've played it before, largely fighting NPCs. It was boring. Now I'm trying again with the intention of largely fighting other people, where “fighting” probably means getting blown up rather a lot.

This brings me to my plan for EVE, which I've decided to have mostly because like this log it lets me keep track of what the fuck I'm doing and why my ship is scattered to the solar winds in small pieces on that particular day. Also, I guess later if it amounts to something other people may want to read it. People can be weird like that.

Anyway, point is, I'm going to die a lot. Dying a lot means replacing the ships I ruined with my spectacular flying. At the moment I have around 350 million ISK, which is the in game currency. This isn't a lot by any stretch, but it's enough to keep me in cheap frigates for a while while having enough left over to get another (slightly) less cheap ship later to make more ISK if need be. Because of that and the fact that expensive ships would be wasted on me anyway, I'm going to start out with aforementioned cheap, low tech frigates.

At the moment the main ship I'm considering is the Merlin. Logically, it's a fairly counter-intuitive choice. It has one weapon bonus... to hybrid range. It has two turret slots, and two missile. This means that not only do I get a non-damage bonus to weapons, I get one fewer of the weapons it applies to than ships like the Rifter (which has three turret slots and two turret bonuses). I also don't have much (if anything) in the way of missile skills, so to train rockets (I'd use rockets) would take some extra time. As though those things weren't enough, any damage mods I install will either apply to rockets or hybrids, not both. All these things combine to mean that whatever I do with this ship, it probably won't be just pouring out damage.

In its favour, it has a bonus to shield resistances: 5% per skill level in Caldari Frigates. So, once that's at 5 in the next day or so, my ship should be stronger than it otherwise looks. It also has 25% shield EM resistance with that skill trained, so that even without a mod it isn't quite as terrible there as most Caldari ships, although it's still a pretty big hole in what would be keeping me from exploding at any particular moment (the Merlin is a bit slow for speed tanking or kiting).

Using rockets does have some advantages too. For example the selectable damage type inherent to missiles. Blasters would only be doing kinetic and thermal damage, so in the event that this was problematic, the rockets could help. I'd also gain experience with them, giving me a better understanding of how to counter them, and along with the actual in-game skills it would open up certain ships as options in the future.

Some other things to consider are:

*Were I to use a shield buffer, it would slowly recharge instead of needing me to land and repair.

*I probably won't actually kill people before other things get damaged though.

*I'd be sacrificing some tackle to fit a shield tank, but...

*I'd be freeing up low slots by not fitting an armour tank.

*There's also the potential for using energy vampires/neutralisers in spare high slots, instead of rockets.

While I'm deciding on this and training skills, I've purchased a Heron to fly around in and get some basic understanding of scanning for sites and ships. I'll be adding another post fairly soon with updates.