so. after a bit of thinking and the fact that im going to lead the military division of a newer corp. i decided to train for a carrier. so after i have read all the guides i could find (compared to other stuff. i think that there are too few of those.) so i thought that i would just ask the forum for tips/tricks that i could benefit from
(BTW im caldari. so i will train for chimera)

A few tips:
- Getting a cyno is hard so don't hesitate to ask for someone to light a cyno for you in local
- A great way to make ISK is to do level 5s in your carrier. You don't really need much tank. There's some great level 5 agents near Amamake.
- If you sit on a gate in low sec long enough you can jump through it. It's like 5 minutes but sometimes its a lot faster than waiting for a cyno!
- Carriers are almost invincible, so you don't really need to make sure to take your ships out of the maintenance bay or modules out of the corp hangar.
- You can use fighters in triage mode, so you should keep them in your drone bay when you undock to triage.
- It's perfectly safe to undock and hit triage before stopping. You will not fly off the station for 5 minutes.
- You can cancel triage mode any time you like, so you don't need to think much about when you tap that button.
- You have super long ranged remote reps so you don't need to be careful about being in range of your gang when you hit triage.
- Carriers are super tough so you should spend a lot of money on faction modules.
- Everyone in Amamake is a complete noob. You should fly there in your carrier and pwn us all.

-Liang

A few tips:
- Getting a cyno is hard so don't hesitate to ask for someone to light a cyno for you in local
- A great way to make ISK is to do level 5s in your carrier. You don't really need much tank. There's some great level 5 agents near Amamake.
- If you sit on a gate in low sec long enough you can jump through it. It's like 5 minutes but sometimes its a lot faster than waiting for a cyno!
- Carriers are almost invincible, so you don't really need to make sure to take your ships out of the maintenance bay or modules out of the corp hangar.
- You can use fighters in triage mode, so you should keep them in your drone bay when you undock to triage.
- It's perfectly safe to undock and hit triage before stopping. You will not fly off the station for 5 minutes.
- You can cancel triage mode any time you like, so you don't need to think much about when you tap that button.
- You have super long ranged remote reps so you don't need to be careful about being in range of your gang when you hit triage.
- Carriers are super tough so you should spend a lot of money on faction modules.
- Everyone in Amamake is a complete noob. You should fly there in your carrier and pwn us all.

-Liang

seriously. 60 views no comments :( i guess that the number of carrier pilots on the forum is minimal

isnt that like the reversed thing of what carriers should /can do?
to all that says that im to new for that. its a long term plan. i will first fly it in 1 year. and use that year to train properly for it

He's trolling. That being said, sp is a concern, but you're missing the point. The most important aspect of a carrier is how many friends you have (both in fleet and on batphone), and if you're here asking these questions and unsure why exactly you need which carrier, it doesn't sound like you need one.

Liang why such elitist behavior? Disappointing.

It's a good set of tips for someone that knows nothing about capitals - if he can read between the lines.

-Liang

i do know something. but i was just asking if the forums had more. because most guides are outdated
BTW: the new corp im starting in is mostly made of of never players. so im one of the top 5 guys in age.

Yes, so read between the lines. There's some solid tips there that I haven't seen in (m)any guides.

thanks for all the replies. 1 thing that people keep saying is that its hard to be the only cap-pilot in your corp/alliance. im not going to be the first. because we have a 2007 guy just need a months training to do carriers and dreads on an acceptable level. and there have to be a first one. ofc i will never fly a 2 billion ship alone. because that makes it just as useful as a 2 billion itheron ultra edition
its a fleet ship. thats what all capitals are (except freighters. but they are not "true" capitals)

I am curious about the intented use for that Carrier.

I mean, this character will be five years in January and I haven't even INJECTED Advanced spaceship command. Not ready.

I always saw Carriers as monster Logis, absolutely dependent on their fleet to survive. They are big, they are clumsy, they are expensive, and they are called primary.

With a 4 months character...man. You will need:

-Very good tanking skills. Compensations to V and all.
-Very good cap skills, meaning not only Engineering ones, but Energy emission systems, etc.
-Fitting skils.
-Drone interfacing V (one month)
-Very good cap transfer skills, and shield transfer/remote armor repping skills.
-Triage > Logistics V + Long Range targetting V + Signature analysis V = close to one month and a half.
-Carrier skill = battleship skill to V, Advanced spaceship command > close to another two months.

Even if you would only wish to SIT on your Carrier, unable to do anything else, you're looking at quite a few months before you can undock it.

And if you want to be USEFUL in any real way...well, let's say you are not playing with Carriers anytime soon.

i have already planed that. 1-1.5 years of training will go into it before i even consider pressing the undock bottom

Another thing here, in a year to 18 months you will have an absolutely useless pilot for 99/100 situations, 18 months is not really enough to fly a carrier well, let alone anything else on top, so you will end up sitting docked up almost constantly and only getting involved once every 6 months.

To fly a carrier well you need:

maxed tank skills for shield and armor, maxed cap skills, maxed fitting skills (3-6 months),

around 10-15mil sp in drones (maxed support skills all T2 combat drones this will take around 8 months -1 year),

carrier 5, fighters 5, (6 more months)

cap remote reps, shield emission, energy emission 4/5, tactical logistics 4/5, jump drive cal4/5 jump fuel conservation 4/5, Cybernetics 5, Science 5 (another 6 months)

So after 2 1/2 years you have a decent carrier toon who can do nothing else .

To give you an idea of the actual scale of the project I bought a 20mil sp focussed carrier toon (ie one that did what you plan) last month and estimate that toon is still 18 months away from being viable (another 15-20mil sp).

Now your 5 year old corpmate may well be months off doing carriers well but then he already probably has 40mil sp in the right support skills.

If you are really determined to go carrier get a second account just for that, then train the toon you have as a day to day pilot, or vice versa.
Better still train your toon to fly a T3 well (6 months) then 6 months doing wormholes and incursions make 15-25 bil and buy a carrier pilot from the character bazaar and save the ballache of training and around 18 :)

Incidentally chimera is a bad choice, Archon/Thanatos are the best carriers atm.

Or just listen to all the people on here trying to tell you it is a bad idea for one in your situation.

A few tips:
- Getting a cyno is hard so don't hesitate to ask for someone to light a cyno for you in local
- A great way to make ISK is to do level 5s in your carrier. You don't really need much tank. There's some great level 5 agents near Amamake.
- If you sit on a gate in low sec long enough you can jump through it. It's like 5 minutes but sometimes its a lot faster than waiting for a cyno!
- Carriers are almost invincible, so you don't really need to make sure to take your ships out of the maintenance bay or modules out of the corp hangar.
- You can use fighters in triage mode, so you should keep them in your drone bay when you undock to triage.
- It's perfectly safe to undock and hit triage before stopping. You will not fly off the station for 5 minutes.
- You can cancel triage mode any time you like, so you don't need to think much about when you tap that button.
- You have super long ranged remote reps so you don't need to be careful about being in range of your gang when you hit triage.
- Carriers are super tough so you should spend a lot of money on faction modules.
- Everyone in Amamake is a complete noob. You should fly there in your carrier and pwn us all.

-Liang

check you tube for the following search words

eve online triage carrier rooks and kings clarion call

Watch at how heroic you can become then cry at how long it will take you to skill up.

OP: I have owned a carrier for 5 years and I have never used it in combat. I have used it for capital fleet ops back in the day and for ratting but beyond that it's of little use today thanks to supers.

i do know something. but i was just asking if the forums had more. because most guides are outdated
BTW: the new corp im starting in is mostly made of of never players. so im one of the top 5 guys in age.

So look. There's nothing wrong with training for a carrier to help grow a small corp. But as a "military" asset? Forget it. It's for hauling things across several regions without trouble. And that's it.

Look as a new player in a new corp filled with new people I would check out the hydra theory. Use T1 frigates and learn/train pvp with each other first.

EM Armor Compensation 5
Explosive Armor Compensation 5
Kinetic Armor Compensation 5
Thermic Armor Compensation 5
Repair Drone Operation 5
Amarr Drone Specialization 4

Capital Remote Armor Reapair 4
Capital Energy Emission Systems 4
Capital Shield Emission Systems 4
Combat Drone Operation 5

Also, did you mean to leave off Capital Repair Systems and friends?

Capital Repair Systems is first on the list. The rest are missing though.

Those skills are way over the top for an 'entry level' pilot.

i had heard about the WH carriers. how usefull are a carrier really in WH space?

I've been playing for 8 months now. I just don't feel ready for a cap ship yet is the thing due to my Skills.

If you are considering flying a carrier/dreadnought in the future though, best thing to do is get into a very good 0.0 corporation which is in an alliance owning sov. The corporation should have some carrier/dread pilots you can talk to about owning a cap.

The most important consideration in training a carrier, particularly if such training is to the exclusion of other skills, is need.

That's the need for Carriers in general and the need for a specific Carrier.
At present you have a small, young and inexperienced corporation; no alliance and uncertain prospects (as far as you've indicated) and that means very little apparent need for any Carrier, let alone your specified Chimera.

That doesn't mean that Carriers are out of the question - but particularly at only four months old I would advise making it a back-burner project.
There are hundreds of skills which you could train, many of which wouldn't hurt your carrier when you eventually reach it but which would (more importantly) improve your day to day performance. It may, for example, be very benificial to spend some time flying Logistics ships for a while, both to grow used to managing reps, cap...etc in the midst of a combat which you have to remain aloof from and to improve your general situational awareness.

Given the gang size you're likely to be mustering and the fleet composition you can initially expect, I would only consider using a carrier if you have support agreements with larger, more established Alliances which require you to commit Capital forces or to transport equipment to your base of operations to provide them with a starting point from which to work - far better at present to provide a backbone around which your younger corpies can build (be it Logistics to keep them in the fight longer, force multipliers such as ECM to increase their engagement envelope, Leadership, scouting or whatever else).
You may wish to train for your carrier in the background, of course, but specialising in something more immediately useful to your corp has both broader application and greater longevity.

I can't remember when I acquirred my carrier but I've moved it three or four times as staging systems changed, used it once (to move stuff for corpies) and been requested to bring it to a potential combat situation once - the scale of the capital modules however meant I didn't have the fit they needed, and in any case I would have been more use to the fleet in a Guardian.

I know that the wish to be useful and the charisma of Capital class ships is incredibly seductive but think very carefully before embarking on such a long and quite niche role - there are probably more valuable roles you could be approaching both more quickly and with much broader application.

But as a "military" asset? Forget it. It's for hauling things across several regions without trouble. And that's it.

But what Archon can carry with 3,300 m3 cargo bay? Rorqual with 40,000 m3 seems to be much better choice.

Everything i wanted to say has been said in this thread, there are many solid comments from experienced people. The only thing i can't stress enough: do not go with the chimera. Train an Archon, you can never go wrong with an Archon!

so. i have bought skillbooks. done nural remap. looking into getting a deal done for the carrier itself. im ready and set for to looooong race towards getting a carrier. and later train for dreads. wish me luck

Kinda funny since i'm currently training for a Chimera.

mind you I have Gallente Carrier V and minmatar Carrier IV on this character, and Amarr Carrier V on 2 other characters.

OP seems determined on his course of action despite advice to the contrary. I doubt anyone's gonna stop him, so i'll just throw in my 2 cents.

I can't really speak to the logistics, ie "using it to move stuff around" part since I never really move (I have waaay too much @#%), but when I have moved in the past (lived in Syndicate for 5 years, with a brief interlude in Curse, now live in low sec) it was far easier to just break everything down and use freighters, saving the SMA space across several carriers for a handful of T2 rigged ships. Also owning more cap ships than characters means you'll be making multiple trips anyway, thx jesus for jump clones.

If you're going to be using your carrier for this purpose, which makes the most sense given what you've stated (the "helping out a new, small corp" part, though I doubt that's your intentions) then don't bother with the 18month training plan. Bare minimum prereq's and carrier 1 still gives you the same 1mil m3 SMA space. The only skill time your wasting on training for it (ie skills that can't be applied to your day to day ships) are Advanced Spaceship command V, capital ships III, and Jump Drive Operation I, though i'd still suggest training JDO V, JDC IV and JFC IV so you're only talking maybe 1-3 months depending on how far you train the jump skills.

Yet I'm assuming from your posts that isn't what you are intending. c'est la vie I suppose.

From a "combat" perspective I have used carriers many times, and by combat i mean as triage or repping structures, ie the other type of logistics. Triage is kinda fun but if you're using them for this purpose you'll need more than one. **Unless you have triage, a single carrier is useless*** Even a single guardian (which is kinda useless) is better than a single carrier, given the responses you'll see to each being fielded. also expect to die. Nowadays a single triage is used almost exclusively as an escalation tool to bring out hostile caps for dread/super fleets anyway. So even if you had the proper support fleet to justify using it, being the lone triage carrier in a small corp/alliance just looking for good fights, expect to get blapped, even if your intentions were pure to begin with.

lastly, speaking as a person with Fighters V on multiple characters, don't bother. I can't remember the last time I used carriers for their damage (actually i can, but that was lulz "faction bs gatecamping" but out of bridge range scenario). I'm sure they're great for running missions and WHs or whatever but for pvp fighters are useless, unless you're in a 50+ carrier cap fleet fighting another xx+ cap fleet in which case, nobody is going to notice the DPS disparity anyway. Seriously Fighters I is enough to use the things and 9 times out of 10 you're gonna be fit for triage anyway and won't even have fighters loaded. T2 heavies, T2 Sentries and the appropriate drone support skills is all you really need.

Again this is just a "For what it's worth" post. Even with everyone posting telling you not to you seem dead set on doing it so go ahead, have fun.

*wall of win*

I'll offer some advice from a carrier pilot:
Jump Drive Calibration 5
Jump Fuel Conservation 4

I don't think it's necessary to train energy and shield emissions unless your carrier has a bonus to them (like the Niddy/Thanny)

- Everyone in Amamake is a complete noob. You should fly there in your carrier and pwn us all.

-Liang