Rattlesnake is your aim. Check what skills are needed there and plan accordingly. For Level 2 and Level 3 missions with really low skills your best ship is Gnosis. With better skills you can switch to Drake for Level3 and then to Rattlesnake for Level4.

Train up for the Jackdaw.
Light missiles, shields, prop and of course PG and CPU skills. Push into a Caracal and heavy missiles. Train Caldari Cruiser to 5 and get into a Cerberus and Tengu.

If you want Caldari ships, nothing beats the Tengu for PVE versatility.
You can pretty much go anywhere from there.

PvE is so much more than just mission running.

Tengu will do them all. Exploration, wormholes, lowsec, nullsec, scanning (combat, data/relic/sleeper).

Try all those with any other Caldari ship.
I dare you

PvE is so much more than just mission running.

Tengu will do them all. Exploration, wormholes, lowsec, nullsec, scanning (combat, data/relic/sleeper).

Try all those with any other Caldari ship.
I dare you

Try all those with the same subsystem fit. I dare you.

The flexibility of the Tengu is the flexibility of T3C's in general - the subsystems. Swapping them out is generally repurposing your ship. The only difference between this and simply swapping to another ship is being able to carry subsystems with you. That's really it.

[Rattlesnake, L4]
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Pith C-Type X-Large Shield Booster
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
500MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Missile Guidance Computer II, Missile Range Script
Large Micro Jump Drive
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II, Optimal Range Script

Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Drone Link Augmentor II

Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Large Core Defense Capacitor Safeguard II

Garde II x2 <- mission specific, check eve-survival.org before choose proper drones
Hobgoblin II x5
Warden II x2

My recommendation:

Get a caracal. Train your base shield skills to level 3 (maybe 1 or 2 of them to 4). Get you missile support skills to 3 and heavy missiles to 4. Get your various fitting skills to 3. Learn through experience how a shield booster works. Play around w/ high resistance fits, try a shield boost amplifier and see what that does. Get a feel for what shield boosting does to your capacitor. This is a week or so.

Get into a drake. Get some more experience doing the shield missile thing. Train all your support skills for shields and missiles to 4 or maybe 5. Get your drone support skills to all 4 and the one that lets you use more drones to 5. This will take 2 or so additional weeks.

Get into a raven. This is the last ship you will ever need for pve. You'll be able to run all level 4 missions mostly with ease. Once in the raven get missile support and shield skills to 5. Get cruise missiles and if you like the feel of the raven - take cruise missiles to 5. A few more weeks.

That's all relatively quick to train through. Sadly, you also have the option to buy skill injectors. Just remember you can't buy the experience and understanding of what modules will and won't due under the pressure of enemy fire. You're at the first big crossroads in the game. Checking the 'proficient at raven' box makes L4 missions and the associated isk easily available. The question is - What do you want to do next?

1. Rattlesnake and perfecting the art of running L4 missions (it's pretty boring and I hope you don't take this path)
2. Cross train to other races - this opens up a lot of additional piloting options
3. Enjoy the raven 'as is' and train into other caldari ships (rook, basilisk, nighthawk and so on)
4. Go after mastering the pirate ships that need caldari as half of their prerequisites. (worm, gilla and so on)

My personal hope is that somewhere along the way you get lost in the world that is eve pvp. The goal of L4 missions gets replaced by adrenaline shakes and heart racing losses. A L4 mission can never give you the feeling you have when you come out of warp w/ a few friends and are landing on grid with hostile players knowing full well there will be winners and there will be losers and how that falls out for you and the guys totally depends on how well you play your part.

Just some stuff to think about

1 - You're new and just working up L3 missions so Pith C-type anything is over priced.
2 - Caldari Navy BCU aren't worth the cost.
3 - all the T2 can be meta modules until you get the skills
4 - Sentry drones are a long train and only come into their own once you have maxed out all the core drones skills

This is a fit for someone w/ 60+ mil skill points and a fat wallet. Here's a fitting lesson for the new guy. Asking for a fit on the forums will give you a good basic idea of how to fit the ship, but historically forum fits assume you have billions of isk and elite skills. The Max/Min crowd also tend to post fits more often than 'regular guys' that don't need the bestest fit for the job.


The above fit has t2 rapid heavy missile launchers, 1 faction (expensive) and then t2 damage mods. Replace all that stuff with the best meta modules and here's what happens

1. Cost goes way down
2. Training time goes way down
3. Fitting requirements go way down (T2 anything is generally cheaper and better than non T2, but the trade of is that they are power grid and cpu hogs - so to fit them all your fitting skills must be at max - which takes a long time)
4. Giving all that up reduces your damage which increases your time to complete the mission.

Add in the training time to get multiple T2 sentries useable and you'll be training for months to actually get into that fit.

It's not a horrible fit, but it's not something you should recommend to a guy just getting into a caracal.