Brother Nightfall
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Posted - 2008.07.22 13:36:00 -
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I too went through a period of regretting my choice of Caldari, but after much consideration I feel very positive about my Achura heritage.
The key thing is to identify your targets for what you want to do, and to stay focused on them.
First priority should be the Kestrel, which will give you a nice early missioning ship, and which has some viability as a PVP ship, especially for Factional Warfare.
From there, viable routes are: Heavy-Missile Drake (for missioning), Blackbird/Falcon (ECM) and Crow (Interceptor). You'll probably want all three, though the order you do them in is up to you. I prioritised ECM first, as in the Falcon the Caldari have literally one of the best PVP ships in the game. You'll never be short of friends once you have one, and you can have max or near max skills with well under 10 million SP.
Thereafter, training up to Tech II HAMs gives you a very respectable solo PVP ship in the HAM Drake. You also gain access to my own personal flavour of the month, the Nano-HAM Navy Osprey (which is very respectable if you have Nav skills from Crow training).
Once you have the Falcon, it's a relatively short train to HACs and the Cerberus, which will make very good use of both Standard and Heavy Missile skills, and is an extremely popular small-gang PVP ship.
This is the point at which I would cross-train, bee-lining for Amarr Cruiser V. At this juncture, you will have access to, and good skills for, the Sacrilege and Curse, which are two of the best fighting PVP ships in the game.
I'd do all this before heading into Battleship terrritory, as all the skills you need for the Cruiser-class ships will be short training times, and you'll have acquired a lot of useful support skills on the way (such as Weapon Upgrades for HAC, which gives you access to Advanced Weapon Upgrades, a key skill). However, deviating for a Cruise Raven for mission use might be worth your time if you need to make money.
This training set will keep you busy for up to a year, after which you'll be well-placed to take a number of routes. For example, you could take time to train up Torps, and get a Torp Raven, or alternatively work on Hybrid Guns and get a Rokh, if 0.0 Alliance warfare beckons to you. Hybrid and Drone skills make a Gallente cross-train viable (though you'd need Armour skills too), and once you have gunnery support skills, Minmatar cruisers look very inviting for the investment of Minnie Cruiser and Medium Projectiles.
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