Starting out as a Gallente

This is a work in progress. Feel free to add information and advice.

Roughly a third of this information is also out of date (some of this stuff is circa early 2008), so be sure to supplement what you learn here with other, more specific, wiki articles. This is still a fine guide for getting started, regardless of its age. You should be studying the rest of the wiki anyway.

Also note that currently, as of november 2009, gallente are generally regarded as subpar compared to the other races in many advanced ship categories, and not really the best of any class, mostly not gamebreakingly aweful but not top of the line, if you badly want to fly the most powerful flavor of the month ships you should currently train for amarr ships. The rest of us scrubs training gallente will just have to be content with being mediocre for the time being, and staring at pretty, mostly symmetrical, ships.

Background

In EVE's storyline, the Gallente are a faction comprised largely of French descendants and members of the arts and democratic governments, whatever that means. On Tranquility they are the only democracy of EVE, on Serenity (the chinese server) they are instead a labor union. None of this is really relevant, but if you want to find out more check this out: http://www.eve-online.com/races/Gallente.asap

Now onto the real information. Through all of this you should keep in mind that your starting race does not dictate what ships you can learn to fly, but you do get a head start (depending on your choices at character creation) along one particular path. Since you are reading this, I will assume that you are interested in Gallente ships.

Gallente Ship Archetype

The Gallente race uses drones and hybrid weapons for offense, and almost exclusively armor tank for defense. Drones are essentially 'pets,' and with good skills drones can put out a staggering amount of damage. Hybrid weapons consist of railguns for medium- to long-range engagements, or blasters for extreme damage at close ranges. Blaster ships put out the best damage in the game, although they have the second worst optimal out of all the weapons (under 5km in most cases), which sevearly limits their use on anything above frigates in size.

Gallente ships are very balanced, most of them combine good damage with good tanking abilities.

Note: Gallente tech 1 ships are very solid compared to other races' tech 1 ships. Some of their tech 2 ships fall behind (Gallente HAC's, Command Ships and Black Ops and are subpar, while interceptors are excellent, the rest are decent for their intended purpose atleast) but they are the most cost effective race to train initially because of how affordable and powerful their t1 ships are relative to the other races.

As far as "veteran" options go, the Gallente Dreadnought (the Moros) is generally considered the second-best dreadnought, and the Gallente carrier, the Thanatos, is ranked by some as the best carrier in the game. Their battleship line are solid as well, with one ok fleet sniper (megathron) and one pve ship (the dominix), never fly a hyperion, they are worthless and for all intents and purposes the megathron is a better choise.

Rookie Ship

The Gallente rookie ship is the Velator. When you first begin your EVE experience, this the craft you'll be given to pilot. Use it to run through the tutorial and become familiar with how to play the game. After you finish the tutorial and join Goonfleet, use it to podjump to the station in NOL-M9, NOL Ishukone Corporation Factory, in Delve. Ask a mentor or join GFHelp if you have any questions about this. Note that despite being the best newbie ship, it is absolutely useless in 0.0 space, and flying it will get you podded (unless its an all Velator comedy op).

Early ship options—Frigates

As either a new Gallente pilot, or as an older pilot just starting along the Gallente path, your first choices are going to be frigates. Here are the various Gallente frigates:

• Atron—Fast light combat frigate

• Navitas—Mining Frigate, but if you're at all serious about mining get into a Vexor

• Imicus—Drone/Scanning ship (Rarely used)

• Tristan—Heavy combat/tackling frigate

• Incursus—Fast medium combat frigate, this is your go-to frigate (Goonfleet Issued)

• Maulus—Electronic warfare, sensor dampening (Goonfleet Issued)

Basically, in 90% of all situations you'll want to fly an Incursus. The Incursus is a very well rounded frigate, and is a nice compromise between the Atron's speed and the Tristan's firepower. An exception to this is level 1 mission running, you may find the Tristan's hardiness and extra firepower compensating for its slower speed in that situation.

The Navitas is a Mining frigate, and while competent in that role, can be quickly replaced by a mining cruiser. The Imicus lacks any real role beyond being used as a probe ship due to the Astrometrics bonus and is almost never seen. The Incursus is the backbone of the Gallente frigates, a common sight in our combat gangs, and a ship with both offensive capabilities and the ability to 'tackle', or keep enemy ships from escaping by employing warp jamming and stasis webbifying modules. The Incursus is also extremely cheap to produce. The Atron, while rarely used, could be a cheap pipe-running ship. Finally, the Maulus is an excellent electronic warfare ship, highly effective in small skirmish fleet warfare. It gets a bonus to Remote Sensor Dampener modules. It also functions well as a tackler in PVP engagements.

A good choice for new players is to try and purchase a Tristan or a Incursus for running level 1 Agent Missions, as you attempt to learn the ropes of EVE and accumulate a bit of money, and as you train up basic, yet vital, skills. Consult the guide linked above for more information about missions. To start out, there are a number of skills you should focus on early on; these are described in greater detail here: Recommended Skill Training Guide As a Gallente pilot your important combat skills will be in the gunnery (hybrid weapons) and drone trees to start out, although once you get a cruiser you will need to expand to include missiles as well.

Once you move out to Delve and join the majority of Goonfleet in 0.0 security space, one thing you should do is maintain a fleet of several (read: 3-5) fitted and combat-capable frigates at all times in your hangar. Frigates in PvP may not be the most powerful ships, but they are extremely effective in numbers, and there is always a demand for frigate pilots in combat gangs for the purpose of tackling enemy ships, if nothing else. Frigates are cheap, and keeping 5 or more won't cost you more than one to two million isk, and if insured their loss will be a fairly insignificant expense after you've been in our space for long. You should not be paying more than 400,000 isk for any frigate.

Alternate Early ship option—Destroyers

One option you have fairly early on in your career is the choice of whether to get a destroyer. At present there is only one destroyer per race, and for the Gallente it is the Catalyst. The Catalyst is basically 3 Incursuses welded together. There's usually two camps of people when it comes to Destroyers: people who think that they're fun little ships and people who think they suck. Here's the Pros and Cons of Destroyers:

Pros:

• Take all the same skills as frigates (minus the skill for the hull)

• Have more firepower than a frigate

• They're pretty cheap

• Having 8 high slots, they excel at salvaging

Cons:

• They're fragile

• They're specialized ships, and don't tend to excel in general purpose work the same way as a cruiser does.

I advise finding out for yourself which camp you're in. Training Destroyers I doesn't take very long. Just remember that they are in no way a substitute for training cruisers.

Training your first skills

Train, train, train. I advise going wide instead of deep. This will open up your fitting options by letting you use a wider variety of modules. It will also increase your overall effectiveness, because you'll have 5-10 percent bonuses in a wide array of areas instead of a 25 percent bonus in one. Browsing through the skillbooks section of the market can be a bit intimidating, so here are the skills I suggest grabbing as a Gallente player. I know that you start with some of these, and its a lot of skills. However, bear in mind that you'll only be training them to 1 or 2 at first, and it really shouldn't take too long.

Drones—Gallente are big drone users, you'll want to grab the support skills for these as soon as possible.

• Drone Navigation

• Drone Sharpshooting

• Scout Drone Operation

• Combat Drone Operation

Electronics—Get to 5 at some point, raise whenever you want to cram more stuff on your ship.

• Electronics Upgrades—Get to 2, this will let you use Co-proccessors.

• Long Range Targeting—Lets you target further out and use Sensor Boosters.

• Signature Analysis—This will help you target things faster.

• Targeting—This will let you lock more targets simultaneously.

• Propulsion Jamming—Everybody loves a tackler.

• Sensor Linking—This will let you use modules that will debuff enemy players. I advise looking over the Electronic Warfare article for more information on this.

Engineering—Get to 5 at some point, raise whenever you want to cram more stuff on your ship.

• Shield Operation—Gallente generally don't shield tank, but training these two skills up a rank or two will make your ship slightly tougher with very little skill investment. Your call on whether its worth the hour or so.

• Shield Management

• Energy Grid Upgrades—This will let you use Reactor Control Units, which will help compensate for poor fitting skills early on

• Energy Management—These two will make your capacitor work better, always handy.

• Energy Systems Operation

Gunnery—Why you want to raise this should be pretty intuitive

• Motion Prediction

• Rapid Firing

• Sharpshooter

• Controlled Bursts

• Weapon Upgrades—This will let you use Damage Mods in your low slots, which are very handy.

Learning—Get all the basic skills (Learning, Instant Recall, Analytical mind, Iron Will, and Spatial Awareness) up to 2 as quickly as possible. Then get them to 4 as fast you can stand it. Then get the advanced skills when you can afford them. See the Recommended Skill Training Guide for some more information on advanced learning.

Mechanic

• Hull Upgrades—You'll want to get this to 4 in fairly short order, as it will let you use armor hardeners. See tanking for more info

• Repair Systems

Missile Launcher Operation—Gallente aren't big missile users. If you're a big fan of the Tristan you may want to train up rockets or standard missiles, but don't go crazy. You won't be using these later.

Navigation—Going faster is good for everyone

• Afterburner

• Evasive Maneuvering

• Warp Drive Operation

• Fuel Conservation—Will help you use that Afterburner longer.

Science—You'll want to get this to at least 3 but probably 4 at some point. Is a prerequisite for a lot of strange things for some reason.

• Infomorph Psychology—Will let you use Jump Clones which are pretty handy.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but it should be a good start if you're not sure what you should be doing.

Hybrid Weapons

One thing you should know by this point is that there are two different types of hybrid weapons. Blasters are generally short range weapons, with high rates of fire, fast tracking, and generally high damage per shot. For each of the size classes of blasters (small, for frigates, medium, for cruisers, and large, for battleships) there are three different sized blasters. Each size of gun has several options with regard to blasters, varying in damage and rate of fire. As size increases the rate of fire decreases, but the damage increases, as do the fitting requirements for your ship (that is, they require more power grid and CPU to operate).

Using blasters will require you to get close to your target, so many people use them on ships equipped with afterburners or microwarp drives to enable them to move faster; this is a good idea.

The other type of hybrid weapon is the railgun. In contrast to blasters, railguns fires at a slower rate with slower tracking. The overall damage is worse than that obtained with blasters, but the range is significantly better. Each size of gun has several options with regard to railguns, varying in damage and rate of fire.

Generally, you will want to place railguns on slower ships where you would prefer to engage from range, and blasters on faster ships that you wish to bring in close to the enemy. The Gallente ship archetype generally tends to favor blasters.

You may have noticed that theres a bunch of different kinds of Hybrid ammo as well. The primary difference between the different ammo types is range. Each type has a range modifier. The rule is that the shorter the range the higher damage, so Anti-Matter does the most damage and has the shortest range, while Iron has the longest range but does the least damage. You'll pretty much always want to stick anti-matter in blasters. With railguns, pack a few different kinds of ammo so that you can switch out as your engagement range changes.

In summary:

• Blasters—Short range, good tracking, high damage per shot. Can track small and fast targets. Think "shotgun."

• Railguns—Long range, bad tracking, moderate damage per shot but low damage over time. Can "alpha strike" (Do a lot of damage/kill in one volley). Think "rifle."

Drones

A brief overview: Drones are like pets in other MMOs. Also, the interface for using them is terrible. In order to use them, you will need to load the drones into your ship's drone bay, you can access this by right clicking on your ship and selecting 'Open Drone Bay.' The Drone interface will appear on the right, below your overview. You can only load drones when you have access to a fitting service, so you have to be (a) docked, (b) at a carrier or (c) at a ship maintenence array. Gallente and Minmatar drones outperform Amarr and Caldari drones in most situations.

What size drone you want to use depends on the size of your target. Here's the general guide: Frigates—Light Drones, Warriors tend to outperform the other light drones in most situations. Destroyers/Cruisers—Medium Drones, Hammerheads and Valkyries are both good go-to drones. Battlecruiser/Battleships—Heavy Drones, Ogres and Berserkers will be your go-to drones in this category, Ogres have better tracking and are thus better against faster targets.

This can slide around a bit if you have your target webbed. Some more handy things to know:

• Drones increase VASTLY in effectiveness once you have Drones 5 and Drone Interfacing to any level

• A hodge podge of drones is sometimes preferable. If you have a 75 m3 drone bay, you could fit 5 mediums and 5 lights, or you could fit 2 heavies, 2 mediums and a light. Play around.

• Tech 2 drones are a lot more effective then tech 1 and very much worth training for.

• You will need Mining Drone Operation 2 for your mining drones to mine Arkonor.

See BEES for a more thorough guide.

Mid-size—The Cruisers

Cruisers are the next step up in size from frigates and destroyers. Significantly more expensive than the smaller ships, but correspondingly more powerful and durable, the Gallente cruisers are generally quite useful, particularly from a PVP standpoint.

• Celestis—Electronics warfare cruiser, with a bonus to sensor dampening. Can be fitted with hybrids and launchers, this is no longer a highly effective support class ship due to remote sensor dampeners being nerfed.

• Thorax—Heavy combat cruiser. Gets a bonus to Microwarp drive usage as well as hybrid weapons. Highly effective at close range with blasters.

• Vexor—Drone cruiser. Gets a substantial bonus to drone damage and mining yield. This is what you want to mine in.

• Exequror—The Gallente Industrial Cruiser, it can be a decent pipe runner. Its bonus to Remote Heavy Armor Repairers makes it handy for repping POS guns and station services.

Of the four Gallente cruisers, the Thorax, Vexor, and Celestis are consistently used in combat operations. All are also reasonably good ships for PvE purposes, and both can run most (if not all) level 2 agent missions without too much difficulty. The Exequror is one of the poorest cruisers across the spectrum of races.

Expect to spend between 4 and 9 million isk to get your first cruiser. Prices in 0.0 tend to be higher than empire, this is due to mineral prices. Your first cruiser should probably be a Vexor, as it is the best for either mining or ratting. One of our mantras is that you should not PvP with ships you cannot afford to lose, and that concept first becomes really relevant when you begin flying cruisers. On a similar note, you should always fully insure your ships when you buy them, as odds are high you will lose it before three months pass.

Note that when it comes to piloting cruisers, you will most likely be moving up to medium sized guns, which means that you will need to train small hybrid turret to 3 and gunnery to 3 as prerequisites.

Notes on the Thorax

Raleigh Note: Do not buy a Thorax until:

• You have trained Hull Upgrades to IV

• You have the ability to use Medium sized Drones

• You read and understand Eve's Tracking Guide: http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g26.asp

• Have bought Kinetic and Thermal Armor Hardeners

• Have bought 1600mm plates

• You realise that a Vexor and drone skills are much better at PvE than a Thorax

• You have trained Mechanic to II

• Have bought a Medium Armor Repairer

• You stop trying to fight small frigates with medium guns at close range

If you don't follow the above precautions, you will be very frustrated and annoyed at how you almost lost your 8million isk Thorax to a bunch of little frigates because you don't have the right skills/equipment.

Starting PvE ("Ratting") as a Gallente Pilot

One of the gallente specialties is drones. Learn your drones, love your drones, rape stuff with your drones. As a newer player looking to start ratting you'll probably end up in a Vexor. Note the bonuses, 10% per level of gallente cruiser of drone hitpoints, damage and even mining yield. A flat 40% bonus is easily attainable, and very noticable.

You mooched off of your squad mates, sold a time card, sucked some crok, whatever it took, you got a Vexor in [insert goon home region of the moment] and you want to make shit dead in the name of ISK. A very admirable goal. The key to ratting in a Vexor is to know what you can do, and what will get your ass pounded. You're not in the grand daddy of drone ratters, a Dominix, yet so you can't just suck up the damage and ask for more like he can. No you need to use your wits, keep your head about you, and not fall asleep at the keyboard the way a Domi pilot does. You're in a cruiser, which means you can move fast. That point is crucial. Before you go any further open up EVE, monkey around with your overview and place the Transversal Velocity column on it. This is what makes things not kill you. If your transversal velocity is high enough a battleship's turrets cannot track you to get a shot on you, and a battleship's torpedoes will blow up far enough behind you that they do little to no damage. Since battleships are what you will be killing to make ISK this is handy. An unfortunate thing to note is that hostile cruisers do not have such limitations. Their guns can track you, and their missiles will hurt you, a lot. If you see cruisers don't even bother. Just skip the spawn and move on to something else. Being in a Vexor you don't have the load out flexibility of the big boys, so sacrifices must be made. with 75m3 drone bay space you can pack two heavies, a medium, and a light that can all be launched at the same time.

When you've finally found a spawn that is battleships, or battleships and frigates you're ready to kill. Target a battleship, afterburn towards him as fast as you can, getting a target lock on the way in. Once you're in range turn on your energy transfer turrets and start sucking away at his capacitor. Orbit him in a tight orbit as soon as possible. The more time you spend not orbiting a battleship the more time it can spend hurting you, and they are good at that. Orbit him tight, keep your transversal up, watch combat logs. if you're getting hit by anything except torpedoes you're not doing something right. A good example is the enemy moving into an asteroid. You'll orbit him, bounce off the asteroid, come to a complete stop and try to bumble around it like a rhotard playing 'who moves first' with a wall, meanwhile the battleship's guns have locked on you and delivered a hurting. Once you've got things fairly stable and you're not going to get blown out of the sky in a few seconds it's time to start killing. The battleship isn't a problem, ignore him. Launch your drones and first kill the frigates who can actually hurt you. Not much but it adds up, so take out all but one frigate. It's very very important to not kill the last frigate, this is called Chaining. To allow that to happen properly means keeping a tight leash on your drones who love nothing more than to fly around willy-nilly killing everything in sight in an unorganized manner.

Once you're down to a lone frigate you're ready to get started on the big boy. Grind away at him and he'll eventually die, given your skills this may take a long time, it may not be too terrible or it may be flat out impossible. If you see you are not breaking his tank (his top white bar isn't turning red and staying red) you'll have to work on your drone skills a bit more. Get a few more levels in Cruisers, or Drones V in order to get five drones launched and Drone Interfacing. Every level of Drone Interfacing gives you 20% more damage. That's easily a 60% bonus in damage at level 3, with 80% at level 4 not too hard to get. Also be sure you have the proper type of drones (Warrior lights against Angels.) Know your target and pack what works best against them.

Most times you will be dealing with two battleships and a few frigates; this is normal, but not fun. The battleship you are orbiting will be largely nullified by your high transversal, but the one you're not orbiting will typically get at his optimal and start unloading on you. Generally speaking you're going to have to suck it up and repair the damage he gets in on you. Welcome to the world of drone boating and tanking, this is your first introduction. Getting Hull Upgrades 4 will allow you to use armor hardeners. Get them. Use them. Live. Another option that I used extensively is drone tanking. This requires a lot of micromanagement, but it can work out wonderfully if you're careful. If you see a drone of yours taking damage keep an eye on it, or if you're specifically trying for this outcome launch your drones before you are targeted, and while you're on your approach so that they have a chance of being targeted but not blown out of the sky. Drones are typically fast enough to tank a battleship in the same manner as you do, with the added benefit of breaking the target lock the moment they vanish into your drone bay. If they're nearby orbiting the same ship as you are they will typically vanish into your bay within seconds. Time your return command to let them speed tank as much damage as they can handle before they get into armor, which does not repair on its own, then tell them to return to the bay. Occasionally I've had scout drones speed tank a battleship for the duration of the fight, greatly reducing the number of things necessary to handle.

What's next?

Gallente ships are versatile in the roles they can perform but not in how they perform them. Drones and hybrid turrets are the order of the day, and training those up will help you with every Gallente ship you pilot. That said, there are a few logical progressions of Gallente ships.

The Droneboats

Imicus -> Vexor -> Myrmidon -> Dominix

These ships get a hefty bonus to drone damage, but don't forget their bonus to hybrid turret damage as well. These ships can be tinkered to perform at a variety of ranges, and are the best for PvE due to their strong tanks and ability to tinker with damage types on their drones. They also make excellent mining ships. You should train for a Dominix in short order, because the ship is a good isk generator.

The Blaster Boats

Incursus -> Thorax -> Brutix -> Megathron/Hyperion (sort of)

These ships are simple to fly. Close to blaster range, start shooting, and hope their tank breaks before yours does. They make good solo/small gang ships but aren't nearly as useful in fleet warfare. The Hyperion is sort of a black sheep. The Devs indicated it was supposed to be a continuation of this family but its a bit sluggish to perform the role and is often outdamaged by the Megathron. Note that while I have these classified as blaster boats, the bonus they recieve is to all hybrid turrets, so they can be set up to work at longer ranges.

The Megathron and the Brutix especially are good snipers, and are often fit with railguns for fleet work. The Megathron is the only battleship to get a bonus to tracking making it the best sniping battleship in the game, being both easy to fit out with the largest and best railguns and having an optimal slot layout for sniping.

E-War

Maulus -> Celestis

These ships use Remote Sensor Dampeners, which were the most potent form of Electronic Warfare in EVE until a recent patch nerfed them significantly. They reduce a ships targeting range or increase its lock time. The Celestis is a common sight in our fleets, and for good cause; It can nullify enemy snipers by reducing their lock range so they're unable to fire on our fleet.

Gallente Capital Ships

There's no getting around this: Gallente capital ships are excellent. For this reason, they tend to be more common than the other races.

The Thanatos is among the best carriers, due to its ability to repair both shield and armor, it also has a fighter damage bonus and its tank is decent.

The Moros is the most versatile dreadnought due to its Drone Damage bonus. Heavy Drones deployed from a Moros are hard hitting and excellent for striking enemy support fleets with their drones while hitting capital sized targets with it's guns.

The Nyx is probably the best mothership due to its Fighter Damage bonus. It's no coincidence that its the most common mothership in EVE.

The Erebus is the most popular choice for titan and was Goonfleet's first titan. There are, to the best of my knowledge, at least 10 Erebi in the game currently. The reason for this choice is that it gives a significant armor bonus to it's fleet and the gallente superweapon deals Thermal damage, which is usually the best all-around damage type to use.

Gallente Tech 2

Interceptors: The Taranis can be hardest hitting inty due to its blasters, but since using them requires closing to web range this is a dubious talent. It's also one of the slower interceptors. The Ares is faster than the Taranis but tends to be less suited to solo work. It's a much more common sight in fleets.

Assault Frigates: The Enyo is excellent for PvE work, and the Ishkur can potentially be very damaging to other frigate-sized ships. However, assault frigates in general are pretty 'meh.'

Covert Ops: The Helios is a decent Cov-ops frigate.

Interdictors: The Eris is the worst interdictor in the game. Its still nice for fleet work because it can still launch interdictor bubbles and scoot away, which is all a fleet dictor does.

HACs: The Ishtar is basically a faster, more maneuverable Dominix and the Deimos is a vamped up Thorax. The Deimos used to have a large number of problems but was buffed in a recent patch, making it just sub-par. Gallente HACs are lackluster because the Gallente battlecruisers can perform either role about as well and are much easier and much much cheaper to field.

Recon Ships: The Arazu is, along with the Pilgrim, a contestant for the title of worst solo recon. Its bonus to Remote Sensor Dampeners and Warp Disruptor range makes it able to scramble ships while making their lock range so low they can't fight back, but was hit very hard by the nerf to RSD. The Lachesis is a non-cloaking version, and is a bit unusual in that it uses missiles and hybrid turrets. The only use that is left for gallente recons are as heavy tacklers, as they can prevent other ships from warping from 50k away while still possessing a significant tank.

Heavy Interdictors: The Phobos is good for it's intended purpose, tackle supercapitals, which is all you should use your Heavy Dictor for, in all other situations a regualr dictor would most likely be preferred.

Command Ships: The Eos and Astarte are both excellent command ships, and are both pretty useful in small to medium gangs.

Black Ops: The Sin is a piece of crap, a 700 million dominix with a worse tank. It has use and one use only, to bridge covert ships (like stealthbombers) to target systems.

Marauders: The Kronos is regarded by some as the best PVP marauder, and can be made into a nice station camping ship, the class is however designed to be a PVE monster and in this area it preforms rather horribly in comparison with other marauder class ships (like the Paladin or Golem).