Eve Online Ships – A Look at the Eve Online Ship Classes and What They Mean

You’ve decided to explore the great unknown, the final frontier, space (read in Tim Curry’s voice). You have your shoes tied tight, your space outfit on, and you are ready to fly out and see what you can find. The only trouble is you have no idea which of the Eve Online ships is for you. Hell, you don’t even know the difference between the Eve Online ship classes. Well, worry not poor space-fairing soul, this guide will break things down a bit. Just bear in mind that in Eve Online best ships aren’t a thing, it comes down to preference mostly.

Before You Even Start

The most important bit of prep work you can do is check that you can actually pilot the ship that you want. To do this, check your skills and make sure you have the correct one for the spaceship you are eyeing up. If you don’t, well, you’re going to have a bad time. So check up on that before you put down your deposit. Once you’ve done that you are good to go. Many of the classes have lower and higher tier versions but don’t worry about that for now.

Frigates

Frigates are the smallest and fastest of the Eve Online ships. These are your starter ships for the most part. Despite their low entry requirements, they can still be incredibly deadly in the right hands. So if you like the nippy feel of them, then you’ll be fine to stick with them.  

Destroyers

Destroyers are a little bit larger than frigates but are more focussed on firepower. They have a lot of slots, and this allows them to make good salvage runs and make them a good step up for someone looking to be a bit more aggressive. They can be one of the more flexible Eve Online ships at higher levels and are a good shout if this all sounds good to you.

Cruisers

Cruisers are the next step up in Eve Online ship types. These are medium-sized ships that are a fair bit more expensive than the smaller ships. This is a versatile class with lots of specialisations depending on what you need. So you can focus on damage, recon, or repairing if you want to.

Battlecruisers

Battlercruisers are a similar size to Cruisers but have more slots, much like Cruisers to Destroyers. These tend to be used a lot more than Destroyers thanks to their versatility. While it comes at the cost of speed, the strength of these Eve Online ships makes up for that.

Battleships

Battleships are the heaviest of the sub-capital ships and are incredibly expensive. However, they are also the Eve Online ships you’ll see most regularly thanks to their abilities. They can be good for high damage output and can even fight at an incredibly long-range.

Carriers

Carriers are capital ships that have the rather impressive ability to control Light and Support fighters. These are frigate-sized drones which can do some dirty work for you. They can also store a huge amount of assembled ships in their maintenance bay so you can help supply other pilots. This is a class of Eve Online ships that serve as anti-subcapital ships. Basically everything before this on the list.  

Dreadnoughts

Dreadnoughts are the third best of the Eve Online ships for inflicting damage, they are only outclassed by Supercarriers and Titans. They can also be fitted with a siege module which has a huge array of effects. Essentially the siege module is a super buff that is incredibly expensive to activate but will pretty much ensure you trash anything in your way and come out fine.

Force Auxiliaries

The final of the capital ships are the Force Auxiliaries. These are incredibly large, incredibly powerful support ships. These logistics ships can repair a huge amount of shield or armour. They can also debuff enemy ships and are essential in large-scale battles.  

Supercarriers

This is the first of two Eve Online ships which are too big to be classified. They are so large they need to dock in special extra-large citadels called Keepstars. These are special because they can deploy two more flights of fighters than normal carriers and are the only class that can launch Heavy Fighters.

Work, Work, Work

Honestly, Titans are absolute behemoths and are truly worthy of their name. They are the largest of the Even Online ships and are able to fit multiple unique mods that the other ships can’t. These are things like Doomsday devices, Phenomena Generators, and Jump Portals.