For those of you who like me are completely new to this game.
I found this post usefull in that it gave me a better idea of what does what than the explanations provided in the item database on the main EvE site.
EFT
EFT is your friend, use it well. It makes chosing ships and what to fit on them out of game very very easy and as you'll find, you can export from it into Battleclinic to discuse your fittings.
Cloaks:
A Covert OPs cloak can only fit on a Force Recon or a Covert Ops. Only these ships can warp cloaked.
An Improved Cloak can fit on any ship but gives a large speed reduction when activated and a large reduction of sensor abilty when just fitted. Only the Stealth Bomber can fit the Improved Cloak with no penalties (skills and a Sensor Booster balance out the penalties)
Prototype Cloak inflicts bigger penalties than an improved cloak and effects Stealth Bombers as well.
With base skills on a non-covert specific ship (example T1 BS) you cant lock a target for 30 seconds after turning off a cloaking device.
You cant use any modules while cloaked. Mods that have already begun a cycle, such as MWD, will complete their cycle (while under the cloak penalties) before turning off.
Guns:
Dont mix short range guns and long range guns. This will make you ineffective at both ranges.
For example dont fit pulse lasers and beam lasers. At range your pulses lasers will not hit so the damage you inflict is reducded, up close your beams will not track fast enough to hit targets, they will miss and again your damage inflicted will be less.
Chose long or short range and stick to it. Use differant ammo types and Sub weapon systems like drones or your often single missile launcher slot on gun platforms to help you out on your weaker range.
Each race has a weapon type of choice. Theres some cross over between the rivals (gal/caldari, amarr/mini) but the majority of each races ships are based on the same weapons.
Gal use Hybrid Blasters and Rails
Caldari use Missiles
Minmatar use Projectile Autocannons and Artilery
Amarr use Pulse and beam lasers
You can find out more about the weapons your ship is designed for from is ship description and in the main you should stick to fitting the weapons it gets bonues for. In time you will learn about ships which have cross over (Damnation uses missiles for amarr, Rohk uses rail guns for caldari) and some "Out of the box" thinking setups but concentrate on knowing the basics first and best.
Energy Vampires (NOS) and Energy Disabilizers (NEUTS)
NOS suck cap to your own ship, reducing the cap from the target. However you can only take cap until you reach your own max cap and you cant take a targets cap below your own level.
This means that if you are on max cap or more cap than the target, you wont suck any more and the targets cap will recharge and wont have a disabling effect anymore. Your mods will still run off any cap you do suck.
Once target cap hits 30% and heading to less, NOS stops working.
NEUTS remove cap from the target AND from you. Although this can be harmful to you, its countered with a cap booster. NEUTS remove more cap from targets than NOS so verses tacklers like intercpetors they work great as a single heavy neut can remove the cap from them in one/two cycles stopping thier tackling mods.
Rigs
T2 rigs are for Supercaps, Rorquals or pimped missoning ships. Pimped out missioning ships dont need them, they are just on there as well, yeah, they are pimped out and the owners have lots of cash.
T1 rigs are good and for everything T2 and T1 battlecruiser above are worth it, especialy on normal caps.
T1 rigs are not worth it on T1 cruisers. You could buy and insure 2-3 T1 cruisers for the cost of most rigs, let alone more than one rig.
T1 Cruisers dont need rigs to do the missions they are designed for and in PVP T1 cruisers die to easy for the rigs to be worth it in those situations either.
Smartbombs
Small smartbombs are of no use.
Medium smartbombs on the likes of Falcon, Rook or Blackbird can be worth it, for fending off drones.
They are of no use on other same size ships.
Large smartbombs are good and often used on caps.
Damage Control Units (DCU)
If you have a low slot left, stick on in. It will save your arse
You can only fit one Damage Control Unit to a ship, same for all ships in EVE, only one DCU. Its that good a mod
Capacitor Power Relays (CPR)
In general these are not a good idea on a ship that is using shield booster mods. They increase the speed your capcitor recharges but at the same time reduce the amount of shield boost you get from a shield booster mod. This effects your "tank" so you wont be repairing as much shield damage.
Tanking
Basic tanking is seting up your ship to repair as much damage as inflicted upon it and sustain it for a period of tim. In general its a bad idea to setup your ship for both sheilds and armor at the same time.
Chose one or the other, as most ships in EVE are good and designed for one or the other. Minimatar ships are slightly odd in that some its best to armor and others its best to shield tank. All the other races have one set way.
Caldari - Shield
Amarr - Armor
Gallente - Armor
Minmatar - Shield/Armor depending on ship
in general a tank can be either an active one, passive or a buffer. "buffer" tank basicly means you stick on enough plates or shield extenders or resists so that you will have killed your target or escaped before you die. A buffer tank does not normaly have any kind of repair mods on, its kill or be killed basicly.
Active tank means you place mods such as repairs/sheild boosters and high % resist mods on your ship and when required you turn them on. These give a high level or repair and reduce damage a lot, but as a side effect can use a lot of cap.
Passive tank, well this only realy effects shield tankers as armor does not repair its self. Sheild recharges its self, all ships have shield and a shield recharge speed value. A passive tank uses shield recharge mods to increase the recharge speed and the amount per cycel, lower % resist mods and shield extenders. Its called a passive tank as you dont turn mods on, you just fit them, and they work away in the background all the time and use no cap.
Speed tanking is using a high speed to reduce damage taken. This is done by going so fast that guns cant track and so fast that when a misslie hits, you pass through the expolsion so quckly, it has a very short amount of time "on target", it does little damage.
You can mix these up, a passive setup drake with active invun fields works very well, the invun fields use cap, so its a mix of both, but to learn the basics, stick to one way or another to start with.
Hull tanking, well, somone once said "Real men hull tank" and i bet you 50mil ISK he dont hull tank often. On expensive fits i believe it can work, but 99% of everyone in EVE does either Armor, Shield or Speed.
High Slot Hardpoints
Your ships can have up to 8 hard slots as mentioned. These slots will either be turrets, missiles or utility.
Your ship will have a set number of these slots you can use on turrets or missile or a mix of both.
You can put a utility mod (remote rep, cloak, smart bomb etc) in any slot, they are not resticted and in most cases you can put more than one (those that you can only fit one of will inform you when you try to fit the second).
Guns can only go on gun(turret) slots and missiles only on missile(launcher) slots.
Electronic Warfare
Jamming:
This is a big topic and calculations and chance based stuff make it hard for a rookie to get their brain round at first in some cases so i'll stick to the basics. This is also based on Jamming ships being used, fitting jammers on non-jamming ships is pointless as they dont have the ship bonuses to make the jammers work efficently.
Theres 6 kinds of jammers in-game.
Gravametric jammer for use against Caldari
Magnometric jammer for use against Gallente
Ladar jammer for use against Minmatar (correct me if im wrong i get this one and the next mixed up)
Radar for use against Amarr
Multi frequency jammer for use on all targets
Multi frequency burst for use on all targets, its an area effect mod, rather than a targeted mod.
Now they are color coded as well so you can stick them in your mid slots in alphabetical order of the race they are used against, Amarr (Radar), Caldari (Gravametric) etc, this helps i think. Multis can be used against any ship but are not as good at jamming as the race specific ones.
Thats it basicly
So whats this Gravaradar frequency thing about then..?
Well each ship has sensors that allow them to do "stuff". The type of sensors the ship has depends on its race. Theres no differance to what can actualy be achived with these sensors, just each race uses something differant to obtain the same result.
So each race of ships has a sensor type, and then a sensor strength which depends on ship type.
When you apply a jammer to a ship, the ships sensor strength and type is compaired to the jammers strength and type, the out come of which gives a % chance to jam then vessel.
If you activated a caldari jammer against a caldari ship you would get a good chance to jam.
If you activated an amarr jammer against a caldari ship you would get a very poor chance to jam.
If you activated a mutli frequency jammer against a caldari ship you would get better chance than the amarr one, but less of a chance to jam than the caldari jammer.
Your chance to jam is then increased with skills and moduls. The vessel you target can increase there chance of NOT getting jammed by fitting modules that increase their sensor strength.
Sensor Dampening:
This is a lot more straight forward than jamming and can be done with ships that are not designed for dampening as well as those that can although the specific dampening ships get bonuses that make dampeners even better.
Your sensors have a set range and targeting time depending on your ship type. You can increase your oponents targeting time and reduce their targeting range with dampeners or you can focus on one atribute, ie reducing their targeting range more, by using a focused script.
They can counter this by fitting sensor boosters which decrease their time to target and increase the range at which they can target.
Warp Disrupters and Scramblers
The differance between these modes are straight forward.
Both stop ships warping away but 1 has a significant bonus.
A disrupter has a standard range of 20k (not including non-role specific ships or t2/faction mods), so a target within that range can not warp off if you have the mod actived on them.
Its got a strength of -1, a ship has a normal warp strength of 1, when the two are added you get 0 so the drive does not work. If the target has warp core stabilsers on (not very common these days) they could have a warp core strength of 1 + the number of WCS fitted meaning for every WCS they have fitted you will need 1 extra warp disrupter on the target.
A warp scrambler follows the rules as above however its range is only 7.5k on standard models. It has a strength of -2, combating the effects of anyone with a WCS or two on.
A scramblers major bonus is that that if your target is running a microwarp drive (speed mod) at the time you apply your scrambler, the MWD will stop working and the target will drop to normal speeds and be easier to catch.
