Background and Generalities According to the back story the Amarr Empire is the largest empire in EVE, with the Amarr Empire spanning 40% of all inhabited systems. The Amarr are a highly religious race. The use of slavery is justified by this religion, and plays a very large role in Amarrian society. Being an imperialistic race the Amarr were very aggressive in expansion after they rediscovered warp drive and jump gate technology, enslaving every race they came across. This imperialistic expansion came to an abrupt slow down however when contact was made the Jovian race. The Amarr as ever tried to defeat/enslave and met a humiliating defeat as a result of the vastly more advanced Jovians. Many enslaved races took advantage of this defeat to rebel, most notably the Minmatar race with the outside help of the Gallente race. As with all races in EVE the Amarr have a racial weapon of choice used on the majority of their ships, this is the energy turret or laser. Most races in EVE also have a racial way of repairing damage that is used on the majority (if not all) of their ships. For the Amarr this way of repairing or tanking damage is on the armour. This can be seen by the fact that the vast majority of Amarrian ships have more low power slots than the equivalent classes of other races. The downside of this however is that most Amarrian ships are lacking when it comes to medium power slots, meaning it is sometimes necessary to choose between propulsion and tackling or electronic warfare modules. There are exceptions to this norm in the Amarrian ship line as will become apparent later on in this guide. Amarrian Weaponry As stated earlier in this guide the racial Amarrian weapon is the energy turret or laser, both names for the same thing. The primary use of lasers is reflected in the ship bonuses of most Amarrian ships. Bonuses such as a capacitor use reduction or a damage bonus to lasers per level is present in almost all Amarr ships. Lasers use crystals as their ammo type. Lasers in EVE come in two different types; pulse lasers and beam lasers. Pulse lasers are the short range and relatively high damage weapon that every race has an equivalent of. Pulse lasers generally have a higher rate of fire (ROF) and lower capacitor (cap) consumption than their beam laser counterparts, but a much shorter optimal range. Beam lasers are the long range and relatively low damage weapon that every race has an equivalent of. Beam lasers are the opposite of pulse lasers in that they have a slower rate of fire, higher capacitor consumption and boast a much larger optimal range. The differences between these two basic classes of laser can be seen in the following example; a comparison of a Dual Light Pulse laser 1 and a Dual Light Beam laser 1. Bother are a lower size of frigate class laser.
Dual Light Pulse laser 1 Dual Light Beam laser 1 Rate of Fire 2.70 seconds 3.20 seconds Capacitor Consumption 2.67 cap per second 3.89 cap per second Optimal Range 4,500m 8,750m These are just the base stats of these two weapons and as with all things in EVE will increase with skills. The ammunition that lasers use are Frequency Crystals. There are several different types of frequency crystals and these types offer the same bonuses and drawbacks no matter what size of weapon they are for (small (frigate), medium (cruiser) or large (battleship)). A chart showing what bonuses and drawbacks each type of crystal give can be seen below: Lasers are the primary weapon of the Amarr as has already been stated, however some Amarrian ships rely on other weapons as supplementary damage and even as their primary damage in some circumstances. These weapon systems include missiles (See Caldari for more information on missiles), and to a greater extent drones (See Gallente for more information on drones). Ships, Setups and Tactics Frigates Frigates are the lowest class of combat ship in EVE. They are generally fast (with a few exceptions) and agile, with little shield or armour hit points meaning they are not too good at repairing damage (again exceptions exist here). A frigate will be the first class of ship you get into after your starter ship (Impairor for the Amarr). Whilst you may think that frigates are weak ships and can t wait to get into a cruiser or other larger class of ship, do not underestimate them. Many veterans of EVE still fly Tech 1 frigates for PvP (Player versus Player) and PvE (Player versus Environment) combat and they can be extremely useful in a lot of situations. There are two main Amarr frigates that I will detail in this guide; the Executioner and the Punisher.
Executioner (Tier 1) The Executioner is another newly commissioned ship of the Amarr Imperial Navy. The Executioner was designed specially to counter the small, fast raider frigates of the Minmatar Republic; thus it is different from most Amarr ships in favouring speed over defences. With the Executioner, the Amarrians have expanded their tactical capabilities on the battlefield. Special Ability: 10% bonus to Small Energy Turret capacitor use and 5% Small Energy Turret damage per skill level. Hi Slots: 2 Me Slots: 2 Low Slots: 2 As its description states the Executioner is a fast light frigate. This means that it favours speed and agility to avoid taking fire rather than lots of armour and resistances to tank the damage done to it. The base speed of the Executioner is 390ms to reflect this. The Executioner is best when fitted with a Micro-Warp Drive (MWD). This module increases the speed of a ship by a little over 500% depending on the module you use. The minimal number of slots the Executioner has however limits its practical usage somewhat in the world of EVE. One thing it is used as is a cheap tackler. This means that it is used to keep large ships from warping away whilst your own side s large ships pound it into submission. Since weapons aren t important in this role the aim is to keep your MWD and scrambler running as long as is possible. A setup such as this might do well in this kind of role: Hi Slots: Whatever you can fit after the medium and low slots (possibly a gatling pulse laser 1 if you wish to appear on kill mails) Med Slots: 1mn MWD 1, 20km warp disruptor (or a 7.5km warp scrambler if you find you can t run the 20km for long enough) Low Slots: 2x cap power relay (CPR) The idea here is to orbit your enemy at high speed using the MWD and warp scrambling him/her. As already stated this will mean that he/she cannot warp away from your main forces trying to kill it. The cap power relays are there to give you a capacitor recharge boost (each CPR gives a 20% cap recharge bonus) which will hopefully allow you to run both modules for long enough that the target is dead. If you have space you could put small pulse
lasers in the high slots, or even small autocannons if you are wary of your cap running low (whilst autocannons are not Amarr weapons they use no cap meaning that you too can fire at the enemy without taking the cap meant for your MWD and scrambler/disruptor). If you are using a 7.5km scrambler you could even fit small Nosferatu in the high slots if you have the CPU and Power Grid (PG) to fit them. Nosferatu take capacitor from your enemy and give it to you, meaning you can run your modules for even longer. Another thing the executioner can be used for is hunting NPCs (or rats as they are commonly known as in EVE). In this instance the idea is to kill NPCs for their bounties, or to clear them from a belt if you are trying to do some mining. This ship is only good for NPCing in high security space (1.0 to 0.5) as a young player however since low security space has cruisers that you will not be able to last against without good skills in an Executioner. A possible setup might be the following: Hi Slots: 2x dual light beam laser 1 Med Slots: 1mn Afterburner (AB)(100% bonus to speed), webifier (slows the enemy ship down) or a cap recharger 1 (like the cap power relay this gives a bonus to capacitor recharge) Low Slots: small armour repairer 1 (repairs a certain number of armour hit points in exchange for cap), cpr The dual light beam laser 1s can also be swapped for dual light pulse laser 1s if you prefer to get in close and do more damage to the target, however when taking on NPC frigates on in belts this will make you more susceptible to taking damage from them. You will need to choose a crystal type for the lasers that you have chosen. For the dual light beams a good medium range medium damage crystal such as Standard or Infrared will give you a comfortable range to kill off belt NPC frigates with at a reasonable pace. The armour repairer is there in case you take damage from the NPCs you are fighting. It will repair your hit points up to full if you leave it running and aren t taking more damage than it can repair, however if you do this it will most likely run your capacitor down to 0. The best way to use the armour repairer on a ship such as this is in bursts. Clicking on it once to turn it on once you have taken damage and then clicking it again immediately afterwards to turn it off once it has cycled (finished repairing). If you choose to include a webifier in your setup, this will allow you to slow NPCs that get within 10km of your ship down by a certain percentage depending on which webifier you have. This is very useful if the ship is orbiting fast and your guns cannot hit it properly since they are orbiting faster than the tracking of your guns allow. For a guide on how tracking in EVE affects your guns see this URL: http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g26.asp The Executioner being a fast frigate is naturally the ship used as a base for the Interceptor class of frigate (Tech 2). Being Tech 2 these require a lot more skills to fly however also do more damage and have more slots and speed. If you like flying an executioner than either a Crusader or Malediction interceptor might be a good ship for you to aim to fly since these are the Amarr interceptors.
Punisher (Tier 3) The Amarr Imperial Navy has been upgrading many of its ships in recent years and adding new ones. The Punisher is one of the most recent ones and considered by many to be the best Amarr frigate in existence. As witnessed by its heavy armaments, the Punisher is mainly intended for largescale military operations, acting in coordination with larger military vessels, but it is more than powerful enough for solo operations. Special Ability: 10% bonus to Small Energy Turret capacitor use and 5% bonus to armour resistances per level. Hi Slots: 4 Med Slots: 2 Low Slots: 4 The Punisher is in my opinion the best Tech 1 frigate in EVE. I have had great success taking on not only other frigates in PvP but also cruisers and battle cruisers in both PvP and PvE due to its extremely useful armour resistance bonus. The best way to describe the Punisher would be an assault frigate, and incidentally the actually Assault Frigate class in EVE uses the Punisher as the base for the Amarr Assault Frigates. Whilst the Punisher may not have a damage bonus it can fit three lasers giving it more damage than the Executioner even with the skill Amarr Frigate at level 5. The capacitor bonus to small lasers as is common on most Amarrian ships also means that you can tank and fire at the same time in most situations. The resistance bonus on this ship also means that with the right equipment you can get some very high resists on this ship which complements a small armour repairer nicely. One of the most common roles that the Punisher is used in is solo or small group frigate PvP. In this a solo pilot or small group of frigate pilots will roam around looking for larger ships to target and take down with swarm tactics whilst using the poor tracking of larger weapons to their advantage. As already mentioned the resistance bonus of the punisher makes it excel at this role. A setup for this might be as follows: Hi Slots: 3x dual light pulse laser 1, small nosferatu Med Slots: 1mn AB, 20km warp disruptor Low Slots: small armour repairer 1, energised reactive membrane, energised adaptive nano membrane, cpr Once you have gotten into range to use your guns you can activate your nosferatu on the enemy. This will enable you to fire and run your repairer, ab and warp disruptor for a long
time. The energized reactive membrane fills the explosive resistance hole that is present in the armour of all ships except some Tech 2. The energised adaptive nano membrane gives a boost to all armour resistances which in conjunction with the resistance bonus from the Amarr frigate skill makes all armour resistances reasonably high. The cpr is there to supplement cap recharge aiding the nosferatu in keeping your repairer running which in turn enables you to take on larger foes such as cruisers. Another thing this ship can be used for is NPCing. The Punisher is better at NPCing than the Executioner is because of its higher armour hit points and greater ability to tank. This means that it can even be used to NPC in low security space (0.4 to 0.1). For NPCing a few modifications can be done to the above PvP setup to make it more effective: Hi Slots: 3x dual light pulse laser 1, small nosferatu Med Slots: 1mn AB, webifier Low Slots: small armour repairer 1, 2x energised plating that coincide with the damage that the NPCs will be dealing, cpr With this setup the same principals apply as with the PvP setup above. The difference here is that you do not need to prevent NPCs from warping off since they do not do this. Instead you can use a webifier to keep them in place. The 2x energised plating will mean that you have high resistances against the type of damage that the NPCs are doing to you which will mean you don t have to repair as much, saving you cap. You might even find that you can swap the CPR for a Heat Sink (damage increase) if you don t need as much cap as you have. If you enjoy flying the Punisher and like it s capability to go up against vessels larger than itself then you will most likely enjoy flying an Assault Frigate and either a Retribution or Vengeance would be a good ship to aim for (being the Amarr Assault Frigates based on the Punisher as mentioned already). As with Interceptors however Assault Frigates are Tech 2 and therefore require a lot more skills to fly than the Punisher does. In the long run however it is worth it worth it since Assault Frigates are also really useful ships. The Retribution and Vengeance do both more damage than the Punisher and tank damage even better.