Flying the best possible ship is one of the driving forces in Eve Online. Fitting a ship can in fact be a very interesting, prolonged, complicated, expensive and rewarding experience.

Being Calderi (and a new player with little experience) I think Calderi ships are great. I love the sounds of missiles rushing out one after another and impacting on target. I like the way the ships look, and even like their names. I think Calderi ships are the best.

I have a little experience with Amarr ships and I also like the way they look. Bananas seem to be the inspiration behind a number of them. The fact that you need minimal training to fly an Amarr Industrial is great. The names of the frigates are quite funny.

Being in Minmitar space I get to see many of their ships- and the frigates are nothing much to write home about. The more advanced ships appear to be inspired by hand weapons. Know little else about them.

Gallente ships are cool to look at- some of them are quite asymmetrical.

As having a competent ship is so important to success, selecting the race with the best ships makes sense. I know that in the long term one can fly any ship- but for the first few months most players will stick to their race ships.

So which race has the best ships overall? Which ships make the best tanks? Which ships are suitable for other purposes?

It really depends on what sort of pilot you are. The different racial ships are almost like "classes" in RPG's, the best thing about Eve is that you're not refined to just one class like you are if you pick a cleric, barbarian or mage in D&D style RPGs; you can just train for the ships that suit your style of play no matter what race you are.

I am Caldari and, as far as I'm concerned, Caldari are considered best in gangs and fleets as support vessels. Their main focus is EWAR and long-range missile warfare. I'm loathe to call them "sniper" ships because any salvo that takes 20 seconds to hit a target isn't really a sniper...EWAR on the other hand can turn wars massively on their side, with the ability to turn the tide of a losing battle even when outnumbered. Blackbirds, Falcons and Scorps are what I consider the mainstay of any fleet for Caldari, not Caracals, Cerberus' and Ravens. One thing Caldari ships cannot do well is 1 v 1 solo PVP.

Gallente are your afk-drone busters that like to get minions to do their bidding. Handy in most situations, they can do a bit of solo PVP in ships like the Ishtar and are also good in fleet fights with the ability to use both combat and repair drones.

I don't know much about Amarr except that they use lasers and are cap intensive.

Minmatar seem to have the best solo PVP ships with the fastest ships perfect for what's known as "nanofag" fits; in 0.0 it's quite common to see Minmie ships going at 10km plus per second making it practically impossible to hit them.

I have to say Gallente are the best, but thats simply because i love using drones instead of other weapons - they're so much easier, though they come in less useful in big fleet engagements, thanks to the lag.

So it appears that Gallente are out for me- as I keep losing the drones I have. Don't like lasers so Amarr are also out for me. This leaves me with a bit of training to do for Minmatar ships- as who doesn't want to travel at 10km/s?

In the meantime I have managed to somehow earn (and retain) 15 mil ISK- thus only a few days away from getting a Calderi battlecruiser (Ferox) - yay!!!!

How do you define 'best'? Best for what purpose?

I started flying Gallente ships, but cross-trained Amarr (because the Curse looks good and there's something deliciously evil about nossing/neuting someone from 40km away ).

IMO, each race has some ships that are currently the best in their class (subject to change as CCP swings the nerf bat...)

I like my zealot for roaming gangs, the anathema is now the best looking cov ops, the apoc is an excellent battleship for fleets, and despite the nos nerf the curse is still rather nice (though the pilgrim has been nerfed so much that I tend to apologise when I end up in a gang with it).

The 'best' ship is really the one that's the most appropriate for the situation - and the one that you're happiest flying ^^