What race you choose isn't all that relevant, it just determines where your initial few days worth of skill points get distributed. From there you can learn whatever racial skills you want.


Caldari is the most popular. Caldari primarily uses missiles and missiles are very user-friendly. Missiles allow you to choose exactly which damage type you want to do which is a plus. Caldari ships are strong for PVE (missions, etc). Caldari also has the best electronic warfare ships. Most caldari ships shield-tank meaning they use shield boosters or passive shields to mitigate damage. This is as opposed to armor tanking which is more dangerous and has less room to make mistakes. Caldari ships look the most "conventional."

Amarr ships are pretty good at everything, they use laser turrets and drones primarily to do damage and usually armor tank. Lasers don't have much flexibility in choosing damage type but do very high damage. Amarr ships look monolithic and minimalistic. Amarr has strong pvp ships.

Minmatar ships are the fastest. Most minmatar ships uses projectile turrets which are medium-strength and have a lot of flexibility in damage type as there are many different types of ammo. Many minmatar ships also use missiles. About half the minmatar ships shield tank and the other type armor tank, and on some ships you can go either way. For this reason Minmatar is criticized for being too skill intensive and lacking focus, but by the same token its a more flexible race. Minmatar ships look like makeshift steampunk scrapheaps, but they have a lot of the coolest looking ships imo. Minmatar is very strong for pvp as well.

Gallente ships are pretty good at everything like Amarr, and specialize in drones and hybrid turrets (which are like a 50/50 of projectile and laser turrets). Most gallente ships armor-tank. Their ships look smooth and organic.