When you're first starting out, you will start looking at all the fancy weapons and ships. Perfectly natural. But some of the most useful pieces of equipment are not that hard to get.

First off, batteries are very important. Almost every ship and energy weapon will test your batteries to their limits.
Free Battery -/-/-/-/-
Light Battery 1/-/-/-/-
Medium Battery 2/-/-/-/-
Heavy Battery 3/-/-/-/-
Fast Charge Battery 4/-/-/4/-

Don't let the fact that the CentII is a cargo variant fool you. It is very fast and very power efficient ship. When I want to be somewhere fast, this is it.
Centurion MkII 1/1/-/-/-

The HX is an unfortunatly low velocity weapon, so you may need to get in closer to your target. It is a very power efficient weapon:
Plasma Cannon HX 1/1/-/-/-

In fact, you may find that the Cent MkII + Fast Charge + PC HX is more power efficient than you need. Play with ships and weapons, but you will almost always want the fast charge battery, and while you might outgrow the Plasma Cannon HX, the Centurion MkII is still one of my favorite ships.

[spellcheck'd-ct]

Nice, but I think you should probably proofread your posts. "Top noch," When your fist," "usefull peices," "effencient," etc. It's not so terrible that it's impossible to read, but I think it'd give your advice more credibility if you had less errors, especially in the title.

Hey Pidgeon, yeah you in the glass house, you forgot to capitalize the first letter of your post. Also, 'less errors' should be 'fewer errors' for better comprehension.

I didn't mean it to sound like I was insulting him, or that he should be overly concerned with error-free posts, but was trying to be somewhat friendly about it.

Nice idea, TRS. This is useful to both newbs and those who try to help them and may have forgotten certain license requirements.

Let me complete and modify two assessments:

1) Plasma Cannon - The choice between Plasma and Phase Blaster is a matter of taste; they are roughly equivalent.

2) Centurion mkII - I used to fly it a lot, so I have an idea of its limits. It is a cargo transport variant to the extent that it does not accelerate or turn well at all. In other words, you can use it to good effect if you can fly at high speed; in dogfighting situations or when accelerating from low speed, it is extremely vulnerable. The Itani and Orion variants of the centurion and the mkIII are better for botting or fighting.

Ideally, it *should* be a choice between the phased blaster, ion blaster, and plasma cannon, each with their own particular strengths and weakneses. As it stands, however, the plasma cannon HK rapid firing, more effecient, and more powerful than the phased blaster, which is available one license level later. It's pretty much the tachIII of newb zone.

I actually made a post about this here:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8321?page=2#110186

Thank you all for your input. I'll try to get around to spelling, but too lazy at the moment.

I may have premoted the Centurion mkII beyond it's merits. I just like that it has the highest infinite turbo speed available.

One thing I think is over looked about the Plasma Cannon HX, the wiki list this at 400 damage, however, in game it list at 550 damage. 550/8 is.. um.. well... um... (where is that calculator?), lets just say thats a better ratio than you can get on almost any other weap. The only thing keeping this thing in the minor leauges, is it's low velocity. Even then, I've seen vets in hornets spray paint the landscape. Perhaps it's not the greatest pvp weap, but when i wanna harvest low level bots...

Also, if you're Itani, I think you can get an IBG and N3 at level 3 or so!

have fun kids. don't hurt anyone...

And UIT can get TPG sparrows, while Sercos can get the SVG.

My tip regarding batteries is to skip the light battery, it's not worth it. Same recharge rate, higher capacity than the free battery means longer time to full charge, which means longer times before you can warp through wormholes. The only time the light battery is at all better than the free battery is for about 5 seconds after docking, when it still has full charge.

other Good Things at level 3 3 2 (combat light heavy):
By then, you can prolly get the centaur mkIII. all-purpose ship, a bit better than the wraith at it.

Jackhammers: okay, so this is a rocket. but compared to all the other weapons you may have been using before, (phased blaster? busgun? ion cannon?) it is useful!

Also, if you get to level 3 heavy, you can get rags, and and and...

The most important peice of equipment is almost always the batteries. 4/x/x/4/x being the goal for a fast charge. By the time you can get that, lots of other goodies are available.