Retort and Counter-Retort!

Everything in EVE has a counter, barring really cheaty activities like hacking, spying on an enemy corporation's communique out-of-game (also known as Meta-Gaming, which is frowned upon, but is unfortunately done daily due to the win-at-all-costs mentality that now thrives on EVE), so on and so forth.

This applies true to the different racial ships available to players (aka capsuleers). Below I've given a personal review of each of the races, not counting their more advanced (Tech 2) ship counterparts, as I have little-no experience in how they fly, they fight, and work. Also, such ships are meant for very specialized work, and for general combat are not effective enough for all sorts of vastly changing battlefield conditions.

The Amarr
Lets start off with the Amarr. The Amarr have the advantage of being one of the more damaging races due to the higher damage-per-second total of laser weaponry, having the toughest ships, able to tank damage (similar to being a tank, but instead of only one person handling the damage, its uniform for everyone to have tanking skills, as it is vital for combat survivability) through their armor, and the fact that their ships are basically laser-gunboats. Simple central idea, which helps in piloting them.

But, because of their reliance upon laser weaponry, they suffer greatly from energy capacitor (or cap, in EVE) shortages, since lasers use no ammo, but use cap instead. Couple this with the fact that lasers are bound to the two easiest-to-tank damage types (EM and Thermal, which are strong against shields but weak against armor, which most ships can easily adjust to), and that they are turrets, easily jammed by turret destabilizers, Amarrian ships are easily countered. Unless in numbers, Amarrian ships are frustrating to fly, especially if your skills in them, and the support skills required, are low.


The Caldari
The Caldari are a powerhouse of a racial ship family. Missile weaponry delivers damage values that would easily make any unprepared ship cry for mommy easily, their ECM jamming capability being unsurpassed, and near-limit ranges of the Rokh-Class Battleship with its railguns place them well in any group combat operations. The Raven-Class Battleship is also a crowd favorite in terms of anti-NPC work, due to the flexibility of missile weaponry in switching to the most-damaging damage type depending upon the NPC in question, and is the most-common ship to use in mission work, especially at lvl4.

Unfortunately, due to the ECM nerf, only 3 ships in the Caldari family are the only ones effective enough with ECM to be even considered for group combat, and since they stick out from the group, are often called the primary target by opposing forces (in EVE, primaried). Missile weaponry, whilst flexible and damaging, suffers from major flight-time issues due to the missiles needing to make contact with the target before delivering damage. This is a major problem especially when the target is far away, or is fast enough to avoid the missiles in the first place. Lastly, most of Caldari's railgun-based ships suffer from lack of damage output, and only the Rokh-Class uses the extreme range possible from railguns as it's calling card. This places it well in fleet operations where long-range combat is very common, as it clearly out-ranges all the other battleships when they're set for long-range combat by as much as 50-100km. Even then, the Rokh suffers low damage outputs.

The Gallente
The Gallente ship family is home to the easiest-to-PvP-with ships, and if skilled properly, are flexible and damaging enough for all situations. Blaster weaponry combined with advanced drone warfare deliver maximum damage-per-second values that would shatter even Amarrian armor. They are the easiest race to do combat solo, and does it very well. Combined with fast bursts of speed using microwarpdrives and/or afterburner technology, you have one racial ship family that basically comes up, sprinting, to your face and punches you with a very spiky glove.

Blasters are very short-ranged weapons. So much so that Gallentean combat ships have to be right beside their target to deliver their maximum damage, or else they have to use drones. This forces them to rely upon speed modules that basically light them up to targetting and weapon lock scanners, making them an easy target to deliver damage to when they're on the ingress. Coupled with problematic drone AI especially during laggy combat, and the normal 45km range limit of drone commands leaves Gallente as a close-up in-your-face only race. Setting them up as long-range fleet combatants however, is possible, but suffers from low damage outputs as they have to use railguns (falls under the same weapon family as blasters), without the range bonii that the Rokh enjoys. This is countered by slightly higher damage outputs due to ship bonii.

And the Mimmatar
The Mimmatar ship family enjoys its one trait very well: speed. They are the premiere hit-and-run ships, with projectile weaponry that deliver first-strike damage that is unsurpassed. They are very flexible, able to use missiles as well as drones to complement their projectile weapons, and can allocate for both shield- and armor-tanking for their damage reduction. Their projectile weapons dont use cap at all, along with the missiles, and so they do not suffer from anti-capacitor warfare as much as the other three races in terms of damage output.

Projectile weapons suffer from bringing out as much DPS (damage-per-second) as possible. Whilst they are not as inflexible as railguns, and do deliver near-insane first-strike damage figures, their cycle times are longer than the other turret weapons. Mimmatar ships also suffer from being too versatile, a sign that they lack a central design philisophy, unlike the Amarr with its pure lasers+armor take. This forces capsuleers to be profient in many more skill families to make Mimmatar ships shine on the battlefield.This requires a lot of skill training time, time that could be better used in other endeavors, or other skill families like a secondary profession.

I may be wrong in certain parts here, because its been a while since I've played all the races through the many trials I've had (the latest I have is of course, Caldari), but more or less, with the research I've done, this is mostly the gist of how each racial ship family is. Do note that you are not bound to any one racial ship family. You can train for another, or even all of them if you wanted to, or had the time. There is no "best" racial ship family here, as they are good at certain things, bad at others. For example, the Amarr are great in mid-range gang combat, but suffer from close-range fights, or anything that damages their cap or laser targetting. Caldari are perfect in gang warfare due to ECM and missile use, but solo, they suffer the most. Gallente are mostly stuck in either extremely short-range combat, or long range fleet combat, leaving a big gap. And Mimmatar are the most flexible racial ship family to go for, but suffer from being the hardest racial ship family to train for to be effective because of so many skills to be good at.

As I've said before, take the time to try out all of the races, and their ships and how they fight with multiple trials if you want. Ask questions, be curious, take time to learn the game at your own pace, and you'll succeed, even unconsciously, if you pay attention to what you're doing :D