Ships have a tech level, tech one being normal ships. tech 2 the specialist ships and tech 3 being even more expensive.
but looking on the wiki, certain ships have a tier level.
for example the hyperion is a tech 1 battleship but is called a tier 3. the same for the battlecruiser myrmodon which is tech 1 and tier 2 as opposed to the brutix being tech 1 tier 1.
now, the higher tier ships require more levels in the regarding skill, are often slightly better and are always more expensive.
However, using the term tier in the game itself seems to confuse people, thinking i'm meaning tech and mixing things up. i am new to eve and these people have played for years, so i was thinking, do Tiers really exist or is it something made up by the wiki?
Best Answer
Tiers does exist, and are used to differentiate Tech1 ships from a same class. While being the same class, they fill diverse roles (mining ships, pew-pew ships), and their tier value allow you to find their exact roles (if you're to lazy to read their bonuses)...
Here is a french related forum thread, illustrating my point. (Translated! Traduction is probably innacurate, due to french being my natural langage. Feel free to edit if you see any mistakes.)
The Tier value change the required commandship skills levels requirements.
The Tier value also impacts the manufacturing needs. Higher Tier ships requires more ores. Tier values change manufacture time, BPO copy time, probability of BP invention success, etc...
I believe some more points to be also influenced, like survivability (a Punisher is sturdier than an Executionner, for exemple), or effectiveness, but i wont try to produce the whole differences list, it would take a while, and you already have the main points...
Feel free to edit my post if you think i missed something essential.