The way I climbed the Gallente PVE ship ladder

Thorax
My first love, as soon as I got over the fun of pressing F1-F8 on a Catalyst I settled into this ship for quite a while, it was able to field 5No Hammerhead had a nice armour tank and able to mission the early missions well. It was also where I was first popped in low sec by an Arazu. Later I went back to try to take on a Arazu with a Thorax but to no avail.
Mrymidon
After getting into trouble on some level 3's I managed to save up enough for the next step up the chain - a battlecruiser. Seeing as how 90% of my damage was coming from drones I picked the drone boat and armour tanked it. One of the early skills I brought up to level V was battlecruiser and I nearly never left the Myrmidon. I moved onto to trying out a shield tank on various ships only to find the the Myrmidon passive tank was rock solid and beat the pants of the armour tank for missioning mainly because you don't have to swop out for specialised resists depending on the mission.
Dominix
Shortly after getting the Mrymidon I bought a Dominix and after three missions got it blown apart. It was a valuable lesson and quite a while before I got back into a battleship. About this time I moved into wormhole space and the Dominix was our workhorse, spider tanked with sentries, the Dominix was repsonsible for a lot of Sleeper wrecks.
Ishtar 
This was a long term goal of mine, to fly the Drone Assault Cruiser. Small, hard, fastish (compared with the Domi), it quickly developed a passive shield tank, a single gun (later a civilian gun!) to show the drones what to kill and a drone bay full of nasty hurt. The tank could handle almost anything until I met 10/10 complexes. Up till then I had never added propulsion modules and was happy to slow boat round. After loosing my shields to alpha I started adding speed to my tank. I finished my engineering skills bringing all my shield skills to V.
Astarte
The one downside of the Ishtar was that it didn't do much damage. It would eventually wear anything down but you had to be patient. With BC V and a tendency to fly Brutix for PVP I naturally moved into the Astarte Command Ship. 7 Heavy Neutron Blasters firing tech 2 ammmo with 3 magstabs puts out over 1000dps not including 5 No Hammerheads, not much can withstand that and it's natural resists make it ideal for Gurista space.
The future
At 50 million skillpoints Slay can hardly be considered young. Flying in nullsec has pointed out that there are ships better able to pull in the iskies - faction battleships and carriers. Seeing has how I have never had much money I am going to stay sub capital and improve my base skills. Their are a few end-game PVE ships - the Marachiel seems to be everyones favorite though the Navy Domi or the Navy Mega might suit my skill set better.

Guristas and their damage

After some abortive scanning round Deklein last night (6 systems and ony 1 WH?), the corp settled into destroying anomolies. And by destory I mean rape, pillage and burn to a beat that wouldn't be out of place in a fast foxtrot. I suspect that 2 anomolies were burnt through for each tick of the wallet. By the time I left the wallet has ticked 7, 10 and 7m with lots more to come when I logged off. The group included a Macherial, Thanatos, Gila, 2 Tengus and myself in an Astarte. I suspect I was the least productive of the group apart from being a tank a lot of the time - those Guristas really don't like Gallente.
Some number comparing ensued and I did some look up. 7 tech 2 neutron blasters and I was doing pitiful damage. It was suggested that I might add a magstab or two so I went away to look at my fit and Guristas. Turns out that Guristas are not like Angels at all, they do Kenetic with a little thermal damage and that is it. As the Astarte is currently used as PVE only I'll strip the EANM and Explosive hardener and add two magstabs tonight and see what difference that makes.
I also have to find a good source of tech 2 blaster ammo because running anomolies like that goes through the stuff fast and without the tech 2 ammo I am getting no bonus from my blaster specialisation skills.
Before these changes my fitting screen has a dps of 575ish. Hopefully the 2 extra magstabs and tech 2 ammo should push that up over 700.

Later...
Turns out Null ammo and 3 No Magstabs pushes dps up to 1001 on EFT and 978 in-game but makes the tank a lot tighter.

Tracking

Enhancers (low slot)
Tech II (5)- tracking speed bonus 9.5%, optimal range bonus 15%, fall-off bonus 30%
Domination (8)- tracking speed bonus 10%, optimal range bonus 15%, fall-off bonus 30%
Republic (8)- tracking speed bonus 10%, optimal range bonus 15%, fall-off bonus 30%

Links (mid slot)
Tech II (5)- tracking speed bonus 15%, optimal range bonus 7.5%, optimal range +6.5km
Fed Navy (5)- tracking speed bonus 17.5%, optimal range bonus 8%, optimal range +7.5km
Shadow Serpentis (8)- tracking speed bonus 17.5%, optimal range bonus 8%, optimal range +7.5km

Computers (mid slot)
Tech II (5)- tracking speed bonus 15%, optimal range bonus 7.5%, falloff bonus 15%
Fed Navy(8)- tracking speed bonus 17.5 ,optimal range bonus 8%, falloff bonus 16%
Shadow Serpentis (8) - tracking speed bonus 17.5, optimal 8%, fall off bonus 16%

Appears the difference between links and computers are in the optimal range bonus(links) v fall off(computers) bonus. The forums claim that hybrids are designed to act within their optimal whereas projectile are designed to act within their fall-off making links good for hybrids and computers good for projectile.Looking at the range on a Heavy Neutron Cannon II (Tech 2 BS grade blaster), I notice that a link would about double the base optimal (7.5km optimal + 6.5km + 7.5% = 15km but this depends on how the bonuses are added).
Then there are enhancers. These do something similar but by using up a low slot, a place often reserved for damage mods or armour tanking. So it comes down to replacing a magstab with an enhancer. Straight damage vs better range and tracking, instinctually I would put an enhancer on a long range boat (rail fit).

Later...
Turns out that links are designed to allow a ship to improve a different ship, ie a remote tracking improvement.