Skill Discussions

Hi Guys,
thanks again for recommending me some nice builds for my alt miner. This time i need your advice regarding my military main character. Could you tell me whats skills/mods/attributes/ships/weapons and upgrades should i pick for dps oriented military char with salvage skills? :)

This will give you a good idea of the categories of skills you will want to train:

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Support_Skills

For a brand new character that you will be playing while you train, you can't really go for an optimized skill plan like you would with a dedicated alt that you don't plan to undock for three to six months. So it's a good idea to just pick attributes that don't suck for the full range of skills you will want to train in the first year or so. Since primary skills matter more than secondary, and Per/Int are the primaries for most of the things a combat pilot will want to train, an even split between them is a good choice.

Broadly, for a combat pilot you want to pick a weapon system and focus on training the primary and support skills for that, then train into hulls that use that system, and train your basic support and fitting skills along the way. What weapon you choose will decide what race you choose, and that will decide (at least early on) whether you focus first on shield tanking or armor tanking. Keep in mind that will all the rebalancing that is happening now, it's very likely that what is FOTM today will not be so a year from now, so don't get too sucked into what people tell you is the "best."

If you want to do mostly PvP, then you should think about what role you will be flying in gangs or fleets, and that will determine the specific ships you want to aim for, because there are some that excel and others that do not in each role. You probably won't have a great idea of what you want to do until you have done some PvP, which means getting into a good noob corp that does PvP. Seeing what other people fly and why will help you a lot to figure out what works and what doesn't, as will your own experience.

If you want to do mostly PvE, then the usual path is to train steadily up in ship class, advancing toward battleships fit for either soloing L4 missions or incursions. Generically, if you want to run incursions, shield tanking and guns are favored over armor tanking and missiles (at any rate, you'll find more shield fleets running and you'll be more likely to get invites if you're in a gun ship rather than a missile ship). For L4s almost anything can work, although missiles and drones have taken kind of a beating lately and are no longer quite the AFK win buttons they once were. For solo'ing L4s, most people will have some species of Marauder in mind as their ultimate ride.

Very early on, you can aim for several short term goals that will set you on the right path:

1. Train lots of basic stuff to level III. You can train all your basic skills to III very quickly, and this will make a big difference in your ability to fit and fly the basic frigates you have access to. Engineering / Electronics, Weapon Upgrades, Energy Management / Operation, Shield Management / Operation, Hull Upgrades / Mechanics, Navigation / Evasive Maneuvering, etc. The EVE Uni link above runs through all the basic skills that you will need no matter what you fly. If you want to PvP a lot, you will need to pick up some utility skills like Propulsion Jamming and buff up your navigation skills if you are flying frigates a lot (which you will be early on).

2. Train the "bottleneck" rank 1 skill for your chosen weapon system to V, and all the relevant support skills to III. This means, for instance, Gunnery V + Sharpshooter, Motion Prediction, Rapid Firing, Warhead Upgrades, etc. This includes Controlled Bursts as well if you are going hybrid or laser.

3. Train the skills to fit a T2 shield or armor tank, depending on what race you're flying. This means Shield Upgrades IV / Tactical Shield Manipulation IV or Hull Upgrades V / Mechanics IV / Repair Systems IV. Eventually you need Mechanics V for T2 large armor reppers, but that can wait for a while. Train all tanking support skills to III. In the long run you'll train for both types of tanks, but pick whichever ones fits best with your chosen race at first.

4. Train T2 weapons in your chosen line; this will require you to max out support skills and train the T1 skills like Small Projectile Turret up to V, so it will automatically pull support skills up with your weapon skills. Train any non-required support skills to IV (Controlled Bursts, Guided Missile Precision, etc.).

5. Train appropriate Frigate, Cruiser, and etc. skills to IV. As a general rule, if you want to avoid failfits, train all the skills you need to get a full T2 fit onto a ship before you train the hull skill. So, for instance, get your T2 tank, T2 medium guns, and needed fitting skills trained up before moving up to a cruiser, and wait until you have gotten your frigate properly fitted before you start on the next level up. You'll need the small weapon skills anyway as prereqs for the medium ones, at least in the case of guns. Battleships in particular take a lot of level IV / V fitting skills to get T2 gear onto, and you will need some other things as well like Advanced Weapon Upgrades, depending on your weapons. You can blitz hull skills pretty quick, but if you can't fit them right you will have lousy performance, and everyone will just point and laugh when you undock.

When you finish all that you will be six months or so in, and you should have a good idea where you want to go from there. Start looking at what advanced ships you want to fly, and that will determine your training plan for quite a while, especially if you're heading for something like marauders. You can now start thinking about rounding out some basic support skills to V and maxing out your favorite hull skills; or cross train to a second weapon system if you like.