Skill Discussions

Hello,

I've had a bit of a rocky first few months of training. I started out wanting to go specialised Amarr but due to a stint in 0.0 forcing me to change my pve skill set to caldari and my pvp to minmatar my skill points are all over the place. As it stands I'm doing level 4's in a sentry drone/cruise missile geddon in Amarr space but I'm looking to the future.

As it stands my skills are sitting in this sort of area. A total of 12 mil skill points.

Gunnery - Level 4
Lasers - Level 4
Missiles - Level 4
Fitting skills - Level 5
Capacitor skills - Level 5
Drone skills - Level 4
Armour Tanking - Level 5
Shield Tanking - Level 4
--
Amarr BS - 4
Caldari BS - 4
--
Amarr Cruiser - 5 (intention to fly Logi)
Minmatar Cruiser - 5 (intention to fly Logi)
--

I'm now left looking at some major skill blocks that need consideration for training - The ships I'm looking at is Nightmare, Paladin, CNR since from what I can see they have the highest potential performance for L4's and are in my skill set. I will be looking to do incursions in the future but probably as logistics.

Sentry Drone Interfacing 5 - Tech2 Sentry Drones - big improvement on tech1 I gather, unfortunately not used on any of the primary mission ships.
Large Lasers 5 - It would boost my damage output with the faction Tachyons I'd want to use on nightmare (I'm reluctant to train tech2 beams since almost all other Amarr fits use pulses? it would make for a long training queue for just one fit).
Caldari Battleship 5 - boosts the Nightmare damage. Boosts CNR damage if I choose to fly that.
Amarr Battleship 5 - boosts the Nightmare tracking, unlocks Paladin.

I'm really a bit lost as to which of these significant 1 month training skills are the best use of my time and which really make a difference to the performance of mission ships. Would a Tachyon Nightmare perform okay with level 4 skills? If not, do I train just one of the battleships to level 4.

I guess the question is - I'm looking for recommendations on which of those ships I should focus on and which skill blocks would benefit the most? Am I barking up the wrong tree by trying to fly a Nightmare with only 12 mil SP and I should stick to a CNR for a few months etc.

Thanks,
Rampant.

Any battleship with t2 tank and decent supportskills is just fine in L4s.

If you already have the missile skills and the Caldari Ship Skills, Consider going Golem instead/aswell as Paladin, as with the Raven/CNR it has selectable damage types, and because you aren't using all the high slots for DPS you can do other things with them, NOS/Neut/Salvage/Tractor/RemoteRep/etc.

The guy asked about CNR, Nightmare, Paladin for level 4 missions

CNR is the easiest faction ship to get into of those 3.

rofl

Ok, it's me and I am patient and a slow trainer so keep that in mind. I am just stating my objective opinion and what you do is up to you of course :).

For your purposes I would definitely stick with CNR for now. It is a brilliant, affordable and easy to replace PVE mission runner. The skill training you put in for it isn't lost since you have the longer term goal of flying a nightmare with which it synergizes. Being a pirate faction battleship a missioning Nightmare draws a lot of unwanted attention from suicide gankers, pvpers and anyone else looking for a nice subcap killmail.

Why take all that risk and fly it when you are still far from getting the max potential out of this highend ship?

For me it is the pilot skills that make the ship, not the ship that makes the pilot.. the little ego boost you get from flying the Nightmare will evaporate like ether on a pan as soon as you lose the ship and the time you spent getting the ISK for it..
Are you flying it because your ego wants it or because it is the best means towards a goal (getting the mission done faster for example )?

If your goal is to fly a Nightmare, by all means, keep that goal! It is what drives you to play! But make sure you have the skills to fly it well, handle and lose it without regrets or loss of dignity. Losing a ship they worked long towards (and the down and humiliation that comes with it) is the number one reason for young pilots to quit (in rage or sadness) and unfortunately it happens a ton to newer pilots who rush to get into ships their toon isn't ready for.

The CNR will do the job PVE (earning you tons of ISK) while you train and pvp-wise you should fill the role your corp/alliance asks and sees you ready for. That way you will probably have a ship replacement program backing you up in case of a loss.

Fly Hard and have fun o/,

Radius

I am going to go completely against the grain here.

Go for gallente BS 4 asap shouldn't take that long.
Get yourself a dominix and with drone skills only you will have universal and extreme "applied" dps with a MJD fit.
You run this boat without guns.

The beauty of this is drones are really your secondary weapon-system on MOST ships, focus on them and you essentially finished 30% of your weapons cross-factions and those drone specific ships.
I would recommend anyone that plans to mission or rat for a large portion of their eve time to go for drones first.
That is if they don't have their personal flavor of damage application written in stone.

The general opinion is lagging behind on drone power.
It is hyper versatile from applying 900 dps at 80km or 800 at ranges well past 100km while completely avoiding E-war, to brawler drones (more for pvp) but still holding a very real spot in pve.
That said if you are hesitant about sentry drones gardes will track in the closest orbits, I still rip Angels and Serpentis to shreds n their 4-5km orbits.
But tbh with a MJD and the auto-targeting goodness of drones this is merely a memory of low SP days.

Do invest in federation navy drone tracking links at least 1.

Let me make this easy for you. Train that scimi up (you seem very close) and start doing incrusions now. While missioning with perfect skills 40m+ and a blinged out ship maybe you can do 50m if you are perfect and know all the missions and all that. In incursion with a decent shield group (tvp, isn) you can make at least 100m an hour without the LP. I personally fly with isn and we average about 150-180m an hour with LP (downtime and breaks included). You just need logi 5 which takes a month and then you should be really close (some accept logi4) and the ship itself costs less than 350m.

I know that is not perfectly relevant to what you asked for, but I think it is the most worthwhile endevour. You will also hone your pvp skills doing incursions as a logi with an actual fleet and comms, instead of mind numbing eye socket scratching solo missions.

Go for the nightmare. Use a good XL shield booster and a cap booster and you'll be fine. Use faction tachyons and go with the following training order:

Gunnery V (1x)
Rapid Fire V (2x)
Motion Prediction V (2x)
Sharpshooter V (2x)
Controlled Bursts V (2x)
Surgical Strike V (4x)

Then the tech 2 guns. You get a lot more out of your immediate training time this way, since the tech 2 guns take a while. Then Caldari BS V. Amarr BS V isn't mandatory for the nightmare.

Nightmare is also a good incursion ship and you can join the good fleets with faction guns, whereas no one wants your CNR in incursions.