EVE New Citizens Q&A

Just a brief look.
I would take frig and cruiser to 5 - because T2 frigs and cruisers are great fun to fly (well apart from that sickly green blob everyone uses nowadays).

I can't remember everything in those certs, but I know a lot of that will carry over into PVP. PVP isn't so much about SP as it is about how you use the SP and your ship. I can fly a Drake for PVP or I can fly it for PVE. The only difference really is the fit, and even that's not a great difference since several mods will be the same on both.

If you don't already have it I would suggest getting EVEMon or some similar app and plugging in all the skills for those certs. Fill it up till the plan takes at least a year then sort it by training time and have it optimize the attributes then remap so your training will go faster. If you don't want to do that IIRC Int/Per or Per/Int is the standard ship/support map, but it's been a while and I'm at work so can't check my own.

Edit:

Overlooked the crosstraining. Like Sabriz said it is a bit suboptimal since it adds time, but it's not a bad idea either. I usually cross train early into two similar races, usually Caldari and Gallente, and I don't really have that many issues with it. You're not as advanced in either race as someone who concentrates on one, but you are still competent in each.

Also confirming T2 frigs are awesome fun.

Choosing your engagement, numerical advantage and having the advantage of surprise matters more than SP in PVP encounters. SP decide the close fights, but most fights aren't close and are decided 20 seconds before the first shot is fired.

Choosing engagements is a player skill that will take time to develop, and will be learned through losses. Every time you lose a ship, make sure it pays for itself with a lesson.

Thanks for the quick feedback!

I chose to crosstrain both Caldari and Gallente for three different reasons:
1. To fly Pirate ships when I can afford to do so (Mostly Gila & Rattlesnake)
2. A good platform to jump to Proteus or Tengu
3. Small gang, or solo pvp

I have done a lot of reading, and while it is inevitable that most of the information I read was incorrect I still managed to get a basic feeling of what I would like to do. I focused on the blogs that has reading about solo pvp, with the hope that it will translate well into larger engagements. Mostly the blogs I have been following is about piracy, since there is a lot of them!

Thank you for the advice on Racial Frigates & Cruisers, I have amended my plan (but not the online pdf yet) to include getting them to 5.

I would suggest instead of Caldari + Gallente, you train Caldari + Minmatar (shields, missiles, gunnery) or Gallente + Amarr (armor, drones, capacitor, gunnery). Of course that doesn't give you as much access to the pirate faction ships.

Frigate 5 is strongly recommended.

One addition to the excellent advice above: Train the skill for MWD, and the skill for a warp scrambler, then congratulations! You're ready for PVP, and can start practicing with duels in cheap ships. I'd do this first, so you then have the option of joining a fleet at any time as a tackler. Shouldn't take long. All the rest of your PVP plan can be done later, after your PVE plan.

OP... here's a spiel I have written about the skillpoint system and how it works. Hopefully you will have greater understanding about your abilities after reading it.


How does the skillpoint system work?

- All skills cap at level 5. No matter how many years you have played the game, you cannot exceed that limit. And lower tier skills (ex. [Racial] Frigate) are very quick to train relative to more advanced skills.


- (*this is the important one*) Only a limited number of skills affect any one ship, module, weapon system, and specialty at any given time.

Ex1: You are a newbie facing someone with about 20 million SP... but how much of that overall SP is actually combat related? He/she could be a HUGE industrial player with limited combat skills.
Ex2: A veteran player has just trained up the skill Large Hybrid Turret to level 5. That skill in no way affects the skill Small Hybrid Turret and thus the veteran will be no better or worse than before at the frigate level.


- Getting a skill from level 4 to level 5 only adds on an extra 2% here, 5% there (exceptions apply). If you simply train up all the skills within a specialty to level 4 (which takes ~20% of the amount of time it takes to get those skills to level 5), you will find yourself flying at about **80 to 90%** of the effectiveness of a multi-year veteran with those same skills in that specific specialty at level 5.


- Getting a skill to level 5 is supposed to be a painful train. Many players (yes, even veteran ones) opt to avoid doing it and instead train up other skills to level 4 (again, because it's faster).

Example: I personally have the T2 weapon specializations at level 4. That puts me at a 2% disadvantage in damage against someone who has the same skill(s) at level 5 (assuming we are both using the same ship with the same fit)


- Ships and weapons have been balanced against one another.

Example: A battleship can potentially instapop a frigate... but the frigate can fly very fast, making it difficult for the battleship's weapons to track, especially at very close range... then again, the battleship can deploy drones to deal with the frigate... and the frigate can shoot the drones down... however the battleship might have a Large Energy Neutralizer fitted to nuke the frigate's capacitor power every 24 seconds... in which case the frigate could use a Small Nosferatu that sucks out capacitor from the battleship every 3 seconds... etc. etc.


- High tech equipment (ex. T2, Faction, Officer, etc) will not give a player "I WIN" abilities. It simply gives a player a linear edge at an exponentially higher cost.

Ex1: A basic T1 Armor Adaptive Plating gives ~10% omni-resistance to damage for only 100 thousand ISK... a T2 Armor Adaptive Plating gives ~15% omni resistance to damage for 1 million ISK... a "deadpsace" Armor Adaptive Plating gives ~19% omni resistance to damage for 15 to 20 million ISK.

Ex2: A group of three or four T1-fit frigates that cost about 500 thousand to 1 million ISK CAN kill a faction frigate worth about 50 to 100 million ISK... provided they are using the right mods in the right configuration and know what they are doing.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39793460/ (Condors caught me and ground me down... I only had time to kill one of them)
https://zkillboard.com/kill/38239838/ (all the Breechers in this KM were T1 fit... I could only kill two of them before being nuked)
http://ifw.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=27040341 (about ~20 Thrashers (T1 Destroyer) warped on top of my groups' 7-man Confessor (T3 Destroyer) gang... we eventually killed all the Thrashers, but not before losing 3 Confessors. While my group may have won, we lost WAY more ISK than the Thrasher gang did).


What does this all mean?

- Having more skillpoints is not the "end all, be all" point of the game and there is more to most activities than "get enough skillpoints, open window, click, press F1- F9."
There are a plethora of factors that can decide success or failure and many of them are purely abstract in nature (see: planning, meta-gaming, friends, short-term allies, making deals, psychological warfare, etc).

- Part of the idea behind the current SP system is that you can't "powergrind" to success. You MUST learn how to utilize what you have first... which requires you to use your head and be creative. This helps you later on when you can finally use "better" ships/equipment... because you have hopefully familiarized yourself with the underlying mechanics that most Tech 1 ships/equipment share with Tech 2/3 and Faction ships/equipment.
Example: you may not be able to pilot that sexy Interceptor right away... but that doesn't mean you can't slap together a super fast frigate that does something similar.

- Once you have your "universal" core and support skills near or at maximum (which takes about 2 or 3 months of mostly focused training) the gap between you and an older player begins to narrow quite significantly. You can find these skills in the "Engineering" section of your character skillsheet.

- Just because you are limited in what you can do (as a newbie) it does not mean that your contribution to a team is meaningless and/or without weight.
Being a "tackler" or cheapo Ewar-support in PvP might indeed be suicide if you have limited skills and knowledge... but even half-success can mean the difference between catching or losing a target... everyone escaping a bad situation or dying in a fire.