EVE New Citizens Q&A

Exploration vs. "Military," is like comparing bullfrogs and all mammalian species. Not only are the similar (both animals) and different (amphibian vs. mammals), but the latter is a much larger category of things.

Exploration is (now) fairly linear: Relic stuff -> Combat sites -> Wormholes. While the wormhole bit opens up a whole lot of nuance, it's more of a combination of exploration with many (all?) other gameplay aspects.

"Military," and I assume you mean shoot npc's and other players: Comes in a wide variety of roles and there's a whole lot of ways to approach it. From highsec mission running to lowsec factional warfare and nullsec alliance warfare, incursions, belt ratting, aforementioned wormhole activities, etc. etc.

As with all things EVE, the devil is in the details. Personally, I'd suggest checking out the new exploration minigame and see if that floats your boat. Some players love it, others hate it, so if that turns you off then you can probably eliminate some of your potential choices. For more on pew pew spaceships, see the What to do in EVE link.

It can vary widely according to whether you want to pvp with your skills. If you just want to do exploration as Goya pointed out running non-combat sites, it will transfer very easily to a career as a scout for any good pvp group. Everyone love scouts, however, they don't get that much of the actual actions. They are incredibly important but it's usually more of a alt thing rather than a main pilot thing.

On the other hand, what you call military is either pve or pvp oriented. Most of the skills overlap when it comes to doing damage or tanking. However, there is a handful of skills that are only necessary for pvp. Moreover, pvper will need you from day one as a tackler which means you could fly frigates for a good year without needing to fly anything to fly anything bigger while still having a lot of funs. Comparatively, flying for pie means you will want to rush to a battleship.

From my experience, both paths whether it is exploration or combat are interesting. However, it also comes to what you want to do with it. I tend to think of pvp as the most fascinating thing eve has to offer and I think it is interesting for you to take that into account when you start training.

On the other hand, it's not because you train for one path that you cannot diverge later on. Getting basic exploration skills early on and then training for combat seems like a good idea to me.

Excellent thread, excellent responses. From my own standpoint, I love the thrill of rushing in and blasting away at an enemy (especially when it ends with my ship departing from a newly-formed debris field) but I also love the idea of punching into uncharted space and seeing just how big the universe really is. There is so much to do in EVE that you may as well just try everything. Odds are in your favor that you'll never be able to exhaust all possibilities.

Fly safe!

Exploration sites (and this includes ore sites) are not tied to downtime. They respawn elsewhere once completed, hence you can explore any time, not just right after DT.

There is this guy called Elo Knight, who - by use of his probing skills - can drop his fleet on the enemy at zero from 4 AU in about twelve seconds.

These are the skills you develop as an explorer, except you just use Combat probes rather Core probes. And then your fleet says hello to their 140km range snipers from zero, which they wont enjoy.

If you can learn Combat Probing, you'll be as Military as all get out, and FCs all over EvE will go 'F.ck they've safed up or warped to a tac. I wish Shannon was in fleet'.