EVE New Citizens Q&A

Like the title said I've been playing eve for not a long time(played for about 2 months and now came back) I think i know a good deal about the game and i love it alot . My only query is that will new players ever be able to come up to equal footing as a vet player? I mean everytime i engage someone i always die in FW duels etc and the characters aren't usually years older but just a few months i have frigs on dps of 148 about there and still loose in a frig to frig combat......idk how? Any tips before i burn through all my isk

Copy-pasting my skillpoint spiel.

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 Adaptive Armor Plating gives ~10% omni-resistance to damage for only a hundred 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)


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 utilize.
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.

Tippia explains this far better than I could. Read this and don't worry about "catching up".

http://blog.beyondreality.se/EVE-Skills-3-Catching-up

Also, just in case you aren't sure what to train, especially since it appears that you're interested in PvP, take a look at the OTHER Tippia blog post that I spam this forum with. It's a great skill plan to get started with; you're already a few months in, and have probably trained a lot of these, but it may be worth taking a look at too, you never know if you missed a core skill here or there.

http://blog.beyondreality.se/Newbie-skill-plan-2

The above posts definitely say all you need to know about this issue.

I'd add that even the player skill discrepancy gets partially mitigated from time to time as CCP changes the ship stats and functions. The recent tiericide initiatives have completely changed 90% of the sub caps in the game. There aren't any ships at all whose tactics and stats have remained static since I started playing in 2006.

Yes.

Skills cap at level 5, and at level 4 you are 90+% compared to a level 5.

Only limited amount of skills apply to a ship. Your frigate related skill dont apply to your cruiser, your BS skills dont apply to your frigate.


But above all....


EVE is not about SP, but about player skill.

A player of 2 months that learned about tactics, his ships strengths and weaknesses and what he should engage and what not WILL always win over someone who has 100mil SP but never played the game.

OK thanks a lot for the feedback guys I think I need more patience knowledge and experience by reading from your replies. I feel much better now thanks for the info all

Yes.

Quantity over quality - "bring friends" and "stick together".

5 vets with over 100 mill SP each will run from 50 "newbies" with 5 mill SP each - or die. That's not a joke, that's a fact. Half the SP but 10 times the numbers; it's a no win situation for the vets.

Why do you think you read gripes about blobbing to win? It's because bringing more will offset vastly more SP per char.

Final word of advice from me: treat EVE as a "process game"... with more elements of poker, chess, and Starcraft than Jenga, Twister, or Call-of-Duty.

Your ability to outthink and talk to people carry more weight than anything else here. And there is no "end" even when you have reached the pinnacle of power.

EVE needs more twister...in CQ.

And the ability to invite friends over and have a drink and play said Twister while drunk..

Extend your gameplay to more than just 'pew' - thats what seperates the old player from a new one. Understanding how different mechanics play into or against each other is where the main difference is. Thats all meta gaming and not so much skill based at all. There are many players who ignore that part and will continue to feel 'noobish' even after a much longer time in-game than yourself.