Skill Discussions

So it has come to my attention through interactions in Eve. I find that characters (especially new ones) are finding a skill they think will be useful, and instead of taking it to 4, they think it is more important and effective to take it up to 5. I'm sure there are resources available somewhere that would agree that taking a skill to 5 is NOT always effective. And here's why. This is my first guide so if you have any feedback it would be welcome.

Basically, when you enter the vast universe of Eve Online and start perusing through the vast amount of skills that are out there, it should become quickly apparent that your 10 or so skills Eve starts you out with is going to be insufficient. I have heard plenty of people say "But it's not about the skills it's about the fit." I find this to be both true and untrue. The skills you start with, are barely enough to crawl around in Newbie ship and maybe shoot at some rats here and there, but if you want to get into pvp or higher level pve, wormholes, mining or industrial, lets face it, you are going to need some skills. But how do you go about getting those skills?

First off, Eve has a wonderful system that was once called certificates, but now is a mastery system for each ship type.
The second reason also has a little to do with time as well but I'll separate them. The second reason is SP Management. I have seen many many characters around Even with upwards of 20 million SP and their characters suck. I mean, really suck. SP management is the most important and often overlooked category in Eve. Players with that much SP allocated and STILL cannot win pvp battles, defend mining outposts, or do anything useful, really start to get frustrated with Eve, and I can't blame them. It's now about what you know, it's about HOW MUCH you know, meaning it's not about how much SP you have but how you have used that SP in training. It is much much better looking at a characters Shield Skills and seeing a good assortment of level 4's and 5's, Instead of seeing five level 5 skills and a whole plethora of level one or just injected skills. Overall this will make you a more well rounded Eve player. Plus you will be able to do even more because you not wasting the time or SP training unnecessary skills to level 5, so you can use that time to get every other skill up to an acceptable level.

Now just drive my point home a little more, here's a small amount of math. Taking Caldari Battleships from 4 to 5 would take 1685960 sp. Your bonus for doing that would be (in a raven)

10% bonus to Cruise missile and Torpedo Velocity and a 5 % bonus to Rapid Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile, and Torpedo launcher rate of fire.

If you had for the sake of argument crappy missile skills with that much sp you could

Take Rapid Launch to Lvl 4

Take Target Navigation Prediction Lvl 4

Missile Bombardment lvl 4

Missile Projection lvl 4

Guided Missile Precision lvl 4

Cruise Missiles lvl 4

That's only little over 900000sp. With those bonuses you get

20% sig radius factor

20% dmg cruise missiles

40% max flight time

40% velocity

12% rate of fire

40% explosion radius bonus

and you still have another 600000sp to allocate as you wish.

As you can see, holding out on lvl battleship has it's benefit. Even if you wanted to pilot a Marauder which requires you to take battleship to lvl 5 it is STILL more efficient to work on all those other skills first.

This ends the first part of this guide. Please let me know what you think and feedback on how to improve the guide is welcome.

Thanks! I wasn't sure if or how much information has been made on the topic as of late. I just thought I'd keep the idea fresh in the newer players minds!

^This. Thank you for that, i should have mentioned that as well.