EVE New Citizens Q&A

A month of SP, which is something like 1.5 million SP usually, costs less than a cup of coffee and a deli sandwich.

Pointing out that they're technically infinitely more expensive than Dust SP, while true, is kind of fallacious, in that the cost is so trivial that they're still essentially free.

... and if 10 to 15$ per month _isn't_ basically free for you, you need to stop playing video games. Not even just MMOs, games in general. That time needs to go toward job hunting, because you're about to die from starvation.

The only way that a video game presents an opportunity cost is if you're playing it when you're supposed to be working. Or doing something necessary to your work (like sleeping).

If this is the case... dude, you have a problem. Stop playing video games, and potentially seek counseling. That ****'s not healthy.

(The fact that you're justifying your gameplay in terms of jargon you don't actually appear to quite understand is a bit of a red flag on your hobby to begin with. I mean, I know this is a CCP forum and they want your money, but even the devs don't want your money to the point of you screwing up your life. Take a break or something, is my advice. Game will still be here when you've got a handle on things.)

game has as much value as you perceive it to have.

That escalated quickly.

Heres an idea, how about we dial back the various 'EVE is a game therefore it has no intrinsic value' arguements and actually answer the guys question??

To be honest if you want to be a skilled EWAR pilot its really a question of what order you train for the various types than which one to use period. They each have their own uses and all take very little time to train to a basic level of competency, having one skill to use the module and one or two skills that boost its effects.

If I had to pick one to start with I would go with sensor dampening, even after the recent nerf it still gives you the biggest bang for the buck and it has the longest effective range so you can stay out of the way while you learn how to use it. If you use missiles on a regular basis train target painting second otherwise do ECM second then target painting. Tracking disruption can be left til last, its a bit more niche than the other three because its useless against ships that dont use turreted weapons such as missile boats and ships with neut/nos or drone bonuses.

Finally I suppose you could do the skill for Target Spectrum Breakers but unless you want to fly a solo battleship that can be safely ignored for now.

If it helps, OP, I've been playing EVE for a couple of months now - coming from an unrelated MMO - and my skill list is all over the place. That hasn't stopped me from having a lot of fun and some good fights (one of which I actually won - well, got a faint mention on the kill mail, two credits lower than the ship's asthmatic rat).

I did the career agents, continued to do a bit of mining, got seduced into faction warfare so stopped the mining train to develop Rifter skills, got fascinated by the market mechanism so toyed with some trade skills, went back to fighting skills, read here about a suggested core skill plan, started it, saw it streamlined with an Assault Frigate skill plan I'd seen, implemented that, added in cloaking, tweaked it all a bit in line with more info from here and the wiki because I thought I knew some stuff now, played a bit with EveMon and saw some cool skills, resisted the urge to try them out, left FW to develop my RP interest which meant Social Skills, and after that detour disciplined myself to get fitting core skills developed because I found I was always up against power grid problems in my chosen Firetail, developed some Destroyer skill to be able to cope with some of the missions that you can't do in a frigate and forced myself to stick to my Assault Frigate plan which is due up in three weeks time.

I expect a similar mess is seen in pretty much every newbie character. Who cares, really? I feel the more important skills I've developed are an understanding of the game, how to use bookmarks and safe points, manual piloting, and limiting my early urge to run screaming from the field the moment another ship glanced in my direction. None of the skills I may have 'wasted' time on affect whatever career I will eventually concentrate on. In the great scheme of things, I have 'lost' a month or so of time. I could biomass this character and start again with a more streamlined skill plan, but a) I know that I may find something new and fascinating again and b) my passion is RP and the character with all his flaws is who he is (and reading lore, for example, I can build the FW experience into a backstory). As with writing a novel, you never quite know where your characters are going to take you.

You may feel differently, in which case it's no big deal to start a character and play around for a month or two, decide what you want to do from real experience (bear in mind, your choice will almost certainly be driven by whoever you meet - the corp you join and stick with may well have a role for you that you never thought was going to be your choice, but you love it because your corp-mates benefit) and then biomass the trial character.

Hope it all goes well. As everyone has said, have fun first and foremost!