EVE New Citizens Q&A

t2 ships serve specific purposes,
functionally they are "classes" from other games or "roles " if you prefer
figure out what you enjoy doing before committing to training one.

in the mean time the t1 ship line up is infact more than adequate in filling these roles so play around with the T1 ships for a bit first , get a taste for the different tanking and weapon systems and associated activities and find what you enjoy
once you know that then it sould be obvious what ships will facilitate you further in that role.


core skills are always a good idea to train, so look at the Engineering, Navigation,Armour ,Shields ,Drones ,Gunnery and Missiles tabs on your charachter sheet (click your portrait ingame).

most of the skills found in those tabs will effect all the ships you fly , particularly engineering, navigation and drones.

Honorable mention goes to "Astrometrics" as a runner up to the core skills.

First, I would pick the ship or ships you are interested in flying for missions and then work on the ship Mastery skills. Under Ship Info, its on the right towards the end "Mastery."

I definitely wouldn't say all of the skills listed under the Mastery tab are critical and must haves, but it is a decent guide to understanding what skills might be applicable.

Also, if you know you want to be a miner the EVE University Mining 101 website isn't a bad place to start either. About a third of the way down the page, they list all of the applicable mining related skills. Same is true for Exploration, Industry and other professions.

Personally, I find that the Navy faction Cruiser and BS are good choices for running Level 3 and 4 missions.

Whatever else you decide to train, I highly recommend putting Thermodynamics V towards the top of the list.

ShahFluffers copy-paste skillpoint spiel


So 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 "one-shot" a frigate... but the frigate can fly very fast, making it difficult for the battleship's weapons to hit, 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 EASILY overwhelm 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, having friends, making deals, appearing weaker/stronger than you really are, psychological warfare, gathering intel, etc).

- Part of the idea behind the current SP system is that you cannot "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/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 semi-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.

Also .. download an out of game skill planner tool.

I use the one that comes with EVEMON .

Yeah Thermo 1 is a must train (literally get it ASAP), but the diminishing returns on that skill are huge.

Thermo 5 is up there with Tycoon 5, Magnetometric Sensor Compensation 5 or Large Blaster Specialisation 5 - skills that do something *useful* but not worth the extreme training time until you have *nothing* more pressing to train.


The maths:

Thermo 5 (75% incoming heat damage) compared to Thermo 3 (85%).

Sounds like you can overheat 13.333% longer, right? Wrong.

Assuming that the same set of modules is heated the whole time:

- Heat accrued to the rack is the integral of the number of modules overheated with respect to time
- Module damage taken is probabilistic, but proportional to the integral of heat over time.

So basically, average module damage taken is proportional to time squared. It's more like 7% more overheating rather than 13%.

There are times that the difference between modules overheating for 40 seconds and 43 seconds will win or lose a fight, but they are incredibly few and far between. Normally, modules don't just hit 0/40 hp - the heat damage tick that knocks them to 0 would have knocked them to -10 or even lower because the rack is so damn hot.



But - do NOT skip Thermo 1. Even in PVE, Thermodynamics is a critical skill - letting you overheat your tank if you screw up, letting you overheat tracking modules to gain considerable hit% against a rat that is orbiting at ~0.6-1.2 falloffs, or the like. And when PVP finds you (which it will), overheating is a key factor in close fights.

T2 frigates do have a place in burners.

Just saying.

I'm thinking that when people barely make it out and they have thermodynamics trained to 5 they say that is what did it without knowing if it really made a difference.

After reading this thread I played around with overheating in EFT a bit and did a right-click then "change affecting skill" and move thermodynamics from 4 to 5 and back again. From what I could see you are lucky if 5 would get you one more cycle on your module more than 4 would. In many cases it looked to me like you would not even get that.

Just as a caveat I don't overheat so this is purely EFT warrioring for me but I found it interesting.

i actually spend more on paste than i do on ammo.

then again i almost exclusively pvp so that little edge often determines who explodes.

not to criticize, but I thought killboard links were not ok in NQ&A. I know that ShahFluffers' post wasn't engaging in bragging by any means, so has the policy changed, or was I misinformed all along? Or is it just bragging that is discouraged?