EVE New Citizens Q&A

How about, to diplomatically appease everyone, train Thermodynamics to 4, then train it to 5 and use skill extractors to get it back to 4 (and repeat, for profits). That way the skill is useful AND makes you money.

There are a few skills that give a benefit that far outweighs the number of skillpoints you need to invest into them.

These are:


Power Grid Management and CPU Management - adds to your ship's powergrid and CPU respectively, allowing you to fit more and better modules. **Train these to 5 within your first month**
The prerequisite skills for a 5MN Microwarpdrive I, a 1MN Afterburner I, a Stasis Webifier I, a Warp Scrambler I, and a Warp Disruptor I: Combined, these open up the option to 'tackle' - a critical PVP role dedicated to preventing opponents fleeing the field of battle.
Drones - allows access to the most widely used weapons system among all ships. **Train to 3 ASAP, 5 if you use ships that are designed for drones**
Thermodynamics - Allows you to get 15% more performance out of almost every module on your ship in an emergency. **Train to 2 ASAP. 3 and higher can wait - the higher levels add little further benefit compared to other skills you could train first**
Weapons Upgrades - Allows you to fit modules that amplify weapon damage, and makes these modules easier to fit. Train to 4 ASAP and 5 within 2 months.
Advanced Weapons Upgrades (Prereq: Weapons Upgrades 5) - Makes it possible to fit more and better guns. Train to 3 as soon as you meet the prerequisite.
Drone Interfacing (Prereq: Drones 5) - Amps up the damage your drones do
Jury Rigging - Allows you to fit rigs, permanent modifications to your ships that have significant upsides and modest downsides. Train to 3 ASAP, then train the prerequisite skills for specific rigs you want to use (for instance, you might train "Hybrid Weapon Rigging" or "Armor Rigging") - those skills can stay at 2 in the short term.
The skills that add 5% per level to shields, armor, structure, and capacitor (cannot remember names). Train these to 3 ASAP and 4 soon.

A further bit of advice that should be obvious but since you've got people in this thread seriously suggesting crap like Thermodynamics to 5 as a high priority for a new player (lol), I feel like it's a point worth making:

Generally it's inefficient to train skills to 5 unless they are required for some other skill you need or if you're attempting to really focus on a single aspect of a ship (or role) - and that will hardly be the case for a new player.

The reason for this is what's called diminishing returns:
Lets take the skill Target Management as an example: this skill allows you to lock one additional target per skill level. Level 0-3 (+3 targets locked) takes roughly half as long to train as it does to increase the skill from 3 to 4. So you're roughly doubling the amount of additional training time for less then half the gain (+1 target locked) if you continue training it past level 3.
Increasing the skill to 5 will take yet longer and still only yield +1 targets locked (but in this case having Target Management to 5 will allow you to train Advanced Target Management which will only take a very short amount of time to train to 3 (compared to the previous skill to 5) and will yield +3 targets locked so that's something to think about). So in this example, training the skill from 4 to 5 is still not as efficient as training the skill from 0 to 4 even including the redeeming fact that it will unlock the Advanced Target Management skill.

This logic holds true for virtually all skills: increasing your weapon damage by +8% (for example by training Small Autocannon Spec. from 0 to 4 for +2% damage per lelvel) will take less long then to increase it by the last 2% (Small Autocannon Spec. from 4 to 5 for the last +2% damage).

So in conclusion: only train skills to 5 when they serve to unlock new skills or when you're running out of other skills to train to 4.

So basically the last skill you'd want to prioritize as a new player would be something as silly as Thermodynamics to 5 (even 4 is very questionable if you're missing other important fitting skills to at least 4). That's not to say Thermodynamics to 5 isn't worth it... it is a great skill but training it to 5 is not worth it if you could have trained 15-20 other skills from 0 to 3 (or 5-7 skills to 4) during the same amount of time it would have taken you to get Thermodynamics from 4 to 5.

This statement is utter nonsense.

If you honestly think Thermo 5 and TA 4 is better than Thermo 4 and TA 5, you should learn the maths of how heat damage works.

Obviously neither TA5 nor Thermo 5 should be on anyone's radar as a newbie but someone (possibly trolling, possibly honestly believing it, I personally believe they were trolling as they suggest it often and have been conclusively proven wrong before) suggested Thermo 5 here.

This is NOT completely true.

There are some skills that are so inherently powerful that training them to 5 very early in your career is essential even if you do not intend to use things which have that L5 as a prerequisite.

These skills are few and far between but they do exist.

The best example is Power Grid Management. The skill takes 4 days to get from 4 to 5 and offers an enormous power boost to every ship you fly now and into the future (some rare exceptions like freighters with nonstandard fiting)

Given the choice between training PGM from 4 to 5 or instead training all of High Speed Acceleration, Afterburners and Rapid Firing from 3 to 4, PGM will just offer more. And all of those skills are *good* skills to train to 4.

The shortlist of skills worth training to 5 ASAP (certainly before your character is 60 days old) are:

- Power Grid Management
- CPU Management
- Drones

aside from all the other points reaised on the topic, scrams shut off mwd's ,thats sort of a big deal.

I've never been 'proven wrong' on my opinion of Thermo V. I've had a bunch of people disagree with me, which is not the same thing. Yes it's a long'ish train. Yes there are a ton of things a newbro needs to train. I'm well aware of all of that.

And no, I wasn't trolling. Name me any other skill that can give you a ~20% bonus to an active module. For a newbro, that's especially HUGE.



I'd be extremely wary taking any PvP fitting advice from someone who doesn't PvP and who uses a RAIL Ishtar for ratting. (a rail Ishtar? full marks for marching to the beat of your own drum, but dude, REALLY?)

Adding a point isn't 'compromising' your fit. If it is, you either need to be in a fleet with some dedicated tackle boats or you need to seriously reconsider your fit.

In small-gang environments, almost every ship will have some sort of tackle mod. In the gang I often fly with, our logibro fits a disruptor to his Scalpel. You want to see Local Chat full of tears? Tackle someone's shiny T3 with a logi-frigate!

For what it is worth:

Is there a consensus on what the core skills are?

All three of these skills that you list here have several skills in the "required for" list at level 5 on them. I hate to be nit picky to Sabriz who's advice is generally solid and still is here but I just wanted to point out that you and Lianara are really saying the same thing here.