EVE New Citizens Q&A

First, realize that you're talking about a short term skill plan; frigates are beginner ships, and most people do increase the repertoire of ships that they can fly to include destroyers, cruisers, and battlecruisers. For the "exploration" role, you have a number of frigates, but there are also some cruisers that you could be training later on.

Second, if you plan to operate in wormhole space, you have to be a little self-sufficient, so you can help your corp with bringing supplies into the WH space, which is somewhat difficult due to the temporary nature of wormholes. So I would recommend training at least a basic industrial ship (to haul stuff), and the very basic mining, refining, and production skills, because you never know what you'll need to be doing to obtain various materials in your wormhole. There are cov-ops "transport" ships that you can train later, to make logistics / transport a bit easier / safer, but they have somewhat high prerequisites, so you can do that later.

Other than that, the probing skills are somewhat self-explanatory, and you definitely want to train to use the covert-ops cloaking device asap. You should also not ignore combat skills, especially if you plan on PVP'ing, so I'll give a brief explanation of skills in EVE:

1. Ship skills are found in the Spaceship Command category on the market, and they unlock various ships for you to fly.

2. Weapon skills are found under Gunnery, Missiles, and Drones, and you should train the weapons that are used by the ships you've unlocked. Make sure to train the actual weapon skills (for example, small hybrid turrets), as well as the weapon support skills (also found in Gunnery, Missiles, and Drones - skills like Long Range Targeting, Rapid Firing, Target Navigation Prediction, etc.).

3. Support skills - these make ALL your ships fly better, and should be trained by all combat pilots. These include most of the skills under Armor, Shields, Engineering, Navigation, Targeting, and quite a few applicable skills in Electronics, Science, etc.

4. You're planning on PVP'ing, so make sure you train the skills required to install the basic PVP modules: warp disruptor / warp scrambler, afterburner / microwarp drive, stasis webifier. Optionally, also train the skills for other electronic warfare modules: target painters, weapon disruptors, ECM, energy neutralizers, etc. Search for these modules on the market and show info to see what skills they require.

5. Miscellaneous skills - ability to anchor things, trading skills, basic mining skills, basic refining skills (under Resource Processing), basic production skills (under Industry), etc. - these you should train as needed.

Thanks for the advice, very helpful.

I think I will ditch the Astero idea. I don't fancy training all the drone skills.

I'm planning to use the Heron, Buzzard, Merlin and Cormorant for now and have the Falcon as a long term goal.

Now I have too much to think about......but thank you.

I thinkI I will focus on my short term goals., SOE arc and make up my mind during the SOE arc.

I guess all these options makes EVE so exciting to me, and reading the lore and back storey.

Thanks for all the help.

I was going to say join Signal to learn exploring - then saw you were already in Signal.
So I'll say "use the signal game chat" instead. Very useful and you'll get lots of tips and suggestions on ships and fits and whatnot. Not everyone are pure space hippies, some have pvp alts in other corps so you may even get some tips on that.