EVE New Citizens Q&A

1) Yes but only to an extent, for instance not as much if you use a program like EFT to figure out all of the numbers for your ship (cargo, sig radius, speed, align time, DPS, tank, CPU, powergrid etc etc etc). Moreso if you wanna do a lot of manufacturing and marketing.

2) That question is a bit like "How do I kung-fu?" Kinda can't be directly explained but i can give some key points.

• Yes speed is important in two ways,normal velocity and transversal velocity. Normal velocity is important simply cause you wanna have speed to keep in your preferred range or to ensure they don't get away. You obviously can't kill someone if they go twice as fast as you and they simply leave the range of your warp disruptor. Transversal velocity relates to how fast your guns have to track. You wanna keep your enemy at as low of a transversal as possible so you can hit them easier.
• Game Mechanics, you gotta know what causes a aggression, when you can and can't dock, and use those sorts of things to your advantage with tactics. Or at least be aware of when a smarter enemy is tricking you into a fight you can't win
• Capacitor, Be mindful of how much cap you use and how much you have left. Good cap management can be the make or break of a fight
• Overheating, know when to use it and how much, balance it well with "normal" mode and don't burn out your modules. Again, a make or break thing if your good with it
• Fitting, understand what modules do and who to mix them in ways that compliment each other. An obvious case of this is that a shield hardener wont help a ship that is loaded down with armor plates. Play with EFT and get a feel for how much you can cram onto one ship. Things like how you fit your ship is one of the deciding factors if whether or not you can win a fight.

3) Sure, with a year or so of SP behind you and a good battleship doing missions or incursions it's not too hard.

4) It sure can be. That's the great part about the skill training system being what it is. I will admit though it will be a bit harder to play PVP casually AND make money to support the habit at the same time. Thankfully as it stand now incursions are a great way to make ISK fairly quickly and a single night of incursions for a few hours can have you plenty enough ISK for a PVP battlecrusier to play with the next day. Or do incursions on the weekdays and go nuts on weekends when you have more free time to roam around.

In general to the OP:

Yes, EVE has a lot to do with Math, almost every single thing is calculated by math (your chance to hit, how much damage you do, your speed, your signature radius, etc etc etc). For a hardcore gamer, fun to find out and perfect every single bit to get the best out of his ship. For the general population, just server side calculations that are done for you (it does help if you understand how they work in the most basic ways). So unless you want to do a lot of calculations, you can otherwise, just play the game in a way you have fun in it.

Yes even general players can play this game funded by ingame PLEX. Keep in mind I don't suggest you just play the whole month to get the ISK for that PLEX, as all this does is grinding you ISK to keep playing a game that makes you grind ISK again for the next month. And on the price, this game is likely bit more expensive each month as CCP often updates the game with expansions which (unlike some other MMOs) are completely free. *CCP usually releases 1 or 2 expansions a year, depending on how big they are

You could check few of these websites which sells 60-day timecodes for EVE, some of them might have prices in USD which can be cheaper to you: ETC Resellers

For cheaper game time, use one ot the GTC sellers on the sellers page linked to above. A 60 day time card costs about £23 which equates to £11.50 per 30 days. The other alternative is pay for your sub in 6 month or yearly blocks which means you get it at a reduced price, a 6 month sub works out about the same as buying GTCs.