EVE New Citizens Q&A

Like the title says: How do you figure out a skill plan for your character?

I've got the basics of the 'Magic 14'. Those make perfect sense as they apply to everything you will fly, but where do you go from there?

So far, I took a look at the ship info for my racial frigates and figured that the skills listed under the 'Mastery' tab would be a good place to start training. I can get most of the way to Mastery level 3 as an Alpha in just a few weeks, but I'm wondering where to go after that. I'm looking more toward PvP than PvE or mining or industry.

Any help is appreciated.

If you are planning on staying alpha your choices are limited. Just train up what ever is available that relates to combat and you will be maxed out in not too long.

If you go Omega then spreading stuff around is favored by the game mechanics with the exponential growth in length of training time for each level of skill.

You want to get access to T2 tank and propulsion modules. You also want a lot of core skills so anything that helps you fit your ship or increases cap or EHP, maneuverability etc... DPS is very important but so is damage application so don't neglect the generic weapons skills meaning skills that apply to all weapons of that type. So for turrets that would be skills that improve range or tracking etc....

I am on a hotspot that seems to be freaking out atm so I'll just link the google search and tell you that the Eve Uni stuff is probably the first links that you should check out:
https://www.google.com/#q=eve+skill+training+guide

That should at least be a good start for you.

As my kids would say you are funny.
It may be straight forward and easy to understand for players with some experience in the game. For those just getting started it is not as easy as you seem to think it is because many things are not what they initially appear to be. Just one example on first glance and for those with little experience or understanding a high HP active tank is often the first choice for a PvP ship, greater damage repair and all that. And yet in most cases an active tank it not nearly as good for PvP as a solid passive tank with higher resists that has no self repair capability.

OP with out some idea of what you want to train for teh best I can do is to give you a basic framework for the process. Perhaps that is best anyway because you can then apply it to anything you want to do in EvE.

1. what do I want to do
2. what ship do I want to use to do it
3. what fitting pieces are needed to do this
4. look at the show info boxes for the ship and fitting pieces to see what skills affect them
5. train each of those skills to the minimum required level
This process will give you a basic plan to train required minimum skills.

Training additional levels of skills is not always this easy.
Those magic 14 would be high on the list to get to level 4's, for now level 5 skills should be avoided unless they are needed to unlock another skill, module or ship that you want / need.
The rest of the skills is a matter of determining which skill give you the most boost in capabilities for the time spent to train it. For this choosing and learning to use a good ship fit tool like those listed below is a wise investment of your time since they allow you to change the level a any one skill and then show you exactly how it affects your ship / fit.

EvE HQ
PYFA
EFT

1. Use the in-game Ship Chart and figure out what ships you want to unlock.

2. Show info on the ships and write down the prerequisite skills, plus any special items that they can install (listed in the Traits tab, things like cov-ops cloak, MJD, bubble launcher, etc.). The ships, esp. T2 ships, have as prerequisite skills from the "support" category (armor, shields, navigation, targeting, etc.) that must be trained to 5, so that takes a bit of time.

3. Once the support skills for the ship are trained, train the command skills to unlock the ships, and the weaponry skills for the weapons that the ship uses.

4. Get into the ship once it's unlocked, and start flying/using it.

5. Consider bumping some of the related skills to 4, or even 5 (for capital ships), to increase performance.

6. Or, repeat from 1 for a different set of ships.

I pick a ship I want to fly (let's say Punisher, for instance). Then I do a Show Info on the Punisher, and I go to the Mastery. I get everything for Mastery I, then II, then III, etc. The certificates in my opinion give some pretty good idea of what to train.

At the very least they show all the skills that have some impact on the certificate, so you can pick the ones you want.

For instance the Reprocessing certificate--if you only mine high-sec ore, you can skill all the reprocessing skills for low/null. (Though training low-sec ores isn't a waste as ore anomalies can spawn in high sec with low sec ores.)

My first character back in 2007 I had no idea what I was doing, so it was the typical newbie progression of "oh, let's make mining uber!" "Oh, I want a battleship" "Cov-ops sounds cool" "Super drones" "Market tycoon!" "I wanna be a FC!" etc. while managing to ignore a lot of the core skills that are fundamental to every character.

I should probably have just repaired that character, but I've been having fun with this one so I bought a stack of Skill Sucker 9000s and RIP his Mining Foreman 5 and Fleet Command skills lol.

Of course what I want to focus on once again changes every few days, so what can you do.

One option for actually focusing would be to pick a year long training plan for a role-specific alt (Logistics, Industry, whatever) and start a new Alpha and take advantage of the $99 for a year of Omega sub offer that's currently running and set up your 50 skills to train and forget about the character for a while.