EVE New Citizens Q&A

I just purchased EVE and started playing. I'd like to join a corp, as I obviously play online games to play with other humans. I was wondering if there is one aspect that a new guy could quickly learn and be useful to a Corporation with a goal. It seems like everybody wants pilots with combat experience already.

I was thinking about trying mining/industry/business?

Another quick way to being useful is to train to be a webber/warp jammer for a PvP corp. If you look around I'm sure you could find a corp that suits your needs.

The most important skill you can have, regardless of the number of SP your character has, is the ability to be entertaining on voice comms. If you are able to keep people chatting, you'll find help comes to you for all the other aspects of the game where you are lacking.

As far as character skills go, you really can't go wrong learning how to fly a cloaky frigate.

For combat:

You can train the pre-reqs to fly a "tackle" Rifter in under a day. You can get into a basic Merlin or Punisher in the same period of time.

If you're interested in learning PVP, you have a couple of choices:

1) Do it yourself (really the hardest for most people)
2) Join Red vs Blue or Eve University (both tend to be pretty forgiving to newer players, while helping them learn some of the basics)
3) Start applying to random corporations which you think have cool names, logos, etc and then annoy them with endless questions about what you should be doing or training (been there, done that).

;)


Sadly, I don't have much experience with manufacturing or other stuff in Eve (aside from mining, which I learned pretty quickly was almost as boring as staring at my computer screen with the computer turned off).

First of all welcome to EVE Online.

Now on too your question(s).

First of all, do what you like to do. This is EVE, this is a game, you should do what you want to do, not what others tell you to do.
So if you want to be an industrialist / trader, then you should do that. And there are plenty of corporations that are looking for industrial players.

While it looks that almost every corporation you look at requires PvP ready pilots this is not entirely true. You might look at the wrong types of corps. If you are for instance looking at 0.0 corps, yes they require that every pilot can PvP as 0.0 means you have to be able to defend / fight enemies off. In high-sec, even as a industrialist it is quite nice if you have some ability in PvP, but don't think PvP means years of training to grind through, in just 2 or 3 weeks you are already able to be a tackler.

Just keep in mind EVE Online is a PvP heavy enviroment, there is no 100% safe spot in space. That's also why a lot of corporations ask for some PvP skills (or be willing to learn them) as being in a player corps means you are also open to war declarations etc.

On the aspect that someone can learn quickly, here I can give you a 'wall-of-text' answer but I will try to make it as short as possible.

First, every single skill in EVE requires time to train. So there is no such thing as instant be able to do something, almost every single thing in EVE requires some time spent in training skills.

Besides the in game skillpoints there is actual skill, this is something most older players will verify, that you need and only train by playing the game. People thinking that the amount of SP is a measure of how good a pilot is will find out that this doesn't matter at all. For instance I have multiple accounts, but the one with the least SP is actually the best frigate pilot, mainly cause I specialized it into frig flying but also cause I actually learned how to do frigate PvP, while one of my other characters can use capitals it doesn't excel in it because I never actually learned how to use them (yet).
This counts for almost everything in EVE. From knowing how mission running works, to PvP. From knowing which asteroids you should mine for most profit to studying the market as a trader. Skills and knowledge is key.

So again, there is actually not 1 thing you can get into quickly, everything takes time to get into. Some things are more SP heavy then others. But also it depends how eager you are to learn stuff and how open you are to learning stuff (by trial&error or from other players).
So in a way everything is easy entrance while also it takes a long time to do it:
PvP = easy (you can be a tackler in just couple of weeks training) // hard (capital / BS / T2 / T3 PvP)
PvE = easy (frigates can do lvl 1 mission, instant entrance but might struggle at start a bit) // hard (level 4's and 5's in BS or capital / T3)
Mining = easy (frigates or cruisers) // hard (full skilled hulk)
Trading = easy (buy low, sell high, low profit margins) // hard (know what sells, know when to buy, larger profit margins)
You name it and there is a easy and a hard part in it.