EVE New Citizens Q&A

- Running L3's efficiently makes you more isk while you skill up.

- Focus depends on what you actually *like* to do in EVE. Arrange to order, then apply focus sequentually. Eventually a single toon can be pretty (cost)effective in many roles.
EVE is a game with a long-term focus. Make a plan for a year, and try to stick with it.

- Passive income in and of itself will not pay for your PLEX, it simply is something that gets you some ISK while logged off.
Outside of popping some training in minor PI alts, all really worthwhile forms of passive income takes either skills, investment, or grinding. Nothing is ever "Free" in EVE.

- Send items to other players using contracts ( costs 10 k a pop) , especially when sending stuff to an alt on the same account. Alts on a separate accounts can station-trade if you get them online at the same time.

- Armor hardeners, well *any* active hardeners: wait until you get neuted in a L4 and are *really* glad for those extra % of protection while you try to gtfo as your lasers died as well

-salvaging: No, it improves your chance of salvaging successfully in a given cycle. Higher skill = faster salvaging.

- skills: gunnery support skills, cap/fitting skills. Or , of course, have fun flying expensive ships with fancy weapons while not being able to not hit much, or often. Or being able to even fit them because of CPU/PG limits. Or...
A well skilled T1 ship >>>>>>>>> a mediocre skilled T2 ship. Period. Be it PVE or PVP.

Agent quality has gone the way of the Dodo. Other than that I haven't paid much attention to it anyways, since my standings are high enough to get whatever agent I pretty well please, and I've avoided the Mission Hubs like the plague during my time in EVE.
But others will prolly know exactly how/why.
As far as declining missions goes, once every 4 hours is enough, especially if you have more than one level [x] (combat) agent in the area. There's really no need to decline more often than that and incur a standings penalty, especially if you can blitz the ones you don't like.

implants.. +4 for your current main attributes leaving the rest open until you remap, unless you have oodles of ISK lying around, or you intend to immedeately grind for Capitals. you *could* fill other slots if you intend to hop a lot, but that's up to taste and depth of your wallet.
In the other slots, I've found the best price/performance lies with what you can get with Cyber IV, which generally is the mid-range variety (3-4% ). The really expensive stuff is only useful if you pretty much maxed out your skills for L4's, and even then if you are really OCD about getting your isk/hr to optimum, imnsho. But your mileage may vary.
Personally I use EVEHQ's ship fitter to figure out what, if any implants I attach to a given clone, other may have their own fav utility.

Nanite paste is really only used in prolonged pvp, or ninja-ratting in sov-null if you can't dock or otherwise have no repair facilities near.
Since it's used to repair damage to overheated modules, it is never used in highsec missioning, because if you have to overheat there, you are doing something terribly, terribly wrong.

Boosters are basically performance enhancing drugs, that fit into three "slots" on your toon, offering various enhancements to performance, while also having some very nasty side effects if you're unlucky or lack the skills to cope with them.
They are also illegal to carry around in highsec, so customs have a thing or two to say about it if they catch you with them.
It is, however, not illegal to undock juiced to your eyebrows.
The only "safe"variety is the "synth" line, which has no side effects, and is legal to have on you. The bonuses on those are minimal though.
Given you fly Amarr, the stuff that gives armor rep, tracking, and falloff bonuses could be of interest if you're having trouble hitting stuff efficiently.
They're generally only used in pvp situations though, where a bit of an edge could make or break.

The L3/L4 choice is mostly a balance between necessty and fun/challenge.

It's a given that you need to earn ISK somewhat efficiently to finance your growth in EVE. On the other hand it's a game , so a measure of fun should also figure in somewhere.

It is quite possible when your mission skills are not up to "production level" to run L3's to generate ISK, but jump into the lighter L4's for a challenge on occasion if you got access to a L4 agent.
While not exactly "efficient" in the ISK/hr calculation, running L4's in this way teaches you the limitations and weaknesses of your ship.
This is something you cannot learn from a manual, and is therefore rather priceless.
Even when you're skilled up, it often pays/is fun to take a wholly inappropriate ship or a pvp fit into a mission and see how it performs.

(It is quite possible to try out stuff on the SISI test server for training purposes, and many people do, but I'm a purist and make my mistakes on the game server. Your mileage may vary in either approach, since SISI also has it's limitations.)

..As for wanting to do everything, I too have made my pilot a jack-of-all trades. It is not the most efficient. I would be able to pilot cap ships had I focused. I could be a master of all sub cap ships on one race. But it was not to be. I can do a lot of things, just not perfectly.

......But. Would I trade my pilot for a focused pilot? No way. Because there will be a day (and there are, frequently) where I need to load my freighter with mats so I can build my combat ships. And I can mine the ores that I need to build them as well.

Focusing has clear benefits, it so does being a DIYer.

- Which implants should I use as an Amarr pilot?

For an Amarr pilot, basically anything that helps your tank, cap, and tracking/range.
Personally I use EVEHQ's implant manager in the ship fitter to figure out what works/is possible. It often depends if you are going for tank, or gank.
The implant sets have cumulative effects that end up as serious bonuses if you get the complete set. They are expensive because they are relatively rare, and cannot simply be bought in a highsec LP shop....

- About drones: I always see Hobgobelins II * 5 as the better choice.

Well any set of T2 drones with damage according to rat/mission type works best. They're mostly used to kill off those pesky scramming frigs and other things that BS weapons have trouble hitting efficiently.
Ewar on rats is generally pretty useless, especially since it's a *lot* more efficient to simply pay attention to spawn management to keep DPS down and kill things quickly.
Sort of the same goes for TP drones: they may make smaller ships easier to hit, but why bother if you can be *killing* those ships with your drones, while concentrating your fire on the big targets...

- About clones: How can I save my current implants and use a virgin clone? If I want to pvp for example, without taking the risk of losing all my implants.

You can't "save" implants, they are irrevocably atytached to the clone you put them on. You can make use of one of the Cloning Services and get a number of clones. Just leave one blank and use that for pvp/dangerous territory purposes.
Do realise that you can only jump clones once per 24 hours though, so parking at least a couple of +3 learning implants in a combat clone may be a good idea if you don't want to put a brake on your skillqueue overly much.

- Does making only security missions increase the chances of getting a security storyline instead of trade or distribution? I love "Kidnapper's strike" and I'd want to have it all the time

It does, however even security storyline agents do give out rather...uninteresting.. missions. (Materials for War ftl )

standing with the agent/corporation and/or agent level.

Thanks again guys, especially Grikath.
Your help has ben precious

Agent quality was done-away-with because everybody would center themselves around one or two mission hubs anyways, cranking out missions for the same agent. They changed the agents so people would spread out some.

As others have stated, the best thing you could possibly do to get into those level 4's quickly and easily is to get as many as the "secondary skills" done as you can. Motion prediction and rapid firing are two secondary skills for gunnery, for example. Those, above just raw gunnery skill, will increase your dps output, help you finish missions faster, and improve your survivability.

When you have level 4's in the secondary skills that relate to armor tanking, gunnery, and cap management, I'd say you're in a good position to do level 4's with a battleship.

My biggest mistake as a new player when I started doing level 4's was to jump into a battleship I could barely fly, and then get owned by the NPC's.

I don't run missions very often any more, but I have learned that Dominix's are the lazy-man's mission runner. Uber tank it with 4 active hardeners and 2 ENAMS with 2x large reppers and the proper rigs, then have lots of Ogre II's, then fill the mids with cap rechargers. You can perma-run the reppers, tank just about any mission, and just go afk while your ogres fly around killing all the hostile ships. It's slower than your raven missioners, but it's far safer, and requires far less attention. Missioning for me is like mining for others; boring, slow, and tedious, so I try to do as little work as possible.