Skill Discussions

It's a fine goal, as long as you realize it's going to take a lot of time. I would perhaps get the core fitting skills done first, as they're going to help you no matter what ship you go with first. Then I would pick a race and train up their weapon system/tank before moving to the next. That way while crosstraining to another race, you'll be adept at flying what you're flying, and able to fly it well. It will allow you to pvp/pve whatever, and be capable of doing it. The mistake a lot of players make is that they jump around and try to do everything poorly before they work on doing anything well.

Stick to 1 race, train it until you are good at it (say, t2 frigates) and then move on to another one if you feel that itch. I trained from Amarr -> Minmatar, simply because Minmatar turrets don't require cap, have great speed and agility, and can project damage to decent ranges, which is essential for any PvP situation.

It's not always beneficial to have missile skills. With the upcoming skill changes, it's obvious that CCP didn't intend for newer players to crosstrain to other races - in fact, they are trying to discourage you from crosstraining, as they know that many new players do it and it leads to wasted time, etc, etc...

Whoever told you that fitting skills are "not that important", slap them in the face. This game is centered around fittings, and the better fittings out there are usually very tight on both CPU and PG, and the best fittings are the ones that win... so unless you have loads of ISK to spare and waste, you need to train fitting skills as high as you reasonably can.

Problem with training Caldari with Minmatar is now you'll have to train another weapons system too - on the other hand, if you train Gallente or Amarr, you will still be training turrets! Turrets share some skills, so sticking to turret-based races will be more beneficial to you for now.

When you are competent in 1 race, say, you can fly T2 frigates and cruisers and you have near-perfect fitting and near-perfect support skills, then it is a good idea to cross-train to another race. But until then, become really really good at one race, rather than mediocre or abysmal at 2 or 3. No race is inherently at a disadvantage, CCP has balanced them all out quite well at this point, and one race's weaknesses gives another strength, and vice-versa...
(Edit: This is also why you see older players flying more races - it's because they already have nailed the important skills, and from there, training more races is relatively quick and easy)


Lastly, only remap when you need it. Use EVEmon to determine how to remap, their calculators will end up to be much more accurate than your guesses on how to remap.

Also, drones are used by every race. Minmatar has one of the most widely used drones in PvP, and it's for a reason - because drones are damn good. Gallente and Amarr have the best drone ships, hands down. So training up T2 drones is a good idea, no matter what race you fly.

Minmatar is a great starter race, no need to train up drones or missiles at all before 10mil really, you can fit all projectile weapons and in the extra slots put energy neuts or smartbombs training those in a lot less time then a whole new weapon system, work on the core skills before switching races, ideally you want the engineering, electronic, navigation and mechanic core fitting skills at 5 before you think about switching weapon systems, Neuts are especially nice with minmatar ships since they are normally close range and have weapons that don't use cap