[samroski]

Have been training Spaceship Command, Electronics, Engineering and Mechanic to level V recently- and this will all be done in 4 days.

So where do I go next as far as spaceship command is concerned?

My skills:

Spaceship Command
Advanced Spaceship Command
Amarr Industrial
Battlecruisers
Caldari Battleship
Caldari Cruiser
Caldari Frigate
Caldari Industrial
Destroyers
Mining Barge
Spaceship Command

In addition to the skills above I've got Amarr Frigate Level III, and Gallente and Minmitar Frigate Level I

I can go for transport ships- which would mean training an Industrial skill to level 5 (24 days I think). This would be useful to cart around stuff- and in the long term I will certainly do so.

But I was hoping to fly something more exciting.

I can train Calderi cruiser to V (again 24 days)- which opens up some ships I am sure...

I could alternatively train Amarr or Gallente frigate higher and try their frigates/cruisers, eventually going for their battlecruiser and battleships...

I could even go the mining barge way... and train for exhumers- though currently I am very happy with my current (medium) barge- I am using this to get some basic ore quickly (using drones for rats). Every few days I spend a few minutes mining and setting up manufacturing orders- and in fact I have a huge stock pile now of ships and other crap items that I have manufactured

Cloaked ships seem pretty exciting- though have no idea what to train for for them...

Also the nano ships/very fast ships is also an attractive proposition....

I also have NO clue about electronic warfare- the ECM type of things. Tried to read up on it but could not make head or tail. Apparently the scorpion is a good ship for this sort of thing- and I had one for a while- but did not know what to fit in those 8 medium slots... maybe I should get one of those again and try again...

Maybe I should train for some form of turrets (using missiles now)- so I can make effective use of ships like a Rokh.

Also there are these T2 ships... how they are better than T1 is anybody's guess- but people rave about them, and as soon as they get one they want to tell the whole world about it. Maybe this is way to go...

Basically I have no clue (as usual)

[samroski]

Lack of guidance has made me drift towards a Covert Ops Stealth Bomber (Manticore).

What happened was that I got Electronics V and Cloaking and tried the prototype cloaking device and this was cool (for a while). Did a lot of testing with it, and the sad reality was that my ship was flying at 26m/s and I was not able to activate any modules, nor warp etc. Still, invisibility is irresistible. So I have decided to train electronic upgrades to V and go for a covert ops ship, which I think can warp while cloaked, and this will hopefully make traveling through hostile territory a little safer.

All this is going to take a couple of weeks more- but at least I have some direction. I am also (mentally) preparing myself for the 24 day training stint for Calderi Industrial V, which I need to do at some stage...

Oh yes, in the meantime after I got Mechanic V, I went and got myself an assault ship. This is a (fanfare) T2 ship (Hawk- I think). I cannot figure out what's so good about it. I had a terrible time fitting it- as I could hardly fit any decent stuff on it (power grid of 50!). I tested it on a level 1 mission (destroy that damn repair outpost for the 100th time)- and that was a breeze (like the last 99 times)...

[thumper2008]

Your spreading yourself too thin.

The trick to eve is specilisation at first. Do you want to pvp or Pve?

Train up skills for frigates and cruisers, avoid Battleships for now.

You have to get support sklills upto at least level 4.

That means Navigation, engineering, etc.. these skills will make you more efficient.

Also train up your learning skills perception, chraisma etc.. they will save you a lot of time.

Going assault frigate is kind of wasted as they are kind of broken ingame.

Look into minmatar rifter ( best frigate in game)

If your thinking of an industrial career then sure go for inty V. Personally, I would stick at level 4, and concentrate on the core skillsets.

T2 ships are better because they have better resists against damage, easier fitting with certain modules, and better use of modules.

Personally I would head for a Rupture cruiser, one of the best cruisers in Game... and allows you to get a good understandig of wepons systems.


for clarification, I been playing eve since Beta, only recently quit (last month) had an illustrious career as a pirate.

I would also recommend getting into a non-carebear corp, as you will learn more in a pvp corp than in a mining corp. Why? pvp corpos do pvp and pve on side. Pve tend not to in my experience .

my 2 cents.

good luck.

[samroski]

thumper2008, on Oct 3 2008, 01:00 PM, said:

Do you want to pvp or Pve?

This is the main issue- have been playing for 6 months and I have no clue what I want to do. The only thing I am sure of is that I love the game and will likely play for a while. I was a great fan of Elite in the 80s, and had I known about Eve earlier I would have played it from beta onwards like you.

About the corp- well, the history is that I founded a corp. after 10 days of playing Eve. I had been trying to get to join Eve University (as recommended by the Terminator)- but could not finish the 10th tutorial mission (requirement to join Eve Univ.), due to a missing datacore that I tried to find all over the Universe. I talked to a lot of corps and players but nobody could/would help- so I thought all these corps were useless and decided WTF I'll make my own. Somehow I had corp management at level 5 at the start of the game (poor character creation), and with a couple of friends I made D.I.N. Corporation, and was the CEO as well till recently. Maybe I should join another corp (our corp being pretty useless with me heading it), but I'll wait a while, as Abramul, our new CEO, may take the corp places, and as one of the Directors I may actually be useful to him.

Will certainly train up for frigates and cruisers, as you recommend, but why not battleships? Having said that, I was not able to make great use of Scorpion and Raven- so I suppose I need to get my skills up before I can use them well? What a downer to learn that assault frigates are "broken". Have been manufacturing Rifters for a while- have scores of these ships lying around. Will take a few hours to train up to fly one- will do so. Will also train for Rupture as recommended.

About the support skills- have been working on them- and have also got all my learning skills to 4 (and Learning to 5). Electronics, Engineering, Mechanic are all at 5 now, with Navigation at 4. Are there any other essential skills that I need to train up?

I already have Industry at level 5- was actually thinking of training Calderi Industrial (spaceship command) (or any other race industrial) up to 5 so I could fly transport ships... Infact it would be a great help if I knew which race industrial skill to train to 5- depending on which race has the best transport ships...

Thanks for the advice.

Edit: Grammar

[Dark0ne]

I wouldn't touch Transport ships, personally. Their main advantage is their +2 to warp strength that means you don't need to fit warp scrammers on them; but in low sec/0.0 Heavy Interdictors act as inifinite warp jammers, that is; they cannot place bubbles in low sec but instead they can "focus" their jamming capabilities on one ship that acts as an infinite jammer so no matter how many warp scramblers you have, you'll always be tackled and screwed when you face a good HiC pilot. Obviously in 0.0 they can drop bubbles on gates that means you're equally screwed. So, why bother training for them?

My trade alt has been using freighters recently and they're really handy for playing the market. Items I originally couldn't trade in (materials, modules, ships, whatever) are now open to me due to the 900,000 cargo capacity of my freighter. If you're looking for a hauler, that's your best bet to be honest. Excellent tank that means (so long as you stick in empire) pirates will only gank you if you're carrying 5b+ isk.

If you could upload your character skill sheet to http://ineve.net/skills/ we could take a look at your skills and give you some pointers on what you need to be training up as "core" skills before you go looking into more ships.

[samroski]

Ok- have uploaded skills to

http://ineve.net/ski...ID=NzQ5NzU0NzQ1

Hope it works. Are there any privacy issues at this site? Are there any settings that I need to tinker with?

[Dark0ne]

Ok, the first thing that strikes me is "154 (skills) with 6,419,512 points". That's a lot of skills. In contrast I have 18m SP and only 106 skills...and I consider that to be a lot of skills for a < 20m character. Your character is all over the shop.

You need to start planning for the long term and actually sticking to your plans. You need to go through the ship database in EveMON and start looking at the ships you'd like to be flying; thinking into the future. Do you want to fly support ships like Command Ships and Logistic ships? Do you want to fly capital ships like Carriers and Motherships? Do you want to be a good fleet brute and fly Battleships? Do you want to be behind enemy lines, running blockade runs in covert ops/recons? Do you want to be a hit-and-run HAC pilot? Do you want to be an electronic warfare specialist? Do you just want to be a pimping PVE pilot? Do you just want to be an industrialist/trader? What do you want to do, basically. That question defines your entire skill plan.

I can understand your wish to dabble in as many areas of the game as possible but in Eve (unless you have a 5 year old fully trained account) the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" is paramount to your skill planning.

[Theta Orionis]

Just one thing... stealth bombers, while classed as covert ops, can't actually fit the covert ops cloak - so they can't warp cloaked.

If you want to get into pvp, as a caldari training up good ecm skills and getting into an e-war support ship like a blackbird and later a falcon would make you effective in gangs. Interceptors take a lot of piloting skill to fly well, and need some nice fittings to be good at their role.

Assault frigates are fun for missions, but pretty dire in pvp (unless you're in BoB and bring 300 of them ).
For pve, a drake and then a raven might be good choices.

But training support skills should be a priority while you work out what you'd really like to do, and what ships you'd like to fly, and fly well.

Or you'll end up like me with skills all over the place

[Dark0ne]

Just as a clarification; support skills are skills that give boosts to areas that are useful no matter what path you take (minus perhaps the invention/manufacturing side of things).

Examples include Electronics, Engineering, Signature Analysis, Long Range Targeting, Energy Management, Energy Systems Operation, Weapon Upgrades, Advanced Weapon Upgrades, Learning skills, Mechanic, Hull Upgrades, Navigation, Warp Drive Operation, Evasive Maneuvering, High Speed Maneuvering, Acceleration Control, Cybernetics and Spaceship command.

All of those skills are handy no matter what ship you're flying. More specialised support skills for Caldari characters would include Shield Management/Operation, Rapid Launch, Warhead Upgrades, etc. etc.

[samroski]

Theta and DarkOne thank you for your invaluable advice at this stage of my training. Will definitely work on my support skills.

Firstly: Oh no!!! I have just started on Electronic Upgrades V training (finished Cloaking III a few hours ago) in the hope to get the Manticore in 8 days - and then fit the covert ops cloaking device 4 days later (Cloaking IV). In any case I think I will go ahead with the training, as the covert ops ships are only about 20 mil. ISK each- and I can get the Manticore as well as the Buzzard. It was too good, I suppose, to have a ship that warps cloaked, and can fire cruise missiles

Am quite looking forward to flying these covert op ships. Have been using the prototype cloaking device, though I can now fit the improved device and am going to try and see how effective it is for evading gate camps
(which probably means that I'll end up losing another ship or two)

Have also decided to train frigate skills for other races to level 3 or 4, as that should only take a couple of days, and will let me try a vast number of new ships. Will also give me the option to go for their cruisers.

The interesting thing is that when you start eve and get that 3rd person view (stark contrast from Elite), it makes you initially feel a little disassociated from the ship, and you do not get the "feel" of the ship. After a while you start noticing the difference in handling between ships and this eventually gives you the feel for each ship.

After the loss of my Raven (due to stupid lag) I have started running level 3 missions in a Drake, which is a nice change, as I had not done missions for a while.