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An Overview of the Skill system
Jipster
Member Posts: 23
Seems like the Skills system in EVE is a bit of a hot topic here at the mo, so I thought I'd just clarify some points about it to explain it better to the newer players. Most of the veterans will probably agree with me, and those who don't will hopefully offer more advice.
Like it or not, EVE revolves around it's skill system. You can't even scratch yer ass without the skill for it. I've already read a lot of discussion about people wondering if they will ever compete be able to compete in PVP against someone with 10x the amount of SP's that they have etc.
The first thing I have to mention is that the total number of skill points doesn't really mean much. There are 15 categories of skills, and over 150 in total. This means that you can mould your character into the way you want. Someone said that there is no role-playing in EVE, but I think this system encourages quite the opposite. If you want to be a fighter you can train those skills to make you one of the best: the terror of the spacelanes, or the opposite - a bounty hunter who always gets his prey. If PVP isn't your thing and you want to be a manufacturer and trader, then you need good industry and science skills. If you want to be an explorer then boost up your navigation and spaceship command skills, and if you want to be a miner, well you get the idea...
I personally have nearly 10 mil skill points, but I am an all-rounder. A jack-of-all-trades who would get my ass handed to me on a plate against a serious PVP'er 
. My navigation skills are OK, so my ships are never the fastest. My mining skills are maxxed out, as are most of my drone skills and my research and production skills are the best in my Corp. I startd out life as a trader, veered towards manufacturing, got more into mining to be able to produce my wares, got bored, tried being a fighter and realised my limitations early enough to avoid being a constant victim and have now ended up being a mix of all of them 
The point is that each of my attempted trades have all required skills, so in order to test the water I had to learn the skills necessary to some level of competency. I'm not particulary great at any of them apart from researching, so I have 9.7 million skill points but not really much to show for it. Being part of a Corp does have it's benefits though I must admit, as all of our members know what skills the others have so if in doubt of what to do next they can always specialise in a field that the rest are lacking in.
There is still no doubt that skills still rule the backbone of the game of EVE, so I'll present some guidelines below to help you advance as fast as possible to the crossroads that will decide what path you wish to follow in EVE.
Learning, learning, learning
"There you are, sat in your Reaper, straight out of the Minmatar Republic Navy school. You've finally managed to get rid of the annoying insurance salesman from the Pend Corp and you're undecided as to what to do with your life... One thing you do know is that you need to learn a lot, and fast !"
All of the skills in EVE have a primary and secondary attribute to them. You can check what your character's attributes are from your character sheet. It could be Intelligence, Willpower, Memory, Charisma or Perception. Eg: for Spaceship Command (that everyone starts with) you see that the primary attribute is Perception and the secondary is Willpower. What this this means is that the higher your rating in either of those attributes means you are able to learn the Spaceship Command skill FASTER (primary adding a better bonus than secondary obviously). Every skill needs 2 of these attributes so it makes sense to get all them as high as possible, as quick as possible, to speed up any learning you need to do in the future.
To do this you need to obtain the "learning skills". The 1st one is 'Learning' - it adds a 2% speed bonus to learning ANY skill. The other 5 each increase one of your characters attributes by one per level of learning eg: Iron Will adds 1 to your Memory attribute for every level you have learned it, so Iron Will level 4 gives you a +4 bonus to your Memory. You can find all of these learning skills on the market uncannily enough under the heading of "Learning" 
. I think they cost about 30k each which isn't really a lot to help you get ahead of your fellow newcomers pretty fast.
An example to a fast start
We all need isk right so you can't just go and buy the skills with no isk. If you haven't joined a Corp yet or have no intention of then a good way to start is try and get mining skill to level 3 (it won't take long at all). Do the early agent missions for some money, and swap between that and mining to get yourself your first ship upgrade to your races mining frigate (Probe for Minmatar, Imicus for Gallente etc). Whack a couple of Miner 1's on that to speed up mining and save that isk for your learning skills. Try to get them all to level 3 asap, and then start sharing the research between those and your races frigate skill which will mean you can fly their better frigates. Once you have all your learning skills to level 4 then I would personally leave them at that and then branch out to your specialist career. You should have learnt enough about the game by now to have an idea of what you want to do, so go for it.
A word of advice - as it stands at the moment, the vast majority of skills require Intelligence and Memory as their main attributes, so I would go for them as a priority. The Charisma skill isn't used much as the Trade skills are still borked and have been since beta so it's not worth working towards in all honesty unless you intend to pursue a career as an agent runner. Perception is the main requisite for combat so invest in that if you want to be a fighter. Also, if there is any gadget/mod/upgrade that someone has recommended as the "Must Have" addition to your ship then ALWAYS check the information on it first on the market - chances are that it needs a skill you don't have yet. Check that skill to see what you need first in order to be able to learn it aswell (Under required skills). I have seen many people buy their first afterburner and then realise they can't use it untill they have the Afterburner skill. Similar thing for a decent Cargo Expander.
There is so much to learn about EVE that this won't help you be great at anything I'm afraid, but hopefully it will help some of you get off to a fast start. The higher all of your attributes are then the faster you will learn each and every skill - that's something that no-one can catch up to if they don't do the same from the start. From then on you just have to do your homework as to what skills you need to be the best you can be, and just remember that a character with high skill points doesn't mean he knows what he's doing, just that he's learnt a lot of stuff - most of it might be useless 
Safe journey pilot, and happy hunting.
Jippy
Comments
Iron will is for Willpower attribute. The skill for getting higher Memory is called Instant Recall
great post ..
i'll add a few things that srping to mind
when learning Learning skill, couple it with learning Int and Mem learning skills, as Learning is based on int and mem learning skills. learning int and mem will speed up Learning, and Learning will speed up all skills, including int and mem. Im not positive which is the best order to learn them in, but when i did it .. oh so long ago, i did learning-int-mem lv1, then all lv 2, etc.. course i could be wrong with this system... food for though anyhow
equipment and ships have requiered skills for use, but many only require lv 1 of the skill, so if your are pressed for time, learning skill to just to lv1 is fine. higher levels are for more bonus (ie damage bonus 5% at lv1 and 25% at lv5). In this way although you cant become uber at a particular weapon, but at least you can use it. This point is usueful for those just trying the game out, dont worry about getting lv 5, just get lv1 ..of alot of skills to check out more areas of the game quickly. This also answers people's concerns over "can i catch up" , although no you cant catch up entirely, you will be able to gain use of the same ships and equipment quite quickly if you dont take the added time to learn skill A to level 5 , then get the next skill. Get 50 skills to level one and you have huge amount of items open to you.
some skills have other skills and pre-reqs, make sure you right click and show info on the skills and equipment you are buying and read all the fine print, nothing more annoying that working hard all day, buying a skill or equipment or ship, and finding you cant use it yet.
aside from learning, the next most important ones, in my mind for game play, are navigation (make flying around faster and thus make the whole game less tedius), also good ones to start learning are electronics and engineering. Although some will disagree with me on this one, if you can learn them to lv 3, before you get your first higher level ship, then you will find you can fit alot more equipment on them, without having to worry about taking up the few slots you have with equipment to boost power and cpu. (this is just a suggestion)
well i'll leave it at that for the moment.
I'd also like to add that the skill system is very forgiving...training the wrong skill won't hurt you in the long run especially since there are no wrong skills. lol.
You can also change your training from one skill to another without losing the time you put into that skill...don't remember seeing that up there so I thought I'd toss that one out.
"Feel free to hate me, but hate me for the right reasons."
"Your still ignorant if you believe the first thing you see when the blindfold is removed."
"Be smart enough to know I'm smarter than you."
rather good overview
can add that apart from deciding what skills set to go for,.. learning the skills.. if you want succeed in PvP, major part of success is actually applying your skills on regular basis. Logic that i have only some skills and dedicated PK with tons of PvP skills lvl5 will pwn... so i wont do PvP.... is mislead, in sense that i.e. well rounded char with some PvP oriented skills that has experience and personal skills in combat and handling PvP has as many chances as the other. It could be argued that in 1 on 1 encounter given even conditions for "duel",.. higher number/ lvls skills will win.... but practice showed the opposite many times...
Well spotted. I knew it was for one of them but I forgot which one.
Good point about swapping skills aswell guys/gals - well worth doing if you know a skill is likely to finish while you're at work, so to save any wasted time at all swap to learning another skill that will last until you get home, then just swap back.
If you cancel a skill, then you will lose ALL points gained in that skill since the last time you started learning it. The only time I think cancelling a skill applies is when you need to fit an implant, but it still has to be done in a certain way to minimise losing any time. Quite easy though - swap learning to another skill, and then cancel it immediately - fit implant and resume whatever skill you want
"Feel free to hate me, but hate me for the right reasons."
"Your still ignorant if you believe the first thing you see when the blindfold is removed."
"Be smart enough to know I'm smarter than you."
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Good thread and good post Jipster. I'm no new player but I usually have something to argue about when reading EVE posts and this time I didn't find much. Keep up the good work
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EVE-Addict
Anjelle [Freelancer Union]
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I love rain, the color gray, and small apartments.
I hate CS, the term n00b and this thing --> ^^
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I love rain, the color gray, and small apartments.
I hate CS, the term n00b and this thing --> ^^
But that's just me.