SHOCK

There I was, Saturday afternoon, gearing up to fit 12 Harpy Assault Frigs and 6 Kirin Logistic Frigs when I discovered something truly shocking. Horrible even.

I couldn't get into the Kirin.

You see, years ago I made it a mandate to cross trained into every sub-capital combat ship in the game, including all weapon systems and tanking systems. Tech 1, 2, and 3. I can fly an Amarr Zealot as well as I can fly a Gallente Megathron as well as I can fly a Guristas Orthrus. As new ships and modules came out I made sure to buy the skill and train up so I would not ever be limited in what I could fly. I had gotten so used to that ability to sit in any combat ship that I was genuinely shocked when I was prevented from getting into the Tech II logistic frigate.

Fortunately for me, CCP Karkur's new Fit Fit feature, aka Multifit, allows you to fit the ship regardless of your skills for that vessel so crisis was averted. And as a result the Sunday Night Fleet got to have this little fight:

I guess I'll have to skip out and get that skill added to my queue, along with Caldari Tactical Destroyers which I seemed to have missed as well (got the other three). I've got 178 million skill points and still need more.

Carrier Fighter Skills

Previously:
Carrier Testing
Carrier Fighters
Carrier Modules and Bonuses

In the last post of my Carrier series I'll quickly go over the carrier specific skills that were added/changed from prior the release.

Before the Citadel expansion, there were two relevant carrier skills, Fighters and Fighter-Bombers. The former unlocked and improved Fighters and the latter unlocked and improved the heavier supercarrier only Fighter-Bombers.

Upon the expansion your skill level in the Fighters skill was maintained but the skill no longer directly unlocked any of the fighters. Your skill level in Fighter-Bombers was transferred directly to the new Heavy Fighters skill.

Fighters - Allows operation of fighter craft. 5% increase in fighter damage per level. Doesn't allow you to use any fighters but is the blocking skill to all other skills in this post.

Light Fighters - Allows operation of the two light fighters types, the general purpose Attack fighters and the Space Superiority figthers. 5% increase in light fighter velocity per level.

Heavy Fighters - Allows operation of the two types of heavy fighters, the Heavy Attack and Long Range Attack fighters. 5% increase in heavy fighter damage per level.

Support Fighters - Allows operation of support fighter craft. 5% increase in support fighter hit-points per level.

Fighter Hanger Management - This skill is surprisingly important. It gives a 5% bonus to Fighter Hangar size per level.

First off, the base carrier fighter hangers range from the smallest at 55,000  m3 of the Chimera, 60,000 m3 for Archon, 65,000 m3 for the Nidhoggur, and 70,000 m3 for the Thanatos. That seems like a lot of room until you look at how much space each squadron takes:

Space Superiority Fighters (800 m3 per fighter x 12 fighters / squadron) = 9,600 m3
Attack fighters (1000 m3 x 9 fighters) = 9,000 m3
Support Fighter (3000 m3 x 3 fighters) = 9,000 m3

Just putting one of each squadron type in a base Chimera, for example, takes up over just half the hanger space. Ideally you want to be able to put out three squadrons of attack fighters or three squadrons of space superiority fighters depending on the scenario so without spares you want to use 9600*3+9000*3+9000 (can only have one support squadron in space for a carrier) = 64,800 m3. That only works for the Nidhoggur and Thanatos out of the box and that pretty much precludes the hope of having any spares to replace losses being available in your hanger.

Having Fighter Hanger Management trained to IV gives a 20% boost to that base size which gives the following hanger sizes:
Chimera: 66,000 m3
Archon: 72,000 m3
Nidhoggur: 78,000 m3
Thanatos: 84,000 m3

As you can see, it makes a large difference to the capacity and gives the carrier pilot more options in terms of what fighters that they can carrier with them to battle. This effect is also important on the larger hangers of the supercarriers with the larger heavy fighters with their larger volume per squadron (6 fighters per squadron x 2,000 m3 per fighter = 12,000 m3 per squadron) and larger number they can launch at a time (5 squadrons at a time, max 3 Light fighter squadrons, 2 support fight squadrons, and 3 heavy fighter squadrons).

In addition, the skill unlocks the use of the carrier-only modules Network Sensor Array and Fighter Support Unit, so all told its pretty much mandatory to have it trained to at least level IV before undocking.

* * * * *

That's it on carrier basics. Hope you find these posts useful.

What Price The Prize?

Yesterday on twitter a conversation started about the upcoming Skill Point trading in which famous blogger Noisy said some things I disagreed with. Before I get into the conversation, Noisy is one of the best EVE bloggers and someone's whose opinion I value highly, so I was not trying to pick a fight or troll him. Not sure if twitter conversations capture the nuance enough to make that point.

To reiterate something I've blogged about in the past, I've come to feel that the skill points system is an unnecessary limitation that impacts negatively newer players and has virtually no impact on veteran players. So while I would prefer that skill points are removed almost wholesale, I'm not opposed to a system that allows newer players to get skill points if they so desire to reduce the negative impact imposed on them by the system. For the record, the Character Bazaar is a similar system but far more advantageous to veteran players since the skill point trading is done via an entire character and thus the costs per transaction are far higher.

Back to the conversation above. Noisy says that skill point trading is contrary to the purpose of the game which he defines as "to journey thru the galaxy developing your character in hopefully fun and/or interesting ways". That's a good purpose; in fact its an admirable purpose, but I disagree its the purpose of the entire game.

This is the meat of the disagreement here, a fundamental parting of ways on whether or not being willing to pay cash to skip parts of the game is an acceptable practice or not. Other people compared it to purchasing a max level character in World of Warcraft. Noisy is of the opinion that if you want to skip part A to get to part B, then you should just stop playing the game. But I'm of the opinion that if part B is considered enough value to you to skip part A, paying cash for it should not be a big deal and should be allowed. 

In EVE's case, there are multiple "grinds" aka limitations: the ISK grind, the skill point grind, and the ability/experience grind. My enjoyment primarily lies in testing my ability against other pilots in PvP as both a pilot and Fleet Commander. I've been in the game so long that I've past the ISK grind and skill point grind but I could imagine coming into the game, wanting to get into the PvP in a meaningful competitive way, and being frustrated by the ISK and skill point grind and wanting to get a boost past them. PLEX already offers a way for the former, and now Skill Point trading offers a way for the latter. 

Noisy seems to be a hardliner against any form of paying cash to skip any limitation presented by EVE and I can see his point of view, even if I disagree with it. I don't think we should allow someone to pay cash and get "gold bullets" or any other advantage over other players that cannot be obtained in any method except cash, for example. Nor do I think we need to allow them to skip progression entirely so that they skill up to perfect titan pilots in a matter of a few minutes and lots of credit card payments. I do think there is a middle ground to be found to allow those with more cash than time to find happiness in the game without unbalancing the game for those with the opposite.

Noisy's attitudes towards RMT may put him in one minority, but I'm sure my attitudes towards skill points (death to skill points!) puts me in a different minority. I hope the different perspectives help CCP continue to make a good game.

Compelling Argument

One of the most compelling arguments against the skill trading proposal came from Mike Azariah on the most recent Neocom Podcast called Tinfoil Reply: Selling Skillpoints. Not quoting verbatim, his major concern is that by allowing new players to skill up faster they will get themselves into more serious trouble sooner, and possibly getting in over their heads before they are experienced enough in EVE and her foibles to handle the situation.

Out of all the arguments against skill trading, I find this one resonated with me the most and took me back for a few minutes to consider it. And then I rejected it. Sorry Mike. :)

You see, starting out in EVE players get in over their heads all the time, paying for painful mistakes for months or even years after they start. I started with 5000 skill points and a terrible tutorial and worked my ass off for a year, joined a new null sec alliance, but everything I had in a Raven, tried to scout myself into null sec from high sec, and died to a gate camp. Spent weeks ratting in a borrowed Ferox to get back on my feet.

Players will get in over their heads a lot all the time but they are more likely to get in over their heads with poor skills in the core and support categories which is one reason why I think they should be given out for free to starting players but we'll not rant about that again. By keeping them in lower skill point brackets and forcing them to wait on crucial skills just to try and prevent them from getting into a bigger ship too soon is not the right way to go about it. If that's really the concern, we should change the game to force players to demonstrate proficiency in playing the game before allowing them to fly something, for example, you need a certificate in Frigates by completing 10 level 1 missions or getting on 10 PvP kills prior to unlocking Destroyers. (This is just an off the top of my head example.)

Or another alternative is to tune the ISK progression model and make it harder to afford the bigger ships, thus putting downward pressure on players to choose cheaper alternatives until they are ready for the risk of more expensive things.

And so on. But skill point progression as it currently stands is a penalty rather than incentive to new players to stay in small ships.

Time Based Progression?

My post on Friday had lots of good comments but one in particular from the respected blogger NoizyGamer stood out for me:

Just an observation. Putting aside the whales who will throw money at a problem, what you propose is turning EVE from a time based progression to where the more active you are in a game, the faster you progress, with ISK the means of progression. That's a pretty big change in the game's design.

Hmmm interesting. Is EVE designed such that progression is Time based?

On the surface of things, yes it is. Even veterans have to wait for a skill to ding and unlock a new module or ship they could not use before.

Except... except not really. That may have been the intent a long time ago but the game's evolution over the past decade have conspired to create a situation such that progression is constrained by three factors: time (skill training), ISK (buying new stuff), and experience (know-how to succeed in the game).

The experience progression is pretty straightforward and highlighted by EVE's learning cliff image:

Its not 100% accurate; any veteran will tell you that you need to constantly learn new things and practice old skills to remain competitive in EVE, but for the most part its correct: the first few months are a flurry of information to assimilate and then after a steady increase of knowledge as you expand your EVE experience.

The other two, time and money, are less clear.

A new player, flying in tech 1 frigates and fitting tech 1 modules, generally speaking will earn all the ISK they need to replace their ships and buy new skill books. (I'm not talking days old new players just starting out, but players that have finished the tutorial and gotten the hang of warping, shooting rats, running missions, mining, etc). But no matter what they do outside of implants and neural remaps, they cannot train skills faster.

So think about what a new player needs to train in order to become proficient in say, a Corax destroyer. Caldari ship skills, missile weapon skills, and shield tanking skills. Not to mention all the core and specific support skills for one should at least consider like capacitor skills, power grid and CPU skills, shield skills, navigation skills, missile skills, etc. And that simply let's you fit and fly a tech 1 version of the Corax, it takes more training to fit it with tech II modules.

That player is definitely time constrained! In the amount of time it takes to train those relevant skills he could earn more than enough ISK to buy and fit that ship.

However, the equation starts to change when he considers his next objective, the fearsome Caracal cruiser. Yes, he needs to train heavy missile skills instead of light missiles, and Caldari cruiser skill, but all the support skills carry over to the new vessel, as well as the shield tanking skills. Its getting to the point for the player that the ratio of getting the ISK to afford the ship compared to the time to train for it is getting closer to equal. Jumping to Drake battlecruiser is even easier, and Raven battleship only slightly harder. By the time that player is pricing out Ravens and cruise missile launchers, he is constrained more by his wallet than time to train skills.

Now, there is a drop back to time constraints if he decides to cross train to another ship line whose weapon systems or tanking system are different with different support skills, and another huge jump if they go for capitals as there is a lot of big capital skills, but more and more a veteran player will find himself not measuring their progression on how much time it takes to unlock a ship but more and more on affording the bigger and/or flashier ships and modules available in the game.

In other words, progression becomes ISK based instead of time based. The extreme example of this is the rich players who decide its easier to buy a new character off the character bazaar for a purpose than bother to train one up from scratch; their progression is blocked by the ISK in their wallet and not time.

On top of all of this, I would like to point out another wrinkle to this thought process. Remember that Corax that our hypothetical new player was working towards? Because of EVE's design a lowly tech I destroyer or frigate still has a role to play in a 9 year veteran's hanger. In other words, in EVE you don't progress from one ship to another so much as you ADD a ship or module to your repertoire of options. And as your plethora of choices grows as you mature into a veteran player, you find yourself less and less concerned with skill blocks as you can leverage your hanger options to work around them. Rarely is a veteran truly blocked from content by any skill training time.

My point is, I believe that EVE's progression in the long run is already ISK based. Its only really time based for new players and I think its unfair to punish them thusly, hence why I think at a minimum all support skills should be rewarded for free to all new characters.

Death to the Skill System

I have more than enough skill points on all my accounts to do practically everything I want to do in game. I rarely need to scramble to train something, skill training is always more of an afterthought, as in "the queue is getting low, what should I throw on there this time?". I am, for all intents and purposes, beyond the reach of the limitation the skill system imposes on players. So understand me that I have no horse in the race of which I am about to speak on.

I have come to despise the skill training system.

In the past I have argued that the skill training system is great for EVE as it allows progression without having to invest in copious amounts of time to play the game to gain "experience points" to unlock new things. I also loved that it was more a breadth progression system instead a depth progression system so that veteran players would have advantages in options as they cross trained ship types and weapon types, but younger players could catch up in a specific skill set fairly quickly.

Compared to a typical level based MMORPG, this system is far superior and I prefer it.

But I still hate it.

I now believe that the skill training system is one of the big roadblocks preventing new player retention.

Last summer I wrote a post called Unnecessary Limitations in which I said:

Support skills are a penalty to new players for being new. And this contributes directly to the horrible retention rate of new players in EVE online.

Go back and read that post, its one of my good ones.

Now recently CCP came to some of their senses and decided to start new players off with 400,000 points worth of skills:

All new characters will now start with approximately 400,000 skillpoints rather than 50,000.

While this is a small improvement, its still a pittance. At the time I said I wish new players started with 4 million skill points.

Then yesterday CCP Rise on behalf of Team Size Matters posted this wild and wolly dev blog titled "Exploring the Character Bazaar and Skill Trading":

High level:
- There will be a new item type called ‘Transneural Skill Packet’ that can be consumed to give any character unallocated skillpoints
- A Transneural Skill Packet is created by extracting some of your trained skills and combining them with a ‘Transneural Skill Extractor’ which can be purchased in the New Eden Store for Aurum (The Transneural Skill Extractor is analogous to the PLEX service fee in the character bazaar).Both Transneural Skill Extractors and Transneural Skill Packets can be freely traded on the market for ISK 

Zooming in:
- Creating a Transneural Skill Packet requires approximately 500,000 skillpoints (we will fiddle with this number a bit to make it most practical considering common skill level denominations)
- Characters with less than 5 million skillpoints may not use Skill Extractors, they can still use Skill Packets
- Trial characters may not consume Skill Packets
- Extractors are consumed on creating Packets and Packets are consumed on use
- Characters consuming a Transneural Skill Packet will receive the following amounts of unallocated skillpoints, based on the total skillpoints trained before consumption:
0 – 5 million skillpoints = 500,000 unallocated skillpoints added
5 – 50 million skillpoints = 400,000 unallocated skillpoints added
50 – 80 million skillpoints = 200,000 unallocated skillpoints added
> 80 million skillpoints = 50,000 unallocated skillpoints added 

As you can see, this design favors skill transfers for younger characters and makes them very inefficient for older characters. We’ve designed it this way so that we protect the prestige associated with long commitment to a single character.

What a convoluted way to admit that the skill system punishes new players inordinately! OK, seriously, I realize that this proposal is a way to diminish the need for the character bazaar by allowing the movement of skill points from characters that players don't want or need anymore to players that want to pay to advance (often times in real money by buying plex to afford the ISK cost), but for me all it does is highlight the problem: new characters are needlessly penalized via skill points and once again veterans can leverage there accumulated wealth to buy their way out, or new players willing to spend their real money to quickly advance can do so as well. The average new player is left in the dust.

To be fair, the current system is just as unfair and the new system has some very attractive qualities, but for me it only continues to highlight the systematic problem with the design: skill points continues to be an unnecessary limitation, as I pointed out last year:

Question: What is required to effectively own and pilot a ship?
Answer: There are three things you need. 

First, you must have the skill points to be allowed to not only sit in the ship itself and not only to fit the appropriate modules but also the core skills that affect a ship's properties for fitting, tanking, offensiveness, and movement. 

Second, you need enough ISK to afford the ship and its modules and its charges as well as enough ISK to cover its loss. I don't subscribe to the school of thought that you should have enough ISK to replace every loss but you should be comfortable enough losing a ship to not be crippled by it. I made that mistake once. 

Finally, to be effective in a ship you need experience in flying it (or a ship very similar) and using its modules which usually involves some losses and missteps (more for some than others) until you become proficient.

The first requirement is killing new players in the crib and I think its time to get rid of it.

"So what, Bill, you think a day old player should be able to sit in a titan and use it?"

Well that's plain old reductio ad absurdum but I'll play along: yes. Let's be realistic, new players are massively constrained already by ISK and actual piloting experience, compounded by and interface that requires you to grow new neurons to grok, that if a newish player managed to find the "Board Ship" button by themselves I'd be impressed. And that's assuming they could figure out how to leave the current rookie ship in the first place.

Let's be clear. A player with perfect skills but no PvP experience against another player with perfect skills and lots of PvP experience, and implants, and boosters, and linking, in the same fitted ships, is still completely outclassed. The veteran will always have the advantages regardless of skill levels.

What prevents progression? Why do we even need to prevent progression!?!?! EVE is a sci-fi simulation, not some crass theme park MMO. And ISK and experience limit progression sufficiently enough in my opinion.

But new players will buy themselves into big ships they are not ready for using PLEX. They already can using the character bazaar, have you not been paying attention? Right now we only are punishing the players who don't have deep wallets.

You're throwing out skill books as an ISK sink. OK, that's a decent argument, but I'm confident we can find some other ISK sink to accomplish the same thing. Perhaps we combine this with the progression concerns and have ships and modules require certification that costs ISK but not training time, therefore you lock progression via an ISK sink but don't punish new players for lacking basica support skills or requiring long wait times.

You'll destroy the feeling of accomplishment for training a new skill. Yeah, congrats on paying your subscription there tiger. I think we can let that one go.

Skill training is an unnecessary limitation that punishes new players inordinately more than veterans. Its time to get rid of it.

Skill Plans

Its been almost a year since I last talked about my skill training plans, so I figure its decent time for an update.

On my main, Kirith Kodachi, I completed the training for the Moros I was planning last year and between training for the new Tactical Destroyers as they came out (except the Jackdaw, somehow I never felt the urge to train that one) I've been picking up level V skills that I never trained and simply have the time for now. At 166 million skill points, there is not a lot of new combat skills to worry about.

As such, I just finished up Recon V a couple days ago and based on the fun I had with the Sleipnir I threw the 42 day Command Ships V on the queue next. After that, some missile skills like Rapid Launch V and Missile Projection V just to close the loop on that skill tree, then some miscellaneous skills like Heavy Assault Cruisers V and Covert Ops V and Cloaking V.

On my alt account, I've been training her to be a Off Grid booster in a "Can't Beat Em so Join Em" move. That included not only the leadership skills like Armoured Warfare Specialist but also the skills for jump clones and tech II link implants, and most importantly, a Loki Strategic cruiser. She has the required skills, so now I'm picking up extra leadership skills. Off grid boosting in a Tech III cruiser is ridiculously broken by the way.

That'll keep that account busy for the next few months.

My third account, which used to be for my Wyvern holding character, is currently training up Jump

Freighters of all things. When I was getting into Moros production and realized I needed twice as many jumps to get minerals into low sec from high sec, I toyed with the idea of two jump freighters jumping at the same time. I've since abandoned that plan as too risky but since this alt has all the jump skills already from being a Wyvern pilot, I've continued the training anyways. Still two months left there, then who knows what next.

Cross Training Dreadnoughts

Aideron Robotics is heavily focused on armour tanking at all doctrine sizes, from frigate to capital.

I recently cross trained into a Thanatos carrier and purchased one from Project Vulcan, and then proceeded to invest in the skill book for a Gallente Dreadnought, the fearsome Moros.

I've got the skills to fly and fit one excepting the Tech II version of the Siege Module. For all the skills to V that I want I have 153 days to go!

Capital Repair Systems V (32 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes, 42 seconds)
Capital Hybrid Turret IV ((none))
Gallente Dreadnought III (1 day, 10 hours, 48 minutes, 8 seconds)
Gallente Dreadnought IV (8 days, 17 hours, 53 minutes, 12 seconds)
Tactical Weapon Reconfiguration V (32 days, 23 hours, 31 minutes, 51 seconds)
Gallente Dreadnought V (49 days, 11 hours, 17 minutes, 46 seconds)
Capital Hybrid Turret V (28 days, 20 hours, 35 minutes, 22 seconds)

Of course, most of that is for the three level V skills at the end so more like 2.5 months to be acceptable levels. 

Ah EVE, you heartless monster.

Unnecessary Limitations

I'm back from the wilds of Eastern Ontario and while I was getting high on nature (or the smoke fumes from the campfire) I was struck by an epiphany that I just had to share. I'm going to describe what I think is the state of the game in terms of one mechanic, then point out why this is a problematic state of affairs vis a vis new players versus veteran players, and finally I will propose a solution to this identified problem that will probably be very unpopular to the general playerbase.

Ready? Let's go!

* * * * *

Question: What is required to effectively own and pilot a ship?

Answer: There are three things you need.

First, you must have the skill points to be allowed to not only sit in the ship itself and not only to fit the appropriate modules but also the core skills that affect a ship's properties for fitting, tanking, offensiveness, and movement.

Second, you need enough ISK to afford the ship and its modules and its charges as well as enough ISK to cover its loss. I don't subscribe to the school of thought that you should have enough ISK to replace every loss but you should be comfortable enough losing a ship to not be crippled by it. I made that mistake once.

Finally, to be effective in a ship you need experience in flying it (or a ship very similar) and using its modules which usually involves some losses and missteps (more for some than others) until you become proficient.

Whether you are a one day old newbie or a 7 year veteran, these three things are a constant prerequisite for being effective in every ship in the game (1). On the surface this seems reasonable as it limits progression evenly for players to advance in a logical manner: newer players can become effective in small cheap ships that require few skill points while older players require ever increasing amounts of skill points and ISK to get into larger and more powerful ships.

Actually its not quite that clear cut and to explain why let's look at the skill list required by a new player to sit in and undock in my favourite frigate, the Incursus with my usual blaster and dual rep setup.

Gallente Frigate I
Small Hybrid Turret V
Motion Prediction III
Small Blaster Specialization I
Afterburner III
High Speed Maneuvering III
Propulsion Jamming II
Capacitor Systems Operation III
Repair Systems III
Mechanics III
Hull Upgrades I
Jury Rigging III
Armor Rigging I
Drones III
Light Drone Operation V
Drones V
Gallente Drone Specialization I

This is the bare minimum and does not include all the helper skills to improve fitting, cap use, hit points, ranges, tracking speeds, damage, etc. Now let's look at the bare minimum requirements for a player to get into a Thorax cruiser with similar fitting philosophy.

Gallente Frigate I
Small Hybrid Turret V
Motion Prediction III
Small Blaster Specialization I
Afterburner III
High Speed Maneuvering III
Propulsion Jamming II
Capacitor Systems Operation III
Repair Systems III
Mechanics III
Hull Upgrades I
Jury Rigging III
Armor Rigging I
Drones III
Light Drone Operation V
Drones V
Gallente Drone Specialization I
+
Gallente Frigate III

Gallente Destroyer III

Gallente Cruiser I

High Speed Maneuvering IV

Gunnery III

Medium Hybrid Turret V

Motion Prediction IV

Medium Blaster Specialization I

Medium Drone Operation V

Mechanics IV

Repair Systems IV

The number of additional skills for the bigger ship, guns, and drones is relatively smaller. Yes, they have more points and higher training times, but there is no additional hidden support skills to include either. Now let's look at a Megathron Battleship with same blaster concept:

Gallente Frigate I
Small Hybrid Turret V
Motion Prediction III
Small Blaster Specialization I
Afterburner III
High Speed Maneuvering III
Propulsion Jamming II
Capacitor Systems Operation III
Repair Systems III
Mechanics III
Hull Upgrades I
Jury Rigging III
Armor Rigging I
Drones III
Light Drone Operation V
Drones V
Gallente Drone Specialization I
Gallente Frigate III

Gallente Destroyer III

Gallente Cruiser I

High Speed Maneuvering IV

Gunnery III

Medium Hybrid Turret V

Motion Prediction IV

Medium Blaster Specialization I

Medium Drone Operation V

Mechanics IV

Repair Systems IV

+
Gallente Battlecruiser III
Gallente Battleship I
Heavy Drone Operation V
Gunnery V
Large Hybrid Turret V
Motion Prediction V
Large Blaster Specialization I
Mechanics V

Again, the skills have higher time investment to achieve but again the list of additional supporting skills is zero and the list of skills to get into a battleship is low compared to the original list of skills and hidden supporting skills to get into the Incursus.

Here's the rub: Although the training times to train the higher ranked skills are much higher, there are a vast number of supporting skills that a newer player has to train to be equally effective in their frigate that a veteran player already has trained for their battleship (or Tech II frigate, or super capital, or faction cruiser, ad nauseum).

In fact, I went through and added all the support skills I could reasonably identify that a players should train to make themselves move effective in that Incursus and added them to the plan to only level IV and it took the original base plan of ~23 days to 97 days. That means no support skills to level V.

But once that player has done that training, its done forever for any other ship they want to fly. That extra 74 days of support skills does not have to be trained for the Thorax or Megathron once its been trained for the new pilot. It takes longer for a new player to get all those support skills to level IV than it takes the Thorax pilot to sit in a Megathron with Tech II Neutron Blaster Cannons. Going from an Incursus to sitting in a Thorax takes less than half that time.

Support skills are a penalty to new players for being new. And this contributes directly to the horrible retention rate of new players in EVE online.

How many of you remember the Learning Skills? The same arguments for getting rid of them really apply to a lot of these skills that do very little but improve stats on modules and ships once trained and apply to most of the ships in the game. For example, Mechanics that adds 5% extra hull point per level, or Weapon Upgrades that reduces CPU needs of weapons by 5% per level, or Drone Interfacing that gives 10% damage or mining yield per level. Once a player has trained them, they apply to so many ships and situations that it becomes manadatory to have them trained to at least level IV. In other words, we penalize new players for not having these near universal skills trained out of the gate, and we penalize them in an environment where their competition includes multi-year veterans who trained these skills years ago.

No wonder people don't stick around!

Here is a hypothetical situation to highlight this tragedy. Let's say a new faction of ships was added tomorrow with its own frigates and cruisers and battleships, call them The Jovians. They have their own skill books for the ships like Jove Frigate and Jove Cruiser, etc. For me to cross train and become effective in a Jove frigate it would take mere days since I have all the support skills and weapon skills trained up being a multi-year veteran. A new player getting starting out in the Jove frigate line would require at least 100 days to even have a hope of coming close to my base statistics while flying the ship, and that ignores the advantages I have in ISK reserves and experience. And there is no way to reduce that time limit.

Over three months to even hope to be almost competitive for a Tech I frigate.

Forget about the learning cliff, we are literally stabbing newbies with a knife several times and tossing their bleeding and wounded bodies into a shark tank. With a plastic spoon for defense. The real miracle of EVE online is that its managed to survive ten years! Actually we know why EVE has managed to survive all this time, its because of the heroic efforts of many players and organizations to protect and nuture new players through this painful and unnecessary phase of learning the game, getting the ISK, and training the support skills to be effective. And its time to make their job easier by removing one of those limitations.

I encourage CCP to look into getting rid of the support skill grind. Level the playing field for new players by putting those bonuses they provide right into the ships and modules from the start and just remove the skills. Alternatively, start all players with a few million skill points and all the support skills trained to IV or V (preferably the latter). There are a zillion ways veterans have advantages in terms of ISK for faction mods, implants, boosters as well as the sheer experience advantage, so penalizing new players with lower stats adds insult to injury.

Come on CCP, do the right thing. Its better for everyone.

UPDATE:  Ripard Teg brought this up before in the winter.

1- Barring rookie ships which are free and come with skill-less modules.

New Direction

After the rousing fun of being part of a pair of triage carriers in Bring Me The Head of Kirith Kodachi 3 last month, I made a couple decisions.

First, I wanted to train up Tactical Logistics Reconfiguration V so I could fit the Triage Module II for even better repping goodness.

Then, I decided it was time to break from my long held Caldari Only tradition for capital ships:

Training Gallente Carrier skill to unlock the Thanatos, my next big purchase. I also need Capital Armour Repair Systems skill trained up so those both will take a while. After that, Gallente Dreadnought and Capital Hybrid weapons.

Perhaps BMTHOKK4 will need a new poster...

Don't worry about my old faithful Chimera, the good ship Ninveah. It will find service with my alt who is skilled up for Caldari carrier as well.

At Some Point, What Else Is There To Train?

Someone once pointed out that to train all of Eve's skills on a single character to level V you needed more than two decades, and since my main is only 7 years of skill training I still have a long way to go.

But more seriously, my main character, Kirith Kodachi, is about 132 million skill points in for pure combat pilot goodness and I still have skills that need finishing despite doing nothing but fine tuning for the past year.

Kirith Kodachi

Right now I'm getting the Link Specialist skills to V for the tech II warfare link implants, and as I talked about last week, ISIS showed me some places for improvement for even my basic favourite ships like the Incursus, requiring the armour compensation skills and tech II small hybrid specialization skills to get that coveted Mastery Level V certification. I'm a sucker for external validation.

All in all, just taking a quick browse in EVE Mon I've for a 108 day skill queue for Kirith and that is not even trying; still got a long road to go.

But what do you do with an alt?

Alts are weird things; typically created and trained for a specific purpose sometimes they can get a life of their own. I had an industrial alt in the past that morphed into a combat pilot and got trained for flying a Maelstrom with Tech II artillery. It just got to a point where there was no more industrial or science skills to train on her and putting on some fighting skills made sense, until I realized I didn't need a second combat character. I don't dual box PvP very well and I like using Kirith. So she got sold.

Now I'm facing a similar problem with my current stable of alts.

Jump Freighter alt? Check. Cyno alt? Check. Planetary Interaction alt? Check. Trader alt? Check. Builder alt? Check. Cloaky scout alt? Check. Cloaky hauler alt? Check.

In many cases I have multiple alts to cover the same role. Its kind of ridiculous. But the worst part is I'm running out of useful things to train on my two alt accounts (fansite free account for the win!) so I'm struggling to come up with skill plans. After all, the skill point totals of my main alts: 48 million, 38 million, ~32 million, and 15 million. Gah.

Anyway, I sat down with EVE Mon and figured out some holes that could use filling for these secondary professionals. Korannon needs some Corporation Contracting followed by some Jump Fuel Conservation V and Jump Drive Navigation V, bringing him to 61 days and putting off my decisions for another couple months. On my other account, my alt Kelarran is going to work on Planetary Interaction skills for a future project and that requires 92 days of training.

So the skill queue crisis of 2013 is put off... for now.

Point of Skills

My main (Kirith Kodachi obviously) reached over 115 million skill points some time in the last month or so. I barely noticed. Since achieving Battleship V in all races last year every skill trained since then has been hardly worth thinking about. Just 2% here, 1% there... I'm sure it all adds up but I hardly notice anymore. I think I just finished Gallente Drone Specialization V this week.

The only time recently I got excited about a skill to train was when the new Armour Honeycombing skill dropped in Retribution that lessened speed penalties of armour plates. Faster ships? Yes please, especially for short ranged blaster ships that I don't want to go active tank on.

But this brings the topic around to the new skills. Other bloggers have written about this before but let me add my voice to the mix: its bad for younger players compared to veteran players primarily because vets like me with no crucial skills missing can stop whatever he is doing and train it up post haste while the neophytes have to make a decision between this skill or something else they need to improve their PvP.

And this brings me about to the upcoming skill rationalization where the Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills are going to be divided into four skills each, one for each faction.

When first floating this idea they (i.e. CCP) were still reeling and stinging from the Summer of Incarnage and the wrath of the veterans that was displayed in full force there. So when proposing this skill division they decided to make the call to say "if you can fly the ship before the skill change, you will  be able to fly it after".

Big mistake.

Essentially, this decision ensures a veteran like yours truly with all race's cruiser skill trained up gets a massive leg up over another player with only one cruiser skill trained up to unlock the battlecruisers. I effectively will get a windfall of 15 free levels of skills compared to the hypothetical other. For no extra training time at all.

What CCP should have done is this:

CCP: "OK everyone, we are splitting the Battlecruiser skill into four skills, one for each race. We will remove the battlecruiser skill from everyone and refund the skill points trained in it and the skill book cost to every player. Then you can invest those skill points and ISK however you want."

Bitter Vets: "What the hell, CCP? I can fly all the battlecruisers but after this I will only be able to fly one race's ships?!"

CCP: "Yes, that is an unfortunate side effect but as you are a long term player you have plenty of wherewithal to buy the skill books and retrain the race's as you need. We're sorry but this way is the most fair to everyone including newer players and best for the game."

Bitter Vets: "*insane rage*"

CCP: "HTFU."

I personally would not have cared. Like any vets, I have my favourites and if I really wanted the other ships I would have taken the month or two or even three to get back to all ships at level V. What's three months to someone playing over seven years? (Hint to Jester: That's Quote of the Week material right there! No? Sigh. Always the bridesmaid.)

Skill Check

I'm nearly done training for the Amarr Legion and Minmatar Loki strategic cruisers, with only another 10 days left on the last three Minmatar subsystem skills to level V. That gives me all sub-capital combat ships trained to combat readiness. I don't have any plans to fly either ship any time soon, but I like being prepared.

Next up I'm going to tighten up some drone skills that I've ignored for a couple years:

Drone Durability V
Drone Navigation V
Drone Sharpshooting V
Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing V
Gallente Drone Specialization V
Minmatar Drone Specialization V

That will take around 90 days and into the new year. After that, who knows? At 108 skill points, its mostly level V skills all over the place if I'm working only combat skills.

Training For Training's Sake

On Sunday Kirith Kodachi will be 6 years old.

I remember starting out and seeing some corps had a 5 million skill point requirement for applicants and being impressed that they were so high. A local pirate corp had a 10 million limit and I thought they were elite.

Over time the ceiling of what I thought was high slowly climbed as my skill points increased. I hit 5 million and pilots with 20 million I considered high. I got to 20 million and others hitting 50 million were elite. And so on.

Last week I finished my final Battleship V skill, Minmatar at last. The Vargur and Panther are mine. I can fly a Machariel with full bonuses. I put in the skills for the Legion and Loki and got them so that I can fly every sub-cap combat ship in the game. Just finishing the upper levels for the Legion and Loki for the next couple weeks.

What then?
Drone skills? Check.
Leadership skills? Check.
All weapon systems? Check.
A few more skills to level V that I never bothered before is all that is left.

I'm running out of things to unlock CCP. I guess I need to start saving for Gallente carrier skillbooks.

100 Million Milestone

I reached the 100 million skill points today, but its hard to get excited. As my friend pointed out to me when I hit 50 million it is simply a testament to having an active account for a certain amount of time rather than any accomplishment.

Still, its like a birthday, a way to point to my character and say "Why yes, he IS in the 100 million club!"

100 million skill points!

If you look at my pie chart of skill distribution, you can see my largest four categories are Spaceship Command, Gunnery, Drones, and Missile Launcher Operation. This is representative of my character's spread into all four factions and their weapon systems, as well as Caldari capital ships.

Right now Kirith is training Citadel Cruise Missiles IV and then is going into a Drone improvement plan to get some more skills to level V.

Skill Training - The Road To 100 Million

My upgrading of Mechanical skills is complete and I'm now working on miscellaneous skills to continue the march to 100 million skill points.

My skills that I'm going to upgrade in the following months are as follows in no particular order:

Multitasking IV
Signature Focusing IV
Turret Destabilization IV
Afterburner V
Fuel Conservation V
Neurotoxin Recovery I
Neurotoxin Recovery II
Neurotoxin Recovery III
Neurotoxin Recovery IV
Jump Portal Generation III
Jump Portal Generation IV
Hacking II
Hacking III
Hacking IV
Archaeology I
Archaeology II
Archaeology III
Archaeology IV
Assault Ships V
Recon Ships V

Only skill I have to purchase is Archaeology.

Skill Point Distribution for Relicc

From yesterday's post's comment thread:

1. ReliccJan 23, 2012 07:38 PM

   How many SPs do you have?

2. Kirith KodachiJan 24, 2012 05:07 AM

   94,622,000 approximately.

3. ReliccJan 24, 2012 05:05 PM

   What in?!

   
   

Well, Kirith is a combat pilot that can fly all Tech I sub-capital combat ships and all Tech II combat ships except Tech II battleships that are not Caldari. As well, I can use Tech II versions of all weapon systems and can Tech II tank in any method. And I trained for a supercarrier. So with those capabilities, my skill distributions are fairly striaghtforward:

Now you know.

Bang Bang You're Dead

In the fall I finished the training for the Proteus (got two in the hanger now) and was faced once more with the eternal Eve question: What Do I Train Next?

I decided it was time to do some polishing on useful combat skills and picked Gunnery as the category of choice since the few percentages picked up there on secondary skills applied equally to hybrid, projectile, and energy weapons.

It took a month and a half but I completed on the weekend and all secondary skills are up to level V.

Oh Yeah!

There is still all the tech II specialization skills to do but I decided to move on to Mechanic category where things were horribly untrained...

"Whadda mean my armour compensation skills are only at level III?!"

 

Yeah... its pretty rough. I'm going to take three weeks and get all those rigging skills and compensation skills up to IV and then re-evaluate. Sigh.

Proteus Is A Go

I haven't blathered about skills in a while, so let's go down that path today.

A while back I got a hankering for a good solid blaster fit Proteus, which sucked because I only had Caldari strategic cruisers trained up. So I bit the proverbially bullet and trained up the Gallente strategic cruisers skills. That took a few weeks to train from scratch and just finished on the weekend. Since then I've been cleaning up some level four skills like Capital Ships and Marauders that I meant to finish but never got around to.

However, I'm a bit stuck on what to train next. I already have all of the race's tech II cruisers and tech II large weapons trained for the new battlecruisers, and there are no other new shinies I need training for in Crucible. Well, that's not true. I'm sure some of the new T2 mods will require me finishing off some level Vs so I might have to investigate that. For now, I'm going to slot in some Gunnery level V skills to increase my performance there.

Korannon is in the process of finishing off jump freighter training and still needs a couple levels in jump calibration and jump fuel conservation to make use of the ship cheaper.

And my Wyvern alt, Selia, is still slogging through Fighters V to get that Fighter Bomber skill, especially now since all the Wyvern will be able to use is fighters and fighter-bombers.

Skill Training End Game

Kirith climbed over 87 million skillpoints a little while ago. He's pretty much a pure combat character and at this point he has cross trained for all weapon systems, tanking methods, and faction ships at the Tech II cruiser level and lower, with only Caldari (his starting race) having Tech II battleships, Tech III strategic cruiser, and capital ships.

Well balanced combat character.

He's currently training Large Projectile Weapons V so he can finish off the weapon systems with Tech II large autocannons and artillery. After that, I'm going to work on Tech III ships as the skills are cheap and quick to train.

My hauling alt, Korannon, at 18 million skillpoints has virtually no combat skills but has specialized primarily in hauling (freighter, Orca, Tech II industrials) with some hacking and analyzing skills thrown in for exploration purposes. He's working through Covert Ops V right now and will train up  astrometrics skills next to become a proficient prober.

No guns, no missiles, no drones.

Finally we have my Wyvern parking alt, Selia, who has trained for nothing but flying a Wyvern for her 25 million skillpoints. She is currently working on drone skills so that she can think about doign combat some day in the future.

Supercarrier pilot means never saying you're sorry.

She's got a lot of skills to go before she's combat ready, but her tanking skills are up to par and she can at least defend herself with drones now.