The Unofficial EVE Online Strategy Guide

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Unofficial EVE Online General Guide Guide

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Table of Contents

1Owner

3Important

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3The short version

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3The long version

6Introduction

7ESSENTIALS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Races and the Roles They Play

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Attributes

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Calculating Your Actual Attributes and Training Time

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Choosing Your Eve-Online Occupation

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Character Creation

18Skill Trees

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19The Miner and Anti-Miner

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Mining

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Hauling

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26The Anti-Miner

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28The Craftsman

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28The Scientist

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29The Mission Runner

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30The Shield Tank

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32The Armor Tank

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Gunnery Skills

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Missile Skills

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Drone Skills

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Support Mod Skills

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39The Pirate

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44The Tradesman

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46The Healer

47Specialized Ships

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Interceptors

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Interdictors





. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49Covert Ops

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Assault Ships

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Reconnaissance

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Heavy Assault Cruisers

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Logistics

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Command Ships

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Assault Command Ship

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Logistics Command Ship

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Transport Ships

58Combat Breakdown

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Gunnery and Tracking

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Missiles and Radii

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Resistance vs. HP

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Electronic Warfare

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Scanning and Probing

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Ship Probes

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Exploration Probes

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69NPC Pirates

70Agents Missions and Loyalty Points

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Agents and Mission Types

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Ore Refinement Chart

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Tradesman Tips





Introduction

This guide to Eve-Online is designed to better aid a reader of any skill level in achieving

optimal performance from his or her character. For the more advanced players, the opening

portion of the guide will be too elementary, while the latter part is stuffed with tips and

ideas for the more difficult side of missions as well as a means by which to make ISK with

the skills possessed.

First I would like to direct your attention to www.eve-online.com Please refer to the

official website for all basic information regarding the interface, tutorial questions, and

account information - all accessible through the left-bound menu.

If you have specific questions, you can refer to the knowledge base here.

If you're still in need of clarification, please refer to the official community forums here.

Within these forums is a marketplace where rarer and more sought-after items can be

found if you're looking for something very specific. It's also the best way to go about

searching and obtaining Capital Ships when that time comes.


http://www.eveonline.com/

http://support.eve-online.com/Pages/KB/

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp




ESSENTIALS

- Races and the Roles They Play

- Attributes

- Calculating Your Actual Attributes and

Training Time

- Choosing Your Eve-Online Occupation

- Character Creation

Races and the RolesThey Play

Eve-Online is composed of four basic

races: Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and

Minmatar. These races however have no

significant bearing on your future in

Eve-Online. These simply compose the

Role-Playing aspect of your gaming

experience and aid you in starting off

down the path skills in the chosen areas

you'd prefer. And I will be going into

detail as to what each race has available

to them; both for the newer player and

the veteran player.

The first point I'll touch on before

going into any further detail, is tanking

(that is, the manner in which you are

designed to take the hits from your

target(s)). There are two types of tanking

available: Shield tanking and Armor

tanking. First off, let me declare that one is

not better than the other, despite popular

belief. Some ships are simply better suited

for one or the other. Therefore, when a

ship that is not suited for tanking faces one

that is, there is often discrepancy over

tanking capabilities of shields versus

armor. The Amarr and Gallente races are

primarily geared towards armor tanking,

while the Caldari and Minmatar are suited

more for shield tanking - with the

exception of a ship here and there. Every

race is equally skilled at Science, Industry,

Mining, Production, Trade, and so forth.

There are also four damage types in

game: EM, Explosive, Kinetic, and

Thermal. EM is designed against shields,

Explosive (primarily done by missiles)

against armor, while Kinetic and Thermal

are the relative types - with Kinetic being

the most common. The shields of a ship

generally have a high Explosive, moderate

Kinetic, low Thermal, and non-existent

EM base resistance. Armor generally has

high EM, moderate Thermal, low Kinetic,

and nearly non-existent Explosive

resistance.

The main reason you'll want to use a

race's designated ship and weapon class is

due to the bonuses thus acquired. For

instance, an Amarr ship will give bonuses

to lasers. This doesn't mean one race

cannot fly nor use another race's ships or





weaponry by any means, but generally

you'll want to use ones that coincide for

bigger bonuses and maximum potential.

The Amarr predominately use lasers

with deal EM and Thermal damage in

general. These weapons are therefore

very effective at eating through the

shields of the target. Lasers, unlike any

other turret, require no consumable

ammunition - instead, they are powered

by frequency crystals - but require more

capacitor use than other turrets. These

turrets come in both the Beam and Pulse

variety - one for higher range and one for

a higher damage output, respectively.

Just like any other ammunition type,

these crystals can alter the damage and

range of the turrets. The general skills

associated with Amarr linger in the

Armor tanking and Gunnery

departments. The Amarr are designed to

be hard-hitting turret users; most of the

ships available give focused bonuses to

lasers. Therefore the Amarr are best

suited for those looking to engage in

regular combat as soon as possible and to

focus his/her skills into the laser field.

The Caldari are lovers of missiles and

are best described as the counterpart of

the Amarr. The majority of ships in the

Caldari arsenal give higher bonuses to

the overall performance of missiles,

therefore making them excellent armor

destroyers. There are different sizes and

types of missiles that are loaded into

different sized missile launchers, which

act much like different sized turrets. The

advantages missiles hold over turrets are

that they can deal any type of damage

(therefore being able to quickly adjust the

damage type necessary to the situation on

the fly) and the damage is consistent

regardless of range. The damage is

dependant of course of the target's

resistances, but unlike turrets, missiles

have no optimal range for payout. Much

like the Amarr, the Caldari are very well

suited for those looking to blast a few

things early on.

The Gallente embrace drones more than

any other race. The drones will act much

like a pet in many other MMORPGs;

attacking when you are attacked or when

you command them to do so. There are

also a variety of drones available from

combat to logistics (ones that repair a

fellow pilot's shields and/or armor). Many

of the Gallente ships will give bonuses to

the drones' hit points and damage, making

them a valuable ally to have in battle.

Hybrid turrets are the weapons of choice

by the Gallente, however. The turrets

come in both Railgun and Blaster size -

Railguns are the long-rage ‘sniper' class,

while the blasters are the short-ranged

devastators. Hybrid turrets deal Kinetic

and Thermal damage, giving them a

rounded damage type that performs

similarly on both the shields and armor.





The Gallente are very versatile and can

handle a multitude of roles right out of

the box, so to speak. Their immediate use

of drones makes them better suited for

the mining-minded and likewise offers

added firepower in battle.

The Minmatar assimilate the other

three races' fields while adding to it with

Projectile Weaponry. Projectile weapons

possess the unique versatility of having

ammunition with different damage-type

properties, much like missiles. Projectile

weapons come in both Artillery (range)

and Autocannon (damage). The

Minmatar ships vary in bonuses and

could be considered versatile due to the

wide array of possibilities that exist for

each pilot, however this could also be a

drawback to someone looking to

specialize talent causing the pilot to be

limited to just a handful of ships (albeit

good ones though). The Minmatar start

with a well-rounded set of skills and can

easily handle their own in any facet.

Attributes

There are four attributes that govern

Eve-Online are: Charisma, Intelligence,

Memory, Perception, and Willpower.

Understanding these attributes and how

they affect you is absolutely vital to your

progress. The higher the attribute the

quicker skills requiring those attributes

will train. This sounds simple enough, but

the improper placing of attribute points

during the creation process can have a

very large impact on the pilot, not mention

being a frustrating experience. I'll explain

how training time and how the

primary/secondary attributes come into

play in a moment.

Charisma: This is by far the least needed

attribute. The skills primarily associated

with charisma are centered on Corporation

skills, Social skills, Leadership Skills, and

Trade skills. With the esoteric nature and

limited skill set associated with charisma,

it's rather silly to spend many points on it

which have a long-term affect on the pilot.

Intelligence: Science, Mechanic,

Engineering and Electronics all use

intelligence as the primary attribute. This

is then essential for anyone looking to

advance in Electronic Warfare and/or the

scientific fields. It's also the secondary

attribute to Mining and Production skills.

This is also an important attribute since it





deals with Mechanic and Engineering

skills, which include those needed for

tanking.

Memory: The primary attribute for

Mining and Production skills. This is the

most important attribute for anyone

looking to invest in the mining

profession and/or desiring to produce

wares. Intelligence and Memory are

often hand-in-hand. This is also the

primary for Drones.

Perception: Gunnery/Missile skills and

Spaceship Command skills are all based

on perception and therefore it is the

number one choice for anyone seeing to

become specialized in dealing out the

damage and flying the most advanced

ship available to them.

Willpower: Nothing is particularly

based on Willpower, but it serves as a

secondary attribute to a plethora of skills

- most notably Gunnery/Missile and

Spaceship Command skills.

One thing to always keep in mind is

that all ship piloting skills are based on

both Perception and Willpower.

Therefore having low Perception and/or

Willpower can slow you down if you

chose to ignore these attributes during

the character creation process. These

attributes will lower your overall time for

training for the more impressive mining

ships and eventually other combat ships

if you so choose to do so. In general, the

basic ships (frigates, cruisers, battleships,

etc) have a Perception primary, while the

Tech 2 or ‘Specialized Ships' (Heavy

Assault, Reconnaissance, etc) are based on

Willpower.

This gives a general idea of why the

attributes are of importance. High

Perception and Willpower don't help

miners very much and prove to be

counterproductive, as opposed to having

high Memory and Intelligence - and vice

versa for a combat pilot. Charisma is the

only negligible attribute. Even though it is

the primary for some skills, the secondary

attribute will vary among the other four -

meaning that a high secondary attribute

will likewise be your best bet to lower the

training time of these skills.

There's a specific class of skills devoted

to aiding you in your attribute

advancements and training time, and these

are called the "Learning" skills. There is a

basic skill and advanced skill for each

attribute as well as a skill simply titled

Learning, which will lower the overall

training time of any skill. These skills are

absolutely vital to progressing as quickly

as possible. Implants also exist, which are

‘plugged in' and become permanent

attachments, so to speak, to your character

that can only be removed when you're

killed or unplug them (they are destroyed

upon removal) - these implants likewise

boost your attributes. Several implants





also have been implemented that

influence many other factors of your

character, such as your damage with

turrets or missiles, how fast your ship

moves, and so on.

Calculating Your ActualAttributes and Training

Time

When it comes to skills it's all about

training time. That is, the amount of time

it will take you to train it from one level

to the next (there are five levels to every

skill). The rank of a skill ranges from one

to sixteen. Rank one takes the lowest

amount of time and sixteen the longest.

The majority of skills however only rank

between one and eight - those towards

the other end of the spectrum are very

specialized skills. I will also mention that

skills do train offline, making this a

much easier task than it would be

otherwise. So to determine how long a

skill will take to train, your exact

attribute must be determined. The

attribute shown in your character sheet is

actually a truncated number - not

rounded. So to determine your actual

attribute, the formula looks like this:

Base Attribute = Attribute if you had no

skills/implants affecting it

Basic Learning Level = Level of the

learning skill relevant to the attribute

Advanced Learning Level = Level of the

advanced skill relevant to the attribute

Implant = Self-explanatory

Learning Level = the actual Learning

skill

(Base Attribute + Basic Learning Level

+ Advanced Learning Level + Implant) *

(1+(Learning Level*0.02))

For instance, if my basic memory is 6

and I have instant recall 4 (the basic),

eidetic memory 2 (the advanced) and

learning 4, with a +1 implant - causing my

memory to appear as 13 - it would look

like this:

(6+4+2+1)*(1+(4*0.02)

Therefore, my actual memory attribute

calculates out to be 14.04 - this is quite a

deviation from the number being

presented.

Another example would be if my base

intelligence was 5 and I had all of my

skills to 5 with a +3 implant (appearing as

18):

(5+5+5+3)*(1+(5*0.02)

This calculates out to be 19.8.

The reason this calculates out to be a full

point deviation is due to the learning skill





influence. The skill essentially adds

unseen points to your attributes.

Now we can calculate training times of

skills with these attributes. This is

actually one of the easiest formulas to

calculate:

(Skill Points Needed - Current Skill

Points) / (Primary Attribute + (Secondary

Attribute /2))

So as you can see, the secondary

attribute only plays half the role of the

first. This is why the attribute allocation

is such a vital role in the creation

process.

So if we wanted to calculate the time it

would take to train Battleship to level 1

with 18 perception and willpower, it

would look like this:

(2000 - 0) / (18 + (18/2))

(2000)/(27)

So it would take 74 minutes, or 1 hour

and 14 minutes to complete the training.

Now let's put this all together in a final

example and use it to calculate the ‘true'

attributes of a pilot and the time it would

take that pilot to train Battleship to level

1 with no prior training.

Let's say this pilot's attribute skills are

4 with a +2 implant and a base of 8 for

the primary attribute and the attribute

skills for the secondary are 5 with a +2

implant, a base of 7 with the Learning

skill level 4.

Primary Attribute:

(8+4+4+2)*(1+(4*0.02))

(18)*(1.08)

19.44

Secondary Attribute

(7+5+5+2)*(1+(4*0.02)

(19)*(1.08)

20.52 Battleship with no time invested:

(2000-0) / (19.44 + (20.52/2))

2000 / 29.7

67.3 - this is always read as minutes.

This number will actually vary slightly

in-game as often times numbers are

rounded or randomly truncated, but the

deviation should be only slightly off (by a

minute or two), and not be figures that are

way out of the ballpark.





Choosing YourEve-Online Occupation

There are several professions available

in the vast universe of Eve-Online with

nearly endless combinations. But

everyone must start somewhere, so it's

wise to get an idea of what particularly

captures your interest and to read over

what it entails before committing

yourself early on. I'll cover a few basic

general profession categories and the

skills primarily associated with them.

Miner: This is just what it sounds like.

A ship is equipped with mining lasers

and flies into an asteroid belt mining ore.

This is a very profitable path to take. The

ore will need to be hauled back to a local

station once it's mined, and there are

several ways to go about it. The method

you will likely first have to utilize is

simply mining until your cargohold is

full, docking and transferring it into your

hangar, undocking and begin mining

again, then repeating this process. Once

enough money is acquired and you have

the skill, you can take advantage of

buying a hauler. You can then mine,

jettison your ore into a can, and then

simply haul a large amount of ore back to

the station yourself in your hauler. This

will improve your income by a bundle

and can be done quite safely in high

security systems. Mining in unsecured

(low-sec) systems can prove to be a

dangerous risk, but the ore that spawns in

such systems in quite valuable. More

details regarding this can be found in -

Skill Trees - The Miner and Anti-Miner.

Mission Runner: This profession is

likewise a very profitable one, but in many

different ways. First off, the ISK income is

decent and will continue to improve as

new and higher quality agents are

acquired. Also, as a direct affect of

running these missions, the pilot will

receive an increase in standings towards

the corporation being worked for.

Increasing your standings will likewise

unlock better agents, ultimately leading to

level 4 agents. The most profitable of all

the missions to run is combat - you will

receive a reward for completing this

mission as well as a bounty for all the

NPC pirates blown up. This of course

involves more risk - namely the potential

loss of your ship - but yields higher

rewards. More information on this

profession can be found in - Skill Trees -

The Mission Runner.

Pirate: Although not an official

profession per se, this is a venue available

if you so do choose it. Like any other

MMORPG, it has its ups and its downs.

The plus side is that you can make much

money killing other players and taking

their modules, but the downside is the loss





of security status and eventual loss of

access to Empire space (secure systems).

No particular set of skills can be

recommended here aside from anything

combat oriented. Attacking another

player always carries a certain risk

behind it, which is the thrill of the

profession and the curse at the same

time. More on PvP and pirate tactics can

be found in - Skill Trees - The Pirate.

Market Trader: Buying low and

selling high is what this is all about. This

is a great profession for someone with a

limited time frame or constantly needs to

leave the computer - buying an item or

multiple thereof in one region and

autopiloting while away to the

destination region, then selling and

working the market there. The use of

autopilot for this profession makes it

ideal for even overnight (or at least until

downtime) traveling. The downfall to

this profession is that you need to have

money to make money, and you may find

it easier to start as a miner and do trading

on the side - perhaps mining on the

weekends when you have free time and

doing trading during the week. This is a

great course to take since your first items

for sale could be the ore you've mined.

More regarding good methods of using

the market for profit can be found in -

Skill Trees - The Tradesman.

Character Creation

During the course of the character

creation, I'll help guide you towards the

decisions that will best aid you for what

you plan to do. Ultimately the

customization of attributes is still yours of

course - this is merely to give you the most

optimized skills available for the general

line of work you've decided on. I'll offer

guidance for each race.

Amarr: The Ni-Kunni are better suited

for the trade and mining fields. I'd suggest

a couple of points into intelligence and

willpower with one in memory. This will

round off the skills nicely. After that, I

suggest the Border Runners ancestry.

Now, it's up to you in regards to which

career path you prefer, but I would advise

the industry one. The skills acquired give a

very nice starting selection and the ones

you acquire from the business career line

are not as impressive and can be easily

trained in the meantime. I would then

suggest the Engineer line as it gives a very

hefty boost to your mining and refining

skills.

If you're aiming for a militaristic path, I

would suggest the Amarr bloodline. The

high base willpower offsets the fact that

it's a secondary attribute. I would then

advise you to put 3 points into perception

(as it's the primary you'll be using) and





two into memory after that. Now the next

choice is entirely up to you. The Liberal

Holders giving +3 Charisma and +1

Willpower is a nice, well-rounded choice

that will even out your attributes on the

whole. The Religious Reclaimers give a

+4 Willpower boost, which is a nice

boost for your secondary attribute

however. I would personally suggest the

Liberal Holders simply to round out your

attributes. Then I would suggest the

military line (since the other two are

trade and industry anyway). From here,

Soldier is a very good choice for soloing

as it gives a good boost to the skills that

you'll need to train to get better at the

hunting gig. The Special Forces gives

you a more general outline for a

group-oriented setup - skills such as

Energy Emission Systems and Remote

Armor Repair are designed to play a

support role.

Caldari: The Deteis are well-rounded

and can fill either role moderately. For an

ancestry, you can pick and choose

according to what you're specializing for.

Be sure to make use of the back button if

you feel you need to make changes to

your attributes to compliment your

choice of ancestry here. If going the

mining route, I would once again suggest

industry followed by prospector. This

gives your character the highest mining

and refining skills available to begin with

and it bumps up the skills that will allow

you to further fit an appropriate ship for

mining. If going the militaristic route,

choose the military once more followed by

your choice for either Soldier or Special

Forces. The soldier line is what I would

advise for a solo experience, and the

Special Forces for group-oriented play.

This is due to the fact that the Soldier line

is heavily involved in missile skills which

are the heart of the Caldari forces, and

having many missile skills available to

you at the get-go will help you deal more

damage as early as possible.

The Achura make slightly better soldiers

than the Civire do since they receive a nice

+2 to Perception and Willpower from the

Monk ancestry. Once again, choose

military and soldier as the career path as

these leads to the best solo experience and

all-around beneficial skills. The Civire can

lean both ways, but the +4 Memory boost

from the Entrepreneurs ancestry allows

them to be better suited for artisan work. If

going this route, choose industry and

prospector. Again this will give the highest

skill payout for mining and refining.

Gallente: The Intaki are best suited for

the mining and production profession. I

would still suggest placing a couple of

attribute points into perception and three

into intelligence; then choose Reborn as

your ancestry and this will give you the

best intelligence and memory as well as a

good basic willpower and perception





amount. I would suggest Engineer as the

career path for the highest mining and

refining skills - the prospector path gives

skills that orient towards being able to

tank and use drones and feels combat

oriented in the end.

Militarily, the Gallente Race handles it

a bit better than the Jin-Mei. I would

suggest putting two points into Memory

and 3 into Willpower. The Immigrants

ancestry is suggested for the bonus to

both perception and willpower here.

Then the Military career, followed by

either Solider (solo-minded players that

prefer the use of guns) or Special Forces

(drones are the primary focus of skills in

this set).

Minmatar: Vherokior are high in the

intelligence and memory attributes and

therefore I would suggest them for

mining and production. You want to

evenly disperse your attributes points in

intelligence (such as two here) and

memory (and 3 here) - however, I would

suggest putting 2 points into willpower -

making it 1 point in intelligence, 2 into

memory, and 2 into willpower. For

ancestry I would suggest Drifters for the

intelligence boost (which brings it even

with memory now if you're following my

advice) and a perception boost which is

an important attribute anyway. This

should bring you to a nice set of

attributes. Again I would choose industry

and prospector.

Militarily the Brutor are better suited. I

would suggest Slave Child as an ancestry

(sounds like a rough ancestry, yikes) due

to the +2 bonus to both Perception and

Willpower. Again choose the military

path, and then either Soldier (particularly

specializing in turrets) or Special Forces

(geared more towards speed and

encompasses missiles, drones, and other

aspects from the other races here). Both of

these paths are very nicely organized.

Personally, I would suggest the Special

Forces simply because it exposes you to

several available facets to give you a

general idea of how things work together

and will prove to be a good learning

experience.

If you create your character find you are

dissatisfied with the manner in which your

character is specialized or whatever the

case may be, then you can always

re-create your character. This can be a

good way for you to get a general idea of

what it's like to play one race and see if it

suits you or not, and if not, then create a

character of another race. Just note that

skills cannot be trained on more than one

character on one account.

At any rate, the next step in the creation

process is your avatar - we finally get to

good stuff after all that skill planning and

attribute placement. And finally, choosing

your character's name - also note that on





this screen is a list of the skills you'll

begin the game with. This ends the

character creation process!





Skill Trees

Before I begin going into a more

in-depth look at the skills required to

properly and more importantly fully

utilize the ships and abilities available to

you in the career path you've decided to

follow, I must first stress the learning

skills. These can't quite be stressed

enough. It does take some time to get

past these skills and this can seem a little

discouraging to anyone - most

particularly those looking to immediately

go out and shoot things; but given the

time training reduction these skills offer,

its well worth sacrificing some time to

complete. Also, you can switch skill

training here and there to help it go by a

bit quicker. Perhaps train the primary

skill you want overnight and then

learning skills during the day, or vice

versa. The versatility of the training

system allows you to be flexible when it

comes to training, so I'd certainly suggest

making as much use of it as possible to

help you achieve maximum performance

out of your character.

As far as the order in which you should

train your learning skills, I'd suggest you

train Memory, Learning, and then

Intelligence if you're taking a Memory

and Intelligence heavy route. If you're

taking a Perception and Willpower heavy

route, then I would suggest Learning,

Willpower, and Perception. This should

allow you to minimize the training time in

this skill set, which will in turn give you

more time to focus on the more important

things - like money and explosions.

There are a few basic skills that

everyone shares and in turn are very

important skills for every character in Eve

to possess. I strongly suggest each of these

skills be level V, and if not V, then

absolutely no less than level IV. These

skills are:

- Electronics: 5% bonus to CPU output

per level.

- Engineering: 5% bonus to powergrid

output per level. Shield Operation: 5%

reduction in shield recharge time.

- Shield Management: 5% bonus to

shield hit points per level.

- Mechanic: 5% bonus to structure hit

points per level.

- Hull Upgrades: 5% bonus to armor hit

points per level.

- Navigation: 5% bonus to velocity per

level. (Although the game words it in a

rather complex way.)

- Warp Drive Operation: 10%

reduction in capacitor needs to initiate a

warp.

- Spaceship Command: 2% bonus to

ship agility per level.





Now for the reason these need to be at

IV or V. The absolute, must-have-to-V

skills being the first two, Electronics and

Engineering - and it is rather obvious

why these two need to be high up there.

These two skills alone can dictate how

well you can fit your ship and essentially

how well you can perform in your

profession.

Next in line behind that would be

Navigation and Warp Drive Operation.

The faster your ship moves, the better off

you are in all scenarios. Whether you're

autopiloting a trade route run or quickly

taking evasive action in combat,

Navigation comes into play heavily.

Warp Drive Operation's main strongpoint

is that you can warp into battle and have

as much of your capacitor available as

possible. This can be a distinct advantage

that is often overlooked.

Shield Operation is necessary for

several ship modifications affecting the

shield (such as boosters) and the recharge

rate bonus is a plus to any profession.

This is coupled with Shield Management

and likewise affects it too. These two

skills are the meat of shield tanks

coupled with Tactical Shield

Manipulation (which is mentioned later

in this guide).

Mechanic and Hull Upgrades fall into

the same category as the shield skills and

are therefore the meat of armor tanks.

These two skills affect the modifications

available to the tanks (such as armor

hardeners) while serving their own

purposes at the same time.

Finally, Spaceship Command is the last

on the list. This skill is a requirement for

many of the larger ship skills and ships,

aiding tremendously in the agility of those

ships. This allows a standstill ship to

quickly turn and maneuver into position to

either speed in a certain direction or align

for a warp. So as you can see, this skill ties

in very nicely with the Navigation and

Warp Drive Operation skills.

The Miner andAnti-Miner

Mining is one of the easiest professions

to get hooked onto and for good reasons.

First of all, it requires minimal effort to

actually mine. Second of all, it's good

income. Now, to get a better idea of where

skill training should be, you should first

decide how you want to mine. I'll explain.

There's technically two ways in which you

can go about mining. One is to jettison a

cargo can and begin shoveling your ore

into it until it's full or you're done (do note

that jettisoned cans have a 1-hour life

span, so I would suggest naming the can

the current time; i.e. if you jettisoned it at





18.26, name it that) and then flying back

to your station and boarding a ship with a

larger cargo hold, and finally hauling the

ore back into the station. The other

method is to mine until your current ship

is full and simply making runs back in

forth between the belt and the station.

The latter of the two is what you'll likely

be restricted to while first starting off.

The first mentioned, however, requires a

few other skills and an industrial ship to

effectively and efficiently perform -

although other types of ships could

handle this, industrials are cheaper and

much better suited for the job.

Mining

The first thing you'll want to train, if it

isn't already there, is Mining to IV. This

will open up the skill Mining Upgrades,

Ice Harvesting, and in turn

Astrogeology (this will also require

Science level IV). Astrogeology will

likewise give you a 5% per level to your

mining yield. Ice Harvesting won't quite

come into play for a while and is mostly

used by larger corporations and alliances,

so if you're looking to operate

small-scale or alone, you won't need to

particularly worry about that one.

Mining Upgrades gives you access to

the Mining Laser Upgrade I

modification. This too increases your

mining yield, but at the drawback of an

increased CPU consumption by the mining

laser(s). So this will require some

tweaking to your ship in order to fully

optimize the income of ore and by

extension ISK. I would strongly advise

against taking off or deactivating a mining

laser on the ship for an upgrade, as that

one laser will rake in more ore than the

upgrade will give to the other(s).

As far as equipment is concerned, I'd

suggest purchasing Miner II mining lasers

whenever you can afford them, and use the

highest named Tech I miners you can

afford in the meantime. Also, I'll touch on

Strip Miners here and that they are very

powerful mining lasers, but need to be

used with a Mining Barge, which is

discussed below.

So what should you do with the ore?

Well, there are two options here as well.

The first being to simply sell the ore

you've mined; the second to refine that ore

into minerals and sell those. The latter of

these generally provides a larger amount

of ISK due to the fact that there's a much

larger demand for minerals. On top of this,

the minerals can be used for production -

so they serve multiple purposes. Due to

this, I'll cover the skills required to refine

those ores.

Industry to level I will be your first

objective. This is a base skill for





refinement skills and pushing it beyond

level I isn't necessary unless you're

looking to advance into the production

field as well or if you're looking to get

into a Mining Barge quicker (more in

barges below). After obtaining Industry

I, train Refining. You may want to stick

with this skill and push it straight to level

V in order to train Refinery Efficiency.

Both of these skills reduce the waste

factor when refining (2% and 4%,

respectively). Beyond this, you can

further train very specific refining skills.

For instance, you can train a skill named

Veldspar Processing. This skill

specifically reduces the waste factor

when processing veldspar ore. These

skills exist for all ore types currently in

the game.

For more information on the

ores/minerals and the marketplace,

please refer to - Ore Refinement Chart.

Now we come to the piloting part. At

first you'll be restricted to your starter

vessel, but can quickly upgrade to a

better frigate - that is, one with a better

CPU and powergrid output as well as a

higher quantity of turret hardpoints - and

from there you can either take the cruiser

route or aim directly for Mining Barges;

this skill requires you to have Industry to

V already, as I'd mentioned above, but

mining barges are much more suited for

doing massive mining operations. Most

corporations that focus on the Mining and

Production industries strongly advise and

even go so far as to require the members to

be up and running in these barges.

If you're looking to simply mine

short-term and move onto combat in the

future or if you're simply not looking to

invest a ton of time and effort into mining,

I would suggest purchasing a cruiser with

several hardpoints to hold you over. This

will give you a decent payload of ore

while still giving you the flexibility of

firepower.

Now, if you're heart-set on getting into a

mining barge and mass mining (which is

most commonly referred to as strip

mining; I will be referring to it as that

now) and pushing your refining and

mining skills to their maximum potential,

then I will give you a general idea of what

the ships look like as far as price and

fittings are concerned in order that you'll

be able to fully take advantage of your

investments.

In the below chart I've listed the mining

barges along with those statistics. Please

note that in the CPU and Powergrid cells

the first number indicates the base CPU

and Powergrid of the ship while the

second number indicates the CPU and

Power if your Electronics and Engineering

skills are at V. Below that I have the slot

allocations followed by the average price.

Please do note that the market in





Eve-Online is very dynamic and the

prices fluctuate from system to system

and region to region, so these numbers

can often fluctuate from one day to the

next - this is included just to give you a

general idea of how much you'll need in

order to purchase such a vessel.





Mining Barge Readouts

Barge Name: Procurer Retriever Covetor

CPU Readout 125 / 156.25 125 / 156.25 200 / 250

Powergrid Readout 35 / 43.75 35 / 43.75 35 / 43.75

Hi/Med/Low-Slots 1 / 1 / 2 2 / 1 / 2 3 / 1 / 2

Price 1.5M 7M 24M

Something worthy of mention here which may have you confused is that the mining

barges are designed to be used with those Strip Miners and therefore they have no turret

hardpoints - the number of hi-slots dictates the number of miners you can equip. So it's

simply an increase of one on each barge.

So as you can see, the Procurer and Retriever have a lot in common with one another. If

you happen to be in a mining corporation, often times they'll finance a Retriever for you -

so you may decide to look into a corporation if you're soloing it at the moment, as this can

be a good way to help you along and learn even more about larger scale operations. If you

are soloing and intend to continue to do so, then you may wish to wait on a Retriever -

especially so if your find are low and you need the money. If you have it to spend, then by

all means advance.





So once you achieve your Covetor, what's next? Well there just happens to be an even

bigger and better class of mining ships: Exhumers. The skill to fly these money-makers

(which is a skill that will set you back roughly 25M) has no pre-requisites that the mining

barge skill doesn't already fulfill.

Below is a chart of the Exhumer vessels in the same format as their predecessors.

Exhumer Readouts

Exhumer Name: Skiff Mackinaw Hulk

CPU Readout 188 / 235 188 / 235 300 / 375

Powergrid Readout 35 / 43.75 35 / 43.75 35 / 43.75

Hi/Med/Low-Slots 1 / 4 / 2 2 / 4 / 2 3 / 4 / 2

Price 11M 90M 500M





The Covetor is much better suited than

the lower tier Exhumers here unless

you're Ice Mining for a corporation. The

Hulk is the crème de la crème of the

mining world and makes the

excruciatingly long training time for

simply it worth it. For the medium slots

on these vessels, I'd certainly suggest

shield extenders, hardeners, a boosters,

etc. - anything that aids your shield that

you can use and afford.

I'll note drones in here since it's often

debated whether Mining Drones are

worth it or not. I say no they're not.

Mining Drones cause you to deviate from

the training path too far in my opinion

(including the other drone skills that

increase the mining yield of these

drones). And given the time investment

to payoff ratio, it simply works out

poorly. I would certainly suggest drones

for protection or if you can already use

mining drones, then pick up a few, but I

would strongly suggest steering clear if

you're not close to them already. Of

course, if you already have everything

else trained and satisfactory, then you

might as well head in this direction, of

course.

At this point, your knowledge of

mining and ship setup has grown quite a

bit from the days of your little starter

ship, so you should be a bit more familiar

with how to set up the barges - especially

since they're very straight forward. But I

will still mention that the mining laser

upgrade is a very helpful tool. For your

medium slot(s), you'll likely want to fit a

shield booster - the best you can use and

afford. With that said, your ship should be

optimized and raking in the ore.

Hauling

So you have the mining thing under

control, but you need to get those minerals

back to base. You'll start off with the

Industrial-class ship of the race you want

to fly. For instance, if you are Gallente,

you'll want to buy the Gallente Industrial

skill. There's a pre-requisite of level III of

the frigate of the race you've chosen

(Gallente frigate III in the above example).

So, if you're still with me, pick up that

skill and look under the Industrial Ships

tab in the ships section of the market and

locate a nearby hauler. Along with that, try

to pick up a few cheap cargohold

expanders - these will optimize the cargo

space available at the expense of velocity.

Each level you train of your Industrial

Ship will likewise increase the cargo room

you have.

There isn't a ton of advice that can be

offered for hauling aside from using the

Warp To 0km function. This will allow

you to move around much more quickly,





especially with expanders. Beyond the

basic Industrial Ships, two more class of

ships become available to you. Neither of

these are particularly useful to soloing

miners in general, though they can be to

those who are expanding horizons or are

working in unsafe space.

The first of these is the Transport

Ship - this skill likewise will require

Industry V. These particular ships are

designed as ‘blockade runners.' That is,

they're designed to be armored enough to

take a beating long enough to get out of

the system or away from a situation.

They all receive a bonus to their

defensive capabilities, and I strongly

would suggest catering to these bonuses

if you plan to be moving anything around

or through low-security systems. I'll also

note that a Warp Core Stabilizer can be

life-saving as well.

The second ship class would be

Freighter. This skill will require

Advanced Spaceship Command (a

45M skill) which increases the agility of

the monster ship. Freighters are generally

used by merchants and tradesmen to

move vast amounts of goods from station

to station. A common misconception

regarding freighters is that they can pick

up jettisoned cans - this is not true. As a

miner, you likely won't have a need for a

freighter unless in a large corporation

that supplies you with one or asks you to

haul for them.

The Anti-Miner

So what is the Anti-Miner, exactly? A

profession can be summed up as simply

this: a thief. This is far from what many

would consider an Anti-Miner (most

would think of a combat pilot), but this is

the most accurate counterpart in the game.

The main focus of this thief is not only

to steal the ore, but to rile the miner at the

same time. This often infuriates the miner

and can lead him or her into making rash

decisions and often times get him or

herself killed.

First off, let me state that this thieving is

normally done in an industrial ship for

maximum profit. Sometimes more

combat-oriented ships are used if the thief

is looking to personally kill the miner at

the same time (though this leads to

counter-production). I'll mention the latter

of these two, but unless I specify, then I'm

speaking of a thief in an industrial ship.

So how does one go about stealing?

Well, there are very sly tactics involved

that separate the good thieves from the

greedy masses. The most common mistake

made by those that are looking to steal the

ore is that they simply take it. This may

seem like the obvious choice, but it can be





reckless and foolish as well.

The proper way to do this is to jettison

your own can within 1500 meters of the

miner's can - and quickly name it the

same thing. Now open both and drag the

ore straight from his can into yours. The

miner often times will freak out

immediately knowing you're after the ore

and open the can thinking he can save it

quickly. The miner will then plop as

much ore as possible into his cargo hold,

thus flagging him as a criminal since it

was your can. This is a rather basic and

easily mastered tactic, but a very

effective one.

This tactic flags the miner to the thief

as well. So this means that the thief can

shoot that miner at will. This particularly

is of use to those that are looking to kill

the miners. I wouldn't particularly

suggest attempting to kill a miner as it

often turns out to be counter-productive.

Many times if you steal and then leave

the system for a few minutes (for 15

minutes or so I would say; or simply log

off for a few minutes) the miner begins

to feel safe again. This creates a good

moment of opportunity for the thief to

come back and re-steal from that miner.

Sometimes this system will work several

times for the thief. So killing the miner is

the least productive of the methods in

many cases.

Many thieves will attempt to incorporate

stealth tactics (with cloaking devices) and

I wouldn't suggest this either, as it often

doesn't work out too well and normally

requires too much effort for too little gain.

Also, cloaking devices can't be active

within so many KM of gates and barges,

so that defeats much of the purpose in

itself.

There are a few other methods, but due

to the high combat scenarios and skills -

and since they're not exclusive to miners -

I've just placed them under the Pirate

section.

This particular profession choice doesn't

require any specific skills aside from just

being able to fly an Industrial Ship or

being combat oriented enough to kill a

pirate, and for combat tactics please refer

to - Skill Trees - The Mission Runner for

skills, and - Skill Trees - The Pirate for

more information on combat in general.





The Craftsman

This is the occupation that puts those

minerals to use. There are a few main

skills that'll need to be completed first,

which are: Industry, Mechanic, and

Production Efficiency. Industry and

Mechanic are shared skills with other

professions, but Production Efficiency

happens to be craftsman specific. This

particular skill lowers the waste factor

when manufacturing an item (building it)

- which means it will require fewer

minerals or other products to construct.

There are five different skills associated

with building ships. These skills are:

Frigate / Cruiser / Industrial / Capital

Ship / Outpost Construction. Notice

there's no battleship construction skills.

The reason for this is due to the fact that

there are currently no Tech II battleships

in the game - the battleships are ranked

on a Tier system instead, and there are 3

Tiers in-game. The construction skills are

used for creating the Tech II variants. So

you would need Frigate Construction to a

particular level before building an

interceptor, for instance.

You'll also need Anchoring for the

high-end construction skills due to the

fact that these items must be built outside

a station in space itself. Mass

Production allows you to operate more

than one manufacturing assembly line at a

time, and is vital if producing several

items for a corporation, or in order to sell

then.

This profession ties in nicely with the

Tradesman and/or Scientist since you can

create your own items and sell them on the

market yourself without a middle man.

The most important skill to keep in mind

here is Production Efficiency since it plays

such a vital role in keeping your costs as

low as you possibly can - which is always

worth the time investment for any

profession.

The Scientist

As a Scientist, your goal is to obtain rare

blueprints as well as research those

blueprints and increase their market value.

Research and Development can only be

done on Blueprint Originals (or BPOs) and

not Blueprint Copies (or BPCs).

Inventions work just the opposite - an

invention can only be performed on

Blueprint Copies and not Blueprint

Originals.

The primary skills you'll need here are:

- Science: Blueprint copying speed

increased by 5% per level.





- Research: Reduces Manufacturing

Time research of a blueprint by 5% per

level.

- Metallurgy: Reduces Material

Efficiency research of a blueprint by 5%

per level.

- Advanced Laboratory Operation:

An additional +1 research job per level.

- Laboratory Operation: +1 research

job per level.

- Research Project Management: +1

Research and Development agent per

level.

- Scientific Networking: The ability to

run start remote research jobs. Level 1

allows within the same solar system,

level 2 within 5 jumps, 3 and 4 both

double up, and level 5 allows for

anywhere within the region.

Metallurgy is a very important skill to

raise in order to lower the overall item

requirements (Material Efficiency or ME

is the label placed on a blueprint) and

increasing the blueprint's ME to 30 or so

yields roughly 100% possible cut-down

if the manufacturer (such as yourself) has

Production Efficiency to 5. It's important

to keep that in mind so that you don't

waste any unnecessary time pushing it up

to 100 or so. This way you can research

more blueprints in the meantime.

Research is a very important skill to have

to lower the time it will actually take to

manufacture the item - this is absolutely

vital to larger items, such as battleships or

capital ships.

Laboratory Operation is obviously of

essence since it allows you to actually use

the labs themselves. So this is an

important skill to get to level III at least if

you plan to work on many Blueprints

Scientific Networking isn't particularly

vital to the success of anything in itself. If

there are no laboratory slots of the type

you need or want in the system where your

blueprints are and you're busy in another

system, then this skill is great for allowing

you to essentially be in two places at once.

There are several other skills tied in with

the scientist along with this Research

agent - more information regarding these

agents can be found in Chapter 6.

The Mission Runner

The mission runner is one who is geared

towards running combat missions again

and again for an NPC corporation (usually

the Navy of the race of their choice).

Several skills will be involved in this

profession, not only in combat but also in

social.

First off, if you're unaware of how the

agent system works, please refer to





Chapter 6, Section 1for more information

- including information on the social

skills. This way you'll be able to get into

those level 3 missions quickly and begin

earning chunks of ISK.

After reading that and understanding a

little better how that works, I'll not be

mentioning social skills in general again.

From here out I'll focus more on the

skills you'll need to fly a combat ship and

the skills associated with properly fitting

it.

As I'd mentioned towards the

beginning of this guide, there are two

types of tanks in this game: the armor

tank and the shield tank. I suggest you

first determine what it is you plan to fly

and what type of tanking it's best suited

for. Generally whichever between those

two has better resistances is the type of

tanking you'll want to do. Again, I made

mention in the beginning regarding

which race's ships were best suited for

what. There are of course some

exceptions to this, but you should have

no trouble spotting the proper tanking

method.

The Shield Tank

Your Shield Operation skill should

already be V. If it isn't then I would advise

doing that first. Next you'll want to train

Tactical Shield Manipulation to level III

or IV. This particular skill is good for both

shield tanks and armor tanks due to the

fact that it lowers the likelihood of damage

leaking through into the armor when the

shields are low. And finally you'll want to

train Shield Upgrades to III or IV. IV is

best since it'll give you access to the Tech

II shield hardeners. One skill that can be

noted here is Shield Compensation which

lowers the capacitor need to use a shield

booster by 2% per level - but you shouldn't

waste too much time training this unless

you plan to take it straight to V, since the

bonus is barely noticeable.

Use the highest shield booster you can

afford (preferably a Tech II version) at all

times. For instance, if you're in a frigate I

would suggest a Small Shield Booster II; a

cruiser would use a Medium Shield

Booster II; but If you're in a battleship (a

Raven most commonly) then you should

be using an X-Large Shield Booster II - If

the X-Large eats up too much

Powergrid/CPU then you can fall back

onto a Large Shield Booster II. This

should be Medium Slot 1 (if it's always

slot 1, then you'll instinctively click there

or use your keyboard shortcut).





Next you'll want to use your hardeners.

There are two types of hardeners: passive

and active. I would strongly suggest

using the active hardeners as they give a

much larger bonus to resistance than the

passive ones. However, the passive ones

require no capacitor to use and work

better for those who have capacitor

issues. The passive hardeners can be

made stronger however with four skills:

EM / Explosive / Kinetic / Thermal

Shield Compensation. These skills

increase the amount the passive hardener

protects against.

The number of hardeners you want to

use is dependant on your weaknesses and

what exactly you're fighting. Since you'll

be running missions, I would recommend

using 2 hardeners. Most NPC pirates do

primarily two damage types, so it works

out well (to see the types of damage done

by pirates, please refer to - Combat

Breakdown - NPC Pirates). If you only

have room for one, then either a Tech II

hardener to defend against either the

strongest type done or to compensate for

a lack of resistance against the secondary

type done, depending on your ships

resistances. An example would be if

you're fighting the Angel Cartel (which

do Explosive and Kinetic damage

primarily) in a Thorax with 60%

explosive resistance and 40% kinetic

resistance and you opt to only equip 1

hardener - equip kinetic since it's the

lowest.

The other option is to equip an

Invulnerability Field and use it to increase

two resistances at once, although not by

near as much as an active hardener would.

Mostly an Invulnerability Field is used

when the pilot is fighting pirates that do

more than two types of damage or to cover

all bases if the damage type(s) of the

target(s) is unknown.

There have been different setups

regarding different methods in which to

make the shield more versatile towards the

vast majority of damage which has been

oriented towards either recharging a vast

amount of shields passively or by healing -

that is, boosting - a vast portion of the

shields in a short burst. Both of these

methods are more flawed than simply

increasing the resistance of the shields.

The recharge rate of a shield can become

overpowered by the influx of damage.

Therefore without proper resistance and

boosting towards the shield, the damage

will normally override it. This is

predominantly true in situations where a

large number of ships are firing at you.

This causes a steady flow of damage that

can become overwhelming quickly.

The burst "healing" method (which is

composed primarily of one or two boosters

and several boost amplifiers) has obvious

capacitor flaws. The shields can become

worn by influxes of damage in a manner





much like the aforementioned except

now the shields are at the mercy of the

capactor and its ability to keep up with

the damage being dealt to the shield

system.

Finally, if you have the room, shield

extenders. Having even more hit points

to work with on top of the high

resistances will allow you even more

alleviation. I would recommend Tech II

extenders to anyone that wants to get the

most out of it.

The best method in which you can

keep your shields well-guarded is to have

your resistances as high as you can

possibly push them without crippling

yourself in the process. Many times the

best offense is a good defense, and high

resistances are a great defense.

The Armor Tank

The armor tank has fewer skills to take

care of, but shares one in common with

the shield tank:Tactical Shield

Manipulation. Refer to the previous

section for a quick idea of why it's so

useful. The other two primary skills

you'll want to have are Mechanic and

Hull Upgrades - which I recommended

to be level V anyway.

These skills combined give you a great

starting point for some good tanking.

Armor tanking has the same options

available as shield tanking; both passive

and active possibilities exist. So if you're

looking to active tank, you'll have all the

skills necessary to properly do so. If you

want to passive tank, you'll want the EM /

Explosive / Kinetic / Thermic Armor

Compensation skills. These will increase

the resistance amount per level of the

passive hardeners.

In slot one you'll want to put an armor

repairer - preferably a Tech II version. In

some instances you may want to use two

armor repairers due to the duration the

repairers last. You can play this by ear and

fear up accordingly, especially if your

repair skill isn't quite to V yet. In the next

two slots you'll want to be active hardeners

- if you only have room for one, then

either the one that compensates for your

lowest resistance or one that counters the

damage type the pirates you'll be faicing

will be dealing; or you can fit an

Energized Adaptive Nanoplate to add

resistance to all types - the compensation

skill will affect this item as well.

The next option you have available if

you have the room would be Armor

Plating. These add armor hit points to your

ship at the cost of a heavier - less agile -

ship. This can give you more time react

and give your armor repairer more time to





respond. If you opted for two repairers,

you may want to try a set of Armor

Plates and one Repairer - this is a player

preference rather than superior fitting, so

don't stress over which is better.

Gunnery Skills

Gunnery and Weapon Upgrades

should be IV or V as quickly as possible

for many of the following skills are

based on them and they help quite a bit

for every race. Following those two you

should train Sharpshooter for an

increase to your optimal range, Rapid

Firing for a better rate of fire, Surgical

Strike for a damage increase, Motion

Prediction for a tracking speed increase

(for faster moving targets), Trajectory

Analysis for a better fall off range, and

Controlled Bursts so that turrets require

less cap (Amarr need this the most;

Minmatar the least). This is a good order

to train them in as well unless you're

Amarr, then you'll want to train

Controlled Bursts sooner to aid in your

cap deficiencies. For a better idea of how

all of these tie in together, please refer to

Chapter 5, Section 1.

You'll want support skills along with

these particular skills, which are: Long

Range Targeting, Signature Analysis,

and Targeting. These allow you to target

further, faster, and more people.

Advanced Weapon Upgrades helps

with the powergrid consumption of turrets

which helps tremendously with Tech II

weaponry. Train this when you can afford

it since it will give you more powergrid to

fit in more advanced modifications.

I certainly advise training the above

skills to II or III for the best damage and

overall versatility. These skills will also

begin to open up the more in-depth skills -

the specializations.

When you're starting out and doing your

level one missions in your frigate or other

small ship, you'll obviously start with your

small skills. You have an option here of

either working towards larger guns for a

larger ship or specializing in the smaller

guns. At first I would recommend aiming

for the larger guns since you'll want to be

in level 2 missions quickly and a cruiser

will help you handle that much better.

You'll still want to equip a small gun or

two for the level 2 missions due to the fact

that you'll be facing many frigates and the

smaller guns have a much easier time

tracking those targets.

If you do opt for the smaller guns, then

you'll want to train the Small

Specialization skill for the type of gun

you want to specialize in. This will allow

you to do more damage of course, but the

Tech II guns are often expensive and a

heavy investment. Also, if you're still





inexperienced on the battlefield, you'll

risk losing that investment quickly. So

you'll want to make sure you're

comfortable with the risks compared to

your investments.

After choosing your gunnery path,

everything begins to fall into place after

that. If you aim for larger guns, train any

tracking speed and damage modification

skills you need to in order to help you get

more out of them. If you stick with the

smaller guns, mostly focus towards

damage and the rate of fire to get more

bangs for the buck.

If you open the market and look under

Weapon Upgrades, you can find tracking

computers and more to better aid your

guns in taking down your targets more

efficiently. Most of these are based on

the previously mentioned skills, so you'll

be set.

Gyrostabilizers are for projectile

turrets; Heatsinks are for lasers;

Magnetic Field Stabilizers for hybrids.

The Tracking Computers are low slots

items that increase your range and

tracking speed by a decent amount -

acquire the highest one you can use and

afford. This helps larger guns hit smaller

target more effectively - especially so

when coupled with Tracking Enhancers.

The enhancers being a medium slow

active item (meaning you have to turn it

on and off) that functions like the

aforementioned low-set counterpart. These

will help your larger guns keep track of

and hit smaller targets from a better range.

Ammunition-wise, you'll want to switch

out according to whichever situation you'll

most likely be facing. If you know you'll

be far away from your target, be sure to

load in long range ammo; if you'll be

close, then short-range. And if you're

unaware of the distance - such as in a PvP

environment - come loaded with

mid-range ammo. But most importantly,

bring all ranges with you - especially if

unaware of distance. This way you'll have

every spectrum covered and be properly

prepared for all situations.

Missile Skills

Like the Gunnery Section above, you'll

need Gunnery and Weapon Upgrades

(for the Ballistic Control unit) to IV,

preferably V. Advanced Weapon

Upgrades lowers the powergrid usage of

missiles as well. You'll also want the

support skills I mentioned above, which

are: Long Range Targeting, Signature

Analysis, and Targeting.

Missile Launcher Operation should be

IV or V. Then train Rapid Launch to III

or IV (eventually V of course), Target

Navigation Prediction for a better hit

from all missiles, Missile Bombardment





for a flight time bonus, Missile

Projection for higher missile velocity,

and finally Guided Missile Precision

(earlier if you trained Missile Launcher

Operation to V already) so that larger

missiles can hit smaller targets. For a

better idea of how these skills work and

tie in together, please refer to Chapter 5,

Section 2.

Let me start off by saying: ignore FoF

missiles. These missiles are often useless

and do little damage. They're designed to

be the countermeasure of jamming, so

that missile users can still fight back,

even when they haven't a target, but the

missiles rarely do what they're supposed

to, and it's much easier to either warp out

if possible or move out of jamming

range. And normally by the time you

switch out to FoF, you're either dead or

the jam wore off and you could be

launching normal missiles.

I also would not suggest training

defender missiles for any reason. Since

you're a missile user, the defender

missiles are incredibly

counter-productive as they'll often target

what you've fired and head off that way.

If you intend to mix turrets and missiles

then you can switch out the missiles

you'd normally use and load in defenders

if you're tackling missile-heavy targets

(such as Ravens and Caracals).

Otherwise they are a waste of time.

Standard Missiles are a good start and

hit frigates and cruisers alike for a decent

amount, so I would certainly suggest

training standard missiles to level IV.

Then it's wise to begin training Heavy

Missiles to II or II - but if you're going to

aim for a specialization, Heavy Missile

Specialization is definitely the route I

would suggest. With the increase from the

other precision skills and the Tech II

precision heavy missiles, these harder

hitting missiles hold their own on the

battlefield and make the effort to acquire

them more than worth it. The Tech II

launchers likewise have a much higher

rate of fire and on a ship that likewise

increases the rate of fire, they're downright

deadly.

As progress into a larger ship, I would

recommend working towards Cruise

Missile Specialization since these serve a

better purpose than Torpedoes do for

missions. I would only suggest Torpedoes

if you're specifically training to become a

Capital Ship pilot shortly.

The only missile modification in the

game at the moment is the Ballistic

Control Unit (low slot item) which

increases the damage and rate of fire of

missiles. I suggest using a Tech II version

when possible to give your missiles an

even bigger bite.





Drone Skills

First off let me warn you to not train

Advanced Drone interfacing as this

skill does not give you the +1 drone

bonus as it suggests - this skill is

designed for use with the drone control

modules for Carrier Capital Ships. If

you're going down the Carrier route, then

do train it, but if you're looking to

advance your skills for missions and PvP

purposes, then steer clear of this money

and time sink.

Fighters fall into that same category,

as they are designed to be used with that

carrier. The pre-requisites of which are:

Drones V, Leadership V, and Drone

interfacing V. These drones are quite

expensive, tolling in at about 20m per

unit.

Drones should be IV or V at least -

this is because many of the support drone

skills, such as Sharpshooting, require you

to have Drones to level IV or V in order

to train them. Scout Drone Operation

will give you access to the drones

themselves and I'd strongly suggest

taking this to IV quickly, and soon

thereafter V; the reason being that this

skill increases the range at which you can

control your drones. Two other rank 1

skills you'll want to train up to II or IV

quickly are: Drone Navigation and

Drone Sharpshooting. Navigation will

allow your drones to move to the target

quicker and orbit at a greater velocity;

Sharpshooting gives them a better range to

begin firing from.

For Rank 2 skills, you'll want to get

Combat Drone Operation, which

increases the damage of your light and

medium drones by 5% per level. The other

Rank 2 skill is Mining Drones which I

don't recommend unless you're going into

mining or mine on the side. Likely you'll

want to keep focusing on the combat

drones over these for defense purposes

while mining, however.

Next in line is Drone Interfacing - it's a

Rank 5, but increases the damage and

mining yield of your drones by 20% per

level. Training this to at least II or III is

definitely a good move at this point -

maybe even IV if you're looking to go

ahead and boost your damage up as high

as you can.

Now, if you're in a bigger ship and

taking on larger targets (cruisers,

battlecruisers, and battleships), then

Heavy Drone Operation is the way to go.

This skill gives you access the bigger

drones that are much better suited for high

damage against ships with a larger

signature radius - think of them as larger

turrets. There are ways to aid them in

hitting smaller targets, which I've

mentioned below.





If you're looking to optimize damage

against smaller and medium-sized

targets, I would recommend going for the

Amarr / Caldari / Gallente /

Minamatar Drone Specialization skills.

This will give you access to the Tech II

version of the Light and Medium drones.

These specialized versions are much

more expensive (Lights run roughly

150K-250K; Mediums 1M-1.5M) but

tote a bigger payload and better

all-around stats. So if you're running

missions in a Myrmidon or even a

Dominix, then you can launch out

several of these and get some very nice

bonuses and damage stacked up.

Electronic Warfare Drones are not that

effective for mission running, so I'd shy

away from that. If you're looking to get

into some PvP sometime, then you'll

need to train up your Electronic Warfare

skill beforehand. Likewise, Sentry

Drones won't be too helpful in Missions

at this point.

Logistics Drones aren't worth training

either, unless you're with someone else

who is taking most of the damage. But

the drones will not work on you, only on

your target, so they're really not worth

deviating for if you're solo.

To even further your drones versatility

and efficiency, there are few upgrades

available. The first of which is the Drone

Link Augmentor which increases the

range at which you can control your

drones by 20km. The next is the Drone

Navigation Computer I which increases

the microwarp drive (mwd) speed of the

drones. And finally the Omnidirectional

Tracking Link which increases the

tracking speed and range of your drones

(much like the tracking computers for your

gunnery skills).

The Drone Control Unit 1 is designed to

be used with the Carrier Capital Ship for

the purpose of controlling more and more

drones since they are the primary offense

and defense of that ship class.

Support Mod Skills

When doing these missions, the defense

and offense basics are obviously of

primary importance, but being able to fit

these modifications and allow more

versatility within whatever ship you decide

to pilot is key. Even though many ships

have the room to fit some of the better

modifications, the actual mods themselves

may require more than Powergrid and

CPU than your ship can handle.

Engineering and Electronics V are the two

main skills that will help you overcome

this in the best way.

Aside from those, the Weapon

Upgrades and Advanced Weapon

Upgrades skills lower the needs of your





turrets and launchers (only Advanced

affects launchers however). The

Electronics Upgrades skill allows you

to fit CPU-altering modifications (such

as the C-Processor I and II) that further

increase the capacity of the CPU to give

you a wider-range of possibilities. The

Energy Grid Upgrades skill allows you

to likewise fit Powergrid modifications

(such as the Power Diagnostic System I

and II) that affect not only the Powergrid

but several aspects of your ship (such as

your shield recharge rate). I strongly

recommend investing in the Power

Diagnostic Systems and Co-Processors

(both low-slot items) since they'll give

you much more to work with.

Cap Rechargers and Shield

Rechargersreligiously for hardening.

(mid-slot modifications) are decent

modifications, but I wouldn't recommend

the shield one over a hardener unless you

simply don't have the CPU/PG to fit it.

The Cap Rechargers are a good aid to

armor tanks and help them keep the cap

in the green while hardening and

repairing -this is less true for shield tanks

since they use the mid-slots religiously

for hardening.

There are items such as Flux Coils and

Power Relays, but I don't recommend

investing in these items unless you're just

toying around with setups. If you're fairly

new and looking to better equip a ship

that you don't have much experience with,

then there's no reason to invest in these

items. In general, they pale in comparison

to the other modifications available for use

and only waste space.

Energy Vampires (Hi-slot; requiring

the Energy Emission Systems skill) are

amazing modifications that drain the

capacitor of your target and transfer it to

you. As a kicker, there's no activation cost

to these items. So if you have an open

Hi-slot or two, I certainly recommend

these items. Do note that if an NPC target

is drained entirely of cap, you'll receive

nothing when it's being used on it and the

NPC will function as normal (NPCs do not

use any cap, believe it or not).

Energy Neutralizers (same slot and

skill as the vampires) simply take away

energy from your target - but also that

amount from you. These take away a lot

more energy than a vampire, but since it

affects you as well, it's quite useless for

missions. It's not bad for PvP per se, but I

believe you'd find the vampires a much

more beneficial item. These are the core

support modifications that help you get the

most out of your ship and equip you in the

most combat-ready manner possible. As

your knowledge of your ship grows and

you find a play style that you personally

like, then you'll likely find other mods that

suit you and your style. But when you're

just digging your claws in and trying to get





your ship in tip-top shape, these

modifications will be a great start - many

of them you'll never want to be without

(such as the Power Diagnostic System)

with certain setups.

The Pirate

A miner's worst nightmare is the

asteroid belt pirate. A miner warps in to

set up a mining operation and before s/he

can react, the pirate has the miner locked,

scrambled, and the bullets/missiles start

flying.

So how does a pirate go about setting

up a merciless ship? Well, there are a

couple of setups available. First we'll

take a look at a solo, straight-combat

pirate that focuses on gunnery and/or

missiles.

Many of these skills are related to the

above mentioned sections regarding the

Support Skills, Gunnery, Missiles,

Drones, and Modifications, with a few

exceptions and skill suggestions for other

modules. The most touched on skill in

this section will be Electronic Warfare

which should be level III or IV.

So you have your guns/missiles and

modifications set up ready to shoot, but

there's a bit more to it than simply

locking and firing. A lot of Electronic

Warfare comes into play in PvP. The

primary thing you'll always want to try to

keep equipped is a Warp Disrupter or

Warp Scrambler (both of which require

Propulsion Jamming I) - the difference

in the two being the range/activation

cost/fitting costs and strength. The

Disrupter has greater range but requires

more to operate, while the Scrambler has a

shorter range but is a stronger variant

(Disrupter has a strength of 1, Scrambler

of 2 - alls hips have a baase strength of 1).

I would recommend the Scrambler since it

has a higher probability of keep a target

from running, but the Disrupter does have

the range advantage (20km on a Disrupter,

7.5km on a Scrambler) - so it's a matter of

how far away you plan to be from your

target.

The manner in which a Warp Jam can be

countered is with a Warp Core Stabilizer

(or WCS for short). This increases the

warp engine strength of your ship by 1. So

this does not get you out of the 2 strength

range of the Scrambler, but it will of the

Disrupter. The downfall of this module is

that it limits your targeting range and scan

resolution (how fast you target). It's often

wise to equip one as a pirate, just in case

you jump the wrong person or if backup

arrives.

Gunnery/Missiles coupled with just a

warp jam module is one of the best setups





you can aim for here. The other primary

type of combat angle you can take is a

sniping one. This is composed of you

warping in as far as possible from your

target and lining up for a long-range,

quick-hit assassination. The best way to

go about this is to obviously use the

longest-ranged ammo you can. And for a

setup, you'll be omitting defense and

substituting nothing but offense.

For a Turret ship (such as the

Apocalypse), you'll want to fit your

mid-slots with tracking enhancers/sensor

boosters only - as many as you can. For

the low-slots, a couple of signal

amplifiers and damage enhancers. You'll

want Tech II variants if you can use them

of course.

For a Missile boat (such as the Raven),

you have no medium slot help except for

sensor boosters. For the low slots,

nothing but ballistic control units - and

again, nothing but Tech II if you can.

Cruise missiles work best for this over

torpedoes.

Now for an Electronic Warfare minded

player (likely you'll want to work your

way into a Reconnaissance Cruiser in the

end) there are several different modules

available to frustrate your enemy.

Aside from those two jamming

modules, Electronic

Counter-Measures, or ECMs, provide

additional jamming. These jammers

affect the targeting of your target. That is,

it causes your target to lose his or her

target. There are 5 jammers at the moment,

which are: Gravimetric, Ladar,

Magnetometric, Radar, and Multispectral.

The race sensor breakdown is this:

Minmatar - Ladar

Caldari - Gravimetric

Gallente - Magnetometric

Amarr - Radar

All - Multispectral

The ECM jammers have a strength

bonus against a specific race - for instance,

the Ladar Jammers will have a higher

strength against Ladar (Minmatar ships)

than the other ships. Multispectral

Jammers have an average strength against

all ships and work well when fighting

multiple people and you need jam those

multiple race ships.

To counteract the ECM modules, there

are ECCMs - Electronic Counter-Counter

Measures. These low-slot items increase

the sensor strength of a ship by a certain

overall percentage. This obviously gives a

bigger bonus to ships that have a higher

base resistance.

ECM Bursts aren't even worth looking at

really. They don't do much to help and

often only end up affecting your drones

and messing them up. So I'd recommend

not equipping these for any PvP warfare.





If you're facing a relatively fast ship

(such as an Interceptor) then you'll want

to have a Stasis Webifier equipped

(often referred to as a "Webber"). This

item slows the target by a rather high

percentage (75% or more, depending on

the variation) and allows your guns to

track and your missiles to hit it for a

much better payout. These will only

require the Propulsion Jamming skill

mentioned above.

With the Sensor Linking skill, you

can use Sensor Dampeners which will

lower the targeting range and speed of

your target. These are a bit more useful

than jammers sometimes and many solo

pirates will prefer them. These items will

help the pirate slow the target's targeting

speed enough to get the advantage of

drawing first blood. The skill will need to

be level IV for Sensor Dampener II

modules.

Weapon Disruption allows you to use

Tracking Disrupters which are the

anti-tracking links. They cause the

target's turrets to take a hard tracking hit,

and often work best with faster ships,

making even smaller, more adept turrets,

have a difficult time of keeping up. If

you train the skill to IV, you'll gain

access to Turret Destabilization which

further increases the range and strength

of the Turret Disruptors.

For more information on how Electronic

Warfare works, please refer to Chapter 5,

Section 4.

The final setup is one designed around a

very interesting concept. This particular

one centers on the idea of taking out entire

mining operations. This could be

considered an Anti-Miner approach, but

with little interest in gaining the ore -

you're after the miner's mods! Why?

Because when there are mining operations,

many members come with named items

and Tech II items. Many cargohold

expanders sell for quite a bit of money

(10-20m). So multiply a couple of those

times four or five possible targets, and you

begin seeing some cash.

For this plan to reach fruitation, you'll

need a big ship - a battlecruiser will work,

but a battleship is much better. For the

hi-slots, fit as many Large Smartbombs as

possible - these will require the Energy

Pulse Weapons skill. If your Electronics

and Engineering skills are maxed and you

can fit Power Diagnostic Systems, then

you shouldn't have much, if any, trouble

fitting 8 on a battleship. For the medium

slots, I'd suggest fitting a Cap Recharger I

in every slot. Smartbombs have a tendency

to eat through the capacitor, so being able

to keep up will be

quite helpful in taking down stubborn

targets.





As far as which ones to equip, I'd

recommend equipping one of each

damage type and then for each slot you

have above 4, cycle through again. The

priority of damage types past four should

be: Thermal, Explosive, Kinetic, and

EM. This may seem a little odd, but since

you can equip at least four, the spectrum

is covered this way and the EM should

be activated first. This means that the

need for a second EM is a bit low, seeing

as how it's primarily a shield killer.

Kinetic is the most common damage type

and most every ship has a general

resistance to it, so it's more of a standby.

Explosive is the armor killer here - the

EM has already eaten away the shield

from the first wave or two, and now the

extra explosive damage is ripping apart

the armor. Finally and most importantly,

Thermal is a strong damage to most any

ship and between it and an explosive (if

you can fit an extra of both), they should

drop like flies. Of course, if you have and

can equip 8 smartbombs, then simply

equip 2 of each to better negate

resistance issues.

Once you're equipped and prepared to

tackle your targets, you must first find

those targets. If you're solo, hop into a

shuttle, then warp is as normal and try to

locate the Cargo Container they're

shoveling the ore into. Many times there

will be more than one if there are more

than a handful of miners. You'll want to

aim for the one with the mining barges

around it - due to the fact that the

smartbombs have a 5km radius and the

miners need to be within 1.5km of the can

to shovel into it. If you can spot a Hulk or

two around one can, that's pay dirt. Right

click and bookmark that location. Do this

as fast as you possibly can to keep the

miners from paying much attention to you.

Now, dock and switch over to your

smartbomb ship and warp into that

bookmark at 0km.

Immediately upon entering the mining

site, unleash your smartbombs. Stagger the

bombs by about 1 second apart - that is,

activate the first one, wait a second and

activate the second, and repeat that for

each one. That way you're doing a rather

steady amount constantly. Before the

miner can react, you should have the

majority of their forces (hopefully their

barges) shot down and the rest should have

scattered already and likely won't be back.

Now it's just a matter of collecting that

beautiful new loot.

If you have a friend, there are a few

possibilities and avenues that open up.

You can have your friend warp into the

belt in a frigate (Tech I and equipped for

speed) and be poorly equipped. Have him

approach a barge or your target of

preference and as he approaches, have him

target it and begin to orbit as close as

possible (default closest is 500m, which





works fine). Now have him begin to

attack the target and as soon as he does,

warp to 0km on top of him (your friend).

This will give them this idea that a small

frigate has come to mess with them and

they'll likely give it little thought. Then

suddenly you appear and smartbomb the

entire location into oblivion. The best

thing about this is that likely the

defenders (if they have any) will

approach the frigate, which means they'll

likely fall right into the smartbomb

radius.

You can also try to set this up in a very

sneak fashion. Have your friend warp in

cloaked (covert ops or recon vessel) and

get as close as he can before the stealth

breaks (can only be within 5km of a

mining barge cloaked). Then speed

towards the barge and you warp in. This

will require a bit of finesse coupled with

timing and practice. But once you get the

rhythm of it, you'll be set. The sheer

speed at which everything will unfold

works incredibly well. By the time the

miners realize there's a ship there, you're

already on your way - their focus is on

your buddy, so you have the perfect

element of a double surprise.

In both of the above scenarios, make

sure your buddy gets out of there fast.

Just as you are warping in, have him

warp out. If you don't, he's going to be

caught up in your smartbombing, and

lose his ship and modules. That isn't so

bad in the first scenario, since it'll be a

Tech 1 frigate with likely a basic MWD

(High Speed Maneuvering skill required

for MWDs, which requires Navigation

and Afterburner IV) or an Afterburner

(Afterburner skill required; Navigation I

is the only pre-requisite) and/or Overdrive

Injectors. So your buddy wouldn't lose

much if he couldn't bail in time. And

whatever he did lose would easily be

replaced quite a few times over with the

mods you'll score from the tactical assault.

If you manage to take out a Hulk or two

or three, you've really smacked a

corporation in the face. You've taken down

somewhere between 500m to 1.5B in just

a few seconds with a setup that likely

costed no more than 125M. And that's just

for the Hulks themselves - imagine the

module costs - modules that you should

now have!





The Tradesman

Forsaking a risky life of guns and

glory, the tradesman prefers to risk his

wallet on a marketing venture. The

primary skills you'll want here is

Navigation oriented skills. So have

Navigation, Warp Drive Operation,

and Spaceship Command to V. You

may also want to invest in Evasive

Maneuvering for the sake of increase

ship agility.

Aside from those, you'll want to

obviously invest your skill points heavily

into Trade. The first of which is, well,

Trade (which increases the number of

active market orders you can handle by 4

per level). At level II you can train

Retail which increases the number of

active orders by 8 per level. Trade II also

opens up Marketing. This skill allows

you to place orders onto the market

remotely - level I allows for the same

solar system, II for within 5 jumps, and

each level beyond doubles, up to the

entire region at level V. If you train

Trade and Marketing to II and Retail to

V, you can then train Wholesale which

further increases your active orders by 16

per level.

With Trade II and Marketing II, you

can train Procurement which allows you

to place remote buy orders. Level I for

the same solar system, II for within 5

jumps, each level beyond doubles, and at

level V it's the entire region. If you train

Procurement to IV, you can then train

Visibility which can be a very confusing

skill. This skill allows your remote buy

orders (placed with the Procurement skill)

to be seen at a greater range. For instance,

if you have Procurement to level II and

you place an order 5 jumps away in a

station, the item(s) you're buying can only

be sold to you in that station. So Visibility

allows you to expand your buying range.

At level I they can sell to you within the

same solar system, at II within 5 jumps,

doubling up at III and IV, and finally the

entire region. This is different from sitting

in a station and setting a buy order up at

that station, since you can set the range

within that station. This skill only affects

the remote buy orders placed with the

procurement skill.

If you push Wholesale and Retail to V

along with Marketing to IV, you'll gain

access to Tycoon which increases the

number of active orders by an impressive

32 per level.

You can also train Broker Relations

with Trade being at level II. This skill

lowers the cost associated with placing a

sell order by 5%; the cost normally comes

to 1% of the total value of the order. The

cost is also externally influenced by your

personal standings with the station in





which you place the order.

Trade IV will allow you to train

Daytrading which allows you to modify

orders when you're not at the same

station that you created the order in. The

first level allows modifications in the

same solar system, the second level is 5

jumps, every level beyond that doubles

it, and at level V you can modify

anywhere in the region it's placed. You

can also train Accounting at this point -

this skill lowers all transaction tax by

10% per level.

With Accounting and Trading at IV,

Margin Trading becomes available.

This skill reduces the amount of ISK

placed in market entering a buy order.

Each level beyond I cumulatively

reduces the cost by 25%.

You'll need Social I to train

Contracting, which allows you to create

3 more contracts per level of the skill, to

a maximum of 15 at level V. Note that

anyone can create a single contract

without this skill. Having this skill at IV

opens up Corporation Contracting

which allows you to create 10 more

contracts per level on behalf of your

corporation and/or alliance - note that

this does not affect your personal

contracts in any way.

Broker Relations and Accounting are

two crucial skills to keep in mind; and

Margin Trading beyond that. So you'll

want to work on these skills right out of

the gate when you're starting up. You'll

want to keep your taxes and governmental

marketing fees at their lowest as much as

possible, since this is an unavoidable facet

of trading.

Now for ships, you'll want to use an

Industrial Ship to haul the goods around

in. Try to get your Industrial Ship skill

(not the Industry skill, the actual ship skill

of the race of your choice) to V so that you

have a much better cargohold. Also, by

getting this skill to V, you'll be able to

train for a Freighter in the future. Freighter

pilots are often sought after by alliances

and many times they even supply the pilot

with one; it's a great venture if you decide

to take that route.

I wouldn't highly recommend training up

for Transport Ships unless you know you'll

be passing through a low-security system.

There's no real reason to use one in safe

space since a much cheaper Tech 1 variant

is able to do all you need it to.

For tips on how to roll in ISK with your

new-found Trade skills, please refer to the

Tradesman Tips section.





The Healer

The concept of any type of "healing"

class or setup in this game may seem a

bit surprising, but there actually is one.

These particular ships are Logistics ships

(for more on these ships, refer to the

Logistics Specialized Ships section).

To "heal" in this game means to

support your target by externally

boosting his or her shields and/or armor

as well as capacitor. The modules

associated with this are: Energy Transfer

Arrays, Remote Armor Repairers, and

Shield Transporters.

The Healer will not be particularly

engaged in the warfare, but rather you

will be at a distance lending aid to your

fellow pilots. Often times this means you

will be targeted first in warfare and will

need to be able to take a good hit - so be

sure to invest a little time in your

defensive skills. This profession is often

overlooked due to the lackluster thrill of

the specialist. Remember this, however:

The fewer the healers are, the better

chance they have of getting into the big

alliances! So this is something to keep in

mind. Ask around and see if any

alliances are interested in having

someone there for support. You might

just be surprised by who answers.

For the capacitor arrays, you'll need

Energy Emission Systems which requires

Science II and Engineering III. All of the

Tech I variants will require it to be level I,

while the Tech II will require level IV.

For Remote Armor Repairers, you'll

need Remote Armor Repair Systems,

which require Mechanic III and Repair

Systems II. Smalls will require level I,

Mediums II, and Larges III. There are no

Tech II variants.

For Shield Transporters, you'll need

Shield Emission Systems, which, like

Energy Emission Systems, ill require

Science II and Engineering III. Tech I

variants will require it only be level I;

Tech II will require levels II through IV,

depending on size.

These are the basic healing skills. There

are several other skills associated with this

profession, which are mentioned in the

above reference to the Logistic Ships.





Specialized Ships

So now you have a general idea of how

combat works and how to properly

defend yourself as well. You've decided

on which path to take for gunnery or

missiles and what type of tanking you'd

like to do or you've decided on becoming

a more proficient healer or tradesman.

You've a good grip on your profession

and can see yourself really enjoying this

profession. So the question arises: what

ship do you use? Well, there are several

available options and there just happens

to be something for everybody.

There are currently ten specialized

ships in the game, excluding the Capital

ships (Freighters, Carriers,

Dreadnoughts, and Titans) and I will be

touching on nine of those - the other is

exhumers which I've gone extensively

into in the mining chapter above. Four

are frigates, three are cruises, one is a

battlecruiser, and one is a hauler.

Interceptors

Required Skills:

Navigation II

Spaceship Command III

Frigate V

Evasive Maneuvering V\

Interceptors I

Often called "mosquitoes", these fast

frigates are potent little speed demons.

Since this is a frigate, you'll obviously

want to use smaller guns and missiles -

rockets are a common choice due to the

high rate of fire and low requirements.

Whichever path you so choose to take for

weaponry, you'll definitely want to invest

in the specialized (Tech II) versions for the

biggest bite.

It's all about the speed. Afterburners or

Micro Warp Drives are your best friends.

If you plan to go pirating, ratting (killing

NPC pirates in belts), or anything not

involving missions, then a Micro Warp

Drive is what you'll need. If you plan to

tackle missions, use an afterburner -

MWDs cannot be activated in Deadspace.

If you're moving fast enough, you won't

even need to worry about trying to tank in

the least.

Use weapon upgrades in the remaining

slots - along with a shield booster and





armor repairer just in case. In this

particular vessel, if you get it, you

normally get hit hard or barely at all. If

you're hit hard, then it's not likely you'd

be able to tank it anyway. If you're barely

getting damaged, then there's no point in

trying to tank, when a single booster

and/or repairer can handle the damage

being dealt.

This ship class is rather straightforward

and is one of the easier Tech II ships to

get into; partly due to the low skill

requirements of not only the ship itself,

but also of the equipment required to fit

it. It's a ship that many will learn and few

will master.

Interdictors

Required Skills:

- Frigate V

- Navigation II

- Spaceship Command IV

- Destroyers V

- Interceptors IV

- Evasive maneuvering V

- Interdictors I

Notice that this ship class is just

beyond the interceptor class. Because of

this, many of the skills are already

knocked out of the way. The longest thing

you're looking at as far as training time is

Destroyers, which is only a 2x multiplier.

These ships are rarely used in Empire

space. The most common and efficient use

is to pirate. These particular vessels are

proficient with an item that only they can

use: Interdiction Sphere Launcher. This

item plops out an Area Effect (or AoE)

warp scrambler, which if often called a

"bubble." These bubbles can only be

deployed in 0.0 space and 99% of the time

it will be at a gate. This is so that travelers

that jump in have no time to react and are

blown to bits.

The required skills for the sphere

launcher are:

- Engineering V

- Electronics III

- Navigation II

- Science V

- Propulsion Jamming V

- Graviton Physics I

Many of these skills should already be

taken care of or incredibly close to it.

Propulsion Jamming (3x) to V and

Graviton Physics (5x) are most likely the

two skills you'll be lacking.

The ship itself rarely does much of

anything aside from blowing bubbles.

There's no viable reason to use this ship





outside of 0.0 space, and if you're in 0.0,

you'll be with a gang of people designed

to shoot down the targets. So build your

ship around this particular item along

with a bit of speed, little defenses, and

perhaps a support item or two if you

fancy them.

Covert Ops

Required Skills:

- Electronics II

- Engineering II

- Spaceship Command III

- Electronic Upgrades V

- Frigate V

- Covert Ops I

If you browse the covert ops ships on

the market, you'll notice there are two

different divisions of ships: Covert Ops

Frigate and Stealth Bomber.

Both of these are designed to be used

with the Covert Ops Cloaking Device II,

and the requirements for this item are:

Electronics V and Cloaking IV.

There are other cloaking devices

available, but the drawback on targeting

and module recalibration times is too

restrictive to allow the vessels enough

time to properly function. The

above-mentioned cloaking device has such

a small drawback (including no penalty to

your cloaked velocity, unlike the lesser

variants) that it's simply ideal. Also, and

most importantly, this is the only one that

allows you to warp while cloaked.

The other item available to these ships

would be the Scan Probe Launcher, which

requires: Science III and Astrometrics I.

These modules fire Scan Probes which

are designed to be used with the scan

function next to your ship's readout on the

bottom of the screen. You can scan for

more or less anything with these probes.

Each level in Astrometrics grants access to

a higher ranged probe. The other probe

available is the Survey probe, which is

designed to analyze a moon. This is for

Player Owned Station (or PoS) constructs.

These constructs install Moon Harvesting

modules to acquire the moon's minerals

and then either sell those are use them for

more complex items for their corporation

or alliance.

The other scan probe group is Recon

Probe Launchers and Lith Probes, but I'll

touch on those in the Reconnaissance

section.

Now on to the ships themselves. The

frigate is designed as a more

straightforward combat ship; cloaking,

locating a target, moving into position, and

opening fire. Due to the combat





orientation, these are often the scouts of

larger groups. The ability to scout an area

(often a belt) and moving into position,

then giving the signal for the others to

warp to 0km, is a strong ally and general

tactic. In the actual combat portion,

they're best suited for tackling other

frigates or Tech I cruisers.

It's best to equip a webber if you can.

These little beauties make tackling

interceptors and other frigates much

easier. At your discretion, you'll want to

equip tracking disruptors, signal

dampeners, ECM jammers, warp

jammers, etc. You'll play "support" in

this sense, but if you're using a couple of

Tech II items against Tech I targets or

inept Tech II frigate pilots, then they'll

have one heck of a time even hitting you

or keeping up.

Stealth Bombers are designed to wipe

out larger targets. I would not

recommend flying one of these solo, but

rather have a handful of other bombers

move as a small wing. One bomber won't

do much damage against the defenses of

a cruiser, much less anything bigger.

Five stealth bombers with a couple of

cruise missile launchers each... well, now

that's a different story. It's hard to fend

off five fast-moving, hard-hitting frigates

that appeared out of nowhere. Add the

cavalry of another wing of the fleet to

that and you have one nice attack force

on hand.

Equip the bomber for damage and speed.

MWD and as many ballistic control unit II

modules as you can. For mid-slots, you

can shoot for the same electronic warfare

modules as I mentioned above - most

important one being the warp jammer,

since you're facing a large target. There's

no need for a webber either.

Tanking is not a very wise decision. If

you're flying a covert ops ship at all,

you're most likely in a gang with other

people that can easily pick up the slack. If

you need to warp out, simply warp out and

back in. The ship is agile enough to be

able to warp around quickly. So simply

run if the need arises.

Assault Ships

Required Skills:


- Engineering V

- Mechanic V

- Frigate V

- Assault Ships I

As the name suggests, these frigates

pack a punch. This ship class is very

straight forward and very efficient. The





first thing you'll want to pay attention to

is your resistances. Note the high base

resistances of the ship as well as the

bonuses you'll gain for Frigate V. This

means that tanking is much more

flexible.

The only thing you're really in need of

doing in an assault frigate is picking up

the slack of your resistances - such as

EM resistance for the shield or explosive

for the armor. Otherwise your ship's base

and bonus take care of your needs. Just

be sure to stick on that repairer or booster

and you're set.

These ships are good at one precise

thing: damage - a lot of it. Stuff on as

many Tech II guns and launchers as you

can fit and damage modifiers. Don't fuss

over tracking speed much. You're using

small guns, so unless you're hunting

down interceptors (in which case you're

going to have a webber anyway) your

guns should have no problem at all

taking down your targets.

This ship is great for any profession.

Pirating, missioning, ratting, whatever

the case may be, this ship will get it

done. Be sure to cater to the slacking

resistances, push your damage as high as

possible, and come equipped and

prepared to take down the type of target

you're after.

Reconnaissance

Required Skills:

- Electronics II

- Engineering II

- Electronics Upgrades V

- Signature Analysis V

- Spaceship Command V

- Frigate IV

- Cruiser V

- Covert Ops IV

- Recon Ships I

You'll notice there are two types of

Recon ships, much like the covert ops.

One is designed for a cloaking device and

one for combat. The combat variant differs

from the covert ops in that it is not

designed to be used with the covert ops

cloaking device.

Just like covert ops, you'll want to train

to use the probe launchers for both, and

the cloaking device for the Force Recon

ship. The Recon launcher is most

commonly used for probing with lith

probes. These probes are designed to

locate large structures, such as stations,

complexes, and even archaeological

discoveries. You'll need to expand upon

your scanning skills to be able to locate

some things (such as needing the





Archaeology skill for making

discoveries) and other skills to make it

faster. The survey and scanning skills

are:

Astrometrics - Allows you to scan for

one more group per level

Astrometric Pinpointing - reduces

scan deviation by 10% per level

Astrometric Triangulation - 5%

increase per level to scan strength

Archaeology - 5% increase per level to

a discovery

Signal Acquisition - 5% faster

scanning with probes (only)

Recon ships in general are not

particularly designed to be stand-alone

combatants even though they are Tech II

cruisers. A highly-skilled pilot can

definitely make great use of the

capabilities of the ship's electronic

warfare coupled with the damage

bonuses of the ship to the weapon

systems. However, someone

not-so-skilled may have difficulty in this

and will have much trouble tackling

more experienced pilots in even Tech I

ships. This is also partially due to the

less-than-impressive resistances on some

of these ships, making it a necessity to

attempt to increase resistances as well fit

combat modules on a ship that's designed

to scout.

Recon vessels generally give good

bonuses to Electronic Warfare (more can

be found on how EW works and the skills

associated with it in Section 5). Since the

cruiser-class has more slots to toy with,

this allows it the pilot to fit many more

EW modules for a plethora of possibilities.

Tracking disruptors warp jammers, ECM

jammers, sensor dampeners, etc. - all of

them can be equipped. This means you can

web an interceptor, tracking disrupt a

Heavy Assault Cruiser, and warp jam a

fleeing logistics ship at the same time.

This also means you'll need the

Multitasking skill, which required

Targeting V. I had suggested this in the

above chapter a few times, but it becomes

particularly of essence with this class,

since these ships have high targeting

capabilities.

The Force Recon ship is your cloaker,

but it also serves another purpose. These

ships are designed to set up Cynosural

Fields - this will require the Cynosural

Field Theory skill, which has a

pre-requisite of Electronics V). These

fields are how Carriers, Dreadnoughts, and

Titans jump from one system to another;

they cannot use warp gates like everyone

else. So this ship is mostly used by larger

alliances try to move their big boys around

for some serious warfare. Normally if you

can pilot a Recon and can use a Cynosural

Field Generator, you've got a good shot at





getting into a corporation based in 0.0

space.

Heavy Assault Cruisers

Required Skills:


- Assault Ships IV

- Frigate IV

- Cruiser V

- Engineering V

- Mechanic V

- Gunnery II

- Weapon Upgrades V

- Heavy Assault Ships I

If you love combat, this is the ship for

you, period. These are the definitive

highlights of the combat pilots. In the

hands of an experienced and wise pilot,

these ships can stand toe-to-toe with a

battleship.

Notice these cruisers, just like the

assault frigates, have high resistances to

work with. These high resistances

coupled with room for weaponry and

capacitor upgrades means versatility.

And versatility means trouble for your

enemies.

Obviously you'll want your medium gun

or heavy missile specialization skill(s) to

be either IV or V - V is definitely

recommended. Push your Heavy Assault

skill to level IV or V as well. This will

give you the biggest possible damage

bonus pool there is available. So now that

you have your damage-bumping skills

trained and your tanking mods set, you'll

want to fit your weapon upgrades first. A

tracking computer becomes important here

and even vital to you. If you haven't one

equipped and you're hit with a tracking

disrupter (especially a Tech II) you're

going to have some issues against a frigate

and even some cruisers.

If you're going to solo in low-sec space,

then take a WCS no matter what. It's also

wise to take a warp jammer as well. This

way you won't be jammed if things go

awry and you can jam your target so he

can't flee. You'll have some room to work

with on this ship because of the high-skill

levels and bonuses you're gaining. This

means that instead of trying to fit several

damage and/or tracking/RoF alterations,

you're able to make full use of the just the

bonuses. If you have room for these

modifications, then of course you'll want

to use them, but they're less necessary

now.

Power Diagnostic systems are a

wonderful asset to these ships as well.

Giving a good bonus across the board to





your shields, cap, pg, etc. so that you can

have even more hit points and overall

bumped statistics to toy with. The

capacitor recharge rate is something of

essence to keep track of. If you run into a

vampire who starts leeching your cap,

you're going to be in quicksand if you

can't get that cap up high enough to

support yourself.

This brings up the option of sticking a

nosferatu onto any open hi-slow you

have available. I strongly advise fitting

the biggest one you can. This allows you

to siphon some extra energy, whether

you need it or not. So even if you don't

need the energy, at least you're taking it

away from your target at no cost to you.

This is one of the best PvP win-win

situations.

Always look for new opportunities to

increase your ship's proficiency. If you

need just a little bit more PG to fir a Tech

II module and Advanced Weapon

Upgrades is only III, then shoot for IV to

give you that little boost. Take every

avenue available to you.

Logistics

Required Skills:

- Long Range Targeting V

- Signature Analysis V

- Electronics II


- Frigate IV

- Cruiser V

- Logistics I

If you haven't already done so already,

read the "The Healer" section of the above

chapter for an idea of what the Logistics

ship is meant to be used with and the skills

required to use those items.

You're not playing defense or offense, so

this is pretty basic and straight forward as

well. You're obviously not alone, so no

need to worry about trying to solo

anything. The biggest thing you'll want to

focus on is recharge time. A few good

skills to have to V to make sure you're

getting the most out of this ship:

Energy Systems Operation - 5% cap

recharge bonus per level

Energy Management - 5% cap capacity

bonus per level

Shield Management - 5% shield HP

bonus per level





Cap Recharger IIs and Shield

Recharger IIs are a good investment.

Though there's two ways to go about

doing this. You can either fill your

mid-slots up with Cap Recharger IIs and

a booster, or a few of both types of

recharges. As far as low-slots are

concerned, you'll want to make full use

of Power Diagnostic System IIs. Fill up

your low-slots with these and your cap

and shields should be recharging and one

impressive rate. You'll want to stick a

WSC on if you're in PvP warfare

however (even though you do take a

range/target speed hit for it) so as to not

get scrambled if you need to bail for a

moment. With long range targeting and

signature analysis both to V, you'll still

have a great range and target speed base

to work.

Command Ships

Assault Required Skills:

- Frigate IV

- Cruiser V

- Battlecruiser V


- Leadership V

- Warfare Link Specialist IV

- Command Ships I

- Gunnery II

- Weapon Upgrades V

- Engineering V

- Mechanic V

- Assault Ships IV

- Heavy Assault Ships IV

Logistics Required Skills:

- Frigate IV

- Cruiser V

- Battlecruiser V


- Leadership V

- Warfare Link Specialist IV

- Command Ships I

- Electronics II

- Long Range Targeting V

- Signature Analysis IV

- Logistics IV

Leadership Skills:

- Armored Warfare

- Armored Warfare Specialist

- Information Warfare

- Information Warfare Specialist

- Skirmish Warfare

- Skirmish Warfare Specialist





- Siege Warfare

- Siege Warfare Specialist

Assault Command Ship

You'll notice that this ship shares the

skills associated with the Heavy Assault

Ships skill. It expands upon it requiring

the leadership skills and Battlecruiser V

skill. That means there isn't a whole lot

more to learn, it'll just be a

time-consuming process (Battlecruiser is

a 6x multiplier).

This ship is designed to fill the

commander or other authority-like rank

in a fleet. It has a good resistance base

and bonuses on top of the already sturdy

shield and armor HP. It's a solid ship that

rewards those that took the time to train

for it.

Leadership skills come into play at this

point, since the modules will need these

skills. Armored Warfare gives a 2%

armor hit point bonus per level;

Information Warfare gives a 2% bonus

per level to the members' targeting

speed; Siege Warfare gives a 2% bonus

per level to the members' shield capacity;

and Skirmish Warfare gives a 2% bonus

per level to the members' velocity. The

Specialist fields grants a 100% bonus per

level to the Warfare Modules of that

type. This is one impressive bonus and in

large fleet-level warfare scenarios, the

modules and bonuses add up quickly and

are extraordinarily helpful.

You'll be equipping warfare modules to

assist your fellow gang mates with this

ship. So although it is a potent warrior on

the battlefield, it's also good at rallying the

troops. It doesn't receive as many

impressive bonuses as the Heavy Assault

Cruiser counterpart to its damage, but it

still holds its own very well. With all of

that said, equip the weaponry as you

would your HAC with the exceptions of

the warfare modules.

EW is a good, but not required, avenue

to take again in PvP. Seeing as how this is

gang warfare and you're not fully

optimized for damage, it's a nice touch to

lock down a few opponents or at least

frustrate them horribly.

A vampire ship is a viable option, but

since you're so heavily invested in assault

warfare, you're likely doing much more

damage and causing your opponents to

burn more cap than you'd be hurting with

the modules. It's best to stick with what

you know.





Logistics Command Ship

This ship shares the same skill

requirements as the Logistics cruiser

equivalent with the exception of

Battlecruiser V and the Leadership skills.

As mentioned above, it's more

time-consuming than anything else.

For a logistical player, this is a good

ship to get into. It offers great defense

and support for not only the gang mates

but the pilot as well. Granted there aren't

the range and transfer bonuses of the

logistics ships, but the gang modules

make up for this. You'll not want to be

50km away from your wing anyway. So

equip it as you normally would, with the

exception of the warfare link modules -

which, as noted above, will require some

leadership skills.

Again, work with the rechargers and

power diagnostic systems. Your ship will

have a good cap to work with also. Other

than that, it's a rather straight-forward

ship since you already know what you're

doing thanks to the logistics ship

beforehand.

Transport Ships

Required Skills:

- Industry V


- Frigate IV

- Industrial V

- Transport Ships I

I've touched on this class a couple of

times in the Mining and Tradesman

sections above. I'm only emphasizing here

that this ship is designed for low-security

mining operations or for a tradesman that

must venture through low-sec to snag

supplies. Train the Transport Ships skill to

IV or V at least to get the most out of the

available bonuses. Use a shield booster

and/or passive hardeners on armor tanks

and active hardeners on the shield tanks.

Always take a WCS or two. It's best to

sacrifice a little room than the ship itself.

If you need to equip for speed, fit

nanofibers over overdrive injectors so that

you're not losing any cargo capacity;

couple this with the largest afterburner or

MWD you can fit. I would recommend an

afterburner over a MWD since the MWD

has a drawback that could work against

you in an incident.





CombatBreakdown

So how exactly is missile damage

calculated? How fast do I need to go to

outrun tracking? How hard will a torpedo

hit me if I have 70% resist? All these

questions will be answered in this

section. Here you can finally figure out

how damage is derived from

modifications and skills. There are some

incredibly detailed and in-depth

calculations involved and I'll touch on

these.

I've also listed the NPC factions, the

damage types they deal, and the

resistances you need to focus on in order

to be well-equipped against them.

Gunnery and Tracking

This is long and confusing and

frustrating if you have no idea how this

works. Tracking is a rather simple thing

to understand in that higher tracking

means the ability to hit a faster moving

target. It does not, however, affect the

damage per se (in closer-range scenarios

it does play into your damage, but it's not

a consistent factor that tracking always

means higher damage) - only the ability to

hit. An example of this would be:

An interceptor is sitting still and an

assault frigate shoots it for a wrecking

shot, dealing 350 damage. The interceptor

responds and begins to orbit the assault

frigate at 5km. The assault frigate engages

active tracking enhancers and fires again,

managing to wreck once more, hitting for

350damage.

Naturally you won't wreck in every shot

and this is just an example. But the point

of this being that whether your target is

moving or not, your maximum damage

does not fluctuate via tracking. For

instance: If the interceptor has not moved

and the assault frigate has turned the

tracking computer on and fired again, the

wrecking damage wouldn't be affected.

However, with the interceptor orbiting at

5km and without a tracking mod, the

assault frigate wouldn't likely hit it. With a

tracking mod, he'd be much more likely to

(as illustrated above). But let's say he

doesn't wreck - what then? Tracking

computers, in this sense, help you to

achieve a better damage ceiling on moving

targets or smaller targets. So without a

tracking enhancer, let's say the assault

cruiser hits the interceptor for 50damage.

He turns on the tracking computer and

fires again, hitting for 100 damage. Did he

increase his ceiling damage? His ceiling is

still 350 damage, so that doesn't change at





all. However, the tracking computer

increased his base probability of damage.

You're more or less facing off against

three different aspects of your target:

Range, Signature Radius, and

Transversal Velocity.

For range, if the target is between the

turret and the optimal, there is no penalty

for damage. At optimal range + falloff,

you'll receive roughly a 50% reduction.

And at Optimal + (Falloff x2), you'll

receive roughly 100%. If everything was

based on range, this would be quite

simple to grasp and work with...

however, we're not that lucky.

Your weapon has a signature

resolution, and that resolution is

compared to the signature radius of a

ship. So using a medium turret (125m

resolution) against a small ship (40m

radius) is a difficult thing to do.

Transversal Velocity comes into play

against the actual tracking speed of the

turret. So let's say a ship is standing still

and the other is orbiting. This creates a

high transversal between the ships and

the tracking of the guns becomes an

issue. If both ships are moving in the

same direction or orbiting one another,

then the transversal becomes lower,

allowing the guns to better track.

The further away a target is, the easier

it is to track it. So ideally you'd want

something far away from you in order to

hit it better, right? Well, then the range

penalty comes into play (told you we

weren't lucky) and you'll have to find the

"sweet spot" where you can keep your

target far enough away to track it and at

the same time not receive a large damage

penalty.

It's easiest to do this with "sniper" setups

that use long range ammo and signal

amplifiers to boost range and targeting

speed. Using enough range modifiers and

long-range ammo means you'll be less

likely to receive any type of range penalty

while at the same time being able to better

track your target(s). This is particularly

true of larger weapons, such as

battleship-class turrets. Now, if you're in a

smaller ship that plans to orbit and sting

things, so to speak (such as an interceptor),

then there's a nice basic formula you can

use for this:

Transversal velocity / tracking speed =

orbiting distance.

If you're orbiting a stationary target, then

your speed would be your transversal. So

if you're moving at 500m/s using a turret

that has 0.25rad/sec as a tracking speed,

then you're looking at a formula like this:

500 / .25 = 2000, or 2km.

The overall, big-picture formula (the

simplest of all the big formulas anyway)

looks like this:





((transversal/tracking on gun) *

(signature resolution on gun / target's

signature radius)) = penalty to your hit

chance.

So if your target has a signature radius

of 40m moving at a transversal of 437

and your gun has a tracking speed of

0.27r/s with a resolution of 125m, the

formula would look something like this:

((437/0.27) * (125/40))

(1168.5) * (3.125)

3651.56 Or 36.52% probability to miss

or, in other words, 63.48% hit chance.

You could also add the "100 - [formula]"

to the above calculation to derive the hit

chance - entirely your choice here. This

is without range penalties, though. If the

target is too far away or too close, your

tracking will begin to decline from there.

So the basic concept here, as has been

stated, is to always attempt to keep your

target roughly in your optimal, especially

with slow-tracking weaponry. With

faster tracking weapons, such as Blasters,

then you'll have a much easier time of

hitting a target consistently, if that target

isn't moving incredibly fast.

And that, in a nutshell, is how tracking

works.

Missiles and Radii

Alright, this isn't quite as confusing as

tracking is, but it is still a little harsh on

the brain if you're still mulling over the

gunnery stuff. One thing turrets and

missiles happen to share with one another

is the signature radius and signature

resolution - except it is called explosion

radius on a missile.

There's a simple formula you can follow

here, which is:

Signature Radius/Explosion Radius =

Damage Percentage

So a cruiser with 125m signature radius

getting smacked by a cruise missile that

has a 300m explosion radius, the formula

would like this:

125/300 = 0.4166 or 41.2% of the

payload. So if you have a cruise missile

normally capable of 300 damage, for

instance, then it would be dealing roughly

123 damage. This number will

occasionally vary by a point or two,

naturally. This is the standard damage,

however, prior to movement speed

penalties.

Speaking of which, the basic speed a

ship needs to be going before it begins to

reduce the damage of a missile is 750m/s.

With that said, no standard (above T2

frigate) class ships will likely be going that





fast without an MWD - and MWDs

increase the ship radius, meaning the

missiles hit harder. The only trouble you

run into here is the missiles keeping up.

This essentially boils down to a lot of

skill training for missiles.

With most of the attribute-affecting

missile skills to IV, you lift some heavy

penalties against you. For instance, if you

train Target navigation Prediction to V,

your target needs to be going faster than

1125m/s before a damage reduction

occurs because of speed. Impressive, isn't

it? This is also true of guided missile

precision. At level V it lowers a cruise

missiles explosion radius to 225, making

the above noted formula look like this:

125/225 = 0.555 or rounded to 56%.

This would be 168 damage

approximately, and that's a good step-up

from the previous 120 range. The missile

skills all need to be trained up to a decent

level to help negate these penalties as

much as possible. With all of them IV

and V, heavy missiles and cruise missiles

(especially Tech II variants) become a

force to be reckoned with.

Resistance vs. HP

It is debatable whether having vast

amounts of tanking hit points is better than

having high resistances. But once you boil

down to raw numbers, it's much better to

have high resistances than anything else. A

quick comparative set of examples are

below.

HP Example:

You have a shield with 5000 hit points

and you're being hit with missiles that do

EM damage; your shield has 0% EM

resistance. So let's say those missiles are

doing 200 damage per and that there are 5

of them. You have a booster equipped

doing 300 per boost and a cycle time of 4

seconds (this is a pretty strong booster

against such damage). So every 4 seconds

you're negating 300 damage. Now, do bear

in mind this does not reflect your shield's

recharge rate, but the reason is due to the

fact that, if in an average ship, the

recharge rate would only be roughly 6hp/s

or so.

So let's say the other target is volleying

all of these missiles at once. This means

that 1000 damage is headed right at you.

Since you have no EM resistance, they

receive full payload (this is assuming that

you have a big enough radius for the

missiles, etc). Now, imagine a volley time





of 10 seconds; this gives you 2 booster

cycles. In this scenario, you're losing 400

shields roughly every 10 seconds. You

can hold out a bit in this case - however,

that booster is eating away at your

capacitor. If you're firing guns, then

they're also eating away at it, not to

mention any other modules you're fitted

with. So you may run out of boost cap

before you realize it, then you're toast.

Resistance Example:

The same ship as above is firing at

you, but this time you have a Tech II EM

hardener. Your base resistance with it on

becomes 55%, so now you're ready to get

things done. He's firing the same missiles

at the same rate, and you're using the

same booster and have the same amount

of shields - in other words, the only thing

that's changed is adding the 55%

hardener.

1000 damage is in flight, but this time

the missiles start hitting you dead on for

mere 90 damage. Quite a difference, isn't

it? A boost of 300 doesn't just negate 1.5

missiles any longer, it negates just over

3. And given the 10 second window

you're working with, you're virtually not

being hit. See how important resistance

can be?

Boosters eat up your capacitor, so you

want to use the ones that give you the

biggest possible boost while using the

smallest possible cap, obviously. And

you only want to boost when you actually

have to. So this is where resistance plays

heavily into that goal.

A very confusing misconception

regarding resistance is this: If using two

55% hardeners, do I become

invulnerable/absorb damage since I have

110% resistance?

The answer is a very resounding "NO!"

Damage is not added, it is multiplicative

and there are nerfs (penalties) that are

associated with them. The first hardener

you apply will give its full resistance. For

instance, if you're using a 55% EM

hardener and you have 0%, you really do

gain 55%. The next one receives a nerf, as

does the 3rd, and so on.

The way this is calculated out is this

(roughly):

First = 1.0 multiplier (no penalty).

Second = 0.86 multiplier

Third = 0.57 multiplier

Fourth = 0.28 multiplier

Fifth = 0.1 multiplier (next to absolutely

useless)

So let's put that information to use. Let's

say you want to use 2 55% EM hardeners

on a 0% shielded ship. The formula in

which to figure out your final resistance is

this:

[damage potential as a whole number] *

[resistance module as a decimal] *





[stacking penalty] = resistance.

The first module receives no stacking

penalties, so the calculation for it is

simply:

100% * .55 = 55% Resistance Bonus

Now the second module receives two

different numbers here - the first being

modified by the already existing

resistance of the first module (the 55%

bonus). Therefore, the resistance is

calculated as this:

45% * 0.55 * 0.86 = 21.285 Now add

that onto the 55% you had, and your

grand total is 76.285% with 2 Tech II

hardeners. What if you added a third for

good measure?

23.715 * 0.55 * 0.57 = 7.435 [hardly

worth using, however]

Adding that up to your previous

resistance makes your new grand total

83.72%.

So this leads into yet another question:

What if I already have resistance on my

ship before mods? Well, you'd calculate

that the same as you would if you had

mods, using penalties where necessary.

Here's an example:

If you have a Tech I cruiser with a base

40% kinetic resistance and you wanted to

use 2 Tech I 50% hardeners, you'd work

that out like this:

60% * 0.5 =30%

So with the first module active, you'll

leap up to 70% resistance.

30 * 0.5 * 0.86 = 12.9%

With both of them active, you're up to

82.9% resistance.

This system also works with ship

bonuses. For instance, if you have

battleship to V and pilot a Rokh that

receives a 25% bonus to resistances, treat

that as an Invulnerability Field. Since the

shield has 0% EM, it would receive the

full 25%, but since it has 60% base

explosive, it receives only 10%, and so on.

One important thing to note here: The

module that has the highest resistance

bonus is the one that ignores the damage

penalty and is considered the "first"

module regardless of which order you

activate your hardeners in. For instance, if

you have a Tech I EM hardener and a

Tech II EM hardener and activate the Tech

I first, followed shortly thereafter by the

Tech II, the Tech II is still considered the

first module on the proverbial ladder.

I've used shielding for these examples;

however armor is treated the exact same

way. So simply substitute your own words

here for armor if you prefer. So there is no

need to worry about different formulas.

Rigs likewise fall into this category and

are treated as appropriate.

As one final and quick illustration:





Let's take the first two ships I

mentioned earlier and see how the

tanking ship fares with a few

modifications. The ship is a Rokh, the

pilot has BS to level IV, he now has a

Tech II EM hardener and an EM

resistance rig.

First of all, the Tech II hardener is

calculated at full potential, making the

EM calculatory base 55%. From there,

the rig is 35%, so it will be calculated

next.

45*0.35*0.86 = 13.545

68.545% become his new resistance;

now let's add in the Rokh's 20% bonus

from battleship IV.

31.455*0.2*.57 = 3.58587

So the grand total becomes 72.1%

resistance.

And that's all there is to it!

Electronic Warfare

Warp Jammers, as noted in the pirate

section in Chapter 3, are straight-forward

EW modules. If your jam strength is

higher than the target's warp drive

strength, it's jammed; if it' is lower (due to

him using WCS modules) then he runs

away.

ECM modules don't quite work on this

same scale. A ship has sensor strength,

normally in the teens to lower twenties.

This is the ship's ability to resist being

target jammed. ECM jamming modules

attempt to overcome this number;

however, they are not required to

overcome it. At this point, it becomes a

probability - or more simply put, a coin

toss.

Ship A has a sensor strength of 15; Ship

B has a jammer with 6 strength against

Ship A. Ship B attempts to jam Ship A and

succeeds. Why? Well, it's nothing more

than simply playing out the percentage. In

this case, that would be 40%. So Ship A

had a 60% chance to resist the jam; he

simply failed.

If Ship B had several jammers equipped

that totaled more than 15, then Ship A

would always be jammed - this is called a

"lockdown." This means that Ship A has a

0% probability of overcoming Ship B's





jamming.

Pilot A can increase Ship A's sensor

strength with ECCM modules however,

knocking his resistance upwards of 25 or

so. So when Ship B comes along and

tries to jam him, it becomes a game of

chance again at a 72% (18 divided by

25). So as you can see, ECM jamming

can be a rather big game of luck. If

you're a gambler, this is definitely the

route for you.

Tracking Disruptors, Sensor

Dampeners, Webbers - all of these

modules are very straightforward

modules. Training your skills up will

either decrease the capacitor

requirements of the modules, increase the

performance of the modules, or both.

Scanning and Probing

There are 3 different groups of probes:

Ship probes, exploration probes, and

survey probes. The ship probes are used

to locate other ships, mostly for PvP

purposes; the exploration probes are used

for discoveries; and the survey probes are

used for analyzing moons. I'll go into

detail on the ship and exploration probes.

The moon survey probes are rather

straightforward probes that you'll have

no issue using if you decide to do so.

The basic skills for Probing and

Scanning are:

- Astrometrics - Adds one scan group

per level.

- Astrometric Pinpointing - Reduces

maximum scan deviation by 10% per

level.

- Astrometric Triangulation - 5% scan

strength bonus per level of skill.

- Signal Acquisition - 10% faster

scanning with scan probes per level.

Ship Probes

If someone is offline and let his or her

ship floating in low-sec space, or if a ship

is abandoned, you can locate it and blow it

up or take it.

Ship probes include:

- Observator Deep Space Probe I -

1000 au range, 1 point sensor strength,

20.000 km max scan deviation, 4800 sec

flight time.

- Ferret Scanner Probe I - 40 au range,

2.5 points sensor strength, 10.000 km max

scan deviation. 2400 sec flight time.

- Spook Scanner Probe I - 20 au range,

5 points sensor strength, 5.000 km max

scan deviation, 1200 sec flight time.





- Fathom Scanner Probe I - 10 au

range, 10 points sensor strength, 2.500

km max scan deviation, 600 sec flight

time.

- Snoop Scanner Probe I - 5 au range,

20 points sensor strength, 200 km max

scan deviation, 300 sec flight time.

Several factors come into play as you

can tell - and these all add up to

something at the end. One of these is the

Signal Size of your target - and the size

is derived via this formula:

Signal Size = Ship Radius/Sensor

Strength

So an interceptor with a 30km radius

and a sensor strength of 10 would have a

signal size of a mere 3. So you can see

how difficult the smaller ships are to

locate.

Next is the Range of your target, and

that's derived by this formula:

Range = 1-(0.65((range/max

range)^1.5))

The Target Range is the range from

your scanner to your target; the max

range is the scan probe's maximum scan

range.

And finally, your probes' sensor

strength:

Sensor Strength = Probe strength *

Astrometric Triangulation Skill / 100

The overall formula for trying to locate

your target looks like this: Signal Strength

= (Probe Sensor Strength * (1 + Level of

Astrometric Triangulation * 0.05) / 100) *

(1 - (0.65 ((Target Range / Max Range) ^

1.5))) * (Target Signature Radius / Target

Sensor Strength)

Signal Strength is the probability of the

target showing up when we run a scan for

it. As you can see, this formula is basically

the above formulas rolled into one,

multiplied by one another. Let's get an

idea of how these work together.

Let's say you're looking for that

interceptor who just happens to be 30 au

away; and you have Astrometric

Triangulation to 2 using a Ferret Probe.

Signal Strength = (2.5 * (1 + 2 * 0.05) /

100) * (1 - (0.65 ((30 / 40) ^ 1.5))) * (30 /

10)

SS = (0.0275) * (-1.185) * (3)

SS = -0.0977 or roughly 9.8%

probability you'll discover him.

Now that you know the mechanics, it's

on to the scanning part!

So the first thing you must do is use

your directional scanner at max range to

see if you can pick up your target. Once

you get a general idea of where it is, warp

around trying to get as close as possible

(do this cloaked). Once you've figured out

about how close you can get to it, you'll

need to determine which probe you'll need





to use; either the 5 or 10 au probes

(scanner maxes out at 14 au).

If you can find your target, you'll need

to use the long range probes to take a

look around. Launch one and under the

System Scanner tab, click the probe and

then ships group to look for him. You

can search for as many groups as you'd

like without penalty as long as you have

the skills (Astrometrics) to back you up;

click analyze at the bottom and wait for

it. While waiting you cannot warp, else

your scan will abruptly end and fail.

After the scan timer reaches zero,

you'll receive a list of found objects. If

your target is on that list, then just keep

reanalyzing. The scanning is chance

based, so it may take a little time -

especially if searching for something

small, such as an interceptor. So this may

take upwards of 15-20 scans for such

ships. Also, note that you cannot find

cloaked ships, no matter what (which

means you can't be found either). If you

do manage to find him, you can right

click the result and use the "warp to"

function.

If you are a bit off from the target, you

can destroy the previous probe and

launch a Snoop probe to get a more

accurate hit here. Rarely are these probes

off by much and often will open the

window for you to warp in at 0km.

This is the basics of ship probing.

Exploration Probes

Exploration allows you to discover

various encounters in systems. There

could be several in one system, or the

system could be void of any at all. These

hidden encounters often exist between 1

au and 4 au of one of a system's moons.

For these explorations, you'll need to use

lith probes which are specifically designed

to locate just such things. There are five

types of these probes:

- Quest Probe - 4 au range, 250 points

primary sensor strength, 50 points other

sensor strength, 2.088 au max scan

deviation, 4000 sec flight time.

- Pursuit Probe - 2 au range, 500 points


sensor strength, 6,250,000 km max scan


- Comb Probe - 1 au range, 1000 points


sensor strength, 125,000 km max scan


- Sift Probe - 0.5au range, 2000 points


sensor strength, 2,500km max scan


- Multispectral Frequency Probe - 999

au range, 1,000,000 points sensor strength

(all types), 600 sec flight time.





The most important of these is the

Multispectral Probe. This little probe

tells you whether or not there are any

signatures in the system at all. Rather

than telling you where any are, it simply

tells if any exist. Just one scan will do. If

it returns no results, then there's nothing

at all, so no need in wasting your time.

If you manage to locate one, the next

step is to get it into range of a probe. The

best way to do this is to drop a probe

(quest, if you can) of the appropriate type

at each of the system's moons, select

them all, and click scan for cosmic

signatures. This, much like scanning for

ships, may require several scans (15-20

at times), but they have a long life-span,

so you have some room to work with.

Once you get a hit and it shows up,

open your system map and warp to the

result, drop the closest scanner that will

still find it, and scan again for it. Again,

warp to the result, scan again if need be,

and repeat this process until you pinpoint

it.

Be VERY careful once you've found

your location. Many times you're

warping right into a deadspace location

surrounded by some pretty hardcore

ships, or least a lot of them. If you're

going in your cloaked ship, be sure to

warp in, bookmark, and bail out quickly.

Some of these places are equivalent to

corporation-oriented instances. So, as

you can see, they're not all playgrounds -

but there's much treasure to be had! It's

just that simple - but very time consuming.





NPC Pirates

Here's a comprehensive table of NPC factions and the type of damage they deal as well

as the type of damage you'll want to shoot at them (against the lowest resistances they

have). This should make missioning and ratting a bit easier than blindly charging in and

hoping for the best. Sometimes there's an odd ship of course, this is general here.

Pirate FactionPrimaryDamage Type

SecondaryDamage Type

TertiaryDamage Type

PrimaryWeakness

SecondaryWeakness

Angel Cartel Explosive Kinetic Thermal Explosive Thermal

Blood Raider EM Thermal N/A Thermal EM

BountyHunters EM Explosive Kinetic Thermal N/A

Cent EM Thermal N/A EM Thermal

Core Kinetic Thermal N/A Kinetic Thermal

Corpus EM Thermal N/A Thermal EM

Dark Blood EM Thermal N/A Thermal EM

Domination Explosive Kinetic EM EM Thermal

Dread Guristas Kinetic Thermal N/A Kinetic N/A

Gist Explosive Kinetic Thermal Explosive Thermal

Guristas Kinetic Thermal N/A Kinetic N/A

Mercenaries Thermal EM Explosive Thermal N/A

MordusLegion Kinetic Thermal EM Kinetic N/A

Pith Kinetic Thermal N/A Kinetic Thermal

Rogue Drones Kinetic Thermal EM EM Thermal

Sansha'sNation EM Thermal N/A EM Thermal

Shadow/Serpentis Kinetic Thermal N/A Kinetic Thermal

True Sansha EM Thermal N/A EM Thermal





Agents Missionsand Loyalty Points

An important aspect to this section is

the influence of your character on the

corporation you're aiming to work for.

That is, how well the corporation will

like you. The easiest way to get a

proverbial foot in the door is to train your

social skills up as high as you can, or at

least as high as you need to.

The first of these is obviously the

Social skill itself. Each level of this skill

increases the amount of faction increase

you gain when you complete a mission.

The next and arguably most important

skill you'll need is Connections. This

skill is listed as giving you a 4% increase

to the standing of corporations (which

actually would be their agents) - this is

wrong. Unfortunately some skills are

mislabeled here and there, and this

happens to be one of them. It gives you a

flat-out 0.4 increase - which technically

is 40%. On top of this, Connections to V

will give you a base increase of 2.50

standing with an NPC corporation's

agents.

Criminal Connections is the same

skill as Connections, except that it's used

for pirate NPC corporations (Angel

Cartel, Serpentis, etc), Diplomacy falls

into this category as well. This skill raises

your standing with hostile agents by 0.4;

which means that when you have a

negative standing towards an NPC

corporation (such as the Angel Cartel)

then this skill lowers their passionate hate

for you. This skill doesn't quite do what

you think it does - to lower your standing

with an agent that you declined a few too

many missions with, simply increase your

Connections skill.

Fast Talk increases your security gain

(from killing pirate, such as Angel Cartel)

by 4% per level. This skill does actually

work as intended. DED Connections

increases your bounty gain by 1500ISK -

this skill is often misunderstood. It does

not increase your pirate bounty increases.

Rather, this skill increases your gain from

killing a player with a bounty - or at least

that's the impression given by CCP - this

skill is not yet in game. But I figured it

would be worth mentioning for reference.

Negotiation increases your mission

payout and bonus by 5% per level - to an

affective 25% bonus at level V. This skill

works as intended and is one of the two

vital skills of mission runners. You may

not want to push it to V, but IV is

definitely worth it - especially when you're

running level 3 and 4 missions where the

payout is a high amount to begin with.

The other vital skill I was referring to

above is actually from a pool of





connection skills. These skills increase

your affective loyalty point gain by 5%

per level, and there are generally two you

can use for each agent type. These skills

and which divisions they affect are:

- Bureaucratic Connections:

Administration, Internal Security,

Personnel, Storage, Archives, Financial.

- Financial Connections: Public

Relations, Marketing, Legal, Accounting,

Financial, Distribution.

- High-Tech Connections: Archives,

Advisory, Intelligence, Manufacturing,

Surveillance.

- Labor Connections: Manufacturing,

Production, Personnel, Mining,

Astrosurveying.

- Military Connections: Intelligence,

Security, Astrosurveying, Command,

Internal Security, Surveillance.

- Political Connections: Security,

Legal, Administration, Advisory,

Command, Public Relations

- Trade Connections: Distribution,

Storage, Production, Accounting,

Mining, Marketing.

The most important skills you can

focus on when starting out are:

Connections, Negotiation, and then the

Connections skill of the appropriate

above division. This will get you higher

on the corporate ladder, net you more

money, and get you a better LP pool.

Agents and MissionTypes

To locate an agent, find the corporation

you'd like to work for. You can do this by

opening your People and Places tab and

searching for the Race of your choice with

the Faction option highlighted. For

instance, choose Faction from the

drop-down menu and type in "Gallente" to

bring up the Gallente Federation.

Now that you have the faction's menu

up, click the "member corps" tab to see all

of the NPC corporations associated with it.

From here you get information on all of

them and see which one you prefer. From

there you can see the agents. I'll use the

Navy as an example. So scroll down to the

Federation Navy and click the information

circle. Now click the "Agents" tab and

here is a list of agents. You'll notice that

within a division you'll have the "available

to you" list and the "not available to you"

list, which is idiot-proof. You'll always

want to use the highest agent you can

according to level and quality (assuming

you can handle the missions - for example

purposes we'll assume you can handle all

missions). The higher the quality of the

agent, the more money you'll receive for





missions and the more LP you'll gain.

More information can be found regarding

loyalty points in section three of this

chapter.

If you right click on an agent that you

can't use and look under the "agent info"

tab, you'll notice at the bottom that it tells

you how high your standings need to be

in order to use that agent. To gain

standings, do missions with the

corporation to raise them up to the

required level to get that agent, then

switch over and keep cycling through in

this manner to get up to where you want

to be.

This is all there is to achieving

higher-end agents. It's just a lot of

mission running.

Each division has a different

probability of giving you a certain

mission type. For instance, Command is

97% likely to give you a kill mission,

whereas Manufacturing is 95% likely to

give you a courier (hauling) mission.

Below is a list of agent divisions and the

ratio of missions.

Agent Mission Types

- Administration: 50% Kill, 50%

Courier

- Advisory: 34% Kill, 66% Courier

- Archives: 5% Kill, 90% Courier, 5%

Trade

- Astrosurveying: 40% Kill, 30%

Courier, 25% Mining, 5% Trade

- Command: 97% Kill, 3% Courier

- Distribution: 5% Kill, 95% Courier

- Intelligence: 85% Kill, 15% Courier

- Internal Security: 95% Kill, 5%

Courier

- Legal: 50% Kill, 50% Courier

- Manufacturing: 5% Kill, 95% Courier

- Marketing: 5% Kill, 95% Courier

- Mining: 5% Kill, 85% Courier, 10%

Mining (II)

- Production: 5% Kill, 95% Courier

- Public Relations: 34% Kill, 66%

Courier

- R and D;*: 0% Kill, 50% Courier(S),

50% Trade

- Security: 90% Kill, 5% Courier,

5%Trade

- Storage: 5% Kill, 95% Courier (L)

- Surveillance: 95% Kill, 5% Courier

The (S) stands for small courier

missions - often done in a shuttle or at

worst a cruiser - though there are

occasional exceptions that will require an

industrial or several trips with a cruiser.

The (L) represents large courier missions

which almost always require an industrial

equipped for as much cargo capacity as

possible. The (II) next to mining means





you'll need to skill to level II to perform

for that agent type. This way you can see

the divisions and choose which is best

according to how your character is

tailored. Note the R and D division is

asterisked - the below section delves

further into this unique class.

When you start a conversation with an

agent, you can ask for a job. The agent

then offers a mission and you can opt to

either accept that mission or decline it.

You can decline 1 mission per 4 hours

without an ill recompense, but if you

decline more than 1 within that span,

you'll receive a faction hit - or a

subtraction of faction - for it. You

generally don't want this happen,

however if you're doing level 4 missions

and need to decline a few in a row, the

ones you do end up doing will raise your

faction by quite a bit. I also suggest

having a couple of level 4 agents that you

work for, so that if you want to keep

from losing any faction you can simply

trade off.

Now, when first starting out, it's best to

stick with exactly what you plan on

doing and are capable of doing. You may

want to shoot down enemy ships, but if

your skills are tied up in R and D, then

it'll require you to be a bit more cautious

and careful. Try out a kill mission, and if

it's easy enough, then keep working on

those. And if it's difficult, then determine

why that is. Are you having trouble taking

the hits? Are you not killing fast enough?

Are you having trouble hitting them?

Figure out where you need to strengthen

yourself, and you'll be on the right track to

setting yourself up for making the

missions quick and easy - which means

quick and easy cash!

Use the above table to determine which

type of agent you'd like to work for. The

percentages vary only slightly and rarely

(1% deviance) and other than that, the

table should give you a great reference to

how often you'll be killing, hauling, and

dealing with the market.

From your level 1 agent, you'll move up

to a level 2 (keep looking under the agents

tab of the corporation you're working for

until a level 2 becomes available) and the

missions will become slightly more

difficult. From there out, you'll be well on

your way to getting into the big leagues.

From a standpoint of ISK: Kill Missions

are the best way to make loot and ISK

quickly. R and D is the most

patience-demanding and boring, but in the

long-run can pay off greatly. So for steady

income, try doing kill missions, and for the

long-shots - or if you're simply

time-sensitive- then try investing in

Research.





Ore Refinement Chart

This is a chart to give you a better idea of what you should mine according to what you

need and the yield. This will give you a better idea of what kind of ore you'll want to be

after also since you can see how you can best play the market in a region.

Legend:

- Ore Type: The type of Ore

- Volume: How much room the ore takes up

- Units: How many it takes to refine once

- T: Tritanium

- P: Pyerite

- Mx: Mexallon

- I: Isogen

- N: Nocxium

- Z: Zydrine

- Mg: Megacyte

- Mp: Morphite

OreType Volume Units T P Mx I N Z Mg Mp

Veldspar 0.1 333 1000

ConcentradedVeldspar 0.1 333 1050

DenseVeldspar 0.1 333 1100

Scordite 0.15 333 833 416

ConcentradedScordite 0.15 333 875 437

MassiveScordite 0.15 333 916 458

Pyroxeres 0.35 333 844 59 120 11





SolidPyroxeres 0.35 333 886 62 131 11

ViscousPyroxeres 0.35 333 928 65 132 12

Plagioclase 0.35 333 256 512 256

AzurePlagioclase 0.35 333 269 538 269

RichPlagioclase 0.35 333 282 563 282

Omber 0.6 500 307 123 307

SilveryOmber 0.6 500 323 129 323

GoldenOmber 0.6 500 338 135 338

Kernite 1.2 400 386 773 386

LuminousKernite 1.2 400 405 812 405

FieryKernite 1.2 400 425 850 425

Jaspet 2 500 259 259 548 259

PureJaspet 2 500 272 272 544 272

PristineJaspet 2 500 285 285 570 285

Hemorphite3 500 212 212 424

VividHemorphite3 500 223 223 445

RadiantHemorphite3 500 233 233 466

Hedbergite 3 500 708 354

VitricHedbergite 3 500 744 372

GlazedHedbergite 3 500 779 389

Gneiss 5 400 171 171 343 171

IridescentGneiss 5 400 180 180 360 180

PrismaticGneiss 5 400 188 188 360 188

DarkOchre 8 400 250 500 250





OnyxOchre 8 400 263 525 263

ObsidianOchre 8 400 275 550 275

Spodumain 16 250 700 140 140

BrightSpodumain 16 250 735 147 147

GleamingSpodumain 16 250 770 154 154

Crokite 16 250 331 331 633

SharpCrokite 16 250 347 347 696

CrystallineCrokite 16 250 364 364 729

Bistot 16 200 170 341 170

TridinicBistot 16 200 179 368 179

MonoclinicBistot 16 200 187 375 187

Arkonor 16 200 300 166 333

CrimsonArkonor 16 200 315 175 350

PrimeArkonor 16 200 330 183 366

Mercoxit 40 250 530

MagmaMercoxit 40 250 557

PrimeMercoxit 40 250 583





Tradesman Tips

This is possibly one of the easiest professions to train for. One thing you'll always want

to keep in mind is the tax. Even with your skills trained relatively high, there are still

applicable taxes and be sure to always account for those taxes. As a tradesman, there are

two ways in which you can make your money.

Before I begin, there are two general rules to keep in mind - you need money to make

money. So you'll need to start out small and work your way up. The fatter your wallet is,

the more items you can buy and sell, naturally. The second thing is: people are lazy. Place

minerals in a station that many people frequent, and you'll likely be able to sell them - even

if they're above the regional average by a decent amount. For instance, many mission

runners for Gallente work out of Dodixie, so placing several thousand units of each type of

mineral will likely sell there, since the mission runners don't want to waste time flying

somewhere else to get what they need.

The first way to make any money is to find high buy orders for common items you can

obtain in bulk. An example would be finding a buy order for 1M Tritanium at 3 ISK per

unit in one region and a sell order for 1M Tritanium at 1 ISK in another. You'd buy the 1M

units of Tritanium at 1 ISK, haul it to the buy order, and sell it there, making roughly a 2M

profit. This is a good system because you're not paying any taxes or broker fees in order to

place that Tritanium onto the market as a sell order. It would be pointless and

counter-productive is place them on the market for 3.1 ISK per unit, for instance.

The other method is to get a general idea of the cost of an item and then find cheap sell

orders of the item, buy all of them around that price, and then put those items on the

market to drive up the general cost. An example would be Tech II Cap Rechargers. The

general cost of the item is 11M ISK or so. So if you fly to an area, see a good quantity at

around 9M ISK and buy them all, then to a region where there's only a few on the market

for, say, 10M ISK, you buy all of those, then re-market all of them for 11-12M ISK as the

monopoly supplier. It may be a bit of work and the profit may not be tremendous, but at

least it is an income.

This works best with very expensive items however, such as +4 implants or high-end

modules. If you can get them cheap enough, you can simply undercut everyone else by just

enough to ensure yours sells while simultaneously making a nice profit.





There are better examples to this and there are other items and certain regions that pay

off more. One of the biggest selling regions is Heimetar, most specifically in the Rens

system. Dodixie (Sinq Laison), Kaunokka (The Citadel), and several different systems in

Devoid (that lead into 0.0) are great places to set up items for sale - especially PvP

oriented-items, such as warp scramblers and WCS. Ammunition doesn't sell as well as

you'd think, unless it's the Tech II version.

You'll need something big to move mass amounts of things such as this, but you have to

rationalize out how to go about getting something big - and what I mean here is a

Freighter. So let's say you have just enough to get a Freighter and buy one - what about

your wallet? You'd need a decent amount of money to buy a hefty amount of minerals to

haul somewhere in it to make a profit. So you'll need to make sure that when you make

your move into a Freighter you have money left over to put it to use with.

Having mining as a second profession, or even production, is a great idea as well. With

mining you can get the minerals you want to sell for free, and take them to the station you

want to sell yourself, making maximum profit. And with production you can pick up

minerals cheap somewhere, haul them to your manufacturing station, create the item(s) and

then sell wherever you can make a good profit from it.

The most important thing to remember though - Never take your Freighter into low-sec

space unless you have friends or you know beyond doubt it's "safe" to do so. After

spending so much money and time on the ship, you certainly don't want to lose it to some

pirates. If it's a good deal you're after, simply risk some industrial ships for it. Jump in,

warp to the station, get the goods, jump to the gate, jump through, dock and place them in

the hangar, and repeat. Once you've gotten what you're after, just haul from that safe-space

station to wherever it is you're looking to take it with your Freighter. It's much better to

lose a 500-1M ISK ship than an 800M+ ISK one.


Documents

The Unofficial EVE Online Strategy Guide