Spaceship Command               11,702,768 (*)
Gunnery                          7,752,860 (*)
Engineering                      2,978,040 (*)
Missiles                         2,745,062 (*)
Shields                          1,553,335
Armor                            1,290,305 (*)
Navigation                       1,265,805
Targeting                        1,048,000
Trade                            1,338,235
Drones                             911,217
Resource Processing                471,680
Electronic Systems                 444,776
Rigging                            436,774
Leadership                         421,824
Production                         222,767
Social                             198,935
Neural Enhancement                 159,765 (*)
Science                             45,255
Scanning                            20,729
Corporation Management               1,000
Total                          ~35,000,000

Since EVE recategorized its skills, there are now a lot more categories than before. Some of them make sense: for example, you don’t have to remember any more that armor and rigging skills are under (the now defunct) “Mechanics” and shield skills under “Engineering”. Some categories are a bit more dubious: why Scanning was split off Electronics for a mere seven skills… who knows.

The downside is that it is a lot harder to compare the areas in which I earned additional skills. For the most part, the asterisks are educated guesses on what I remember training. Basically, it’s been another 5 million in mostly gunnery, missiles, and spaceship command. The other categories are short trains for skills that were added to the game with the recent Odyssey expansion: “Infomorph Synchronizing” for reduced jump clone timers, and “Armor Layering” to fly faster with heavy armor. The latter one has already been renamed once in its short life. I have no idea what was wrong with the original “Armor Honeycombing”, I liked it a lot better…. However, most skill progress is still done in The Big Three, with a bunch of long-running skills. That works well with my current play time: I don’t play at all, I just let my pilot sit in his ship, waiting for the subscription to time out.

The Mandatory Titan Test

I’m still 128 days from flying a Titan. That number hasn’t changed a bit in the last 5 million SP. Gunnery skills are not required to get into a Titan, so they don’t get me any closer to one. They do get me closer to actually fit weapon on the theoretical Titan, though, so there’s something.

Plans for the Future

Sit in a station. Log in to train skills. See the subscription timer tick down. Unless something unexpected happens, this might be the last round-number skill point post for a long time. I’ll train a couple more extra-long skills until then. Next up: Advanced Weapon Upgrades V. Getting that out of the way would, in theory, allow me to fly dreadnaughts, the smallest capital class of ships, within a month, and only a couple more days for their guns. Not that I think that’s very likely to happen… ever. But AWU also gives you some other benefits, so it’s probably good to finally get that done. It’s not a fun skill to watch train for weeks while you’re actually playing.

Spaceship Command           11,061,943 (*) 
Gunnery                      6,271,210 (*)
Engineering                  2,939,845 (*)
Missile Launcher Operation   1,670,950
Electronics                  1,623,756 (*)
Trade                        1,338,235
Navigation                   1,265,805
Mechanics                    1,719,079 (*)
Drones                         911,217 (*)
Industry                       690,204
Leadership                     421,824
Science                        225,749
Social                         198,435
Corporation Management           1,000
Total                      ~30,300,000

Asterisks denote categories that changed from last time. Unsurprisingly, since I am still in my Perception/Willpower remap, Gunnery and especially Spaceship command have seen the largest increase since last time. Sadly, since it’s been so long that I paid attention to my skills, I cannot really say what I picked up since last time. I think it was T2 Large Hybrids, so I can now fly Caldari and Gallente Battleships (or at least a good part of them) properly. I can also fly the Oneiros now, and other than that, made a decent spread across all the T1 hulls for the different races. I guess the idea was that, since I didn’t know where I’d end up, I better train a wide spread, so whatever they ask me to fly wouldn’t be too much of a train from what I got. Sadly, I didn’t take a snapshot of my skill level distribution this time around, but it seems I picked up a fair bunch of IVs and Vs.

What I’m Currently (Not) Doing

I’m at a total roadblock with EVE at the moment. I’m not with the UNI any more, because they kicked me after a long period of inactivity and when my API key ran out (can’t blame them for that, really can’t). I can’t do anything on my own, except maybe run missions, which gets boring fast. I have a couple of people on my friends list from the EVE university days, but I haven’t talked to them in months because I’ve been offline for so long, so I kinda don’t want to start the conversation with “Heeeeeyyyy… remember me? No? Well, damn. Anyway, can you vouch me into your alliance?” Even worse, I don’t even know what I want to do. Null? Low? Wormhole? it actually all sounds ok, everything would be better than what I’m currently doing. Which is a whole lot of nothing. I log in, stare at my chat windows and friends list (typically people are offline), then jet around in my interceptor from point A to point B, then queue another skill and log off. It’s basically Farmville in Space. Then again, I’m also worried that even if I ended up getting someone to help me with getting back into the groove, I’d have to bail out again eventually. I remember EVE being a good time-sink, and the rest of the year will probably be a lot of work for me. I basically want to finish a first version of my thesis document until the end of the year, and that might mean a lot of long working hours. Plus, there are other games around, too…

So yeah, enough of the morose attitude. If anybody has suggestions, shoot please. Otherwise, I’ll probably just let my subscription time out again.

The Mandatory Titan Test

Funny enough (and fitting for my whole love-hate relationship with the game), my “time until I can fly a Titan” has actually gone up from last time. I mean, what? How is that even possible? I guess it must have something to do with the skill reorganization, and the Titans must’ve picked up different prerequisites. I can’t figure out what they are, though. Jump Portal Generation maybe? In any case, if I won a Titan today, it would now take me another 128 days until I could fly it (difference between the four Titans is only about a day).

Plans for the Future

I think I covered the lack of those quite well. It’s been a year since my last neural remap, so I could, in theory, go for Int/Mem and pick up lots and lots of support skills. That would be perfect for a time in the game where I’m not doing much anything. On the other hand, if I end up doing anything in eve again, Perc/Will will probably be valuable, because it’ll allow me to train for ships and guns much faster. Then again, using my free remap now means the next free remap will come again sooner, and I have 3 bonus remaps available still. Decisions, decisions… Anyway, if I keep playing (or at least paying), and stay in Perc/Will, then I expect to pick up even more guns/missiles/ships. If I go for Int/Mem, most of the skills until the next milestone will go into Engineering, Electronics, and Mechanics.

Spaceship Command            4,783,925 (*) 
Gunnery                      3,443,574 (*)
Engineering                  2,924,345
Missile Launcher Operation   1,670,950 (*)
Electronics                  1,389,011 (*)
Trade                        1,338,235
Navigation                   1,265,805 (*)
Mechanics                    1,211,517 (*)
Drones                         887,217 (*)
Industry                       690,204
Leadership                     421,824
Science                        225,749 (*)
Social                         198,435
Corporation Management           1,000
Total                      ~20,000,000

Asterisks denote categories that changed from last time. Of those, Missile Launcher Operation, Navigation, Drones, and Science only saw minimal changes. I can’t even remember what exactly it was I trained there. On the other hand, Spaceship Command, Gunnery, and Mechanics saw the largest increase since last time, just as I had predicted.

The longest train in this period was Gallente Cruisers V, which took most of my vacation. (The first week I was gone was for a conference, so I had net and could train some shorter skills during that time.) That it’s Gallente after all, and not Caldari, comes as a bit as a surprise to me. I’ve always liked the Caldari ships, and Tengus are simply awesome. On the other hand, I caught up on armor tanking and hybrid weapons recently, and the leader of my battle group in EVE University wants to experiment with setups that bear some similarity to TWEED gangs, so I decided to train Gallente before Caldari for this one.

That means I picked up skills to fly a couple more Tech2 ships. Together with Gallente Cruisers V, I trained up Heavy Assault Ships IV and Logistics IV, so I can now fly the Deimos, Ishtar, and Oneiros. I cannot fly Recons because I’m missing the CovOps prerequisites, nor can I fly the Phobos Heavy Interdictor.

I can also equip those more expensive ships properly, because since the last milestone, I picked up skills for T2 medium hybrid weapons, and a bunch of Gunnery support skills, as well as decent (if not great) armor tanking skills; enough to fit T2 armor tanks, a very very good idea for every ship armor-tanked anyway.

Looking at the skill level distribution:

Level 0:  1
Level 1: 15
Level 2: 24
Level 3: 37
Level 4: 48
Level 5: 29

Quite a spread. It follows the old adage of “everything worth training is worth training to level IV”, though. I just lose interest in a lot of skills early. When it comes to training skills, I go through two-phase cycles. Either I don’t know what to train at all, and just put in something long, or I have so many things I want to train as soon as possible that I stop training at level II or III as soon as the bare requirements are met. I guess I should round off some skills soon.

The skill at level 0 is a bit odd. It means I injected the skill, but then never trained it up at all. That rarely happens if I buy a skill before I head out somewhere where skill book supply is scarce, but want to finish training something else first. The skill in question is Nanite Operation. Whoops! Totally forgot about that one! That might be worth training, definitely!

The Mandatory Titan Test

All of this training, however, has not brought me closer to a Titan by even a single day. I am still 118 days away from the closest Titan (the Leviathan), of which 77 days are for training Advanced Spaceship Command and Capital Ships to V, and another 30 for Caldari Battleship V. Not that I have any intention of flying a titan anyway, but there. 2 months of training, and not a day shaved off.

Future Plans

I am in a bit of a slump again with EVE at the moment. Back when I was still a Sophomore, I had something to work towards. After becoming an EVE Uni graduate, my play time has gradually decreased, though. I did not play all that much in the month before I went on vacation, and I’m not even really sure what the ILN is up to these days. I hope I can find something fun to do, because I have lots of memories of just sitting around, waiting for anything to happen (like just some sort of fleet, even one that doesn’t do much), and nothing happening at all. In the last months, TSW has been released, LotRO has been calling out to me again, and RIFT’s one-year-plus-expansion-soon deal has rekindled my interest in the game. Competition has become more fierce again. Let’s see how EVE will hold up against that.

When I picked up EVE again 4 months ago, I was above the 10 million mark, and I didn’t even think of logging my skill points either. On the other hand, even at optimum training speed, it will take more than another two months before I hit the 20 million mark. So I’ll do an intermediate step and look at my skill point distribution when I hit 15 million skill points three weeks ago. Here we go, in decreasing order of points:

Engineering                  2,924,345
Spaceship Command            2,637,897
Missile Launcher Operation   1,664,365
Gunnery                      1,599,645
Trade                        1,338,235
Navigation                   1,117,391
Drones                         774,741
Electronics                    756,776
Industry                       690,204
Mechanics                      659,598
Leadership                     421,824
Science                        213,770
Social                         198,435
Corporation Management           1,000
Total                      ~15,000,000

A look at my current skills

The first thing you might notice is the large amount spent in Engineering, even more than Spaceship Command. This is mostly due to shield tanking skills that I trained mostly without playing during one of the previous 2-months-for-the-price-of-1 offers. It ties in really well with one of my favorite ships, the Drake, which I like to fly both in PvE and PvP. Another hefty contributor are capacitor skills – the “Core Capacitor” certificate is the only one I have at Elite level, actually.

The Harpy is the most recent ship I learned to fly on my way to 15 million SP. It’s a tough assault frigate (and the first T2 combat ship I can fly!). I really like flying Harpies, they can take a beating and dish them out. If only they were a bit faster… I can also fly their sister ship, the Hawks, but I don’t have appropriate rocket skills to make them worth it.

Next up, Spaceship command. Not a big surprise here. I’m still mostly invested into Caldari, which means I can fly everything T1 up to battleships, and currently branching into T2 frigates. At the point of that snapshot, I could fly Caldari assault frigates and was just about to finish training for interceptors. The odd-non-Caldari-out is Gallente Industrial, which I trained to V early on during my aborted industrial career. At least it means I can fly the largest T1 hauler there is.

Missile Launcher Operations: also not a big surprise, considering I was exclusively a PvEer until a short while ago. Most of these are missile support skills and the training for T2 heavy missiles. (for my Drake – maybe the fact that I have all the cool skills for it is the reason I like that ship so much?)

Gunnery would’ve been really interesting to watch since the 10 million mark. I’ll go out on a limb and claim that of the 5 million difference from 10 to 15, I spent half my skill points in gunnery. (Nevermind that this isn’t even possible because then I would’ve started at -900,000 skill points in that category. Details!) Until I joined the uni, I was all about missiles. There was no motivation for me to train guns, because missiles are just so much better in PvE. I started investing in gunnery support skills quite heavily recently though, and now can use T2 small hybrid weapons, and am now working towards T2 medium hybrids.

Trade: Of the 1.34 million skill points, 1.28 million are spent in Accounting and Broker Relations V. I trained those very early on, because I was looking into an industrial and trade career, and these meant more money made on trading. They are still kinda useful… I guess. I don’t expect to see any changes in that category any time soon.

Navigation: This is mostly support skills. Until I start using jump drives (read: not any time soon, potentially never), I don’t expect to invest a lot more points here. I got almost everything I want, except High Speed Maneuvering V. Oh. Right. Yeah. This one is really nice, but the train is soooooo long. I’ll get back to that at some point.

Drones: I can fly T2 light and medium drones of every race now, and I don’t have any plans to train up to T2 heavies any time soon. Takes so long. I really should get to work on my support skills in that category at some point, though. I’ve been very negligent there.

Electronics: I’m surprised how few points I have in that category, even though it felt to me like I trained many different things there. It’s probably because I trained almost nothing to level V, which is where the skill points ramp up.

Industry: Mostly from my early industrial days. Skills to get to perfect refining of minerals, which my alt would mine and I would pick up in my Iteron V.

Mechanics: Even though I know that my armor tanking skills suck, I’m still shocked at the low number of points invested here. I will really need to work on that soon. Only being able to fly shield tanked ships and no armor tanked ships restricts me a lot when fleets go out, because they often ask for a specific tank type.

Leadership: These were trained up in two surges. The first one occurred when I trained this character to become a competent mining foreman two years ago. The second time I touched skills in this category was recently, to be able to be a squad commander for Uni fleets, and pass on bonuses properly.

Science: I guess I’m not gud with ze science. Maybe I should reconsider my real-world occupation? I am very thankful I at least have an alt with all those scanning skills that I know I will need at some point.

Social: So not only am I too dumb for science, I’m also antisocial. Go me!

Corporation Management: I’m not even sure why I trained that. I guess I needed that one skill to anchor containers in space?

The Mandatory Titan Test

Every post with meaningless statistics needs an equally meaningless goal to measure progress to. Thankfully, Wilhelm already came up with one: How long does it take me, from my current point in time, to gather the skills to fly a Caldari Titan? EVEMon tells me it’s 118 days. So if I wanted, I could fly around in a Titan by Christmas. Well, and if I had the money. And a nullsec alliance that would allow me to fly around in a multi-billion ship without proper support skills.

Future Plans

A short while ago, I used my first neural remap ever. I’m now set up with very high Perception and Willpower skills. This means that I am very fast at training Spaceship Command and Gunnery skills, but slower at a lot of other things. Most notably, training armor tanking skills will take longer than before. Maybe I should’ve thought of that before. Oh well. But with the remap the way it is, I expect to pick up skills for a lot more guns and ships in the next few million skill points. By the end of the year, I should be a competent pilot in several races’ ships and their preferred weapons. Though, it’s hard to plan that far ahead. If I decide to join a corp, they will probably ask me to train skills that benefit them or fit with their fleet doctrines. Which hopefully should still mean mostly Perc/Will skills, so I’m not too worried. My prediction for the 20 million skill point mark: Gunnery and Spaceship Command will see the most development, with Mechanics (for armor tanking) coming third. The rest will be a smattering here and there to round off stuff.

We’ll see how right or wrong I am in about 2-3 months.