Been away a long time: How much does time subbed influence power?

[Nebu]

One of the reasons that I've hesitated to re-sub to this game was my fear that there is too great a reward for time subbed.  If I were to come back as a relative noob, how long would it take before I was competitive with some of the old timers?  Will they alwasy have a huge advantage or is there a way that a new but dedicated player can "catch up" so to speak.

Thanks!

[Raging Turtle]

Depends on the assets and skill points your old character had and/or if you roll up a new character. 

It's not that hard to make money in this game - trading, running missions, even mining in highsec is profitable now because of some mineral price spikes.  You could join the F13 corp and immediately be helping out, or look for a different corp to join depending on exactly what you want to do. 

If you think your old character sucks, you should download the trial and check out the revamped character creation - new characters now start with about 800k skill points, which would take almost a month to get to under the old system.  If you have the money, you can make a new character and be using T2 small guns almost immediately. 

Also, people in the F13 channel tend to be generous if someone needs a little starting cash. 

[Nebu]

That's all very helpful, but it doesn't answer my question.  How weak is a new character relative to an older character?  How long will it take to be competitive with an older character strictly in terms of abilities?

[Yoru]

That's all very helpful, but it doesn't answer my question.  How weak is a new character relative to an older character?  How long will it take to be competitive with an older character strictly in terms of abilities?

It depends on what you want to do. Trouble started off and was competing with long-established traders on the market within hours. He made something like a billion isk in his first month playing.

If you want to get in on mining, it'll take about a month to get up to serious mining capabilities (i.e. a barge), plus whatever it takes you to make the cash to support it. Then you'll want to go for exhumers and drone/tank skills, so you can join up with a 0.0 corp and mine down there.

If you want to get in on PVP, I hear you can be useful within a day or so if you use a new character, although I don't strictly know the numbers here. This particularly applies to piracy.

If you want to do Exploration (the system), it takes about 2-3 months to train up (from scratch) to get the skills necessary to do it, not to mention effectively.

If you want to run missions, it probably takes ~2 months to get up to L4 missions, but it'll take at least 3 to train up your tank/weapon skills enough to be able to solo them.

[Morat20]

That's all very helpful, but it doesn't answer my question.  How weak is a new character relative to an older character?  How long will it take to be competitive with an older character strictly in terms of abilities?

It depends on what you mean by "competitive". EVE's skill tree is very broad, but not deep. Which means you can be good enough to fly HAC's with T2 gear in a few weeks or so after character creation -- quite competitive against someone in a similar setup.

A character with two years of skills won't be appreciably better than you flying a HAC, but he'd also be a skilled refiner, a decent miner, and very asskicking in a T2 battleship, a covert ops frig, and as a tackler.

Experience -- learning to recognize ships by sight, learning to recognize the sorts of tactics and fittings others can use against you (and how to fit to counter them, and when to run, etc) take more time. It's something I'm hoping to start learning myself.

So in short -- you get competitive really quick. What takes time is broadening the number of things you're competitive in. You can be flying a tackler frigate an hour or two out of character creation (especially if someone stakes you gear) and making a serious contribution in PvP against players who have years of skills. But they'll have a lot more choices at what they want to be good at today than you do. That part takes time.

[Nebu]

So in short -- you get competitive really quick. What takes time is broadening the number of things you're competitive in. You can be flying a tackler frigate an hour or two out of character creation (especially if someone stakes you gear) and making a serious contribution in PvP against players who have years of skills. But they'll have a lot more choices at what they want to be good at today than you do. That part takes time.

That's very helpful.  Thanks for taking the time. 

I've been playing DAoC for years and am really looking for someplace else to get my pvp fix.  WoW and EQ2 have too many balance issues to really satiate my tastes and both appear to lack the depth that EvE has.  I may just have to take the plunge and see how it goes. 

[dwindlehop]

Minor niggle here. I'm just about to crest 9M skillpoints with about 6M in combat skills and it would take me more than a month to fly a HAC. Obviously I haven't prioritized going up the Spaceship Command tree, but the point is it takes a while to fly a HAC even if you train for that exclusively. I believe your point about being skilled enough to fly competitively in a few weeks applies to T1 frigates, interceptors, maybe assault frigates, and T1 cruisers. I'd even throw T1 battlecruisers in there, but I think that's a poor target to train for someone who has no Eve PvP experience.

[Morat20]

Minor niggle here. I'm just about to crest 9M skillpoints with about 6M in combat skills and it would take me more than a month to fly a HAC. Obviously I haven't prioritized going up the Spaceship Command tree, but the point is it takes a while to fly a HAC even if you train for that exclusively. I believe your point about being skilled enough to fly competitively in a few weeks applies to T1 frigates, interceptors, maybe assault frigates, and T1 cruisers. I'd even throw T1 battlecruisers in there, but I think that's a poor target to train for someone who has no Eve PvP experience.

I'd have to look at EVEmon, but I thought with the new character creation you were maybe a month from HAC's at start. You wouldn't be able to hit shit, though. Or have enough cap or grid to fit the good stuff, even if you had the skills for it.

I know you can do tackling and other EW stuff more or less "out of the box" with a new character (this all assumes someone spots you gear). In my experience, the biggest hump is the first few months out because you need an array of skills (although the new character creation helps tremendously -- I'm just now training up skills almost everyone starts with now) to fly anything past a frigate -- decent weapon skills, grid and cap enhancing skills, hull, armor and shield skills.....

I just concentrated on drones and learning. So I'm just now moving Engineering, Electronics, Hull Upgrades and the like to 5. (I think I only have engineering left to move from 4 to 5). My gunnery skills are quite good, but they're a waste of a few million skill points -- I don't use guns anymore.

[Vedi]

I'd have to look at EVEmon, but I thought with the new character creation you were maybe a month from HAC's at start. You wouldn't be able to hit shit, though. Or have enough cap or grid to fit the good stuff, even if you had the skills for it.

You need Cruisers V for it, and taking that from IV to V is close to a month alone. You also need Engineering, Mechanic, Spaceship Command and Weapon Upgrades to V. You could perhaps train them all in two months with good learning skills, but in the beginning you don't have that.

I think Dwindle's assessment is mostly correct - you'd have to stick with for T1 ships or T2 frigates for a while. Which I incidentally still do, it's not a crippling menu by any means.

[Morat20]

I'd have to look at EVEmon, but I thought with the new character creation you were maybe a month from HAC's at start. You wouldn't be able to hit shit, though. Or have enough cap or grid to fit the good stuff, even if you had the skills for it.

You need Cruisers V for it, and taking that from IV to V is close to a month alone. You also need Engineering, Mechanic, Spaceship Command and Weapon Upgrades to V. You could perhaps train them all in two months with good learning skills, but in the beginning you don't have that.

I think Dwindle's assessment is mostly correct - you'd have to stick with for T1 ships or T2 frigates for a while. Which I incidentally still do, it's not a crippling menu by any means.

I'm sure you're right. I just fly regular cruisers for now, so I was having to guess at the HAC requirements. I was probably thinking T2 frigs. I make enough money doing L2 missions (I'm working on rep), and am toying with trading and research. Looking at making rigs, since I get a fair number of parts from missions. In a few weeks I have to zip around the region and round up the crap I've purchased over the last few weeks. I took a serious bath on some boosters -- they didn't sell as well in bulk as I would have thought. I might yank them off the market and haul them to Jita, though.

I don't focus very well -- I tend to train whatever skills I happen to need, and then go work on something else for a bit. Very scattershot and not very efficient.

[ajax34i]

With the new char creation, it'll take about a month to get the learning skills squared away and fly frigates well enough, and probably 3-4 months to boost up your support skills and be able to use T2 weapons (and some modules), at which point you should be just about as competitive as it gets, with maybe one or two ship types.  After that, it's a matter of diversifying, being able to fly more and more ship types, or maximizing various skills so you can minmax your performance.

[hal]

There is a misunderstanding about skills and skill caps. There is no cap on skills you can learn. But... BUT there is a max clone level. Any skills learned above the clone cap (assuming you have this active) are lost on death. The reality is most small PVP (groups or singly) is done in small cheep tech 1 ships and modules because you know you are gonna get toasted sometime. All of this is accessable reasonably quickly by a new player. Now, having said all that how about large corp/fleet battles. Well they need tacklers which are small cheep frigates and cruisers that scramble and web the targets. Again accessable to new players and usually your first job. And ya, your right in the thick of things

[Evangolis]

My newbie char Gen could probably have been vaguely useful in a PvP gang right out of the box.  Certainly at 12 days I could mount a basic tackler, no solo killer, but I probably could have lasted in a good gang.  Ship fitting would have been a bitch cold, but I could have mounted the basics.  I'd be surprised if it took more than a month for full T2 fittings if I focused, probably 2-3 for full T2 frigate.  But I could have mounted a T1 Racial Frig III and gone into PvP on initial login.  I'd have died if anyone noticed me, but I could have been a tackler pretty much at once.

And clones just got cheaper, so even getting podded is pretty survivable.

[Endie]

There is a misunderstanding about skills and skill caps. There is no cap on skills you can learn. But... BUT there is a max clone level. Any skills learned above the clone cap (assuming you have this active) are lost on death.

Is this the normal clone cap on skills depending on whast you pay?  If so, surely it's not really a cap, then, since my clone, which wasn't anywhere near the maximum one, originally protected 16 million skill points, and that was doubled in the last patch to 32 million, which is almost 3 years' of points even with good learning skills.  I'm sure that the top level clones are something in the Eve's-not-existed-that-long 9 figure range.

You're right to say "make sure you have a good enough clone", though.

[Morat20]

There is a misunderstanding about skills and skill caps. There is no cap on skills you can learn. But... BUT there is a max clone level. Any skills learned above the clone cap (assuming you have this active) are lost on death.

Is this the normal clone cap on skills depending on whast you pay?  If so, surely it's not really a cap, then, since my clone, which wasn't anywhere near the maximum one, originally protected 16 million skill points, and that was doubled in the last patch to 32 million, which is almost 3 years' of points even with good learning skills.  I'm sure that the top level clones are something in the Eve's-not-existed-that-long 9 figure range.

You're right to say "make sure you have a good enough clone", though.

I may be wrong -- obviously it's not something I need to know -- but I don't think death results in the loss of ALL your "over the clone cap" skill points. I'm pretty sure if I had a clone for 5 mil skill points, and I had 6 million, that getting podded wouldn't reduce me to 5 million skill points.

[Yoru]

You lose 10% of your over-clone-cap points. And the top-end clone has about 92 million SP in it, I think, whereas the highest SP total I know of in a player is around 80m.

[Slayerik]

From what ive heard you lose 1 rank off your toughest train skill. A friend of mine forgot to get a clone and he lost Heavy Drone Operation 5

My other buddy said if that happened to him he'd lose carrier 4....so ...um IDK

[dwindlehop]

Not true. You lose 5% (but possibly Yoru's figure is correct, but Help told me 5) of your over-clone-cap points. They come out of your highest skill point total skill. Normally that does put you down a rank, because you can't have anything higher than V. However, if your highest skill point total skill is in the process of training to V, you might not lose a level. I shed about 9k of Amarr Frigate which I had trained about 20k or so towards V when I died without a clone and 210k skill points. I didn't lose a level, I still have it at IV.

[Slayerik]

ok ... gotcha

I dont plan on loosing any of my 28 million SP :)

[JoeTF]

I confirm 5%. Died with no clone and ~16 M SP and it didn't hurt at all.