Neural Remapping

[76561197993764546]

Once this is done it is apparantly set in stone for quite a while so I want to make sure I get it right. So if I were interested in Exploration what would be a good balance of stats?

[Shotgun]

Think of it more like this:

Are you interested in being a purely industrial player, or are you going to train a general mix of combat skills, including support skills?

In terms of attributes, most industrial skills are (primary/secondary) intelligence/memory. Most combat skills, such as ship skills and weapon skills, are perception/willpower. Most support skills, like CPU and PG management, are intelligence/memory.

Even as a combat pilot, you will spend a lot of time during your first year training the support skills, maybe at a 40/60 split with combat skills. As such, after using a remap and unbinding all of your available attribute points from their default categories, you should probably go with a 60%/40% perception/intelligence split. You won't need any points in charisma at all (trust me), and willpower is predominantly used as a secondary combat attribute, plus in some marketing and social skills. Memory is used as a primary attribute in drones, but you will spend relatively few days training drone skills. Otherwise, memory is most often found as a secondary attribute in skills whose primary attribute is intelligence.

So remember, 60/40 perception/intelligence split for your first year or two. Then, if you continue training combat-related skills, dump everything you can into perception and the rest in willpower.

[76561197993764546]

I'd like to focus on exploration and avoid combat where possible. When combat becomes necessary, I'd like to be at least somewhat capable of defending myself.

Thanks for the info Shotgun, it's very useful, I was wondering if I could use Charisma as a dump stat :)

[Shotgun]

Originally posted by Doom:

I'd like to focus on exploration and avoid combat where possible. When combat becomes necessary, I'd like to be at least somewhat capable of defending myself.

Thanks for the info Shotgun, it's very useful, I was wondering if I could use Charisma as a dump stat :)

Exploration is 90% of the time meaningless without combat. Furthermore, only a few skills affect "exploration" in total, mainly the probing skills, and archaeology/hacking.

Also, if you're so averse to combat, you probably won't emjoy EVE over the long term.

[76561197993764546]

I'm not particularly adverse to combat, I'm just surprised to hear that it plays such a large role in exploration, I naturally assumed that an explorer would be alone much of the time on the frontier or under cloak gathering information.

[Shotgun]

Originally posted by Doom:

I'm not particularly adverse to combat, I'm just surprised to hear that it plays such a large role in exploration, I naturally assumed that an explorer would be alone much of the time on the frontier or under cloak gathering information.

Just to clarify, what type of combat are you thinking about here, pve or pvp?

[76561197993764546]

I dont really mind either. I came into the game assuming that combat would be necessary, both pve and pvp and I dont have a problem with it. It just surprised me to hear that an explorer career requires so much combat, thats not obvious to a newbie.

[Shotgun]

Okay well, most exploration sites are going to be full of NPCs that try to kill you, and as far as pvp goes, people will always try to kill you whenever they get the chance (and believe me, they will get the chance if you're doing lucrative exploration sites in non-high-sec space), so you can either carebear it up and run away from every potential encounter like a rodent, or learn to be able to defend yourself.

You can't "not like" combat in this game unless you want to be a total pushover.

[76561197993764546]

I'm more than happy to learn how to defend myself, I'll just have to focus more on combat skills than I though I would as an explorer, thanks for the heads up, its good to learn of these things now rather than later.

[Shotgun]

That's not to say that there aren't sites that have no NPC spawns at all (especially after the last expansion, Odyssey, completely retooled Radar and Magnetometric sites). Just that the majority of good, profitable sites are pretty much focused on killing NPCs until you get to the one that drops really good loot. Exploration doesn't actually have much to do with "exploring" in EVE.

And the significance of pvp is self-explanatory so I won't bother reiterating on that.

[Baneken]

My solution is to DL evemon, create a plan and place attributes accordingly.

Per / will is the most common combination for optimal drone plan per / memory, int / memory for most science related skills.
Cha is needed for leadership skills of which leadership V is important for you, mainly because you need it to enter 10/10 plex (for reasons I still cannot comprehend), not that fleet boosting skills are a bad thing to have they are just so rarely needed from individual pilots.
Trade skills and POS skill require cha as well and some PI skills.

[Shotgun]

Originally posted by Baneken:

My solution is to DL evemon, create a plan and place attributes accordingly.

A new player doesn't have the knowledge to map out a whole year's worth of skills. Most new players will train skills that are perception/willpower and intelligence/memory for the first year at least. So it really comes down to math:

The formula for the speed of skill training (points per minute) is:

(primary attribute + secondary attribute/2)

Can just use Excel to figure out the most optimal split.

[Baneken]

Well I think evemon is still useful for browsing skills especially when you find your favorite fit from a kb and slap it to evemon through EFT.

[76561197993764546]

Originally posted by Shotgun:

Exploration doesn't actually have much to do with "exploring" in EVE.

lol, which is the exact same thought that occurred to me when you said it would be 90% combat. I think I'll stick with it as a career choice though, it still sounds interesting and it cant possibly be worse than mining. :)

I might take a look at evemon when I get a bit further into the game. At the moment everything is a bit overwhelming.

[Shotgun]

Originally posted by Baneken:

Well I think evemon is still useful for browsing skills especially when you find your favorite fit from a kb and slap it to evemon through EFT.

Yes, it's a pretty useful tool, along with EFT. Actually, and though I'm no genius, since I'm pretty good at math I never ended up using either tool, and just did fitting and skill calculations in my head, or with pen and paper. People found it weird, but I got really good at it to the point that I can mentally assemble a fit for a particular purpose, and also judge an enemy's combat effectiveness down to the second when I scan their ship (mostly in high-sec wars).

Originally posted by Doom:

lol, which is the exact same thought that occurred to me when you said it would be 90% combat. I think I'll stick with it as a career choice though, it still sounds interesting and it cant possibly be worse than mining. :)

I might take a look at evemon when I get a bit further into the game. At the moment everything is a bit overwhelming.

In my opinion, exploration is a bit more fun than missions. The only reason I've ever touched missions was to get the bare minimum standings to use locator agents for pvp purposes. I do, however, enjoy doing a site or two every once in a while in an attempt to play the loot lottery. But even exploration gets tedious quickly, because there are only so many different sites. The pve content was never this game's strong point.

Oh, and as far as evemon and EFT go, you can get them and play around with the programs even when you're not playing the game. In fact, this might help you learn the game quicker.

[76561197993764546]

Well it sounds like I'll be getting quite a decent dose of pvp just doing the explorer missions. I *was* planning on gettin more involved in pvp when I figure out what the hell is going on, but I was hoping it would be more in terms of spying, espionage and stealth based surveilence of enemy positions for intelligence gathering rather than direct confrontation.

I have no idea if that's even possible in Eve but the idea does appeal to me. Its one of the reasons I gravitated towards the explorer career, it seems logical that the same skill-set would apply to espionage. Of course it also seemed logical that exploration wouldnt involve much combat and look where that got me.