Skills, Skills, Skills...........more skills!

Skills breakdown into to two categories. Those needed to fly the ship and the support skills to make flying that ship better.

The skills needed to fly the ship are simple and easy to find. Take the Rifter, that awesome little ship I am preparing to fly.

Just to assemble the ship so you can look at in you hangar, you need:

Minmatar Frigate III
Spaceship Command I

Simple enough and quick to train.

But that is far from all the skills you will need to be successful in flying the Rifter in PvP.

You need to fit the Rifter with the modules discussed earlier and that takes skills. You also need a myriad of support skills to make fitting, flying, and fighting possible.

To fit the high slots you need:

Gunnery I
Small Projectile Turret I
Missile Launcher Operation I
Rockets I

The mid slots:

Afterburner I
Navigation II
Propulsion Jamming I
Electronics III

Low slots:

Hull Upgrades II
Mechanic I
Repair Systems I

So there are the basics to fit an armor-tanked Rifter. Easy enough, but if I try to fit this all on my ship, I quickly run out of power grid and CPU. Plus this is only the basics and what if I want to upgrade to the better T-2 modules. For instance, I really want to fit a Microwarp Drive in place of that afterburner and some more powerful T-2 guns. More skills!

Let's look at some key support skills:

I like to break my skill training plans into logical units so training seems quicker and I accomplish more sooner (at least in my mind).

Energy Management:

• Engineering V
• Electronics V
• Electronics Upgrades
• Energy Grid Upgrades
• Energy Management
• Energy Systems Operation

Weapons:

• Gunnery V
• Sharpshooter
• Trajectory Analysis
• Surgical Strike
• Weapon Upgrades
• Advanced Weapon Upgrades
• Controlled Bursts

Other categories I use, include shields, armor, targeting, missiles, speed, etc. I encourage you to research the skills needed to support flying a ship successfully in combat. I use the forums and blogs to read about skills that will give me what I need to have edge over a flashing red target. The importance of good skills is second only to fighting experience in realizing success.

I use Evemon to setup all of my training plans. What an invaluable tool!