User:Diane yanumano/certs

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Introduction

It seems to be a more or less well accepted fact that the certificate system in EvE Online is less than entirely useful as it currently stands. Articles tend to stress relatively complicated ways of approaching what skills to train. Long descriptions of the skills and how they interrelate are quite important to undersand, but for the beginning pilot, they tend to overwhelm.

The game has a system that can help simplify the decision as to what skills you train by allowing you to focus not on the individual skills so much as the underlying foundations of what pilots end up doing in New Eden. This is the certificate system.

But this too can be overwhelming to the new pilot. Because the game does not demand a certain progression or dictate roles and goals, the pilot is more or less left to her own devices. When she looks at the certificates, to choose wisely, she needs to know more or less what she wants to be when she grows up.

This article explains and details the certificate system, explains how to use it to plan your training, and briefly argues why you should use the certificate system, at least in the beginning.

The Certificates

The certificates are grouped into N categories. They can usefully be organised into supergroups, like so:

• Professions
  • Starter Professions
  • Business and Industry
  • Harvesting
  • Leadership

• Flight Skills
  • Core
  • Defence
  • Drones
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Gunnery
  • Missiles
  • Navigation

Careers v. Professions v. Occupations

A career and a profession are clearly not the same thing and both of these are different than an occupation. One way to look at it is to see professions as skill sets and careers as the sets of activities you perform with those skill sets. Occupations would then be specific activities themselves. A real world example is the distinctions between lawyer, public administration, and running a non-governmental organisation. Being a lawyer is being a member of a profession, but administering non-governmental organisations is a career which people from many different professions can pursue.

The certificate system can be seen as a helper on the professions side of this picture, while the detailed understanding of the skills trees should be seen as the career side. Specific occupations may require specfic skills that either fall out of the scope of a certificate or fall under what seems to be an entirely unrelated certificate. Useful metaphors might be the distinction between law school (where you learn what the law is) and the training you get in a law firm (where you learn how to practice the law) and the sort of courses requried to achieve the certificates/diplomas that technical schools/colleges award and the training offered by a specific technical company for a specfic job. 

Careers

The EVE Careers Guide[1] has an interesting breakdown of the various career paths available in EVE. Not only are the normal industrial and military careers considered, but discussions of role playing careers and metagame[2] play[3].

Occupations

These are some of the basic occupations that you can get into very early and very easily in your career:

• Courier
• Miner
• Rat Hunter
• MIssion Runner

Getting Started in the Professions

Seeing as this guide is about certificates and professions, let's look at those now.

The certificate system allows you to train into six 'starter' professions in three broad classes: business, industry, and the military.

The 'Starter' Professions

It is a misnomer to call these professions 'starter'. A better word would be 'main' or 'core'. There are quite a few more skill sets we should be calling 'professions' than these.

Each of the starter professions have racial variants, but only the racial frigate skill is different between them. Each certificate has four grades: basic, standard, improved, elite.

We'll see the first grade of each of these professions with a mind to understanding what the skill training amounts to and what you are able to do with what you've trained.

Business - Entrepreneur

• Basic
  • Racial Frigate II
  • Trade V
  • Retail IV
  • Daytrading IV

Business - Executive Commander

• Basic
  • Racial Frigate II
  • Leadership V
  • Shield Operation IV

Industry - Engineer

• Basic
  • Racial Frigate I
  • Industry III
  • Mass Production I
  • Laboratory Operation V

Industry - Prospector

• Basic
  • Racial Frigate I
  • Industry III
  • Refining V
  • Mining V

Military - Soldier

Caldari

• Basic
  • Caldari Frigate III
  • Missile Operation IV
  • Standard Missiles III
  • Shield Operation III

Minmatar

• Basic
  • Minmatar Frigate III
  • Gunnery V
  • Small Projective Turret V
  • Shield Operation III

Military - Special Forces

Example: Caldari

• Basic
  • Caldari Frigate IV
  • Shield Operation III
  • Electronic Warfare II
  • Missile Bombardment V

Example: Minmatar

• Basic
  • Minmatar Frigate IV
  • Gunnery III
  • Navigation V
  • Afterburner V

Advanced Careers

As has been said, these six core careers should be though of as root professions, like 'lawyer' rather than manager. But there are quite a few careers that are more highly specialised (or take longer to make them more than marginally worth the time) and require more skill training. We'll see just a few of these as introduction to what you might do once you are well on your way in training into a profession.

• Scientific Careers
  • Archaeologist
  • Hacker
  • Cartographer

• Adventure
  • Bounty Hunter
  • Pirate

• Military
  • Scout
  • EWAR Specialist
  • Tackler
  • Covert Ops Specialist
  • Sniper
  • Fleet Commander

• Corporation Management
  • Chief Executive Officer
  • Accountant
  • Instructor/Mentor

• Industry/Engineering
  • T2 Manufacturer
  • Research Engineer
  • Hauler

Supplementary Reading

Information from the EVE wiki

Chat about the Certificate System

Windows character progression program

Eve Tools: MacOS X character progression application

the guide

Authors

Diane Yanumano