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

Certificates are simply credentials that are assigned to you by CONCORD (and a few other organisations) when you have trained a specific number of skills at specific skill levels. Think of certificates just like certificates in IT training, or diplomas and degrees granted by universities and colleges. The skills gathered together represent, to some extent, a competence in some area, such as in the use of missiles or more general areas like 'prospecting.'

The certificates are grouped into eleven categories. Most certificates have four grades: basic, standard, improved, elite. 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

What you see here is a fairly clear division between the skill sets for flying spacecraft and skill sets concerned with doing specific tasks with those spacecraft. Flight skills everyone needs at one point or another, but the professional skills are all about what you do with or without your spacecraft.

At this point, it would be instructive for you to pop into the game and just look over the certificates that are available (and the ones youmight already have), but going to your neocom and clicking Neocom > Character Sheet > Certificates > Certificates tab and then click on the Certificate Planner. Take a long look around.

Flight Skills Certificates

Let's look first at the flight skills. At this point, even the neophyte pilot is more or less familiar with these terms and what they could possibly mean for them. Core skills are required to underpin the other skills, while gunnery and missiles increase the usefulness of turrets and missiles. For example, the Gunnery class certificates at the basic level include

• Battleship Energy Turrets
• Battleship Hybrid Turrets
• Battleship Projectile Turrets
• Cruiser Energy Turrets
• Cruiser Hybrid Turrets
• Cruiser Projectile Turrets
• Frigate Energy Turrets
• Frigate Hybrid Turrets
• Frigate Projectile Turrets
• Turret Control

Turret Control - Basic requires the following skills:

• Gunnery III
• Sharpshooter I
• Rapid Firing II
• Motion Prediction II

This certificate is supposed to represent 'a basic level of competence in handling all kinds of turreted weapon.' If we look at the skills, we see some basic components to what should be an intuitive understanding of in what being able to operate a turreted weapon should comprise. Almost all of the certificates are like this. They take a groups of skills that general go together (with respect to game mechanics) and then label those skills with a certificate.

Core certificates are gathered in five sub-categories and one 'master' category:

Core Competency

• Core Capacitor
• Core Fitting
• Core Integrity
• Core Navigation
• Core Targeting

Again, we can see how the sub-categories form the most fundamental skills associated with piloting a spacecraft. The Core Competency certificate gathers the other five together. For example, the Core Competency - Basic certificate requires all five of the other competency certificates at the basic level. As for the competence groups, the Core Capacitor - Basic certificate, for example, requires

• Energy Systems Operation III (which provides a 5% reduction in capacitor recharge time per skill level)
• Energy Management III (which provides a 5% bonus to capacitor capacity per skill level)
• Energy Grid Upgrades II (which provides a 5% reduction in CPU needs of modules requiring Energy Grid Upgrdes per skill level)

Clearly, these skills are going to be invaluable for piloting a spacecraft: cap is life.

The certificates I have called 'Flight Skills Certificates' are those you should be particularly interested in when improving for present and planning for future ships and fittings. Go to your Character Sheet, click on the Certificates tab and read up. Nothing is going to substitute for familiarity with the specific requirements of the certificate themselves and the skills that fall under them. Again, be aware that the certificate has no further function than guidance. Train the skills you need for a particular ship or fitting, but do not slavishly train for a certificate without knowing why you are training that particular skill to that particular level. With that in mind, let's take a look at the certificates that are recommended for the Drake.

The required skills for the Drake are Caldari Cruiser III and Battlecrusiers II. But it is recommended that you obtain these three certificates:

• Core Competency Standard
• Passive Shield Tanking Standard
• Cruiser Launcher Control Standard

Now, if you are a relatively new pilot, getting into a Drake seems pretty simple. But, as you probably know by now, being able to fly a ship is not the same thing as being able to fly it well. Training Caldari Cruiser requires Caldari Frigate IV and Battlecruisers requires Spaceship Command IV. So, what do the three certificates just above get you?

Well, to get these certificates you will need to have trained the following:

• Energy Systems Operation V
• Energy Management IV
• Energy Grid Upgrades IV
• Electronics V
• Electronics Upgrades V
• Weapon Upgrades IV
• Long Range Targeting IV
• Signature Analysis IV
• Targeting V
• Multitasking I
• Navigation IV
• Evasive Maneuvering III
• Warp Drive Operation III
• Mechanics IV
• Hull Upgrades IV
• Shield Management V
• Shield Operation V
• Shield Upgrades IV
• Tactical Shield Manipulation II
• Thermic Shield Compensation III
• EM Shield Compensation III
• Kinetic Shield Compensation III
• Explosive Shield Compensation III
• Missile Launcher Operation V
• Missile Bombardment IV
• Target Navigation Prediction IV
• Rapid Launch IV
• Missile Projection II
• Light Missiles III
• Heavy Missiles IV
• Assault Missiles IV

This is not a trivial list. Depending upon your implants and neural mapping, this might take more than three months of training. If you follow th ecertificates blindly, you are liable to waste a lot of time training skills you don't need or, even worse, training skills you don't really need yet. The certificates do not prioritise skills for you. That is something you are going to have to do for yourself. Read about each skill, find out how it helps you, and then prioritise. You will be trading these skills off against profession skills as well.

Professional Certificates

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.

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].

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

The starter professions can be seen as the core around which Business and INductry, Harvesting, and Leadership certificates revolve. Muchof what is required to complete these higher level certificates rest in the starter professions.

The 'Starter' Professions

There are three broad classes of starter profession: business, industry, and the military (the military has two because it is, you know, special). I think 'starter' is a misnomer. 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, primarily because of the racial frigate skill but also because some racial ships/skills are tuned for different weapons and defensive systems.

Business - Entrepreneur

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

These skills all revolve around trading and market interaction.
Business - Executive Commander

• Racial Frigate II
• Leadership V
• Shield Operation IV

These skills start you off along the path to command fleets of ships.

Military - Soldier (Caldari)

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

These are basic skills that any military pilot should know.

Military - Special Forces (Caldari)

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

These skills are more specialised and aim for some of the more esoteric military roles later on.

Industry - Engineer

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

These skills aim at very basic production and research roles.

Industry - Prospector

• Racial Frigate I (allows you to fly a Bantam, the Caldari mining frigate)
• Industry III (allows for basic operation of factories)
• Refining V (allows for use of refineries and gives a 2% reduction in refinery waster per skill level)
• Mining V (skill at using mining lasers and gives a 5% bonus to mining turret yield per skill level)

Clearly, if you are going to go down the mining profession path, these are the core skills required.

Business and Industry

Business Mogul

• Trade II
• Retail II
• Broker Relations II

Business Tycoon

• Procurement II
• Daytrading II
• Wholesale II
• Accounting II

Field Technician

• Salvaging I
• Mechanic III
• Survey III

Production Manager

• Industry III
• Mass Production III
• Production Efficiency III

Research Manager

• Research I
• Laboratory Operation I
• Metallurgy I

Harvesting

Common Ore Refiner

• Kernite Processing III
• Omber Processing III
• Pyroxeres Processing III
• Veldspar Processing III
• Plagioclase Processing III
• Scordite Processing III

Rare Ore Refiner

• Crokite Processing III
• Dark Ochre Processing III
• Gneiss Processing III
• Hedbergite Processing IV
• Jaspet Processing IV
• Hemorphiote Processing IV

Refinery Foreman

• Refining III

Resource Harvester

• Mining IV

These two certificates start at the standard level. They represent relatively advanced skill sets.

Ice Specialist

• Ice Harvesting I
• Astrogeology III
• Mining V
• Mining Upgrades II

Mercoxit Specialist

• Deep Core Mining I
• Astrogeology II
• Resource Harvester Certificate - Standard

Leadership

There are quite a few leadership certificates and some of them require more basic leadership certificates. The general idea is that the more advanced leadership certificates are more specialised.

Battlespace Technician

• Warfare Link Spcialist I
• Battlecruisers II

Harvesting Comptroller

• Tactical Commander Certificate - Basic
• Mining Foreman V
  

Tactical Commander

• Leadership V
  

Unit Leader

• Tactical Commander V
• Skirmish Warfare II
• Armored Warfare II
• Siege Warfare II
• Information Warfare II

At the standard level, you have certificates that specialise in specific kinds of warfare (armoured, information, and siege).

Planning with Certificates

In the same way that one plans an academic or professional career based on goals, the pilot should plan one's skill training. Using certificates helps the process by laying out in relatively perspicuous form, just what you need to train to be able to do what you wish to do. I recommend using some form of skill training third party application like evemon, Mac Eve Tools, or EVEUniverse.

Again, the idea is not to follow whatever these programs tell you to train (unless of course your goal is to just collect certificates), but to get a working template for fine tuning.

As an example, say you have done the tutorials and are ready to go into the glamourous profession of mining. Looking at what we have said above it is clear that the core competencies are going to be important so that we don't die in the harsh cold of space and so that we can get the spacecraft to the rocks in one piece. Furthermore, the starter profession Prospector deals with mining, so that will be a good one to pursue.

Being conservative, we look to the requirements for Core Competency - Basic and Amarr Industry - Prospector, our current skills, and come up with something like this:

This is a shot of Mac Eve Tools after I loaded our two certificates into the planner. I have chosen to do the Prospector certificate first because I'll be mining while these skills accumulate, so I might as well increase the yields I get while I skill the certificate. Your thinking might be different here; go with it. Feel free to move the skills around as you see fit. The program will re-arrange dependencies for you. For instance, you might want to wait to put Mining V into the skill queue until just before that long weekend you'll be off surfing or hang gliding or wrestling alligators. Being away from the game, gives a good time to do something like that. So, you might decide to skill to Mining IV, then do some of the energy and signature stuff before that Friday you leave.

With some of the more advanced certificates, you might feel that putting that 14 day skill into your queue can wait for a while as you gather some of the other skills you'll need to get in tot hat battlecruiser you've always wanted. That's perfectly good as well, as long as you don't need that particular skill to train the others. This is where the skill planning tools really help out.

Advanced Careers

As has been said, these six core careers should be thought 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
    

• 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

Certificates - Planning the Future (devblog)

EVEMon - Windows character progression program

Mac Eve Tools - MacOS X character progression application

ISK: the guide

Authors

[Diane Yanumano]