Support skills

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Support Skills are those skills which affect how well you can fit/use/fly ships and modules, without being skills directly required to use the modules or enter the ships. Common examples are capacitor-related skills such as Energy Systems Management, and fitting skills such as Advanced Weapons Upgrades.

Since 'good support skills' is a cliché in the Uni and EvE generally, this page attempts to define the skill set and suggest what levels qualify as good in what circumstances. Wish us luck.

Expectations in Various Ship Classes

The heart of the brawl is that a skilled character can double the damage and defense of an unskilled one flying exactly the same ship. And, of course, you can put more and better stuff on the ship besides.

Battleships

T2 guns on battleships can be great, but the training time for T2 turrets is on the order of 70 days, from basic T1 large gun skills. They're currently considered vital only for Amarr battleships, and that's on economic grounds (Meta-4 large lasers ran about 22M isk each, last time I checked.)

Battlecruisers

A battlecruiser is a nice step up from a cruiser in firepower and tank. In fact, it's the first hull you're likely to get into where fitting a tank has real meaning. The cost of the fitted ship is also a lot lower than a battleship (1/3 to 1/4 the price), and you don't have to have large guns trained. Which is to say, you don't need to be overly timid about moving up from a cruiser.

Support skills you'll want to work towards are the ability to fit a T2 armor or shield tank, good enough fitting skills to fit all the turret/launcher slots, and eventually T2 medium weapons. If you have medium gun/missile skills to L4, and can fit a t2 tank, I wouldn't hesitate to step into one of these. You should also be able to handle a full flight of drones (Drones V), since battlecruisers generally have a drone bay -- and you'll want light drones to harass tackling frigates and so on.

This is also the first hull you'll encounter that generally has rigs installed. You can use rigs without having the rigging skills trained, but you'll need someone to install the rigs for you, which is a pain -- so you may want to train rigging skills for whatever you're fitting.

T2 Frigates

Support skills depend on the particular frigate, of course. An extreme example: you can fly a covops ship without putting a covops cloak on it, but you'll be missing the point completely.

T2 Cruisers

In general, at this level you should be able to fully T2 fit your ship. In practice, you'll need Weapons Upgrades 5 and a couple levels of Advanced Weapon Upgrades (AWU), or you'll be very frustrated trying to put guns on. T2 cruisers are small, fast, and powerful, but tend to have limited CPU and/or powergrid, and limited capacitor as well. You'll want your cap skills and fitting skills to be nearly maxed-out before flying one of these.

Capacitor-related skills

(Non-Capital)

• Energy Management - 5% bonus to cap
• Energy Systems Operation - 5% cap recharge reduction
• Controlled Bursts - 5% reduced cap for weapon turrets
• Electronic Warfare - 5% less cap for ECM, ECM Burst
• Energy Emission Systems - 5% reduced cap for energy emission weapons
• Fuel Conservation - 10% reduced cap for afterburner
• High Speed Maneuvering - 5% reduced cap for microwarpdrives
• Jump Drive Operation - 5% reduction of the capacitor need of initiating a jump
• Propulsion Jamming - 5% Reduction to warp scrambler and stasis web capacitor need
• Remote Armor Repair Systems - 5% reduced capacitor need for remote armor repair system modules
• Remote Hull Repair Systems - 5% reduced capacitor need for remote hull repair system modules
• Sensor Linking - 5% less capacitor need for sensor link and sensor dampeners
• Shield Compensation - 2% less capacitor need for shield boosters
• Shield Emission Systems - 5% reduced capacitor need for shield emission system modules
• Target Painting - 5% less capacitor need for target painters
• Warp Drive Operation - 10% reduction in capacitor need of initiating warp
• Weapon Disruption - 5% less capacitor need for tracking disruptors

Source

Fitting Skills

These all either reduce the CPU or powergrid requirements of modules, or just give you more raw CPU or powergrid to play with. Having decent fitting skills is very useful. T2 modules, which have higher CPU and grid demands, and T2 ships, which tend to have quite tight amounts of CPU and grid in the first place, really demand good fitting skills.

• Electronics: 5% more CPU per level
• Engineering: 5% more powergrid per level
• Weapon Upgrades: 5% less CPU need for weapons per level
• Electronics Upgrades: 5% less CPU need for signal amplifiers, co-processors &c
• Energy Grid Upgrades: 5% less CPU need for most of the modules listed under "Engineering Equipment"
• Shield Upgrades: 5% less powergrid need for shield extenders, shield rechargers &c
• Advanced Weapon Upgrades (requires Weapon Upgrades V): 2% less powergrid need for weapons per level
• Mining Upgrades 5% less CPU need for mining upgrade modules (useful for miners but, of course, only for miners)

Overheating

In a sense, Thermodynamics is the ultimate PvP support skill: it lets you overheat modules beyond their design specs, though at the risk of temporarily burning them out. You need at least one level in Thermodynamics to overheat modules; getting this skill to level 4 doesn't take long and is well worth it, as each level reduces the damage your modules take from overheating. The prerequisites for Thermodynamics were reduced in the Dominion expansion.

There's a more detailed guide to overheating here.