Support skills

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Support skills are those skills which affect how well you can fit and fly ships, without necessarily being directly required to use modules or sit in ships. For example, you don't need to train Controlled Bursts, Energy Management and Energy Systems Operation to put large lasers on an Amarr battleship -- but if you do so without training them you will find you swiftly run out of capacitor.

The need for 'good support skills' is often emphasised in discussions within the Uni, and in EvE generally, because there's a tremendous difference between a pilot who can get into an expensive ship but has no support skills for it and a pilot who can get into an expensive ship and has the relevant support skills trained to high levels.

This can seem counterintuitive, since while in many other MMORPGs most of the value of expensive equipment is in the power of its inherent bonuses, in Eve most of the value of expensive equipment is in its potential power in the hands of a character with enough skill training to get the best out of it.

The cheaper Tech 1 frigates and cruisers are much more forgiving, and can actually have a bigger impact than more expensive ships if you don't have many skillpoints (as anyone who's been jammed by a two-week old character in a Griffin can testify).

Since new pilots are often told they need 'good support skills' to fly such-and-such an expensive ship without being told exactly what those skills are, this page attempts to suggest what training qualifies as 'good' in different circumstances. This page also lists some particular categories of support skills for ease of reference. 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

Ignoring skills relevant only to capital ships, there are seventeen skills which can help your capacitor. You don't necessarily have to train all of these, since some of them only apply to very specific sets of modules (Sensor Linking, for example, won't help you if you never use sensor dampeners or remote sensor boosters). But some of these skills are vital for every pilot, and many of the rest are quite important.

• Energy Management: 5% bonus to total cap (vital for everyone)
• Energy Systems Operation: 5% cap recharge reduction (also vital for everyone)
• Warp Drive Operation: 10% reduction in capacitor use when initiating warp (vital for everyone)
• Controlled Bursts: 5% reduced cap use for hybrid and energy turrets (important for hybrid/laser users, no use for projectile/missile users)
• Fuel Conservation: 10% reduced cap for afterburners (hefty bonus makes it very easy to permarun an AB at level IV or V)
• High Speed Maneuvering: 5% reduced cap for microwarpdrives (very useful)
• Propulsion Jamming: 5% Reduction to warp scrambler/disruptor and stasis web capacitor need (affects disruptors even though they're not mentioned in its description)
• Electronic Warfare: 5% less cap for ECM jammers and ECM bursts (Caldari ewar)
• Energy Emission Systems: 5% reduced cap for energy emission weapons (energy neutralizers and nosferatus)
• Jump Drive Operation: 5% reduction of the capacitor need of initiating a jump (not useful for sub-capital ships without jump drives)
• Remote Armor Repair Systems: 5% reduced capacitor need for remote armor repair modules (vital if you ever do armor RR work)
• Remote Hull Repair Systems: 5% reduced capacitor need for remote hull repair system modules (not so vital; RR hull tanking isn't very good)
• Sensor Linking: 5% less capacitor need for remote sensor boosters and sensor dampeners (Gallente ewar)
• Shield Compensation: 2% less capacitor need for shield boosters (though in the long run it's good to train for both kinds of tanking, if you only use buffer tanks when you shield tank, this may not be useful for you)
• Shield Emission Systems: 5% reduced capacitor need for shield emission modules (important if you ever find yourself in a shield logistics ship)
• Target Painting: 5% less capacitor need for target painters (Minmatar ewar)
• Weapon Disruption: 5% less capacitor need for tracking disruptors (Amarr ewar)

Fitting

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.