EVEMon
In Eve you skills determine what you can fly and do. EVEMon is there to help you plan out a path to the skills you need to fly a battleship or become an excellent explorer. There is an excellent skill library with pretty prerequisite trees to tell you just how many other things you would need to study before you can even start training Amarr Battleship. EVEMon will even suggest learning skills to reduce the amount of time till you are ready to fly. EVEMon also has some other gadgets attached to monitor market orders, manufacturing, research, and clones. EVEMon is open source (GPL V2) with the project located at BattleClinic. The software is primarily developed for Windows, but it will work on Linux using Wine, and may work on Macs using Darwine. You will need your Limited API key to use the software. This will allow EVEMon to actually monitor your skills. For additional features you may need to use a Full API key. This guide is written with the new player in mind since it is often the first 3rd party tool they should start using. More advanced players may find useful information here along with the simpler details.
Starting Out
Install EVEMon
Download EVEMon from BattleClinic. There is an installer on the right hand side in the box labled Downloads. Only download EVEMon from the BattleClinic, other sites have had virus infected versions of EVEMon. If you are running Windows you can run through a normal install. On a Mac you will want to look at the BattleClinic wiki page describing Darwine installs.
Set up Character
Once EVEMon is installed and running you should have an Overview tab telling you to click the File|Add Account. You will first need to acquire your Limited API key and User ID from CCP. With your ID and key go ahead and add your account to EVEMon. You can then select which characters you want to monitor on that account. A screen like you see in figure 1 should appear. You are not ready to start using EVEMon.
Planning
With the character screen open you can create a new plan by selecting new from the plans menu and giving this new plan a name. You can have multiple plans which can be combined to form big plans a year on longer in length. You can also import plans written in text files. The new plan should open as a big window with a number of options along the top and left-hand side.
Adding Your First Skill
Select the Skill Browser tab. In the skill tree open Spaceship Command and click on Amarr Battleship. A skill tree will appear showing all of the skills you would need to learn in order to learn Amarr Battleship. Above the tree is a description of the Amarr Battleship skill and times to learn each level of the skill. On the far right just above the tree is an option to "Show what this skill enables." That will show you modules, ships and other skills which use this skill as a prerequisite. Right click on Amarr Battleship at the top of the tree and select plan to level 1. Now switch tabs to the Plan Queue. Here you can see the Amarr Battleship skill I along with all of the prerequiste skills needed. There are columns showing the time to learn each skill the learning stats such as rank and attributes for the skill and the estimated total SPs after learnign each skill. Black skills can be learned immediately. Greyed skills can be learned once the earlier levels have been trainned or once you have purchased the book and injected the skill. Red skills require another skill as a prerequisite. At the bottom of the window is a summary of the plan including a total training time. All together this gives you the information you would need to persue your plan to fly an Amarr Battleship.
Researching a Full Plan
If you actually wanted to fly an Amarr Battleship with any success you would have to research a fitting and skills needed to efficiently run the ship. Each of the modules will have required skills. In order to put the ship together, you will need some basic ship fitting skills to meet the powergrid and CPU requirements for the ship. All together these skills will create a much larger plan. For any plan you will have to do research to figure out all the skills you need and want. You can use the various guides in this wiki, which often list skills needed for their particular activity. You can use the Ship Browser in the EVEMon Plan window and look at fittings from BattleClinic, even if most of them are terrible. You can setup better fittings using Eve Fitting Tool. You can also just browse the Skill Browser and pick skills you think will help you.
Adding Learning Skills
EVEMon will suggest learning skills which might reduce the length of time needed to complete a plan. You can see these suggestions by clicking the blue exclaimation point at the bottom of the Plan Queue tab. If it is not there then adding a learning skill will only increase the length of the plan, despite any individual time reductions for individual skills. Remapping points can be added in the middle of a plan. EVEMon can even suggest a mapping based on the skills you are considering. An excellent detailed discussion of skills and learning and how they can benefit you can be found elsewhere on the UniWiki.
Advanced Features
Multiple Plans
My first plan included everything all mushed together. As the plan spread out to a year it became unwieldy. A plan like that can be good for getting the right remapping points, but lacks flexibility on figuring out exactly what you should be training next. Making multiple plans solves this problem. Each plan can have a specific theme or goal. For instance, all of your drone skills might go in one plan, or the plan could be all of the exploration skills you might need. Managing multiple plans in EVEMon is simple. When you add skills the skills go in the currently selected plan. You can combine plans into a new plan by selecting Plan|Manage on the character window. Thus you can make one huge master plan from all of your individual plans. Any duplicate skills will be combined during merging. You can also set EVEMon to remove skills once they are learned, and the skills will be removed from all plans once you have finished the skill.
Importing and Exporting
Plans can be made and exported, or imported into a new plan. The export is done by clicking on the Export menu in the Plan window. To import the same plan you must use the Plan|Load Plan From File... menu on the character window. Exported plans can be imported by any other character or person.
Monitoring Market Orders and Manufacturing
If you provide EVEMon with a Full API Key then it will monitor market orders and manufacturing. It will alert you when either has changed, such as when someone purchases part of a market order, or manufacturing has concluded.
Minerals Worksheet
This is a basic little worksheet found on the character window which will calculate the total isk value of something based on the isk value of the minerals.