Editing Skills and Implants (section)

==Introduction==

Unlike most console and PC games, EVE Online doesn't have the usual progression where activities earn experience points, which accumulate until you earn levels up, which increase your powers and abilities. In EVE, character progression is based on the training of skills, which accumulate passively, whether or not you are actually logged in and doing game activities. Your skills provide progressive bonuses to your effectiveness in using the ships you fly, the equipment you fit them with, and your interactions with the various systems of the game environment. 

Every profession or career in EVE can be viewed as a set of skills that support the activities that result in entertainment and profit for players and characters. If you're here and reading this, most of this should be familiar, and if you're a member of Signal Cartel, you're here to learn about the exploration trade. Before we jump in, a couple of introductory items... 

===Skill Plans, and Why This Isn't One===

A "skill plan" generally refers to a specific sequence of skill progressions, set forth very carefully to optimize the training of just the right skills at the exact times needed, with the appropriate implants and neural remappings precisely when required to make your character's evolution just perfect. It's number crunching, and theory crafting, and otherwise obsessing over every important detail that could possibly grant an advantage. 

That's not what you're getting here. This is an overview of the skills most commonly used in exploration, with the aim of helping you decide for yourself what you want to pursue, and how far, and when. We're Signaleers, and we forge our own paths, with the help of our comrades. Your decisions are your own, and this guide is just here to help you make them. 

===Skill Planning and Management Resources===

There are several utilities available to assist in tracking and managing your skill training. These range from simple skill queue adjustments to long-term planning with simulations and optimizations. 

====The EVE Portal Mobile App====

There are a lot of compliments and criticisms about the EVE Portal app available for phones and tablets. Whatever its other successes and failings might be, the ability to rearrange your skill queue by dragging and dropping on a touch screen is a very nice feature. It's also very convenient for adjusting your skills as you browse through website guides and articles, without having to open the EVE client and keep it running.

You can also acquire and use skill injectors through the app, and also inject new skills by paying a nominal amount of ISK in lieu of purchasing a skill book through the market. 

If you have the Omega perk of creating a skill queue that stretches beyond the next 24 hours, you can add up to 50 skills that you plan to train eventually, just to have a list of sorts that you can sift through as you go along.

====EVEMon for Windows====

EVEMon is an open source tool for the Windows OS, and can also be run by most emulators or using a virtual machine for Linux and Mac users. Skill queue monitoring and management is available, as well as developing skill plans and other useful features. The installers and binaries are available for free at [https://github.com/peterhaneve/evemon/releases/tag/4.0.20 EVEMon at Github].

One of the most useful features of EVEMon is adding prerequisite skills automatically. If you add a skill to your plan without having all the prerequisite skills, the software will fill the missing skills in for you. This is also possible by selecting a ship or fitting that you want to fly, and having the software build a skill plan with all of the skills required for that equipment. 

EVEMon can also test the effects of attribute changes and neural remaps, and can even suggest a remap based on the skills you have chosen. Bear in mind that the suggested remap is specific to the skills selected, and isn't necessarily the best option if you plan to adjust your skills mid-plan.

====EVE-Skillplan.net====

[https://www.eve-skillplan.net/ EVE-Skillplan.net] is a free browser-based skill planning utility, with the option to directly import your character information, or to create a plan from scratch. The plans can support advanced optimization, including adding neural remapping and implant selection. 

A particularly useful feature is the ability to change your attributes on the fly, with immediate feedback telling how much time would be saved with the new numbers. Considering the usual diminishing returns involved with most upgrades in EVE, being able to assess the difference between a +4 implant and a +5 implant (at 10 times the cost) is well worth it.

====PYFA (Python Fitting Assistant)====

While not specifically a skill management utility, PYFA, the Python Fitting Assistant, allows you to examine various fitting options for ships and equipment without having to actually buy ship hulls and modules. Its benefit for skill training is the ability to adjust your skills and see the effect on a ship fitting. For example, you can adjust the Spaceship Command and Evasive Maneuvering skills to see how they work with different modules to optimize your align time. 

PYFA is a free and open source tool available through [https://github.com/pyfa-org/Pyfa PYFA at Github], with versions for Windows, Linux, and OSX.

===Too Long, Won't Read===

''WARNING! The following recommendations are not the official advice of Signal Cartel, its leadership and membership, or the wiki administrators and contributors. They are not even the advice of the wiki contributor who is writing them... he thinks that you should read the guide. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.'' 

If you're looking at this guide and wondering what you should be doing right away, here's your answer. It's a much better idea to read, and consider, and take your time, but for those who need to take a running leap, here you go:

The immediate factor that will get in the way of successful exploring is not having enough virus coherence to hack cans, which is how you get the loot. Train Archaeology and Hacking both to 3 as soon as you can. 

Your Racial Frigate skill and Astrometrics will come next, because your other major obstacle will be scanning down difficult signatures. If you can't get to the sites, hacking won't do you much good. Your starting skills will be good enough to scan down signatures in hisec, but the big risks and the big rewards are in j-space, and your scanning will have to be better. Astrometric Rangefinding is worth training at this point, but Acquisition isn't as important, and Pinpointing has time-consuming  prerequisites. 

If you're willing to upgrade to Omega, train Cloaking 1 as soon as possible. That prototype cloak is a bell-and-whistle worth having. 

That should get you through about a week or so, which means you now have plenty of time to read the rest of this and make some considered decisions.

===Don't Panic===

As previously noted, this is not a skill plan. Fortunately, you probably don't need a skill plan, at least not to start out with. There is plenty of room for flexibility, adjustment, training a useless skill, leveling up the wrong skills first, and all the rest. It's OK. You'll do fine.