>Just in case you didn't know it, your other chars will _not_ train up skills while your new characters are active

Not exactly right AFAIK - it's true that only one character per account can be training - but switching to an alt does not stop them training - in fact you get a warning on the alt if you try to start training (tried this two years ago, mihgt be different now)

I'm guessing that doz3rr has extra accounts not characters?

>So essentially you have to do the mission 5 times. Is this correct?

Again AFAIK that is correct, there are no group missions, everything is 'solo', although you can split the reward for a mission between up to 10 characters.

By 'solo' I mean that one character gets the mission but can be helped by as many chars as you like.

Lastly, in EVE 'ratting' generally means killing the npc pirates that spawn at belts etc as opposed to running missions, again, as far as I know that is.