Incoming rediculously rambly, hard to understand wall of text - TLDR version at bottom!


No coma! Sorry, had a super busy week at work, and just general innability to check the boards. Thanks a ton for the advice everyone. Right now I'm 12.5 days from having all my learnings kills done as far as I plan on taking them (rank 1s to 5 and rank 2s to 4). I like the go miner advice, and do plan on getting 3 characters to at least the minimum to pilot a hulk (Evemon says 50 days on that) while taking the 4th character further and eventually into industry/research.

Here is where is gets kind of strange for me....I wonder if I am being silly, but the min/maxer in me is telling me that before I do my 2nd remap, I should try to get the memory/int type skills that are just generally usefull across the board done.

In my humble newbie opinion, things like...

Engineering to V
Electronics to V
Jury RIgging and armor/shield rigging skills to IV or V
Mechanic type stuff to V
then some drone skills to V as well
(all the skills I laid out here plus a few others will take about another 90 days according to evemon)

And THEN remap and go my combat/spec ops way. Evemon tells me my current plan will take about 150 days including everything - so at the end of those 150 days I'll basically have the basic 'everyone should probably have this' stuff, plus be able to pilot a hulk. This means basically I can spend the next 4-5 months running around in my four destroyers fooling around in level one and two missions and doing some mining and maybe fooling around in lowsec with some frigates - just getting to know the game while I let skills cook. Like Meeo said it's what you want from the game, and I'm happy doing what I'm doing right now, but is this normal? Or do people remap right into their per/will and just go nuts on the ship skills?


It looks like I eventually want to really set up....

Main char
Start towards piloting a Proteus (I seem to read lots of good things about the strategic cruise ships) then eventually some kind of command ship, maybe an eos, otherwise a HAC maybe

Secondary/Logistics
Oneiros

Covert ops guy
Helios/Sin

Industry guy
Miner/Salvage after missions

Also at night I have been just starting my guys mining an asteroid in high-sec and then just go to bed, to wake up to a cargo full of minerals in the morning. Haven't gotten exploded yet doing this - good idea, or have I just been extremely lucky?


A few questions:

Is my sick min/maxing head being stupid by basically delaying my 'real' progression towards what I want to fly by almost 5 months? Really I'm having fun just smashing level ones and flying around in space right now - I'm in no hurry.


Do I need a logistics ship? Right now all my guys are flying a catalyst with one shield transfer aray each - I basically just all focus on whoever is taking damage, and they can keep them full even through an entire room aggro type situation - I just have cap problems right now is all. Games like WoW make me think I need healing/a dedicated healer, but would it be better to just have 'attack' type ships and just blow stuff up before it has a chance to even hit me?

Robin you give very detailed advice about how to proceed in terms of ships, but do you recommend you go that route even if you want to specialize the characters? Like if I'm shooting for a special ops character, should I still try to advance him more or less the same way as my main, or should they take the shortest path to their respective goal ships?

Meeo you said you don't regret flopping back and forth all over the place - how long did it take you to get your characters where they are now even with the flopping? It seems this game is very much about the long term, and everyone says not planning for it is death, but you seem to have a great group.

Kromtor how long did it take you before you were running level 4s? I'm making a small amount of money running 1s and a bit of mining, just curious how much you can realistically expect to make from running level 4 missions mixed in with some mining?

Sorry for the wall of text ;-/

TLDR version:

I'm a silly completist min-maxer - am I being stupid planning for like 2 years down the line if it delays my 'progression' now?

Should I take all my characters through all the ship advancement lanes to start, or take them to the ships I want them to eventually pilot as fast as possible?

How long till people can run level 4s on average, and how much money can you expect to make from that?