Originally by: Elbie Klep

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Originally by: Malcanis

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The main argument against training all learnings to level 5 at the start is that by the time you see a net profit in non-learning SP, you'll have so many SP that you just wont really care about getting a marginally higher rate.

Conversely, you'll be hugely disadvantaged early on, right at the stage when every rank of every skill is important to you.

So training all to level 5 early on hinders you when you need the skills the most and benefits you when it will help you the least.

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Sorry, but I don't follow this logic at all. Yes, you effectively pay CCP two months of turn fees before you can actually play the game. But once you do start playing the game the speed at which you learn the "useful" skills will be greatly accelerated compared to your peers. So every skill you acquire subseqently will come faster and overall you will pass anyone who didn't do all learning skills first within a couple of months. That, in turn, translates into better ships, faster growth in wealth, and/or more PvP success. So unless you are planning to quit the game after 4 months, you will be far better off.

Perhaps more to the point, the first six months of mining, ratting, and mission running in EVE is your least productive time because your skills are so low. So you want to get past that low-skill period as fast as possible. After you have been in EVE for six months your position should be very much better off if the first two months were spent maxing out learning skills compared to anyone who spreads those skills out over the entire six months. In addition, they will never catch up. Once they max their learning skills they will learn at the same rate but you will already have more skills than they have and that gap will remain for the entire game. So a year later when they are skilling heavy missiles you will be skilling cruise specialization. So you will not be better off just after the first six months; you will be better off for the rest of the game.

It is true that once your peers have also maxed the skill gap becomes fixed and it becomes a decreasing fraction of your total skills. But EVE is a skill-based economic simulation so everything you do depends on the quality of your skills, especially increasing your wealth. Thus you will have a small advantage in every wealth-building activity (e.g., you will run missions faster). That ensures that your wealth will continue to grow faster than your peers' throughout your career and small differences snowball over time into big differences.

If it is a secondary character, it is a no-brainer because you get to play your first avatar while it is just sitting doing learnign skills. If it's your first character, then just think of it as an entry fee. You will probably get more out of surfing forums and chat full time for two months than frigate mining and ratting with poor skills.

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