That Elusive Level 5
image from K162space
I've been playing for a little over 3 months now. I've been careful to keep my Skill Queue full, and I've reached 4.5 million skillpoints. And what I've found out is while there are many Skills that are useful at low levels just to access types of ships or modules for instance, it seems that increasingly, every skill I find I need I really ought to take it all the way to Level 5. Sometimes the bonus bump per level is paltry like 2% so that leveling up to 5 will only give a 10% increase. But when the bonus is 5% and up, and especially when it's something like Drone Interfacing which gives a 20% bump per level to drone damage and drone mining level - it makes it seem crucial to eke out that full Level 5. I mean, I'm running those damn drones, I paid a helluva lot for them, so I want them to deal the maximum DPS! ( Damage Per Second) Of course you can't even inject the skillbook for Drone Interfacing until you've reached the Level 5 Drone Skill. The question of course is time. Most of the Level 5s I've needed so far have been able to be completed in 3 or 4 days, but now I'm looking at topping off a few skills that will take 2 weeks to finish. Argggh.
When I looked on the forums to see the sort of Ideal Fits for ships, I was surprised to see that some people came up with setups that seemed to deal outrageous amounts of DPS - even on little frigates. It didn't make sense until I realized that it wasn't just the Tech 2 or Navy Issue guns, it was also the accumulated skillpoints in Gunnery and Engineering and Electronics and what have you that exponentially increased the lethality of these tiny hulls. These sort of chains of skills leading to greater bonuses is what makes me quite content to just stay in Empire space for now, around people that haven't had the time yet to amass huge hordes of skillpoints.