12 Month Review and Advice to Younger Self

Starwalker looked over the previous review and the key areas of ships, combat, skills and bases. This was also the time period when Starwalker had started to lose interest and then gained a renewed sense of purpose and enthusiasm. It had been a remarkable time.

The four areas of interest were previously summarised as:

1. Ships - focus on a few ships and fits, suited to you, to learn to fly and fight. Only fly (and fit) what you can afford to lose and whilst taking risks is fine, try to avoid silly losses such as being destroyed by not knowing New Eden mechanics
2. Combat - maintain situational awareness and use all tools (display, local, overview...) and modules in combat and overheat
3. Skills - focus training plan on particular ships, fits and skills needed. Be flexible and change the plan as needed but use the plan. Optimise that plan where possible such as using implants and a neural remap
4. Base - select a small number of bases based on most important need such as central to roaming locations

Starwalker felt that this was still true but with some slight changes:

• Focus on a few ships that are suited to your flying style and that can compensate for your pilot weaknesses or emphasise your strengths
• Consider combat when fitting and just before engagement when you know what you are about to fight:

o   What range(s) to use against brawlers?

o   What ammunition to use against the target?

o   What to do if engaged by a kiter or how to avoid being kited?

o   What to do against this pilot and ship from any new information such as from the Battleclinic killboard?

• When in combat use some method to help maintain situational awareness such as ROTA (Range, Overheat, Tank, Attack)

Looking back over the year, Starwalker would advise his younger self to do things slightly differently. Focus on the Rifter because that would allow him to use and train in one ship but to learn different styles of fighting or different mechanics. 

A Rifter could be fit for shield or armour tanking, buffer or active tanks, brawling with auto-cannons or kiting with artillery. Use the flexibility to try many different things and learn about the ship, fittings, tanking and piloting. Losing ships while learning would be both fun and cheap with a T1 frigate.

Regarding skills, base the skill plan around a Rifter and as soon as possible train all relevant skills to level 3. This includes everything for tank, gank, support and fitting. Then train to level 4 for everything in the order where the need was greatest based on recent flying experience. 

Completing skills to level 4 would also be the time to branch out to new race ships or move up ship classes if desired. Finally, train to level 5 first those skills that open up new skills such as a specialization or more ships and then work around the other level 5 skills based on flying experience.

Combat experience was important and a young Starwalker should not have been obsessed with either ships and fittings or skill points. Starwalker’s experience had shown that he lost more ships through pilot error than anything else. The next reason he lost ships was because of ignorance of New Eden mechanics such as stargates, stations, sentry guns, aggression and session timers, tracking, optimal, falloff, damage types and overheat. The simplest advice, use a cookie cutter ship build and fly and fight in that ship, and expect to lose it every time it was undocked. Rinse and repeat.

Starwalker had come to the realisation that he was not a very good combat pilot and nor was it very likely that he would become very good. However, he enjoyed flying in space and the combat, even if he lost more fights than he won.

The last year had seen lots of changes and the coming year would no doubt see more. Looking forward Starwalker had no real goal that he wanted to achieve, he was simply enjoying the experience and going with the flow.