Make good decisions

[I made a pretty bad spreadsheet error before I posted this. See the next entry for the correction.]

I made a few additions to the skill-planning spreadsheet I created and shared with the world. It was easy enough to have it calculate how long it would take to train all the 105 skills I've identified as "important" up one level from their current state. Today, I plugged in the math to calculate how long it would take to max out all those skills to level 4.

22.5 years.

Yes, it would take over two decades to train all the skills useful to my capsuleer to their maximum level. That's almost twice as long as the game's existed. Among registered users at Eveboard, the character Drahcir Nasom has the most Level V skills: 286, developed for almost 11 years. In that time, Eve has made lots of changes to how skills and skill-learning work. In fact, this summer they will make some tweaks to skills affecting resource processing and drone operation. Those seem relatively miniscule, though, compared to a massive 2010 skill-learning overhaul and another affecting ship piloting last summer.

Last week, I wrote about how this spreadsheet has helped me make decisions. One specific example is the Cybernetics skill. This skill allows the character to use increasingly potent implants, some of which increase core attribute values. There are five attributes, and their values affect the rate at which the character learns skills. Therefore, more powerful implants allow for faster skill training. That said, the accelerated rate is relatively small, perhaps shaving a few hours from a skill-training time that otherwise takes days. Thanks to the spreadsheet, I ascertained that the time up front to max out Cybernetics and install the most powerful implants will save much more time from future training. It's a good investment.

Currently, my Cybernetics level is at 4, and the math above is based on how rapidly my character trains with current-level implants. Maxing the skill to level 5 and plugging in the appropriate implants does, in fact, shave some time off that 23-year figure.

It brings it down to just under 22 years.

Removing the implants and their bonus? Over 27 years to max those skills. If, after looking at the spreadsheet, you're curious: my VLOOKUP skill is about level 4.

These numbers, though, are kind of red herrings. My "important skills" cover a lot of territory, and only a few of them are so important that I feel an urge to max them out: Cybernetics for one, plus a few that are prerequisites for ships I want to fly or more advanced skills to develop. In truth, right now there are fewer than a dozen that I'd prioritize maxing out.

I wrote to a friend last week that in Eve, "you can be fair to pretty good in multiple areas of gameplay, or truly superb at one." It might've been more apt to replace or with and: I'll take most of the skills important to me up to level 3 or 4 and, in the course of trying them on and getting into a groove, decide on a subset to get really good at, i.e. max out. Given enough time, maybe that group grows. What I didn't think of at the time is that there's a whole area of skills and experience I right now don't plan to delve much into, e.g. frigates and destroyers and their commensurate small-scale weapons, missile-heavy Caldari hulls or laser-happy Amarrian ships, or stocks and market manipulation. Put another way: I've tagged 105 skills as important, but the game offers close to 400. And, of course, anything can change.

It occurs to me that this openness of pursuits, with a vast timeline and squirrely to-do list and no due date, reminds me of another project I'm involved with. I've edited Wikipedia since July 2005, and one of that project's tenets also seems relevant when thinking about Eve skill training: there is no deadline.