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Making a good balanced combat character is probably the hardest character type
in the game. It requires so many different skill trees that it will take a long
time to put an accomplished one together. In this guide I will discuss the
creation of the basis for a long-term combat character.

A good combat character will have Skills in most of the following trees:

* Electronics:- necessary for scramblers, disruptors and CPU increase and CPU
use savings

* Engineering:- necessary for shields, amour, Power increase and Power use
savings

* Navigation:- necessary for speed and agility

* Gunnery:- sorta speaks for itself really

* Missiles:- as above

* Ship Command:- necessary for use of different ships for different situations

* Mechanic:- necessary for hull upgrades and repair systems

* Learning:- necessary for attribute increases

This is far more than any other character build and the obvious comment is
"damn, that is going to take a long time and cost a lot of isk". There are a few
shortcuts however. The first obvious one is the Mechanic skill. This is a skill
that a combat pilot should have as it opens the door to self repair modules for
hull and amour. This ability will make a combat character much more viable as
repair costs at stations are astronomical. The mechanic skill can be acquired at
character creation in one of three ways.

1-Create any Minmatar Sebiestor character.
2-Choose Military School->Gunnery->Advanced Gunnery->Gunsmith (best option)
3-Choose Tech School->Industry->

If, however, none of these are the character choices you want to make, then buy
the Mechanic skill as soon as you can afford it, but be warned, prices vary
drastically and can reach 400k+ which is a bit expensive and is not far short of
the cost of the top combat frigates. Going to Tech school and choosing Industry
may be a strange way to start building a combat character, but it does provide
you with the mechanic and engineering skills that become valuable almost
immediately. Besides which, a good combat character has four high attributes and
so will also be a very good all round character, able to turn his hand to most
other professions without much problem. A low charisma score will however always
leave the combat character at a disadvantage when it comes to social skills, but
who needs good diplomacy when you have your enemy on the receiving of that 650mm
artillery cannon

The second shortcut is to do with the Learning skills.

The presumed main skills for combat are Gunnery and Missiles and these require
Per and Will. However, Electronics and Engineering are just as important and
these require Int and Mem. It is obvious that the combat pilot needs high scores
in four different attributes. Now since skill-training times are directly
dependent on attribute scores, this poses us a bit of a problem. The solution is
the Learning skill tree as time invested here can reap huge rewards in all your
other training times. I would suggest building a character with at least 10-12
Mem to start with, an even spread between Int, Will and Per and as low a Cha as
possible. Make one of your first skill purchases Instant Recall and bump it up
to level 3 or 4 as fast as possible. This increases memory and so decreases all
the Learning skill-training times. Follow it with Analytical Mind to improve Int
and then Iron Will for Will and Spatial Awareness for Per. Doing it this way it
is possible to add 3 points to all your attributes in a few days and 4 points in
less than two weeks. This will significantly decrease all your subsequent
skill-training times. The Learning skill can be used as well but the training
time benefits are not as significant as with attribute increases until your
attributes reach at least 15, or your attribute learning skills have reached
level 3 or 4 or possibly 5.

Other important skills for early on are Navigation for extra speed, Afterburners
for even more speed, Electronics to increase CPU, Engineering to increase
Powercore and Warp Drive Operation to reduce cap need for warping. Even a few (2
or 3) levels in each of these can make a big difference to your combat
effectiveness. As your combat character grows you can add more skills in Gunnery
to suit the weapons you would like to use, skills in Missiles for the missiles
you would like to use and skills in Engineering and Electronics for shield,
amour, scramblers and ECM devices.

The Electronics skill tree is geared towards sensor use, scrambler use, reducing
CPU need and increasing CPU capacity. A popular Electronics selection is
Propulsion Jamming. This requires Electronics level3 and allows the use of
Stasis Webifiers that slow down your target. Other popular modules that require
Electronics are Warp Scramblers and Target Scramblers.

The Engineering skill tree is geared towards shield and amour use, reducing
Power need and increasing Power capacity. A fully trained engineering tree is
possibly the only way of avoiding the purchase of the mechanic skill. The
benefits to shield and amour through the skills themselves and the modules that
you can operate will probably reduce your repair bills to manageable levels.

On the Gunnery skill tree, buy and purchase your small turret skills early and
then train the other gunnery skills as needed. Leave the medium turret until you
can buy a cruiser and the large turret for when you can buy battleships. I do
not think any frigate can carry a medium turret, and if it could you would have
to strip off all your other modules to meet the power and cpu requirements.

Missile Launcher skills can be bought as and when necessary. If you want to
launch long range attacks rather than engage in close quarters combat then this
is the skill tree for you.

Weapon selection is a very personal choice and weapon loadouts are so varied
that everyone will have pet loves and hates. Personally, I like the range and
damage of a 150mm railgun but the activation costs and Power requirements are
high. I also like the 200mm Autocannon for close range fighting.

In the really long term Genetic mutators, Cybernetic Implants and Boosters will
become available. The skills to use these are all Science tree based and once
again depend on Int and Mem for training. So our earlier investment in these
attributes will pay off again here.

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