On Races and Skills...

For those who dont know the basics of the races and character improvement through skills, a post for you:

Basically EVE has 4 main racial factions. They are the Amarr, Mimmatar, Gallente, and Caldari, each with their own traits and advantages.

The Amarr are religious, and value tradition over innovation, with a social caste system that is friendly to the top, harsh on the bottom. For combat, they rely upon laser weaponry (requires no ammo, except for focusing crystals to change output), and strong armor plating. Disadvantages include the lack of battlefield endurance due to the large power drain of lasers, the lasers being of two easily resistable damage types, and the fact that they rely upon turret weaponry, easily jammed by electronic warfare.

The Mimmatar are a loose tribal society, rich in culture and pride, especially after the seperation from Amarr slavery. Whilst not openly at odds now against the Amarr, the experience has made them hardy and quite dislike them (to the point that two roleplaying alliances have taken this to actual blows in combat). Mimmatar rely upon hit-and-run speed and powerful first-strike projectile weaponry, missiles, and a variety of either shield or armor damage reduction. Of course, because of so many proficiencies they should master, they suffer from being the hardest to train for in terms of time it takes, and also that since their ships have no central design philosophy like the Amarr (lasers, armor), they are very versatile, but not strong in any one specialized field.

The Gallente are the free people under the only true democracy in EVE, relying upon drone warfare (think MMO pets, and you're somewhat close) and short-range-but-insanely-powerful blasters in combat. They rely upon armor plating and speed to do their dirty work, since they have to get in close to use their blasters. Hence the term "knife-fighting" or "in-your-face PvP".

The Caldari are a strict, no-nonsense people, always striving for economic and military might. They rely upon advanced shield and electronic countermeasure technology, as well as long-range railguns and even longer-ranged missile firepower. Unfortunately due to certain game changes in the past, ECM has weakened, and only two ships in the racial family are still powerful with them. This leads them to be immediately taken out asap by opponents since they stick out too much. Secondly, missiles take time to travel to their target to apply damage, and thus at range, are not suited for fast-paced PvP combat. Railguns, however, are. They are the most powerful in terms of anti-NPC work, due to their capability of switching damage types via their missile banks, to deal the maximum amount of damage against a certain NPC target.

So the basic run-down between the races is Amarr vs Mimmatar, Caldari vs Gallente. You can read up more about it in the Prime Fiction of EVE.

And about skills.
Skills are how you advance in EVE. You dont "grind" for them except for the isk to buy the skillbook and the prerequisite skills. Training time is dependent upon your attributes, and only affects how fast or slow they train.

Of course, to maximise training, you would like to maximize your attributes, and/or train skills which have favorable attributes according to your character.

More info can be found in the skills section of the forum.

And so, thats a post to give background information about the races, and skill training.