All useful guidelines.
My only contribution would be “play your way”. Sure, there’s some stuff you should always do to make your life easier, but there’s no linear progression in a sandbox game: if you want to stay in a smaller hull, you can. If you don’t want to go to null, you can. If you want to mine, you can. Play the game to have fun and it will be a positive thing in your life.
The reality is that EVE is a world PvP single server game. It’s an intrinsec part of the game and if someone doesn’t want to worry about PvP, maybe that person should be playing something else.
Why would anyone want that battle to be fair? I’d prefer if it was unfair and that I had the advantage. If I fight for survival, I fight to win. I’ll use any edge I can and you should do the same. Honor makes for a shitty tank, IMO.