I’ve been playing Eve for many years, and I think I’m ready to take the plunge into flying capital ships. I have a highly skilled sub-cap combat pilot.
I’m interested to hear what others have done, and whether they were happy with their decision.
I’m pretty sure a Cap pilot will need sub-cap skills trained up first so yeah, just use your sub-cap pilot… While doing that you can train sub-cap skills on an alt…
Personally I trained capital ship skills on new characters. It is also what people in my alliance recommended when I started training them.
There is little overlap between subcap skills and capital skills so you might as well train it on a separate character. Besides some support skills and very little SP to train a chain of ships to lvl 3 most SP for caps is new: jump drive skills, fighters instead of drones, new armor or shield repair skills for cspital sizes only, etc.
To move a capital ship around you will really want to have a character on a second Omega account to be able to light a cyno in a Recon cruiser.
For me Gerard is my main pilot who can fly all subcapitals well and can light cynos to move my capital ships if needed.
Next, the reason my alliance recommends capital ships on alts is because most capital PvP fights start as subcapital ship fights first, and can escalate or not. You want to be part of the usual action on a subcapital character and have your alt in a capital ship ready if things escalate.
If you only had capital ship skills on your subcapital main you have the choice of either missing all action by being docked in a capital ship in the hopes that the fight today might escalate (which much more often than not doesn’t happen, cap fights are rare!) or you’re stuck in a subcapital ship in the fight as your allies bring capital ships.
Lastly if I ever get to the point of affording and flying supercapital ships on my cap pilot I want to avoid the risk of being stuck in a coffin.
A long time ago supercapital ships could not dock so your character was stuck in the ship logging out and in in space in only that ship. Nowadays supercapitals can dock in Keepstars, but depending on null sec politics these aren’t always available to you and I have seen people in my alliance being stuck in their logged-off supers for some months. I’d rather not have my main stuck and unable to play like that.
To conclude, to fly capitals will want to have a second Omega account anyway to use your ship’s jump drive on your own.
While training capital skills on a good subcap pilot saves a bit of time on support skills you don’t have to train again, many capital skills are new, high SP and specific for caps only so you might as well train it on a new character on the second account.
This has the added benefit that it leaves your subcapital pilot free to do other things like light cynos, fight as the cap waits for escalation or simply play as your supercap pilot is stuck logged off.
I hope this gives you some perspective on your question!
Lastly, I’m having far more fun in subcapital ships and think capital ships are overrated.
I like having caps mainly for their ability to move a whole lot of my ships at once in their Ship Maintenance Bay, and the rare capital fight I’ve had over the years have been a lot of fun, but it’s a big investment of SP and ISK for very little content in my experience. Subcaps are more fun!
I appreciate the advice from both of you, and feel there’s value to either approach.
I highly doubt that I’ll ever get into super carriers, and i don’t know whether my corp will use caps. I do anticipate flying black ops battleship, and using a carrier as a suitcase- but any use beyond that is questionable.
Separate alts, dont train capitals and supers on main please.
Black ops battleships are fine on your main, although it’s also not a bad thing to train on a dread pilot.
Either way you’re going to want two accounts to light cynos for your capital ship. You might as well put the capital ship on the second character.
Having caps on a second account is not a bad idea. The offsetting consideration is: my main is closer to flying a carrier (the primary cap I’d consider at this point) and I could work toward skilling a second account into the role of cyno alt.
The offsetting consideration is super caps. There’s less than 5% chance I would ever get into super caps, but if I did, I agree that it’s better to have it on an alt so I can log off in the ship, without tying up my main.
I may also need to take another look at those skill queues. It isn’t lost on me that capital ships have a very long skill queue, which provided zero benefit to a subcap pilot.
Training those capital skills on my main would completely lock up my main’s skill queue.
Since I’m Minmatar, I went with a Minmatar Cap ship…
According to Uniwiki, a brand new character with no Attribute Implants, Neural Remaps, Cerebral Accelerators or Skill Injectors will take over 147 Days just to pilot a Nidhoggur Carrier…
Required Skills
- Capital Ships I 1h 56m
- Advanced Spaceship Command V 29d 15h 6m
- Spaceship Command V 5d 22h 13m
- Minmatar Carrier I 1h 56m
- Capital Ships IV 14d 15h 59m
- Advanced Spaceship Command V 29d 15h 6m
- Spaceship Command V 5d 22h 13m
- Minmatar Battleship III 1d 11h 33m
- Spaceship Command IV 1d 1h 8m
- Minmatar Battlecruiser III 1d 2h 40m
- Spaceship Command III 4h 26m
- Minmatar Cruiser III 22h 13m
- Spaceship Command II 47m
- Minmatar Destroyer III 8h 53m
- Minmatar Frigate III 8h 53m
- Drone Interfacing V 29d 15h 6m
- Drones V 5d 22h 13m
- Jump Fuel Conservation IV 8d 9h 8m
- Jump Drive Operation III 22h 13m
- Navigation V 5d 22h 13m
- Warp Drive Operation V 5d 22h 13m
- Navigation I 8m
- Science V 5d 22h 13m
- Jump Drive Calibration III 1d 16h
- Jump Drive Operation V 29d 15h 6m
- Navigation V 5d 22h 13m
- Warp Drive Operation V 5d 22h 13m
- Navigation I 8m
- Science V 5d 22h 13m
Training Time
147d 13h 43m 40s Grouping
Obviously the training time for other types of Capital ships will vary but this gives you a basic idea on how long it’ll take… Also you’ll want to be max trained so it’ll actually take even longer to train, specifically Level 5 for the skills Minmatar Carrier and Capital Ships…
As you can see there’s also a lot of sub-cap skill prerequisites required which is why I said to use your main character since it already has those skills trained… While your main is training up Cap Skills, you can have a brand new character train up sub-cap skills…
As I’m doing more research, it does appear that putting cap skills on an alt provides long term versatility. My subcap main is used 99% of the time and has excellent subcap skills. The cap pilot is in reserve and called in for escalations.
On the flip side, I don’t even know whether I’ll enjoy flying capitals. And this is hard to answer for myself without testing the waters. Adding cap skills onto my main has about half the training time, vs starting a new character. I’ve heard a lot of cap pilots tell me they rarely fly capitals - which is potentially quite revealing in and of itself.
Well, after constantly training up sub-cap skills while playing this game for a long time, eventually the only thing left to train is Cap skills…
Since day 1, my goal for this character was to stay subbed and always keep training skills… So keeping that in mind, for the past year or two I’ve been training up all kinds of skills, some I’ll probably never use…
Anyway, here’s my skillboard…