Yes I use all three character slots on my accounts.
It’s useful to train them a bunch of skills, as it allows you to double your industrial output or allows you to log out and log in at another place in the universe, or allows you to log into a character with different corp and different standings so you can take part in other parts of the game.
I personally like having to train numerous prerequisites in order to fly bigger ships. Unless you wallet tank your skill queue, the prerequisites encourage you–require you, really–to get into the smaller ships and fly those. You get more experience, and you become a better pilot.
Personally, the accomplishments I’ve gained and the abilities I’ve developed mean more to me than if I’d just paid to skip over the smaller ships and jump directly into the bigger ships. There are times I agonize over how long it takes to train a skill, but that’s ultimately because I’m just impatient, not because prerequisites and training times are a bad mechanic.
It would be refreshing if skill requirements for skills was removed but the price on skill books was increased and then skill books was integrated to loot tables and they could be injected from station remotely.
Why exactly…? There’s nothing inherently wrong with the way the skill system works - other than we all hate training for those lengthy 8x+ multiplier skills.
If you think it sucks now - just remember there was a point where you couldn’t inject skill points, use cerebral accelerators or extract skills you’d deemed expendable.
I have no objection with increasing loot drops - even if it only amounted to more raw components from direct salvaging (salvaging needs a buff as a profession).
I don’t necessarily see any benefit in skill books dropping - but I haven’t really given this an extensive amount of thought.
The Gaussian Mining laser is better than Miner I but it is cheaper.
If the loot table was updated so that mining related skill books have a chance to drop in place of Gaussian Miner, then the price could go up on it and the game would become ever so slightly better balanced.
you not making much sense here as the math is not really like that.
the minimum requirement for ep-s is Mining 1 which gives you a 5% bonus resulting in 52.5 m3 or 0.87m3/sec for the module itself
while the Miner II requires Mining level 4 which will add a 12.9% bonus resulting in
72.9 m3 or 1.2m3/sec for the module itself
which does make Miner II 38% faster out of the box.
compared both with half-decent skills in a bonused ship like a venture gets you 242.25 vs 204.30 m3 which is still a 18% difference.
thats because the advanced skills like Asterology, Mining, Mining Upgrades do affect both types of lasers. but those are building the base for larger ships that do not use Mining Lasers.
if you do use them at the max potential like in a prospect you looking at 333.49 vs. 227.91 which is 32% faster even with my shi$$y skills.
in short, using Tech2 modules in a Tech2 ship gets you the advantage, if you just bridging the training time to a barge, then ep-s lasers are probably the way to go about it or if you mine something Rare, where resedue is more valuable than your speed.
Miner I has to be manufactured. EP-S drops as loot from mobs all over the place. That’s why it’s cheaper. I have thousands of them stacked up in stations from ratting or missions.
Players tend to go with the EP-S for the increased range.
There is an issue with being forced to train skills in a specific order and better variants of modules being cheaper than worse variants. For example if you want to train Battlecruiser you have to train frigate, destroyer and cruiser first. And EP-S Gaussian mining laser is much better than Miner I but its also cheaper.
If you are forced to train skills before you can train the skill you want, for example frigate, destroyer, cruiser before Battlecruiser then that is wasted training time