The Forge Region – Anttanen Constellation
Uitra System – Planet VI, Moon 4
State War Academy Station
16 January YC 121
In my previous post I forgot to mention a curious change of my standings. Completion of the course seemed to be a big deal as I saw some major movements in my relationships with various factions. For example, my standing with State War Academy increased by 0.5 to 0.81 which is a blaster shot away from access to the Academy’s level 2 agents. Caldari, Amarr and their subsidiaries had predictably made positive albeit small changes to my standings. Was surprised to see Joves getting friendly with me; I thought they would disapprove of nosy explorers. And totally unexpectedly, my biggest fan after the Academy was, guess who, Mordu’s Legion! The only explanation I could think of was that Muryia Mordu was still a big supporter of Caldari military cadre, being a former Caldari officer himself.
The cheers were counterbalanced by heckles. Gallente-Minmatar block informed me of their mild disapproval of my association with the Caldari State’s military school. Sansha’s Nation obviously objected to free-thinking individuals. But the biggest decrease of standings, -0.21, was made by Blood Raiders Covenant. Was it something I said when I visited their station?
After finishing the exploration course I intended to continue my education with other career agents but I took a brief pause to plan my skills queue. So far my learning focused on Magic 14 skills all of which I had already trained to level IV. Further study of those skills, decided I, had to be needs-based and focused, as training a single skill to level V could take up to two weeks. At the same time, what I learned during the course made me really excited about Exploration. At my request, Rulie Isoryn sent me a list of skills needed by explorers and I bought missing skillbooks. Boy, some of them like Cloaking and Covert Ops were bloody expensive – my Dad would be proud (or horrified) if he knew how much I invested in my education. Here is what I had to study:
- Archaeology
- Astrometric Acquisition
- Astrometric Pinpointing
- Astrometric Rangefinding
- Astrometrics
- Hacking
- Survey
- Covert Ops
- Cloaking
The adjusted curriculum prioritised Exploration-related skills, training which to at least level IV would take whopping 157 days. You can say it was just five months but I was super-keen to start doing Exploration in earnest. At that time I recalled that my induction kit had some information on mental traits which affected the speed of learning. It appears that Exploration skills were based mostly on two attributes – Intelligence and Memory. I had rather average ratings in both categories but the good news was that a capsuleer’s brain could be remapped so that important attributes gained prominence at the expense of less significant ones. Without much thinking (average intelligence, remember?) I ordered a neural remapping procedure which was carried out at the same station.
My improved intelligence and memory brought to my attention one fact that I previously overlooked – such neural remaps were possible only once a year. So if after finishing courses with other agents I decided that my ideal career would be mining, I would have hard time studying a pick-axe. On the bright side, the duration of my exploration study reduced by almost twenty days.
Now that my skills queue was in order, I was ready for the next course.