"Perfect" Cyno Alts

When you plan on traveling LowSec or NullSec space, having a Cyno character is something very important when handling jump capable ships. You may have friends do this for you, but I strongly advise having a second account which you can use. Below is what I have learned over time and from other experienced players, especially Jump Freighter Pilots.

Now, what do I mean by "perfect"?

A "perfect" Cyno character in this context is built around the premise that he should be dedicated to do his job. He should be fast to skill up and cheap to get around. Put into EVE, this distills into:

- Less than 900.000 Skill points. (No costs for clones when podded)
- Able to fly "throw away" ships.
- Have a lot of utility skills to support his role.
- Be a "throw away character" in general, if needed.
- Be able to Pod Jump to medical facilities.
- Have other utility skills like MWD+Cloak, Webbing Freighters.

Let's start with a "fresh" character, having no skills trained:

Caldari, State War Academy

Skill	Skill points
Electronics III	8000
Engineering III	8000
Gunnery II	1415
Small Hybrid Turret III	8000
Mining II	1415
Mechanics II	1415
Navigation III	8000
Science III	8000
Caldari Frigate II	2829
Spaceship Command III	8000
Total:	55074

That leaves us with 844.926 Skill points left until we hit the cap with no medical clone.

For now, let's focus on some essential Cyno skills:

- Cyno Field Theory
- Cloaking
- Afterburner
- High Speed Maneuvering

The first one should be simple, and trained to Level IV, the second one to Level I. Cloaking makes your life a lot easier together with a Micro Warp Drive that you get from Afterburner and High Speed Maneuvering. Cloaking and Cyno Field Theory require Electronics, up to Level V, so we add this as well. Finally, we'll put in some Energy Management II. This adds 489.268 SP and we get our absolute base character:

Skill	Skill points
Cloaking I	1500
Cyno Field Theory IV	226275
Afterburner III	8000
High Speed Maneuvering I	1250
Energy Management II	4243
Electronics V	256000
Engineering III	8000
Gunnery II	1415
Small Hybrid Turret III	8000
Mining II	1415
Mechanics II	1415
Navigation III	8000
Science III	8000
Caldari Frigate II	2829
Spaceship Command III	8000
Total:	544342

You might ask: Why Cyno Field Theory IV and Energy Management II? The answer is simple: With these skills, you can fit a Cyno including one load of Liquid Ozone into Rookie Ships. So you don't even have to buy a Frigate, and if you leave spare Cyno Generators and Liquid Ozone in stations you visit, you can easily build a network spanning all of New Eden.

This leaves us with 355.658 Skill Points for utility skills. From here it all depends on your playing style, but here are some options:

- Add Contracting so you can contract stuff from your Cyno Character to your Main and back.

- Propulsion Jamming I to turn him give him the Role of a Webbing Trick Character.
- Evasive Maneuvering and Warp Drive Operation for more Agility and longer warps in wide systems.
- Add all racial Frigates to III to be able to fly them.
- Put in some Trade skills.

Basically, it is up to you, but you should *not* get over the 900.000 Skill points.

This post only covers the basics, there are more tricks and tweaks to Cyno Characters, but this will be for another, more "advanced" post, where I will also post my complete Cyno Character setup, with full utility skills. And add a little trick I've learned to free up some useless Skill points in that list above, and also a trick to create "save spots" on stations when traveling into deep LowSec or NullSec space.

Fly safe,

OutOfBound