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Originally posted by Tangogulf

1) Combat - Again I was at a very low level, but my experience with the combat was basically auto attack and circle the other ship until the fight was over. No positional or special attacks, just auto attack and circle. I didnt like this, I wanted alot more complexity and skill requirements out of the combat. Was I too low to make an informed decision on combat? Did I get the wrong or right idea with the combat?

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I suppose, on the MOST BASIC level, this is somewhat true. But there is a lot of depth hidden in combat.

Let's first focus on the ships and the setups. You can do many things with a ship. You can rig it for speed (overdrives and afterburners) tanking (shield boosters/armor repaiers and their hardeners), or a damage dealer/sniper/ganker (sensor boosters, damage/tracking mods). You have to consider the limitations of the design, how much powergrid and cpu the ship has (which you can increase with certain mods), since every component uses those 2 resources. You have to consider your capacitor abilities, because nothing works if you don't have cap. Also, you have to consider what range your ship will attack. You can choose from SR and LR guns, and also ammo affects the range of your gun too. Also, for some types of ammo (projectile and missles to be exact) you can choose what type of damage you deal, depending on what your opponent has hardened the least.

As far as positioning, well, depending on your ammo and guns, you have to make sure that your enemy is at the range you can hit it at, also, you have to consider the trasversal velocity (how fast he is moving in relation to you). So it's best actually to head for the target or attack a fast target from far away. Plus your skills also take part in deciding if you get a hit and how much damage you do.

No special attacks, sorry. But I suppose a Titan's doomsday weapon could count as one.

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Originally posted by Tangogulf

2) All there is to do is mine - Again let me qualify, that this would be paraphrasing the rumour. I really enjoy making money via the economy. The economy and the markets seemed very robust in the game. I envisioned travelling to far off stations, buying products low and selling high in other sectors. However, given that I could not at all survive in combat against pirates, I really was quite concerned about travelling beyond the safe zones, thus hand cuffing my economic activity. It seemed that I had to mine nearby to survive.

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Mining is an important part of the economy, since it is the basis of all constructed items. So if you want to build, you'll have to mine (or do missions/rat a lot and be very good about gathering your loot and refining what you don't need/sell). BUT, it's not the only way to make money. You can do missions, and I strongly suggest you find agents that give out kill missions at least half the time (Admin, the securities, intel, personell IIRC).

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Originally posted by Tangogulf

3) I ll never catch up with other players - The skill based system. The longer that Im here, the better I get. Therefore, if someone has been here 2 years, and I have been here only a month, then I stand the risk of being continuously ganked (and again handcuffed) in my activities.

I think more then anything, I had the perception that if I travelled too far or did too much in attempting to expand my economic empire, then I was finished. I didnt feel I had the freedom to really experiment with or play the game.

Can anyone help dispel these myths for me?

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Well, once a person hits lvl 5, that's it, there is no going higher than that. So if you focus on one skill tree after doing your learning skills advanced and basic (trains skills faster), you can get to be roughly the same with the vets in a number of months. Being in the game longer only gives you the ability to diversify more. Plus, take risks, not everyone in low sec is a pirate (but you should be careful). Or join a corp that works in low sec. But take risks, use t1 items and insure your ships, make instas if you need to haul something important and you should do just fine.

Hope that helps you.