Nine Days

"As a reminder, we would like to state there are no skill changes planned for the winter expansion - your Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills are safe for now, as we are not adjusting spaceship command skill trees until we are done with the Battlecruiser class."

CCP Ytterbium, September 2012

I know that I still have a lot of time to take advantage of the training changes coming with CCP's tiericide efforts but with the latest dev blog discussing battlecruiser and battleship changes I figure I need to take care of business before I forget.

• Breaking Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills into four racial versions with an identical training multiplier (thus making it four times harder to get all races trained)
• Changing skill requirements for Racial Cruisers from Racial Frigates 4 to Racial Destroyers 4
• Changing skill requirements for Racial Battleships from Racial Cruisers 4 to Racial Battlecruisers 4
• Changing skill requirements for capital ships from Racial Battleships 5 to 4, but introducing or increasing other skills to keep the same overall training time requirements

Up until now both of my main pilots have exclusively flown Minmatar and ORE ships.  As such both have trained both Destroyers and Battlecruisers to V.  If the implementation of racial Destroyers and racial Battlecruisers occurred today, I would only receive Minmatar Destroyers V and Minmatar Battlecruisers V.  So what would I need to do to get all of the racial Destroyers and racial Battlecruisers to V?  Here is what CCP Ytterbium wrote:

"Let us repeat again: if you could fly it before, you will be able to do so after the change. Technically it means if you are able to fly an Oracle by having Amarr Cruisers 3 and Battlecruisers 3, we will remove the Battlecruisers skill from your character and give you Amarr Battlecruisers at 3. If you had Battlecruisers at 3 and Caldari Cruisers 3 instead, you would not receive Amarr Battlecruisers but the Caldari Battlecruisers skill at 3 instead. The same principle work with the Destroyers skill."

CCP Fozzie clarified further in the comments thread for the dev blog when answering a question:

Antoine Jordan:  "So if I have Battlecruisers V and Amarr Cruiser III, after the patch I'll have Amarr Battlecruiser V, right? So that I can fly them to the same effectiveness I could before the patch."

CCP Fozzie:  "This is correct."

So all I need to do is train the three racial Cruiser skills I don't have to III and I will have Battlecruisers V for all races.  As a byproduct of the requirement to train the racial Frigate skills to IV before beginning Cruiser training, I'll also have Destroyers trained to V as well.  The nicest part is how long the training takes for me.  Even with my attributes not min/max'd each of my pilots will finish in under nine days.

Nine days.  Yes, I know that I still have to learn the gunnery skills to fly the ships properly (well, except for the Caldari missile boats).  But for the eventual payoff I think I can divert nine days of training for support skills on both my pilots to have a big payoff down the line.  I can't wait for the spring expansion.