[Radahr Manasponge]

Noobish questions!

I've read everything here EVE-related at some point. Yes, even all 8 million pages of the 'FOH Guide' thread. Unfortunately, a lot of the Guide that deals with starting the game and getting to know things is wayyyy outdated or flat-out no longer applicable as new toons nowadays are completely different then they were then.

With that preface stated, I started in on playing EVE a couple weeks ago. Things have been pretty crazy at work, so I've been playing extremely casually and often at odd hours. I'm actually still on a trial account, but will be subbing regular soon (in a 'point of view' pissing contest with the wife right now, so it's on hold another week or two), so please feel free to point out if something I ask is a restriction based on the trial status. I also have done zero PVPing thus far, as the learning curve and my own newbish stance would likely make me a quick and easy kill for almost everybody.

I've been having a pretty good time in EVE thus far. But there are some things I just "don't get" yet, and haven't seen answers to anyplace that I've looked thus far. So, now let's get down to the real bones of it:

First off, is there a skinng/UI mod movement in this game at all? I'm pretty burnt out on Teamspeak/Ventrillo/et al, but the chat interface is absolutley ass-tastic in this game. One of the good things about WoW was it's UI modding community. I do miss that.

Next up: I see lots of people referring to 'tier 1' and 'tier 2' missions (and on up the line to tier 4 and 5 and whatnot) in regards to the difficulty. what the hell is this designation? I don't see this anyplace! at what point of what setting does one move from tier 1 to tier 2? and so forth.
On this same topic of 'not getting' the mission difficulty setting; I took some agent missions over my lunch...I got three courier missions in a row (no combat, easy, low money). then I got a 'kill pirate NPCs' mission...that had two ships to blow up and done...it took me longer to warp to the accel gate than it did to kill them!
my next mission is called 'world's collide'; this takes 20 minutes of nonstop combat, i log 26 pirate NPC kills, and have 10% structure left at completion, and am out of ammo on three of my merlin's four weapons. *sheesh*
Next mission: three pirate NPCs, 20 seconds to complete
Next mission: courier, one jump away
Next mission: World's collide again, only this time I'm dropped out of warp withing firing range of 15 of them. I last long enough to shoot down exactly ONE NPC ship before getting blown out of mine....roughly 40 seconds....where the HELL did they suddenly get all this armor from?
This kind of 'progression difficulty' isn't the norm, right? I just musta gotten a wonky set from the random number generator, right?

Next question: ship gear. Those of you that have played a while are familiar with all the different flavors of what's available. It sure is a lot for a newbie to get used to!
Other than the blaringly obvious naming conventions (Missile Launcher I, Missile Launcher II, etc) or the slightly harder to see but relevant 'tech level one' and 'tech level 2', is there a way to get a handle on certain things, gear-wise? For instance, I played all four races to the top of the frigate chain thus far, so I've played with many different weapon types. But the differences within the same weapn family! The Compressed Coil 150mm might as well not even be NAMED the same as the other 150s, say the light autocannons, as glaringly different as these weapons perform...it's more than a night and day difference, it's like a centurys difference! But the range difference ALONE is 900m to 13KM. There's gotta be an easier way to compare or know what to kind of look for, OTHER than pulling up 50 different property pages and taking copius notes on each, right?

Next, progression. I get the standings (make them happy, do work for them, get better standings with a nice numeric value. straightforward). What I don't get is why I'm supposed to ... care?
At the end of the day, I understand that that EVE is a mostly PVP game, and to accomplish DICK you have to join a corp and PVP. That's fine. So what's the cutoff point for grinding NPC rep? I've been told that one you get rep over 8, for instance, you can move clones around to different stations.

Since I haven't PVP'd yet, I haven't really seen the need for this. *shrug* I also don't seem to get the point of using my so-called 'loyalty points' on the tributes they occasionally offer...most of what they offer is useless and either gets instantly sold, reprocessed or trashed. Is that the way it stays? Or should I just save my points 'cause the tributes get better?

I've also spent my time in the 'relatively' safer high-sec areas. I've seen posted many times that 'ratting' is a standard 'grind' moneymaker. Wild guess: is that short for 'piRATing' in lower security areas? Just random PVPing and seeing what you get from the wreck when you win?

Lastly (for now)...I had someone tell me to start working up mining and manufacturing early. All they said was it was the king of moneymakers later. Wide question here, but is this true? if so, how does one (besides training up the obvious 'mining' skill) begin to walk this path?

I've got some more to ask, but works' busy, so that all I can type for now.

Thanks for your patience in reading my ramblings, and thanks even more if you can answer any of 'em.