Most items such as ships, modules, ammunition and even Skills will require some skills to be trained to a certain level before they can be used. These requirements will be listed within the Skill Requirements tab of the item’s information window. The colors and shape of the squares in windows displaying skills are an indicator to the status of the skill and the respective skill level:
Before a skill can be trained it needs to be injected to the characters skill list by right clicking the respective skill book and selecting the 'Inject Skill' option. Alternatively, the skill book may be dragged directly into the training queue. Most Skill books are available on the market, albeit some advanced skills may only be offered by certain factions and as such might not be readily available everywhere.
The Skill training itself happens in real time, independently of the player being logged into the game. . To cover offline times, up to 150 skills may be queued up into the training queue.
The speed at which a skill accrues skill points while it is training is determined by two out of the 5 attributes of the character. These primary and secondary attributes that affect a skills training are listed within the information window of each skill. Along with the Clones state, they determine the speed at which the skill accrues skill points. The formula for skill training on an Alpha Clone is:
0.5 * (Primary Attribute + (Secondary Attribute/2)) = SP per minute
An Omega Clone will train at double the speed.
As only two attributes affect a skill, and skills within the same category often share the same primary and secondary attributes, the skill training speed can be increased with Neural Remaps and some careful skill planning. Implants and Cerebral Accelerators can also be used to shorten skill training time.
In addition to the above, Unallocated Skillpoints can be used to directly add skill points to a skill, to the point of immediate completion if enough unallocated skill points are available.