There is a list of damage types that tend to be used by different NPC factions on the EvE wiki. It also lists which damage types tend to be most effective against them.
NPC damage Types
The various factions and pirates across New Eden tend to inflict particular damage types over others. The following is a list of the damage types inflicted by different factions
Damage done by NPCs
- Angel Cartel: All types, although mostly kinetic and explosive.
- Amarr Navy: EM and thermal.
- Ammatar Navy: EM and thermal.
- Blood Raiders: EM and thermal.
- Caldari Navy: Kinetic and thermal.
- Centii: EM and thermal.
- Coreli: Kinetic and thermal.
- Corpii: EM and thermal.
- Domination: All types, mostly kinetic and explosive.
- Gallente Navy: Kinetic and thermal.
- Gist: All types, mostly kinetic and explosive.
- Guristas: Kinetic and thermal.
- Khanid: EM and thermal.
- Mercenary: All types.
- Mordu's Legion: Kinetic and thermal.
- Odamian: Kinetic and thermal.
- Pith: Kinetic and thermal.
- Rogue Drones: All types.
- Republic fleet: All types, mostly kinetic and explosive.
- Sansha: EM and thermal.
- Serpentis: Kinetic and thermal.
Best damage to do to NPCs
- Guristas - Kinetic
- Serpentis - Thermal or Kinetic
- Mordu's Legion - Thermal or Kinetic
- Blood Raiders - EM or Thermal
- Sansha - EM or Thermal
- Angel Cartel - Explosive
- Mercenary - Thermal
There is indirect PvP aspects in Planetary Interaction, and soon there will be direct PvP aspects with the release of a console game called DUST514.
The indirect PvP aspect is fighting over resources. This was only turned on in some of the later patches in the Incursion. On each planet there is only a limited number of the resources in the ground, which only refill at a certain static rate. The planet will support some (unspecified) minimum amount of resource being extracted, then after that it will deteriorate. This means that too much concentration in the area will deplete the resource for all players pulling that resource out of the ground at that place.
The direct PvP will come later when the DUST514 console shooter game comes out. Exact details haven't been confirmed yet, but the base premise of it is that people playing Eve Online will be able to somehow ask players in DUST514 to somehow disrupt other Eve Online players Planetary Interaction networks.
There are usually two types of Planetary Interaction (PI) setups : Extraction and Factory setups.
With Extraction setups, PI doesn't really require any sort of ongoing ISK costs to run besides export fees of planetary products, therefore all PI here should be "profitable". In High-Sec you won't get very high extraction rates at all, and they will be highly contested, which means not very profitable on a "ISK-per-time-invested" basis. Lo-Sec can be better, but Null-Sec and Wormhole planets can be quite lucrative. There is a larger risk in transporting the PI products from these lower security areas of space though.
With Factory Setups, people can make a fair amount of ISK by making PI setups in High Sec that purely concentrate on turning lower level cheaper PI products bought from the market into higher level more expensive products. You'd need to figure out what is profitable here and what isn't as it would also be quite easy to lose a lot of money doing this if you chose the wrong products, or the sell prices of the high-end product dropped unexpectedly.
In terms of investment of training time, it doesn't take too long to get decent PI skills. Anywhere between a few days for some basic skills to a couple of months to be able to run multiple planets with high level command centres depending on how much PI you want to be involved in.
Best Answer
The devblog on hacking covers most of the basics, and via personal experience and a quick refresher at the UniWiki Odyssey page I have this to say:
There are five different kinds of nodes: Empty, System Core, Data Cache, Defensive Subsystem and Utility Subsystem - with the defensive Subsystem and Utility Subsystem having a few flavors each. Data Caches are either Defensive or Utility Subsystem.
The damage is consistent per node, but different types of the same node are random within a specific set - i.e. the same node will always hit you for the same amount, but another node of the same type may be different.
No.
Yes, but the number of released containers increases, without increasing the amount of available loot, meaning each individual container will have less in it. However if you fail too many times (currently 2) then the loot will be destroyed.
Additionally, the profession containers can be cargo scanned. If the loot isn't overly valuable, skip it. The ISK/hr may be better without wasting the time.
Extra extra additionally, Ali Arias wrote a detailed piece of the entire process over at themittani.com. It's a bit of a read, but it covers all of the salient points.
Once you've won the mini-game and the look has exploded into space you have about 10-15 seconds before the last of it disappears.
The individual containers are divided into types (currently Data, Materials, Parts, and Scraps) with their contents being determined according to their type. Scraps containers are effectively worthless, don't waste time on these and reliably collecting all the loot requires at least 2 characters doing it.