oh, I wasnt aware that there were any plans for a cash shop.. I didnt think it was going the way of microtransactions this early on with this small of a player base. I know they're doing some kind of store based on Energy credits, but I thought that had to do with ingame things (I am assuming either plasma, or another item that would be introduced, but thats another topic).

I wouldn't pay cash for a paint job either.

<sarcasm>A monocle for my bot, on the other hand...</sarcasm>

There's some part in the background story that describes the oceans being electrically charged because of gravity so that no life, robot or otherwise could exist there, and that it could be used as some sort of power source.. 

how the hell did the robots get on the different islands? the teleporters must have been made by the other life that was once there, unless they have secret airplanes..

Yeah, coming from Eve, I have perspective on the long term aspect of a game like this. I think to have fun mining or doing industry you basically need to belong to a good corp. Once I get home, I think I'm going to subscribe to get over the annoying restrictions on trial players, and because after 5+ years in eve the game seems to have gotten kinda bland, especially since I cant play often enough to maintain a presence in 0.0, and I think the way the mechanics seem to be right now I wont have to log in 3 times a day to check to see if our space has been taken over, or something I have to do that takes the fun out of the game, but I guess that remains to be seen. (I apologize if you never played eve, as what I'm saying might just come off as jumbled babbling)

I'll check out your corp thread and recruit channel when I get home too,  doing corp stuff and working together toward a common goal is part of what makes games like this so fun, especially if you take an industrial role. Id rather be in a mining op with corpmates than pve solo, although both have their place occasionally, but nothing is more entertaining than devising an operation in a corp with everyone having their role, then executing it.

I'm probably babbling now, so I'll stop

Thank you for your input and advice.
See you on the other side.

I pretty much went industrial all the way, but, as I sit here (at work ) unable to play, I was wondering if I should have switched it to be mostly industrial with a little into whatever the branch was for piloting skills, but I think it will balance out since the industrial skills will be relatively cheap to learn, it should offset the cost of necssesary pilot skills or equipment bonus skills.
(pardon my lack of appropriate terminology, if I could log into the game I could reference the skill trees proper names)  If I am going to be mining I should be able to at least have a chance at tanking/defending or at least escaping should I get mobbed, or be able to run some low level combat missions should I want to inject some fast paced excitement/variety into my gaming experience.

I suppose If i join a good corp someone could defend me while I rake in the dough for the corp  while out in the field mining/gathering/exploring etc, but I feel I should be prepared to hold my own in a pinch. Overspecialize and you breed in weakness.