PVP Lessons from my 10 year old

I've been mulling one an idea for Eve PVP for a while, but I think my 10 year old clinched it for me last night.  So I'm going to start this story with Minecraft and bragging on my son, but trust me I'm going to bring it back to Eve.

Mineplex

My son plays a PVP Minecraft minigame on a site called Mineplex.  I bet some of you know more about it than I do, but the relevant part here is that you have many possible monsters you can play.  Some of these you only can choose if you're a paid member (an "Ultra").  My son hasn't done this, so he's limited to a less powerful set.  A match is four players, all against all though of course people end up teaming as part of their strategy.  Last night he was very excited - he had won a match against one Normal and two Ultra players.  My first thought was that I was glad that "pay to win" wasn't too dominant and he was able to overcome that - he's definitely been getting better and better from what I see over his shoulder.  But what caught my brain was his explanation: "That's because I only play the Creeper, so I've gotten really good at it."

Hangar full of Mediocre

A while back I had decided that I wanted to learn to kite, since I've mostly been a brawler in Eve starting from my blaster-fed Gallente roots.  But what have I done to accomplish that?  Filled my hangar with Stabber, Slasher, Retribution, Omen, Rifter - all sorts of things.  Plus I keep jumping into my trusty Thorax.  I have to wonder if I'm filling my brain with mediocre skills because I keep swapping ships.  Yes, the general kiting ideas should apply to most of those, but I bet they accomplish them in different ways and with different patterns that I'm not letting settle into my brain.  By contrast I think about a corpmate who is almost always in a Slicer (though she recently has branched out), or the recent video compilation of Marlona Sky working Battle Nereus magic.

Lose 20 Rifters

Standard advice to new PVPers is to "Lose 20 Rifters" (or insert your racial favorite here).  I thought of that mostly as just getting to learn PVP in general, but it also means you're really getting to know that ship.  You can extend that up to other ships, as the excellent blog series "Punisher Plan" did by moving up to T2.  I've kinda done this with my Thorax - I've gotten into a lot of brawls solo in my Thorax, as well as used it for tag-ratting.

Too predictable?

I do worry a bit about being too predictable.  That someone will see me in system and pull me up on their favorite killboard and see that I'm most likely to be in a particular ship.  Honestly though, that's probably the least of my concerns.

Too boring?

Will I get bored with focusing on one ship?  Maybe, though if I can come up with a ship that is flexible enough to do tag-ratting or some other activities when the PVP situation is quiet then perhaps I can mix up the action while continuing to build the patterns of the ship up in my head.

So I think I'm going to take a hard look at what all is in my hangar.  Is there one ship I can focus on for a month, perhaps?  A pair of ships with some similar characteristics?  Maybe I should learn something from my ten year old.

If you were going to fly 20 of one ship to learn kiting, what ship would it be?  I'm better trained to turrets, but I've started on missile skills recently.  T1 or T2 is fine.