I've been playing for a few months on and off, but continuously training. My personal advice on character creation is to stick with the soldier career line. There isn't much money in manufacturing unless you get a T2 BPO (extremely unlikely). You can make more money doing missions than mining with additional benefits of increasing standings. The only downside is that from my point of view, the military starting corps seem to contain much more agressive players (as to be expected) whereas the manufacturing corps seem much more friendly. Just my personal experience mind you...
As for the starting stats, unless you plan to be a commander/leader, you want charisma as low as possible. If you go the military route, perception should be slightly higher than memory and inteligence. Finally, I don't think willpower is actually the primary stat in any of the skills, so you can let that slip a little. Something like this isn't bad: -
CHA: 3
PER: 10
WIL: 8
INT: 9
MEM: 9
At least, that's the sort of spread I wish I had now!
