Getting on the bandwagon

It's that time of year again where everyone who has something to sell is advertising that they have are having some form of "MEGA BONUS UBER ONE TIME ONLY SALE". It can be a little overwhelming or just plain annoying if you see the same adverts over and over again.

Almost a Fire Sale

This year I decided that I would join in but instead of advertising I'd just drop the price of my items as if I was having a fire sale. Not everything I trade was covered but all my T1/T2 modules and ships. Thanks to some unknown person who has cleared up the Metamaterials and Sylramic Fibres market these too were included.

From the 20th December to 2pm (AU TZ) I've been selling over three thousand items in both High Sec and Null Sec at under market price. As of 2pm today this is my trader's wallet:

Normally I try to keep as little ISK as possible in my wallet but in three days I've gone from a little under 1.5b to almost 10.5b ISK, 

Why Do This

Aside from the title, I wanted to clear out my current stock of items in my locations because they were annoying me and I was a little tired of the 0.01 ISK price updates I'd have to do several times a day. By dropping the price to well under market I may have lost some profit but I sold the item and no longer have to keep trying to sell it.

By selling it I now have ISK I can use to invest in the New Year on things that will generate me more profit. Believe me, I've spent the past two weeks looking for new opportunities for 2015.

Don't be afraid of Long Term when Trading

Most (~95%) of the trading that I do in High Sec is based on short time scales. I buy low, sell at a higher price to make a reasonable profit and I list items either for a week or fortnight but never longer than a month. Prices are checked anything up to a dozen times a day depending on the item for sale. Null sec is slightly different in that I list items for 3 months and check the prices once or twice a week.

My aim is to make at least 20% profit on anything I sell and for 95% it happens within a day or two of listing.

There are some (~5%) items that I sell that I know will take a longer term to sell either because they are a rarity or have a high price with a low volume. I avoid Deadspace/Officer items as well as Storyline modules, outside of a couple of them they do not have a sale volume to justify the expense of buying them and then sitting on them.

A while back I noticed that Mobile Tractor Units were good sellers and the named ones, whilst not selling in hundreds or thousands a day, were selling in good quantities and for good a good profit.

Why Mobile Tractor Unit's

Mobile Tractor Units are common and come in three variants (base and two named) with the differences coming down to tractor beam speed and maximum range. The base unit ("Mobile Tractor Unit") is cheap (~5m ISK) and available in large quantities, the next model up ("Packrat") is about ~22m ISK for a small increase in tractor beam speed. Finally we have the top model ("Magpie") which comes in at a whopping 300/350m ISK for a 40% increase in range and a much faster tractor beam.

I've rarely seen Magpie's in use but they are sold fairly regularly.

Manufacturing

The blueprints are available in certain Data/Relic sites and a couple of months ago I saw five BPC's for sale in Jita for between 250m and 280m ISK. The material requirements were the same for all of them (from memory) and it appeared that the price of the BPC was what was controlling the final price, which at the time was 400m ISK.

I worked out that, at 400m, I could easily produce these for less than 300m ISK with BPC prices as they were. I was helped by several friends producing the PI materials used so I was able to obtain what i needed at a significant discount on market price.

So I bought the five BPC's for just over 1 billion ISK, bought all the materials needed and shipped them to my manufacturing system for production.

Long Term Sale

I've built 5 Magpie MTU's and as of two days ago the final one sold after just over two months on the market (in total). I listed all at 1m ISK under the lowest Sell Order price with a lowest limit of 325m ISK. 

If the price dipped under this I remained at 325m and it did several times but within a few days recovered to head back up to 325m ISK at which point my unit sold and the price continued to climb to just over 340m ISK.

All the Magpies sold within two months of listing:

Magpie #1 - 331m

Magpie #2 - 325m

Magpie #3 - 325m

Magpie #4 - 334m

Magpie #5 - 325m

I received 1.64b ISK in total and my production costs were 1.31b ISK leaving me with a nice profit of 330m ISK or a nice even 25% profit.

Two months isn't very long in trading (CCP said that there was one sell order for an item in-game that had such a low database id it showed it was set up in 2006 and had been modified ever since) but remember that sometimes things won't sell immediately so you need to hold on to them until they do.

About EVE

I've never really had a look at the About EVE tab of Settings within the game. There are some very unpronounceable names there and its a shame that they don't list what peoples CCP name is against their real name. 

Anyway I was reading down (waiting for the server to come online) and I noticed that about three quarters of the way down is all the people who work in the background that we don't know. Financial staff, HR and such but it was one section that took me by surprise just under the Office IT DBA:

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you and I haven't manipulated the image in any way. 

As it shows CCP employs four chefs and two assistant cooks at their Headquarters to cater for their staff and they get credit in the game.

Rightly so I think, for keeping the Dev's, GM's and other staff fed and watered so they can concentrate on the important tasks. Perhaps a future devblog or community featurette could give us more information on these six phantoms who keep the wheels at CCP rolling. :)

Goonswarm Secret Santa

A friend of mine, in Goonswarm, just posted that he had gotten a Secret Santa gift from another player in-game.

He received a small faction battleship fleet:

1 x Bhaalgorn

1 x Machariel

1 x Nightmare

1 x Vindicator

Just under two billion in value from someone whom he doesn't know. Goon or not, it was a nice thing to do and in return, for his Secret Santa, he gave a gift of some Faction Webs, Gyrostabilizers and a Loki (plus a few other odds and ends) to someone who needed these modules to pimp out their dreadnought.

I still told my friend because he's a "goon" I automatically have to hate him but this was pretty cool and props to the 'swarm for doing this,. 

Even Scams should be spell checked

This is a couple of days old but I blocked the character so I don't know if its still like this but whilst in Jita the night that Rhea was deployed I saw the following appearing in Local:

Theta requires armor tanked ships! Typhoon Fleet Issue with Missile Rigs for only 410 million ISK! Save 10 million isk off current market value! Show some love to the Minmatar!

Can you see the error?

Seems like a deal but I cannot get past the first word without cringing, Thera is the name of the new wormhole system NOT Theta.

Sure its a simple typo, T is next to the R on a QWERTY keyboard but it just shows a lack of professionalism from a scammer.

They want our ISK but are too lazy to do a basic spell check, scammers today eh. Back in my day it was different ;)

Edit: Thanks to commenter Chinana who pointed out my own spell check failure.

Passing 100 million skillpoints

Previously I mentioned that my 'main' was getting close to 100m skillpoints, well that time has passed and my 'main' passed the 100 million skillpoint milestone at 12:50 EVE Time on the 9th December.

1616 days ago my he was born into the fire that is New Eden. He started his adventure in Amdonen and Nishah but has since moved on from these locations and adventure I continues today but all over New Eden. 

In his time he's lived in a wormhole, mined in high sec, moved to low sec and back to high sec, flew a carrier into battle, run missions and performed huge amounts of research and manufacturing.

He's not the best trained character but every SP he's got has been a pleasure for me and he's continuing to expand his skills and recently finished training for the Aeon he bought over year ago. He has the Amarr Titan skill trained to Level 1 but I doubt sit in one before 200m skillpoints roll around.

My 'null sec main' is currently 2.5m skillpoints from 100m and my 'pvp alt' is 14m but it is the guy who finishes first that people remember.

FIRST!

Random Facts

• Of the the 318 skills he knows he has 101 at level 5 and 95 at Level 4 with only 3 skills yet to be trained. 
• His skill breakdown shows that the top 3 for points are Spaceship Command (27%), Drones (16%) and Gunnery (10%).
• He was the character that built my first Carrier and Paladin and was the first to be podded when I made a disastrous investigation of a low sec system aged 25 days
• For just over 3 years he had trained no guns to Level 5 nor had any of the support skills above Level 3, but the Paladin being built was too much of a draw and in less than four months he had all Large Guns and Support Skills to 5. Yet he hasn't flown the Paladin since December 2013.

Change of Plan

The plan was simple, get some BPO's for the new Bowhead and move them to to Jita/Amarr for sale and quick profit just after the patch was released.

Planning had put jump clones in the system where the BPO's would be, a route was planned and additional resources moved there in preparation for the night. Energy drinks were consumed before hand (as the DT would mean a late night in my time zone) and we were ready to go.

Small Issue

Then we logged in and found 34 people in local within minutes of the server being online. This grew to over 50 and attempts to undock found ships surrounding the station and large bubbles covering the undock arena.

Undocking was not an option and even if we'd been able to insta-warp its probable, based on what we saw that we'd be insta-locked and pointed/blapped. This did happen as pilot can confirm:

Loot Fairy certainly was good to the campers.

Bex even tried a little theory crafting on SiSi to see if he could do anything to avoid the camp but nothing came of it and we logged off nearly two hours after the server came online.

At the time I was a little pissed off at CCP and the campers. CCP for seeding the BPO's in a place that was easy to camp and the campers for profiting from CCP's oversight.

However this morning I have woken up and I'm not at all annoyed like I was last night. The game was working fine and hats off to the campers for being in the right place at the right time. I've purchased a BPO from the market (I can afford a slightly inflated price after all) and started a couple of points of research whilst I assemble the rest of the components I need to make one.

Profit?

I noticed with my skills that it will take a little over 13 hours to create a copy of the blueprint so in a week I should be able to create at least twelve copies. Twelve copies sold at 150m each would return the outlay of my reserach AND BPO cost.

Return on investment in just over 7 days, that's got to be worth it.

Of course I'm dependant on the price of the Bowhead BPC but once I complete my research on it I'll just keep making copies and selling them. Either way, I'll recover my costs just when is unknown.

Planning for Rhea

We're just a couple of days away from the release of Rhea and with it the new Bowhead ship transporter. This is a ORE produced capital class vessel and, as with previous ORE vessels, the BPO has only been seeded in ORE space and cannot be bought from NPC suppliers in Empire space.

I was not in a position to take advantage of this when the Noctis was released but I am now so why not guy a couple of BPO's and get them shipped to Jita, within hours of the release of Rhea, and make a decent profit from selling to those that do not (or cannot) source them from ORE stations in Outer Ring.

All Your Assembled Ships Are Belong To Me

So I had a word with Bex and suggested the idea to him and he's spent the past couple of weeks looking for a way to get in and out with the BPOs whilst avoiding the station campers and/or gate camps on the way to high sec.

Plan

On Saturday Bex told me he'd come up with an idea but needed some help getting the ship he wanted to use to the system in Outer Ring. I asked for some more information, OpSec prevents me sharing the full details now, and it was quite ingenious and far better than the plan i thought he'd come up with.

My task was simple, I needed to move a character who could use a cyno to a station in 4C-B7X so he could jump in the needed ships and modules. Quite simple but this was space I was unfamiliar with and would need me to travel through systems that, according to DotLan and zKillboard, were regaularly gate camped.

Into The Breach

A little bit of investigation led me to the high sec system of Orvolle in Placid which I determined as the best starting point for my journey. It had a direct connection to null sec Syndicate  that would lead directly to 4C-B7X.

Checking the ingame map for pilots active in the last 30 minutes showed that there were three systems along the way where i should expect probable gate camps which I confirmed using zKillboard and saw the kills for the past couple of days.

One thing I did before I confirmed my route was to check all NPC stations along the route I was going to take for Medical services. If they had them I would dock up and move my medical clone to this location so I would not have to do the entire route again.

So I jumped in my pod (no need to take a ship as I could buy the fuel and cyno module where I was heading) and immediately wished I had trained interceptors on my cyno alts.

The Journey

I needed to travel through six systems in Syndicate and eight systems Outer Ring to get to my destination. 14 jumps through very hostile space.

Route Taken

I warped to the PF-346 gate and my journey was started. Orvolle gate was clear and I made sure to bounce to a celestial and then to the next gate which, I saw, had a drag bubble on it that would have pulled me off the gate had I warped directly.

One jump, so far so good.

After bouncing in FD-MLJ I landed on gate to see two ships. "My first gate camp" I thought as I jumped through. It took a couple of seconds but the grid in X-M2LR loaded and I saw a Sabre on the gate and before I could do anything an interdiction probe appeared and the dreaded bubble appeared.

My first thought was I was screwed and I'd wake up in my clone in Orvolle and have to start the journey again. But regardless I selected a moon and spammed the warp button and was overjoyed to see the bubble stop short of my pod, quite literally by only a few hundred metres I'd estimate, and I entered warp! Luck was on my side and I had appeared just outside of the diameter of the interdiction probe.

I expected to be chased but after I jumped through my next waypoint I saw I was not and proceeded to the next system that had a station so I could update my medical clone location!

The rest of the trip was uneventful, I stopped three more times to update my clone location. Saw a few people in local in most systems but the gates were clear of drag bubbles and ships. I still made sure to bounce to moons before landing on gates and it added a few seconds to the stay in each system but it would, if there was trouble, save my pod.

Eventually I entered 4C-B7X and warped to the first ORE station I clicked on. My medical clone location was updated and, with the free rookie ship I got on docking, I bought the cyno module and fuel for one use. I waited until the system quieted down and lit the cyno, bought in the needed ships/modules for Bex and then jump cloned my cyno alt back to her home system.

Lessons Learnt

I have taken two lessons away from this trip:

• Having cyno alts with Cynosural Theory V really saved me, I doubt I would have made it all the way to 4C from high sec in a rookie ship with cargo expanders. 
• I cannot stress how important learning how to "bounce" between celestials and gates is. I really should have been doing that when I lost this pod earlier this year.

I'm hoping we can get BPO's out of the system pretty fast after Rhea is released but its all dependant on downtime.

It's been a long day, perhaps time to retire

My monitoring program has told me that I need to empty a number of silos in my towers because they will be full in less than 22 hours. The 22 hours finishing when I'll be at work and unable to do anything.

I've put it off since I got the notification around 2pm today because I've been having much fun "learning to scan properly" with a character in a WH (lots of signatures mean lots of practice). I also had to move a cyno toon to a station in Outer Ring in prepartion for moving a couple of characters there to try to (oh lol) harvest High Grade Harvest implants via LP missions. The 14 jumps from high sec to the station were eventual, and I finally used what my CEO has been teaching me when moving around unknown systems, and I'll probably do a post on that tomorrow.

Anyway, I've been emptying silos and I think its time to go to bed. I've emptied the same silo FOUR times now, warping to the tower, offlining the silo and then well I was sure I moved the contents to my cargohold but it appears I didn't.

I'm off to bed afer a shit of a day in RL but a positively fun one in-game.

Being the Nice Guy

Sometimes I feel that being a nice person in EVE Online is the wrong thing. 

My personality is one that I like co-operation, I like helping people and I find it difficult to be a bastard and either take advantage of another person. I've often thought that I miss that "killer instinct".

All my friends in EVE Online have that killer instinct that, to me, allows them to be great players. The clinical attitude and "mistakes are not an option" of my CEO impresses me, I wish I could be more like him but then again I do enjoy being Mr Nice Guy and helping people rather than just laughing and shooting them.

Revenge Wanted

This Is EVE has bought a lot of people to the game and I was lucky enough to meet a player who had returned after a four year hiatus. He contacted me when I logged in two characters with a mail:

Greetings, would you be interested in killing a player for me? I will pay 250m for him to die 10 times. His corp is in this system. Let me know if you are interested.

Being the inquisitive type I asked for some more information and was able to find out that the player in question had returned to EVE Online after a four year hiatus, joined a corporation but found it was not to his liking after investing time and ISK into it. Upon leaving his former CEO put a 100m bounty on him.

He was slightly miffed by this and wanted to get revenge by paying someone to kill his former CEO 10 times. I had a chat with the guy and discovered he was a fellow Australian living in Perth who had recently returned and was trying to make a new start. We chatted for about an hour and he told me how he was going to buy a PLEX to fund this endeavour. 

At this point I asked him why bother, he should wear the bounty with pride (none of my characters have no bounties anywhere near this) and he should move on and forget about it. He seemed to agree with this and after we discussed bounties in a little more depth I think he finally understood that they weren't a mark of a "bad" player but something that all players, good, bad and anywhere in-between ,can be given

He left the convo by adding me as a contact with Excellent standings and I was feeling rather generous and sent him a billion ISK after I found out he had 40m but that he was now down to about 15m because he bought some things.

Been There

I was reading /r/EVE a few days ago and nothing really was grabbing my attention so I opened one of those subjects that looks like someone having a vent or bitch. I hate these things but sometimes I can relate and that's exactly what I found.

A pilot was venting because he had lost a pod to a smart bomb Proteus in low sec and lost a rather expensive set of implants. The pilot didn't say much but his loss mail was linked and at first I smiled but then remembered my own loss on a null sec gate just a few months ago.

Looking at the loss I saw it was a set of Mid-Grade Snake's and as I had a couple of full sets of these from my recent LP adventures in Angel space I decided that I would ship some to Jita and help the guy out with a full set at a discount.

I fired him off an evemail after I setup the contract and received this response this morning:

[character], I totally thought this was a scam. 100%. I really had to look at all the info and realized how awful of a person I have become since my EVE career began, I don't trust anyone and was sadly mistaken on you. Living among all these awful awful people you forget that there is actually good people out there. I really appreciate the kind gesture and will pay it forward.

I was in the position to help someone and a full set of Mid-Grade Snakes could cost around 750m ISK but would only cost me 187m to get. I added on a little for isotopes, to jump the implants out, and the guy got the implants for 200m.

It does feel good to be able to help people I don't know. Maybe one day I'll get that killer instinct that my peers who PvP have.

Confessor Your Sins

Sorry about the title, it was funny in my head.

SiSi has been updated and the first look of the new Amarrian T3 Destroyer is available for all to see. Previously we had just a view/the model of the actual ship now we have some statistics and details of the bonuses the ship will have.

Traits, Attributes and Fitting

Thanks to Althanear for the screenshots.

With the introduction the new Modes the Traits page is one of the longest of any ship in game. Nicely laid out and easy to see what the ship has and each mode brings to the table.

tbh, defensive mode will be the go-to

                       - Apex Bex

Of course the stats are subject to change but with only a week til release I think its fair to say that the slot layout is fixed.

Seven high lots which can fit six guns and still has a utility high slot free for a neut or nos. Three mids is going to limit tackle options and five low slots seems rather anemic for both tank and damage modifiers. I think we'll see these ships in either a sniper (range ~80km to 100km) or a "heavy" tank variant with a prop mod and a scram/point with tank provided by speed so a DC II perhaps a Adaptive Nano Membrane and speed/agility mods in the remain low slots.

Fast Tackle

if this is for going through frig holes, people are going to want them to be heavy tackle and dps

                                                                                                                                     - Apex Bex

The Defensive mode looks to be the best option of the modes available, Speed is appealing but speed can only get you so far before you get into a tight orbit and if you're taking damage then speed really isn't going to help.

With a decent buffer and resists you're looking at 19,000 EHP (ingame) with DPS in the region of 350 (skill dependant).

The larger destroyer hull means you'll take more damage than a smaller interceptor or frigate, and the interceptor is designed to tackle where as this isn't. Its got three modes which means three purposes instead of one that most other ships have.

I've spoken to a few friends who think that the Confessor is going to be a white elephant and based on the statistics it has it looks like they may be right. It has nothing that makes it any better than a current ship that is dedicated to that role. 

So Whats The Point

Aside from its new and looks great I can't see a role or purpose for this ship.

Interceptors tackle better, T1 frigates and destroyers will be able to shoot just as well and (ignoring the sniper mode) range isn't an issue. Speaking of which I found it ridiculous that the ship can lock and snipe out to 100km but the guns could only go as far as 60km in the testing I did. 

Pitiful.

You can fit to get 500dps from the Confessor and include a local repair module but turns from a brawler into a glass cannon with anaemic defence attributes but I would not do this, it would be throwing ISK away everytime.

Sure other ships don't have the ability to switch modes on-the-fly but they don't need to. They (especially after rebalancing) have a singular role or purpose and (now) do it well.

I can see Confessors (and the other new ships) carrying Mobile Deports to refit but this isn't ideal. For one thing if you're in the middle of hostile space you've got to find somewhere to refit and then you may do so whilst being probed down. Not ideal circumstances for refitting.

What If You Changed This

mark my words, in its current form, it's a white elephant

                                                                 - Anon (I don't want to embarrass them)

I like the ideal of these smaller ships. I'm a capital pilot, I love my battleships and larger vessels but I do enjoy wathcing and (rarely) partaking in fleets of smaller and more nimble ships. A fleet of Confessors, supported with T1 logistics and a few interceptors/fast tackle would leave wrecks whereever it went.

But what if we made a small change to the confessor, in the defensive mode add the ability to increase the range and output of remote repair modules? Imagine a fleet of Confessors roaming that could spider tank and put out between 300 and 400 dps and could repair themselves. That would be a fun fleet and would certainly get fights where ever it went.

Edit: The idea for the logi bonus for spider tanking was first proposed by Apex Bex, happy now?

Enough, You've Rambled Long 

The Idea - 8/10

The Implementation - 4/10

I know it hasn't been released yet but playing with it on SiSi and getting feedback from people who have used it I want to love the Confessor but as it stands I cannot. 

New Digs

Last night I moved one of my combat pilot alts from my holding corp to a new home where I hope to be involved in a fair bit more pvp than I do now.

I rarely do PvP at the moment not because I don't want to but because when I come online fleets and people are typically finishing or have finished. Not to mention that industrial activities are quite the time sink.

However I've decided to move a little used combat pilot to a new corporation and will aim to spend at least two hours per day improving my woeful skills at pvp.

Geronimo

I was logged in last night and received a conversation request which ended up being the public channel for the corporation I was planning to join. There were a few people there, I said hello and a little banter happened. 

I was redoing my skill queue at the time and that was taking most of my attention as I had a lot I wanted to train but getting the order right so as to be useful and not "the third wheel" was important to me. 

Eventually the CEO of the corp asked when I'd be making an application and I decided to do so just then and there. It was very quickly accepted (within a minute I'd say) and then I was in a new corporation with some pilots who I hold in high regard. 

There was no API check or other security clearance required but I'm pretty sure I received a vouch from the friend who has been urging me to join. The CEO is not a fool and I'm sure he's vetted me before allowing me to join. I'm not interested in corp theft, awoxxing or any underhanded methods, that isn't me or how I play EVE Online.

I'm there to be a line pilot, learn as much as I can and have fun.

Getting Setup

The Corp Bulletins and Message of the Day (MOTD) for the channels I was in were excellent. I quickly found out Teamspeak details, Siggy password (for wormhole navigation) and the corp/alliance fleet-up (for fits and other fleet things).

Took no more than 15 minutes to get access to these systems and within 30 minutes I was racing to a high sec location where there was a wormhole that could be used to get to the home system. 

Teeny Tiny Hiccup

One small issue was I didn't have any doctrine ships available so I grabbed a armour tanked Loki that I have and will form the basis of my ship fleet for wormhole use. I browsed the list of fits in Corporation fittings and was disappointed to see that most I could not fly, so off I went back to Skills and reorganised my queue so as to train for more ships much quicker. 

In 126 days I'll be able to fly all but 2 of the 160 listed ships but in the next 30 days I should be able to fly all frigates and covert ops ships the only exception being Gallente and Minmatar cruisers/battlecruisers which I already have at Level V.

I've already sent a freighter to Jita to collect various ships and modules that I can or will shortly be able to fly and I'll slowly start moving them over the coming week.

The Future

I hope to be fully setup and ready to fight no later than Friday of this week, at least with Minmatar and Artillery/Autocannon based ships. I'm looking forward to getting some more experience with pvp with a different group to whom I've flown with before.

And what I learn here will be able to be used with my other characters.

A Week In Short

Lore

I really have to thank the EVE subreddit for making me get into the EVE Lore more. A couple of the recent threads about "Catherine's Star" have been fascinating and piqued my interest in what the story I'm involved in is.

I found it funny reading Templar One and reading more about the history of the Amarr that I actually find myself dispising them. Even funnier considering that all my characters are Amarrian and I've ben known to refer to friends who are Caldari as "Caldari scum"... and they're supposed to be our allies!

I don't think I'll go full RP, I'd probably find it a little too weird, but I have enjoyed reading about about the history of the Pirate Factions, the major races and where Sleepers fit in. I'm pretty sure I've only scratched the surface so I have a lot more reading to do.

With Christmas approaching I know I'll be visiting various family so I'll load up the iPad with reading material to keep be entertained.

Ticking Along

Not much to report with my industrial juggernaut. Towers are ticking over, wares are shipped to Jita for redistrubtion, at a nice profit, and unfortunately I've found myself not logging in most days with my null sec characters.

My high sec ones are doing well, nearly three quarters of a million LP for one store from L4 missions. As boring and repetiative as they are I do find time to do a few in a row and the odd Storyline does mean I get some nice loot.

I've had three Shipyard Theft storylines in a row so far, with each one giving me a different Leadership Implant.

New Opportunity

One of my characters will be, very shortly, leaving my holding corporation and striking out on his own. I've identified a new home for him and hopefully I'll be able to join up and see if I can live in a wormhole once more.

I'm sure I can, just got a few skills to update before I do join...

Rhea Approaches

With the release of the Rhea expansion in a weeks time I've been getting ready to make a few Bowhead for myself and friends. I've had to invest in Capital Part BPO's and that's cost few billion ISK but at least I can research and use them for other jobs later.

I'm interested in the new T3 Destroyer although I don't think its going to be cheap to start with, regardless at some point I'll get one or at least try to build one. An interesting premise the Confessor is, with the three modes. Although I really think it will lack in the DPS department with only 5 low slots.

Aside from that I'm not really doing much market speculation or investment. Rhea is going to be my quiet-ish expansion.

276 Hours

In 276 hours my main will pass 100 million skillpoints. That's nearly two weeks and if EVE Online has taught me one thing it is that patience is certainly needed.

Norm, as he's known, is the first of my characters to reach this milestone and I think it is fitting that when he does he'll have reached 100million SP with 100 skills trained to Level V.

He has just finished Fighter Bombers V, 39 days it took and now he's off to complete the rest of the Drone tree skills in order to close that branch of training off.

It's slow training, I only have the Level V to do for all Drone skills but once that's done he'll be moving onto something new and I'm not yet sure what that will be.

Scratching the Surface

It wasn't until a few weeks after I started playing EVE Online that I learnt that instead of just being a "space based game" it was a "space based game with a story". 

I've never really read much about the back story and lore that EVE Online is built, I've always intended too but something has always sidetracked me and I've never got around to it. Until last night that is...

A New Star

Whilst reading Reddit I found this thread that had an image that showed that, when in space in the Perrigen Falls region that there was a new star visible. A comparission image was shown showing normal/classic star alongside this one and it certainly does look different.

Image credit to dragonshardz from /r/eve

Interesting I thought and read the comments in the thread and found CCP Falcon had commented:

It's like he's in a Procurer sitting in a belt, looks like bait. I thought no more of it, aside that the star within game looked awesome and it must be part of the continuing lore. A few more pictures were posted showing the star was visible from other regions, but not as bright as if the light hadn't reached them yet... awesome attention to detail CCP.

Speculation

I checked the thread on Reddit a couple more times yesterday and was amazed at how busy it was with people adding speculation or making comment on how it would integrate with the coming Sleeper story that was progressing within the game.

This morning I've seen another post that the star has gotten brighter since yesterday:

Lets just spare a moment to admire that screenshot from the game. 

Not content with that some players have tried to find out what star this is and quite how they did it is beyond me but they seem to have narrowed it the location down a constellation and then a specific star in Jove space. Speculation around this was fascinating to read and there are some seriously clever players in EVE who know not just EVE but so many other subjects that are useful.

Anyway, enough pontificating the belief is that the star is VYX2-I in Jove space although some believe it is W477-P because it had two jumps recorded in the 24 hours before the star appeared. Regardless it appears that something has happened to a Star in Jova space that suggests a high energy event or some form of supernova!

E.L.E.

Jovians have been part of the lore of EVE since the beginning and being a non-playable race there is a lot of rumour and guess work about who they are. It was revealed at some point that there was a disease, called the Jovian Disease, that was killing the Jove and as a result it was suspected that the Jovian race had actually died out and all that left was their technology. This was backed up in books and other Lore by comments about the lack of contact between the Empires and the Jovians in the last 100 years (game time). 

So the Jovians are dead and then I read this on Reddit this morning. Is it coincidence, that the latest update on SiSi seems to have removed all the stargates in Jove Space. 

Image credit to Nu11u5 of r/eve

Interesting development especially as the poster made note that there WERE 101 Stargates in Jove Space and in Rhea we'll be getting 101 new wormhole systems...

What Now

I have no idea but CCP have obviously had a plan and this is all coming to fruition with the release of Rhea next week. I'm certainly in no position to comment or speculate on the Lore aspect of EVE Online but I am going to be reading a lot more so I can understand what is going on.

It appears that I've only scratched the surface of the story of EVE Online and I'm eager to learn more and I've already started reading Templar One to try to understand what is going on but I think I'm going to be rather busy this weekend on the official wiki site reading what there is on the story that I'm a part of.

ISBoxer Gets Nerfed

I may still post on this as I've spoken to a few friends this morning (not just my Goonian friend) who use ISBoxer and they all have differing thoughts. Only one thinks the change won't affect them, the others believe they'll have to close accounts down and go back to having three or four accounts instead of the ten or twelve they have now.

Instead I'd like to link the following reply on the EVE Online Forums by Trinkets Friend to a question he received about the nerf. He's also followed up, somewhat more detailed, on his own blog.

Go read boht the forum thread and TF's blog, well worth it.

Time to offend some people...

Who'd have thought it, an Australian with an awesome sense of humour. 

Then again he does live in Western Australia which is only slightly better than Tasmania but it could be worse, he could be from South Australia like a certain former friend of mine.

Fresh Meat

Unveiled over the weekend was the latest cinematic for EVE Online. As some have said could be the greatest video released for EVE Online to date.

I fully agree.

The audio, which came form players after a CCP request in September, combined with the cinematic are just perfect. I have watched the video a few times and each time I have had the hair on the back of my neck rise.

I've been reading Reddit and several other sites and as a result of the video EVE Online has been getting a lot of attention this weekend and yesterday saw a jump in new characters being created. Which has been taken as a lot of new players signing up.

I'm sure a lot of people will help new players but there are a just as many who are, even now, rubbing their hands with glee at all the "fresh meat" that will soon be undocking and they can scam, con or kill.

That's the shame about it but hopefully even if 5000 people test drive EVE Online from this video and we keep only 10% that's a damn good retention rate from one video.

Update:

According to someone from CCP at EVE Down Under there were 300,000 new trial accounts created within 24 hours of the video being uploaded.

300,000. Damn, if they retain just 10% that's practically a doubling of the average users online.

A Delay In Broadcast

As soon as I click Publish I will be turning off the PC and heading to the air conditioned rooms of the house for the afternoon. 

I shall later put water in the inflatable pool and then soak until the sun sets and the wife tells me to come in. I shall ignore her, get another beer and top up the cold water.

It got to 41C (~110F) where I live today. I've made sure my animals are indoors or in the share, have plenty of fresh water. 

Until tomorrow, when it should be back down to the high 20's/low 30's.

Two Short Posts

Bowhead Update

I had a look at the Bowhead and Johnny Pew released a video of the ship and its current form on SiSi. Its a very ugly looking ship and rather surprisingly it is longer than the Providence, the video doesn't show how much larger it really is.

I think the price of a BPO will be around the 2 billion mark and I've already spoken with a couple of people who are interested in getting one as soon as its released. A plan has been devised to get a few from the stations we know they'll be seeded in.

A thought on Thera

Not enough for a full post but I do like the idea of Thera I just don't think it will be as good as people are saying it will.

A lot of people have said that the new named wormhole system will become a beacon for players and that it will turn into the wormhole version of Jita, that it will revitalise EVE Online and many other things.

I flew around Thera on SiSi and it was interesting (its a frickin' huge system) and Local certainly made me think I was in Jita (it was almost non-stop) but there was nothing that would make me want to live there. 

Sure ice belts, anoms and mining opportunities but it will be a haven for PvP'ers first and foremost. Industrialists and Miners won't have a look in as I imagine there will be at least a few roaming gangs (with bubblers) that will vie for control of any wormholes to the system and pounce on anything that tries to come in or leave.

Don't Panic

Bex has been selling me gas that he mines from w-space and I finally decided that I needed to move it to Jita and it fitted in nicely with having some new manufactured goods and materials needing to be sold too. As a result I've been moving gas and assets around for most of the evening and taking items to Jita for sale. 

Passing through Niarja tonight I had one of those "OH SHIT" moments that every Freighter pilots will have. I'd checked ahead with a neutral alt and Niarja was quiet and both gates I'd be using did not have any obvious scanning or bump ships. So I made the run.

Niarja loaded and just as I enter warp Local lights up, with lots of red flashing:

First reaction is "oh shit" but then I catch a glimpse of one of the red flashy pilots in a capsule. A check of the name shows its CODE. no doubt returning from a gank but for a moment I felt panic that I'd be targeted.

They didn't follow and appear in the next system so I was "safe" and I managed to continue my journey unhindered. 

Although I think the capsule I'm using needs a very vigorous jet cleaning and a pine deodoriser...

Thar She Blows

Announced during EVE Vegas was that there would be a new ship coming in Rhea and I covered "The Tug" (as it was then known) briefly in my Pre-Phoebe post. 

We've finally been given more details and Rhea is set to see the release of the Bowhead, a frieghter sized vessel that contains a very large Ship Maintenance Array designed to carry assembled ships through New Eden. 

Learning To Fly

Being a new ship class means the chance to introduce a new skill for pilots to learn and this means we're going to see the introduction of the Ore Freighter skill. No details have been provided (outside of what bonuses the Bowhead gets from this skill) but I'd expect it to be the same training modifier level as the existing Racial Freighter skills and cost the same (~100m ISK).

Statistics

BOWHEAD

Ore Freighter Bonus:

5% bonus to inertia modifier per level

5% bonus to ship maintenance array capacity per level

Role Bonus: 

90% reduction in jump fatigue generation

Slot layout: 0H, 3M, 3L, 3R; 0 turrets, 0 launchers

Fittings: 1350 PWG, 215 CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 21000 / 11000 / 39500

Capacitor (amount / recharge) : 3900 / 235000 

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / warp speed / align time): 65 / .0675 / 640000000 / 1.37 / 59.89s

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 51.5km / 45 / 3

Capacity (cargo / ship maintenance array): 4000 / 1300000 (goes up to 1.6 something with ore freighter 5)

Sensor strength: 12 

Signature radius: 3200

Reasonable PG/CPU along with 3 each of mid, low and rig slots mean plenty of fitting options available. The Defense statistics suggest that Shield tanking might be viable, more likely a propulsion mod and maybe a shield extender or two, but I'm certain that Hull Tanking (as with Freighters) will be the fitting of choice.

The Forums Speak

The initial details resulted in a lot of feedback on the Forums, as usual some was constructive most was not but that that was constructive has already seen to have caused a change to the Bowhead. The per Level velocity bonus has changed to an inertia modifier and extra Defense added, mainly to the Shields and Structure.

The change to modifying inertia instead of velocity makes a lot of sense and I agree with it. When you're flying a Freighter/Jump Freighter it is the inertia that matters not how fast you can go. Sure if you're AP'ing 20 jumps having an extra 30m/s will make you do that 15km to the gate faster but you'll be losing out because you're going to be entering warp slower due to your inertia.

Gank Target

Ganks happen and happen a lot. Its not uncommon for me to browse through the kills in a major 0.5 high sec system and see dozens of catalysts or tornados lost to kill a single Freighter/Jump Freighter and most of the time these aren't well tanked and are fit for maximum cargo or maximum agility.

A lot of pilots do fit for tank and split their cargo up and take the time penalty for a couple of extra runs rather than risk losing the lot to a gank. Regardless a large cargo carrying ship is going to have a massive target recticle painted on it and the Bowhead will be no different.

Its been said that if a Bowhead is destroyed then anything that survivcs the loot fairy will be lootable by a player from the wreck. This will mean we are going to see Bowheads targeted by gankers not just because its a fat target but because the expectation is it will contain valuable cargo in the form of fitted ships.

Incursion runners are expected to be a major user of the Bowhead to carry their bling fit incursion ships and even just killing on Bowhead and having one blinged out ship dropped will be enough to fund dozens of more ganks.

Defence

With a hull tank fit the Bowhead is expected to have around 420k to 450k EHP and this should be more than enough for the average pilot. Depending on skills we may see this top out just around the 500k mark but if you're fitting anything but tank modules to this then you're asking for trouble in my opinion.

There is no need for cargo modifications, this is a ship carrying vessel not a cargo mover, and any cargo space should be for small modules and other things that cannot be put into a ship in an SMA and should not need increasing.

I'm certainly going to spend the ISK to hull tank any ship I get as well as looking at getting T2 variations of any rigs. The expense will be worth it if I can put off just one gank attempt.

A New Wormhole Tear Extractor

It was just a line in the release notes but with the release of Phoebe came the adding of null sec data and relic sites to low class wormholes (C1 thru C3).It doesn't seem like much of a change but its actually rather an excellent one as many high sec pilots won't venture into null sec but will enter wormholes to run sites.

Aside from the oddness of this behaviour this obviously shows that the day-raider pilot certainly exists and by adding the Data and Relic sites to low class wormholes should see an increase in the loot that comes from them.

Thus was born a new variation of the Wormhole Tear Extractor.

Hypothesis

From this its possible to come up with a hypothesis:

The adding of Data and relic sites to low class wormholes will see an increase in nano'd, warp core stabbed covert ops frigates who are fit to find and complete these sites as quickly as possible.

To a wormhole dweller this means one glorious thing: More Targets.

Catch Me If You Can

However catching them will be difficult as you'd have to allow at least seven seconds, more likely ten, during which time they could easily align and warp out. The delay is caused by deactivating a covert ops cloak and then the time to actually lock a target and activate any warp disruption module(s).

Theorycraft

In a deep dark wormhole somewhere my friend Bex and his cohorts decided to come up with a solution. Bex summed up the task ahead so succinctly:

So what can I produce that is able to efficiently scan out a site, arrive on location cloaked and prosecute the little thieving bastards with impunity.

Much theorycrafting was then performed and eventually the following fit was produced:

[Night Fever, Proteus]

Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge

Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge

Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge

Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge

Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Expanded Probe Launcher II, Sisters Core Scanner Probe

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I

Warp Scrambler II

Medium Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 800

Reactor Control Unit II

Reactor Control Unit II

Reactor Control Unit II

Reactor Control Unit II

Reactor Control Unit II

Medium Ancillary Current Router I

Medium Ancillary Current Router II

Medium Ancillary Current Router II

Proteus Defensive - Adaptive Augmenter

Proteus Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer

Proteus Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration

Proteus Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifer

Proteus Engineering - Power Core Multiplier

Not pretty but the fit has one purpose and you're certainly not going to be tackling anything larger than a Destroyer/Frigate sized hull in this because there is no tank outside of the base the T3 hull gets and all the rigs and low slots are used to provide the Power needed to fit and run the smart bombs.

Testing

It didn't take long for the first test to occur and that was rather successful.

A site was scanned down, with a perch bookmark generated that made all the loot containers warp-able and then it was just a waiting game.

Eventually the fly entered the web and as soon as they moved to a container the ship warped to the container and the smart bombs activated. 

Kill: Atherios Lincestor (Helios)

Kill: Atherios Lincestor (Capsule)

Covert Ops ships don't have much tank, especially configured for ninja missioning like the was. 

The test was a resounding success but as with any prototype further refinement could be made. So it was back to the fitting tool but at least the basic ship premise had been verified and now a new weapon could be bought into the fight against "the little thieving bastards" that visit wormholes daily.

I've not seen or been provided any details of changes to the fit above, as of yet, but I know that additional variations have been produced for all T3 hull except the Tengu. I guess its only a matter of time before we see, and hear, of smart bombing T3's protecting wormhole Relic and Data sites.

Conclusion

The fit is solid, if a little light on tank however the use is not as a brawler but as a surprise and designed to go after lightly or no-tanked frigates/destroyers. As I've been writing this I have been sent this kill mail:

Kill: Eryx Vanguard (Astero)

which prompted this 'feedback' in Local:

Eryx Vanguard > ps - douche bag move
Apex Bex > bahahaha

Alas Vanguard's pod was able to escape thanks to being ejected just outside Smart Bomb range but regardless the effectiveness of the ship and fit has been proven and I'm sure there will be plenty more killmails to come.

The Week That Was

A Week with Phoebe

It's been six days (for me) since Phoebe was deployed. It was painless update for me and after I'd returned from an evening out I updated my client and was logged in about 30 minutes after Tranquillity came back online.

The new sensor overlay was amazing to see in space, my CEO had fits of pleasure when he saw all his tacticals, perches and other bookmarks when he undocked. I've turned most of the overlay stuff off for day-to-day use but there have been a few occasions, around camped gates, that having the bookmarks appear in space has saved me precious seconds that could have seen me captured. 

I haven't been doing jumps since before Phoebe so I can't say how much jump fatigue will effect me (not much is my prediction). I will be doing some jumps in the coming week, friends need stuff taken in/out plus its good to at least move my market items to high sec ready to move to Jita for sale.

Domination Commander

I've been doing ratting in Curse not because I was bored or in need of ISK but because I was testing out new ships and fits. My current Gila does the job but there are other ships I've never flown that may be better. It has been quite fun using different Faction and T2 ships to see what could replace my Gila as my primary ratting ship but nothing so far has come anywhere near the Gila in terms of cost/dps although I'm going to look at Polarized weapons as an extra 25% damage may be worth it.

During one run I even managed to get my first ever Domination Faction Battleship spawn, previously I'd always gotten Cruiser sized faction spawns, I was hoping that this time I'd get some decent loot and I kind of did but a Domination Shield Amplifier, 1,000 faction ammo and a faction tag was quite a let down. I swear I had better cruiser faction spawns in Providence when I was there, Domination just seem to be ammo, tags and not much else. 

I shouldn't complain too much the Domination Shield Amplifier was worth around 60m.

Results of my tests have been mixed and as much as I love my Amarrian Lasers I've found them to be seriously wanting against the local rats and I've not been at all happy with the fits I've been using. I've been keeping copious notes so in the future you can expect to see a blog post on what I've been doing.

Metamaterials Pricing

Being a producer of Metamaterials I've been saddened by the unit price over the past 8 months. As I've previously written, the price has been very volatile but not in a predictable way. Sure its market so its dependant on other factors but the more T2/capital ships destroyed the more metamaterials will be needed to build new ones. We've seen a lot of ships destroyed but volume of metamaterials sold has been all over the place and pricing with it.

I'm going to see if I can get Lockefox (EVE-Prosper Market Show) to have a look at the prices to see if there is an correlation or pattern to the pricing/volume. I am certain there should be correlation, i.e. certain ships need metamaterials thus more of these destroyed the need for metamaterials increases, but I'm yet to see any proof that this is true.

All Quiet on the Southern Front

There is an active war front near to my home system and as I said last week having PL as nearby neighbours is somewhat concerning but I'm happy to report so far that aside from a few PL or PL-affiliated characters passing through I haven't seen any of them.

I've seen Battle Reports and linked kill mails about what their exploits against HERO but they seem to be nice and busy again them rather than trying to take over the region.

Of course that could change tomorrow but at the moment things are quiet.

Market Activity

Since coming into a "gift of ISK" I've changed my approach to my market activities because I no longer need to make "x ISK per day" in order to keep my accounts active and buy what I need. 

I'm stockpiling the materials I'm making at the moment with no plans to sell unless there is a major market price change. Hopefully what I learn from EVE-Prosper will help me see that well before it happens and I can take advantage and profit greatly :)

EVE-Prosper Show Update

Episode 003 is live and it is much better than previous episodes. Best. Episode. So. Far. as comic book guy might say. The show was more polished this week and I'm sure we'll only be hearing less err.. and ah's" from Lockefox as he gains more confidence in his presenting.

*drool* graph p0rn

The interview with Diana Dial was interesting but it was frustrating with the delays and empty air that happened a few times. Not a production issue more Skype or whatever method of communication they were using (I believe) but this was more than compensated by the excellent discussion between Lockefox and Diana.

I'm loving the graphs that are appearing, as well as looking great they are presented so simply that even an idiot like myself can see the important bits without needing a degree in mathematics.