Unintentional

I never planned this but I had to laugh.

 

Four of my five active characters have training that completes within sixteen minutes of each other and all skills are Level V ones so they've been active for at least a week and I've only just noticed.

 

The skills that are going complete around the same time are:

 

Social V

Science V

EM Shield Compensation V

Thermic Armour Compensation V

 

and looking at each of the next skills, this may happen again next week as they all move on to more Level V skills.

 

Totally unintentional but perhaps its my sub-conscious at work making sure I don't forget to keep the queues filled and best way to do that, arrange it so I have to update multiple characters at the same time.

 

Not a great blog post, I know. I promise I'll do a better one later today.

How Are You?

A friend asked me last night on TeamSpeak how was I and how was life now I'd left Providence.

 

I answered things were good, lots of things happening, and it was nice and quiet now I'd left Providence. I had a few things to do last night so here's a more expanded version of the answer I gave him:

 

Quiet

 

Last night every single chat channel was quiet and devoid of people. Normally the channels I idle in have between 10 and 20 people in them, last night the most any had was three, four if you include my main and the various alts I logged in at different times.

 

I expect this type of situation on  Monday night for me, as it's either very early Monday morning in Europe or late Sunday night in later time zones. This is the time most people aren't logged in and it's useful for me as it's a great time to do logistics or move freighters around in areas you normally wouldn't use them.

 

Consolidation

 

As it was quiet I used the time last night to send a couple of characters around New Eden to pickup buy orders and collect materials on various characters for consolidation in a single station. I base myself out of one system so it's very useful to have 99% of my assets located here, albeit spread over all my characters.

 

Two Providences and a Prorator were sent out to collect the assets, in total 146 jumps would need to be made between three characters. Slightly more jumps for the freighters but the Prorator still had to run the gauntlet of low sec for three jumps so it wasn't all popcorn and movies.

 

It took a little over four hours but every jump was completed, without incident, and I managed to get all the assets back to my staging system. Even managed to reprocess quite a bit of the T1 and meta modules I received into minerals for my production lines.

 

Projects

 

I have three major projects and one minor, on-going, project on the go at the moment (the names are just for easy remembering):

 

Project Vixen

 

Three years of research, asset buying and training have gone into this project. I'm still a month or two away from being able to pass Milestone 3. Milestone 1 was passed just before Christmas 2013 when I was able to finish all the training I needed to and Milestone 2 was completed just after New Year when I managed to get all the ISK together (two investors and a lot of savings/PvE Bounties) to finance the project.

 

Project Make Stuff

 

Comprises all my Tower and manufacturing operations, the aim is to provide income for my other projects as well as some passive income (in tax form) for my alliance .

 

Project LP

 

I'm in the process of reskilling a Minmatar character to have the best Social skills with the aim of using him to do PvE for LP for corporations/factions that I've identified have high value/profit BPC's available in their LP stores. It's more PvE but instead of grinding for standings this is specifically aimed at getting LP for rewards and something I'll do in batches.

 

Project Minerals

 

I'm using buy orders in a lot of new player systems and a few other highly populated mission running ones to purchase salvage (to make rigs) and loot that I can then reprocess into minerals for use in my projects.

 

Blueprints

 

I've amassed a nice collection of T1/T2 BPC's and am slowly working out what I will need to produce goods from them. Logically the input materials will have both a high cost and size but profit margins look to be between 10% and 30% depending on the items and where I'll sell them.

 

Previously I would have sold a large amount in Providence but as I'm now out of there I'm having to look at market hubs but also now I'm in Curse there is a thriving market there that I can move a lot of items via. Time will tell but my aim at the moment is to work through the blueprints I have before I look at selling anything.

Happy Day

Sunday Morning 23rd February 2014 at 5:37am this happened:

It took 45 days and several times I wanted to change to other skills but I'm glad I didn't listen and kept with this.

Since the first day I got EVEMon and saw carriers I wanted to fly and own an Archon. I achieved that after a year but its the past two I've progressed my skills enough to actually be competent when I needed to fly it into combat again... I can still remember the first, and only time, I took my carrier into battle.

Wavy Lines, Wavy Lines

It was two years ago I first used the Archon, the purpose was to defend a tower and repair it in low sec from some "aggressors". I got myself onto two dreadnought kills and a carrier in the battle, as fun as that was it was a rookie mistake that I made and have kicked myself for ever since.

The mistake, I focused so much on attacking the enemy that I didn't attempt to repair the tower that I was sheltering in and supposed to protect. I wasn't a huge loss and we'd expected to lose the tower but I still laugh at myself now for the stupidity in not locking and putting reps on the tower during the battle.

Name Dropping

Just because "I can", have another look at the battle report and see a couple of famous people there. Corelin of the Mad Haberdasher blog was there in his 'potato'. So was founder/head of Sev3rance FuriousPig and former Lead FC for Sev3rance Disposable Ensign, who now runs an growing Empire in NPC Null. 

I once was in space, in the same system as someone famous. TheMittani who!

Actually it's quite good to see people on the BR that I'm still friends with or have moved into other corporations and I've gotten to know. Great people, good times.

Back to Reality

Well that's my memory moment over, I was smacked back to reality when I added Amarr Dreadnaught V to the skill queue. Not quite as long as Amarr Carrier but still 39 days of training for an extra 5% damage, damage that will be used and needed at some point.

Still could be worse I could be training Amarr Titan...

On the way to Profit

Moved

 

Well I've moved into my new null sec home, previously I'd just visited but now I live here. Bookmarks have been created around gates and the docking range of the systems only station has been well and truly plotted (it's not a bad station, better than those I use in low sec).

 

I have a few deep space safes that I was able to get off friends who have been in system longer and a couple are off d-scan to all celestials.

 

Local Politics

 

It's been interesting watching Alliance and local intel channels and getting a feel for the politics around the constellation. Former neutral/reds are now light blue but don't have access to our intel channels but we have access to another shared channel with them and we fleet with them a lot for defence or localised roams.

 

I've gotten to recognise quite a few by name and no longer flee when I see them enter system, of course I don't fully trust them yet but that will change as I join their fleets.

 

Towers

 

Towers are going nicely, although the "over 1000 ISK" drop in the price of Metamaterials over the past week has not been good. It's cut into my margins rather sharply but to counter this I've added two new towers producing Sylramic Fibres, I could have gone back to Fullerides but I've found the market to be more populated and harder to sell into than Sylramic Fibres.

 

Market

 

I've started to populate the local market with a lot of modules and ships, there is competition within station but also from one jump away on a lot of items but aggressive pricing (under cutting by 5%/10%) should see me win business. I've put 1.5billion ISK's worth of modules on the market to see how they go, most are in quantities around 8 to 10 but a few items I know are in demand I've put on in quantities between 20 and 50.

 

Buy orders aren't good, I've not had a single one filled as of yet and this seems to be the way as most modules have zero buy orders.

 

Implants

 

I've finally finished my PvE grind in Minmatar space and I cashed in getting six Omega's and two full sets implants of the Low-Grade Nomad implants. These provide a boost to agility so Freighter and Supercarrier pilots do like them. Provisionally profit looks good, the Omega's alone should be nearly 5 billion ISK in profit, add in the full sets and I'm conservatively estimate I'll walk away with 7 billion ISK profit.

 

This is a nice boost to the wallet and will mean my towers can be fuelled and have all materials needed for the next two months from these monies alone.

 

Nearby in Curse is a Level 4 Mining agent that I'll be investigating once my standings for them are fixed.  Apparently a single low standing Gas Mining mission will result in over 7000 LP which can be used to purchase some very nice blueprints in the LP Store. 7000 LP is more than I got in high sec on a fully skilled character and instead of spending 45 minutes per mission its only a fraction of that.

 

Conflicted

Yesterday I participated in the killing of a Rhea in low sec, I was quite happy to be on the kill mail because it's rare I'm online using the right character and able to make it before something dies.

I'm not conflicted about the kill it's the accepting of the 330m ISK I received as a cut of the ransom that wasn't honoured.

Situation

I was 20km off the Rhea and it was just in structure when all firing stopped as one person contacted the pilot to organise a ransom. After a minute he said someone needed to write "guarantee" in local to confirm that the ransom would be honoured and three people did (using various spelling of the word, one said he was channelling his inner Frenchman). A 2 billion ISK ransom was paid and then the order to fire was given, which we all did.

Suffice to say the pilot was not polite in local at this and I felt a little uneasy at this, more so after I returned from picking up the wife from work when I found 330m ISK in my wallet.

Conflicted

I like the fact I'm on the kill but I cannot help but feel uneasy at the ransom that wasn't honoured, I didn't write 'guarantee' in local nor did I say in anyway, shape or form that I wouldn't shoot. I was following what was being said by the FC.

But I still feel that I should not accept this ISK but should I return it to the Rhea pilot or to the pool for the pilots that participated in the kill? I just don't know.

Help Me

My valued reader, please help me by commenting on this. Should I return the ISK1 and if so whom should I give it to, the Rhea pilot or my friends who were on the kill?

Momentum

Status

 

The past few days have been productive, wares sold in Jita fattening the wallet and then some of the money spent on fuel and inputs. I even got permission to defer tower taxes for a month to purchased a new Jump Freighter to help out with logistics, still debating whether to go for a Nomad (fuel is more easily available where it will be used) or an Ark (which I'm already fully skilled for).

 

Training

 

The PI character in null sec finished Electronics Upgrades V and as I type this Cynosural Theory III will have completed and Command Centre Upgrades V is in the queue. When that finishes I'll make sure Cyno Theory V is added and he'll run out this before I switch the queue back to my 'main' on this account.

 

My new Jump Freighter character is finishing Armour skills but will be changing to Jump Fuel Conservation V in a week, based on research in a previous post, it makes financial sense to get this skill complete as the savings in fuel usage will add up over time considering he'll be making at least two JF runs per week.

 

Industry

 

I'm not quite as blueprint copy rich as Lorna but I've managed to collect nearly two thousand blueprint copies of various modules and ships. I'm currently in the process of tracking my mineral and component needs in order to use these up, not going to be cheap but fortunately the profit margin looks to be between 30 and 40% so it's a worthy investment.

 

I'm both disappointed and happy to see that the price of Faction Battleships has dropped, disappointed because I have four nightmare BPC's and two of those I've had for nearly seven months and cost me more than the ship now sells for but it's good because I'm able to market trade them quite well. Seven over the past week I've made at least 30m on each one.

 

My favourite current item are Hammerhead I drones, I had a few BPC's that allowed me to make 20,000 of them and they sold like hot cakes  within hours of being posted at around the 25,000 ISK each price point in Jita. I have a couple more BPC's left to use and I've invested in BPO that I'll research so I can continue to make them as they, for their mineral need, are a good source of reasonably passive income.

 

Towers

 

My towers are running nicely, fuel and input is added and the outputs exported to High sec ready for sale on a fortnightly cycle. It just works.

 

I'm going to add two more towers making Sylramic Fibres to diversify somewhat, I used to make these in Providence and they were a good choice but I'm not going to both with Fullerides anymore as the margin is small and the market saturated with sellers.

 

Mentoring

 

I've had someone in my new Alliance ask me about setting up towers and I will be working with this person to teach them how to do basic reactions and getting them up to speed with running towers and researching.

 

I've discovered that I know a lot about running towers but I need to find a way to communicate this to someone who is in a different time zone that doesn't really overlap with mine. This limits communication to EVE mails and chat messages rather than voice comms. Going to be interesting to see what we can do.

 

I am looking forward to the challenge though.

Screwing my Logistics Chain for a night

Fool Me Once

 

I ran into an embarrassing situation last night, I had to move a JF full of product from null sec to high sec using my secondary JF character. Only I couldn't because the mid-point cyno toon is on the same account as the JF character, so I spend nearly an hour moving another character twenty or so jumps so he can jump out. Yet I run into the same problem again because where as I used to use the Jump Beacons in Providence for the final jump now I cannot because I don't live there anymore.

 

Dammit.

 

 

Fool Me Twice

 

I wasted a couple of hours messing around getting a cyno toon, modules and fuel to the right station and then, to compound my stupidity, I didn't have enough fuel in the JF to make the final jump and had to borrow 30m ISK to buy enough fuel to finish the jump.

And of course as I undocked some NA. guy decided to try to bump me off station with a Cynabal... but I eventually made it to high sec and safe'd up in a station whilst I went off and did something else to calm down.

 

Fixing the Fool

 

After I logged off last night I spent some time considering my options as my plan is to use a second JF on this run as I have the need for it. Unfortunately 'as-is' I do not have the cyno alts on the right characters to be able to do this.

 

In order to be able to do it I'll need to repurpose a PI character into a combined PI/cyno toon and make sure they have two jump clones (at least). This will give me the flexibility to have two JF characters active at the same time and allow me to be able to move nearly 700,000m3 at a time from null sec to high sec.

 

I was going to utilise the PLEX for Training scheme but thinking further the character that the PI toon is currently on doesn't need to be training concurrently as he's just finishing up "nice to have skills" and a 30/60 delay on these won't be an impact for him.

 

Finding Direction

Lost

 

It's hard not to feel lost in EVE, there are so many things to do and so many people to ignore or interact with. Deciding what to do in EVE can be difficult and this is something I'm in the middle of trying to resolve.

 

I have friends to bounce ideas off as well as a couple of locations around New Eden where I can locate myself. The only issue I'm facing is one question and that is "what do I want to do".

 

 

Direction

 

For me the choice  comes down to some form of industry, I've commented before that I have poor PvP skills (and miniscule real interest in solo PvP). That's not to say I won't do it but I'm not going to be alone and start fights or even join Faction Warfare.

 

I have a love/hate relationship with PvE (documented previously) and there is no way I can make it my full time occupation so this leaves only a few things and all of these are based around industry.

 

Deciding

 

I like running towers, the whole logistics of it is something that appeals to my nature and I get enjoyment out of it. The ISK I make goes to buy interesting things or to save for a 'rainy day' but it will be used at some point.

 

So I've decided to move to a null sec region and join some friends (as well as new people who don't know yet they're my friends) by running towers that will help finance operations in this region. It's a small alliance I'll be a part of but the work I will be doing will be important and is in many ways an extension of what I've been previously doing.

 

The Future

 

There are four towers now that I will be running but I'm already planning and looking to perform a full moon survey within 5 jumps so we can look at getting more towers up and running.

 

Logistics are going to be a little difficult to start but I've already had agreement from the alliance CEO to purchase a new Jump Freighter (from liquid funds) so we have additional capacity for moving stuff in/out.

 

 

Leaving In A Freighter (three actually)

It's taken three years but I've finally left Providence.

 

Recent events, RL changes and the fact when I was in Providence I wasn't doing anything there that contributed to my corporation or alliance has pushed me to do this. It's been a hard decision but one that I needed to do.

 

I took my towers down and, three full freighters runs later, all my assets are out of Providence and not a single character has anything in the area now. My timing was right for me but I will be missing out on the festivities as Sev3rance celebrates it's seventh year as an alliance.

 

 

I wish my former Corporation good luck for the future, it was a great place to be and there were a number of people who made it a great place to be a part of.

 

But this is no time for nostalgia, the future is coming and I need to work out what I want to do.

 



The Tower Caper

For the past two months I've been monitoring activity in one of the systems I have towers in trying to find out who may have taken, without my permissions, material inputs/outputs and POS fuel from my towers.

 

I haven't had any luck in finding out but since nothing else had happened until overnight Sunday/Monday of this week. Sometime between going to bed and waking up again (about 9 hours) I found lost all the output (about 36 hours worth) from my towers.

 

 

 

I had mentioned it to a couple of people when it first happened and was recommended to remove access rights to my towers, I did but I reset them when someone else (not alliance) asked for access so they could boost in peace).

 

I've now reported it to my corporation leadership and found out that I wasn't the only one that had suffered a loss. It seems a few people had and even more intriguing was the fact that the people who had POS access was a very small group of no more than six to eight people.

 

I'm not really bothered by the loss, ISK can be replaced and it wasn't a huge amount anyway, but more so I'm bothered by the fact someone whom I count as a friend has done this. If they needed ISK they could have asked, I have very favourable rates for friends and I'll only break legs once...

 

The corp leadership is going to put out a mail about this, not much else that can be done, the list of people who have access is small but there is no evidence or indication of who might have done this.

Press coverage of B-R5RB fight

In the day or two following the battle in B-R5RB it was somewhat exciting to see mention of the fight appear on the traditional news websites that I read.

Most of the coverage focused on the $330,000 US figure given for the cost of the lost ships but the stories appeared to be well written and gave a good overview of EVE Online to explain it to people unfamiliar with it.

 

The gaming press certainly reported the battle and the facts but there wasn't a fervour or even that much enthusiasm for what transpired. Traditional press however was a lot different, focusing on the "perceived" monetary loss over the politics of the game. This is expected, even now nearly four years in EVE Online I have a hard time explaining the politics of the game to someone who is not a player, but money isn't everything and as a result the traditional press coverage was stale and disappointing.

 

A number of bloggers have done a great job in reviewing the press coverage:

 

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Nosy Gamer

Fiddlers Edge

Mad Haberdasher

 

The last one, written by Corelin, does go off on a tangent about the coverage from the "an online gaming 'zine" Massively. I can't agree more with what he wrote, Massively seemed to do nothing more than spout the CCP Press Release in their article and very little else where as at least the (later) AP release(s) tried to report on more than just the monetary loss.

 

I was very happy to see this in the press and it seems that CCP has received a whole host of new players into the game as a result. Hopefully they're not more alts and actually will be new players who have come to be part of the best MMO.