Creating a Super Capital Character - Part 3 - Polishing Skills

Previous Parts of the Guide can be found here: Part 1, Part 2

 

As previously stated the Basic Skill plan of Part allows you to create a character that can sit in a Super carrier for around 4b ISK but sitting in the Supercarrier is a far cry from being able to actually being a useful holder character.

 

Basics are just that

 

The basic skills needed for sitting in the hull are just that, basic, if you want to make your character more attractive for someone to purchase you need to inject additional skills and train a few of the basic ones to higher levels.

 

A side effect of the missing skills is any modules dependant on them will be offline when the holder is in the ship but when swapping in a character that does have those skills they will remain offline and have to be onlined manually. Without the aid of a mobile depot/Ship Maintenance Array this is problematic so having skills for all fitted modules on the holder toon is highly recommended.

What To Train

 

Thinking, Pondering, Working out what to do

Obviously the Core skills need to be trained along with any Shield/Armour specific ones but being a super carrier the benefit of agility cannot be understated and as such I'd train any skills that will provide a bonus to agility or agility modules.

Armor - everything except Armor Laying and Amor Resistance Phasing (to IV) to V with Capital skills to I
Drones - Fighter Bombers I
Electronic Systems - Electronic Warfare to V and Projected ECM to I
Engineering - Everything except Advanced/Weapon Upgrades, Nanite skills and Thermodynamics to V with Capital skills to I
Navigation - Evasive Manoeuvring V, High Speed Manoeuvring to III and all Jump Drive skills to V
Shields - Shield Management V, Tactical Shield Manipulation V
Spaceship Command - Capital Ships V

We don't need to have perfect skills, Level I is basic is enough (it will be the responsibility of the buyer to further train, if they want) for most skills but there are some pre-requites skills that we do need to get to IV or V to unlock the next skill book (Fighters is a good example, we need it to V to unlock Fighter Bombers).

In Summary

All up this is another ~190 days training that will need PLEX and skill books for but will make your character more appealing to those interested in a "pre-packaged super character". It is totally optional to do but if you're looking for maximum investment return (and remember this is a long-term investment) then doing this will be something you'll want to do.

EVE Online Industry Evolves

He may have a funny name, one that I cannot pronounce despite many attempts, but CCP Ytterbium has released a devblog that can only be categorised as a live hand grenade, sitting on top of a pile of TNT.

 

I certainly did smile after reading the devblog

This is an absolutely excellent development and shows that industry is getting the love it deserves finally. Features such as these take a lot of research and trial and error and obviously this has been under wraps for good reason.

 

But it's been released, subject to further balance changes, but what I've read and understood is going to be fantastic for the industrialist EVE player.

 

100% Reprocessing

 

I've always found it hard to believe that it was possible to get "perfect reprocessing", that is extracting all of the parts of an item that were put in without any waste. Don't get me wrong, I've profited from this mechanic and I will miss the advantage this gave me but I'm a realist and I'll no longer be able to get 100% reprocessing will change the way I do some of my activities.

 

I've mentioned I hate PvE'ing, I still do but one of the benefits of it has been the salvage I get from each mission. I run an alt with my PvE character who just salvages all the wrecks, the salvage I use to make rigs but the T1 and meta modules dropped I save and reprocess back at my main station and from this I get a good proportion of my minerals I use in production.

 

Skills

 

I have one character that has Scrap Metal Processing trained and it took a lot of time to train him into that skill. With the changes to skills (reducing/improving some bonuses and pre-requisites) this gives budding industrialists a progression that doesn't end after a couple of skills (as it is now).

 

The skill changes may even see a decrease in the number of part-time industrialists (who use industry as a secondary income), perhaps pushing people to trading or missioning instead. We may also see the death or further reduction of "salvaging mission runners" as yields (and in turn profit margins)make this unviable.

 

Increased Yield

 

I do like that whilst CCP are taking away something they are giving back by increasing the base yields of all ores and ice by ~38%. It may not sound a lot but that 350 helium you get from Clear Icicle

now turns out to be 415 helium, meaning a bit more ISK per block or less ice you need to mine to keep your Tower running.

 

Refining Array No More

 

I lived in a Wormhole for a considerable time, I mined in the wormhole and this was well before I was able to fly/use a Rorqual so I had to use the Refining Arrays to turn my ore into minerals inside a Tower. I cannot explain what a waste of time it was, the small capacity with the low yield and long processing times (literarily hours for a large array) meant it was a frustrating exercise.

 

Had I had a Rorqual I'd have compressed my ore and moved out to high sec but I didn't have this luxury. Seeing the changes proposed to the Medium Intensive Array, making it able to compress ores means we don't need that Rorqual in the WH attracting the sharks.

 

User Interface

 

The teaser in the devblog of a new UI for reprocessing was a nice carrot. But I'm trying not to get excited or swoon over what we've seen (as it may change) but the basics are there, the easy to understand details along with a less click intensive system are all positive changes.

 

When it appears on SiSi will be the time I'll come back and give my thoughts on it.

 

Economy

 

The changes are effectively going to halve reprocessing of ships and modules so the question I'm still pondering is how the changes will this effect the EVE Economy. Will we see price increases or decreases, what will happen to supplies of minerals and other items typically received from reprocessing.

 

I see supply decreasing somewhat, perhaps enough to force a price increase initially but people will sell their stockpiles for higher prices and the market will be flooded with minerals which will cause the price to drop back to, at least, the original level

 

Iterations

 

It's a often used word in software development but this aptly describes what CCP are doing, they are making changes to Industry in small amounts. Soliciting feedback, reviewing and then changing as needed.

 

This is what we need, we don't need two large Size 15 feet changes, we need small, balanced and focused changes to such an important area of the game.

 

The northern hemisphere Summer is starting to look very interesting this year...

Lowering Broker Fees

I've previously mentioned that I was looking to see if I could save more ISK by lowering further the 0.75% broker fee incurred when setting up Sell Orders on my Trading Alt.

 

I'm happy to report that I've managed to lower this to 0.70% as of today but I don't believe I will get this to what I thought was the lowest level of 0.1875%.

 

0.7% Broker's fee and dropping

Standings were increased by being in fleet with an Alt missioning for Caldari Navy and then sharing the rewards when completing the mission. For Level 1/2 missions this was frustratingly slow, but training Connections to IV and Social to IV on my Trading Alt improved the rate at which I gained standings.

 

A little extra training to make the standings increase faster

The 0.05% reduction in my Broker Fees seems to correlate with a 2.00 standing that I have with the Caldari Navy. Based on this I believe I should see a maximum reduction of 0.05% per 2.00 standings, meaning a total reduction of 0.25% or a final figure for Broker Fees of 0.50%.

 

Current standings after a weekend of grinding

It's not a huge amount but over trades I do a month this will add up to be several tens of million ISK and that's no longer being removed from my wallet.

 

 

Creating a Super Capital Character - Part 2 - Basic Skillplan

In Part 1 discussed the motivation and basic needs for creating a Super capital pilot this Part describes the initial plan design along with the use of implants and remaps to ensure maximum efficiency.

Below is the skill plan I use to get a basic "ship holder character" started, the example is for an Amarr Aeon, but substitute any racial skills for the one you want to train. 

Plan Design

I designed the plan on the basis to maximize skills learnt in the shortest span of time, because of this 94% (16 of the 17) of the skills in the basic skillset are to be able to sit in and move the ship only, this is not a combat capable pilot. As a result of this decision the first skill we train is Cybernetics and this is to Level V in order to get Improved implants to maximize skill points per hour.

A new character benefits from two remaps being available instantly so we'll leverage these when appropriate and I determined that these should be applied to when training Memory/Perception and Perception/Willpower (approximately the final two thirds of the skills). We could use the remap immediately but getting the Improved implants with the default attribute setup I thought was more productive.

Basic Skills for Aeon Pilot

Cybernetics I

Insert Basic implants for Intelligence/Memory/Perception

Cybernetics II

Cybernetics III

Cybernetics IV

Cybernetics V

Replace implants with Improved implants for Intelligence/Memory/Perception/Willpower

Science IV

Science V

Navigation IV

Navigation V

Warp Drive Operation I

Warp Drive Operation II

Warp Drive Operation III

Warp Drive Operation IV

Warp Drive Operation V

Jump Drive Operation I

Jump Drive Operation II

Jump Drive Operation III

Jump Drive Operation IV

Jump Drive Operation V

Jump Fuel Conservation I

Jump Fuel Conservation II

Jump Fuel Conservation III

Jump Fuel Conservation IV

Jump Drive Calibration I

Jump Drive Calibration II

Jump Drive Calibration III

Remap to maximum Memory(27)/remainder Perception(21)

Drones I

Drones II

Drones III

Drones IV

Drones V

Drone Interfacing I

Drone Interfacing II

Drone Interfacing III

Drone Interfacing IV

Drone Interfacing V

Remap to maximum Perception(27)/remainder Willpower(21)

Spaceship Command IV

Spaceship Command V

Advanced Spaceship Command I

Advanced Spaceship Command II

Advanced Spaceship Command III

Advanced Spaceship Command IV

Advanced Spaceship Command V

Capital Ships I

Capital Ships II

Capital Ships III

Capital Ships IV

Amarr Frigate III

Amarr Destroyer I

Amarr Destroyer II

Amarr Destroyer III

Amarr Cruiser I

Amarr Cruiser II

Amarr Cruiser III

Amarr Battlecruiser I

Amarr Battlecruiser II

Amarr Battlecruiser III

Amarr Battleship I

Amarr Battleship II

Amarr Battleship III

Amarr Carrier I

Notes

• The total training time for the above is 107 days with Basic and Improved implants and remaps or 119 days without.
• Use of Dual Character training adds an overhead cost of one PLEX per month. If you had a free account with no characters in training you could eliminate this.

Coming Up

 

Having a "basic sitter" is a start but many buyers want a more advanced character and so will you, especially if you want a character to sit in your own Supercarrier.

 

In Part 3 I'll discuss and show the additional skills that you can further train to increase the value of any character you sell.

Oh Mai, Killing a Titan

So I went out for dinner last night, a last minute decision and it cost me a slice of 115 billion ISK kill...

I returned to be greeted with a killmail for a Against All Authorities (-A-) titan that my friends caught and killed in Mai.

George Takei approves (possibly)

What I said when I was shown the killmail I won't repeat but I did congratulate my friends for their good fortune. I have the privilege to know some very good players and the group whom ply their trade in Mai is both diverse, great group and amazingly skilled for what they do.

High Fives and Back Slapping

I've seen numerous capital ship kills, far too many Jump Freighters that had poor cyno's and I've even been involved in a few kills but this is by far their largest and most successful kill. Congratulations again all involved, it was a spectacular kill.

Honeypot Glaze gets a shout out for turning up in a Ibis and putting that Civilian Gatling Railgun to good use...

Face Palm

This morning I checked EVE News 24 and TheMittani.com and only EN24 had a story on the titan kill so I read it.

I'd like to just go on the record and say I have nothing personal against EN24 but I do at times cringe and shake my head at the poor reporting, writing and even worse spelling and grammar I see in their stories, but I still read them.

The story is just plain wrong. The whole timeline of events and the facts of how it went down is comically incorrect.  It's as if they didn't speak to anyone involved (which I believe they did not) and I'm going to set the record straight with the details as I was told them.

The Story

As usual the story starts with people being attentive and watching the comings and goings in a system. Pilots are cataloged, checked, cross-referenced, noted and information shared in a private channel.

The cyno character was initially believed to be that of a JF pilot who has previously lit cynos on gates so people were ready on Mai's only gate for this but instead the cyno went up near Planet 7. A Purifier, flown by Honeypot Glaze, warped to the cyno and seeing a titan aggressed it, he then attempted to bump it out of it's alignment.

We're going to need a bigger fleet

Unfortunately the titan was fit with a smart bomb and the purifier started taking significant damage so he had to get range at which point the titan warped to what was either the Sun or Planet 2. The purifier warped at range to Planet 2 but no titan could be seen. Fortunately for Honeypot Glaze someone was smiling on him and on his moving about he managed to get the decloak and this caused the titan to enter warp again.

Tackle

This is where the titan's luck ran out, it warped to Planet VII Asteroid Belt 6 where a HIC and two BS were in warp to, having used d-scan to narrow the titan location, on arriving the titan had already cloaked but then inexplicably "combat logged" revealing himself to the HIC that was only 15km off him.

Friends and friends of friends were woken up (quite literarly in one case) and told of the capture and the need for ships. Sev3rance were called upon as Against ALL Authorities is red to them and had ships available in system, as veteran member N00b FO0 explained it:

"Well, some of my friends poked me, saying 'N00b, we got an enemy titan of Provi-Block tackled, we need your help'. So I Jump Cloned over, and called over a few guys from the Alliance, some of which got there in time, and some of them didn't. I was just psyched when I saw that it was an -A- [Titan], Providence Victor man"

The pilot, Carinia, attempted to refit using mobile depots but the attacking fleet was wise to this and alpha'd any attempt to deploy one as soon as it appeared. This must have frustrated the pilot who logged off and as a result all his active modules went offline, making the task of killing him easier.

Reinforcements

Black Legion were not involved initially, up to now the work was done by a combination fleet of members of different alliances who work together in this one system. When the titan reached ~50% shield the call for help was made, because there was concern that a call for help had been put out and PL/-A- reinforcements would be arriving shortly.

BL reinforcements arrived, via a cyno on station which they used to jump carriers in with their sub-capitals inside, and then question no longer whether the titan would die but how quickly.

No Help

It's often said that Supercarrier and Titans should have a cyno fitted in order to be able to provide a way for people to come to their aid should something like this happen. Eagle eyed viewers will notice in this case the titan was fitted with a cyno but it wasn't used, the obvious reason being that there was no help available because there doesn't even seem to have been an attempt by -A- to even raise a rescue fleet.

Says It All

Had there been reinforcements and the titan gotten any help could it have been saved, chances would have been slim but it may have helped. Even a couple of carriers with remote repair modules might have made the difference.

The Story Continues

After the titan was killed (not before as EN24 has said) did the following come to light:

• the Titan was only purchased by Carinia no more than 24 hours before it was lost as shown in this EVE Forums post
• the infamous Chribba took part in the sale as the "trusted" 3rd Party as shown in this screenshot 
• Tempest Legion were 'sniffing' around having seen the sale too and in fact a interceptor was killed on the wreck

Outbreak and Black Legion both released videos shortly after the kill from their points of view and -A- have been silent on the whole thing.

Thanks

Thank you to FrEeSoUl5150, a55mu11e7 and Disposable Ensign for help in writing this. Big thanks to EVE Scribe for his version and his stellar job of translating what he was told by N00b FO0 into English.

Creating a Super Capital Character - Part 1 - Overview

Research

Quite a while ago I was looking on the official EVE Forums and I noticed a trend of people wanting to buy super capital capable characters. The demand was more than those selling and so I did a bit more research into what skillset these characters had and how long it took to make them.

What I found was interesting, a Super carrier Pilot could be made for an investment of ISK and time and, once completed, they would sell for between 9b and 18b depending on the skillset and what racial carrier skills the character is trained for.

What People Want

I've found most people looking for a Super carrier character want either a Gallente or Amarr trained character. This is because the two most used Super carrier ships are the Nyx and Aeon (not unrelated is the fact both are armour based ships).

Development

I've been creating characters like this for nearly 9 months now, focusing on the skillplan and maximizing my investment return by focusing on what people want. Some people want basic, "sit in ship" character that they can then train and expand on whilst others want the "whole package" which means maximizing a lot of core and racial skills.

The latter character obviously requires more ISK and time to train but is worth considerably more where as the "sitter character" is ready quicker and doesn't require as much ISK investment.

The choice you need to make is simple:

• What race ships do you want to fly
• Do you want a sitter or a fully developed character

Obviously the choices come down to how much ISK and time you want to devote to the endeavour.

What's to Come

Part 2 of this Guide will cover the Basic Skillplan needed for a "sitter" with Part 3 expanding on this to show the Core and additional skills that need to be taken to Level V for any pilot to be combat ready.

What I'm Doing

Null Sec Local Market

 

My local market sales have slowed, I haven't seen any new people selling but I have seen a drop off in traffic which I put down to the new people in the area. I will have to relist items in a couple of weeks (I sell on 60 days cycles not the default 30 or 90 day ones) and I will check all prices to make sure I'm competitive but elsewhere income is good so I'm not really concerned with this dip in sales.

 

Capital Production

 

I've decided to pull the plug on my Capital Production line and as a result have a nice stack of researched BPO's ready for resale but also a large stock of minerals that I can use for other things or sell.

 

Why have I done this, two reasons:

 

1. Effort
2. Profit

 

My profit margin for Capital ship production has dropped over the past few months. A lot of people are producing capital ships and unfortunately this has dropped the price to the point where the effort to make capital ships hasn't been worth it. I'm sure others can disagree but for me it is time to get out.

 

I'll be listing and selling my capital part BPO's (22 of them) over the next couple of weeks and I think I'll easily get between 25 and 30 billion ISK for them. The actual ship BPO's (12 of them) I'll keep and will add some PE and ME to them before putting on copying duty and selling the copies on the market (for a passive income of at least 2 billion ISK)

 

Missions

 

I'm stilling missioning although not for Thukker Tribe at the moment I've moved on to Caldari Navy to see if I can get my Trading Alt's standings up and in turn lower his broker fees from 0.75% to (lowest possible) 0.185%. I've been told this can be done but so far no change but I will be missioning all this week to get my standings up so I can use Level 4 agents instead of the frustrating Level 1 and 2's I am able to use now.

 

One alt is now maximising his missioning skills with all social skills to V within 60 days. If this works out then I may have to update all my other characters that will participate in PvE.

 

Blog

 

I'm enjoying this blog, I do wish I had more to write about and I do have lots of ideas but I'd like to throw the floor open. If you have any ideas for posts you'd like to see please leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Looking for a HERO

Actually I'm not, personally I'd like them to be further away but so far I'm only having to deal with a single cloaky AFK camper and a couple of TEST pilots who are trying to siphon my reactions.

 

Could be a lot worse but I'm not focusing on the negative I'm quite the opposite and happy at the moment as I got word of the HERO deployment system about 24 hours before it was public knowledge and managed to get three full JF's of modules and other stuff into station (which is not a friendly one for jump capable ships)

 

Frenzy

 

I've now sold out of modules in less than four days and am around 2 billion ISK better off. I put most items for sale in the 10% to 30% over Jita profit category but a lot of T1 modules I put at local prices which put most under Jita but having over three hundred Experimental Micro Warp Drive I's meant I was making money even with a very low resale cost.

 

Sounds odd but my tracking spreadsheet shows me making an overall profit of 9% on this one item and an average profit (over all items I sold) of 17%.

 

Not Again

 

Unfortunately I won't be restocking as competition is no doubt going to be fierce and I've already been reading that profits have dropped and profiteers are taking over. Well that's not the only reason, the other reason is I don't want to lose a JF in such a heavily populated system where everyone wants to shoot the next ship that appears.

Not. Happy. Jan.

The title comes from a series of adverts in Australia for Yellow Pages and you can read about it here, if you want to. It's quite amusing I write this as just recently Lorna wrote a post on this subject herself.

Anyway, to the point.

Sunday night is my night for tower maintenance, time to dust off the freighter and visit all my towers and refuel and resupply them. It's not glamorous but it pays the bills and is quite relaxing.

When I'm in space, even if I'm alone in a system, I will fire off d-scan periodically on my travels in case anything shows up. Until this evening nothing interesting ever has but tonight I saw a mobile siphon unit appear on d-scan.

Wait.. what did I just see. Yes, a dreaded siphon unit was active and very possibly on one of my moons. I continued my maintenance tasks and logged in another character who had some combat ships available and got him to a tower location where I thought any siphon may be.

Good guess by me, exiting warp there on my overview was the siphon unit. I right click and select Look At to get a better look at this interloper.

Interloper found

There was a small progress bar underneath the name of the unit which indicates how full it is, it around a quarter full so I warped to the unit, took back my product and destroyed the siphon.

It took two full reloads of my Purifier to kill the siphon, they are quite resistant to attack and I sent a mail to my corporation to let them know what had happened and to make sure we keep eyes open for more in the future.

And yes, I did note the name of the pilot who dropped the unit and they've already been added to watch list and so was another member of his corporation/alliance who was in Local when I logged in tonight. 

Reaction Towers and Silos

One of the most frustrating things running towers is making sure they are adequately protected. I'm lucky I can call on a number of corporations/alliances nearby that will help me defend my towers but ideally I want to be able to add 'teeth' to my towers to ward off opportunist attacks but also that will cause a bloody nose to someone who does attack.

 

Guns don't need CPU but do need Powergrid however other defensive modules such as Warp Disruptors and ECM Batteries do use CPU and understandably. As a result I can put guns on my towers but the support modules I really need to go with them I cannot.

 

In an ideal universe we'd like more CPU generated by our towers but this, I believe, is a major and would have to be properly analysed and vetted.

 

Solution

 

However something that could change now is to lower the CPU requirements of one module, the silo. The silo has a CPU requirement of 500 tf and I really cannot see why, the Silo doesn't need to react things, it doesn't need to process anything so why does it need so much CPU.

 

Even after the 'mentioned' POS revamp in the future changing the Silo now should not impact that, so lets get the CPU requirement of the Silo reduced from 500 to 100 or better still 50.

 

This would free up a lot of CPU so we can properly defend our towers (which we invest a lot of ISK into, upfront too) and give those that do want to try to take them a bloody nose before we drop our friends on them.

Standings

Standings 101

 

Standings are an ever present thing in EVE be they Faction, Corporation, CONCORD, NPC or even Player. Most are not that important but Faction and Corporation standings are important for the access they give to better items in LP Stores.

 

None of my characters have high standings with a lot of factions or corporations, I try to keep Amarr positive as I live in Amarr space but the others I really don't mind. I just want to avoid that situation where the standings hit -5 and I can be attacked by Faction Police. I've also got good standings on my industry characters for a couple of Corporations so that when I reprocess I can get that elusive 100% refining (with no loss or tax) in high sec stations.

 

Changes

 

I've recently audited all my characters and decided that I need to really get all faction standings positive and on two characters that PvE I want them to be +5 so I can benefit from Level 4 missions and the LP rewards they allow me access to.

 

So I'm starting the slow grind again, on five characters. Fortunately friends have pointed me to a couple of good systems where I find multiple Level 2 and Level 3 Distribution agents in the same station to get my standings up quickly and open up Level 4 agents.

 

Learning New Things

 

I've also decided to return to Osmon as there are good Level 4 agents there (not to mention Sisters of EVE) but more importantly in the same system are two Faction agents I can use to get good boosts to my Faction standings with Minmatar and Caldari.

 

What I did not know is that completing Storyline Missions (available every 16 completed normal missions) for one of the major races also affords minor increases/decreases with other factions. Run a Storyline mission for Minmatar and you get a large boost to Minmatar standings but a smaller positive boost to Gallente but a small decrease to Amarr.

 

Now run the Caldari storyline mission and you get a large positive increase to Caldari and a small one to Amarr with the small decrease to Minmatar.

 

The best bit though is the positive boosts are always larger than the negative boosts so over time the positive/negative boosts don't even out as you might expect instead the positive wins and by doing Storyline missions you'll improve standings with all four major races.

 

Skill Changes

 

So I'll be PvE'ing some more but I've restructured my training to make sure the characters all have maximised Social, Security/Distribution Connections, Negotiation and Diplomacy skills in order to improve rewards and standings I'll receive.

 

All up it's only about a 15 day variation in training to maximise these skills and it's a nice break from some of the long Level V skills I have been training.

 

So, back to the grind but the grind will be worth it. At some point I need to improve pirate faction standings and that'll be interesting as they don't exist in High Sec...

Conflicted no more

Mid February I posted soliciting advice on whether I should return to the character I helped kill my cut of the ransom they paid but that was dishonoured by the pilots I flew with.

Well based on the comments I got, thank you those that did publicly and privately comment, I decided that the right course of action was the give the money back to the pilot I helped kill. I have done that and I feel that I have done the right thing.

I wasn't happy when the ransom was dishonoured and although I took the money I didn't feel right having it. Returning it was the right decision, ransoms are to be honoured I believe and many of you have agreed with me.

Thank you.

Dancing with the Devil

Oh joy!

One of my favourite non-industry blogs has a new post and I'm hoping it's a sign that Jack Dancer, Rifter Pilot has returned to New Eden. I've been an avid reader for quite a while, living vicariously through his exploits. I just wish I had the balls to do PvP like he does.

Still, he's back and his writing is as expansive as ever and it was a pleasure to read his writings again.

Welcome back Mr Dancer and good hunting.

For every good action there is a corresponding screw up

I spent a pleasant evening setting up PI for three characters on five different planets, refuelled six towers and even managed to get myself some PvP for the first time in months.

Lock and Load

I'm not a great PvP person, I prefer the industry side of EVE, but I'm not adverse to trying to help out and I did last night in the last remaining Wolf that a friend sold me nearly two years ago. We snagged an empty Prorator and a Talwar trying to leave our base system, I didn't do the capturing but I was there to lend my dps and to help secure the pods.

 

The Wolf, based on the tried and tested Rifter hull

The Prorator was quite funny, we podded the pilot and his pod was worth more (128m vs. 120m) than the ship he'd been flying. The Talwar was just passing through but our bubbler managed to catch him as he left system and well, he didn't last at all long.

 

Screwing Up

 

Later on in the evening I was out in space doing PI setup when we had a red appear in local, checks of station showed he was not docked so d-scan was used and we caught a glimpse of a Gila. I went to report this in intel but instead what I wrote appeared in Local.

 

I'm certain it was the exiting of Planet View that caused the focus to shift from the intel chat window

to local but regardless I screwed up and kicked myself. Fortunately my fleet mate understood and my CEO was rather less impressed but he didn't yell (for once) at me.

 

Still, the guy remained in local for about 20 minutes, we think he was interested in Relic and Data sites we had, before he left not to be seen again.

 

PI Setup

 

After he left I had a period of time which I used to finish setting up PI on the planets in system. I've had four characters ready for PI setup for quite a few weeks but the 'click fest' and monotony that is PI meant I went to great lengths to avoid it but I knuckled down last night and did it.

 

I've now got four characters setup for PI, with all POS fuels being made across the characters. I've setup two alts to provide the P1 materials for making Enriched Uranium and Coolant and two mains producing Enriched Uranium and Coolant as the rest of the fuels on a one planet per item basis. It has worked nicely over the last few weeks.

 

I don't produce a huge amount of items but a consistent amount on five/seven day cycles. I've finishing Control Centre Upgrades V on one alt and if that works out well I will upgrade all my characters and try to improve output thanks to that.

 

Still what I have is working and making, passively, a couple of hundred million ISK a week for me and should I be able to get that up to 400m a week (which I think is very possible) I will be able to cover my POS fuel expenses.