Musings on the proposed Jump Drive Isotope Consumption changes

CCP have proposed changes to the use of racial isotopes for jump/jump bridge capable ships.

It hasn't been said, at least in the three pages of responses I read on the Forums, but this does appear to be a partial nerf (despite CCP Fozzie saying that "[we] don't expect this change to significantly impact behaviour around jump drive power projection") directed at capital ship proliferation as well as an attempt to 'balance the books' with the excepted drop in tower usage in high sec once the new industry changes come in to effect.

What Is Changing

Initially fuel bays were going to be increased by 50% (60% for black ops) but after a comment suggesting a one third reduction in isotope size that has changed to leaving fuel bays as-is but reducing the size of isotopes by one third or from 0.15m3 to 0.10m3. 

This will mean more fuel can be carried (by one third) but the 50% increase in fuel usage will lower their range due to the consumption but also the amount carried meaning that crossing the galaxy in minutes is going to be slower and cost more. The only example given was a high sec to null sec Rhea run that showed a 50% increase in fuel costs and this did not show a breakdown of what the trip was or how much fuel was consumed (so i'd say its a poor example).

What Does This Mean To Me

I see costs increasing (not a surprise, the industry changes were going to do that anyway but this adds extra overhead) and I think I'm going to have to stockpile isotopes before the Summer Expansion in my jump locations so I can ensure I'll have a steady supply at least for 2/3 months afterwards.

I'm also considering changing my jump freighter fleet from Ark's to Nomad's to take advantage of the isotopes available in the region I'm in. A couple of hours mining a week should cover my fuel costs but I will need to look into this in more detail.

I Spy A Future Change?

A patch was released last night weighing in at nearly 300mb, details are available on the patch notes but a few changes to the UI seem to have occurred. Most noticeable was the Character Selection screen which has changed to a really nice blue hue instead of the red it was before.

There were a few other changes listed but it was when I was looking at ship details later that I noticed that the Traits page had changed and now included icons representing roles/modules that the ship can use/be under the heading of Ship Characteristics. It's very nice and moving the mouse over the icons shows descriptive text about what the icon means.

Here is the text for a Interceptor:

But what really piqued my interest was what I saw when I viewed the Details for a Freighter or Jump Freighter:

I wonder what that XL icon means, let's have a look at what the tool tip says:

Well "bounce me up and down and call me Skippy", could this mean that Freighters and Jump Freighters are in for a major overhaul in the Summer expansion, could they be finally be getting module/rig slots and be able to have defensive and tanking modules fitted?

Obviously this could just be the UI being updated, after all Freighters/Jump Freighters are considered Capital Ships and thus would, if they could, be fitted with capital sized modules. But there is the chance, however small, that these ships are being looked and receiving the long-needed upgrade to allow them to be rigged and fitted with modules.

Hopefully we'll find out more during/after Fanfest 2014.

Jita Burned

The Jita Burn event is once more in full swing or is just finishing, not 100% sure but it was active over the weekend that just was. 

The kill roll can be viewed at zKillboard here and it currently shows at least 500 billion ISK worth of damage, however the Admin Note states:

This campaign reflects only kills happening in Jita, it doesn't count the surrounding systems, and it only includes the kills that zKillboard knows about.

These losses include both the attackers and those being attacked in Jita but still just looking at some of the losses a lot of people unwisely decided to ignore warnings or were just oblivious to the whole event.

And they paid for it.

Comfort Zone

I've been playing EVE for nearly four years, that's four years of living in wormholes, null sec and high sec. I've yet to live in low sec but there is plenty of time to do that and the one thing that these things all have in common is I've been very comfortable in what I've done.

I've felt safe, secure and have always had the backup of people I trust. Very recently though I've started branching out into null sec without the safety net I've been used to and as a result I'm out of my comfort zone and I feel I've grown as a player.

Hermit Behaviour

For three months I've not left the system where I'm based except to jump to high sec or in the case of one character, move to a station in the next system over where I can jump clone to/from. I've led a sheltered life, very sheltered if I'm to be honest.

I've mined, reacted and manufactured without a care to the goings on around me and whilst I've done well I could do better and over the past week I finally decided to do something else.

Missioning, again

"You can earn 12,000 LP for one gas mining mission, no more than 15 minutes with good skills"

That was the quote I've heard four or five times from various corporation/alliance people and I've listened but did nothing about it. It doesn't help that most of my characters have high negative standings with the two corporations I'd need to get the missions from.

But salvation come in the unlikely form of my boosting alt, he had absolutely zero standings with any faction and only a couple of corporations liked him, a bit. An alliance mate offered to give me a hand with basic standings so I could run them myself and he did seven missions over the two corporations and I magically had 1.0 standings with both in less than an hour.

Fortunately you can get standings just by being in a fleet when a mission is completed and I took the chance to drop off some materials in Jita for sale (before Burn Jita started) and buy myself some modules for use on a Venture that I'd use for the missions.

Skills Need Work

I also purchased the Mining Connections skill book and made sure this was injected and trained to IV. I also remembered that the Criminal Connections skill would be helpful for standings increases with the NPC entities I would get the missions from and may help me get to the magic 5.0 standings sooner.

I now have Criminal Connections IV and Mining Connections IV trained and am working on Level V for both after I finish Mining Frigate V.

Results, are promising needs more work

It's been four days since I started mining missions and I've got just over 20,000 LPand 3.80 standings (4.43 modified). Nearly enough for Level 4 missions and they're the ones that will bring in the big LP amounts.

I'm getting between 300 and 1000 LP per mission at the moment and this has been great. I'm used to getting no more than 300 LP for a distribution or mining mission in high sec but here in null the rewards are much greater. The dangers are too but these can be mitigated by good decisions and using d-scan regularly.

The LP store has Snake implants so my plan is to get a low-grade set of Snakes for the market and then if they sell move up to the high-grade set. It's a plan and the Storyline missions at least give me the implants I need for LP exchanges.

Random, but funny

Where I'm located in Curse we have several friendly corporations and alliances nearby, today I met someone from one of them and got chatting. 

It was a good chat and I was able to share some EVE/industry knowledge with someone new but what made it funnier was I linked a prior post I'd written as an example and in return was told that he was a regular reader who had my blog on his Feedly feed and he provided a screenshot to prove this.

I had to laugh at this coincidence and so, Nikor, thanks for reading and not shooting me when I appeared in system.

Status Report

Twiddling Thumbs/Turning Wheels

I haven't posted for just over a week and it wasn't intentional. I like to queue posts and have them automatically deployed but over the past week I've been hit by that horrible "writers block" as I could not write anything that I deemed worthy. 

As a result I've been turning my wheels or twiddling my thumbs, whichever makes more sense to you :)

Several posts were written and then torn apart because I thought it was less-than-stellar but I was finally able to write something about the new Industry dev-blogs, although I think more posts are to come on that subject.

CSM Elections

The CSM election is coming along and I have voted so it'll be interesting to see who gets in as new CSM has a lot to measure to considering CSM 8's effectiveness.

Null Sec Industry

My run into null sec industry continues well, I've sold plenty of modules and a few ships but I've also worked out what new modules I need to bring BPC's. 

Supplies of raw materials are good, I had three hauler spawns whilst ratting which bought in a nice amount of mexallon and pyerite so I don't need any for a while and thanks to a friend who has much better station standings than me I was able to bring in a couple of dreadnaughts worth of materials as railguns and he reprocessed them at 100%.

Building Better Worlds

CCP have released a devblog on the changes to industry that will be in the summer expansion. If you have an interest or do any industry with EVE Online and haven't already read this please go read it.

The Changes

In short the changes breakdown as follows:

• Damage Per Job is going away for R.A.M. and R.Db items
• Extra Materials are being removed
• All materials will be affected by reprocessing/production efficiency
• Market groups are being reorganized, again, to make a little more sense
• Industry slots are being removed, replaced with a variable charge based on demand/usage
• POS standings, in high sec, requirements are being removed
• Remote BP access will not be shared between POS and NPC station.
• Copy speed is being reduced to make it easier to distribute copies.
• New User Interface was shown that will reduce the click-fest we all have come to hate

Reaction

There has been much discussion about these changes and some of the best has come from Lockfox and The Nosy Gamer doing a casual look at the changes from their perspective. Lorna finally weighed in a long post that covered it from her perspective very nicely.

Overall it seems to be positive, even people I've spoken to in the channels I'm in are in favour of the changes that have been listed.

My Reaction

The devblog came as a surprise to me, I really didn't think Industry would be the summer expansion focus and I'm very happy with the changes that have been announced but I can't help but feel that the focus of the changes is for the solo industrialist and not the co-operative or group industrialists. I can understand the need for some of the changes, it removes maintenance and overhead for features that were good 10 years ago but no longer have a place. 

BPO Risk

One of the corporations I'm in has a research POS, it sits there churning out copies of the BP's we have, adding PE/ME to those BP's and it just works. The BP's are safe in a station in the system and the lock down functionality is used to secure BP's from opportunistic theft. Not that this is likely, we're a group that are friends and share this resource.

Making it so the BP's now cannot be remotely researched from the safety of a station is going to increase risk not just from external war dec's but also internally from (in larger corporations) as in order to move from copying to inventions or adding ME/PE additional roles will be needed. The likelihood that these roles may be wrongly or mistakenly applied increase, sure corporations will have proper auditing in place and will spot these things but the current Role Management UI/feature isn't exactly flexible and easy to use.

POS Standings

We recently put a new POS up in a 0.5 system, nothing special it was a staging POS in a well known system for use and friends to use in times of war and/or during operations. Our corporation is small and has no more than a dozen members at any one time but the slog to get standings was painful and slow, something never to happen again thankfully.

This is probably the most interesting change, will we no longer see offline towers cluttering systems holding precious moon locations or will we, hopefully, see more war dec's looking for enemy towers with the aim of killing them and, if a research POS, extracting the BP's held within?

The removal of the standings for a POS will, I think, result in a lot of new towers going up but towers aren't simply a "drop and forget" thing, you've got to fuel them and protect them should a bigger entity come along and want that location.

Industry Slots

Lorna will be (at least initially) ecstatic, they were complaining about the slots needed for industry in null sec and then this comes along and banishes slots forever! Of course you can't have the pleasure without pain and those doing anything that previously used a slot will have to figure in increased costs depending on how busy a stations industry is.

Hopefully no longer will people need to look at erecting a POS for manufacturing should their station be permanently suffer from "slot full" syndrome, they just have to pay a little more to use the station they want.

New UI

A new UI for industry was teased at the end of the devblog and it certainly looks good but that's all so far.:

So pretty but where are the buttons, the text telling us what's happening?

My initial impressions are it looks cluttered and not at all intuitive but then again it's just a picture and I cannot yet play with it to see how it functions. Hopefully we'll get a lot more information on this in the near future, a video of use would go a long way to helping understand this.

And lets hope "batch installation" has finally been implemented.

Challenge Update

It's been just over a week since I started my "null sec manufacturing challenge" as prompted by Lorna over at A Scientist's Life in EVE.

My aim was to produce T1/T2 modules and a few ships for sale in my local null sec market. Over the course of a week I moved all the raw materials into my base along with BPO's/BPC's and whilst it took two JF loads more than I thought I did finally get everything moved.

The station I'm in had plenty of slots free for manufacturing so I started producing combat modules that I was running low on. These comprised T2 variants of warp points/scramblers and webifiers as well as T2 auto-cannons and artillery.

What Did I Make

I produced 30 of each module and listed them for sale at a base price point a little above Jita but with enough of a markup that it was profitable and covered all my costs and then some. Local competition was present, especially 1 jump away, but in the case of the guns my nearest competitor was 6 jumps away. 

Results

I've obviously stocked correctly because I've sold nearly all the items I manufactured over the weekend bringing in 145 million ISK, I've already started on a second run and thanks to prompting from some alliance people I've even added some shield defensive modules to the list of production so I can list these.

145 million may not sound much, it's not really as I can make that in about 4 hours ratting in null sec, but it's a good income for no more than ten minutes of actual work and supplements my other income streams quite nicely.

I still have over 1900 BPC's to work through and all the raw materials I need to complete these so I will be continuing to watch the local market and adjust my production accordingly.

Challenging Null Sec Industry

Lorna, at A Scientist's Life In EVE, challenged the CCP Devs to actually do industry in null sec without their 'super powers'. It's a good challenge and one that they should follow through with because I find it hard to believe anyone at CCP actually is an industrialist who has first hand experience with the Industrialist features of mining, manufacturing, invention and research.

As far as I'm aware Lorna hasn't received any word from CCP that they've accepted or even read her challenge but she herself has moved back into Null Sec with a large collection of blueprints (originals and copies) and is setting up shop (so to speak) and aims to produce goods and services with little to no need of working in High Sec.

It's an admirable step to take, it could all end in failure but equally in success. Lorna is nicely plotting her course and success/failures in the blog. Her latest post on the subject nicely explains the problems faced by having many industrialists wanting to use the same, limited, slots provided by Player Owned stations. 

Challenge Accepted

Although not a CCP Dev I have decided to accept part of the challenge thrown down and see if I can move at least part of my industrial base to NPC Null where there should be better supplies of goods and more slots for me to use.

Of all my industrial activities I've decided to move all of my T1/T2 module and T2 ship production to null sec with the aim of producing all the modules I sell and only having to import materials that I cannot either source locally or within my alliance; or cannot be found where I am.

Packing and Moving

I've packed up all my BPO's and my current collection of T2 BPC's and moved them to my new base of operations. I have counted 122 T1 BPO's and almost 2000 T2 BPC's of modules and ships that I will be working through for this attempt. I may buy more BPC's later but initially I will be limiting myself to what I have bought in.

Minerals and other components used in manufacturing I have been shipping in for a few days via JF runs. It's actually been very convenient having a full load leaving null sec (usually moon goo/finished materials) and then returning with components for manufacture.

I have been fortunate that I've had several hauler spawns whilst in NPC space and I've managed to collect a sizable collection of minerals that are supplemented by mining.

Planning, Planning and Planning

Where I'm located there are the following slots available to the public:

• 10 Copy
• 20 Invention
• 50 Manufacturing
• 20 Material Research
• 20 Time Efficiency

The ME slots are fully in use at the moment and judging by the time left on these they will be in constant use, it's a good thing my T1 BPO's are ME/PE researched as 'perfect' so I will not need to use these slots. Manufacturing seem to be used but there are always a few slots open for use and I can always queue jobs. The Invention and Copying slots could be useful, I don't have an immediate use for them but they seem to always have space and aren't in demand.

Overall I've got what appears to be a good station and resources, it helps that I know a lot of the people already using them so I can barter and get access when I do need them.

What to Make

I'll start by making T2 modules that I know will sell on the local market, things such as proplsuion jamming modules (warp distruptors, stastis webifiers), shield and armour modules (adaptive invul. fields, armour hardners) and guns. 

Guns especially sell very well very but I'm going to start with production runs in the 20 - 30 range and then only manufacture more when I get down to single digit units remaining (5 as a starting point). I don't want to hold too much stock and producing on a, semi, just-in-time system should allow me flexibility and not be an ISK sink.

Ships I will produce, I've bought around 100 T2 BPC's of different ship types but I have also bought all my T1 BPO's for each sub-capital ship and I will be producing runs of these at some point in the future. I see a lot of T1 frigates moving around the area so having these on hand should be good. Producing them is quick and easy even if the profit margins aren't massive.

I don't want to be running JF's in/out of system every day so my production schedule is going to be fixed, I will produce items as I need but I want to aim for a JF run only once or twice a week bringing in materials that I will need. This will help with costs as the less I jump the less fuel I use but also it should make it so I'm looking to the local markets and people for my materials instead of running off to high sec trading hubs.

What I Won't Be Making

I'm not going to be making capital ships here, I pulled out of that work a month ago due to the increased competition I saw where I was based and I'm still not convinced I should return as both k162space and EVE-Fail have noticed shrinking profits. If I did I would need to find new buyers and local ones at that but I would also be stepping on the feet of an friend who makes capital ships where I'm now based.

I certainly don't want to do that so I'll be avoiding the capital market and just focusing on my T1/T2 production for sale on the local market with perhaps a small number of capital modules being offered.

Current Status

I've only been at this for a few days, all my BPO's/BPC's are moved along with 70% of the materials to make all the T2 BPC's I have. I'll move the rest over the next week and then start on production using the slots I have.

I'd rather have everything in place than keep running to/from high sec for stuff I've forgotten and then I can sort it out. Freight and Station containers allow me to sort stuff in a basic way but I'd really love to use something like the Corporation Hangers but at a personal level. Being able to separate my assets without the need for containers would be so much more convenient, but hopefully that'll be in a future release.

A Funny Thing Happened In Jita

I received word from a good friend that he'd had an interesting incident occur in Jita that resulted in my friend being given a PLEX's worth of game time for raising a petition.

Firing Up The Time Machine

My friend was on his way to Jita with one of his alt characters (who happened to be a misspelling of one of PvP characters) and upon docking in 4-4 a trade window immediately opened, from a character he did not know, and some ESS tokens appeared and the green tick. So he did what any normal EVE player would do, he accepted the trade and received the tokens which turned out to be worth around 1 billion ISK.

Trade content proposed and accepted

At this point my friend started to think hard about what happened, was it a generous donation to another player from someone rich (it might happen) or could something untoward have been going on and he got in the middle of by accident and no fault of his own? 

So he decided to petition CCP to find out if he could keep them and to at least limit any liability. The petition was submitted, with a screenshot of his hanger and the details of both his Journal (showing the trade) and the characters involved.

Team Security Responds

It didn't take long for CCP to respond and no less by someone from Team Security, CCP Peligro. My friend was thanked for raising the query and informed that the "assets came from an RMT operative and they have been removed" (I'm paraphrasing the actual and full text). Details could not, of course, be provided but as a thank you my friend received an extra 30 days of game time on his account.

Suffice to say my friend is happy, gloating even that he managed to get a PLEX on his account for "helping catch" an RMT Operative and to boot he has a story to tell.