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.