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.

*Bing* - Proposed Invention and Reverse Engineering changes

Another week, another devblog to review. This time details on changes to Invention and Reverse Engineering that did not make it into Crius.

Summary

First the really bad news, this will not be released in Oceanus or any time soon. These changes are being worked on now and have no release date.

Proposed changes are good, simplification of Invention and Reverse Engineering process and skills required mean it will be easier to get into and, I hate to use this analogy but it fits, level the playing field for all players new or veteran.

A change to the base success change also could, long term, see more T2 ships being available on the market or as blueprint copies. But the best change of all is that inventing will be changed so that only a single run is needed of a blueprint, meaning maximum run copies will yield multiple copies instead of one.

Skill Changes

Skill/item requirements for Invention will be changing. In their investigation CCP found that Electronic Engineering and Mechanical Engineering skills and data cores were being overused whilst some Racial Encryption Skills were not as intuitively used as they could. 

As a result a number of ships, modules and ammunitions are having their required skills and/or racial skills changed:

Changes to skills for invention

Skills required for Tech 2 manufacturing are also receiving a major change with the "construction" skills needed being changed to 1 instead of 4 or 5 they are now and as compensation for those who have trained this each extra level will yield a construction Time Efficiency reduction.

Invention and Reverse Engineering Merge

Comparing the two is confusing but they have almost the exact same look and feel. CCP decided that based on feedback and usage these two separate entities should be merged and just called Invention. In short Invention will be the future activity to describe the industrial activity that will yield advanced blueprints regardless of Tech level.

Using a Tech I blueprint will result in a Tech II blueprint copy or using an Ancient Relic will result in a Tech III blueprint copy.

Data cores and Decrypters will still play a part in the process, with Decrypters being expanded to affect Tech III blueprints, but Data Interfaces are going to be removed the game (yes!) and Meta items will no longer influence the quality of a blueprint.

Teams, much like in manufacturing, are being expanded to include invention and will function much the same but their bonuses will apply only to Invention.

Invention Outcomes

By far the most interesting changes (to me) is the introduction of the outcome gradient for Invention and the tweaking to the base success chance for all blueprints.

Rather than the binary style Success/Failure only indicator these changes will now see each Invention job have one of eight possible outcomes (four each of Success/Failure). Each has a benefit either in the end result:

• Success has a change of improving the base ME/TE) 
• Failure has a chance of a % of the data cores used being being returned

The new outcomes are as follows:

• Success (exceptional): yields a ME 2 and TE 3 bonus to the outcome
• Success (great): yields a ME 1 and TE 2 bonus to the outcome
• Success (good): yields a TE 1 bonus to the outcome
• Success (standard): basic unmodified outcome
• Failure (standard): 50% of datacores returned
• Failure (poor): 25% of datacores returned
• Failure (terrible): 10% of datacores returned
• Failure (critical): no datacores returned

The probability that one of the new Success/Failures occurs is as follows:

The new outcome gradient of eight is an excellent change, no more do we have "success or failure" only but now we see a tangible benefit to success (increased ME/TE) but also a form of compensation in data cores being returned if we fail.

Base Success Chance

CCP are changing the base success chance for item types, not so much to compensate or restrict what is available but it should see a base chance increase of 5% for all invention.

The change also, finally, formally documents what chance when inventing rigs, capital ships (for the future perhaps) and sets all Mining Barges in the same chance tier:

Old Base Chance

40% - Modules and Ammo

30% - Frigates, destroyers, Freighters and Skiff

25% - Cruisers, Industrials and Mackinaw

20% - Battlecruisers, Battleships and Hulk

New Base Chance

40% - All modules, rigs and ammo

35% - Frigates and Destroyers

30% - Cruisers, battlecruisers, Mining Barges, Industrials and Ore Industrial

25% - All battleships, Industrial Command Ship

20% - Capital and Capital industrial ships

Roughly a 5% base chance increase for ships may not seem a lot but spread out over 200 attempts its a good increase of about 10 over the old base.

Multiple Invention Runs

Invention is seeing a major change in how blueprints are consumed with the process now using only a single run of a blueprint copy instead of the whole blueprint copy. This, wonderfully, opens up a future change to allow Invention to be semi-automated and no longer require manual input after each Invention attempt.

Imagine being able to kick off an invention run on a 100 run copy of a module and return a week or two later to see 40 Tech 2 variants and a heap of returned data cores from the run rather than having to check after each individual run.

This is a great change that should do a lot to make invention less cumbersome and more useful, all the changes since Crius to industry have been good in the UI/behaviour columns and its excellent to see this continuing.

In Summary

Read the devblog, it has lots more pictures and explains in more depth what the proposed changes are. The changes ARE going to be good, it may well see an influx of people who will now give invention a proper try instead of seeing the skill requirements as a barrier and not bothering.

Looking forward to seeing this evolve with user feedback and see how it changes but the announced content is enough to make me quite excited at Invention for the future.

Most useless Blueprints?

I nominate the entire Blueprints->Ammunition & Charges->Scripts category.

I can understand the need to have blueprints for these items but I imagine who would actually own one, let alone admit to owning one.

For 99.999999999% of EVE pilots there is no need for these blueprints and any profit from them must be negligible (not that I've checked).

You can't invent from them, there aren't Optimal Range Script II's or Tracking Speed Script II's for you to build, so I can't see the real benefit of owning one. There exist THOUSANDS of them in market hubs, I don't see the need to make your own.

Sure if you're stuck in a WH without a high sec connection or the back end of null being able to manufacture your own would be useful and of course someone has to populate the trade hubs with them.

The requirements to build one make no sense either, minerals are needed to make a script. In what universe do you need minerals and not data scripts or computer output to make something that modifies the working of a module?

It just seems so.... 

Breaking News:

I just realised that I can reprocess scripts to get minerals, not huge amounts but minerals none-the-less. I have hundreds of the bloody things all over New Eden, instead of selling them (or giving them away) I should put them in one place and reprocess them.

Maybe I'll get enough to build something useful, perhaps a drone or Station Door Key...

Update

Not 10 minutes after posting a friend presented me with this screenshot:

Althanear you bastard, I should have known you would at least have one set.

Know Your Scams: Blueprint Scam

This is another old scam, I remember back in 2010 more of these than the ISK Doubling/Tripling Service ones. As with all contract scams take time to verify the details of the contract before thinking about clicking that Accept button.

It's a variation of the Ship scam where instead of a ship in the contract it is the BPC for the ship/item.

Setup

The scammer will setup a contract containing a basic variant blueprint copy of an faction and/or T2 item/ship that people want, a common example is instead of a Megathron Navy Issue BPC they will use a basic Megathron BPC.

The contract will contain the item, which at a glance loojs like a BPC of the item the mark wants and of course the price for this item will be around the price of the more expensive faction/t2 item/ship.

Example of the Blueprint Scam

They will then advertise the contract in local:

Advertisement in Local for the scam contract

What Happens Now

The mark comes along and sees the advertisement, they click on the link and see the item at a good price and although they look at the item they will get, they see it has the main part of the name and is a copy of the blueprint but not that it is not the item that is being advertised.

They click on the Accept or Place Bid button and, once they win any auction, receive the blueprint but on closer inspection notice it is not a blueprint they were led to believe it was.

How Can You Protect Yourself

As with other contract scams the ruse plays upon the mark not looking at the contract too closely, the use of a similar named, but much cheaper, item would allay some suspicion and the use of a price that is much lower than the actual value screams "awesome deal". The mark may well be inclined to accept the contract without spending the few extra seconds checking the details, after all if they can see the contract so can everyone else in the same system.

To prevent yourself succumbing to this type of scam, spend time verifying that the contract is for the right item, at the right price and that the Get and Pay sections are correct. 99.9% of the time these contracts are too good to be true and common sense dictates that if it is too good and you can't believe your eyes, it is too good and there must be a catch.

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.

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.

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.