Woot.... Urm... Yay for Me!

I can recall a couple of years ago reading a blog (a pirate/ninja salvager from memory but the name escapes) who showed a screenshot of his pilot finishing all of the skills to V in the navigation tree. 

It's a great achievement to complete all skills to V in a tree, some are going to take a very long time (and a lot of ISK) whereas others don't need completion to V (i.e. they only lower capacitor usage). 

One of those trees that does deserve the effort is Navigation and it is with great pleasure I awoke this morning to see High Speed Maneauving V completed on my null sec pilot:

Pretty.

There is one skill missing but I don't use Micro Jump Drives (at this time) so as far as I'm concerned the tree is complete. The Jump skills were the longest and most painful but, consequently, the most rewarding to complete.

The character moves on to Int/Mem skills before finally starting on Gunnery, 4 years overdue I'd say. All he has is Gunnery III in that branch but when he's finished it's going to be Level V's all over the place!

All Quiet On The South-South-East Front

It's quiet.

Possibly too quiet.

But then again I'm happy that it's like this, it's allowed me to concentrate on grinding standings with one of the NPC corporations in a fairly fast time frame. Zero to 8.34 personal standings with the corporation in a little over a week has meant that I now have access to all the Level 4 agents in the area. 

Mining PvE 

I've found the mining missions not as boring or repetitive as Security ones and much faster to finish. Mining missions seem to comprise one of three types, mining ore, gas or ice. I was told only to do the gas mining missions for best reward vs. risk but I've found that the ice ones (mine 20 blocks of ice) are quick to do with a Skiff or Procurer and are worth doing with Gas. I do decline all the ore missions as they take far too long and usually require two or three trips back to station to drop off what I've mined.

I invested some of my liquid ISK in buying six Ventures and fittings so I could get three characters running missions in the future, the LP rewards (between 7,500 and 12,500 LP per mission with Mining Connections IV) are excellent and I have some good items (Vindicator/Daredevil/Snake Implants) to choose from when I do cash out. 

One really good thing about the mining missions are that they take place in the system with the agent or at most 1 jump away so I don't have to worry much about being caught on a gate. 

Last night I was fortunate enough to get three gas mining missions in a row and not just the "rat free" 7,500 LP reward ones. I got the 12,500 LP mining missions with "drone rats" (which are very easy to tank in a shield boosting Venture) and an hour later I'm 36,000 LP better off and a few million ISK richer.

Towers

My towers are good, we haven't had any siphons since Brave Newbies Inc. moved out and whilst we get a lot of traffic this doesn't interfere with my towers or reactions I have running. 

I did make a mistake last weekend, I bought in new raw materials from Jita about three weeks earlier than I should have so. This caused my liquid ISK reserves to be depleted (read: I spent all my wallet ISK) and now I don't have to buy anything for six/seven weeks apart from fuel.

ISK Today, Gone Tomorrow

The lack of ISK isn't a problem, aside from Ventures I'm not in need of buying anything at the moment outside of tower materials or trading opportunities. I have nearly 20 billion in buy and sell orders active so I'm not really in any trouble it's just depressing to see my wallet balance so low.

The reason I'm so low is I finally bought, and injected into his skills, the Amarr Titan book for one of my characters, not that he has the titan nor do I have the need or ISK for one yet. 

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.

Training Gone Awry

I've just updated EVEMon and have looked at my characters and made sure they're training the skills for their long term goals.

Of the five characters I have four are training the right skills and I've finally realised that my "main" is training skills with no real goal in mind. I can't believe I haven't noticed this until today, I really should have noticed it before today.

Perception/Willpower attributes to maximum and instead of training Spaceship Command skills I'm doing Gunnery. This is silly, this character doesn't do PvP he does industry yet I am 5 hours 10 minutes from completing Capital Energy Turret V... I don't even have the basic support skills to V and that skill has been going on for 26 days!

How. Did. I. Miss. That.

Time to spend some time in EVEMon working out what he should be doing rather than just adding skills (in what appears to be) a random manner.

Edit: I have also discovered I've managed to train Tactical Weapon Configuration to IV. I have no recollection of doing that, have I been sleep-skill-queuing?