Sense and Sensibility

This is not a Jane Austen Book but feels it could be just as long

The past ten days have been quite piss poor if I'm honest. Both in EVE and in the real world, the only place where things have been going good is actually my day job and when you don't want to leave and go home that at the end of your shift you know something is either:

1. a. going well
   
   or
   
2. b. seriously wrong 

I've been inpatient and rude with two friends who I was playing World of Warships...

Aside: I lost my temper in WoWS last night and "went pink" doing team damage; I was sick of dying so quickly because teamwork was not in the team vocabulary; when I lose my temper I know there's a problem with the game I'm playing but i digress.

... and EVE Online with. I knew it but I was too bullheaded to admit what a bastard I was and fix it. I've basically been wallowing in my own machinations and that isn't a good place for me to be in.

But tonight that's been fixed and all it took was a constant squeaking from the newest member of the family...

6 week old Hybrid Rainbow/Mustard Lorikeet baby

I've been off my feet for most of the past ten days, I injured my foot and have had serious issues walking. This guy was born just before Christmas and had a sibling but unfortunately in the changeable weather we've had this past week the sibling didn't survive.

Right now I'm hand feeding him (or her) and after they eat they make quite a loud squeaking noise as they digest their food. It can get very annoying if you have to listen to it for any length of time.... and tonight he's been sat less than a metre away from me the whole time he's been squeaking.

Epiphany

It's amazing what a constant annoying noise can do to clear you mind. I've mentioned the PI work I'm starting to manufacture Wetware Mainframes. I've had four characters working for nearly a week collecting raw materials, I've had great feedback and comments (it's my most commented post. Ever!) yet I've ignored all the feedback, the suggestions and the best practices.

In the last 30 minutes I've destroyed every single Command Centre on each planet on every character I was using. Gone, deleted including all materials extracted.

Why? Simple, I was doing it wrong.

From this I realized I needed to change a few things and get out of this rut. I loved PI when it came out, people asked me for advice and help. Am I that much of an expert that I don't need help to do mine? Fark No.

I know nothing, I need to remember that. What I was trying to do was great in principle but it would not work long term, Bex told me that. Althanear told me that and so did other commentators but I ignored them to my mistake.

Making Repairs

I'll be making repairs with my friends over the next day or two. Need to work out what to say and try to repair things the right way rather than an empty apology.

As for the PI well I'm going to go with a different tack and use the suggestions I've got. I'm lucky I have six characters to use with high PI skills so why not try to do things efficiently and try to maximize my return on investment (which is standing at a rather depressing negative four hundred million ISK at the moment).

Better Planning 

Five of the Six characters will make Refined components from each of their planets such as:

• Water-Cooled CPU
• Coolant
• Consumer Electronics
• Nanites
• Livestock
• Construction Blocks
• Test Cultures
• Synthetic Oil
• Fertilizer

I'll then use the final character to combine these into the Specialized commodities that will then be used to make the Wetware Mainframes.

On paper (or Excel) it looks more complicated than what I was trying to do but it is not, it's actually simpler as I don't have to move (large amounts of) raw materials between planets only Refined components (which are considerably smaller).

Watch, Learn, React, Be Proactive

With six characters to use I'm going to have to make changes to production slowly, bottlenecks identified then new production lines bought in to fix those. 

Unfortunately PI hasn't had any worthwhile changes for several releases but what we have is functional.

I'd certainly like to have better control over the flow of materials, I hate that you can't setup links from one storage to another (to act as buffers) like you can with Reactions. I'd love to have templates for planets, being able to select "Coolant Setup" from a predetermined list and see the required factories, links and extractors appear for dropping on a raw material patch would be something I'd very much like.

But this is a space game not planet based :)

In Conclusion

I've rabbited on too much but I now have a clearer view of my way forward with EVE Online and my PI as well as fixing some RL issues that have been ignored for too long.

Getting back to Planets

For more than a year now I've been running a small albeit efficient production of Guidance  Systems in a multi-character PI setup. I say efficient but it's when I remember to update production on planets and move materials between other planets.

 

So not very efficient at all.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's been profitable and when I have it running full blast it makes a lot of Guidance Systems very efficiently. It's just PI is incredibly boring and a click-fest that I really hate to do.

 

Making Money

 

I pause my PI production and I see this morning that Wetware Mainframes are at 2.2m each :S

Those were the words I received from Bex late last week that piqued my interest. Wetware Mainframes have  risen recently in price, most likely due to speculation around Citadels I thought but it could easily be due to increased POCO destruction, from an average of 1.1m ISK to 2.2m ISK.

 

A nice profit if you can make them.

 

So I reviewed my available characters and planets to see if I could manufacture this P4 item.

 

I realized I could and it would cost a whole briefcase full of ISK and need a lot of clicks in my future...

 

Planning

 

Wetware Mainframes are P4 production, meaning that you have to make P2 (Refined) items from P1 (Raw Materials) and P3 (Specialized) items to manufacture the P4 (Advanced). It's not a simple tree nor is it possible to do with one or two characters.

 

I use the wonderful EVE PI Diagrams 1.4 to see what I need to produce and to understand what planets I need to be setup. Other tools are available, many of which work in-game, but to me this PDF one with its simple flow setup is exactly what I need.

 

I spoke with Bex about his setup and decided to go a different way to him. I have available to me two systems with a variety of planet types (Barren, Temperate, Lava, Ice, Gas and Storm) from which I'll extract the raw materials then use a single character to produce each level of manufacturing I need.

 

I have six characters allowing a total of 30 planets with two having Command Centre Upgrades V and the rest all have IV.

 

My plan, which Bex commented on that it would be "labour intensive" is to use five characters (~24 planets) to extract all the raw materials which I will then hand off to the final character who will setup two or more planets to produce the P2, P3 and finally the P4 items.

 

I don't mind the labour at the moment, I can always redevelop planets at a later date to increase savings or to change how Raw Materials are gathered or processed into P2 items.

 

This isn't something that will be setup and left alone to run, I see it as an entity that will require monitoring and when I can develop it to make it more efficient or cheaper (in time) to run then I will make those changes.

 

Future Posts

 

I'll cover in the future my progress with this. I've already got three characters setup and producing Raw Materials as I type. The others will be setup over the next few days as they JC into system and are given a small amount of ISK as a float.

He'll be back

Bex has lost his mojo (I could make a joke about marbles but why point out the obvious) and yesterday I was present in teamspeak as he was moving out of his wormhole.

 

It was a solom and quiet process.

 

He'll be back, there just is little to keep him active in EVE. I know what he means, all players go through this at one point or other (multiple times mostly). One less blog to read now :(

 

And don't think about asking him for his stuff, I already did and he said I could have it all.

 

He'll be back though, three months, six months or even a year from now. He'll be back....

 

EVE is a harsh Mistress, but she always wins.

Arc De Triomphe

Tumbleweeds

It was quiet yesterday. So I took the opportunity to move some assets around.

Soooooooo many systems were visited.

I saw many beautiful sights and even turned up the graphics settings so I could see the glory of New Eden as it should have been.

Assets were moved, only to be replaced by new ones as buy orders were filled. It's a never ending cycle.

Convoy

Terrible music alert....

but I had to put that there, saying Convoy always brings up that song in my mind.

Towards the end I was fortunate enough to have three jump freighters passing through the same systems so I took the opportunity to take some screenshots:

EVE Online sure is a pretty game.

Most Wanted Status

Hundreds of kill mails are posted daily to zKillboard and most are ignored and mean little other than to the pilots involved.

 

Capital/Super/Titan kills always generate comments, usually negative by the vocal egotistical idiots, but there are a few kill mails that are interesting for various reasons and today I present one that is interesting.

 

The pilot in question, Big Lynx, hasn't killed something expensive (it was a shuttle worth roughly 4m ISK). He hasn't done something new or come up with an amazing new tactic, no this pilot has done the worst possible thing he could do.

 

He has advertised himself as having an extremely rare and expensive ship:

 

 

Special

 

The Guardian-Vexor is a relic of the original EVE Online. It's not a great ship, it's basically a Vexor with an additional missile turret slot but it does have one impressive trait that no other ship (outside of Carriers) have any longer.

 

It can deploy more than 5 drones at the same time.

 

Originally the Drone Interfacing skill allowed the use of +1 additional drone per level but in response to latency/lag issues this was changed to the current +20% drone damage per level trained. However the Guardian-Vexor was one ship that had the +1 deployable drone as a trait and not reliant on the skill and has, luckily, retained this over the years.

 

As a result the DPS the ship can do is very, very good and the extra deployable drone has meant that the value of this ship (and it's rarity) has meant it now commands a very high price to own.

 

Painting A Target Of Yourself

 

Originally there were 50 of these ships. In December 2012 it was estimated that only 20 still exist in-game with 5 being held by a single player (Entity).

 

So showing you have one by appearing on killmails is a sure fire way of asking for the attention of every mercenary or ganker in New Eden.

 

Congratulations Big Lynx, you're now on the watch list of hundreds more people :)

I Knew I Forgot Something

Periodically I change the force-field password on my Towers and I did this just the other day I notified the people I knew used my towers to idle in when in space.

Except I missed one person and a couple of days later I received an evemail from my CEO with a link to a kill mail.

Ah Fudge

It was only a couple of hundred million ISK and I had totally forgotten this person friend was using it as a staging post as he ratted up his security status.

I could blame my memory, lack of notification from the pilot that he still used this tower but that's not right. I fucked up and changed the password without checking with everyone whom I knew had used the tower.

Restitution

I'm sure we'll laugh about this in a week or two but right now I'm embarrassed about this screw up on my part.

I haven't spoken to the person, I think time-zones are very much against us at the moment, but I have already purchased a new ship and fittings and it should be in his hands in the next 24 hours.

Know Your Scams: Deadspace/Faction Loot

Setup

The scammer advertises in Local:

Deadspace/DED/Faction loot for sale always piques interest from people. Green and Blue modules can be very expensive and very useful fit to ships. This is certainly goign to interest a lot of people.

Looking at the contract there certainly are a lot of Faction, Storyline and Deadspace modules listed and it could be interesting but lets check the price of the contract versus what they are asking for.

What Happens Now

First thing of interest is the price You Will Pay. It is 560 million ISK not 5.3 billion as the advertisement said. Let's use evepraisal.com to see how much the items are worth in Buy/Sell methods:

Ah, now it becomes clear.

The Sell value of the items is possibly 5.07 billion ISK and that is what the advert in local was saying. It's possible that it's right but the buy value is only 10.32 million ISK and, as any trader knows, the smaller the difference between Sell and Buy the more people who want it.

You could buy the contract and try to sell the items for 5 billion but you'd be waiting A LONG time, if it all sold at all. 

The scammer has just bought this stuff for around 10 million ISK and offering, what appears to be worth 5 billion, for 500 million he hopes to snare a mark who is not going to look closely at the offering.

How Can You Protect Yourself

Rule #1 in Jita is: anything in Local is a scam to take your ISK.

Is this a scam, it could be argued it isn't but its attempting to prey upon the unwaring so to me it is definitely a scam.

Block the advertiser and think no more of it.