More fool me

We are at war again – a different variation of the same group behind more than half our Dec’s.  I had to get my Industry Toon out to do some shopping for Alt 1, but otherwise I don’t expect any impact.

The shopping required was for skillbooks.  With a view towards the proposed racial changes to the Battlecruiser skill, I have just finished up training Amarr and Caldari Frigate and Cruiser V skills on Alt 1.  That gives him the complete set.  I picked up the various Energy Turret and Strategic Cruiser skills that he was missing, which I am now training.

I am mindful of how underutilised that Alt is.  His 91M SP is rarely used for anything but the occasional scout or boosting role.  I’m not sure if that is a sign of CCP’s genius that I have felt that I had to spend so much time on an almost unused account, or my own foolishness.

My Industry Alt finished off Interplanetary Consolidation V and was able to setup a new planet for the last ingredient needed for my PI production goals.  I need to adjust extraction rates however on a couple raw ingredients as I am coming up too short on a couple of the shared ones.  I’ve also ran 10 invention jobs for the following modules, getting:

T2 Damage Control, getting 7 successes
T2 Adaptive Invulnerability Field, getting 3 successes
T2 Cap Recharger I, getting 5 successes
T2 Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane, getting 7 successes
T2 Micro Auxiliary Power Core, getting 4 successes
T2 Power Diagnostic, getting 7 successes
T2 Survey Scanner, getting 4 successes

I haven’t started producing any of these yet – I first need to re-do my entire T2 production spreadsheet to make it easier to keep track of costs.

Last of all my Main Toon ventured back into Wormhole space.  This time it was quiet and I saw no sign of active pilots, aside a single frigate wreck.  I was a little rustywith scanning, made worse by some of the systems having an excess of sites, so I didn’t get as far as I had hoped.  I also had an “oops” moment when I used d-scan to pin-point the location of a POS but got it wrong.  Not what you want when warping around a POS with bubbles on scan.  I am parked in Black Rise now, waiting for the next time I have a couple hours spare.

Who needs plans

Happy with my bookmarks and understanding of the lay of the land around my new chosen NPC 0.0 Station, I logged in on Sunday to do some PVE.  Within minutes a neutral entered the system, opened a Cyno, and two Carriers flown by pilots from a well-known pirate alliance jumped in and docked.  A few minutes later a Tengu undocks, drops probes, and is on the hunt.  That put an end to my plans.

A few days later I log in again at around the same timeframe with the same plan – but soon after neutrals log or jump into the system, open a Cyno, and bring in a couple Jump Freighters.  Then EVE does an emergency reboot, and my plans fall through again.

The Carebears game is always controlled by other people…

One of the carriers sat protecting the Cyno on the earlier encounter.  I had considered dropping a bomb on the Cyno frigate for laughs, but held off as I did not understand the mechanics used by the Sentries on the NPC 0.0 Stations.  Apparently they only respond if you directly target and shoot at the station – and don’t respond to bombs if you haven’t targeted it.  I’ll have to give that a go next time.

The Mittani claimed a somewhat heightened impact from the Burn Jita event in his most recent article for Tenton Hammer:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/78

While I am sure it had a physiological psychological impact (as would his warning that it might happen without notice on any of the other trade hubs in future), I’m not sure it really had any more than a momentary economic impact.  A month long Hulkageddon supported by 0.0 Money might however.  I am intrigued to see if I am caught up in it during my PI and trade runs in my haulers.  I have already changed the route I take to pick up buy orders (to crisscross a main highway instead of running along it), plan to minimise how long I spend at Custom Offices, cut down on the value of what I carry, and never auto pilot (although I don’t do that generally anyway.)

I just finished training the last of the Invention related science skills to rank IV – and have various BP copies coming out of the labs about now.  Any efforts in that regard are also likely to be impacted by the Technetium price increases (whatever the real underlying cause).

Again – my game is controlled by others…

A mishmash of nothing

The kids were sick for a week with gastro, so very little was accomplished in game. While they are ok now, my wife and I are still somewhat shell shocked. At one point I counted more than 20 loads of washing done in 4 days.

It took a while to motivate myself, but this afternoon I finally managed to log in and update my various industry activities. My PI has basically ground to a halt, with none of my stocks moving. It is waiting for me to identify what items currently sell at a worthwhile profit. While that wouldn’t be difficult to do, the thought of changing all my planets has sapped any motivation to get started. General trade volumes remain low, with related subdued profits. I have sold some 175M worth of T2 item’s so far that I’ve manufactured, which makes a bit of a dent into the setup costs. I suspect I won’t be manufacturing Crow’s all that often. I can’t make a profit on those at trade hub prices.

The DEV blogs have continued over the last fortnight.

A team has been put together to revisit the new player experience, to try and improve the retention rates. Obviously worthwhile:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3421

 

They announced that there should be small releases in March and April, with the next major release being called Inferno, coming out just before the northern summer. It was light on details – as is pretty common before Fanfest, but it will apparently focus directly and indirectly on conflict.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3433

 

There was a blog from the Avatar team. Again this was relatively light on detail, basically saying they are just working on some minor tweaks while going back to the drawing board to try and identify the most effective way for WIS technology to enhance the game.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3430

 

The new launcher has reached Singularity if you want to have a look at it now:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9082

 

They are remodeling the Rookie ships – which is a good starting point for the new player experience. All of them look better.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3435

 

There is an explanation on the standardisation of EVE modules, implants and script names. I understand the need for this, although it will take a little while to adjust to it.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9130

 

There are 40 candidates for the upcoming CSM elections. I’m not sure I will have the motivation to read all their campaign messages. I guess after I arbitrarily dismiss the Null Sec voting block candidates, it might be more manageable. I was rather horrified to see that Mintrolio was the only Australian candidate. I don’t know why his obviously faked; one trick pony comment style garners so much mirth or support.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9128

 

Last but not least, we learn no one was at the helm of the anti-bot processes at CCP for a while, but they flicked a switch again recently and identified 1,000+ more accounts using bots. What was particularly nice to read is that once warned for this, a character will be locked to that account from then on.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9133

 

Even though I haven’t been that active, the skill training is however rolling along.

My main is just short of 94M SP. His Capital skill training is coming along well – covering off all Racial Carrier, Local and Remote Capital Amor, Shield and Energy, and both Tactical Reconfiguration skills to rank IV. He still has 3 Racial Dreads, and various Dread weapons to get from rank III to IV, but I put them temporarily on hold just to cover off a few different things. I’ve recently picked up Transports IV and Infomorph Psychology V, and am currently working on Black Ops IV.

Alt 1 is up to 87M, and after finishing up all the Minmatar medium T2 hull and weapon skills, is currently working on Recon V.

Alt 2 has hit 20M, and is currently working on Frigate Construction V so she can manufacture the Retribution BPC’s she invented. (Can’t remember if I remarked or not, I ran 18 invention jobs for 7 successes.) After that it will be science skills for further invention opportunities.

I won’t have much time for EVE in the next few weeks, but after that I should have some extra free time in my evenings. I had been getting stuck in DDO night after night trying to keep up with a burst of Guild activity based around several friends working towards completionist goals. Miss a couple nights and you basically would never catch up. They have however scaled the schedule back to 3 nights a week.

Invention 10 and back visiting NPC 0.0

 

The price of Phenolic Composites was being manipulated in Amarr, so I flew an extra 20 jump round trip to buy them at more normal rates. From a time perspective I lost money doing this – but I just didn’t feel like feeding their excessive profits.

 

I cooked up the last of the required ingredients for the Buzzard Production, and gathered enough to do my first Crow. These are now in the oven, and should reach the market on Wednesday.

 

After a slight mess up on my skill selection, I still have 3 days to go before I can attempt to invent the Retribution Assault Frigate.

Next on my to-do list is to ensure I have the ingredients required to build some more of those Crows. I am also fast approaching the point where I will have achieved my initial T2 manufacturing goals – so will have to think about what to work towards next.

I am down in NPC 0.0 Space again – at the request of the Corporation.

I don’t find I actually achieve much when I am there – and have felt less inclined to visit than I thought I would.

Certainly the main issue remains the constant interruptions I face from real life when trying to play. I also seem to straddle active time zones, so when I am active not much is going on. But there is a little more to it than that – it just isn’t what I had expected.

I had assumed it would be a little more chaotic, with more opportunities for solo PVP. In our area it is instead relatively stable. Small to medium alliances hold sway over groups of systems, with allies and shared Intel channels. Intermingled across the area is a patchwork of reds. There are just not that many neutrals – and most people moving around solo are scouts or bait for much bigger groups, or of course the obligatory Cyno ships for hot droppers.

There are landscape changes – people come and go. It is just not as sharp and defining as it is in Sov 0.0. If things get too difficult, people just move quietly to some place nicer. There just seems to be less consequence to it all.

Invention 09

Just a short update. As mentioned, the skill training for my Crow invention completed on the weekend.

I’ve run 21 invention attempts. Based on my skills, an average result would have been 7 or 8 successes, but unfortunately I only had 5.

Initial calculations on build cost and sale prices indicate a profit margin of around 20-25%. That looks ok on paper, but it requires a fair amount of effort to achieve – including some market manipulation to clear away the really cheap stocks up for sale.

I missed one moon related ingredient on my last shopping trip, so the actual manufacturing of my first Buzzard and Crow are on hold, waiting for me to find some free time.  I have about 1 more week or training to go before I can try to invent a Retribution.

Harder to get stuck in the hole than expected

 

So let’s try again. I undock in the Loki and check the local system. There are 6 signatures to scan down, which takes a bit over 15 minutes. It was good practise.

There are 2 Radar, 1 Mag, 1 Grav, 1 Combat and 1 Wormhole. I grab the Retribution to run some of them for the amusement value. I clear one Radar and notice probes on scan. I move to the second Radar site, and half way through have a Heron and a Drake warp in.

I’d have assumed the polite thing would have been for them to warp away since someone had beaten them too it, but instead they start shooting at the rats. I make a point of burning over to the last can and scan / open it before they could approach. I wonder if that is the norm now. When last I was into scanning people would generally not crash the sites you were already in.

I then do the combat site, ignore the Mag (since I didn’t have the appropriate module nearby), and finally grab the Loki and head for the wormhole. A641 – what does that mean? I look it up and find it leads to Hi-Sec… Damn, it just isn’t my day. Oh well, I jump through and start my Journey.

I’m in a backwater in Metropolis. Nice Nebula. There are 5 Sites in this system, 3 to scan down. It takes me 10 minutes as I am distracted by the kids. I find a hidden belt, the wormhole I came though, and a combat site.

I move into the next system and find 9 sites, with only 1 to scan. There are more distractions from the family, but 5 minutes later I have another wormhole. It is labeled K162 – so now I can finally start my journey.

I check local, but there are only two toons, neither with reference to wormholes in their Corp or Alliance Bios. One of them is mining. I jump through and find myself in wormhole space.

There is nothing on scan, so I bookmark the entrance and warp off. A quick check of the POCO in the hole show that 5 are owned by the same Corp. Interestingly enough, one of the pilots I checked in Hi Sec was also in the same Corp. I watch the wormhole bookmark on a 5% d-scan, and sure enough within a couple minutes a broadsword, two hurricanes and a drake show up on it.

It is not a big Corp or Alliance, but 4 or 5 active pilots is too much for the Loki, so I leave them to it and go looking for their POS. It is a big system, and unsurprisingly I find the POS on Moon 4 on the outer most Planet. There are bubbles on scan, so I don’t warp directly to the POS from the planet, or moon 3 or 5. Instead I make a safe between two other moons and try to warp to it out of any celestial alignment. Either I was unlucky, or didn’t get my angles right, because I landed in one of the bubbles. I slow boat out while cloaked, and set up a bookmark 300km off.

The entrance was still being camped, so I dropped probes more than 15AU from the pilots and checked what else was in the system. I had read about scanning a system while keeping your probes out of d-scan range of a location, which seemed to work. (I kept my own d-scan cycling 2AU off the camp, to ensure I couldn’t see my own probes)

There were two unknown sites in the hole, 1 obviously the entrance I came through. I moved the probes carefully around the outskirts of the system, but the second unknown site was within 15AU of the first, so I couldn’t scan for it without alerting the other pilots. I recalled my probes and waited.

Meanwhile the camp kept dropping and gaining one member. I had at first thought they might have been warping around to check for probes in the system, but the more obvious cause was soon apparent – they closed the hole. Then probes were out on scan, followed shortly later by a couple anchored bubbles and the same ships all together on d-scan in a different location. My guess was that they were camping the new entrance.

I was in no rush, so I waited. They were rather persistent, so I assume their scout saw I was in a loki, had added me to their contact list, so knew I had not logged off. Patience would be required.

I logged on my alt and did some industry stuff. I found I had only 1 success from 5 attempts at inventing the crow BPC. Not a good start. I went and had tea. I watched the cricket on TV. Every so often I would hit scan and see them still about. Finally after a couple hours they dropped off scan, and I watched at least 1 log off within their POS shields. I gave it more time, before scanning down the only unknown site, and exiting via a N110 – back to Empire.

I just can’t seem to get lost in wormholes! Now I am out in the Citadel. I moved a few systems and docked up. I’ll go back another day.

It was a learning experience:

. Two out of three wormholes I have found so far had scouts on the Hi-Sec side

. POCO’s are the first thing to check on overview to get an idea of who you might be dealing with

. My probing and D-Scan skills are adequate enough so far

. My reading and research into the mechanics used in wormholes has been worthwhile. I felt I had a reasonable understanding of what was happening around me, and what I should be doing

. You need to be on the ball with managing your bookmarks and contact lists

. Patience will be required

So was this actually fun? Kind of, sort of, partially.

Carebear Hat

I completed my first full PI run in a number of weeks. There hasn’t been much urgency given sales have been almost non-existent for over a month now. I’ve already re-tooled some of my planets for T2 manufacturing ingredients. When I have the inclination I will have to check prices in the trade hubs – I might have to change what I am producing for profit.

I’ve finished the research of my Fuel block BPO’s. I’ve begun the conversion of my POS fuel stockpiles, but need to source some extra Heavy Water and Coolant.

Trading volumes seem very subdued at the moment. This was made worse by new entrants to the 0.01 ISK buy battles in some of the areas I operate. After a couple of weeks however they seem to have moved on. A common occurrence actually – not many preserve with the low volumes.

My training for Caldari Interceptor Invention finally finished yesterday. I’ve put my first half dozen attempts in the lab. I had not realised they would take a day each. I should see the results in a few hours’ time. I am now working on the skills to manufacture the components for those Buzzards. I assume the Crow will require similar extra training to produce.

Even though things are obviously quiet from an Industry point of view, there are still more pilots around my local area than before Crucible. The game itself seems busier,which is good to see.

The Loki Suicide is still on the cards. I made an attempt to get myself lost the other day and undocked the ship. I quickly scanned down a wormhole in my home system and warp cloaked to it at 10km. Unfortunately there was a Cormorant sitting at the entrance. A check of the pilot shows they were from a 400 man Alliance who lives out of a wormhole. Not a great idea to jump through under the eyes of a scout.

I moved to the next system over, but found probes out already. Move to the next system over. No wormholes but a couple of sites which offer the possibility of faction drops and escalations. I swapped into the Retribution and quickly run them, just getting some faction tag and ammo loot.

The business of getting lost is taking it’s time.

Meanwhile a friend who has been unsubscribed for a year has decided to remove their EVE client and stop playing forever more. They basically originally gave up after being suicide ganked – carrying T2 invention supplies on autopilot. They used the free time CCP offered up on occasion, but usually complained about some minor annoyance or another and soon stopped logging in. He was the sort of player who stubbornly wanted to play EVE his way – and had a string of losses on his killboard because of it.

I was thinking a safe Empire might have left him playing for a few more years – but then the reality of that hit me. In such a cocoon, he would generate next to no content or value to the overall game environment. The issue isn’t that EVE needed to be changed to suit him, but that he wasn’t really suited to the game.

I guess unsurprisingly, for someone who was generally focused on themselves in the game, he didn’t think to offer me all his stuff!

Invention 08

I am rather thankful for the comment on my last post, explaining why I couldn’t pin point signatures while scanning. With my filters fixed, I was able to find sites within 3 or 4 minutes effort. That makes the concept of moving through wormholes a lot more palatable.

I even managed a quick trial run into my first wormhole with the Loki. (J171813 for the record.) There were 4 POS anchored from at least two different corps, but the hole was empty and quiet. I practiced my DScan skills to identify the location of each of the POS (rusty, but kind of workable), noted they had their own POCO, then slipping quietly back into Empire Space.

I shall be starting my journey soon – although won’t be reporting on it in real time.

I’m still waiting on skill training to complete before I can start the next phase of the T2 invention plans. I do however have the Buzzard BPC to use, so I have been preparing for that. The ingredient list includes 7 manufactured goods that are created from advanced moon materials. I did the calculations, and it is around 10% cheaper if you buy the moon material and build these items yourself. (Even with ME0 BPO.) Since they account for 91% of the build cost, this saving works out to be worthwhile.

I purchased 25M worth of related BPO and some 40M worth of skill books to allow me to build these. (It has added a bit under 3 days to my training queue.) I also picked up some 120M worth of reacted moon goo, grabbed from around the Domain region at prices near or under Jita’s. This is almost 3 times more than was needed for the 5 run Buzzard BPC, but I wanted to stockpile some. I then ran them through this useful site:

http://zofu.no-ip.de/bpo

… to calculate the perfect ME (1 to 8) and balanced PE (2 to 4) that I will have to research the BPO to at some point in the future.

The spreadsheet for this T2 stuff has already become somewhat unwieldy. I am glad I have just been investigating this in small chunks. I suspect if I had of tried to cover all this off in one sitting that I might have given it away as a bad joke. So far my total expenditure on the T2 Invention / Manufacturing process has been over 500M. Earnings so far have been around 20M. That sounds bad, but the risks are not that awful. I can re-sell the majority of the things I have purchased, so the only real cost so far have been the Skill books and time. Once I can manufacture the Buzzards (in around 4 or 5 days at a guess), the profits on the 5 should total more than 50M, which is nothing to be sneezed at.

Invention 07

 

The first round of invention attempts for T2 Small Tractor beams has finished. I had 21 attempts for 15 successes, which was better than expected.

As I remarked in a comment, I am not looking to get into this in any volume. I will only be drip feeding items onto the market. I plan on selling them in blocks of 10, with 10 more kept in stock. As each block sells, I’ll replace them and then manufacture another 10. If prices drop below an acceptable margin, I won’t manufacture more until that equation changes. I won’t do more invention attempts for this module until I have almost used up the current BPCs.

Basically all the industry stuff I do on my Alts is just for interest sake, and to, through a mix of sources, end up turning over a useful profit. I don’t plan on making the effort to make billions off T2 Small Tractor Beams alone.

I have sold 3 so far – at a profit of 1.85M on each. Someone else came in and dropped the prices by 1M – so future sales should be towards the margin’s I was originally working off.

So what’s next? I am about 10 days off finishing the skills for my next invention attempts – these for Caldari Interceptors. After that will be Amarr Assault Frigates. After that I will pick something else – until I end up with a large portfolio of things I can build. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have covered my setup costs and be adding to the Corporate Wallet.

The Material Research is finishing up on my Fuel Block BPO’s, and being switched over to Time Efficiency. I picked a level of 40 for these for no other reason than that they match the perfect ME. Sometimes that is as much thought as I am willing to put into things. That will take four odd days for each.

I still can’t use two EVE clients at the same time on this system. Well – I can, but I have to close down everything else, and kill off a few services. If I don’t, Window’s crawls quickly to a halt while giving me memory warnings and asking me to kill the EVE clients. Overall the system is still reporting 300MB or so of RAM being available, and the client size isn’t that much larger than before – so I expect this resource conflict must be on some other memory buffer. Annoying, as it impacts how I play the game.

Invention 06 and Wormhole Suicide Preparations 04

As you might be able to tell, I actually got to spend a few hours in EVE on the weekend.

My first batch of 10 T2 Tractor Beams have come out of the oven. I did not rush them to the nearest trade hub for sale, but instead am selling them locally where the margins are a fair bit higher. The next batch is in the oven, but I need to source some Morphite before I do more.

So far I’ve run 12 invention jobs with 8 successes. The next 2 jobs are running now.

I had been wondering on how you select your invention target for BPO’s which have multiple choices – but as soon as you run your first job the method is obvious.  You just pick the Output Type.

I have been musing over the fact that I won’t be able to turn over things quick enough with just the one Toon. I will probably train my PI alt up to be able to do the copy jobs. I’ve also noticed the margin on selling T2 BPC’s can be quite good, so that is another option for profit.  Funny how these things just keep growing…

I haven’t forgotten my Wormhole suicide plans. I picked up a somewhat cheap Loki on Contract. I need to swap some of the fittings around, but it should save me about 50M on the final setup. My only cheap clones (with +3’s) were already in 0.0, so I bundled the Loki into my carrier, and jumped it and my cheapest clone back to Empire. Now I need to decide on how I am going to set it up, and then collect the required parts. I’ll start the journey off in Empire or Low Sec.

My carrier jump was slightly more eventful than planned. Even though I have used that Cyno spot successfully over a dozen times, I landed 5km off the station. I had to quickly calculate which would be faster – warp away and back again, or slow boat it. Slow boat won – but it seemed to take forever to dock.

I suspect my T3 suicide might annoy people. There have apparently been a couple (mild) comments on the Alliance killboard recently about a number of expensive Corp losses. While in reality the Alliance is pretty chilled about such things, there are still a few people who keep an eye on the losses.

The War Dec was finished with barely a loss and no fights to speak off. The aggressors were a recognisable and skilled group, so I had expected more.

Regardless, both these projects are keeping me busy in game.

Invention 05

I’ve had 5 successes from 6 attempts so far.  A good start.

The ingredients required for the T2 Small Tractor Beam are relatively straight forward:

. 1 T2 BPC
. 8 types of minerals
. 2 T1 Goods
. 1 PI Product
. 1 Product built from 3 Moon Materials

The BPC costs I have already discussed, and on average over the long run they should be around 90K for each module.

The Minerals I have in stock, but I’ve put up 250M worth of buy orders to keep in front of that demand. My alt is also contributing a little from her 10 minute mining sessions here and there.

I have kicked off the manufacturing jobs for the T1 goods (R.A.M – Energy Tech and the T1 Small Tractor Beams). I had some R.A. M already in stock, and picked up 10 tractor beams off the market from Amarr to do my first run with. (The cost was within 5% of what I was making them for anyway.)

I am not currently making the PI product (Transmitters), although might consider doing so. It accounts for only 2.4% of the build price, so no need to go overboard on that. I picked up a supply to cover over 100 modules in Amarr at sell prices.

The Moon Material based product (Laser Focusing Crystals) I have less options with. On current prices I can save around 10% by buying the raw materials, and building the ingredient myself. Given this makes up 9.5% of the build price, it might be worth looking at. I grabbed the BPO in case I went down that path.

So the first batch of 10 is now in the oven. A very conservative build price of this batch (ignoring the cost in the skills I purchased) is 1.55M each. Current sale prices in Amarr are around 2.19M. Assuming I can sell for that price, I would be looking at a profit of around 640,000 ISK per Module.

I am surprised at the margins to be honest. My actual profits will be higher than this, as I am sourcing many of the items with buy orders, saving 10% or so.

Why are my costs inflated? Because I make an allowance for Opportunity costs when I calculate the price of manufacture. If I mine the minerals, it doesn’t mean I have got them for free. By using them as an ingredient, I have forgone the ISK I could have made selling them on the market. There isn’t much use crowing about how much profit you make on an item, when it works out you would have made much more by selling the ingredients separately. In this case, there is quite a good margin in the end good.

So is this the ISK nirvana I noticed someone remark on my Corp’s forum the other day? (Who seemed to be a relatively new character, and assuming they would be rolling in ISK once they got into T2 manufacturing.) Yes and no.

I will have to make and sell around 350 T2 Small Tractor Beams before I cover my startup costs, and actually make a profit. (Although those costs will be apportioned over more items as I continue my training.) I’m already in a position to make 50 of them, so it probably won’t take all that long.

But that profit isn’t quick and easy to come by. I have to keep creating BPC’s, sourcing the invention ingredients, and turning those jobs over. I will have a lot of buy orders up for the manufacturing ingredients – which will require monitoring and tweaking, plus of course hauling to collect them all. Three of the ingredients are built off BPO – so I have to either build or source them off the market. While moving everything I am at risk of being suicide ganked. Finally I have to combine them all into the final module, and play the 0.01 ISK war to sell them while hoping the prices don’t collapse.

Given the relaxed way I approach the game, I expect I will make a profit in T2 manufacturing, but it won’t leave me rolling in ISK. It should however keep me amused, and adds another dynamic / element to my EVE experience.

Invention 04

Due to my fuel block research and copy jobs, I only had 2 slots available when my skill training for my first T2 Small Tractor Beam invention attempt completed late last night. I kicked off 2 jobs and went to bed. This morning I delivered my first success.

The next two jobs are in the lab, and I am starting to look at sourcing and costing the ingredients.

Invention Investigations 03

The skills are slowly ticking over and the BPC coming in – so it is time to get a little more serious.

For T2 Invention attempts you need:

. The required skills

. A blueprint copy of the T1 item

. One specific data interface

. Two specific types of datacores

. Access to an invention slot

 

Optionally, you can also adjust your chances and the end BPC attributes with:

. A named T1 item that you are researching for

. A suitable decryptor

I also probably helps to assume things are not black and white – as Serpentine Logic’s comment to my last post suggested.

 

Skills

I will start with the T2 Small Tractor Beams.  I have the required skills now, but I was planning to get rank 4 for each of them.  I did not however use concrete facts behind that decision – it just seemed like a good idea.  After a Google search I found this useful Invention Chance calculator:

http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/invention_chance.php

Inventing T2 modules has a 40% base chance of success.  You need at least rank 1 in the appropriate encryption and datacore skills, so in reality you will have a 42% chance of success.  A quick check at rank 4 shows the chance increases to 48.3%.  That seems a worthwhile starting point.

If I was to spend 60 odd days to train up rank 5 in the three related skills, the chance of success would increase to 50.4%.  That’s nice, but not really worth chasing after given this is just a casual effort.  So I have about a fortnight of training before I will make my first invention attempt.

 

BPC

I have some 700 odd BPO in my library, so can source the majority of the BPC I might need myself.  Very few however are duplicates, so if I wanted to get into this in any sort of volume I would need to buy extra BPO to generate copies from.

I have generated 20 max run Small Tractor Beam BPC already, and just kicked off a second job to create 20 more of them.  That will be ready in a bit over a fortnight.  I can see some forward planning and patience will be required when using public slots of this.

My initial reading suggests that T2 Module BPC will have 1 to 10 runs – depending on how many runs were on the T1 Module BPC used.  I hope because I am using max run BPC that I will get 10 run copies upon a success.  I guess it could also mean I have a chance of 1 to 10 run – where as if I used 50% max run BPC I might only have a chance of 1 to 5 runs.  I guess I will find out soon.

 

Data Interface

I scourged the hodgepodge of stuff I have collected over the years, and found I already had 9 of the 12 invention data interfaces.  Of course these were mostly just the cheap ones.  For my experiment I was missing the Occult Ship Data Interface for the Amarr Assault Frigate.  You only need one of these – they are spat out immediately upon the start of the invention attempt, and can be re-used.  I didn’t bother doing much research, and just picking it up for 27M in Amarr.  I already had an Occult Data Interface for the T2 Tractor Beam and the Esoteric Ship Data Interface for the Caldari Interceptor.

 

Datacores

I need 1 High Energy Physics and 1 Laser Physics datacore for each invention attempt for the tractor beams.  I had a few in stock, but basically just picked up enough in Amarr to try 50 invention attempts for each of the 3 items I am looking at.  This cost 73M in Amarr on sell orders.  I could have saved 10% if I waited around with Buy orders, but I wasn’t interested in spending the time.  I split my purchases and cleared them out of the main Amarr station in two lots, to lessen the chance of being ganked.

 

Invention slot

There are plenty free at the moment, but I have noticed all being used up at other times.  I’ll just have to put up with whatever situation I find when I am ready.

 

The Optional

There are no named T1 versions of the three things I am looking to invent, so I don’t need to worry about those.

The Decryptors will be harder to work out if they are worth it or not.  I suspect not for modules.

In Amarr, Small Tractor Beams are selling for 1M, T2 Small tractor beams for 2.3M.  Given you will need a T1 version of the module to build the T2 that means very roughly you need to be able to invent and create the T2 module for under 1.3M.  I haven’t looked at the manufacturing costs – but that is the starting figure I will be keeping in the back of my mind.

Assuming I read correctly, a max run BPC should mean each success will create a 10 run T2 BPC with ME -4 and PE of -4.  Each attempt will cost around 450K in datacores.  Assuming near on 50% success over time, the basic cost of each success will be 900K, or 90K ISK per module.  If I get serious I can lower my datacore prices to buy prices, which would give roughly a 10% saving.  Maybe more if I shopped around.

I have five decryptor choices for the Tractor Beam invention.

The Cicular Logic reduces the success chance by 0.6 and ME by -2, for an additional 9 runs.  Or – given their current price, my rough calculations would be that it would increase the average invention cost per module from 90K to 820K, and drop ME to -6.  That doesn’t make sense.

The Sacred Manifesto increases the maximum run by 2 and the ME by 1.  Based on current costs, my rough calculation is that it would increase the average cost per module from 90K to 825K, and increase the ME to -3.  Given I need to invent and manufacture within 1.3M, you would discount this one as well.

The Formation Layout, Classic Doctrine and War Strategon all increase the average invention cost per module to well past 1.3M, so it doesn’t matter what ME improvements they provide, I can’t make a profit using them with Tractor Beams.

 

Summary

I hope to get around a 50% success rate for my Invention attempts on T2 Small Tractor Beams, at an average cost of 90K per unit on a 10 run BPC.  I won’t be using decryptors.   I have all datacores required for 50 attempts, and just need to wait a couple weeks for skills to run down and the extra BPC to be generated.

Given the initial review on decryptors, they don’t seem worth using for module invention.

 

Total spend on this experiment so far – skill books and invention supplies, is around 152M ISK.

Next steps –keep a focus on the skills required for the T2 Frigate invention, while starting to look at the manufacturing process and costs.  I assume I will have more skills to train, and probably more BPO to buy.

 

The missed T2 Invention Post

In the last days of 2011 I decided I would bite the bullet and try my hand at T2 Invention and building.  These first steps are not aimed at profitability – but just to understand and try out the game mechanic.

I arbitrarily decided try to build T2 Small Tractor Beams, Caldari Interceptors and Amarr Assault Frigates – simply as I knew my main could make use of them, regardless how much they cost me to make.

While my main has many of the required skills already – I decided to concentrate my efforts around Alt 2 – my Empire Industry Toon.

Continuing my laissez-faire approach, I didn’t start by doing any reading.  I just looked at the BPO for Small Tractor Beams, Condors and Punishers, clicked on the Invention Tab, and set up an EVEMon skill plan based on what I was missing.

 

The primary hits were Science V, Engineering V and Mechanics V.  I then had Amarr and Caldari Encryption Methods, Amarrian and Caldari Startship Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, High Energy Physics and Laser Physics to get.  The skill plan was some 45 days, just arbitrarily selecting rank IV in all of those as I had memories that it impacts your invention chances.   (It does.)  I had a couple of these skill books lying around, but had to buy most of them off the market.  This cost 52M ISK.

I knew you needed BPC to invent off, so I moved the 3 BPO to a public science station and kicked off copy jobs.  Again I had vague memories that max run copies might impact the number of runs an invented T2 BPC would have – so that is what I did.  (It does and it doesn’t.  It impacts invention of modules and ammo, but not the Frigate copies I was making.)

So far in the process I have trained Science V and Engineering V, and Mechanics V finishes within the day.  The Encryption method skills are at rank II, as are High Energy Physics and Laser Physics.  I have 20 max run Small Tractor Beam BPC, and in a fortnight will have the Condor and Punisher copies (13 of each).

Meanwhile I also picked up a 5 run, 20ME, 0PE BPC for a Buzzard for a couple Mil.  Interestingly, and if I read things right, that would have had to of come from a Buzzard BPO.  To build those I will need Electronic Engineering – so that has been added to my skill queue, and I will have to spend another 10M for the book.

Finally – a little late in the process, I read this:

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Invention

 

So things have started off ok – with the only wasted effort so far being on copying max run Frigate BPCs.  I will get the various skills to rank IV before I try my first invention.

Next I need to look at the ingredients used in invention, see what I have collected by chance over time, and start filling in the gaps.  I might as well organise whatever I am missing from the 12 data interfaces.  I can see either spread sheets in my near future, or using some of the invention tools to work out where decryptor’s are best used, and where they are not.  The items I am starting with don’t have meta variations, so that doesn’t come into the equation.

Inventing these is actually going to be the easy part (relatively speaking).  The manufacturing is going to require even more planning on how best to either build or source the ingredients.  I can see this is going to keep me busy for quite a while.