My Astrahus build is underway. This was started by my main character last year but was abandoned when I realised it would tie him down for too long in the one location. I used the Raitaru spreadsheet as a template. The minerals are now covered..
.. and I have started the long process of PI extraction and processing.
It has been a much quicker and easier project to kick off using the resources and knowledge I gained in building the Raitaru.
It has been a week, maybe two, since I undocked and did something in EVE. I can’t remember exactly.
Today I had a look again at the ingredients required to build that Astrahus. I’d made a start by doing some random mining sessions – using a local belt and a mining anomaly that popped up one day. I had also kicked off a couple Planetary Colonies. The endeavour had however lacked the attention to detail I usually put into such things.
Reviewing the BPC-pack I had purchased, I could see I had to get Zydrine and Megactye. With a bit of patience and luck, I can find Zydrine in High Sec Ore anomalies containing Jaspet, Hemorphite or Hedbergite. To get Megactye I’d need to venture into Low Sec Ore anomalies, Wormhole Space or Null Sec to mine.
To that end I spent a bit of time and worked out fittings for a couple Venture Mining Frigates and a Prospect Exploration Frigate. I’ll keep an eye out for suitable Wormhole links, and do some suicide, sorry, Ninja mining. I’ll need to move some near empty clones into the area first.
I went all the way to Dodixie to get a Prospect. The prices were excessive in Jita. One system from home I stumbled across an unexploited small Ore site, and was able to make a start on my Zydrine requirements.
A local NPC rat soon turned up. The Prospect has no offensive capabilities, so I assumed I would have to just tank it. Instead of firing however it just orbited the same Ore I was orbiting, without opening fire. When I returned later with a Skiff it immediately attacked. Not sure what was going on there.
The Mining Ledger was able to show that my haphazard efforts so far had netted 284,000m3 of Ore, worth a bit over 46M ISK. I realised I had made a hash of my initial spreadsheet, and I in fact had no idea how much I had to mine for all the Structure Parts. I suspect most of my work however will be in PI.
To that end I also spent a bit of time on my Planetary colonies. It ended up hurting my brain through. I started a third planet, and continued working on various components I know I will need. I think I’ve almost got the basics covered for the first P4 items required for the first structure construction part.
My skills are slowly continuing to tick over. Interceptors V, Expedition Frigates V and Electronic Attack Ships V completed since I last remember mentioning it. I am currently working on ORE Industrial V. I am sitting on 222M SP apparently.
Now I need to get back to the spreadsheet.
*Edit*
My Astrahus Mineral Needs Met:
27% Tritanium
19% Pyerite
4% Mexallon
59% Isogen
100% Nocxium
46% Zydrine
0% Megacyte
A bit further along than I thought. PI however is much more of a worry.
I spent part of yesterday carefully going over the Citadel Patch notes.
https://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-eve-online-citadel
There was this glorious entry for version 1.3:
“Projector and Doomsday super-weapons no longer affect ships in invulnerable states (POS shields, tethered, gate jump cloak)”
Can you imagine the delight of the Super pilot who first worked that out?
There was, as I expected, not that much of note for my particular style of game play. That is not to say there is nothing for solo players. I am aware, particularly after reading some more enthusiastic bloggers, that there is the potential for a great deal of game content.
I checked through all the new BPO but I did not purchase any. I’m not interested in getting into the manufacture of citadels and their fittings – although it could keep a solo manufacturer busy for quite a while. Similarly, solo resource gatherers could be looking at increased demand and prices if citadels really hit off. They are also viable for a solo player to anchor and use – particularly as I expect I am in the minority with my strong dislike of their defence and unanchor mechanics.
I’m not sure how long we will have to wait to see how successful they are. Plausibly a year or more.
Similarly, there would be profits to be made producing the new Capital modules, especially in the early days. I have dabbled in various parts of capital manufacturing, but decided in the end it did not really suit. I also passed on buying these new BPO.
The patch notes had links to the EVE Online Help Center; a resource I haven’t really been aware of. The structure pages were easy to read and a good starting point. The site covers some of the game play information I thought was lost when the EVE Wiki was shutdown. The site is worth remembering:
https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us
With changes to in space objects you will of course want to double check your overview settings:
As expected, the new structure objects were not selected by default. Strangely though the Force Auxiliaries did seem to be.
You might also want to add the new structure browser to your Neocom. I expect once Citadels find their way across New Edan that this little app will get a lot of use.
I’m not a huge fan of the new v5 station hangers. I initially had some stuttering performance issues, but they seem to have been resolved (either by CCP or by resource downloads finishing). While I don’t mind the overall look, it just seems easier to see flaws in the various textures, at least in the Amarr stations I am tending to use.
The first stage of the tax increases are now in. My sell off allowed me to avoid around 1B ISK in extra tax, so was worth doing. I think I am down to under 5B ISK of assets now earmarked to sell, although I could (and may) cull even harder. I am still of the mindset, right or wrong, that moving forward it will pay to be able to be nimbler in game. Destructible homes won’t matter quite so much when you have little to store.
The new 900K cost to jump between clones in NPC stations is in – as I was reminded when I had to pay it yesterday as I jumped my alt out of NPC Null. Meh.
I’m reading the occasional complaint about the new NPC Capital ships. People are finding they can lock quickly, scram from quite a distance, and apply heavy damage to small hulls, so they are losing PVE ships to them. It will be interesting to see if this will just require an adjustment to solo fit and tactics, or if it ends up being if you rat in Null you need to do so with the backing of a group. That later result would be a nerf for solo play.
I did run around and make sure I had all the new skills injected and trained to basic levels. These were mostly structure or fighter related. I might not plan to use them, but it always pays to keep your options open.
I noticed last week that CCP said the refund of SP and ISK spent on the Force Auxiliary Skills has been delayed. I am not sure when that is expected.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6457659#post6457659
I do find the new tactical overlay is cool enough.
I haven’t quite got the panning and moving option working reliably, but I can see – for the first time in almost a decade of playing, that I will start using it for better situational awareness. It goes well with the option to now press Q then click on a spot in space to fly to and stop. That would have worked well in those event sites were I would try to stop my ship where the final rat spawned, but kept over flying it if I wasn’t paying attention.
Last of all I would like to flag a post by Neville Smit – on the notion of #occupyneweden
http://nevillesmit.com/blog/2016/5/1/occupy-new-eden
There is a lot of merit in the idea, and a lot of the manifesto I agree with. I do truly believe CCP thinks they understand and are catering for that 85% of pilots outside of Null Sec, but I find their actions suggest that they simply don’t get us at all.
Having said that – I’m on the fence with how much I should support it. Part of the reason I’ve been able to play this game for so long is that – in the end, after having my say here, I try to step back from the drama and concentrate on just what I can personally do to adjust and adapt.
I am not sure I want to leap into something that comes with the clear likelihood of aggravation and frustration. I’m not sure I see EVE is in so much trouble that it needs to be fought for – just yet.
I will have to think on it.
Is it my imagination or does there seem to have been an uptick in the number of blog posts and news articles about EVE players being out and about interacting with spaceship violence? It has been good to see.
(You won’t find any of that here though.)
My main finished training Jump Drive Calibration V. I missed the occasion as with the new skill queue I had lined up a couple months of training and wasn’t paying it any attention. It seems to be one of those rite of passage skills.
He is now training up Outpost construction. I don’t have any reason to be training it, and it is highly unlikely I will ever use it, but it amuses me.
I have basically completed researching my BPO collection – some 733 of them. I have a dozen odd blueprint jobs still running, but everything will be done within the week and nothing is waiting. I haven’t got everything to ME 10 / TE 10 – where it had no benefit or to get from TE 9 to TE 10 would take more than a fortnight for an insignificant improvement, but everything is where I want it to be. Overall it took less time than expected.
I am now sitting down to look closely at the 553 BPO I was gifted. As TurAmarth ElRandir mentioned recently, it is not always easy to know how best to deal with gifted wealth from a departing player. I had put it aside for six months to facilitate its easy return incase AD changed his mind. With that anniversary recently passing I will merge the collection with my own, update any research on them as required, and list anything I might be missing.
I should remark on the fact the gift has certainly impacted my game in a positive way. I used it to fuel the POS I am using for my BP research. I would not have done that otherwise – and unexpectedly it gave me the excuse to log in daily to keep the jobs turning over, and I have enjoyed the POS investigations and overall process more than I expected. It has also left me to be a little freer with my own ISK, and I’ve spent considerable time looking at ship hulls I might not have bothered with, such as the Rorqual, Widow and Garmur. That has been its biggest lesson actually – to be freer with my ISK. You gain more enjoyment from the game by spending your ISK (within reason) than just watching it accumulate in the bank.
Right now I am using it to revisit invention and T2 manufacturing, and I am in the early stages of planning to build my first capital hull. I feel guilty that I am not making more of it, but I have obviously been extremely busy in RL and I appreciate that I am still managing to play at all.
My effort to review all my ship hulls and their fittings is progressing slowly but surely. Some were already in the right spot, some require days of EFT and in space testing. All my Orca’s now carry Hull tanks, which makes them a lot more robust. I have a couple of Falcon’s sitting in the Corporate Hangers with a new fit – the 18th version since I started to use them. I still have a lot of work in that area, but it is something suited to my limited and sporadic game time.
I do still interact with space. I am generally clearing all exploration content from my home system once every other day, or will do the occasional mission or the like to test a ship fitting. Just last night I cheekily moved 400M ISK worth of fittings out of Jita in my hauling Exequror so I can test out fitting variations on an Arazu.
It is all keeping me amused and interested.
(And if you do decide to return AD, I should be able to return the gift in one form or another!)
I got the heads up on when the Crius update file was available on Twitter, so I was patched and ready to log in when the servers returned.
I can’t say I was feeling any particular excitement about Crius, but I wanted to grab a moon in a 0.9 system which happened to be rather close to a Trade Hub. I figured I might have some competition. With that in mind I had already scouted out a couple moons and placing book marks around them. My main alt was logged off nearby in a Blockade Runner with a small POS. I figured that ship would allow me to move around quickly, and scout out other moons cloaked if required. My main was also nearby in a Deep Space Transport holding fuel for the POS.
I logged in during the early minutes of Crius and had the system to myself. I warped down to the moon and tried to anchor the POS. It wouldn’t allow me because my alt did not have Charters in the hold. That will teach me for separating the POS and fuel into different hulls. A quick scramble and that was rectified, and the POS started to online.
I still had the system to myself.
I then sat down to throw a few modules on the POS, and realised within minutes that I couldn’t do what I wanted with it. I hadn’t really done my preparations for this.
Some research, checking of prices, a purchase off the market, and a run to and from the Trade Hub had a shiny new (or I guess it could have been well worn) Medium POS.
I checked my backup moon and it was still available. Actually – I still had the system to myself.
I got the second POS anchored and online, and dropped the modules I needed for my playing – a compression array, a reprocessing array, a design laboratory and a research laboratory. I updated my overview (the Compression Array is a new object, and so not selected by default), looked at the new Industry interface, took a couple screen shots, and then I was done for the night.
I still had the system to myself.
(Two more POS were anchored overnight – so people made use of the changes, but not quite as many as I had expected. I’ll decide later on if I end up with a Small or Medium POS. I’ve left both online for at least a month.)
The 6th of 6 Industry update overview blogs have been released.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/industry-teams
This is not at all what I thought teams would be about when I first saw the topic, although it was apparent where it was going after reading earlier blogs.
I’m not sure what to think. How do players incorporate these sorts of variables into their spread sheets? Will it really add something worthwhile to the dynamic of the game? I imagine teams with benefit for high volume, high margin type objects would be carefully targeted by larger scale industrialists who work out exactly at what pricing point they are worthwhile, and when they are not. The more casual player won’t think much about them, or might grab the teams no one else cares for – for amusement value more than anything else.
Industry has gone from more simple, easier to access after the first couple Dev blogs, to more random and harder to fathom by the end of the six. It is going to take a lot of forum reading to understand how these changes will really impact things.
The fourth Industry blog is out – covering changes to ME and TE.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/researching-the-future/
It seems a logical change that should be more accessible and easier to understand. If you understand the current skill training structure, you should understand how the ME and TE research works. My thoughts:
. Casual BPO ownership should be easier to get into
. There should be more, and cheaper BPC available on contract
. This quote is worth flagging – “Everything is on the table in terms of finding a reasonable solution that meets everyone’s legitimate concerns, so please approach the feedback in terms of telling us what you’d like to see rather than simply expressing frustration with the changes as described here. We’re not done with this yet!” I have seen a number of such statements from CCP over the last week. It is suggesting that the core of these Industrial changes are not meant to be confrontational. That is important.
. It will be interesting to see how the transition works from the granular old BPO researched levels to the new rigid 10 rank system. I have some 700+ researched T1 BPO, most with carefully selected ME levels that maximise benefits from the minimal amount of research time. If your current ME is 95% effective, will the blueprint end up with a rank 9 or 10 in the new system?
. I can see a large and long flood of BPO research being done after the changes as people mindlessly research everything to rank 10. Depending on how the new scaling cost system works, this will likely have a heavier impact on the more casual players out there. Corporations with the resources to run and share a research POS will have an advantage.
. Casual manufacturers might have more competition generally. If CCP get the design right, this will continue into the future.
. There will likely be some nasty exceptions – probably around T2 items and those with special manufacturing rules. CCP seem to be very amenable to addressing these if they are constructively highlighted.
I hope I didn’t come across as alarmist in my recent post about the industry changes and the possible Nerf to Empire space. I thought I was just calling myself out for missing key information in the DEV Blog, calling Jester out for thinking the average Empire Industrialist would consider the solution was to forge their way into Null, and just remarking on the need to wait for more details.
Personally I had assumed this was going to follow a somewhat well-trodden path with CCP. They would announce partial details of changes that could have far reaching impact; people would get upset, rant and rave, then CCP would clarify a situation that wasn’t nearly as bad as was being imagined. That way they implement a Nerf that people are almost thankful for.
(Who would have thought I get called cynical at times.)
However – if this does end up being a major Nerf for Hi-Sec Industry, I am not actually that concerned. I don’t see such a change making any real difference to the population spread in game, and I can’t imagine the volumes of goods produced in Null suddenly flooding the Hi-Sec markets. Instead I see people re-adjusting their spreadsheets, finding the next best methods to transport ingredients, and charging higher prices. The manufacturers in Null – even if they are able to produce volumes that have a market impact, won’t drive down prices. They will just continue to play the 0.01ISK games and take higher profits.
There will be individual areas where this won’t be accurate – but overall, I think people will continue to play this game the way they want to.
I am actually more focused on the UI and process changes to manufacturing and refining – and hoping the end result is more new players finding careers in Industry, and hanging around for longer.
When I read through the DEV blog announcing the theme of the next expansion, I assumed the cost of the slotless stations would be based on a revamp of the currently insignificant station fees. How bad could it be?
With lots of people up in arms about it, I re-read the Blog and noticed this bit in bold.
“Expect costs ranging from 0% to 14% of the base item being produced for the most extreme case”
If you are manufacturing T1 items for income, a tax / fee / cost of 14% of its base value would almost ensure there would be no profit in it. I can understand why dedicated manufacturers are worried.
We don’t know at this point how this sliding scale will work, and what differences there will be between Empire, Low Sec, Null Sec and POS. For that we have to wait for a DEV Blog from CCP Greyscale.
(Who? Did they say Greyscale? The DEV synonymous with ideas and ideologies that are hostile towards the solo empire dwelling carebear? This could go well…)
Jester’s recent blog post relates to these changes. I don’t always agree with him, but I tend to find Jester is knowledgeable, calm, rational and able to communicate well.
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/traitor.html
He flags that we should be concerned, and suggests industry players join a Null Sec Renter Alliance, grab a jump freighter, and profit.
If these changes fall into a substantial nerf to Empire manufacturing, how many people do you think would follow Jester’s suggestion? As they say, interesting times.
So the summer expansion is going to be Industry based.
The first Dev blog a few weeks ago was about reprocessing.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/reprocess-all-the-things
The second Dev blog released now is about manufacturing.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/building-better-worlds/
More DEV blogs are expected to cover the Industry UI, Research, Job Cost Scaling and working in Teams.
There is a lot to the latest blog.
They are resorting and labelling the Manufacture and Research section of the Market into something that is more logical to navigate.
The damage done to R.A.M and R.Db manufacturing inputs will be removed. Instead they will just become a standard ingredient item.
With the capping of Item and Ship refining at 55%, they will be removing the concept of “Extra Material” during manufacturing.
Somewhat contentious, they will be removing the slot system for stations and star bases. Instead of 50 manufacturing slots in a factory station, an infinite number of jobs can be submitted. They will be replaced by a scaling system – with costs to submit jobs going from 0 to 14% depending on how utilised the station is. If you are a full scale manufacturer that means you will want to move your jobs to a quiet station. For people just making small volumes of stuff for themselves, that means they should be able to use these services any time they want without waiting. It will also mean BPO research should become much easier and more accessible.
If that wasn’t big enough, the next comment is that they are looking at allowing POS to be anchored anywhere in Hi-Sec (aside a handful of protected systems) without standing requirements. I expect there will be a run on moons when this is first allowed. I might even re-anchor a POS or two as place holders. (Surely they will also be allowing some mechanism to hack or remove such things though?) There will be changes to the various POS modules to come in line with this new approach, and you will need to place BPO in the POS to do research on them going forward.
Last of all the Dev blog has an image of what the new Industry UI might look like. Pretty…
Very interesting and – I might actually be feeling a little excitement about the next expansion.
This would be one of the biggest DEV Blogs for Industry players for quite some time.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/reprocess-all-the-things/
I expect the Blog sphere will be filled with commentary, and it is going to take a while to come to grips with everything in it. My strongest initial thoughts:
. It really nerfs the refining skills, making it far less likely for the average player to train them to V
. The industrialist is really going to have to be more careful about what they build for sale
. Effectively halving the refined value of ships and modules is going to have a dramatic impact on the market floor for anything with lower turnover volumes.
. The new Refining window mockups look great
. They could have done more to differentiate rates between Empire, low, null and POS
Overall I don’t mind the direction – I just suspect things need to be tweaked though.
CCP have released details of the Odyssey expansion resource rebalancing.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/resource-shakeup-blog
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/resource-companion-blog
I had been wondering how they would try to address this – particularly given the cries of nerf Empire which seem to be so prevalent. For the most part however they concentrated on buffing Low and Null Sec.
Ore Mining –
They have buffered the Tritanium, Pyerite, Mexallon and Isogen volumes in some of the Ores found outside of Empire – making them both worth noticeably more, and possibly making it more viable to mine your requirements for these outside of Empire.
Hidden belts will no longer be searched for via Exploration – they will be available via the onboard system scanner. Reading between the lines I expect this will also include an Empire nerf, by ensuring you can’t find these boosted asteroids in any Empire sites.
Ice Mining –
They are removing static Ice Belts. You will find Ice in Anomalies, spawned in systems that previously had Ice Belts (excluding some removed for good in Amarr aligned empire space). These sites will respawn every 4 hours – to allow their use across all timezones. The empire sites will contain enough resources for around 80% of the games fuel needs. Oddly they are halving the cycle time of Ice Harvesters by 50%. It is an empire Nerf, but not one the average player is likely to complain about.
Player Outposts –
They are substantially boosting the number of installations available on all player-built outposts, making it much more viable to use them for all your manufacturing needs. I think this should have been done a long time ago.
Moon mining and T2 Production –
There are changes to reduce the Technetium bottlenecks, and to more evenly spread the four rarest moon minerals around. I can’t comment on the full impact of these changes, although I do like that they are making each R64 mineral more strongly associated with each Empire’s Tech Two ships. I like that dynamic.
Null Sec Anomalies
Another area I can’t fully comment on – but it reads as a bit of rebalancing and adding warp disrupting NPC’s into any high level anomalies currently lacking them.
I am sure there will be plenty of unhappy people, but for the average casual empire player these changes, aside initial disruptions and price fluctuations, won’t really change their game too much. I’m not entirely sure you will see anything but minor population shifts, but the changes should make it more viable for those already out of Empire to be more self-reliant.
I’m rather casual with my trade and manufacturing. Every so often I will eyeball history in some subsection of the market, and use a spread sheet and price check alts in the trade hubs to identify possibly profitable areas.
One of the more recent areas I identified was that there were no Survey Probes on the market in my region – and hadn’t been for some time. I put up some test batches with high profit margins, and was surprised that these turned over reasonably well. I had the market all to myself for a couple of weeks, but then was hit by 3 or 4 people joining in competition.
This has happened to me so many times over the years that I don’t believe it is always a coincidence. Now that I am dabbling in some of the EVE related 3rd party industry tools, I am finding some provide reports on the most profitable items to manufacture based on all sorts of definable restrictions, such as by region. It wouldn’t surprise me if people just hit a refresh button once a week on a report, and survey probes popped up in my region as returning margins of 100%+.
Is this kind of cheating – or just being smarter than I have been?
My foray into T1 Logistic Frigates was not really worth the effort. So many people did this that the market is still priced well below the new build costs, and the competition rather high on very low volumes. I am being more aggresive on my pricing to try and clear some of the stock. The T2 Logistic Cruisers have fared a little better – aside the never loved Augoror, which mostly languish unsold. I also updated my pricing on these. I won’t make a loss, but it could hardly be considered worth the effort.
I have been reasonably happy with how the stock of containers is running down. Interestingly given the relatively high margins on most of them, people have not moved in with lower priced stock. If anything they are pricing them even higher.
Overall January was a good month in my little backwater. I made 1B ISK in profit – which is the equivalent of 1/3 of my 2012 profits, and all of my 2011 profits. On top of that I picked up two months of POS fuel at 1/2 price, and a year of heavily discounted Star Base Charters. All while Real Life was being painful.
Real life has been a pain again, so EVE sessions have only been sporadic.
I did my first PI run in 3 months. Most planet resources were in the same place / under extraction heads as my last run. It doesn’t look like I have much competition in my little corner of Empire. I’m still only producing Robotics and Coolant. I have just about finished the PE research on all of my POS related BPO, so will consider producing some of those, more just for the interest.
One of the systems in my Trade zone must have a Dust Starter station. It is odd suddenly finding an extra 100+ glowing blue dust helmets displayed in local.
I’m not picking up any hulls with my buy orders for Tier 1 Battlecruisers (which will be more expensive to build after the next patch, and likely more useful). They are not something that has historically turned over well anyway, so I can’t say I am surprised.
I have picked up a dozen Ventures at 200K ISK buy orders, but only sold a handful of them at around 700K. Only minor profits there, but enough to keep me amused.
I have been flipping mining barge hulls lately. I tend to come and go from this area of the market as competition really ebbs and flows. At the moment I am making around 19M on each Covetor I flip, which turn around quickly. I was flipping Hulks for a while – but was making less profit on them. Procurers also have a nice profit margin – but they don’t sell particularly well.
I checked the rig market out for the common ones I always need. The margins on manufacturing seem to be around 10 to 20% – although there is a fair bit of competition. I probably won’t bother.
I’ve been playing around with EVE ISK per Hour recently:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eveiph/
My initial use has been pretty simplistic – but I need to start checking out tools like this so that I can speed up my research into what items are worth manufacturing or trading in. My old spreadsheet is getting too big and complicated.
My desk is a mess, covered with paper work delayed by too much time lately spent playing EVE, and copious hand written notes with in game To-do lists, POS and Moon Research, Market notes and so on. I really need to do a cleanup, but not tonight.
I noticed the price of the new Destroyers had dropped to just above build cost in Amarr. Seems the gold rush has ended. The profit margins are still around 200% in my backwater, but the sales have dropped off and it won’t be long before people knock that price on the head. It costs me a little over 1.4M to build each of the destroyers on a non-researched BPO.
I took a Corax out. It seems like a fun little hull for PVE, although a little awkward to fit. I picked up 20M in loot from a Sansha Forsaken Hideaway. (One of the anomalies you can pick up on your onboard scanner which can drop a Faction Frigate in the last spawn, as it did this time.) It did look slightly awkward in space though, as if its alignment time did not match its shape.
Still like the Missile effects
My first run fit using whatever I had spare:
[Corax, PVE Play 01]
Damage Control II
Ballistic Control System II
1MN Afterburner II
Small Shield Booster II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Salvager II
Rocket Launcher II, Inferno Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Inferno Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Inferno Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Inferno Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Inferno Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Inferno Rocket
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
I must admit I was really impressed with the visuals and sound during this post Retribution NPC’ing. I am sure I’ll soon be zoomed back out and ignoring them, but they should help with the new player “wow” factor and subsequent retention.
Initial sales of my ship hulls and containers have been surprisingly ok, particularly as some are still competing against pre-retribution priced stock.
Now that the rush is over, I need to focus on the little things. Tonight I start with buying for my various Toons the new skills Mining Frigate, Radar, Magnetometric, Ladar and Gravimetric Sensor Compensation, Salvage Drone Operation and Micro Jump Drive. They are all at a nearby school station.
Next I need to source all container BPO’s. They are under Deployable Ship Equipment in the market place, which is not immediately obvious. The original DEV Blog included the corporations who sold them – none of which had stations in my home region. I hunt down high sec stations for Amarr Constructions and Ishukone Corporation in Domain, Roden Shipyards in Sinq Laison, and Boundless Creations in Metropolis. It ends up being a 70 odd jump trip to gather them all, although I notice the Survey Probes are for sale in Perimeter as I pass through, so grab those and mark another item off my To-do list.
I contemplate seeding them in my local region, but I can’t be bothered. Why make it easy for the competition.
As I warp across the galaxy I ponder the use of some of these containers. What I would like to see is a container that is subdivided into sections; displayed as tabs, such as having all your BPO in one container, but split into sections for ship hulls, modules, ammunition and such. I think I have mused over that before.
The price of the Venture Blueprint is down to under 4M in Jita. I grab two for 4.5M in Amarr on my way through to tick yet another item off the To-do list. I expect it will get even cheaper, but I’m happy to pay that price to have it now and start the ME research. I already have a Venture – grabbed by running the Industry Tutorial Chain of quests after a tip on CCP’s Facebook page.
I have to stop at another station to offload my BPO temporarily before docking in Amarr, so that I don’t look like a target when I undock from the trade hub. I remember to go back and pick the rest of them up afterwards.
I throw up some extra containers on the market, put aside some for Corp use, and put one of the Venture BPO in the POS for ME research. I then move some of the blue prints I had sitting in a NPC Research Station over to the system where the research POS is anchored, where I do some sorting.
New BPO
I will have to now go to the Retribution release notes, and look at everything I have highlighted, to test / understand / update settings and the like to make the most of things.
I know my last series of updates might seem mundane, but it is keeping me focused. I also figure it is pertinent at times to show a picture of what a Carebear Industrialist can get up to. It wouldn’t be for everyone.
Long time no see
The 24 hour delay after dropping roles passed, and I went back to my personal Corp. I meekly left with not many people remarking on it.
I mothballed my two carriers. I left a useful collection of ships stored within them, some supplies and ammunition, and enough fuel to get me most places in EVE. When I next have use for them, they will be ready to roll.
An Alt was logged in half the day scouting my movements in and out of low sec. It was interesting watching the comings and goings. The system is well placed and used for Logistics by quite a number of Alliances. There seems to be some unspoken (or spoken, what do I know) truce – as I watched a steady procession of capitals and cynos move through, all apparently politely ignoring each other.
I grabbed any leftover spares and fuel, and moved them, and my mining base, back to where my Industry Alt operates.
I believed I had to wait 7 days for the standings of my main and Alt to impact the Corp – but they don’t appear to have changed since I left over a year ago. (Neither Alt left in the Corp had any standings.) I’m not sure if that is a bug or what, but EVE is telling me I should be able to anchor a POS immediately.
So the next step is to test that theory. I can’t anchor a POS in the home system, so I need a system within 3 jumps, with a free moon, a station with a free office slot at a reasonable price, and hopefully not a huge amount of traffic.
I scout 8 systems, which takes a number of hours. Some are discounted due to office slots or rent, and some are discounted as they have no free moons. Now remember I am in a relatively quiet region, yet I found one system with over 30 moons, every one of which had something anchored on it. I use probes to scan down POS in one system (6 on 30 moons), but otherwise am forced to just warp to each moon in turn to take notes as generally at least 75% of the moons have something on them.
I must admit I was surprised by this. There was a suggestions I read recently which was to allow offline POS to be looted / unanchored / Hacked by anyone. After my travels today, I am inclined to support such a thing. Around half the POS were offline.
It Lives!
So I picked a system, a station, and a moon. Not entirely trusting what the EVE client was telling me, I was pleased to see the anchoring and onlining of my research POS occurred without hick up. Now to work out the fit and stockpile some supplies.
After a reminder from Serpentine Logic (http://serpentinelogic.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/preparing-for-retribution/) I figured I’d put in a token effort and manufacture some of the items which will cost more to build after Retribution is released.
As he wasn’t forthcoming with what those particular items were (I don’t blame him), I tried half a dozen different Google searches until I found comments and posts outlining the obvious ones.
I grabbed out the related BPO’s and started kicking off some max run manufacturing jobs – only to hit the limit for my Industry Alt at just 5 jobs. Seems I hadn’t trained that Alt in Advanced Mass Production!
I quickly scramble to train up my PI Alt so she can kick off a couple jobs – but then realise she doesn’t have Production Efficiency V.
Skill plans get adjusted and updated, and a couple skill books are purchased.
I then log in my Main, Jump to his Industry Clone, and auto pilot an Interceptor to my Trade and Manufacturing Hub. I’ll use him to finish off my manufacturing.
One job submitted, and then the next fails as I am short on Minerals. That’s right, buy more Mexallon was on my To-do list.
Back to my trade Alt, find some at a reasonable price on the market, purchase, and start hauling.
The last of the jobs is finally kicked off. I realise my minerals could do with some replenishment, so I put some buy orders up.
I knew there was a reason I wasn’t going to bother with this. Damn you Serpentine Logic..
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.
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…
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.
Evehermit 