I can’t think of a title today

I am still here – just extraordinarily busy in Real Life.

The Azbel is also still here, or there, in space.

It forces me to log in at least once a day to check for War Declarations. That, if I am to be entirely honest, can be a touch irritating. It can be refreshing not to log into EVE for a day or three, and a chore when you feel you are being forced too.

The vague justification for anchoring the Azbel was to allow me to flesh out and fully research my BPO Collection. I have been accumulating BPO for more than a decade and had more than 850 of them. I might justify them as part preparedness, part self-sufficiency, but mostly it is OCD.

I carefully went through my entire collection, looking for any that were not fully researched, and for any I was missing. This took quite an effort. I currently have 885 BPO, all fully researched or in the process of getting there. There are a further 64 I must fly around and purchase. It is not exciting but has me undocked.

Some of my BPO are for POS and their modules, which CCP are working towards withdrawing from the game. I presume I will get those taken off me and reimbursed at some point this year.

There were a lot of BPO I do not plan to buy due to cost. I was able to comfortably buy all the BPO I needed to build and fit a couple variants of small POS. The price of Structure related BPO however is substantially higher – to the point it seems unlikely most casual players could ever be able to justify buying them for their own use. CCP seems to have priced them for Null Sec players and corporations who are fat on the teat of anomaly Supercarriers and belt Rorquals.

I wish there was a level down in the structure tree – the equivalent of small POS – for the less wealthy players. I don’t feel I will see that unfortunately.

The standard training on my Main continues. He has most recently completed:

Precursor Destroyer V
Precursor Battlecruiser V
Precursor Battleship V
Black Ops V

He is currently working on Marauders V. This latest training is more for bragging rights than anything else. I still haven’t used the SP he purchased. I am not sure what way to go with that.

What else have I been up too..

I have finished stockpiling ships to be able to mount a defense if my Structures are attacked. I will only throw these away if it is viable that I will get something worthwhile out of the experience.

I have been playing around with dual box mining again – first with a boosting Porpoise, then a boosting Orca. They drone mine a reasonable amount by themselves and give an impressive helping hand to the second account. From memory the Strip Miner range went from 15 to 27km, and the extraction cycle dropped from 167 to 112 seconds. There is still a little room to move there to improve. I put that on hold however as one of the locals came under War Declaration and I did not want to parade myself around as a suitable next target for the attackers.

Last of all the Astrahus build continues – but I’ve missed weeks of PI cycles due to busyness. I’ve gathered above 76% of the total P1 requirements.

Raitaru.06

I manufactured 8 of the 9 components needed for the Raitaru.

Whether from psychic abilities or pessimism, my suspicions about not having fixed all my spreadsheet issues then came to fruition. I was missing 10 Self-harmonizing Power Cores required to build the Structure Reprocessing Plant.

I updated the spreadsheet and it automatically listed what I was missing and dropped the progress from 100% to 95.8%.

Annoying.

I contemplated buying what was needed off the market, but I decided to use it as an opportunity to start retooling my planets for the P1 Extraction > Factory Planet approach I’ve theorised would be more efficient.

I listed out all the planets I had access to with low tax rates and added any extra I was already using. I then checked them for the density of each of the resources they held.

 

This was illuminating but stumped me for a little while. What does a 5% density really mean when compared to 50%? Where do you start?

I went back to the basics. The processing of P0 resources into P1 are done with Basic Industry Facilities.

Every 30 minutes, they can take in 3,000 P0 and convert them into 20 P1. Over a day that equates to:

. For 1 Facility – 144,000 P0 into 960 P1
. For 2 Facilities – 288,000 P0 into 1,920 P1
. For 3 Facilities – 432,000 P0 into 2,880 P1

I’ve been running 24-hour cycles, aiming ideally to gather around 290,000 P0 units to keep 2 Basic Industry Facilities busy per extractor.

I ran some tests. There are so many variables in this that it can only be taken as an extremely rough guide, but I found

. Between 2-5% density two Extractors with 16 heads could gather around 250,000 P0
. Between 12-18% density one Extractor with 8 heads would gather around 240,000 P0
. Above 25% density one Extractor with 5 heads would gather around 300,000 P0

I have two characters doing PI, with a total of 12 planet slots available to me. Without any concept if it was even possible, I wanted to set up my P0 extraction so that it was mostly done on my secondary PI Alt and would not require me to change schema. If a spreadsheet told me to gather X number of this, I would go straight to the planet and kick off the required cycles.

I looked very closely at the combinations of resources and tax rates and ended up being able to cover all the P1 goods across 8 planets and using 9 planet slots. That left 3 spares for Factory Planets.

The new setup is more efficient with where I extract resources, reduces the number of systems I must visit to collect, and cut out two of the planets I had to use with 10% Tax rates.

It makes quite a difference, and there are still some areas I can improve, with some planets holding spare capacity for extra facilities.

Next – and with a bit of trepidation, I investigated setting up Factory Planets where the build would all be automated and I would not need to change Schema on. I would just dump all the P1 ingredients my spreadsheet told me onto a Launch Pad, and it would automatically generate the P2, P3 and P4 goods without any wastage or further effort from me.

Here I am not too sure how successful I will be. First – I messed up as I forgot you could only process P4 goods on Barren or Temperate planets. I will have to shift some of my extraction between planets and PI toons to get 3 suitable planets. Next – there are 8 P4 goods to cover, but on my first attempt I was only able to shoehorn the infrastructure to automatically build 2 of them on one planet. I don’t have enough planets to do all 8.  (A solution might be to free up a planet by buying instead of extracting Oxidizing Compounds, but I would prefer to get my factories more efficient.)

The P3 into P4 process is easy – each P3 only goes into one P4. That might be the same for the P2 into P3 as well. The problem is the P1 into P2 processing, where your ingredients are used in multiple P2, which makes the automatic routing difficult.  I am thinking I could pre-load resources to stop the unwanted routing from happening.  I would only have to do that once.

 

Right now, I am processing the final (extra) P4 goods needed for the Structure Reprocessing Plant.  The automatic build for them is working well, and it seems to be noticeably cheaper with regards taxes, only exporting / import P1, and exporting P4.

Something I haven’t mentioned, but I did calculation on was volume. My basic setup of using a launch pad for storage and with two extraction units keeping Four Basic Industry Facilities continually busy, means I must collect the P1 output around once every 3 days.

As I said, the delays are a bit annoying, but I’ve been enjoying the overall effort.  I am really surprised at just how complicated PI (and industry) can get.  All the decisions you have to make, all the tuning and finessing you can apply.  Even how different things are if you are working solo in Empire or as part of a huge Alliance in Null Sec.

Raitaru.04

So now I had a plan and the required skills to perform it. The next step was to setup a glorious chain of Planetary Infrastructure to extract all the PI goods I needed for the Raitaru. This stretched my brain a little more than usual.

To begin I went back to my spreadsheet and noted down what sort of planets you could source each of the P0/P1 goods on.

I then repeated that step to identify what P2 goods you could create on just the one planet.

(In future when building P4 goods I don’t think I will bother with exporting P2 goods. I will instead export P1 goods, then do all the P2, P3 and P4 goods on factory planets. This time around however I exported both P1 and P2.)

Next, I looked at what planets I had available to my Alt with low tax rates.

I have four Empire based POCO, anchored under my Main Character’s Corporation. Each has the 10% NPC tax rate, plus an additional Tax based on standings.

Pilots in my Corporation, Alliance or with positive Standings are charged a 0.1% Tax. I’ve left it at the minimum (aside 0%) so that I can see via my Wallet Journal who is using the POCO. Neutrals are charged 2%, those with poor standings 3.5%, and those with bad standings at 5%.

My Alt has Customs Code Expertise at Rank 5 and positive standings with my Main’s Corporation. As a result, the base Tax Rate is 5.1% on those four Planets. There are also another three POCO in the system where the Owner (who I am friendly with) has set the tax at 0%.

That gave me a starting point of 3 Barren, 3 Gas and 1 Lava planet I could use with minimal additional tax.

Now an example of the impact these Taxes have. I want to move 1,000 units of Bacteria off one of the planets I have a 5.1% tax on.

I can move the Bacteria into a Launch Pad and shift it up to the Orbiting Customs Office. The game currently values each unit of Bacteria at 4,000 ISK. So, 4,000 ISK x 1,000 Units x 5.1% tax means it costs my Alt 20,400 ISK in tax to do the transfer. 20,000 ISK goes to some mystical NPC, and 400 ISK goes to my Main’s Corporation.

If I want to avoid giving any ISK to the POCO owner, I can move the Bacteria into a Command Centre, and launch it into space where I can pick it up from a container. There are two limitations for doing this – the first is you can only launch 500m3 at a time with delays between them, and second it costs a flat 15% NPC tax. In this case it would cost me 60,000 ISK, which would all go to the NPCs.

If I need to move Bacteria from space down to the Planet Surface, I only have one choice. I must go through the Customs Office. The tax however is calculated at half the export cost. In my example, importing 1,000 units of Bacteria costs 10,200 ISK – 10,000 to the NPCs, 200 to my Main’s Corporation.

In the 3-jump range I was willing to travel to find planets to work on, most Player Owned Customs Offices charged an additional Tax of between 5 and 10%. (The 10% likely set to equate the cost of exporting via the Command Centre.)

The maximum extra player Tax I was willing to pay was 5% – so I only used other POCO with total taxes of 10% or less. At that rate exporting my 1,000 units of Bacteria would cost me 40,000 ISK, half going to the NPCs, half to the POCO owner.

At these volumes that might not seem like much – but I had to extract 34,880 units of Bacteria for my Raitaru. That meant a cost of:

7.11M ISK at 5.1% Tax
13.95M ISK at 10% Tax
20.92M ISK at 15% Tax

With no skills in Customs Code Expertise, that would have been:

14.09M ISK at 10.1% Tax
20.92M ISK at 15% Tax
27.90M ISK at 20% Tax

Factor that across 400,000 plus units of P1 materials, and add in Import Taxes, and it gets bloody expensive. (It can be a sizeable proportion of the overall build cost and can make it very difficult to complete against players using low tax POCO out of Empire Space.)

This was why I paid close attention to the Tax rate on the POCO I was using and tried to carefully consider and limit the times I exported and imported goods. It was also why I cared so much about the number of units I was extracting. Sure – I appreciate the efficiency and timeliness, but mostly I didn’t want to end up paying taxes for things I didn’t have immediate use for

Just to add to all this – you must remember that the POCO owner could block my access to the Customs Office or set the tax rate up to 100% at any time they wanted!

With an understanding of the taxes and what Planets I needed to extract resources off, the next step was to start scanning. I began with the 7 planets I had cheap access too, looking at their resource levels.

(32% is high for Empire space.) I then looked at how the resources were distributed, and if I wanted to extract P2 goods, eyeballed where this distributions overlaid.

Picking the best option for each PI good that I had available, I used the same basic layout on most of my extraction planets. (Setting up PI infrastructure can get expensive, so I wanted a flexible layout I would not have to keep changing.) (This is not an optimal setup!)

I would put down and upgrade to level 5 a Command Center. Next to it I would place a Launchpad, which I would also use for storage. On planets I was extracting P2 goods from, I put down 4 Basic Industry Facilities. The first pair would process one lot of P0 goods into their corresponding P1, the second pair would process the second P0 good. I then put down one or two Advanced Industry Facilities to combine the two P1 goods into the P2. Finally, I laid two Extractor Control Units with as many heads as I could manage, on 24 hour cycles. I tried to match the total amount they extracted by allocating different numbers of heads between them so there was minimal stockpiling of one good or the other.

I reused these planets as much as I could, but there were resources I had to gather through other player owned Customs Offices, including on Temperate and Oceanic planets. There were also some planets that had 0% resources for some of the P0 goods they were meant to contain.

I visited all systems with the planets I needed and noted the total Tax rates on each of their POCO. Approximately half the planets were taxed above 10% so I did not use them on principle.

Working away at half a dozen resources at a time, I managed – across two alts and with lots of extraction schema changes, to obtain and export all the P1/P2 goods I needed for the Raitaru build. It probably took almost a month, although would be quicker the next time around!

The last stage was processing all this into P4 goods, ready for use with the Raitaru Component Blueprint Copies. I did this on a very sub-optimal Factory planet.

I used two Launch Pads, 4 storage containers (1 or maybe 2 too many), 8 Advanced Industry Facilities (for creating P2 goods), 8 Advanced Industry Facilities (for creating P3 goods), and 4 High-Tech Production Facilities (for creating P4 goods).

This meant however I had to continually change the schema being used and to be careful to only route the exact amount of goods to each set of industry facilities. On that last subject, I mistakenly left routing in place at times that grabbed new resources I would transfer to the planet and place them into facilities I did not want them to go.

For example – when I was building the P4 Organic Mortar Applicators, I moved 1,560 Bacteria down to the Factory to be used. The Launch Pad already had a route configured for Bacteria and moved 40 units x 8 to Idle Industry Facilities previously configured to build Fertilizer. You can’t remove those goods once transferred into a facility. You can either fulfil the needs of the Facilities current schema or change to a different schema that also needs that ingredient, otherwise it is lost. In this case I needed the Bacteria in a High-Tech Facility. Because I was so careful to only extract and store the amounts of materials I needed, I then had to go extract more Micro Organisms to convert into Bacteria, export it and then re-import it onto the Factory planet. I made this mistake more than once – so had to get into a habit of removing routing once I had finished.

As I write this, I am finalising the processing of the last required P2 and have three P3 and three P4 goods to complete. It is about a day or two effort. After that I will be able to complete this series – with the notes around the actual manufacturing step.

Assuming I move into building an Astrahus (or another Raitaru), there are some changes I will make to these set ups. First, I will only extract P1 goods. That will cut down on the number of facilities I will need to build on those planets and increase the number of extractor head units I have available. Second – I will set up several Factory planets with as much permanently set schema and routing as I can manage. As Red Neckromonger suggested, I’d like to be able to dump a set amount of P1 goods into a Launch pad and have it all automatically routed through facilities and built into P2 / P3 and finally a P4. That would save a great deal of time (and mistakes) if I can manage it.

It has been quite a complex and interesting process to do solo, which I hope is apparent for non-industrial types.  For those who do industry, sorry for all my mistakes!

Raitaru.03

The EVE University Wiki gives you an overview of how to do PI, with links to videos and details of what everything means and does.

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Planetary_Interaction

Again, my posts are not really a How-To guide.  Instead they are looking at the complexity, planning and decision making.

I now reviewed the skills I had and what I felt I needed to have for this project.

I knew I would need the maximum number of planets available to me – being six, so I trained Interplanetary Consolidation to rank 5. (As expected, I ended up needing more than six planets, so I had to bring in a second Alt to help.)

To fit in with CCP’s Risk v Reward mantra in EVE, the planets in High Sec generally have poorer and less concentrated resources than what you might find in Low Sec, Null Sec or Wormholes. From previous experience doing PI in High Sec, I knew I would have to upgrade my Command Centers to level 5 to allow me to maximise the number of Extractor Heads I could use. Command Center Upgrades Rank 5 was added to the training queue.

While you can’t remotely interact with Custom Offices or install Planetary Command Centers, you can do a lot of your PI work without undocking. The skill that determines the range at which you can remotely do planet surveys is Remote Sensing. I am not completely sure about this skill, but this is the logic I follow.

The skill gives you the following remote scan ranges:

Level 1: allows scans within 1 ly
Level 2: allows scans within 3 ly
Level 3: allows scans within 5 ly
Level 4: allows scans within 7 ly
Level 5: allows scans within 9 ly

Obviously outside of Capital jumps, Light Years is not really a measurement you think too much about in EVE.

I knew I was going to do all my PI in and around the Akes system in Devoid. I also knew I did not want to have to travel more than 3 jumps to any planets I was going to work on.

I used the Dotlan EVEMaps Navigation tool to work out how far away in Light Years all systems within 3 jumps of Akes were. This is a part of the tool I use when planning capital jumps.

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/planetrange

I simply put in the Akes system, and ensured the Range Options were “Sub-Capital”, Max Jumps (Gates) was “3”, and I had Planet Type as “Show all planets”.

This showed me I had 21 systems (including Akes) within a 3-gate jump range, a count of the type of planets they each had, and the distance in Light Years they were away from Akes:

This tool also crosses into different regions, giving system options you might not always be aware of.  The longest distance was only 3.057 Light Years.  Since that was (just) further than 3 Light Years, I figured I needed at least Rank 3 to survey all planets within 3 jumps.  As I had rank 4 already, my needs were covered.

The last two PI skills – Planetology and Advanced Planetology increase the number of gradient bands and the precision of your scans. The logic I guess is that you can better place your extraction heads.

I settled on Planetology at rank 4 so I could train Advanced Planetology, which I also trained to rank 4. While this rounded out the character, I am not sure it is critical. In the past I’ve compared doing PI on an Alt with Rank 5 in both skills with another Alt with just Rank 3 in Planetology. The amount the better skilled Alt was able to extract with better head placement wasn’t that much more than the lessor skilled Alt.

The next critical skill was getting Customs Code Expertise to Rank 5.  (It is part of the Trade group.)

Another way CCP has made PI less rewarding in High Sec is by setting an additional NPC tax that you must pay to import and export PI goods. This tax doesn’t exist in Low Sec, Null Sec or Wormhole space. You can mitigate up to half this tax however with the Customs Code Expertise skill. (Each rank reduces the NPC tax rate by 10%.) If you are moving any sort of serious volume around, or trying to compete on the market, getting Customs Code Expertise to Rank 5 is almost mandatory.

Last of all from a skills perspective I needed to work out what hauler I would use.

There is a Gallente Industrial called an Epithal which has a special hold for Planetary Commodities (a base size of 45,000m3 +10% each rank you have in the Gallente Industrial Skill). This is a cheap hull that can carry a lot of PI goods, but I don’t like using it. It at times will have to carry goods worth 50+M ISK but is difficult to tank well, and other players know exactly what you are carrying.

I went back to my spreadsheet and added a column for the total volume of each PI good I had to collect. The most was around 13,000m3. I also knew I had to have room to haul multiple Planet Command Centers to allow me to initially set up my planets. I settled on using a Caldari Badger Industrial that was able to carry 14,750m3, with a 20K EHP Tank, and importantly fit a Cloak. The second Alt I am using for PI flies a Transport Ship for their PI. The First Alt will be training to get into a Transport Ship, once she finishes being able to fly a Freighter again.

So that covers my thinking with the skills I needed.  Next post, I will look for planets to work with.

Raitaru.02

In my last post I mentioned I made a spreadsheet outlining the Minerals and P4 Ingredients I needed to gather to build my Raitaru (using the Blueprint Copies I had purchased).

I knew how and where I could gather the minerals, so it was just a case of working through mining them.

Gathering the 227 units of P4 goods however was more convoluted.

My next step was to go back to my spreadsheet and add a section identifying what ingredients were needed for these P4 goods. There are online tools which map all this out for you – but I wanted to ensure I had a proper understanding of things the first time around, so I worked it out for myself.

The ingredient list for each P4 good is listed on its information window, under the Planetary Production tab.

I dutifully listed these out. Each P4 ingredient needed either three types of P3 ingredient, or two types of P3 ingredient and one type of P1 ingredient.

I then repeated this process for the P3 ingredients, P2 and P1.

I linked each new section so it would automatically calculate how many units were required based on the higher tier ingredients.

The result showed my 227 units of P4 goods would require 61+ Million units of P0 goods.

 

Next, I incorporated a way to keep track of my progress. I did not worry about this for the P0 goods as these were always immediately converted into P1 goods. The P1 goods were more problematic. Some I would extract from a planet and store in my hanger for later use, others would be converted into P2 goods and then extracted.

 

To keep a running total, I took the amount that I needed of each P1 good and subtracted from it what I had stored. Wherever the P1 good was extracted as a P2 good, I used the stored total of that P2 good to calculate how many P1 ingredients were used and subtracted it from the amount remaining for me to gather.

In the end all P2 goods were extracted and stored, so the calculation of my progress for them was easy.

The calculation of the P3 and P4 goods were also easy. The P3 goods were all created on the one factory planet and fed from there into the creation of the P4 goods.

The only variation I had to accommodate was where the goods were being extracted on multiple planets. My stored total of Silicon might look like this:

= (1,000 + 1,500) + 2,000 + 5,000

That meant I had 9,500 Silicon –

2,500 units on Alt2, across two planets (1,000 on one, 1,500 on another)
2,000 units on Alt1, on one planet
5,000 units stored in the Corporate Hanger

If I collected some of these the calculation might change to –

= (0 + 1,500) + 0 + 8,000

Which meant I had 9,500 Silicon –

1,500 units on Alt2, across two planets (0 on one, 1,500 on another)
0 units on Alt1, on one planet
8,000 units stored in the Corporate Hanger

All my Calculations using multiple characters used the Alt1, Alt2, Corporate Hanger notation / format.

Last, I used a simple colour coding system to highlight when I had collected the perquisite number of each ingredient (green) or was actively extracting or processing an ingredient (yellow).

Now – I made several mistakes in my spreadsheet. Some I picked up early without impact, but some I missed until towards the end of this process. That resulted in delays and me having to go back and extract more P1 goods, such as Bacteria.

The first mistake was I did not add the extra P1 ingredients needed for three of the P4 goods. They were not that voluminous however, so it was more a mild inconvenience.

The second mistake was I wrote down the wrong number of goods stored once or twice, leaving me short when I went to process a higher tier good later.

The third mistake was I missed accounting for an ingredient or two when calculating the total number of P1s needed. An ingredient might be needed in four P2 goods, but I only added three of them.

If I consider all the calculations I typed in, I only got 1 in 100 wrong, but it was a bit aggravating.

None of these calculations were smart or tricky or even optimal. I followed what seemed like logical step after logical step, so built lots of simple calculations into an overall project plan. I remark on it here to highlight the sort of complexity that exists in EVE industry which might not be apparent to some.

The more complex decision making aspect was deciding where and how to do the extraction, which I will look at next.

Into the last 10 percent of the Extraction

I have 91% of the required P1/P2 ingredients for the Raitaru Build now. I am powering forward with the involvement of a second Alt.

This endeavour has been more successful than my goal to build an Astrahus with my Main. It is a lot easier with a character who stays in the one area and is focused only on Industry Goals.

I will move what I have accomplished so far on the Astrahus from my Main Elmis to my Industry Alt Illesha, and get her to complete the task.

Speaking of moving, I’ve decided to transfer most of my Industrial assets to my Industry Alt. After an effort spread across a couple days, I finished transferring my BPO library to Ilesha today. It required a total of eight round trips of forty jumps each, hauling on average 600M ISK worth of BPO each time.

I managed to do this without the intervention of the multiple ganking groups I passed on almost every journey. These groups were more plentiful than usual and stationed in systems I am not used to seeing them in, particularly on the Amarr side of the trade route to Rens.

One day I am going to get caught and generate an embarrassing killmail in my hauling Exequror.

I used the spare time while hauling to set up a Factory planet with Illesha to start the process of converting my P1 and P2 supplies into the P3 then P4 ingredients needed for the build. I haven’t created a full Factory planet before, so I expect there will be some costly trial and error as I work it all out.

Under, off, over the Radar

My wife has started her new job. She leaves the house before the kids get up, and gets home after they have had tea. I find myself the full time stay at home parent, who also happens to have a busy paying job. I’m not sure EVE will get much of a look in during the week.

I scheduled for a long session in game on Saturday, and actually managed to achieve it. I started by logging in my Low Sec Scout, but the system I am basing out of was once again awash with Pirates. It has been the same since Kronos – far more pirate gate camps, far more pirates out hunting. It is just not feasible to do any carebearing, so I move my focus elsewhere.

Next I log in my Island Scout and go looking for access to Hi-Sec. There are only 4 wormholes in the constellation, but luckily one is to Hi-Sec. It is some 20+ odd jumps from where I base my supplies, but I make use of it anyway. I ferry in one of my Gila, a Gas guzzling Venture, and a PVE Stabber Fleet Issue I wanted to test out. While there I picked up a contract purchase and brought back a Pilgrim I wasn’t using.

I had one stumbling block – I couldn’t work out how to get a bookmark from my out of Corp Alt to my main that didn’t involve a Contract. I ended up moving the Alt into my main Corp and putting it in a Corporation bookmark folder.

The moving of ships took quite some time, so while manually flying 100+ combined jumps I looked at my PI Alts. I remarked the other day about two pilots at war, one in a station, the other outside trying to goad them into undocking. It turned out the war was against the Corporation I have blue standings with in my old home system. I had originally witnessed an Ally to the defending Corp goading one of the aggressors. Later, I witnessed an Ally to the aggressors trying to goad the defenders to undock. The irony was not lost on me.

We had both remarked that we could call on each other for help if our POCO were in danger – but they didn’t send me a message. That was probably lucky for me as I am not really in a position to log in.

Coinciding with them losing their POCO someone offered to buy my four. I expect, unless unusually fortuitous, it is probably from the person behind the takeover of my blue’s POCO. Given I don’t use them, can’t defend them, and they generate very little income; it’s prompted me to sell them. I’ve spoken to the blue and offered it to them first. They will look at it after their war is finished. If the wars move to me I’ll lose them for no ISK, but that’s a minor price for doing the right thing by another player. (I am really not suited to this game!)

I emptied my planets and cleared the installations so, if I ever felt inclined I could set up new planets closer to my new home. I think I have remarked before, my dabbling in POCO would last simply as long as it took for someone else to notice I had them and take them off me. Once I sell (or lose) them, any further PI I do is at the mercy of finding planets with reasonable tax rates. It’s the price of solo play. I finished off my session with yet more hauling, moving my PI supplies to my new home and closing the old corporate hanger.

Piece of PI

All planets in my home system now have Player Owned Custom Offices – 4 of them my own. I’m not sure how common having them all replaced is in other areas.

Most of the POCO in the system and within 1 jump have Player export tax rates of between 5 and 10%. This is made up of a small number between 5 and 6%, and most between 9 and 10%. With the NPC component for me of 6% added, export costs are generally between 11 and 16%. In other words – the cost of doing PI in Empire has on average increased in my area.

My POCO, with their tax rate of 3.5%, are the lowest of those I’ve checked.

The tax income from my POCO over the first few weeks has been sporadic. There was a bit of a rush in the first few days and I made about 20M from the first week. There was almost nothing the next week and I would have earnt less than 5M. The third week was more active, with around 30M earnt. I’m not sure if people have moved onto my planets from the more expensive alternatives, or if this just happens to be how people operate where I live.

I’ve had no one approach asking for standings or special deals on tax rates.

It has taken me three weeks to get enough time (and the inclination) to complete the first full iteration of my new PI Chain.

Previously I used 12 planet installations across two Alts, extracting and processing 12,000 units respectively of Chiral Structures, Precious Metals, Toxic Metals and Reactive Metals into 450+ units of Robotics every two days. The process was well balanced – I only extracted what I needed so I was not paying tax on goods I just stockpiled.

Each of my Alts now have 2 planet installations that they launch into space from – paying 15% tax, but bypassing the Player CO. I also have 6 more planet installations using my own POCO, with 2 still be to decide upon. My current extraction volumes are:

9,300 Chiral Structures
13,500 Precious Metals
9,500 Toxic Metals
13,500 Reactive Metals

Picking up from containers launched into space will be more common in future

There isn’t too much of an option to increase the Chiral and Toxic volumes, so my second iteration is probably going to be to lower the volumes to around 9,000 of each. (So a 25% reduction in the volume of Robotics I was producing in comparison to before Rubicon.) I will have spare capacity however to make something else. I already do Coolant, so I could certainly do more of that.  It has been a slow process.

Oh – I saw my first ghost site on overview. It was gone within 2 minutes of me noticing.  I managed to log my main in and grab a suitable ship, but it disappeared as I undocked.

Existing through the ignorance of others

There’s a count of the various planet types in Hi-Sec, Low-Sec, Null-Sec and W-Space in this wiki entry:

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Planetary_interaction

I expect it is out of date, but it would give a reasonable idea of the spread.

Dotlan also provides details on planet counts (although I don’t think summarised like the first link), and you can drill down to see where they all are:

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/region/planets

The rarest planets are Plasma. I use one in my PI cycle, and I had the opportunity to plant my own POCO on it because no one else staked a claim for 24+ hours. I didn’t though, and I never planned to.

My ability to defend my POCO is limited. I could likely see off other Solo players, or a handful of lesser experienced pilots – but any partially organised and persistent corporation can take them from me. I could hire mercenaries I guess, but the cost wouldn’t be justified.

There was no use in me owning a valuable planet because someone else would just come along and take it. If they War-Dec me to take that one, they might also grab some of my other POCO’s while they were there.

I had even wondered if the Lava Planet I have was a little cheeky – but with low tax rates and it being a little out of the way, I’m hopeful no one will pay it much attention. Actually – I think my main risk is if a Corporation decides to settle in my home system, and take all of the planets for themselves.

Whether I lose one or all of my POCO, all this planning and restructuring of my PI cycle will come to naught. I have tried to be a little smart in where and what I have placed, and the tax rates that have been set. But the reality is – my POCO exist only through the grace or ignorance of others.

Now personally I don’t mind this. I’ve liked having the opportunity to get involved in this sort of aspect of the game. The fact I can lose it all fits my idea of the environment I play in. But I am an old player with plenty of skill points and a reasonable ISK balance. I am not reliant on PI income. What fun it this Empire POCO mechanism for most Causal Solo or new players? They are entirely helpless and at the whim of other players – or stuck quietly operating around the fringes where the profit isn’t worth the while of anyone else? It is not a great mechanism in that regard.

When I look at the changes being made by CCP I usually set the benchmark against what impact it will have on those solo players who like to be able to do absolutely everything for themselves. Those who gather the resource for and manufacture everything they have in game. I think the Siphon unit was brilliant for this style of play. I think the PI changes have a negative impact on that style of play.

Thinking on it – I think there needs to be an expansion of the Command Centre launch mechanism to balance things a little better. Either through skill or upgrade; increase the CC payload from 500m3 to something a little more flexible. A factory processing P0 to P1 generates 365m3 each 24 hours (if my old notes are still accurate). Maybe allow the export of two factories worth of processing – so 750m3 a launch? There should still be the 15/20% tax (or fuel costs), but you just have a little more flexibility to salvage your set ups if a Corp decides to set their planet tax at 100%. There should also be some sort of new ship module to allow you to import PI goods via an unmanned drone or shuttle. It should have around the same sort of capacity as the Command Centre, influenced by skills, although it could be a little less. Or maybe allow the fitting of a couple of these modules?

It is just to give the little guy the ability to still operate on the small scale.

Oh but this is meant to be an MMO, and you are a whiny little bitch who is not playing it right – join a corporation and stfu.

The only problem with that advice is that the vast, vast majority of players, corporations and alliances only operate within the sphere they do with the grace or ignorance of others. They are in exactly the same situation as solo players, but they just don’t realise it.

You have a POS? Most of you can’t defend it if one of the Elite groups decides to take it. You have just built up a POCO Empire since Rubicon? Most of you can’t defend it if one of the top tier Alliances decides to take over. You have a constellation and multiple stations in Providence? Most of you can’t defend it if someone stronger decided to take it away from you yet again.

But you are a member of one of the largest Coalitions? Yes, until your CEO says something stupid or argues with the Alliance leader, and you find yourself summarily booted.

There are few in this game who are truly not beholden to someone else. As such I think most mechanisms should be designed to allow scaled access for all styles of player.  IMHO the new Empire POCO could do with a little finessing in that regard.

Paying attention until my brain hurts

I’m still focused on PI – and will be until I adjust my infrastructure for the Rubicon changes. It might take me a while.

My previous PI setup had two Alts managing 6 planets each, running on a two day cycle. I balanced the extraction so that I gathered 12,000 units each of Reactive Metals, Precious Metals, Toxic Metals and Chiral Structures, and processed the same number of units into 450 Robotics.

I did extra bits and bobs with excess capacity, but that was the core of my PI.

The cost of doing business in Empire space was straight forward.

. You paid a 10% Tax to export goods via a Custom Office
. You paid a 5% Tax to import goods via a Custom Office
. You paid a 15% Tax to export goods via the Command Centre

The tax was based on a static value for the various tiers of PI goods. The old values were:

Tier – Type – Old ISK Value
P0 – Basic – 500
P1 – Refined – 9,000
P2 – Special – 70,000
P3 – Advanced – 1,350,000

For simplicity sake assume each cycle I exported 48,000 P0 from extraction planets, imported 48,000 P0 to factory planets, and exported 450 produced P2 units. The cost was:

48,000 x 500 x 10%
+ 48,000 x 500 x 5%
+ 450 x 70,000 x 10%

= 2.4M + 1.2M + 3.15M, or 7.75M ISK in taxes

It fluctuates, but on average over the years I’ve sold my Robotics at around 60K each – so for around 27M ISK. Take away the tax and selling costs, and I made around 19M profit each cycle. If I was diligent this would earn me 3.4B ISK a year profit. I wasn’t diligent.

With Rubicon things have changed. For starters the base value set against the PI goods – for calculating taxes, has dropped:

Tier – Type – Old – New Value
P0 – Basic – 500 – 400
P1 – Refined – 9,000 – 7,200
P2 – Special – 70,000 – 60,000
P3 – Advanced – 1,350,000 – 1,200,000

In addition you can train up a new skilled called Customs Code Expertise. This drops the taxes you pay through Custom’s offices by 10% each rank. I am going to presume the casual PI player will get this to Rank IV. That means the new NPC taxes you pay will be

. 6% Tax to export goods via a Custom Office
. 3% Tax to import goods via a Custom Office
. 15% Tax to export goods via the Command Centre

Now – if I owned the POCO on every planet I used, and set the tax to 0%, my costs will be down.

48,000 x 400 x 6%
+ 48,000 x 400 x 3%
+ 450 x 60,000 x 6%

= 1.152M + 0.576M + 1.620M, or 3.348M in taxes

I’m 4.4M better off, or I would make around 800M extra profit over a diligent year. Score!

But I don’t the POCO on every one of my planets. I am now reliant on using either some Interbus Customs Offices, which seems to charge a flat 17% tax regardless my rank in Customs Code Expertise, the very limited (time and size) 15% taxed export via the Command Centre, or a Player Owned CO with total tax rates (NPC and their own) that so far seem to average between around 11 and 16%.

I am also at the whim of other players. An Interbus Customs office can be replaced at any point in time, and players can change their own tax rates from 0 to 100% as frequently as they want.

I’m now struggling a bit with what to do.  Do I hope / trust the other players will keep their taxes at around the same levels, or do I change my method to only export P1 goods from planets I don’t own the CO on via the expensive – but consistently priced Command Centre export? Even the process of changing from P0 to P1 export really hits the volumes I will produce in the end.

And 1 makes 4

7 of 9 Interbus Customs Offices in my home system had been replaced when I logged in this morning. I looked through the list and realised there where two Gas planets left. Hold on – I thought there were only two, and that they had been taken? I need my eyes tested.

Owning a Gas POCO gave me more options with my PI output, so I checked the price of the Customs Gantry and upgrade supplies locally, in Amarr, and in Jita. I undocked the two Domi’s and started on one of the remaining CO’s while I flew my Alt to Jita to buy everything needed to plant my fourth POCO.

The whole process took 100 minutes, and now 8 of the 9 planets are player controlled.

I’d like to see CCP release some stats on how many POCO have gone up in Empire. Zkillboard has recorded very roughly around 2,000 odd Interbus Customs Offices being destroyed (in all security zones) since Rubicon was released, with a total of almost 23,000 killed.

https://zkillboard.com/ship/4318/

I think that will be my last one. I guess the next step is to fully review all my PI infrastructure and move / adjust everything to use my own planets, or to launch output into space. That will be quite a job.

Meanwhile I’ve grabbed two of the new BPO (want one more), and started training Customs Code Expertise on four of my toons.

Tax time

The base NPC Tax on a POCO in Empire is 10%, which you can bring down to 5% with rank V in “Customs Code Expertise”.  I figure most casual PI players will get rank IV, leaving them with a 6% tax.

I configured my POCO with 0% Corporation Tax, allowing an Alliance Tax of 0%, and all the remaining Access to be based on standings.  Neutral, Bad and Terrible standings were given a 3.5% tax rate, and Good and Excellent Standing was given 1.5% tax rate.

The show info on my own POCO displays (10 – Customs Code Expertise)%, which is what I was expecting.

The show info on my POCO from my Alt in another Corp but within the same alliance is showing (1.5 + 10 – Customs Code Expertise)%, which is not what I was expecting.

I figured on average the people using the POCO would pay around 9.5% tax in total, with me getting a small slice.  I didn’t do this as a money spinner, and hopefully no one would be too offended with that approach.

The Interbus CO’s are set now with a 17% tax.  Even though I have ranks in Customs Code Expertise, that doesn’t change the tax rate in the Show Info screen.  Unless it is a bug, I assume that means if I want to use one of them, I will need to look at launching off the planet instead of going via CO.

Just looking around locally the tax rate other POCO’s are being set at is 10%.  (The default.)  Add the average NPC tax most people will be paying of 6%, and the price of using those will  be 16%, near enough the same as Interbus.

It will be interesting to see how it all settles down.  I’ve made around 5M in taxes on the 3 POCO I own so far, which I was surprised by to be honest.  They might pay themselves back over time.  Going forward I can see I am going to have to change my entire PI chain.  In particular I am going to need to ensure on planets I don’t own the CO/POCO on, that I export T2/T3 products via launching, and not moving the T1 via CO to a central factory system as I generally do now.

I’m not expecting my POCO to get much attention, given their tax rates, location, and the planet types they are on.  I do suspect overall PI will be less lucrative in Empire, possibly by a fair margin.  I will about halve my volumes, and require a bit more effort to manage even that.  At least the option is still there for me to dabble in it though.

Planted

As I had remarked before, I purchased 3 Custom Office Gantries and the applicable upgrade supplies back when Rubicon was announced. I was quite excited by the idea – until CCP announced the NPC tax would still apply.

After some thought I decided I would aim to own enough POCO to allow me to both continue manufacturing Robotics (on a reduced scale), and have room to set up some Factory Planets. I used the following website to make my choices:

http://eveplanets.com/

I found if I grabbed one Lava and two Barron planets in my home system I’d have my needs covered. I also considered grabbing a Gas planet as I also make Coolant.

I had prepared two Dominix Battleships with T2 Sentries, 3 Drone Damage Amplifiers, 6 Mega Pulse Lasers and 3 Heat Sinks. In EFT they averaged around 1240 DPS each, and would not require reloading. On paper the Interbus CO’s would take 97 minutes to take down. To speed this up a little I used a low SP Alt on my Third account in his Hurricane to help.

Move along, nothing to see here

As I remarked in my previous post, I anchored my first POCO in the hours after Rubicon was released.

In practice my little fleet did 9.5M points of damage per hour, and brought the POCO down in just under 90 minutes. That’s the cost of playing solo. The kill mails indicated the Hurricane did around 15% of the damage, so was a worthwhile addition.

Last night I read the EVE Collector’s Edition Book during the take down. Today I layered the client windows over each other on one of my monitors, and worked on the other monitor. It did not require a lot of attention – just reactivating the weapons on the Hurricane when it told me it had run out of ammunition, glancing at D-Scan occasionally, and making sure I swapped the Hurricane out once I hit 50% structure, so I had the Customs Gantry ready to anchor as soon as the Interbus CO died.

I wonder what intel I missed cutting out of that image

I didn’t plan to move quite as quickly, but when I had logged on this morning I found another Corporation with 40+ members was taking down one of the other CO’s in system. They had two Battleships, a Marauder, and a couple Battlecruisers working away on it. I didn’t know how long they had been at it – but I undocked my fleet, took down a different PO and anchored my replacement, and then docked up. When I went back to check shortly after they had still not brought theirs down. Go the mighty Domi.

The big Caboom

I didn’t have a big enough block of time to start on the third POCO so it had to wait 6 odd hours, by which time the other Corporation had taken the second and last of the Gas planets in the system. So my thought of getting a fourth in my system was dashed. I did however anchor my 3rd POCO giving me my initial goal of 1 Lava and 2 Barron.

I thought they were going to give us more options with this Gantry thing in future releases?

While this process was mildly interesting, I will say at 90 odd minutes each, it is not something I am planning on doing much more of!  It is not really aimed at Solo players!

Interesting to see how long this will last

I seem to be hemorrhaging ISK at the moment – I must be subconsciously focused on being poor again. The latest indulgence was to ready myself for the Empire Custom Office changes coming with Rubicon.

There seems to be a level of doom and gloom from some quarters, fearing the main Null Sec entities will sweep through Empire and claim every single planet for themselves. I don’t see it happening, and would certainly be impressed if they did pull off such a feat. We will just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile I have now purchased the supplies required to anchor three Custom Offices of my own, and built two Dominix Battleships to use on clearing some Interbus Custom Offices. 5 Garde II sentries, 6 Mega Pulse Lasers, and 6 damage amplification modules (split 3 each for Drones and Lasers), sees between 1,150 and 1250 DPS for each hull. My main and main alt should be able to bring one down in a bit under an hour, without having to worry too much about ammo changes.

 

I have no idea if they will stay anchored for 5 minutes or 5 years, and I don’t particularly care. They will be set with a low tax rate and ignored. I am just appreciative that I will – as a solo Empire player, have the opportunity to mess around with this sort of thing.

Epithal

With my main focus this month being on my Wormhole travels, most of my other EVE activities have ground to a halt. I’d like to think that relates to my limited free time, but it might also be an inability to concentrate on more than one task at a time.

With my Main parked back at home and my Collector’s Edition assets stored away in the Pool Room (explained here for Non-Australian’s), it was time to visit the Epithal.

My Traditional PI ship has been the Iteron V. With Cargohold Optimization rigs and three Nanofiber Internal Structures in low, it’s relatively speedy and can carry just under 18,000m3. Enough room if I optimise the order of where I picked up and dropped goods off.

Both my PI Toons have Gallente Industrial V which gives their Epithal a PI Commodities hold of 67,500m3. Rather impressive. So how to fit?

The first thing is the Cargohold – I want it to be able to carry at least one Planetary Command Centre (1,000m3). With a bit of fiddling about I settle on two T2 Expanded Cargohold and a Medium Cargohold Optimization rig. That gives a normal Cargohold of 1,028m3.

That leaves two empty low slots. I could go a Damage control, but generally the risk of doing PI in Empire is pretty low. I settle on two T2 Nanofiber Internal Structures for an align time of 8 seconds, the same as my old work horse.

I want to fit a 10MN afterburner and a Large Shield Extender. I can get a large T2 Shield Extender and an Experimental 10MN Afterburner on with a Medium Ancillary Current Router fitted, which I do.

I have two mid slots left – and as I prefer a passive tank on my haulers, I select a T2 EM Ward Amplifier and T2 Thermic Dissipation Amplifier. The last rig gets a Medium Core Defense Field Extender.

The highs are easy – a Prototype Cloaking Device for when I have to go AFK, and a T2 Salvager, just because.

[Epithal, PI Play 01 – higher skill]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Large Shield Extender II
EM Ward Amplifier II
Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Salvager II

Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

10.7K EHP, 1K Cargo, 67K PI, 8s align, 415m/s with AB.

That works well enough on paper.

I then swap to my main Industry Toon and come up short on power grid. I swap the T2 Large Shield Extender for a Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction module. Power grid is ok now, but EHP drops to 9.2K. I am still happy enough with that.

I then swap to my secondary Industry Toon, and Power grid is blown out of the water. She also can’t fit the T2 shield tank items. For her ship I drop the Ancillary Current Router for a Core Defense Field Extender, use a T1 tank, and put on a T1 Salvager.

[Epithal, PI – Low Skill]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Upgraded EM Ward Amplifier I
Upgraded Thermic Dissipation Amplifier I

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Salvager I

Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

5.1K EHP, 1K Cargo, 67K PI, 10s align, 358m/s with AB.

Skills do make a difference. Still – I’m happy enough with these, and they are an improvement over the Iteron V. I set about fitting them up and finally do my first PI run for the month.

I am quite pleased with the Epithal.  I will no longer get caught out with having to dock up mid PI run as I run out of Cargo space, and it is a worthwhile addition to my hangers.

Still logging in

Real Life has been rather busy, but I am still managing to log into EVE daily. I am just not doing anything out of the ordinary.  As such today’s blog is made up of just some random thoughts.

I have noticed that I currently only use the EVE Client Launcher once per day. This is just after down time to check for any updates or news items. Otherwise I am running the client executable directly. It gives me the “log off” option and is faster. While this survey of one lacks statistical merit, I feel the second iteration of the launcher still hasn’t really hit the mark.

(In the unlikely event someone reading this doesn’t know where the executable is, it is called ExeFile.exe, and is in the bin directory of the EVE client install. On my Windows 7 system, it is C:\Program Files (x86)\CCP\EVE\bin\ExeFile.exe)

I’ve been persistently plugging away with my trading, doing one or two updates per day. I seem to be back to only a handful of active competition in the areas I operate, and generally get to spend an acceptable amount of time with my orders at the top. It turns out one of the most important traits for backwater trading is stubbornness. I research and watch list my main trading competitors, and have found most stop logging in / being active in the area after a few months. I am enjoying the current small lull while it lasts.

This month I’ve also been persistently doing my PI runs every second day. Each cycle I process 48,000 Processed Material units (Chiral Structures, Precious Metals, Reactive Metals and Toxic Metals) into Robotics. I started by working on getting my ingredient stockpile down to the point where after I load up my factories I have extracted just enough to cover the next full run. That is the sort of efficiency my wife – who works as an Analyst in Warehouse Management and Logistics, could appreciate. I have got to that point with 3 of the 4 materials, and should have the fourth right in the next couple of days.

I can’t explain why, but the process has made PI a little more interesting again. I am not just mindlessly processing every planet, but instead keeping a running track of what I am picking up, and missing certain planets from the cycle where I have enough materials. Next month I will work to clear up some of my other stockpiles.

July done

I post these for myself, as a way of measuring and tracking what I am doing in game.

Game Hours & Play

I had around 35 hours of game time, half of which was over one weekend, with one 10+ hour day. About half was spent on my Trading Corp, a quarter on doing stuff in space, and a quarter on upgrading a number of ships with bling.

 

Fluid ISK in the Trading Corp at the end of month

I only keep an amateurish measurement of my Trade and Industry profits – based around fluid ISK.

Cash, Stock & Supplies

9.1B Wallet
0.5B Escrow
0.1B Stock on Market
1.5B Manufacturing Supplies
0.2B PI
0.4B POS Fuel
0.0B Long Term Speculative Stock (Not valued)

Fluid ISK this Month
11.8B

Fluid ISK last Month
10.7B

Position Change
+1.1B

 

Industry / Trade Details

I cut right back on the number of trade items I was covering, down to around 50 at the moment. This should see a drop in revenue of 100-300M ISK a month, but will halve my trading efforts. I also plan to cut back on my Manufacturing Supplies, since I rarely find it worth making things these days.

Competition was moderate this month, while volumes fluctuated from excellent to dismal every few days.

There were no PI runs in the month. I do want to start clearing out some of the excess stock sitting in my hangers.

 

Training

Account 1 (Main) – 128M SP. Finished Tactical Shield Manipulation V, Corporation Management and Diplomatic Relations IV, and currently working through getting all Ore and Scrap Metal Processing skills to IV.

Account 2 (Main Alt) – 121M SP. Picked up Drone Durability V and Fuel Conservation V. Working on Siege Warfare Specialist V.

Account 3 (Industry Alt 1) – 42M SP. Completed her Drone updates
Account 3 (Industry Alt 2) – 7M SP. Covered the base Trade skills to IV. Working on Hull Upgrades IV.

 

Plans

None basically. I will continue with the Hi-Sec exploration. I tried to complete my 16 mining missions but had to abandon it at 11 or 12 – it was just too boring. I also need to go back to my PI installations and try to clear the backlog of supplies I have sitting around.

More Undocking

My PI changes have at least temporarily worked – I’ve managed to be enthused enough to do 4 out of a possible 5 cycles over the last 10 days. It is certainly less bothersome. By tweaking the order of the planets I process I even managed to save a little extra time.

For as inane as the process looks on the outside, there is certainly something special in the PI system for the micro managers and perfectionists.

I have finished the Ship Refitting process and all of my roaming bases are ready to, well, roam. I am basically just stuck waiting for jump clone timers to run down to allow me to move each of the Orca’s out to their starting points.

I currently have 470,000m3 of stuff to sell off, EVE suggesting worth around 6.6B ISK – plus one Orca. I am down to 41,000m3 of stuff to sort through, worth apparently around 1.4B ISK. Most of that should go to be sold as well. The whole process should end up allowing me to do what I was before, but with an extra 6B ISK in the wallet. Packrat is probably an apt description of some who can collect so much unnecessary junk.

On the plus side my Trading Alt is able to manage 269 orders. On the negative side, there are some 600 individual items to organise the sale of.

I’ve had to adjust my training of my main for a few days. One of the mobile bases I am preparing is new – for Low Sec exploration and mining. I realised my main did not have the skills to use all the mining crystals required to cover off what you can find in low sec gravimetric sites, so I’ve added various Ore Processing Skills to the queue. Training for a specific purpose at least makes things more interesting.

I noticed my main passed 105M SP, with recent highlights being Astrometrics V, Achaeology V, and the Minmatar and Amarr Electronic T3 Subsystems V skills (all to help with exploration).

(I am not doing much in space at the moment – RL has continued with its cow moments.  This process has however kept me amused and distracted for a while.)

The next EVE expansion now has a name – retribution.

 

There are a few gaming websites which provide additional information, such as:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/29/ccp-unveils-eve-online-retribution-coming-this-winter/

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/14/feature/6763/Winter-Expansion-Retribution-Unveiled.html/page/1

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/9/29/3425080/eve-online-retribution-preview

I am pleased that they are looking at the Bounty area. The current system is so easily gamed that it is useless. Differences include being able to put bounties on any Player, Corporation or Alliance, without them having to of wronged you first. The bounty payout rates will now depend on how much loss the target suffers, including taking into account insurance payouts and the like. That could still be manipulated due to the errors in how CCP calculates the average value of things. (I still have that laser crystal that the game suggests is worth 200M, but sells in Jita for less than 1M.) It is an improvement though.

If it works like I assume, there seem to be some really interesting gaming elements in this change. If you want to grief a Hi Sec Corporation, you can put a Bounty of 1B ISK on them. Suicide Gankers could then target their haulers and miners, and in effect get paid for the kills – basically like a Mini Hulkageddon. I can imagine people will be crying about the pendulum swinging too far back into the Griefer’s ball court. However it adds new elements and complexity to how the game can be played. If you get it right CCP, this will be an excellent change.

You have a reiteration of the old ships, addition of new destroyers and a mining frigate, and the NPC AI changes which have been previously mentioned. They also mention a Salvaging Drone. Be interesting to see how effective those are.

You also have an update to Crimewatch – to make it easier to identify the effect of performing actions, and what flags you have and how long they have to run down. You can toggle the level of warnings you get, which is ideal for newer players. Assuming it is implemented well, I think this is a good thing for the game.

Mining Director V

Mining Director V finished on my main alt yesterday. I’ve now plugged in a Mining Foreman Mindlink (an expensive purchase), and kicked off Industrial Command Ships V. I’ve also plugged in a MX-1005 Mining implant on my main Toon.

About a month ago I posted the updated Hulk fits I use. I generally stick with the Tanked T2 Strip Miner version of the ship. At the time that ship provided the following base Yield:

1,382m3 per minute

Adding an Inherent Implants “Highwall” Mining MX-1005 into slot 10 (cost ~105M), that Yield increased to:

1,451m3 per minute

If he fleets up with my Alt – in his Orca, Mining Foreman Mindlink and the T2 Laser Optimzation Link running, that yield increases to:

2,364m3 per minute

That’s a 71% increase over a month ago. It was by no means a cheap or quick process, but the increase is noteworthy. It makes the original yield look downright agricultural.

The alt is now training Capital industrial Ship V. In a bit under a month that should increase the yield to

2,467m3 per minute

While not exhaustive, I checked around for what else I might like to do to increase the yield further. The obvious is to drop the Damage Control and go with 2 T2 Mining Laser Upgrades. That sees the yield up to:

2,688m3 per minute

There’s a slot 7 implant called Michi’s Excavation Augmentor. That adds another 5% to mining yield – but at a cost over 1B I just can’t justify it. Still, the yield would increase to:

2,823m3 per minute

Last of all my main only has Exhumers IV. Train that to V, and yield should increase to

2,899m3 per minute

I think common sense will prevail, and I will just stick to the tanked and boosted Hulk, with a yield when my Alt has finished training in a month of 2,467m3 per minute and 25.5K EHP.

My PI and Trade runs are set up to be run every second day. I am struggling to make that once a week at the moment. I’ve contemplated just giving it away, but I guess there are no real issues with leaving it dormant for long periods of time. It is an hour long distraction when I do get around to doing them, which usually nets me 20+M.

When I first set up my PI chains, I surveyed every planet within 3 jumps of my home system, looking for the best resource levels. For convenience my main PI alt used the local planets, while my second PI alt did a 9 jump round circuit to collect her goods. The reality of that effort however meant I’d often just not bother with that second alt.

Since I had free slots after dropping Data Chips and Gel-Matrix Biopaste (which did not sell well enough), I took the opportunity on the weekend to delete all of the distant installations, and move them into the local system. (I ensured not to use the same resource on the same planet for each of my PI Alts.) It cost a sizeable chunk of ISK to do that. I need to stop changing my mind. Hopefully with the lower effort, I will process the cycles a little more frequently.

I also took a long trip to Jita and back, picking up some implants (just from sell orders) to test the market in this area. Being more of a backwater, I’m not sure how these will go. I’m hoping for some low volume convenience sales.

It’s been a Carebear sort of week.

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.