25/08/10 15:39 PM
| Jaspet | 55.92 |
| Omber | 55.99 |
| Hemorphite | 62.18 |
| Pyroxeres | 68.21 |
| Hedbergite | 74.04 |
| Veldspar | 65.77 |
| Kernite | 88.68 |
| Plagioclase | 84.13 |
| Scordite | 68.17 |
| Spodumain | 75.94 |
| Dark Ochre | 95.49 |
| Gneiss | 95.24 |
| Crokite | 172.65 |
| Bistot | 216.26 |
| Arkonor | 270.56 |
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I’ve been doing some calculations for the upcoming Orca release and trying to get some relatively harder numbers for the mineral requirements. I worked through the BPO’s and the subsequent requirements to total up their costs and arrive and a minimum cost. To produce one Orca from an unresearched BPOs of each piece it will cost 433,439,762 isk. This based on the same weighted averages for minerals that I use to calculate the isk per jetcan values.
I’ve uploaded a screen shot of the calculations, but I’ll try to summarize here a little bit:
- Total Cost of BPOs = 7,906,896,360 ISK [+ Orca BPO @ 1 billion]
- Total Mineral Cost = 433,439,762 ISK
- Cost – Tritanium = 252,301,136 ISK
Conclusions:
It will likely debut for close to 1 billion as people rush them into production and to market. For those manufacturers who already have researched parts BPOs, they will be able to produce them at a significantly reduced amount.
I’ve finally wrapped up several skill sets that I have been wanting for some time. I can finally fly the whole range of Caldari industrial, transports and freighters. I can’t afford my Bustard, Crane or Charon yet, but I can fly them.
I also saw the devblog about the coming changes to the transports and I think they are good changes. I’m not so sure they were ‘broken’ per se, but they sure weren’t fully utilized. This may encourage more players to get into them and train beyond Transport level 1.
Also tucked into this blog is some ninja posting about the buff to the Mackinaw that allows it to finally fit two Ice Harvester Upgrades II and an increase in cargo hold that will let you hold 2 full cycles.
This last week we got our first concrete look at part of what is coming down the pipe in the near future. In a combined announcement from Outer Rim Excavations and Deep Core Mining, the new Orca was presented to the universe. It has the news wires all in a tizzy about it’s various aspects and roles it can perform. As with any new product, there are both fans and detractors. I tend to remain pessimistic about improvements until I actually see them, but I also have to admit that this really has me excited. It is at the core, a Mining Command Ship.
From the released information the specs are impressive. It will still likely have some tweaks before we see it in production, but the possibilities are phenomenal. I’m not privy to all of ORE’s and DMC’s research and test data, but what I have seen is a good start. The ship is laid out with the following information:
Ship Bonuses
- 250% bonus to tractor beam range [70km means you'll need long range targeting]
- 100% bonus to tractor beam velocity [1km/sec means just over a minute to drag from range]
- 500% bonus to survey scanner range [125km means you can tell what people are mining?]
- 99% reduction in the use of gang mods
- Multiple gang mods can be fit without command processors
Skill Bonuses
- 3% increase in mining foreman links per level
- 5% increase in cargo capacity per level [meaning w/ T1 rigs will hold just over 90,000 m3]
The announcement mentions a material cost of approximately 400 million and a BPO cost of 1 billion. The initial BPO specs could change, but they indicate a total cost to own all part BPOs of around 7 billion. I would expect that the ship initially debuts for about 800 million to 1 billion and eventually will settle down closer to 600 million.
The specs also list a cargo capacity of 30,000 m3 + 30,000 m3 corporate hanger + 400,000 m3 ship maintenance array. It can effectively haul two rigged Hulks, but not a battleship.
The press release has been met with a lot of discussion ranging from cargo space adjustments, the need to buff this and that aspect of the ship and the general “it’s a crap ship that doesn’t meet my needs” opinions.
The ability to fly the ship is based on a new skill called Industrial Command Ships which means going back to school to fly it. Most of the rest of the skills I’ve studied before. If they change the skill requirements, I’ll probably have to get back to hitting the books hard.
I’m finally almost to Caldari Industrial V. It’s been a long week, but I can finally see the end. Well, I can see it a week away. I thought about just training Gallente Industrials to level five, but since I also knew I wanted to fly a Charon, it seems frivolous to do both. At least at this point.
It’s been rough only having the Badger Mk 2 and it’s ~10-13.5 m3 capacity. Even with the 4 GSC‘s it only hauls 16,000 m3 worth of my stuff. If I forego the bonus yield of my MLU 2′s on Lou Ferrigno, I can slot in a couple of Cargo Expander 2′s and actually care more than my industrial ship. Something about that seems wrong. 
After I have the Charon, I’ll probably go back and pick up the skills for the Iteron Mark V, but until then, I will make do. Since I have been focusing on mining, I haven’t been the one entrusted with hauling on any group mining ops. For that matter, there haven’t been many group mining ops lately. I also just realized that even though I will have the skills for a freighter, I’m roughly 1,500,000,000.00 isk short of actually slotting my pod into the beast.
And finally, I’ve decided to pick up and train Transports to level 1 to shift into a Bustard for intermediate hauling in the interim.
How we conceptualize the universe around us plays an important part in determining what we find enjoyable. I once commented to a friend that I am that most detestable of all MMO participants. I am the carebear’s carebear. I find an enormous amount of fulfillment and satisfaction in helping people out and even more so if that person is an industrial ship flying, mining & manufacturing, POS-building, spreadsheet yield calculating fool of an EVE player. I see EVE as a relatively inhospitable, cold place that takes new pod pilots and tends to mount their broken, lifeless corpses on the ends of blasters and auto-cannons while simultaneously spreading any remaining biomass all over the scrap metal shavings to gum up the salvage scavengers.
From this point of view it a short jump to utter fatalism, that if we’re all going to die, we might as well go out with a bang and take any poor pods we meet along the way with us. There are some people who do this very well and with aplomb. They warp, web, point, shoot and pod all in the same breath. They tend to speak loudly and carry large sticks. The are only two options, death and victory. May the gods forgive any poor pilot who happens to escape their wrath. Anyone who runs is then inept and unprepared for life and will obviously meet their end in a quick and hopefully painful manner. How dare someone not engage them in combat! What lowly, incompetent fools to think themselves above an encounter. They should be vocally and wildly ridiculed from the com channels so that everyone else can look on in disgust at their craven behavior.
Or you can decide that this is a place that obviously needs your kind and patient touch. Your isk can make the difference in a young pilot’s life. They might decide that there’s nothing worth the time and energy when the world is out to get them. Oh, how extravagant the gift of a new frigate seems to the player who loses 2 in the first couple of days. The bonds of fraternity forged on the sharing of information and piloting proficiency are strengthened by the application of liberal amounts of understanding and redemption. What uncommon operators and precious pilots lie beneath the common dross of humanity waiting to be refined?
There is a balance that must needs be reached between the pain and providence of new players. Heavenly help does not replace the harsh reality of hell in space. Neither does being beaten bloody mean better basics. If we are to watch our world continue to grow, we need each other. You pirates shoot, maim and kill. However know that I will be teaching other to run, hide and if necessary crawl.
The time comes in most every corporation when things slow down, group ops tail off, members wander towards the edge of space and fly off into oblivion. Sometimes their families need them more. Other times they have obligations outside the pod that call to them and need their attention. During these times when the light shining on a corporation begins to fade, evening falls. How do you respond to this twilight of the corporate group and gains?
Do you run? Is it time to pack up your shop and move on to other fields, roids and rats? When the end begins, there is the very attractive option to look at moving your own personal operations toward something that seems more active. That corp over there looks active. They have a good, low tax rate. They fly regular missions/mining/ratting/pvp ops together and constantly talk about it. There is the possibility they look really active compared to the ending/failing/dwindling nature of your own corp though. Perhaps they are also dying and looking for anyone who might bolster their ranks.
Do you pour on the fuel and invest even more into the corp? Is it time to talk it up to everyone you meet and get more young blood involved in the corp and groups ops? It maybe time to take some more of the corporate work onto your shoulders and take a personal interest in making sure the corp you are in is the best corp to be in. Planting and fertilizing the grass on your side of the fence, so to speak.
I’m sure there are other options? They both have positives and negatives. Thoughts?
I don’t know where to begin. It seems the universe is going to change radically in the next couple of days. The faithful, foolproof capsuleer mnemonic skill training system is going under a radical frameshift resulting in a cessation of training when you capsuleer membership dues aren’t paid. It seems that even though the system was unintentionally created this way and has operated this way without fail for the last 5 years, it has now become a necessity.
The sadness comes from the loss of many good capsuleers. It seems times are getting lean and the inability to keep your dues paid is nothing new. However, now without being able to continue to learn, it is likely that a lot of players won’t be interested in coming back. They’ll likely pick up jobs planetside or maybe just fly off the radar somewhere….
For myself, I don’t think I would have still been playing if this had been in effect from the beginning.
It’s been a busy last couple of days. I have been perpetually thwarted by every attempt to undock. First it was a family emergency that required more than my passing attention to the information being fed down the hardwiring. Then there was a business trip to meet with a potential client for ongoing mineral sales. He was wanting to buy consistent quantities of certain minerals on a guaranteed schedule at or above market rates. The problem turned out to be the client’s backers were slightly less than reputable or even honest. It wasn’t shaping up to be a good time.
I managed to get back into the Lou Ferrigno and get several million units of Veldspar, Scordite and Kernite mined. Now that I have the standings with those Tash-Murkon Family posers, I can refine for more than I can sell the ore for. I don’t have the manufacturing skills yet to produce much with it, so I go for the profit. As I was making trips back and forth to the station, I would check the available mission ops for something interesting. The next to last trip in I noticed they were offering a chance to retrieve some minerals for war and knew the area would offer some Gneiss as well. I’m all for working through kind of ore I can get, so I pulled my records on the area and saw some battleship sized baddies.
I have been putting this off for some time, but I finally broke down and fired up heavy missile training. I hoped this would help it go a bit more smoothly. I checked my training times to make sure I could get it finished before the mission offer went away. Knowing that it was going to work, I flew off to make the last couple of jumps on the last sales trip. I’ll have to let you know how the heavies work out in real world practice. I might miss the missile-per-second firing rate of my seven little assault launchers.
I wanted to take a quick look at some of the connections that are being made around the EVE universe. It is wonderful that a lot of pilots have been getting their thoughts together and putting them down in type for the rest of us to learn from. For just a small sampling, we’ve added a list of them on the right under the heading “EVE Blogs”. It is exciting to see all of the people with varied feelings and experiences about flying in New Eden.
Speaking of connections, the first outside connections have been made to my own experience logs here at Our EvE. Thanks and kudos out to CrazyKinux for speed linking us this week as an addition to the EVE blogosphere. The number of blogs is daunting and trying to keep up with even a portion of them can be overwhelming. It is great that we have someone like CK keeping them all under his watchful eye. 
We’re still a young communique and don’t have much in the way of readership yet. But we are beginning to link in to others in the hopes that the greater EVE community is served by it. I know we’ve all learned something from reading about someone else’s experiences in flying around the universe.
Keeping up with all the goings on this week has been a trial in and of itself. And what has been going on that needs so much energy? Well – nothing! That is I just have gotten back from some much needed R & R in Kamio. I was getting a little burned out with all of the missioning I was having to do to get my standings up for refining and really needed a break. I love the Kami system with it’s grand cloud sweep and the way the colors play back and forth across your display as you warp around. It’s one of those systems I pass through quite a bit on the way to and from The Forge and I always think to myself, “This would be a cool place to live.”
I have several of these systems, but Kamio was the first. to really drive home the beauty of the omniverse that we all fly in. I’m not Amarrian, but I’m almost tempted to support their nonsense of some divine action in it’s formation. It evokes some of the images captured in the Gallente heritage museum data streams.
What systems do you love to look at? Where did you fall in love with the beauty of our EVE omniverse?
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