15/05/11 08:39 AM
Arkonor 285
Bistot 217
Mercoxit 192
Crokite 187
Hedbergite 171
Hemorphite 168
Jaspet 152
Dark Ochre 147
Pyroxeres 118
Kernite 106
Veldspar 99
Scordite 93
Gneiss 90
Plagioclase 88
Spodumain 82
Omber 81

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Search of Heartache I

Having recently wrapped up Astrometrics IV, I headed out in my trusty Heron. I really like the ideas & mechanics behind exploration and I was excited to put it to work while I was working toward training the rest of the skills on the List™. My home system was empty so I warped next door to see what they had to offer. After my unskilled 431 second scan, what should appear to my multispectral probe but a Gravimetic site. Nearly lost in excitement I warped off to the first planet, simultaneously destroying the first probe and pulling up the system map to chart out the Quest probe layout.

The tiny system had two outer planets and a group of tightly bunched inner bodies. I figured out the best way to use four probes to completely cover all of them & then began another unskilled 431 second scan. On the very first run up pops a signature with a 0.6 AU accuracy. As I warped off to the point, I again bid goodbye to another set of probes & loaded some Gravimetic Combs to track it down. The first scan returned nothing, as did the second. On the third I could scarcely believe my eyes. A signature with an accuracy of 0m!

Flush with success, I cheekily warped to 0m and scanned the asteroid contents while aligning towards my home system. It was a small to medium belt of 15-20 rocks with about 175,000 units of various Omber derivatives. Arriving back home, I jumped into the Lou Ferrigno, loaded a fresh set of Omber I crystals and cleaned out the cargohold. The rest of the corp had long since docked and headed off to other pursuits. I knew this was going to have to be a one woman show. I opted to go with jetcans and risk the flippers as I was on a role as well as a bit of a time clock. Approximately an hour and fifteen minutes later I was busy loading the last of the ore and heading off to refine the whole mess.

Then I got a bit proud and maybe a tad cocky… (to be continued)

Late Night Math

I’d like to introduce you to a new concept I’ve come to know very well. I like to call it late night math. I’m sure you all have a great familiarity with it. It’s the math that leads you to undock in a poorly fit ship because “it’ll do” and cause you to reprocess something because you just “know” you can sell the minerals for more. It’s the kind of math that leads you out into low-sec because you were ok there last time and cause you to see a market on an item at a great price, only to realize after you’ve bought it that the bottom has also dropped out of the demand as well.

Occasionally you’ll see minor variations of this. Some of the more popular ones include:

  • Emoragequit – blindly screaming at the computer, turning it off and saying you’ll never be back
  • Drunken Master – established player gives away stuff or blows it all up while drunk
  • EFT – Empty Forum Threats – favorite home of the whine and whinge that really mean nothing
  • Lovesick Loser – unrequited love blossoms in the deepest reaches of space

One or more of these may end up being combined into a sad state of pitiable pod pilot puke. Please ignore all of them and help stamp out Late Night Math.

How you might ask? Simple – don’t buy, sell or make major decisions after midnight, a couple of drinks or a fight. Simple. Really. No, honest.

Updates & Information

Just as a quick post, the price of Tritanium has skyrocketed over the last week. Prices in some areas have broke 5 isk/unit and many low-sec areas easily in the high 4′s. In high-sec hubs there are regular orders of 3.8 isk/unit. The price for a jetcan of Veldspar then has broken 3 million and is rapidly approaching 3.2 million as I write this. Currently it takes amost twice as much Omber to equal Veldspar. I’ve updated the sidebar to reflect the price changes. Interestingly enough, the other minerals have mostly fallen in the wake of tritanium’s climb.

In other mining news, my corpmates and I have noticed that there seems to be an overall decrease in the size of asteroids available. Due to heavy mining, many belts are being kept in a perpetual state of regeneration and only about 50% full. It means more work as we try to keep up with production demands and resource management.

On an unrelated note: shout out to Kyle Langdon and his Journeys In EVE who recently stumbled across Our EVE here. Update the Isk/Jetcan and you misspelled my name!

Laughing All The Way To The Bank

Usually I spend my isk faster than I can make it. If there was a unlimited faucet spewing isk into my wallet, I think I would still manage to spend it all. I love going shopping. “Oh, new ship. And I need a new jump clone to go with it. And matching implants. And how about some designer modules. And… and…” You get the idea. Girls in space are just like girls on the ground I guess.

So I’m so happy to stumble across EVE Bank. I am aware of the scams and problems with banking on EVE in the past. Regulation has always been an issue where there is no oversight. Several different people have commented on it in the past. Massive wrote a piece about it and Eve Tribune covered it in their interview of CSM candidate LaVista Vista [A member of the EVE Bank staff]. Perhaps one of the best endorsements comes from the near legion of imitations and obvious scams. Dynasty Bank is another option currently out there offering investment services, including long-term Certificates of Deposit that have insanely high rates [~10%]. And for what appears to be obvious scams, the standard deposit character for EVE Bank “EBANK Ricdic”, has several near copies ["EBANK Ricdik", "EBANK RIDDIC", "EBANK Ridic"] hoping you’ll mistype and send them money instead.

Even with all of the issues surrounding it, I think there is still a valid point to be made for banking in EVE. As has been mentioned many times over, there is no guarantee that it’s not all a scam. It wouldn’t be the first and it certainly won’t be the last. However, as I try to put my money to work, I’m also looking at areas where I don’t have to be involved 100%. My time is also valuable, and being able to earn even 1.5% compounded daily is more than worth it for a portion of my isk. I don’t put it all in, I still need to be able to shop. But I’m a proud EBANK investor. My 70 million won’t make or break their endeavor nor mine, but it is still nice to see it grow in my account. I now have an additional 200k that for all intents and purposes, I just allowed to come to me. I consider the whole deal a rain day investment that may or may not be there when I retire, but will be candy/cake/icing if it is.

I would encourage anyone with extra isk to consider investing some of it with EBANK. I would strongly encourage anyone who considers investing with EBANK to review and investigate EBANK as they would any investment in EVE. Is it a scam? Maybe. Do they currently deliver on their promises and your investments? Yes.

Eve-Mag.com Article
Massively.com Article
Eve Tribune Article
EVE Online Forum
Ars Technica Report
EBANK Annual Report

The Future Is Bright

As a carebear industrialista, I am extremely excited about the flood of production communiques that are coming out of major research and development corps all over New Eden. New industrial command ships and reactions for moon materials are coming as are changes to some of the blueprint manufacturing amounts. One thing that has caught my eye and caused me to nearly get goosebumps was the seemingly innocuous announcement that ship equipment that have activation times would soon also have little countdown gauges to tell you how far along in the cycle said equipment has gone.

Oh wonder of wonders! Now we will be able to see how long until the next activation of any repeating module takes place. On one off, non-repeating equipment, the change is only mildly useful. But on the equipment that is set to auto-repeat, the change is monumental. Finally, modules can be planned around and taken into account. For us, the way this plays out is with the mining lasers and strip miners. No longer will it be necessary to overspend time whittling away at a roid that can easily be half-cycled or less. It will be easy to see how much ore you pull in a full cycle and then cut off the beam at a fraction of the cycle close to it’s final amount.

For example: Say your Hulk can strip a modest 1400 m3 per cycle. There is a Dense Veldspar rock floating 12 km off your port stern that scanners indicate has 9000 units left. At roughly 2/3 of the cycle you can cut if off, finish the roid and be ready to move on to roid number 2. While is isn’t new functionality in and of itself, it will now be so much easier to see. Miners, watch your timers. Keep them close to the final cycle you need. Any miner worth her morphite will be able to tell you how much ore they are able to pull from any given roid in a cycle.

Orca Production Calculations

Orca Work-2

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.

Industrials, Transports and Freighters. Oh My!

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.

Über Miner Luvin’

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.

Almost There

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.

A Carebear’s Carebear

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.