Our EvE » missions

Addiction and Mediocrity in Ubiquity

kename — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:30:19 +0000

I know, I know, I said that I would quit
All right, I promise, no more after this
You don’t know how I’ve tried
To forget what it was like – (TMGB)

So things have been busy and I’m at a bit of a loss where to start. Who knew that managing a bunch of raving lunatics with delusions of insecurity could be so much like running a corporation. All that time at the asylum is finally paying off. [Warning, excessive use of makes my hands overly tired so just apply liberally where you feel it's appropriate to make it interesting for you to read.]

Towers: Apparently you have to keep putting fuel in them. Otherwise minor details like shields, guns, labs all go offline.

Labs: Mostly full of jobs, except for when something happens to a tower.

Wormholes: Much fun. I hope to stop running errands and get back in them.

Combat: I think I remember fitting a ship with something other than cargo expanders once upon a time. It was cool. I died.

Skills: Battlecruiser V was cool and the implications are still settling in. Though it’s nice to be able to jump in all the racial BCs, albeit without being able to weaponise them currently. I can fit a whopper tank to them all, but not so much DPS. I blame the ferrets.

Corporation: Growing. Leaps and Bounds. More people means more annoying opinions opportunities, but also more things to manage. Need to train Delegation [5% workload reduction per level] to level 4 and start handing off some of this stuff.

Organisation: What? Hmm? I filed that here in the stack of papers on my desk back in the tower that went offline. I’ll get back to you January 4th. Some year.

Mining: See combat. [I think I warped to a belt in a NOS Drake. Sadness.]

Invention: Lot’s of invention going on. Need to get some of it finished.

So a little bit everything goes a long way toward getting nothing accomplished. Happy times!

The Long Dark Hull

Kename Fin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:57:54 +0000

In the process of dreaming about my future and while staring at the picture posted in my pod, I have already started fantasizing about potential fits and what not for my Damnation field command ship, Al Abd. Come on, admit it. You have all tried fits for ships you can’t yet fly. It’s the dirty little secret/Pandora’s Box that EFT and EVEHQ when they become prevalent. Armchair capital pilots everywhere are fitting out their supercaps to do battle in their minds eye. So skipping the reverie and amorphous thoughts about what might have been, I managed to cobble together the following [mind the Tool Tips].

[Low Slots]
- Damage Control II
- Armor Thermic Hardener II
- Armor EM Hardener II
- Armor Kinetic Hardener II
- Ballistic Control System II
- Ballistic Control System II
[Mid Slots]
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
[High Slots]
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
- Armored Warfare Link – Damage Control
[Rigs]
- Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
- Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I
[Drones]
- Hobgoblin I x5
[Statistics] Using Level V Skills For Comparison
- Effective HP: 85,934
- Tank Ability: 20.56 DPS
- Damage Profile – (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
- Shield Resists - EM: 12.50%, Ex: 89.06%, Ki: 73.75%, Th: 30.00%
- Armor Resists – EM: 85.66%, Ex: 87.25%, Ki: 89.24%, Th: 81.35%
- Capacitor: Stable
- Volley Damage: 1,121.98
- DPS: 269.28

Bah – this whole post too long to format. Nearly twice as long as dreaming up the fitting that I am sure I will iterate through at least another thirty times. Are you not entertained? Ten million to the first comment that collects all the eggs.

In Search of Perfection

Kename Fin — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:53:53 +0000

I’m always trying to make the best of both what I have and what I can do. In some cases that means being as efficient as possible and cutting costs and corners. At other times it is a matter of training that last skill to level V. Currently I’m working at wrapping up Production Efficiency to level V so that the stuff I manufacture costs less and I’ve been slumming [mission running] so that I’ll have enough LP to purchase an Inherent Industries ‘HX-2′ mining implant and then the ‘HY-2′ ice duration implant. My clone out in the Ardalabier ice fields will get the HY and the main high-sec mining clone will get the HX. I’m about half way there. If I get those all squared away, I’ll consider a set of implants for the mission clone.

On other progress fronts, I’m getting closer to having some good R&D agents with Lai Dai. I have plenty of standings, but the skills are still by major road block. For someone who likes to do a little bit of everything, getting your skills up to a sufficient level can be maddening. So in four days I’ll shift from production training to research training all the while I’ll be missioning to be able to mine more efficiently.

On the sales front, I know I’ll need more order slots, but that has also fallen in terms of importance to the other options. I’ve been putting my LP from Amarr corporations into faction laser crystals. This has been fairly profitable as they would otherwise just be collecting dust and the crystals additionally required for purchase have all been from mission loot.

Summary:
Perfection is painfully slow in coming sometimes.
Implants are worth the cost [sometimes].
LP should be available to sell/contract/trade.
Clones allow for specialization without alts.

Addendum:
Apparently magnetic cable flux disruption from a small planetoid in some far distant system is playing havoc with my pod’s electronics and it’s taking hours to accomplish little tasks like docking, warping, jumping or even just using the coms. [Some numbnut cut two major under sea cables in the Mediterranean Ocean and all of my connections are being routed to Venus first which further results in a ping of something on the order of 4800 ms.] I think the term is Sad Panda™.

Good Grief

Kename Fin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:36:37 +0000

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.

Refined Tastes

Kename Fin — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:46:28 +0000

I couldn’t resist the title now that I have for the moment completed my mission grind. I now have enough standing with the local corp to refine my ore at 100% before taking it to market. For weeks I’ve just been sitting on my rock collection while I ground through mission after horrible mission to get enough standings. An unexpected bonus is that I have enough LP to pick up one of the specialized social skills from the LP store [nothing else of interest to a non-Amaarian pilot]. Now that I have my 6.7 standings, I’m refining on every trip out. The next major hurdle is getting it to the right market.

Speaking of refining, I’m finishing up Refinery Efficiency V so that I can start training Scrapmetal Processing and Ice Processing. Of course this also necessitates training Hydromagnetic Physics and Metallurgy. It really bothers me that inefficiency would take so much from the modules and fittings that I want to refine.

The Occasional Missioner

Kename Fin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:15:57 +0000

I hear a lot of people talking about mining as a means to be able to do missions or support a PvP habit. I’ve always viewed missions that way. It’s a necessary evil for mining. You could concievably mine without ever running a mission [check out the macro mining isk-boys] but as a complete miner, you will conceivably need to refine some ore at some point. Then it’s nice to have a better than 6.7 standing with an NPC corporation. How do you get that if you are a dedicated miner?

To be sure, you can use connections to get a little bit closer, but at some point you’ll need to actually run a mission to even get started. Given that a large portion of mining training has not been in combat related skills, doing missions for standings can be a slow process. I’ve approached this rather in the same way that Dee Carson talks about training your learning skills. I do a mission now and then as time allows or when I’m done for the day with all of my mining trips.

I have skills to mine well in an Osprey, so that allows me to also pilot a Caracal. The tank is shield tank is also something that I’ve trained based on needing to survive in belts. Drones as well. The only thing missing is the weapons skills. I evaluated missiles v. gunnery skills and opted to go with the missles. This was based in part on the desire to possibly use a Drake or even Raven later on down the road as well as the ability to do mission specific damage.

So I mostly run level 1 and 2 missions for standings. Occasionally there is a level 3 agent that offers courier misssions that I can run for a bit more standings. Finally there is one other use for running missions, the LP store. There are some great mining implants that can be had from those stores. Not much else that a miner needs from the LP stores.