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 |
|
On Friends Coming To Join Us
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="128" caption="Bandits In The Hole"]  [/caption]
This last week or so has seen our good friends and alliance-mates the Fearless Bandits come out to play. They are mainly the Greater Realms’ highsec mission and PVE corporation but they are looking for some diversion and adventure so they have trundled out to the wormhole to set up shop. They have already proven their worth on multiple occasions previously, have been a part of the alliance planning and development from the beginning and we are thrilled to have them along for the ride. It is always a good thing to have more friends around.
While they are primarily focused on mission running in high security, Empire space, they have very quickly adapted to life out in the ‘holes. There are still questions to be considered and answers to deliver, but it’s still a pleasant addition. They now have their own tower up and happily living from it as they join us for several combined operations. Initially they packed light and so we’ve loaned out a few of our now standard fits for them to use. It has helped to know exactly what they are flying and how it should perform in integrating them into our “well-oiled machine” [insert laughter here].
In addition to FEARL coming out to play, we’ve added several new faces who are old faces come round again. Some former corp-mates from long before have finally rejoined us and really stepped out mining/refining game. Hats off to them for helping to capitalise on the resources we just had floating around for lack of more barge pilots.
My corporate compadres, denizens of Domnion, wanton wormhole wanna-be’s are relentlessly reminding me that it has been a week two weeks nearly three weeks since I posted any information. I’ve been sorely remiss in spending much time posting information here, as I’ve been busy trying to live life in a pod out in the wilds of Apocrypha. Dominion brought some changes, but nothing overly significant to the capsuleers who fly here the wormhole. So then the question I need to answer to myself is, “What has happened?”
We’re still in the same system and we’ve managed to pick up another regular engineer. He really seems to be settling into the opportunities that exist out here in the unknown and is always eager to learn more. He laughs at our attempts to explain that living out of one or more metal boxes powered by a large metal candy cane is a “Lifestyle Choice,” but is excited about the future. We’ll have to revisit the idealism when he’s been ganked a coupled of times, podded and otherwise thrown under the bus [bus being a euphemism for Tech 2 ships with overwhelming firepower and numbers.]
The ability to run sites has picked up some as well with a fairly balanced effort at participation from all involved. We have tried [and been fairly successful] in making everything a concerted group effort, though the industrial side of things is still a bit of a struggle. The new guy has been very giddy about not only mining Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite, but being able to be compensated for it without having to worry about the market, hauling, refining, et cetra. We’re excited about his excitement too. Along the way we’ve become very adroit at operating together as a unit and understanding each others’ strengths and weaknesses. In many ways our efficiency is finally picking up and coming together.
The flip side of this situation is that we are also beginning to realize just how isolated we are. Our jargon and vocabulary has shifted significantly and we communicate in seeming nonsense to some of our corp-mates. We haul our “bloot” to market, we talk about our gases and our pre-warps, we know that “@#$@” and “aoliv89#*&” mean someone is about to die. We have reached the point where we know within a few million isk how much a particular site is worth. We can judge approximate time frames for running those sites. We have become fairly comfortable with suggesting fittings and I would go as far as to say know what should work. We have established procedures for scanning, scouting, bookmarking, mining, fighting, etc that aren’t really written down in electrons anywhere.
This is all to say that as we add new people to our endeavor out in the uncharted realms of otherwhen, we’ll be struggling not only to bring them up-to-speed, but also even just communicate.
Technorati Tags: old players, new players
In a brief return from being lost in space, our intrepid explorer and CEO of Penny Ibramovic Engineering [PIE] drops by to bring us another of her delicious posts to read after dinner. Enjoy.
The manufacturing division of Penny Ibramovic Industries is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Whilst it is reassuring to check my wallet and see a steady stream of income based on profit from sales, that income is dwarfed by the continued success of the wormhole engineers. Raking in tens of millions of ISK for most wormhole operations makes my market sales look like petty cash. One wormhole operation can plump my wallet up with enough iskies to cover all my sell orders on the market, whatever outrageous profit margin I added at the time, rather than waiting weeks watching the cash trickle in. Production may offer a steady and generally reliable income, but it’s slow.
Admittedly, I am hardly a business entrepreneur at the moment, but nor will I be with my home out in w-space, as I will not be able to commit the necessary time to making a fortune off the market. Indeed, access to any market information is impossible in w-space, hence my need to return to New Eden to monitor prices and make adjustments. If I simply accept that manufacturing and sales is not currently a cost-effective use of my time, maybe I will be better off. It isn’t as if my researched blueprints will disappear or suddenly become useless. All that will happen is I will lose the incremental adjustments to my wallet as my modules sell. But I think I may miss that.
However much I like living out in w-space, my anti-social nature enjoying the solitude, the sell order transactions in my wallet continue to give me a link back to New Eden. It’s not that I want to interact with these capsuleers, I actually quite like that I don’t have to just because I run a business. But w-space can feel very empty. Local channel remains quiet and unpopulated, regardless of who may be in the system. Even if there are others in the system, space remains big enough that you are unlikely to encounter them, except perhaps when passing through wormholes. And you don’t really want to encounter other capsuleers in w-space, unless you’re specifically looking for them.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Tourism In EVE"]  [/caption]
Not that I pay attention to the local channel when I am in high-sec, though, I actively ignore it. And idly hitting d-scan in high-sec—out of curiosity more than w-space habit—reveals far more activity in the system than makes me feel comfortable. I am sure all that activity was occurring back when I was living in high-sec, I just wasn’t aware of it. But now that I am used to the deceptive tranquility of w-space, appreciating all that is going on around me in high-sec makes me oddly claustrophobic. I need space. But just as much as I need space, I need to feel connected, even a little. Inferring that life continues by the wallet transactions of capsuleers buying my products gives me that connection. I suppose sometimes you just want to look out the window to be reminded of the world you are ignoring.
Ok, I admit it. I am in awe, struck dumb by the sheer enormity of what has transpired. In case any of you missed it:
Dominion has come.
And it is good. At least every little bit that I have seen from with in our little part of the unknown space we live in. With all the little things that have happened in the client, it really does feel a lot like EVE 3.0 instead of just an expansion. The marketers missed the opportunity to really push this as a major update to many of the parts that make EVE feel like EVE. With all of the updates to the UI as well as the actual graphics used for the systems, it is much more apparent that things have changed. And after one measly day in, I think it’s wonderful.
I’m sure there are a lot of little things going on around 0.0 involving sovereignty changes and support/logistics for them. There are some nitpicks, glitches and annoyances [hide windows?], but on the whole, I think it is a great update.
And finally – I can easily update this from inside my pod. Beware.
Posted from J130554, deep in the heart of nowhere and using the browser in EVE.
Hip, hip, horrific are the words we sing
Hip, hip, horrific is our thing -(TMBG)
As I look around and back at the posts I’ve written for the last year or so, I am reminded how well things have gone, but also how spectacularly I’ve managed to fail. If you are looking for pitfalls to avoid – you’ve found them. If you want to see how not to train for something; look no further. If you would rather have less isk at the end of the day, then this is your lucky blog!
Seriously, the posts that inhabit these pages are filled with the heartache and misery of a pilot bashing her head against the same asteroid day after day after day. At the end of the day there is a hangar full of veldspar and tritanium, some trash modules and a ship that desperately needs a tune up. Along the way the pilot has learned that you shouldn’t trust another pilot but you have to trust the other pilots until they fail you. You can’t put 4000 m3 in a GSC and there’s no way to get a station container out of a station. Overheating missiles is not so effective and skilling up adequately for boosters is going to be very expensive.
There are a few bright spots along the way. Namely, the ships and modules that have been opened up through a varied training programme that includes tech 2 mining equipment, logistics cruisers and some command ships. This is easily countered by the fail combat skills that barely allow for named heavy missiles on a Drake and some lame, unsupported rails on a Moa. It’s rather comical sometimes to be able to fit a full Tech 2 tank on every ship in the game, but then realize you still only have the equivalent of light weapons for armaments. Fear the fail firepower of 150mm rails on a Ferox! My heavy missile Drake of Dewm causes fits of laughter when people can safely orbit at 55 km and pick off my drones and then me.
![Low DPS [Divide by 7]](http://eve.finkeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Low-DPS-tm.jpg)
Other suggest that I should be proud of the fact that I can invent nearly anything possible on the market, but even that seems to fall flat. I have consistently managed to lose money or break even on Tech 2 invention and production. My volume approach is low and slow, so as to be moving backwards in appearance. I can train people to use the towers, labs, production facilities, but seem to fail in doing so myself. What was I thinking! Science is for smart people. Production is for people who are actually motivated.
So what have we learned from all of this:
- Train all the skills you possibly can [let's start with 231]
- Train a wide variety of skills to level 5 [53 is a good number]
- Science skills help you store lot’s of SP [9.6 million and counting]
- Collect ships [So you can collect dust]
- Every 3-4 months spend everything you have on one ship setup and then poke a pirate.
And I think I’ve rambled on enough for all of us today. And that is how to fail.
Words fail
Buildings tumble
The ground opens wide
Light beams down from heaven
She stands before my eyes
– (TMGB)
Because I’m always a bit distracted and doing 20-30 different things at once, it often means that I hit things hard and hope I get enough to keep the project afloat until I get back around to it again. One of those projects is the ongoing Orca development project that manages to be purely theoretical in nature. All this means, I don’t actually produce Orcas, but I come back and look at their production costs in relation to the current ore/mineral prices. In update to a post of long ago [Orca Production Calculations], the following changes have been made:
An Orca can currently be broken down into its component pieces and then sub-costed into their mineral components. The overall picture doesn’t include any of the manufacturing costs and assumes NO Material Efficiency research. I am putting the picture of the calculations in this post, but I’ll try to summarise the numbers for brevity as well.
To produce an Orca requires 7 component blueprint and one ship blueprint that all average around 1.1 billion each to purchase from the market. Each of the seven components will cost approximately 4 million in minerals on average [3.2 million - 5.5 million]. Combined with the total number of each component, the cost to produce an Orca is currently approximately 310 million. Since I’m not selling Orcas, I feel comfortable in suggesting that market prices ought to be around 350m allowing for profit margins, research costs and capital paybacks.
If mineral costs continue to fall, Orca prices could stabilize as low as 325 million. Adding rigs to them will still push them up over 400 million. The cargohold optimization rigs are still running over 30 million each. The addition of the ore hold has drastically improved the Orca’s flexibility and original role performance.
If you don’t believe me now
You’ll never believe me now – (TMBG)
Ok, it looks like I might have been a little to personally enamored with living in a black hole. Really though, who could resist the sheer, unrequited and unbridled draw from a purely science stand point. Here we stand on the brink of a natural phenomenon so powerful that the very fabric of time and space are subject to its whim. Why, the gravity of the situation alone should inspire the kind of awe to last a couple of eternities worth of exploration. Well, apparently, “not so much” as one of our pilots put it.
So, the real issue turned out to be less of the anomaly and more of an issue with being so deep. We had scouts scanning out double digit paths through class four and five wormholes to find any kind of exit into known space. I don’t mind taking a freighter full of fuel or supplies or ice cream to a place they can import from, but if they can’t even get an exit all the logistics in the world is still going to fall short for them.
So after just a few short days in the class 4 with multiple static class 4s, we have moved next door to a class 4 with a static class 3 that is much more likely to have some kind of route out to known space. This will appeal to both the mission and industrial minded pilots who want to be able to come and go for various reasons as well as the pvp oriented personnel who want better access to replacement ships and modules.
Like some sharks, our gypsy base must keep moving to live. A constant stream of new anomalies and signatures flowing over its hangars is required to keep it alive. The task of dismantling the current location, loading up the wagon train and heading out for the new frontiers is quickly delegated and distributed. In quick succession, the tower falls and is exported. We’ve collectively decided to move on to something a bit more challenging for the future, so we shall have to see how that comes out.
The medium Amarr tower has performed amazingly well for us and we’re proud of it. It has become a sort of second home for many of us and each time we set up, we give someone new the chance to give it a name. We have had some really good suggestions so far, including Slight Doom, and Event Horizon. The only real problem is on my end with the need to move stuff between the two holes for mfg or back to our high-sec base. The logistics behind it all haven’t been difficult, but I would be guilty of withholding the truth if I didn’t say they were time consuming.
As an aside, I want to put in my two bits in support of a corporate bookmark facility. If we can share corporate fittings, why not corporate bookmarks. Throwing a system of bookmarks in a can everyday for the crew is needlessly time consuming and a bit of logistical nightmare in and of itself. Surely it’s redundant and resource intensive for all of us to have a bookmark for the tower, the current wormhole or 3, the 10-12 anomalies and signatures. For the 3-4 people who happen to read this, pass the information on and see if you can get any action out of this too.
And so now the search for a new home for the mobile assault base continues with a couple of quick possibilities opening themselves up. Sadly we can find places faster than we can get to them and full utilize them. Perhaps with a larger contingent or a wider alliance we could manage them all, but I am still a bit skeptical of our participation in an alliance.
Finally, we’ve put some finishing touches on our rules of engagement and its application in wormhole systems. We are trying to balance our own carebear tendencies with the ever present need for defense and deterrence.
I  ‘m staring down a long dark hallway that is only dimly lit with some bioluminescent globes that are spaced much too far apart to give any sort of definition to the length or features of the corridor. I cannot see the end, nor can I see any distinguishable openings or portals either. My choices now are to turn around and abandon this path or proceed onward to see what will become of it. Where will it lead…? What have I begun…? What have I become…?
And so my thoughts on beginning the journey towards my current skill objective come to the fore. I’ve had long training plans before. They got me into my Covetor and my Hulk and have helped me max out most of my core skills [AWU - I love/hate you]. They are not pleasant to watch, but they are fun to achieve. Kirith Kodachi has kept many people entertained with his own regales of routines passed on his way to the Ninveah and later a ill-fated Nighthawk.
 My own plans are much more modest. I am working toward the skill set needed for the Amarrian Fleet Command Ship, Damnation. The die has been cast and the decision made. Currently I’m just getting rolling on my Battlecruiser V training. Then it’s a relatively shorter time to Amarr Cruiser V, Warfare Link Specialist IV, and Logistics IV. I’m already excited, but trying to temper that elation with the knowledge that it will still be awhile. I’m also trying really hard to ignore the results of my rather Scientific Background which includes such minor details as having pants for offensive skills. I’ll need to pick up some more training in heavy missiles and heavy assault missiles to be an effective fleet member.
 The impetus for this impulse is the desire for our fleet to be able to run sleeper sites more quickly and efficiently. With the added range for HAM’s, I think it might even be useful to fit them. With a couple cheap [it's all relative right?] rigs I can fling a HAM out to 40 km for approximately 260 DPS and just a smidge over 1,000 alpha strike volley. This is modest damage, but coupled with the ability to be cap stable while running both RR and links is too hard to ignore. In the meantime, I’m an entertaining myself by pasting pictures of my new ship all over the inside of my pod. [In case you hadn't noticed them all over this post by now. I'm also playing around with fittings for Al Abd [the name I've already chosen].
And so it happens. There is the past that is always with us. There is the present that is always running away from us. And finally there is the future that never quite manages to get here. There will always be another ship to build, another system to swim, another skill to train, et cetra. From my past I have trained to be a good scientist. For the present I am working on a few small projects, but the future draws my eyes to the misty veil of time. What then shall I do and where shall I go? Do I need this or that skill to get it done and how best to proceed in that direction? The future is always full of questions.
One of the things that has changed radically within the universe that we all swim through is the way new capsuleers join us. As technology has improved and the cloning and pod-pilot technology matured, we arrive at our current place where not only can you improve yourself towards any desirable end, you can also improve and train in what would seem like no direction at all. Now a pilot can not only improve her ability to learn skills that improve her ability to pilot ships that improves her ability to learn/earn/kill/thrill, but that same pilot can utilize the new technology available to rearrange the very fabric of the brain to enhance certain basic attributes or reduce others.
The veil around my own future has grown quite thick, and I am left without real pictures of what it will look like. There have been some things that I have always wanted to do, but given the lack of direction, I let them wander. I also know that sitting here in this present and expecting to get a clearer view of the future will never cause the past to go away or said future to become clearer. I have decided then, to walk off into that veil of mist. I have been to the new technology, and drank deeply of its mind altering draught. I am now as balanced in ability as any and only break down and cry a little about my slightly slower skill training in science on days that end in “Y”.
|
|
![Low DPS [Divide by 7]](http://eve.finkeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Low-DPS.png)
