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Back In the Saddle

I’ve finally been able to get some time to sit down and actually play, write and most importantly fly! The second stage of wormhole operations [WH 2.0] has been proceeding at full steam. I sincerely apologize to anyone wondering what was going on. We managed to find a nice little class three wormhole system with a static, high-sec, regenerating wormhole. I’m hoping to be able to use this as our staging ground for further wormhole operations and production ventures. In effect, the wormhole space gives us a small, portable pocket of null-sec from which to operated out of, without the associated hassle of carving said bit out from some existing alliance death-grip.

It is exciting to think and dream about the future possibilities of T3 production and supply, but at the same time we need to remain grounded in reality. We’re trying to work out what our needs are as opposed to what we’d merely like or want. Do we need that large faction tower? [probably not.] Do we need the ability to manufacture the full range of T3 hulls and subsystems? [Maybe as many as we can get, but understanding that we probably can't compete with the larger alliances.]

We have for all intents and purposes created a mini-alliance with in the corp. We have a dedicated group of wormhole engineers [what we're calling the people doing everything in the WH] and another group that are still in high-sec. We’re not opposed to a full fledged alliance, but currently don’t see the benefits outweighing the costs. Perhaps in time my views will change.

In news unrelated to WH’s, I noticed that I am nine days away from celebrating my one year anniversary with the Engineers. It has been an interesting and fun time, and it is neat to look back on all of the things we’ve accomplished and learned. I’ve moved from barely flying my Retriever to being a proficient ABC miner in a fully tricked out Hulk. I’ve expanded my personal BPO collection to include most all of the other ships and modules that I like to fly and use. The corporation has moved from selling a variety of T1 modules, ships and ammunition into an ever increasing number of T2 items and ships. I know there is still a lot of things we could do and improve upon, but we’ll get there. Step by step.

Refit for a Bit

We successfully dismantled the POS from our little corner of wormhole space and got everything moved out and back into high security space. There was one little hiccup as a bunch of fuel was exported to an island [group of high-sec space surrounded by low-sec/0.0 space] that required a bit of scouting to extricate.

We’ve learned a lot about the whole procedure and how to approach wormholes which makes the operation an overall success. The main drawback was the initial investment was probably overkill for the returns, but in terms of knowledge was likely priceless.

Personally, I have a very low wallet and need to seriously rectify that. As we are also looking at moving into more permanent tech three (T3) production, the capital investment costs are still accumulating [labs, reactors, component bpos, reactions, skills] and will need to be factored into the final evaluation. We saved all of the salvage from our time in the ‘hole as a precursor to production, but are considering putting it up for sale as a support for future wormhole expansion.

Busy Two Weeks

Well, there’s been a complete dearth of posts from myself as I’ve had a very busy two weeks. Though I’ve been able to fly around a lot, I haven’t had much time to sit down and compile a coherent thought. [Those of you who are reading this, stop laughing at the last statement about coherence.]

We removed a couple of no-shows from the corporation. It’s always a tough decision to make, but after only popping in once after joining, you begin to wonder at their future potential. We’re about as laid-back as you can get in an industrial corporation, but we do prefer at least some warning that you might be scarce for the next couple weeks, months, years. On the flip side, we’ve had three new people join us that are shaping up nicely to be good support for the corporation.

In a comment to a previous note, someone asked about the exact difference that the training skills made in terms of skill training. I’m working on adding all of this up and will try to get a more complete answer calculated. I know for instance that training your learning skills can reduce the time to get into a Hulk from over 90 days to slightly less than 60 days [including time spent on the learning skills. Similar calculations are true for PvP, PvE and Market Mavens. I'll try to have a more complete answer for you in the future. Have to spend some quality time with my trusty calculator.

On a related note [calculations], I’ve managed to rebuild my spreadsheet [with kudos to Letrange for an interim sheet while mine was reduced to electrons] to a pre-crash state. It’s a good thing that the School of Applied Knowledge trained me well to handle this sort of thing before I started piloting around the rest of the galaxy. I can now reliably pick various BPO’s that we own and run the numbers to see if we will make a profit on them. Given that we mine almost all of our ore, the manufactured products are technically all profit, but realistically only if we make more off the pieces than we make off selling the minerals outright. We could undercut a lot of markets to move merchandise, but would only be hurting ourselves. By giving the inventory full market value, we cut into our profits as well as weaken the overall market by potentially providing a cheaper source of refinable ore. I’ve done the same thing to others by buying large quantities of items that were more profitable when refined and either resold or manufactured into to more valuable items.

I’m working at slowly rebuilding my wallet as well after spending a lot of getting some production underway. I’ve got a fairly decent supply of various T1 drones on the market and they are providing a steady [if somewhat low] amount of income. I’m also working on doing a lot of jobs for the FedMart corporation out in Everyshore. I need the ability to refine my ore out there more than I have loyalty to my Caldari upbringing.

More to follow…

Always Another Skill

I finally finished up what I considered a fairly good set of mining skills for a high-sec carebear-ette. All I’m lacking is the full set of T2 mining crystals. Additionally I thought I would start working on getting started on some production skills. I finally got that rolling along and realized I should be inventing as well.

I had decided at about three to four weeks into my pod-pilot career that I should focus on running any missions with one particular NPC corporation. I looked around at what I wanted and decided I like what Lai Dai had to offer. They covered a spread spectrum of endeavors and didn’t seems to rule anything else out. I wanted to fly for them as well, but it seems their rigorous application and acceptance procedures excluded me because of a technicality of my Achuran heritage or some such nonsense. I liked their spread of stations and coverage as well as the offerings from their LP store, not the least of which was the much vaunted ‘Highwall’ HX-2 mining implant.

So after specializing for a long time and even catching some flak from my then corp mates about not using ‘their’ corp and agents, I managed to get enough standings for a perfect refine. A couple of weeks later I was able to get a jump clone. And finally last week was able to afford my much coveted implant.

All of this to say, I have a lot of standing with them and was curious if there was a way to continue to leverage that to my benefit. Well, it goes back to one other reason I had selected Lai Dai originally. There are a lot of research and development agents within the Lai Dai corporation and they cover a large area of space and range of research endeavors. I looked at the spread and realized I have access to all off their R&D agents and was only lacking the prerequisite skill areas to begin earning research points for datacores. The datacores are requirement for invention of all kinds of various modules.

I started with Hydromagnetic Physics. Why? Well, my study of Ice Processing had required that I gain more than a passing familiarity with Hydromagnetic Physics and so I could immediately access high level agents by training Research Project Management. On a side note, RPM is a charisma heavy skill in the science field that for an Achura is painfully slow to get trained. I’ve stopped training it after four rounds as it will take another month to maximize it. In the mean time, I’ve also picked up Caldari Starship Engineering so that I can possibly work on some of the ship invention as well as sell some extra datacores.

The final skill endeavor has been to get some exploration work done. I had learned enough Astrometrics to use all the various exploration probes and some of scanning speed training, but knew that at some point I would need to move into a tech 2 ship to take full control of exploration. So I embarked on a journey to train Electronic Upgrades V I could train for a Covert Ops frigate. On a somewhat related side note, it turns out I need that for something completely unrelated. Manufacturing. Really, Manufacturing? Apparently you need various encryption methods for invention which require some skill at hacking which in turn relies upon… Electronic Upgrades V. So coming full circle, I’m training for scanning again so I can invent the T2 mining crystals so I can train for level IV of the various ore refinement skills to be able to use them in my modulated strip miner 2’s. Whew. I sure hope I don’t need to train any other skills along the way…

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.

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