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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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.
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 moved a bunch of my Tritanium to market today. I’m still using a Badger II as I don’t have the resources to use a Charon yet or the skills for something like an Iteron V. The result is that I move about 1.6 million minerals per trip. At the current market rate, that means I’m getting about 4.9 million per trip. As it’s only 6 jumps, I’m ok with making the jumps and moving it to sell it.
Having made some isk, I was contemplating going back into the field to make some more roids cry, but somehow got distracted by a item link to a Drake battlecruiser. Suffice it to say that 31 million later, I’m right back where I started isk-wise. I’ve never owned a BC before and barely have the skill to fly the thing. I have the tank and support skills, but haven’t spent much time learning the weapons systems. As a primarily industrial character, I didn’t use much beyond the occasional assault launcher or 150mm rail gun. So now I have a very well tanked passive drake without any launchers. Hilarity never ceases.
This is a topic that I’ll probably come back to at some point. Apparently at somepoint in my career, I made the following statement to a good friend. “I am that most dreaded of MMO players, the care bear.” I tend to upset the natural order of things by needlessly throwing resources at things that could be better put use wiping the virulent infection of my fellow humans from the universe. I constantly waste isk, time and other things to put people that I hardly know into new ships, get them started training new skills, help them get set-up for mining/research/learning/pvp/pve/et cetra.
Case in point: Today I happened across a young Caldari pilot fresh into the SAK and had an overwhelming desire to just throw help at him. He really didn’t seem to know a PDS from an SPR but that only further spurred me to fill his wallet with my isk. To top it all off, he was genuinely interested in learning the game and getting over the learning curve. I almost couldn’t contain my enthusiasm at finding someone so ready to play the game and learn the ins-and-outs of a complex system like EVE.
We talked a length about skill training, mining, missioning and the general accumulation of wealth and power. In the end, I gave him over half of my net isk worth in new skills and equipment that would have taken him a couple of weeks to obtain on his own. I pointed him toward such perennial favorites as EveMon and EFT so that he could begin planning for his own future and make educated decisions [or at least ask educated questions]. By downtime I had made a new friend, had helped a new player and lost over half my isk. Sheesh, what was I thinking 
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.
I was relaxing in my favorite pod, sipping on some nutri-goo after a very long and successful set of Blockade missions. It’s almost kind of sad how easily these traders let their private jumpgates get stuffed up. So I had cleaned out all the Sansha scum and was relaxing while perusing the nearly 200 m3 salvage I had cleared. It has been a good day.
The music was softly playing in the background and I closed my eyes for moment. Only for a moment and the moment’s gone. But so was my connection. The universe-wide, pod system shutdown caught me while I was dozing. I had missed my latest skill training completion and was so angry with myself I screamed. Unfortunately I then had to explain to my family on the other side of the coms why I was screaming and it wasn’t at them. There’s another couple of hours of training I’ve lost.
Someday I’ll write a book, “All The Things I Could Have Trained”!
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.
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