On Colonising and Mining a Planet

In my first foray into Planetary Interaction [PI], there was a mythical 4th Tier [P4] level product that could then be used to potentially build POS arrays and structures. I scoured the ‘show info’ windows and read as much as I could about how it all stacked together [P0->P1->P2->P3->P4], which planets were necessary and even which POS arrays were moving and selling, how much of what it took to make them, which planets were optimal for that, what skills would be needed, et cetera. I briefly [nearly non-existent moment in time] toyed with the idea of building Corporate Hangar Arrays as a lot of them were showing up on tower kills [a few that I happened to be a part of – shooting them that is].  I have seen a lot of other pilots talking about their planetary colonies, how they set them up, what they are producing and what they have found to work well for them. I wanted to share my experience and hopefully offer help for someone else looking to set up their own PI production chain.

As it turns out, this was going to be quite beyond what would be profitable for a single pilot [or even two] to effectively manage with sufficient appreciable return. Perhaps if an entire corporation were committed to producing all of the parts involved it could be a profitable venture. Realising full well that the first ‘M’ in MMO is for multiplayer [the second is for migraine], I still thought there must be something that a single player could do with PI that would be a least somewhat profitable.

I spent a fair amount of time looking at the spreadsheets, making my own, pulling up prices from the late eve-metrics and eve-central and deciding what might be possible. In the end I opted to start with just a couple of little things to help offset POS fuel. Enriched Uranium seemed good as it could all be produced at the plasma planet we already had and then could be used to help fuel the POS we were living out of. Easy, right?

It took a couple of tries [including a full tear down and rebuild of the colony] to get everything situated in some semblance of order. Along the way I learned important lessons about planet size [bigger means longer, more expensive links], production set up [work in reverse – more on this later], and repetitive stress syndrome from the click-a-palooza involved in turning everything on. As I learned I also read more and discovered several great tools for planning:

• EVE-Central
• EVE eye Intergalactic Positioning System
• EVE University Wiki
• 4WARD’s EVE PI Spreadsheet

Additionally I began to become more efficient in planning my colonies to try an squeeze the most out of them. This is a fairly difficult pursuit as the changes made to PI since incursion have affected the ability to do single planet construction.

On Cleaning Up The Moons Of Wormhole Space

I happen to wake up in my Buzzard next to the tower to a flurry of activity. Seems one of our pilots has found a tower that is offline a couple of wormhole jumps away. This is little cause for flurries or activity, unless said tower has of particular value to it. And wouldn’t you know it, this tower has a Corp Hangar Array and Ship Maintenance Array as well as, 2 refineries, about 30 gun batteries and a dozen or so various electronic warfare batteries. Rapid structural eliurination reveals a dozen shuttles and several larger boats from the SMA and the CHA produces a lot of Tech 2 equipment and tower arrays and batteries. Several quick transport runs are made due to the presence of potentially hostile forces in a nearby location.

Fully intent upon cleaning up the wayward detritus floating around this distant moon, we loaded up in as many laser ships as we could find and headed out to uproot the tower so that full salvage operations could begin. After a time, an incoming com-link was requested by the tower’s negligent owners. He explained that they had been cut off from their tower and were actually in the process of trying to get everything out when the estrangement occurred. They were prepared to pay up to three hundred million for bookmarks to the tower’s current location. Given the tower was worth more than that and there were at least another 250 milllion in arrays and batteries around it, the offer was declined. A negotiable counter offer of 1 billion was made to offset the time cost of scanning out a location and leaving everything in place. This was additionally declined. At a seeming impasse, preparations were made to fully remove the structures.

The initial fleet was battleships to the rescue complete with portable batteries [Guardian] to keep them firing continually. The change to end of life of the wormhole to our system resulted in a refit to battlecruisers across the board, so the Harbinger gank squad rolled out [plus one Coercer for a pansy industrialist without proper laser skills]. This continued until [insert rational reason for downtime] at which point we safed and planned to return to shooting and looting. One of the keys to this plan was the presence of a Badger Mk II from the aforementioned SMA. The plan was to remove the tower, yank the other modules out to highsec with the indy and call it a day. Along the way a couple things happened to kink said plan.

Firstly, the fleet wasn’t able to reassemble until much later, putting a strain on everyone’s respective schedules. Secondly, the delay allowed a fairly non-trivial portion of the shields to recoup [approximately 10%]. And finally, the static wormhole was too small to fly a covetor through. We grabbed the last of the loot we could, popped the barge and headed out. Our corp-mates had another highsec entrance for us only 12 jumps away through crazy random happenstance. In short order we were all home again and back in normal ships looking for something to do [where do is roughly defined as shoot].

On Living And Lasting In Wormholes

In a recent article Star Defender ponders the longevity of wormhole occupants and the preponderance of persons heading back into known space. This is increasingly true, I will agree. One of the other things we have noticed is that even within a corporation, we’ve found that some people who loved the wormhole when they first moved in, decided that it wasn’t really a long term option for them.

After doing this for almost a year, we’ve learned that it is, as much as anything, a lifestyle issue. Some people are looking for isk and have decided that missions or tending their rock gardens in high sec is more to their liking. Others miss the constant flow of traffic and capsuleers that they can shoot at. We look for people who like smaller ops, closer knit groups and slightly neurotic. The people who end up doing the best are the ones who don’t like crowds, love making things work [especially without the right tools], and are used to living on the fringes of society.

In many ways, Letrange’s post on Alliances as they relate to wormhole life is indicative of the issues involved in long term wormhole residency. If you haven’t read it, let me take the liberty of paraphrasing him, “1st, go read Letrange’s Blog Entry. Back. Good.” Basically as it relates to wormhole life, alliances are different. Both alliances and corporations need to start thinking approaching life differently from their counterparts in high-sec, low-sec and null-sec. There are aspects of all of them that apply, but there some things that need to be thought through differently.

The first to be addressed is living out of what amounts to a caravan parked on the Gaza border. You desperately need fuel, supplies and food; however, parties on both sides of you are armed and should be considered dangerous to your well-being. You have to find ways to be self-sufficient while sharing with those also in your RV. One hopes that everyone living in the same place is courteous, thinks exactly alike and doesn’t have any body odour. If you solve this in a manner that keeps everyone happy, let me know.

Other issue that exists after a short amount of time is resource availability. CCP stated that they never intended wormholes to be a long-term residential solution. They’ve set it up so all your fuel and possibly everything else you use up will come from beyond the confines of your home. Couple this with the simple fact that wormholes tend to ‘dry up’ with usage and soon there are a plethora of people and paucity of provender for them. This is the main issue for people that otherwise have the correct state of mind to survive in a hostile environment making ends meet with their own wits. They just need more ‘content’ to be content.

As a corollary to this, the more pilots that you have in a given system, the better equipped the corporation will be to deal with any of the situations that happen to come upon it. Besieged by battleships, bring it. Perplexed by pirates, pulp ‘em. Stymied by Sleepers, sic ‘em. But as above, it takes a lot of resources to provide a lot of resources and all of them chew through it rather quickly.

So we’re left with the phrase, “Lifestyle Choice” that I really think best captures what it means to be a wormhole resident. Things aren’t often grand out here, nor does it all happen with clockwork efficiency. Fleets are often best described as ad hoc and would make most dedicated FC’s cry. Logistics are always a bit of strain and a large percentage of time is dedicated to just making sure everything doesn’t come crashing down. I think it is ok to say that those of us who tend to stay out here in the wormholes are different. There’s a niche out here that we honestly feel blessed to be able to fill and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.