The times they are a-changin

I work at a University in Information Technology (IT).  That means that contrary to popular opinion - summer is when I'm stressed, working overtime and scrambling franticly to upgrade all of our servers and services while the students and many of the faculty are away on their "summer break".  Now that the fall semester has started back up, this is when I get a brief respite - that is, unless some one of the multitude of rushed summer upgrades was not quite right - and then the frantic pace continues until it gets resolved.  Well - for me at least, the lull has finally arrived and I'm able to take stock of where I am with EVE and what I am doing for the next few months...

And... I'm doing a lot of things.

• The Hi-Sec POS is stored in the corporate hanger and the fuel has been sold.  I'm going to hold onto it until Christmas to see if I feel a need to use it again or if I'm going to sell it.
• One of my characters (with about 75million skill points) who is a generalist - nice to have along on almost any kind of mission - is being sold.  That transaction should be complete this week.
• Two of my four accounts are going to be stripped of useful characters, and the other characters either destroyed or left on the unrenewed account.
• The character that I started when my daughter and her husband got me playing this game in 2010 is off to join a null sec renter corp (renting space from NC., I believe).
• The character I acquired from a friend that started playing in 2003 and left in 2011, is for the next month or so, running lvl 4 missions in hi-sec with one of the industry characters fleeted up to get their standing raised - after that, if Null renting is good - she's likely to join that same corp (which means turning the corp CEO over to one of the characters that is being trained for that position right now).
• Two (possibly Three) industry characters will be maintained.
• One NPC corp, hide my time online from everyone, for sanity, character will be maintained.
• The still wobbly part of the decision is whether that third industry character gets moved, or if she is abandoned to leave me with a slot for training specialist characters for sale on the character bazaar.  At this point, I'm almost definitely planning to move that character.

The markets seem to finally be settling down.  The cost of making things have fallen dramatically, and prices are slowly following those costs down.   I've still got some tech2 modules that are profitable to invent/build/sell - and I continue to be able to realize a profit every month from doing that, even with doing all the work in a station.

I'm actually looking forward to the invention changes that are due to drop next week.  Being able to start up a multiple run invention job so I can devote less time to the industry side of the operation.  Giving me the ability to log in once a day to set up the queues, instead of trying to be able to log in about every four hours to start up a new set of invention jobs.  I really need to make some time to get on SiSi and try that out, so I know what I'm doing next week ;)

Ya'll be safe now...
  Yinmatook

Should PVP be the new PVE?

A few folks I follow religiously (Jester, Mabrick) have commented in blogs (or it has been said in the comments on the post) I have read this morning that PVP is the only acceptable gameplay.  That got me to thinking about what is wrong with PVE in hi-sec space...

The biggest issue I have with PVE in hi-sec (especially as I am doing it in Osmon where I can run missions for SoE and Caldari [which are diagonally opposing factions in the faction wars and by raising my standing with them (as SoE is a front for the Minmatar) I can slowly raise my standings with all factions ... but then standings won't matter after the summer (hah!)]) is the ninja gangsters that drop in and challenge you by shooting your MTU or looting your wrecks knowing that you are in a PVE fit battleship (or marauder) and their PVP fit cruiser will make short work (or at least be a superior match) for you as you battle them and the targets of the mission.  

How to fix that?  Let's see... (off the top of my head)

If CCP really believes that PVP is the only valid play style - then PVE should not exist as it does today.  Really, it should just be PVP against an AI.  So, there should not be any difference between a PVE-fit and a PVP-fit.  That would let the PVE running person defend their loot/wrecks/MTU.  How would this work.  Well, I'm given to understand (I need to admit that I'm no PVP expert - haven't ever really engaged in it -- so, I'm really admitting that I'm not CCP's desired game player... even if I do have four accounts...) that a good PVP player is going to have multiple safe spots as well as perches and spying locations to watch from.

Therefore, I think that CCP could make this a lot riskier for the gangsters by updating the PVE content to force people to use PVP-fits to run them.  Give us more than one bookmarked warp in spot.  We need a perch to assess the situation.  We need warp targets that are close to each group so PVP tactics can be executed, in true hit-and-run style.  This allows us to warp in, decimate the cloud (or be decimated) and run off to the perch/safe to lick our wounds before coming back to take out the next group.  And since we are already flying a PVP-fit; when that risk averse thinks hi-sec is their personal hunting ground shows up to help, we are probably ready to take them out as just another small iteration on the mission parameters.

I have tried (in the past) to use what I am told are PVP fits for missions and it has been a dismal failure.  As I don't PVP, I may be completely doing it wrong.  I shall have to run an experiment and see...

What do you think?  Is it possible to run the existing PVE missions with PVP-fits?  If it is, are their suggested methods (that I've obviously failed to find)?

See you in space,
  Yinmatook

You need a laugh?!?!

In the spirit of this being a quiz day and needing to have something positive after reading the "Traitor" entry from Ripard...

How do you know you are too tired to continue playing?

When you get back from that PVE "Dread Pirate Scarlett" mission, turn it in, and THEN realize that you didn't pick up your MTU.

Yup... that's not the first time I've done that either...

Enjoy yourself,
  Yinmatook

Is the High Sec POS about to be abolished?

CCP has recently posted blog 2 of 6 in their summer expansion set of dev blogs.  This one is about the changing of the manufacturing lines.  If you haven't read it by now, you must be living under a rock.  So, go read it already.

So, there is wild speculation about what this is going to mean for those of us that use High Sec space Player Owned Stations (POS) to get around the lack of station slots for copying, material research, and production time research.  While I do that, I have also (recently) expanded into having a POS in a system that does not have any industry in the local stations - therefore, I'm playing with manufacturing from the POS in High Sec as well.  

I have a few concerns that I hope will be addressed in the remaining four blogs - but only time will tell, of course.  Therefore, I'm in a bit of a quandary.  I was planning to expand - to put more towers up - even with the inability to see what is in the POS containers (except from the external API) [please don't get me started on my rant of how stupid it is that the external API can tell me what materials I have in the modules/containers anchored at the POS but the game client can't].

I don't have any remarkably expensive original blue prints (BPOs) that I would have to risk in the new method of doing things, but still - a researched BPO is an item that it is going to take TIME to replace, not just ISK - therefore, it is as precious to me as the time I would have to invest to go purchase a new ME/PE 0 BPO from an NPC and then do the ME/PE researching (and most of mine are either researched to "optimum" or as close as they can get with up to a month of ME and a month of PE).

I don't believe that this change (as some have posted on the threadnaught) is there to let the GOONs put POSs up in all of High Sec - after all Gevlon's war on the GOONs is not in need of that many targets :)

I'm conflicted about whether this is a good or a bad change.  I need to see what changes CCP is going to make to the actual interface and how much we can see into the POS modules and containers without being in a ship at the POS (which today is absolutely nothing).  Let's face it, anything that is not the current mechanic of

1. right click on BP, select Manufacturing
2. click on select slot, chose the correct POS assembly array, select the slot
3. Press ENTER do not click ok - or you'll get that dreaded "you do realize this is not right now" window
4. Select the number of the item you want to make
5. Press ENTER
6. Now, you can see how many materials you are missing in the POS...
7. Load up the needed materials from your station hanger into your transport
8. Trundle off to the POS
9. Move the materials from your transport into the correct POS assembly array
10. Now, back on that quote window that you left open... click on the REFRESH button
11. Repeat steps 7-10 if you screwed up and didn't get all your mats
12. Finally, it is all green check marks - accept the quote.

Has got to be better.  The question is going to be - is it better enough to be worth the risk you are taking by putting the blueprint(s) into the POS instead of leaving them safe in your station hanger.

Until the next time...

Yinmatook

Changes to reprocessing...

Jester has a post up about his take on the changes in the reprocessing dev-blog.  I think I disagree with him that the vast majority of minerals will now come from mining exclusively.

I certainly believe that some of the folks that run missions and loot, reprocess, sell the minerals are going to continue doing so.  Will they realize as much ISK from doing so?  Of course not.  But, they weren't doing it completely for the ISK anyway (or half of them wouldn't have bothered in the first place - right?).  There is certainly a population that look at ISK/hour calculations and determine that salvaging and looting their missions is a waste of their time.  So, there is already a population that is out there and just letting their wrecks rot in space after they move on.  Of course, there is also that entire class of low life that come barging into a mission and start salvaging your wrecks on you.  If those folks get to go find a new pastime, it won't hurt my feelings at all ;)

My own play style is one that I do take the time to loot and salvage my missions.  Is it always cost effective?  Nope.  Why do I do it?  Because I can.  It is something to do that is not just an endless - blitz mission.  Makes it feel like I'm actually a real capsuleer, instead of a human (with a limited life expectancy) who is playing at being an immortal space pilot.  So, for me, it is just part of the way that I play EVE.  What do I do with all the loot and salvage?  That depends... When I get a hauler full (or get frustrated that I can't find anything in my hanger), I lug it to a trade hub and determine whether each item is better sold or reprocessed.  That particular process probably won't change for me.  At least not at first.  If I get to the point that I'm actually selling loot for .01 ISK because nobody really wants it - well, then I'll probably stop.   Until then, I'll continue and I bet others will too.   So, if it is worth more to reprocess it (even at 55% recovery) than it is to sell in the current market - well, then I'l reprocess it and sell the minerals - at least, in the near term after the change drops on TQ.

I think enough people will continue that while the raw amount of minerals provided by reprocessing the chaff will go down, that it will still be a measurable percentage of the minerals available.

Enjoy your time in space!
  Yinmatook

Yeah, that was a little profitable ...

I had reported a while back that I'd discovered a moon with a dead POS that had a bunch of things anchored around it.  Well, we talked it over and decided to take the gamble.  You see, some of those things that were anchored around that dead POS were pirate faction modules and are actually quite expensive.  We declared war, and spent about three hours making the POS go boom.  A few of the modules were stashed for future use by ourselves - but most of them have gone up for sale.  So far, we've made a small profit (approximately 30,000,000 ISK) after deducting the 50,000,000 ISK cost of bribing Concorde not to blow up our battleships in the multi-hour process.

I personally find it interesting that this (apparently) inactive corp removed and did something with all of the modules that were not related to defense - but left all the defenses hanging out there (especially those pirate faction ones).  One of my cohorts thought that the layout suggested that they'd been in the process of setting up the POS and went inactive before they finished.  I don't know.  I've never hung 18 cruise missile batteries around a POS (and even if I did, I would not put them all in the same spot).  My cohort may have a point (she usually does).  But, I'm not the POS defense expert...

Anyway... that's what we were up to two weeks ago.

Now, we're processing the massive changes to refining/reprocessing that CCP has announced here.  We have really not decided what to make of that whole set of changes yet.  Our mission running alts make a fair bit of their ISK from selling the loot/salvage that is profitable and reprocessing that which is not.  We certainly believe that this is going to change the balance point of what is and is not profitable.  I do expect that the crap buy orders that exist in the market will drop down to compensate so that they make money off the fools that sell to them even at the 55% maximum reprocessing rate.   However, I honestly cannot say that I disagree with these changes.  It makes absolute sense (having done a fair bit of tearing things apart in real life) that you don't get 100% of the parts that went into making the thing back for reuse when you tear it apart (especially after it has been through the war - in these cases, they certainly have been).

Enjoy your space time!
  Yinmatook

Back into the POS business

Last night became a night of "must escape the boredom".    The boredom of what?, you say…  he he.  Well, those agents in Osmon.  They have something like seven different missions.  A couple of them are against the Amarr, so I always decline those.  One other is that blasted "The Anomoly" thing that takes forever and has zilch for loot.  (I need to quantify.  It takes forever in a Marauder that is fit with a Micro Jump Drive as its propulsion module).

Unfortunately, the escape turned out to be hanging two POS's because I messed up and hung up a small one at first which would not fit the Mobile Lab, Advanced Mobile Lab, Ammunition Assembly Array, and Equipment Assembly Array that I wanted to hang on it.  Being an Amarr Small, it was 100 CPU short of the necessary 1400.  So, back to the medium.  Of course, I had already installed a copy job in the AML on the first POS, so I have to wait for that before I can take that one down.

In the system where I did this, I went from moon to moon.  I found seven POS hanging and three of them had force fields up.  Now, I fully realize that there are folks that hang a POS and leave it as an insurance policy.  The requirements to be able to hang a POS in hi-sec being what they are, you have to anchor them when your standings are good, and then if you get a nasty War and have to retreat and abandon the POS you were using, and your standings have slipped too low, you can just pick up and use the POS that you have had sitting there in space for the past umpteen months waiting for that eventuality.   I'm not one of those folk.  So, I'm in the process of researching these dead sticks.   Maybe I'll declare war on them and help rid space of the detritus of failed experiments.  Or maybe, since I obviously found two moons that were not currently inhabited, I'll just file that away for something for someone else to deal with…

I do have to say, that it would absolutely be nice if CCP provided a mechanic that we could use (besides the War Dec and hang out shooting a dead thing for days) as a small corp to rid space of these things.  Perhaps a mini-hacking game to obtain the control of the tower so we could take the modules that got left behind and the tower.  It always seems such a shame to have to destroy the tower to get the modules.

Anyway… off to dream...

Just a quickie...

Oh my!  Checking in today and the page views have kind of gone berserk.  Hmmm… Oh!  My! Goodness!  I got found and outed on MarketsforIsk .  I'm honored to be included in his list, but my business relevance is really just that I am reporting what I'm up to over here.

A minor update on the post I did yesterday:  I'm currently not blitzing anything in the missions, as my first goal is to replenish my wallets.  However, I am watching Mabrick's experiment to see if I should start blitzing the missions.

If you are new - welcome to my view of EVE ;)

Fly it like it was free
 - Yinmatook

Climbing the standings tree

Our pilots are currently running missions (Security Level 4) out of Osmon.  Why Osmon?  Because there is a SoE level 4 agent there who every 16 missions gives a Minmatar based storyline.  AND...  Three stations over to the left - look there!  A Caldari based level 4 security agent who gives a Caldari based storyline every 16 missions.  You know what happens when you bounce back and forth between those two agents?  You climb the standings tree with all four factions!

Yup, you do.  Here, let me lay it out for you.

You run a storyline mission with the Minmatar.  Turning in that storyline mission gives you a positive boost with the Minmatar and a small positive boost with the Gallente.  The other impact of that storyline is a negative push with the Amarr (who are directly opposed to the Minmatar) and a small negative push with the Caldari.

Now, you swap over and run missions with the Caldari until you get your storyline.  That storyline gives you a positive boost with the Caldari and a small positive boost with the Amarr.  It also gives you a negative push with the Gallente and a small negative push with the Minmatar.

Now, the thing that is the surprise in this is your positive boosts are always larger than your negative pushes.  The full on negative push with the Amarr for completing the Minmatar storyline is actually smaller than the small positive boost you get with the Amarr by completing the Caldari storyline later.  That's why you actually will gradually increase your standing with all four factions over a period of time.  How long?  I don't know, yet.  Will I stick it out until I have level 8 with all four factions?  I don't know - my crystal ball was dropped by my pet Fedo and is so shattered I don't even know if I should go out with that exotic dancer I saved from Zor's pleasure palace yesterday.

So, that's what me and my friends are doing for the next month or so. I think.

Fly it like it was free

-Yinmatook

Take that you scum!

While running a mission for the Servant Sisters of EVE a while back, a fellow corp member had his MTU shot away.  He pondered, and then went after the Ishtar that had deprived him of his loot bucket.
Although he had the wrong ammo for shooting a Gallente boat, he had the Ishtar well into structure before his PVE fit Golem had to retreat.

It would have been nicer if he could have destroyed the Ishtar for that scum, but leaving him with a hefty repair bill had to do.

Meanwhile, the corp members are scattered across New Eden running level 4 security missions for the various factions, and selling the salvage and loot to bolster their personal wallets.

We're also pondering the mess that is ISIS.  I mean, seriously…  Just because a Golem has a target painter bonus - is that any reason that you shouldn't train those same target painter enhancement skills for ANY ship that you could put a target painter on?  Sure, they're more effective when the ship has a bonus, but why can't I get ISIS to tell me that to get the best out of a target painter on ANY ship, that I should train… hmm, perhaps CCP should be told that people don't fit target painters to only ships that have target painting bonuses?  You think they might not know that???  ;)


Fly it like it was free,

Yinmatook

And the grand experiment is over - for now

We pulled up stakes and left w-space in the past few days.  The C2 our alliance was sharing with another group was just not enough to sustain us all.  We were not doing any PI, that's probably why we weren't making any isk - and the agreement with the other alliance was that we wouldn't (as they were afraid that the planets wouldn't support us all) do PI.

The anomalies just were not plentiful enough and nanoribbons just do not drop frequently enough.  Being camped by mercs for the Christmas break was the last straw and it was decided that we'll pull out before we actually lose something of value.

So, we're back in k-space.  Gone in different directions, running things out of stations instead of a POS, doing lvl4 missions for various factions to re-build the personal wallets.  Waiting for CCP to release the next great thing (well... as soon as we recover from rogue MTUs that kill their owners).

-Yinmatook