Thursday, March 27, 2014

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

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

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

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

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...