Gateway Quadrant for the ???

Yeah, CCP suckered me back in with this promise of an updated "new character experience".  Yup, it's updated...  You get to die again.  Well, actually, you are forced into it, no option this time around.  I had high hopes at first when they handed me an Astero to fly -- wow, new characters are getting ... oh, I have to get it blown up and me with it... Ok, now it makes sense.

Afterward, you walk through the new skill "experience" and how the AIR group has whole plans (I think someone discovered the old skill certificates system and put a new face on it) you can just dump into your queue (of course, you need to purchase the books at a markup over what you can find them for in the market from NPC vendors).  And... may the gods help you if your not-so-new character never bothered with all those useless fighting skills because you don't have much choice of slot configuration on a freighter... cuz, you don't get anywhere until you train up those initial (aka REQUIRED GUYS AND GALS) AIR plan skills...

Yeah.  

Once Aura (bless her blue skin) dumped my new character on the tender mercies of the career agents (yup, same old same old here) - I abandoned the "new" new character experience and went back to playing my Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 characters...

Yup, CCP made changes - they're still pushing PVP down your throat as if there is no other valid game play and if you aren't in a corporation you don't deserve to enjoy the game.

Sigh.

Well, I dropped by... but, I am gone again.

Maybe, if CCP survives another five years, I'll see if they've made any real improvements to the game or if they are still rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...

Until next time.  Be safe out there.

Yin

CSM 14 Q3 2019 Minutes...

This week, I sat down and worked my way from the start to the finish of the published CSM 14 Q3 2019 minutes.  I think this is the first time in the entirety of the nine years I've had an EVE account, that I actually read the entire document.

I was searching for some glimmer of a clue that CCP has a plan or glimmer of a plan for what they want to make EVE into.  The closest I got to that was on page 39, with:

"Aryth says that CCP Seagull had a vision but right now CCP seems to be throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. "

That pretty much sums up the way that I've been feeling this year.  The torrent of skill points for logging in and playing have not helped.  In fact, if anything, these events have deepened my despair that there is a future in EVE Online for a "Lone Wolf" player style.

Therefore, I have cancelled all my accounts and as their time expires, I will just disappear.  I doubt I'll completely walk away, but the game is not worth paying for.  I'll play the alpha level game - it is just as "rewarding" as the omega level game, and does not cost me anything other than the time I throw at it.

No, you can't have my stuff.  CCP wants money out of the economy, so I'll just lock it all away as insurance against some future time.  Who knows, CCP might come to their senses and find a direction that includes something (new and challenging) for Lone Wolves to do.  If that happens, I'll at least come back to try it.

In the meantime - if you are staying, I wish you all the best.

bye.

I will not dump my Occator!

Hermit posted yesterday that it was time to throw out the Occator and start using an Impel.   Hold on one little second.

For Yinmatook to throw away his Occator that as currently fit can do the MWD/Cloak "quick warp" trick (which is different from the MWD trick that Hermit is talking about) and fit up that Impel that is not able to do that trick, would not only cost the price of an Impel and fittings, but would require that he go purchase the Amarr Industrial skill and train it to level 5.  That is 19 days (or a two injectors and some hours).

Instead, if you are willing to give up the MWD/Cloak quick warp, here's an Occator fit that is fairly cost effective and has more EHP than the Impel.

[Occator, Haul G]

Centum C-Type Energized Explosive Membrane
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II
Centum C-Type Energized EM Membrane
Centum C-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
800mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates

EM Ward Amplifier II
50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Medium Shield Extender II

Prototype Cloaking Device I
[Empty High slot]

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II






Yes, this thing costs more than the Impel (140M isk rather than the 14M isk Hermit's fit has). 

As for the Centum/Corpum/Corelum C-Type modules - purchase the cheapest one available -- they have the same fitting attributes.

One other thing.  Perhaps my copy of Pyfa is out of date, but testing the fits on SiSi, I find that they are actually 100K and 99K EHP, not the 121K and 118K that Pyfa is showing me.

Anyway... whichever ship you choose to fly.  Tank it!

Spring cleaning.

I have finally taken the time (5 minutes... woohoo) to look over the list of blogs that I claimed to follow for the past five years and throw out the ones that I really don't even look at anymore.  I even added two admitting who I am really paying attention to.

I do watch the CCP patches, but sadly, I am finding nothing to draw me back in.  I don't play EVE for "companionship" - hell, I have a wife, five children, ten grandkids, an elderly cat and a sister-in-law and a couple good friends for that stuff.  I play EVE to escape from the pressures and battles of life.  To be honest, EVE has grown to suck at that.  I am finding Diablo3 to be far better at that, right now.  However, I have not completely walked away from EVE.  I still log in and fiddle with Yin's skill queue when it looks like it is getting too low (like less than 200 days of training) and keep my copy of pyfa updated.

I do hope that eventually, CCP adds something for the solo player to salivate over instead of more and more for the massively large alliances to drool over and chase.

Life is real, EVE is a game.

Woah! Really?

This Crimson Harvest event, now that's interesting...  Yin managed to get enough points yesterday that he got the first level of rewards.  The mystery box contained a speed booster.  He popped that like a sailor going... well, yeah, fast!  Thirty minutes later, while speeding through a system running from Ghesis to Amarr on one of those blasted purchase that last bit of kit runs... the speed booster expired and the Apple computer rebooted.  Say what!?!?!?!  Ouch.  All I can say is the speed boost is nice while it lasts, but the after effects are painful.

Be careful out there - and watch out for Crimson Harvest drugs!

Where did Yinmatook go?

Yinmatook has been retrenching.  Fighting off a serious bout of not wanting to play.  The end result (at least the plan right now) is to consolidate onto two accounts.  One character now works for a new puppet master and a second is thinking about making the same move.

The bottom line is that I play this game to unwind, and I play it alone.

I don't want to get into massive fleets and have the massive headaches of always having to wait for Charlie to get his act together and show up for the event.   I've been in large guilds on WOW and EverQuest and learned long ago that nothing starts on time, and usually will be at least two hours late starting.  Given my life, that means I don't get to take part -- the alarm goes off at 5am whether I've had my eight hours or not.

I also cannot afford to have this become another "job" -- I've got three of those IRL, and I don't need any more.

What is my beef with EVE?  Well, I am fed up with claim jumpers.  I am out there running missions in a Marauder fit for PvE, and some damn PvP fit cruiser shows up and starts looting.  If I wanted to do PvP, I'd be out in a PvP ship.   However, if I take a PvP ship out to do PvE missions, I get to file an insurance claim -- and the insurance payout on a Marauder sucks. :/  Until CCP fixes that - EVE is just something I do in off moments and I am not going to pay anyone $500 per year for that.

Instead, I've been playing Elite: Dangerous and Guild Wars 2.  Both of them are games that you buy once and play for free forever (well, unless you want to go into their store and buy things).   I've also been fighting with physics in the alpha Besiege game!

If you drop by Teshi (Domain) or Murini (Kador) -- you might find Yinmatook running missions occasionally -- but don't count on it happening often.

Ta...

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

Message from a friend...

This just in from friends in a sister corp in the Alliance:

"We've decided to pull out POS and go back to running our industrial work out of a back-water station.  All work in our POS will be completed this week and we'll take it down and mothball it.  Discussion is taking place about whether to hold onto the components or sell them off."

We wish them well in their migration back into dealing with station queues.

For our own part - we've so far invested about 4b ISK into our w-space adventure and have realized an income of approximately 50m ISK.  Quite a loss for the first month.  But that heavily defended POS was not a small expense!  We'll see what the next month brings for profits… Though… someone was talking about sending one member back to HiSec to run LVL4's in a Marauder for some sort of steady income!

And, now for something completely stupid

Yeah, the new dev blog is out about hi-sec poco's in Rubicon...  I was ok with this idea until I read this paragraph in the poco dev blog:

The NPC tax will continue for hi sec POCOs (as we want low sec POCOs to still be competitive). The tax rate stays the same, at 10% for export and 5% for import. This is then in addition to whatever tax the player owner sets. 

Yup... let's just give everything to the playground bully.  No need to worry, they won't do anything wrong.

Guess our decision to dive into w-space and forget about the junk in k-space was well timed.

I hope it works for them.  I suspect it will turn out to be a short quick grab by large alliances that are not so hated that they actually can get into hi-sec to get a lot of poco's up and help squeeze the profits out of hi-sec to force people to go somewhere else.  Sad.  Oh.  Did you hear that?  I think it was the death gurgle of PI in hi-sec... R.I.P.

-Yinmatook

Tick tock, tick tock...

"Oh bother!", Guerre exclaimed.  Then quickly shuffled his feet and apologized to the Amarr mission agent.  Still, he was upset with himself about forgetting this agent was one that frequently sent folks out to do direct combat with the other factions.  Since this was the second in a row and declining right then would have led to a confrontation with "the boss".  The displeasure (and standings hit) from the agent would have been fine, but when "the boss" got wind of it, and somehow she always did, then there would be hell to pay - and hell hath no fury like a woman bunched up panties... hmmm, did she even wear... oh my God!  Guerre decided he didn't want to pursue that line of thought any further!

So, he delayed his decision (knowing that he'd decline it after the four hour window had passed) and went off to run courier missions.  At least those never led to direct declines in apposing faction standings!

Someone had told Guerre that you could run fifteen distribution missions and then switch to a security agent to run that all important sixteenth mission and guarantee yourself a security storyline for the maximum faction gain.  Sadly, he had found that while you can (and in fact you will get a storyline mission as long as the agents work for the same faction - they don't have to be in the same Corporation) do that, all the storyline missions are a random crapshoot and you are not guaranteed any particular storyline based on the normal mission agents you work with.  Bummer!  Oh well... the standing would come, eventually - as long as he didn't go bonkers (or get castrated by "the boss") in the mean time.

The bottom line is waiting around for the skill queue to finish that all important skill is a slow and tedious process and one just needs to find the right challenge...