Out-of-pod holiday

Well, time for my holiday has arrived, and about to park up the ship while I take a vacation. Unfortunalty its supposed to rain for next 2 days, which really means could be in for a miserable day unfortunatly...

Passed the 27m of corp funds remaining to Jax after purchase of Zydrine (some 4500 units)... so he can get buy orders filled while I'm gone and setup a 3rd outlet store for our wares. Coproration has 90m of items up for sales currently, which is ~ 2 weeks of supply. Whats great is the coporation rate of sales is increasing weekly, as is the actual funds. All without further investment, and with monies being taken out for blueprints.

Personal wallets of both characters are doing very well due the amount of l3 missions stacked on Sunday - enough to consider buying a vast quantity of skillbooks on my return... For both characters.

Anyhow bed is calling - see you all in 2 weeks.

Too much loot/salvage.....

DeafPlasma has a non-T2 fitted salvager, a Catalyst destroyer, fitted with 3 tractors, and 5 salvagers - which seems the ideal mix for speed salvaging. Low slots are filled with 3 basic cargohold extenders.... giving 650m3 of cargohold on board, with an additional 400m3 available if needed in the Myrmidon. Until last night a single mission had never filled this amount.

One mission last night resulted in 1500m3 of loot/salvage total, requiring a trip back to the hanger to drop off the loot. I am trying to avoid having loot piles over many systems so I don't have a big hauling job in future, but think its going to be a requirement sadly if these huge loot missions become regular.

Thanks to Mynxee for the tip on POS fuelling, it looks like training for Blockade running can wait a while on DP. Its still literally months before a POS can be errected anyhow, due to corp standings being low, and also the fact we are literally nowhere near prepared for life in low sec. We'd literally be eaten for breakfast! DT only has 3 skills at L5 currently, but Gunnery is fast approaching 1m SP. I don't think I'll be risking going into Decon with Doom Armada around right now needless to say.

I have 5 factory slots in operation 24/7 currently in preparation for the time away next week/week after - and a full weekend of playing ingame, and building up the personal funds needed for some essential skillbooks. L3 missions really increase your isk income :)

Industry is getting to 1-2m profit per day right now. Now if I get that to 100x that figure I'll be very very happy.

Mineral price update

Over past month in Essence based on my spreadsheet stats and what I'm buying raw source minerals for:

1. Tritanium still increasing 2.75 buy order price average
2. Pyerite over month - pretty stable
3. Mexallon - stable
4. Isogen - small increase
   
5. Nocxium - Increased by 10 isk on buy-order price
6. Zydrine stable
7. Megacyte - Small increase

No real shortages causing production delays as in previous months for the industry section - apart from the almost constant usage of slots in the DSTIC home base. We now have to queue for manufacturing slots in Ours. Not a huge issue currently when we are building jobs that take > 48 hours, as the 2-3 hours wait for the slot is minimal. More of an issue in future. We'll build a manufacuring and science POS in low-sec soon enough to bypass all these issues. Only problem then is fueling and hauling minerals in/out.

Industrialists, how is it in your region?

Logistics wise has anyone got any ideas on strategy for fueling POS's in low-sec so I can prep my longer-term skill plan. Are rigged industrials best with WCS's, or is using a proper transport ship/blockade runner best?

Myrmidon is go!

Yesterday got the Myrmidon for Deafturret.... And I started
investigation of the areas to do level 3 missions for the intelligence
office - to my surprise DT has standing now for some level 4 missions!

Anyhow took a trip around essence visiting various mission areas...
The funny thing in doing this is I discovered the best agents were
next to low sec and therefore you had a good chance of being sent into
hostile territory for missions!!! Checking the low sec areas with a
shuttle to lay safes and check out the locals I found them to be
piratey.

My guide to spotting pirates in low sec...

1/. Take a snapshot of local residents and use this to investigate
their security status, corp and alliance info.
2/. If security status is under 0 they probably are a pirate.
3/. Check personal info notes Corp and alliance info and google it -
they may well even advertise the fact they are pirates!
4/. If all the above are okay you may be safe - but still stay alert
as situation may change..

Anything anyone else can suggest to improve the above list???

On a side note got 2 systems to inestigate tmrw for low sec ratting
and pos possibilities after checking out the official eve maps book -
which by the way is one of the best ways I've found to investigate new
eden space prior to flying to a location... Fingers crossed one of
those systems is good and relatively pirate free... It's low sec I
don't expect 100 percent safe space but it's nice if there's a nice
anti pirate Corp or two setup to discourage the yarr brigade...

Battlecruisers are go!

Last night I though I had it sorted, but made a crucial mistake with DeafTurret: Myrmidon requires BC level 2, not 1. Doh! So I didn't have the required skills for my BC of choice until, well, past my bedtime.

I have 50m isk ready to buy, insure, and fit my new Myrmidon with the best equipment I can afford and use currently in Ours.

Industry wise, last night, decided to take a break for skilling DP on Refinery efficiciency as he can get to 5 during the time I'm out of game from next week onwards. Decided instead to concentrate on trying to get DP to have some of the skills required to do research - which is progressing very nicely. Though this is unlikely to be finished by time I go away, it'll be close. Once I can use a few research agents simultanously it'll then be a case of leaving that going while copying blueprints for invention and buying the Interfaces required.

Downsides are today I will not get a great chance to this new Battlecruiser... as time online is extremely limited today & tommorow due to needing to be up early tommorow & not getting home till extremely late same day. Getting old is really starting to eat into my Eve time as I can't stay up as late as I could in the past with an early start.

Best news is with some quick skill purchases tonight - I now have 2 chars capable of hauling in an Industrial ship, meaning mineral flow back to manufacturing base from purchase point is increased.

Has anyone else noticed the terrible inflation in Ours for Tritanium recently? 2.76 was the price this morning, a noticable increase from the 2.4-2.5 range of previous weeks. I am now a net trit importer into Ours, as its getting too expensive to manufacture from the in-system buy-order price.

Weekend updates

The new Tales from New Eden site is live. It's a blog where I'll put my eve fanfic when I get inspired to do so. It'll not be as frequently updated as this site. Its a very very low-publicity launch until I get some more Tales on there. And get better at writing fiction.

Skills, well, Deafplasma is currently still working on Refinery efficiency 5 (14 days left!). I may start him on advanced Laboratory skills shortly so I can get a few extra lab slots. DT is working on a multitude of items. DT can get a BC tonight and likely will be doing so and should also be doing his first L3 missions. DT is still months off being a decent pilot sadly.... But every week he is improving at missions...

Industry... wallet at 27m, 50m of items on market, and still a sizable stockpile of minerals of all types. Blueprint shopping is waiting until 45m. Did buy 10 million of trit over the weekend, as had run out! Also have to consider the period I'll be offline (almost 2-3 wks - though will be online in 3rd week on/off), and thus need to be building a huge huge amount of modules/ships for sale in the period offline. I have 8 days until the offline period.

I've been waiting for the inevitable mission into Decon, luckily so far have avoided that particular bunch of pain for the moment - but expect it to happen at some point, especially when I start doing L3 missions. Thinking of fitting the BC to also deal with threats from PvP - well at least to allow me to be competitive. I think a warp scram, afterburner (as will be in deadspace a lot), and webber will help here...

Can't wait for L3 missions when I login tonight.

EVE Daily update

I missed blogging yesterday, awfully busy day at work... and prefered to play EVE than blog in the evening.

So updates:

Finished the level 2 mission of "The Blockade" which is the 1st time I've had that mission. It made a decent level of profit for the corp. Another day of grinding/standings for the corporation basically. We're getting there. I have personal standings for L3 agents now.. and money for a battlecruiser. Sadly have no skill to fly one, as this week instead of doing BC skills brought up my shield, drone and hull support skills.

As a battlecruiser will be essential for ISK generation, this is next on my list, and in theory DT could fly one by end of the weekend. This will unfortunatly mean a relocation out of Oursuleart (although corp base will still be there), and another hauler route. Which leads to... DP needing to learn skills to fly an industrial class ship next week also.

The rent is paid for the corp hanger until November now, so it means I can go away on holiday knowing none of our stuff will be locked down by the authorities for not paying a bill.

Industry is ticking over at 4-5 million isk a day now, with a profit of 1-2m depending on the day. Not bad for sitting down not doing much and hauling some goods around occasionally. Jax's industry hanger is also selling, though not at the rates of DP's.

Big news is this will be new blueprint weekend. I'm hoping to have cash tonight to go and buy the 25m of blueprints I have marked for profit making potential. I wish I could blog about what I'm buying, but think its sensible not to pass on my industry analysis, as I know someone else will just undercut and reduce the margin for me. On T1 goods the ability to spot a good selling, high profit line thats undersupplied is essential.

I'm about to start a new blog to cover Tales/Stories from EVE (ie fanfic), which I don't think are best placed here. Will post/link URL once the page is done. Submissions from other authors welcome. I aim to update this new blog weekly with a new Tale.

Corp Update, USB headsets...

Last night, Deafplasma got a mail from a potential new corp member - a seeminly nice guy or gal (though given its eve, lets assume a guy...) from Canada - he certainally wrote a excellent EVE-mail indicating his aims in game which seem to concur with the corps. Unfortunatly I didn't have time to formulate a mail/speak to the guy as he/she wasn't online all night. Hopefully I'll catch him online at some point during the week - as he's an older character he really could assist with corp growth.. If not I'll reply with an EVE-mail today sometime once I get home this evening.

Jax's USB noise reducing mic arrived (like me he's using a PS2 socom style headset, which he acquired on ebay for a similar price to mine). We had a chat from 11pm -1am using voice, which is far nicer than chatting in game as you can be doing other activities at the same time :) I should comment to other EVE players that these PS2 headsets are great for EVE voice, Teamspeak etc... When you connect them to USB on the PC they present as a new sound card in/out. You switch ALL sounds in windows to use normal soundcards, and set eve-voice/teamspeak to use the headset. The noise reduction means I can have music playing, but to people I'm chatting to they can only hear my voice - can't reccomend this enough...

I'm basically playing on my own next 10 days, due to various real life occurances in Senx and Jax's life involving lack of broadband from both for a while... its going to be strange, was getting used to those guys being online.

In good news, the corporation mineral stockpile is now growing daily, and is keeping up with 2 traders running with it...

Tonight I won't get to play much - but should get a chance to refresh sell orders. I'm down to only having 47million of goods on the market - which for me is very very low.

EVE's Power of 2 promotion

This is a truely great deal, 49.99 euro for 6 months play, so about £42 likely when it hits my bank account... Link here if you havn't seen it before

So until October 10th, if you already play EVE and are considering a 2nd character this is probably the best deal available bar none. Once the 6 month period is done, you can go onto ShatteredCrystal if you live in UK to continue the subscription at £9-10 a month ish (read about them in this post for the financial rerasons) - although you could also transfer the character onto another paid account. I'm considering my 3rd account to make a research alt - but just can't justify it to myself, purely as I don't have a 3rd monitor to play it on - and right now logging in/out constantly to change skils would not be good, as I doubt my PC could handle 3 concurrent clients anyhow!. Now once I have an EVE capable laptop, maybe I'll do it - so I hope the power of 2 returns then :)

On a side note, don't you European players wish EVE would do one year timecards in US dollar?
I'd snap one up in a moment if available.

Level 2 missions

Faction grinding has got me to the point where I can run L2 +18 missions finally for the agent in the station where the coporation hanger is. This makes life easier, as can base out of the corp hanger... which is handy when you need to refit for a particular type of enemy.

Ran around 10 missions last night, grinding them for isk. I need a Battlecruiser now, so am fundraising for the cash for one - but as all loot goes to corp for the industry growth - this does take a while - especially as I'm still stockpiling salvage for rig manufacture :) Deafturrets combat skills are growing daily, and he's able to use a MWD now. Ludicrous speed is now a setting accomplished by hitting MWD button.

This weekend in Industry have managed to get Deafplasma up to point where he's now 75% ready for invention. Still got some electronics & hacking skills to go... However need to work on social/connections skills... plan is to go to the Gallente Datacentre with a stack of tags so we can instantly get some very good Gallente standing. Base refinining efficiency currently at 92.5% - should be at 100% or close by end of week.

As ever with EVE, everything takes time, so you can't rush things...

One piece of good news is the Incursus BPO is now able to come out of research tonight - that will immediately go into production (although not in Ours as the build-costs will eat into profits there). Also moving frigates = a problem until we get the 30km3 industrial..

The corp will start recruitment properly in about 2 months I expect, as then we'll need some combat pilots... Looking at my eve-maps book, I've designated 4 areas to check-out, for POS placement potential - and another few areas for mining possibilities for those in the corp who may be interested in that. Far enough away to hopefully be quiet and relatively speaking pirate free - have stations's present ideally (not essential)... and low-ish sec - but not so far from high-sec that we can't get stuff back to ours for manufacure, then out to sales hubs.

Prior to going out there, it'll require some map work to check on system activity (ie pod-kills etc), plus a cloaked scout to meet the residents. Everywhere has existing residents, so finding if they are Pie/not-pie will take some time.

I also need to check research agent locations - as we don't want to spread our wings too far. Well until we have jump-clones anyhow :)

Quiet weekend's industry update

Well, stuff sold... reasonably well last week - but not enough to bring up to new BPO buying 45m level...

Had 30m in the corp wallet on Sunday night when I logged into check (in the industry-1 wallet). Immediately refreshed buy-orders - now have 20m of various buy-orders setup. If you havn't got your more popular items in stock then its not good. Unfortunatly for me all the popular items sold out over the weekend.

Used 2000 zydrine in a few production runs + a load of Megacyte. Unforuntatly at same time Nocxium (something I'd never really ran out of before) hit rock bottom. More buy-orders placed for Isogen, Nocxium. They're not producing minerals quickly, but based on last time should fill the corp mineral hanger back up quickly enough.

Hauling minerals is becoming a problem for corporation - mainly as with current skills, 5000m3 is the max per run. By end of week this should be a reasonable 15-20k. Our plan is to buy cheap minerals outside of the major trade hubs, and haul back to Ours to manufacture (and sell in some cases) - then have a full hauler in the other direction for goods to sell in the more profitable mission hubs.

I'm happy with corp growth, but going to have to pass the mantle of management on in 3 weeks time, as I'm off on a 2 week holiday. Question is... which skill should I spend skilling in the 2 week holiday?

Waiting for isk - production semi-halted

Over next few days I'm not going to have much time online (until Sunday), so I'm leaving the industry of the corp in the hands of Jax... Basically when I do login for 20 mins, I'll be running off production jobs for the corp, which Jax will finish and place on market for me in his new location.

Its a good way to get the 2nd "retail" outlet started for the corp - as otherwise we'll be waiting 2 weeks for Jax to get PE to 5, and I've got spare production slots at the moment... so why not start industry-2 division this way ?

Well, basically we're trying to get the main industry wallet to 40-50m to allow for 5 new blueprints to be purchased - I'm afraid which ones would be a need-to-know.. research has identified that one of these alone has a 650k profit per run, and the end result sells well... downsides are to get the full 650k when we buy the blueprint, it needs to go into ME research for 30 days. So great for future growth... not so great for now. The other 4 I've targetting may sell better without ME reasearch, but I havn't fully calculated the profit margin on these yet.

In the meantime, plans for this next week are continuing to improve both players learning skills just a little - though with a main aim for DP to get perfect refines (minus standing loss) in Ours... should take to mid next week for this. Standing loss we're working on as all corp members are running missions when online.. for isk and for standings.

Lesson learnt: Don't fly tired.

Last night, myself and Senx Trelligan were on a mission VERY late.

It was a multi-part storyline mission and unfrotunatly it sent him into low-sec for a combat leg - so he messaged for assistance. I had ran missions in low-sec before, but in relatively safe space. This was far from that, and well past my bedtime already at 0:30am. 14 guys in local but no gatecamp and seemingly not in space (or in scan range). Senx warped us in and we started the mission knowing we were in full danger of being scanned out. L1 and L2 of the mission were fine, we were watching our backs. We then got sloppy and stopped paying attention to our on-board scanner. Too late....
Doom Armada alliance warped in with 3 guys, and ended up podding Senx, and killing me (but my pod did make it out alive). Was impressed with 2 things... - one being their warp scram range at 27km (from what I can remember). Second was just how efficently they went about killing us. The use of Navy ammo must help them a lot with dps also...

I personally should have done a lot of things better than I did - one being using AB to fly away from the scrambler (being deadspace this may have got me out of his range)... But as this was my first PvP encounter in EVE for 9 months... I'm rusty - and being 0:45-46 at the time was very very tired too. I'm also not skilled for T2 anything, and have pathetic support skills. So basically NOT a good place to be.

Lesson learnt:

1. If missioning in low-sec pay attention to scanner... it will alert you to guys coming towards you.
2. Don't fly tired - it leads to 1/
3. Stay aligned at all times.
4. If you see bad guy on overview hit warp. Don't collect drones, don't pass go, don't get your ass handed to you on a plate. Warp.
   
5. If you are getting targetted and are scrammed and knowing you can't survive make some attempt to get out of range of the scrammer. Don't just sit there. Really. Don't.

PvP is an aim for the combat char, but it's 9-12 months off - I'm resigned to doing missions till them. But I'll definitely pay more attention in low-sec next time. So thanks for the combat lesson Doom. One day I hope to be able to be as efficient at PvP as you guys were.

Cost to Play EVE - if you live in UK read this:

Apologies for this blatent public service advertisment - but I thought I should post as when I initially joined EVE I was unaware of the savings TC's could give vs paying for EVE time direct to CCP. New players take note:

I play by 60 day timecard - why do I do this? Answer:

• Its cheaper than buying a sub in the EU... fullstop.
  
• Its 19.99 euro's first month to pay direct to EVE, then 14.99 euro a month per account. (ie, about £12.50 a month). Current EVE TC costs are £19.31 (as per bank statement from this month) for 2 months (though it does depend on the UK->US exchange rate)- ie, you save just over ~ 2.50 a month (if euro stays at 1.2). Paypal is nice for payment as it gives rate at time of transfer, ands its usually competitive. This means I can run 2 accounts for roughly 19.31 a month - only a fiver more than a single WOW sub :)
  
• It may also be cheaper for the Europeans in Eurozone to pay this way also, but I've not done the maths as it depends on the dollar to euro rate. I can't imagine it is not cheaper though.
  
• Another thing you may not be aware of - you can start an account with a EVE TC, saving the 19.99 first month fee (or continue onto a full account from a trial with one). If EVE still charge more for the first month that is :)
  

Now note I would change to paying annually if the Pound -> Euro rate recovers from its current low as this will then work out a lot cheaper... but currently I believe EVE TC's are the cheapest way to play EVE-online if you pay monthly for a UK player - as of Sept 2008 at least.

Now the link to the guys I use - ShatteredCrystal - click this then choose EVE TC's then the 60 day card.

The guys linked are awesome - they are an approved EVE TC reseller (see the EVE-online website for confirmation, but don't click on their link from there (see below to why)!), and once you've got the first TC (which takes 1/2 hour and a phone call for verification), subsequent ones usually take well under 5 mins - you order, TC arrives in email (my record order took under 60 secs from order to TC delivery).. I personally have used them for last 2 years for all EVE TC purchases (and other games where TC's make sense financially from UK/EU) and never had a problem.

Note that DSTIC corp gets approx 1/50th of a TC (which we'll trade for corp ISK using the approved method) every time you buy from the link on this blog post - so corp members should ideally use this if they pay by TC). Or anyone else who feels generous and who appreciated this post as saving them hard cash (and not the ISKie varient)

Corp management mistake...

I made my first mistake in EVE last night - not a major one, but one that resulted in 41 sell-orders dropping off the market, and all my buy orders also.

Basic mistake: Dropped DeafPlasma (the trade guy) from being a director (full access to everything, nada-nada) to being a "Indurstry role" to allow me to check this role worked as desired. Didn't give him access to the wallet existing sell-orders were running under... hence all were auto-cancelled.

Lesson learnt: Create an alt to prove permissions working as desired... don't use a active trader. Will generate an alt tonight for this alone.

Overall, following a comment from Xoair in previous blog, last night the corp "Blueprints" hanger was opened, along with a Minerals in/goods out hanger. This allows "Industry" members to produce, research BPO's without being able to take them out of corp's hands without my persmission (I'm sorry but the corp although democratic and will take advice needs a figurehead director with full access purely to stop others stealing the hard earned ISK from the rest of the corp). Also granted Wallet-7 to Jax's use so can monitor the new Industry division.

Tonight: Need to generate a 2nd Industry role... For the members who produce only, for personal use - ie, if corp hanger has ran out of module X, you need it, and even though you havn't got PE to 5, it will still be cheaper to make from minerals - you can use a production slot to acomplish this. This will require another wallet for the funds being dedicated to this (available to all pilots but generally a low level of access) and a new hanger being opened for the Traders (as you don't want combat pilots goods intermixed with the current 80m of corp production!). Now I know the basics of Roles in EVE, this should be a 20-30 min job.

I now see why, ideally CCP should implement more wallets and hangers. I'd LOVE that in fact :) Right now I can see a point where we need considerably more corp hangers and wallets than the current game design allows.

And... when are they going to fix it so running factory/lab slots does not require the factory manager skill (ie one character able to cancel another characters production)?

Corp growing....

Last night got approached by a eve-playerwho reads this blog and who wants to start in Industry - hes an older char than me even, but has zero industry skills... usefully he has a BC, allowing L3 missions. So DSTIC welcomes its 3rd member (and 4th character) in Jax Koreth.
He'll have ~ 2 weeks of skilling to get able to manufacture high value items for profit PE5 needed for that - but should be able to start producting ammo and other high-volume, mid profit items in earnest in 3-4 days... so next 3-4 days activities will include finding a high-volume market output location to either setup an office or use as a trading location for Jax (as the current one Corp uses is fully accounted for). I'll be using the eve-map's (on paper) and the eve-agents search to find high trading volume areas of Essence... (apart from Ours). As hes new at industry, I'll be giving him a corp wallet to work from so I can keep his transactions/profit/loss record seperate from mine. Yes I know eventually we'll need to share the same "industry" wallet, but doing so requires me to have a excel sheet with API access to work out member profit/loss figures.

Plan will be... use base in Ours to copy very higher value BPO's - ie researched expensive BPO's. Cheap BPO's ie ammo, we should buy in each location.. as they do get used a lot. The corp's ML20 small tractor beam bpo for example can make 150k per run profit (only 10-15% profit margin, but it means we're competitive) - although requires 930-940k of minerals to be tied up for each run. I'll get Jax copying that in next 2 days so its usable when he gets to Production Efficiency 5 - although we could also build this partricular BPO in Oursulaert for profit also and just take the finished goods to sell - as its a high value item. Hope to get Jax to the 2m ISK per day mark also as a min after 4 weeks.

On the subject of production, DeafPlasma has now hit an empass. All BPO's currently in stock have at least 100 completed items sat spare in hanger or close (ready to put on market when current order expires)... This is the 1st time this has occurred so far, and means I may have to go back to ammo produiction until such time as got enough cash for the new BPOs (and the existing ones to finish research in 7-18 days) needed to progress again. I need the stock mountain as 75% of all sales occur in the Fri-Sun period.

Missioning on Sundays

Undocked for some faction grinding on Sunday with the full corp in tow for ~ 6 hours. As the corp is only 2 members currently this was quite fun especially with some of the missions being challenging for 1 cruiser, 1 destroyer + one salvager to manage :)

We managed to make ~ 15 million in loot + bounties, split between the 2 chars involved - was slightly disappointed overall, as usually we'd make double that. We'll soon have enough faction for L2 Q+16 missions which should increase isk generation activities. In course of last night got a second char able to to the Level2 -16's we've been grinding on to date.

I trained my new corp member in basics of contracts and industry, and gave him a frigate BPO to research for the corp (Maulus). After all we are an "industry corp" right now, we're only doing missions to get practice flying our ships and increase our skills. PvP is of course the aim, as at some point a low-sec PoS will need to be established to make our research run quickly - meaning we need a combat wing for defense/anti-pirate activitys. We couldn't cope in PVP currently with "only" 1m sp in gunnery and ditto in drones on both combat characters...

We're not ready for L3's as don't have a BC yet although we will be working on this during this week - well once Hull Upgrades IV finished so hardners can be used this training will be started for the BC.

I think it's going to be an expensive week for the corp and the characters in it... Characters need "more" advanced learning skills... Corp also need to go shopping for hardner BPO's this week.

Corp funds currently sit at 2m isk. Wish it was 1000X that!

Industry update for week & mission reports

• Zydrine is now at ~29xx on buy order price in Essence. Cheapest sell-order is ~3100. Prices continuing to rise. My stockpiles of this mineral are non-existant. Can any large corp who reads this potentially supply me with 2000 units (I may need more - to be evaulated weekly - this is the min requirement) a week at 3000 isk each - to be contracted to me in Ours? I know I said I wouldn't pay this but now I can't build half my good-selling items due to the shortage. I'm willing to commit to 6 months at this rate.
  
• Megacyte isn't such a huge issue for me, as I use less of this than Zyd currently.
• Mexallon - Also another item I still am struggling to get buy orders filled for, 100K units per day is all I am managing.
• Production is going steadily.. however the loss of 8m of capital for the core hanger has impacted growth of core corp assets, which is flat this week. As I aim for 1-2m a day, we will be back in the black from this in 3 days time.

Overall, I'm happy with Industry right now.

Missions:
We hit a L2 mission last night (Recon) that slightly threw us. Lots of high value bounties.. which I collected 1m of before my tank couldn't take it. Tried fitting for rat specific damage. This helped, but I still can't use the decent resistance modules... due to lack of Hull upgrades skill. This oversight is now being rectified. Now as the bad guys were left on warp game at this point it left a dilema, as the Cruiser (Vexor) I usually fly coudln't make it to the accel gate before getting ganked. The mission ONLY required us to warp through the gates, not actually kill anything. A case of greed over being sensible I think here (I saw the 2m of bounties and got er, excited!)

So we decided next was to speed tank and rush the 1st gate (with a corp mate helping to split the enemy's targets). Thuswas a case of building speedy ships which I named "Scaredy cats", ie frigates fitted for extreme speed/manuverability with named AB's. Mine done 830ms with current skills and turned on a dime. This allowed us to blitz past the Corelli crusiers and hit the accel gate prior to them being able to do serious damage. Mission complete, after 2 hours of talking tactics and trying to kill the cruisers that were ganking us! Speed as a tank really works as despite being locked on they didn't do any damage in the 20km to the gate :) It was my first experience speed-tanking, as in my last stint in game I concentrated on slow moving battlecruisers/battle ships, in which this tactic wasn't really an option.

Haulers & Corp hangers are go...

After some scouting last night, settled on a station in Ourselaurt (or however you spell it). Spent 8 million of hard earned profit on a station rent for 30 days. And therefore we have corp hangers. Spent out on a Iteron BPO, and produced the corps first hauler, the "Itsy Bitsy mk1". This was carefully flown out to Ours to populate the main hanger in 2 fully loaded ~5000m3 trips. Downsides are production is expensive in this stn, but slots are available (even though not cheap). This means only higher margin items should be produced here.

Introducing a new member to the corp is hard... for one, you can be scammed, so limiting access for new players, is unfortunatly a reality of the hard nosed EVE world of commerce.

Luckily however, in this case, I know my 1st corp member IRL. We work for same company in different geographic region, and he started playing using a buddy code I gave him. He's addicted now, and is paying for 1st month of his account as of er today.

Overall though as a corp we're not going to take on "trial" accounts as a hard rule. We'll help new players, yes, but to actually invite to the corp will require a paid acct.

Something new I noted in the patch... now the orders screen shows a total value of sell orders. So right now, on market, I know I have 39m ISK's worth of items for sale : In production is another ~20m, and I have 12m outstanding on buy-orders - along with a mineral stockpile worth ~15m. The spending of a total of 20m yesterday hurt corp reserves - but we should make it back within a couple of days and be back on track. The constant buying and investing in BPO's is what costs the corp currently the most cash apart from skill books...

A question - I know its possible... how do you organise a corps Science/Industry hangers to allow members to produce items without being able to nick BP's (with an already ~100m of BPO's this is essential)? Am I right in you grant query access, but not take to this division? - where do minerals & the lab costs go? This is for future growth as theres only one industrialist in the corp currently.

Emperian Age 1.1 Update

Well, impressed isn't the word. The game seems A LOT smoother for me in non-premium mode - also command lag appears greatly reduced. I run dual account on multi-monitors most of time, so rarely run premium as background.

Anyone else think EVE's got smoother graphics and less lag since patch?

Due to limited playtime last night with the lateness of servers being available (10:30 PM uk time) I only got one mission done and salvaged. Annoyingly picked up a "important" courier mission that requires me to have a hauler. Something I was planning anyhow, but now made urgent... also will allow a new corp base to be established in Ours... I priced this yesterday, and as one station is 500k a month its far more reasonable than my other location that I considered. We need an office there for sales activities in any case, so it really makes sense for the corp to use this system as a base now... Theres also good missions originating from this system.

Mulling the merits of rig production

A little birdie told me the Capacitor control rig was the top selling rig... so last night I investigated profit based on buying the materials required. Basically locally I can buy the parts (with buy-orders) and make 1 million profit per item if I have a researched BPO (thats worst cast on lowest sell-order price if I choose to compete with it).

In my mind.. not worth it - right now anyhow (its worth it if its all my own salvaged materials). I'm going to research the rig bpo in any case so I can make it for a reasonable sum. Overall though - I think I'll make more consistant profit with other items (I have 30-40 different items being sold at all times, as early on I learn't a diverse production = a healthy one).

Production is still being hampered by the shortage of Zydrine locally at least. I'm only getting 2-300 units a day with several buy orders in place. I need > 1000 units per day now to keep up with the pace of the profitable modules.

And... this week is fully researched BPO week. 3 of my more expensive blueprints pop out of the lab this week - so I need plenty of Zyd to build/stockpile the items I'm going to be making. The shortage is becoming a serious problem to my industrial ambitions...

Ship production

Some tips for budding industrialists:

• Do your research before buying a BPO - In my region (Essence) some ships or modules have wafer thin margins and require a researched BPO to consider profiting. Some have 200k margins, and actually will move at that price. This allows you to build without Production efficiency at 5 and without a researched BPO.
• Build items for the region. Not much point building Railguns in Amarr space is there?
  
• Don't buy or build heavily contested items. Antimatter Charge S in Essence is something you can build, but make tiny profits on recently due to sheer level of competition in marketplace.
• Don't make huuge stockpiles of expensive items that move slowly.
  
• Don't build or sell high cost/low profit items. I had a stock of 40 Incursis that took 20 days to shift. Thats around 8million isk tied up and not moving, and considering profit per item was 30k isk, hardly worth the effort.
  
• Sometimes you can drum up a market for a decent module IF you price it right. Pricing at over 50%-100 profit usually results in less sales/slower turnaround than say a 25% profit margin. Once module locally some "entrepreneur" has priced a 10k build item at 125k isk. Thus it doesn't move (this from market stats). My items at 20k isk however flys off shelf at rate of 300 modules per week.
  

Over the weekend I didn't wake up much except for Sun night(this is usual, as most of my gametime is during the week). In the Fri-Sun night timeframe DSTIC made ~20m ISK, of which I reinvested 75% into minerals as the furnaces/machines shops need feeding again as the sales over the weekend have led to almost no stock being in the DSTIC warehouses. Soon I need to take ~7 mill out of the Industry wallet to provide skills for both chars... which will be a great shame. That said, I have 5 blueprints leaving ME research this week which I'm majorly happy about as that means some of my more lucrative items are able to be produced again, and with a extra 9.9% profit.

I'm also eyeing the cruiser blueprints... as although expensive, I now own all frigate and the one destroyer blueprint for Gallente. The corp is starting to be what I want it to be... :)

I'm still mulling over selling the 100m ISK's worth of salvage in the hanger :)