Stealthed Industrials are go go go

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My long term skill plan has me in low-sec in 6-9 months with some 0.0 activities also... basically exploration and the like. I'm not going to be putting in a claim for space - it doesn't interest me currently, and I'm not planning an alliance, so my problem has been mainly hauling. With NBSI polcies and bubbles in 0.0 the logistics for a small corp without jump capability is very very limited.. but with stealthed transports, I seriously can consider getting some ships out into 0.0 space with ability to cloak up if needed... A 2 or 3 man exploration team could stay out in 0.0 quite a while until the blockade runner is full.... of course using a few of the 0.0 stations that allow anyone to dock as a staging post/ship change point.

Until this, I thought I was going to have to do several nasty runs to/from 0.0 daily to be able to haul loot back to empire. But with the Blockade runner changes I can move around equipment far easier.

I have several plans for tonights activities - manufacturing of more goods for sale, and some test runs of some non-common items on the market locally... My personal rate of sale of items has fallen considerably so I need to spend an hour checking that no-one is undercutting my very reasonable prices (I'm usually close to best in region price on items that have competition)

Planning in EVE / Cost of EVE

What I love most about EVE is the fact you have to plan a lot in order to progress.

We all know about skill training plans... I'm talking about industrial planning (as we're predominantly a industrial corp).

Right now, corp has 8 blueprints being researched or copied simultanouesley by me alone (never mind other members). This is on a long term plan - each bpo being researched in will increase profit - and we only research pre-researched items (some items don't make profit at all!).

Theres not only that planning. Its also which BPO's we'll be making next. What are good sellers - and where is a good station to sell items (and sell items consistantly for a higher mark up than a major market hub). etc etc. This is all data which I certainally wouldn't share on a blog post sadly.

Last night I ran a lot of missions.... I took the opportunity to upgrade my weapons systems on my primary battlecruiser "DSTI Cookiemonster" to a named t1 equivalent prior to starting. Right now all systems on the battlecruiser are best named, or T2. This cost a lot, but has made the tank on the BC a lot stronger - prior to upgrade I used to have to warp on a few missions. After this this upgrade (and in doing 8 missions last night), I've not had to warp out at all, so thats 12m on equipment well spent. I've also optimised my railgun setup, so I can both snipe at 60km, and do serious damage at 20km, just by changing ammo types.

I hate to admit, I made a mistake when thinking I could use T2 weaponry. I thought medium railgun specilisation just required Medium hybrid's to L5. It didn't. It also needs small to L5, + small railgun specialisation to 4. Thats another month. But it'll be worth it. In meantime I'm going to concentrate on drones and other support skills.

The downsides recently to my playing is the cost has increased for us UK people with the recent exchange rate movement (this for those who havn't noticed). This means its now cheaper (I base what I pay on the cost per month) for me to sign up for a 12 month subscription from CCP direct in Euro's rather than pay in GTC's in USD sadly. I think I'll be treating myself to 2 12 month subscriptions next month, then a renewal of my EON subscription next month (my one year sub expired on the recent EON issue). I'll go back to GTC's once the dollar/pound rate gets better - its annoying as I like paying by GTC as it doesn't require me to hand my credit card over (I'm a bit paranoid about this).... I'm kicking myself for not buying a power of 2 sub last month, as a third character would really help me now. The cost of EVE has increased certainally, so I think I'm justified in saying I've been "Credit crunched"...

Manufacturing update

Well, last night hauled 50% of the minerals back to base.. and set up the manufacturing jobs. Unfortunatly for me the corps manufacturing base is somewhat busy right now, no free slots for 24 hours!.. Queued up 5 jobs (my max) to build a significant amount of several good-selling modules.. They will complete Thursday, when I'm actually working from home, so should be able to quickly move them to sell during the day.

Still gotta sort out the research queues. Tempted to do some productivity research for a few days on the more popular modules to reduce build times and increase productivity.

All is well... Even caught up with Senx Trelligan whilst online... and had a quick chat while I done the above. He's aiming to be in a battleship soon, where I'm concentrating on core skill improvements before going up a ship class... I suspect I'll be able to tank and kill his BS with my Myrmidon if I'm right :) - he has very very basic core skills... and with a BS would have little manuverability to be able to stay at his optimum vs mine.

I'm itching to start using my new skills to use T2 guns :)

Mineral availability

Prices are still increasing in essence, but availability seems better. Buy-orders for > 50 million isk's worth of trit, mex, and pye were completed in under 2 days at the weekend. This usually takes a lot longer (a week).

Tonight, I have the job of moving a vast vast quantity of minerals from the delivery station back to corp HQ for the manufacturing division to use. Got about 2 weeks of solid building to start (starting with most popular items of course), to restock the corporate sales outlet. Theres only 10million of items left on market so that needs to be quickly rectified...!

Being away also means 4 blueprints are due to come out of reseach tonight, opening up several items to be able to be built for profit. Once done I'll be adding a Thorax blueprint and researching it... This on top of 3-4 other bpo's that we've found need research to be profitable.

One of the downsides of eve, is each time you get a BPO and start making increasing profit from it, is you then need to buy another BPO to keep the momentum... as being away showed, when all your items do finally sell, you do end up with a lot of funds... I also need to start using some alts to get more research queues. That or build a POS for research.

The corp's montly bill appeared last week. I need to pay this for the december station rent. Thankfully the rent has reduced to a more reasonable 6m isk. Lukcily a few days missioning even with a 5% tax will pay this quickly. And I've got all of Saturday afternoon and Sunday for gametime this week... and just can't wait.

Macbook/Pro's

I'm not online much this week and really really hating it. Only net access via iPhone or work PC's. Floor is down in the new office finally... and IKEA delivering the furniture so the PC has a "home" on next Thursday. So next Friday/Sat the new office will be built and I'll be a pod-pilot again. Can't wait. I hope to get online tonight to setup buy orders for minerals/building to get back into industry.

This extended absense did get me thinking though - about getting a laptop, and after being throughly seduced by the new Macbook marketing am 100% sure my personal laptop will be a Mac.... Now I won't be purchasing it this year, as got some other expenses to deal with 1st... but will be at bonus time in March next year. Well providing I get a bonus, with the credit crunch and all that...

My big question to the EVE communitiy is with the New Macbooks, will I need a Macbook Pro to play EVE, or will an ordinary Macbook suffice - as with the new graphics in the basic Macbook almost being 50% of the speed of the old "pro" is this good enough?

P.S somehow (I havn't done analysis fully yet) readership shot up by 30 subscribers while I was on the non-computer, non-tech holiday and not posting. Literally this growth was all on one day... I'll be investigating the stats later! Hello new readers.

Back from my extended leave - sort of

And.. have Refining Efficiency 5 done... free refines at loong loong last.

Time online will be limited next weel though as decorating/moving around the house/going to the dump to get rid of years of accumulated garbage/ebaying others, so hardly will get to be online. Already started a manufacturing job... looks like corp has some serious finance now, in the 2 weeks away, corp funds at ~75m. I know for some corps thats micro-cash, but thats all hard earnt industrial efforts that made it, so I'm very happy.

As the corp is playing for the long game, we're going to be spending most of that on blueprints, and minerals to restock the markets. 1st BPO already purchased, just need to fly over to collect later in week.

Can't wait to see everyone, but with the week being so busy its just hard to get online in evenings. Will see all the regulars back in Essence in the next 2 weeks, I just can't say when - then have 2-3 solid weeks of playtime in November when all this work is finally finished.