New Member to corp

We'll see how it goes - but invited a new-ish player(who appeared lost) to join Corp when traveling via Algogille on Sunday to drop-off items for sale and pick up items purchased....

Unfortunately due to my time being extremely limited we didn't get much time to fly together... Most time spent being setting her up with cruiser hulls and t1 fittings.. She is based in Belgium and thus GMT+1, and had to leave at midnight local time. (11 EVE time). This particularly unlucky due to the loot picked up in a set of escalations on a "combat" site that was picked up right at 11... and finished at 0:30. Corelli C-type 1MN MWD, + a few Shadow Serpentis goodies off the overseer at the end... I also now have 2 serpentis small blaster (or is it rail) BPC's (for fitting to towers). Anyone interested in bidding for these?

The escalation took me all over Gallente space - including a trip via low-sec to Stacmon via one of the most camped gates I think I've ever seen. Was glad I was not travelling in other direction as the sensor boosted ships sat waiting for outbound travellers from Stacmon would have locked even my AF in a very short while...

Why the new players, well I'm a sucker for them - and being honest our base corp hanger isn't exactly loaded with "choice items" - but it is better in many cases than the junk new players can buy off market (lots of named mods, but not super expensive ones). So if any new player empties hanger, we'd be 10mln down... no big deal when the corp assets can easily recover from that.

Industry this week has been good. 180mln in bank, 250mln on mkt, and about 200mln of mineral stocks. Some minerals low-ish though, so need to restock on high-end's. However need to keep corp cash reserves high due to plans below.

Considering buying minerals down in low-sec, its way cheaper in the region I'm based in now (like 1.5 isk less than the Ours trit price). With the Transport ship/Blockade runner being a short while away, hopping through gate camps shouldn't be a huge deal. Am thinking of multi-hop logistics, with hauling vast quantities of minerals to a office in a gateway system to high-sec (say Stacmon).. then hauling them up to production base via a rigged Itty V, or a freighter. I think freighter would greatly increase profit margin, and make the hauling a less frequent thing...

Current plans:

In 1 week: Covert operations ship for moving high value items around low-sec (should allow the 500-1bln isk's worth of high value items to be moved from low-sec to Ours for sale).
In 1 month: Transport ship - for moving quantities of minerals around low-sec + POS fuel..
In 2 months like to see Corp put up a research, reaction and moon-mining POS in low-sec. A few systems in mind for this, but need the cov-ops to go scanning for minerals. POS may go up sooner if good items found. Need a few more corp members who can fly decent defensive ships and PVP experience before POS goes up.. so I see myself/Jax/new member (who's name I forget) going roaming in W-space/low-sec with cheap-ish ships prior to this..

Beyond this, I'm thinking training up pre-requisites for carriers....

Going to be online this week tonight (extremely limited, just movement of ships and and purchase of t2 drones to replace those killed) - and hopefully Weds night, and again Sun. Real life does get in way of EVE sometimes.

Am I the only one who's got lots of under 24 hour skills left and can't wait for new expansion to enable all these to be finished?

Industry update

Well, its been a few weeks, so heres the DSTIC trading update as far as my characters go - I havn't had a chance to catch up with Jax to see his stock situation:

Corporation cash on-hand: 100mln ISK (give or take).
Mineral stockpile (at last count): 150mln ISK or thereabouts.
Stock on-hand to be sold (but not on market): 50mln ISK or thereabouts + 50mln ISK's worth of minerals tied in production that finishes Wednesday.
On-market: 170mln ISK. Sold out 100% of several lines over past few days. What is it with people buying batches of > 100 items!

Personal wallets: Low - really low - under 75mln on hand. Expect even this to take battering. Have placed a snake implant for sale at lowest in region price, in Ours - to top this up by 60mln. Its a false reading though really as got about 1/2 a billion of goods out in low-sec, which I need a covert operations ship (can fly one in days now thankfully). Will be flying out to recover said goods asap this week.

Why the above changes - well blueprints were purchased and researched, and theres a few months backlog before profit can be taken from these... More blueprints also need purchasing, so I sense a spending trip is required.

Skills also are getting expensive - spent around 50mln this past week on new skill books for Deafplasma/DeafTurret.

Overall - its positive. EVE-mon is also showing DeafPlasma may overtake Jax for 1st time in overall Skillpoints over coming days/months due to my training rate being vastly greater currently.

Overall industry also needs to start research on T2 component BPO's for the items we're planning to make...

All looking like will be setup for the new expansion in terms of readyness - probing/scanning skills - check - Cov Ops capable - check. Only thing missing for one of my plans is Gallente Industrial 5. This is the next skill on the list once Covert Operations ship is mine.... Only downside is total available funds (as ever) not being huge. Once covert ops ship is mine, plan to go on a moon surveying run and look to deploy a POS in low-sec as the next overall phase to the plan... and deploy science labs + moon mining (yes I know this is a 300mln or so investment - but by that stage we should have that on-side as petty cash.

Is anyone else hoping surveying missions into W-space could be cash cows? Jax is setup for battleships (so need to get him ready for PVP fit battleships)... I'll be flying a Myrmidon fit out with T2 drones, tracking computers (speed script) + medium turrets (possibly T2 rails or blasters). Hopefully 2 characters will cut it (+ a hauling & salvaging covert ops blockade runner or covert operations). We'll see.

Anyone else in the "just can't wait" mode for the new expansion?

Hardware issue day

I had noticed pre-christmas that EVE would cause my PC to power-off completely sometimes. I hadn't really commented on this as a normal "reboot" cycle seemed to fix, and make the PC work again in EVE again fine...

However, converting video's a plenty this weekend - the computer started to power off as soon as it hit the intensive part of the process - the 2-step conversion to mp4 for iphone/psp's 2nd step seems to hit all 4 of my CPU's cores at max power. As such I decided to pop the lid off for a look.

The computers main fan was embarrassingly clogged with "dust" - I should have realised this was the cause earlier. This was causing a thermal overload... and the machine to power-off to protect its components. To allow me to monitor this better in the future I've installed an ASUS thermal monitor for PC, mainboard + fan rotation speeds. If PC hits over 60 Celsius it should alert me...

I'm now as typing this using the distributed.net client + video conversions to stress all 4 cores - and its been doing this for 30 mins now. The PC doesn't sound like an aircraft now, and is staying a constant 57 Celsius. Fantastic.

But a lesson to me - get the air duster out a few times a year to clean the PC's fan's or it will suffer from unreliability and noisiness...

Bob Collapse - espionage/defection

Okay, everyone now knows what happened from other blogs, so I'm not recapping possibly the games biggest ever espionage incident...

Apart from to say thanks to FunkyBacon on Eve-radio - for the excellent coverage last Thursday. I know ER had problems with the sheer amount of listeners during his show - but the coverage was excellent, thought-provoking, and plain amusing. Excellent, professional job Funky, and I'm hoping you get many more listeners to your show as a result..

The above show is actually pretty much the only EVE Radio listening time I get right now due to personal circumstances meaning time in game is limited. Good news is, I should get at least one evening this week in which I can spend some time actually doing some exploration (which I love doing). I even missed helping set the new PCU this weekend (51400 I think it was?) - which is unusual as I usually get online with my 2 characters during that time so next time it may peak even higher (by 2 at least).

I'm hoping the BoB controversy leads to more people joining the game - its brilliant that one trusted defector can effectively destroy an alliance. As such I imagine a lot more corporations & alliances will be less trusting and re-evaluate their directors.

Though that said our existing structure in the DSTIC corp I manage designed to eliminate precisely this possibility... although I will be promoting Jax next time he's online as he is a very trustworthy individual (given he's paid for 50% of the BPO's in value pretty much).. and being honest him not being a director is harming the corporation as both of our time is limited online thus not being able to see which market orders need manipulation or restock can cause problems.

In non-EVE news the Wedding in Vegas thats preventing the trip to Fanfest (presuming its on usual week in November) has now been booked (flights/hotel etc), meaning sadly I'll definitely not be attending Fanfest 09. Sadness due to not attending. Joy cause it looks like a crowd of >20 of my best mates will all be in Vegas together and I know we'll be having an awesome time.

Updates on current trading situation to follow later in week.

Back from a short leave of absense.

Well, it's been a week between postings, which I try to avoid but are sometimes necessary. Reasoning was my g/f moved in finally (been awaiting the day a while) meaning time was limited Fri-Mon while all was sorted and the stacks of boxes packed then unpacked, and the office tidied so was finally usable. Works also been totally crazy busy with problem after problem - so time to play has been limited to 15 minute bursts here and there.

Crazykinux has added me to the EVE blog pack - as of last week (I missed the posting due to above issues - but linked here!) so I'd like to say Hello to any new readers who have discovered this blog using this method.

Of course the above being away from EVE doesn't really mean away - I've used the time to set some long skills going, and gave the corporation shop a full restock. Hit an amazing barrier as of Sunday - 250mln ISK of items for sale - all in the one single station - all on my personal character. Doing industry jobs with only 15 mins of playtime here and there works a treat.... its one reason I continue to play EVE whereas other MMO's just tended to lapse due to the high input required.

For the moment, similar to my corporation member Jax, I've moved both my characters back to the Ours central hub from which the corporation operates on a day to day basis, but left jump clones over in the "exploration area" where I've found great spoils - allowing quick jumps back to do a few days exploration. Obviously I've also left the ships required for this back in same area.

I can't wait for next week - as finally Gallente Frigate 5 will be done on my "scout" - meaning Covert-operations frigates and thus the reduced scan times are but a few hours away. Vital for the upcoming expansion.... which I can't wait for.

On the subject of which, once its out I think the corporation will have to go on a recruitment drive for characters interested in joining us in exploration/combat in late Feb/early March - as based on the recent Dev blogs - I think it'll need a group to be able to be effective - though we may be able to do with myself and Jax on, we probably ideally need 2-3 others with AF, BS, BC type ships. We also likely will need more industrialists later this year when Jax/myself start hitting limits on amount of production slots..

Wormholes

Well - as you probably can't guess from reading the blogosphere - the changes to exploration content have been announced and its absolutely brilliant in my opinion. I'm not going to link to content as this is all accessible on the EVE homepage

Basically - CCP are adding >2000 new solar systems to EVE. Except you can't access them via jumpgates, only via wormholes. Wormholes will be accessed via Exploration and allow a set amount of mass through them (ie bigger ships = more mass = less time before collapse). Oh and wormhole space will be 0.0 - ie no restrictions on bubbles and the like. And no sovereignty - so no alliances holding the space... Downsides are other players are definitely a risk in exploration - but with the sheer amount of new systems to play in, I can't imagine it'll be a huge risk, just watch the scanners...

Downsides are a new exploration system to learn... If you have not got skills in exploration already, I suggest it may be beneficial to get some...

Downsides are: logistics. I can't see how I could partake in a meaningful exploration session without needing a monster exploration boat, and possibly a 3rd character. To explain, the problem will be storage of loot and ammo. In a meaningful exploration session right now I can get through 10k of ammo easily. Assuming I was going to be in wormhole space for a while, I would need a lot of ammo, some spare drones.. and the ability to haul loot back to high-sec as efficiently as possibly without hitting the mass limits. If the trips through the wormhole are limited, hauling could be a huge problem.

A possible tactic may be:
Fly in a small POS + corp hanger + ship maintenance array in a hauler. Dock the hauler. Fuel POS for 2 weeks.
Fly back in a pod to pick up Cov Ops ship.
Other character brings in a salvager - then flys back in pod for combat ship.
Now got a base that can be used without hitting the mass of the wormhole too much. Now other characters could find wormhole, and thats the risk - this is why I think exploration will *have* to be done in low-activity systems for this tactic to work (so you're looking at a low-sec entry point thats well off beaten path). Luckily through some work recently I've identified a few proper low sec systems that fit that requirement. The other nice thing here is you'd get POS shielding...

Another tactic I can immediately think of (though I've never done it) is leaving ships in space. Ie, leave a hauler, in space, at a safespot. No-one in it. Eject jetcan of loot near it, swap to it, pick up. Rinse/repeat.

A ORCA in this sense may also make sense on a 3rd character, storing all the loot, a cov ops (for scanning), a destroyer (for looting), an AF (for fighting) + possibly a cruiser or 2 for hacking. Downsides are the time taken to train for said ORCA - and the higher mass content than doing the above (if I'm right) - meaning that the POS may be the better option.

I can't wait until it's all released to see which option of the above is the "right" way to fly. And I also love the fact I might get proper PvP with no standings loss in a "safe" jump from highsec... rather than the risky 0.0!

What are your thoughts on this?

Big profit

Okay, Exploration IS brilliant. On just one combat site yesterday, I picked up a Snake implant which I could sell right now (instantly) for 100 million isk, but is worth > 200mln if I move and sell more centrally. Same guy also dropped a Serpentis small blaster POS Tower gun BPC (3 run). Yet to investigate what thats worth, but can't imagine it'll be cheap. Also picked up some named shadow serpentis modules - armor hardners which I'll also need to investigate sales price for (or keep).

Also found a radar site that had been bugging me for days (incredibly weak signal). When I finally scanned it down I was rewarded with 30mln's worth of decryptors...

I'm also amazed at just how quiet space is where I'm basing myself (I'm not saying where due to fact I like it quiet!). Last night in 3 systems I was the only active pilot - it was almost 0.0 in quietness. I note this is in high sec, when > 38000 pilots online. New record in one system, scanned, and found > 20 cosmic anomaly's in one system on a single scan!..

Basically overall, doing L3 missions, for 2-3 hours, I was lucky to earn 10 mln in an hour... doing this, I seem to easily average > 25.... though it can be more sporadic.

The big downside is the fact I have to really wait until I've got a cov-ops to do the run back to Ours (via low-sec) to actually liquidize all these assets and get my personal wallet healthy again - as exploration does not = big bounties. As it'll be a few weeks for this, scarily I may be flying with at least a billion isk's worth of modules in the ship... That does scare me immensely. Any idea on ship-fit-outs for a Cov-ops to avoid being caught in a gatecamp anyone?