Great weekend profits

Very happy this weekend, started selling a new line in starships - and said ships are selling very well indeed - to tune of over 1 ship an hour. This is good because due to a lack of said ships on market, its a raw 300K ISK profit per ship.

The good and bad news is one of the corporations founding members, David decided to quit playing for the next few months. He donated his wallet to the corporation in a great "have my stuff" moment. We'll invest it, and when he chooses to return we'll return the cash from industrial funds. Because of this as of yesterday afternoon, corporation wallet had around 170mln ISK available. Thats on top of the 180mln ISK worth of goods I've currently got on the market (Jax likely has similar)!

To recap this year so far:
September: Corporation started around this time and was initially funded exclusively by myself (Deafplasma). All available funds not going into my characters development, but into buying and researching blueprints for future use. Market trading started in earnest, buying low, selling high... Some bad decisions made until we got better at only buying profitable/useful BPO's for tech 1 manufacturing. Jax and Senx joined corporation.

October: Corporation in growth phase - total funds under 100Mln. I go on holiday and return to find 70mln worth of items sold on market in under 2 weeks.

November: One expensive blueprint purchased back in late September and researched REALLY starts to pay, to tune of 500-700k ISK per item sold. Total funds and buy orders > 100Mln

December (now): Total corporation worth - probably over 500mln isk total (in funds tied up on mkt, in the corp mineral stash and 170mln of on-hand cash). Blueprints in corp hanger are definitely worth over 400mln ISK also. We're also sitting on a huge pile of salvage... worth hundreds and hundreds of millions - to be used by corporation to make cargohold rigs for use on our Itty V haulers initially.

Now, in the Janurary timeframe I feel we'll be ready for new-ish players to join and learn with us I would say - I'll be chatting with Jax as to the framework for this tonight, but basic requirements are 1.5-5mln skillpoints - a full paid acct(no trials), an interest in industry or pure combat (mission running right now, but pvp later). Voice essential - we typcially use eve-voice, mainly because its built-in... (and as we ain't doing pvp the risks of using EV are minimal). We play UK timezone, and play evenings mainly (9pm evetime onwards), so if you will be interested in joining us - let me know via evemail or comment.

Industry update

Well, its been almost a week, so I thought I'd give an update on trading situation:

1/ Tritanium is increasing still. 3.87 was the last big buy order I got filled. Considering Trit was under 3.0 last year, this is massive inflation.

2/ High-end minerals are continuing to fall. Zydrine/Megacyte orders get filled quickly typically and our stockpile of these is reasonably large still. Still having issues getting Mexallon orders filled in a timely manner.

3/ Mineral stockpile stands at very high levels. I don't think I can complain when the manufacturing hanger has > 11 mln Pyerite (from a all-time high of > 14).

In blueprint news:
We went shopping, and spent > 90mln on new blueprints on Sunday. Some aimed at T2 production, some aimed at profit. Profit margins on some of the items are > 100%, and this is for tech 1 stuff that sells reguarly. We actually ran out of BPO's needing ME research believe it or not on Saturday...

We plan another blueprint shopping spree on Sunday I think - a trip down to amarr space for more T1 item bpo's.

Oh, and around 150mln on market for sale from my personal characters on Sunday too :) Total sale-orders = > 200mln now. When this was 100mln a month ago, I'm still happy with the approx 100% month on month growth rate. Also am using less sales-slots to accomodate this than I was last month too..

A question - are there any good transation/journal API applications that allow us to monitor sales volumes/growth corp wide easily? Or will I need to cut my own?? This is because I want to monitor on a per-corp member basis their contribution to the corp (this is ahead of a recruitment drive planned for new year to add 2-3 industry folks to the corp).

7 facts meme

I've been tagged by Karox Lomax So its time to do a response.

Now, unfortunatly I can't find anyone EVE related to tag - so I'm calling end to this, as tagging someone twice would be plain stupid and make this continue ad-infinitum, and result in an ever-increasing volume of facts to fill.....

Some facts about me:

1. I'm a bit of a jet-setter most years, typically travelling a lot with work (3 months a year on road is common), and also a lot personally - although this year work wise has been quiet with visits only to Sweden & Italy, and only 2 weeks out of office. Personally this year, its been UK (a massive road-trip over 2 1/2 weeks) & Germany... Next year however, places the work project plan could take me to include - Colombia, Argentina, USA (Vegas, LA, and Nashville), Sweden(again), Denmark, China.. lets hope I get to visit a few more places.

2. I have an interesting-ish job IRL - I security test applications for the banking & insurance industry as well as being responsible for making security architecture decisions. Unforuntatly this does not mean I can scrape 0.00001p off every transaction or similar, but it does mean I'm responsible for finding cases where this kind of thing is possible. Most days I'm on phone to China in morning, and USA/South America in afternoon - as spend more time working with the non-UK sites.

3. I love beer - real ale in particular. I brew my own ale (from kits right now, as doing it from raw hops is a horrible smell). One batch of my homebrew once resulted in one of my friends being barred from drinking it again by his wife, as it was the "1st time he'd ever been even mildly drunk".

4. I live in the county of suffolk, UK - notable nearby residents include : Delia Smith. The excellent, but sadly deceased John Peel also was local.

5. I have cooked for Delia Smith on more than one occasion - she was a regular visitor to the Fish and Chip shop in which I worked as a chip/fish fryer from the age of 14-17 (prior to University) and came in at least once a month, if not more frequently.

6. I went to school with an stage star in London/Broadway... didn't really know her, but she was the one a lot of the guys in my year fancied. Link - Kerry Ellis

7. I love gadgets, and according to my girlfriend spend far too much money on technology related purchases every year (and she believes far to little on clothes etc)...

I hope people enjoyed this post, and found a little more about me.

Oh, I also didn't mention, I have another proper published blog (by a REAL publisher) over at Itpro magazine, that I'd appreciate all you EVE folks linking to and commenting on if you enjoy.

Music to listen to while playing EVE

While playing EVE I tend to listen to music... I'm sure I'm not unusal in that regard.

The main music I listen to is either Eve-Radio (Check the schedule, and tune in for DJ Ion and also for Funkybacon - both I enjoy a lot), or my own MP3 collection. Unless ER are playing music I positively hate I will have that on in the background. Some of their DJ's I enjoy, some I can't stand..

Other "Free music" I have found recently is the Above and Beyond - free podcast. Its's called Trance around the World and is in the iTunes podcast selection. 2 Hours a week of the latest music for all around the world. Well, dance music anyhow. I've been enjoying this more than any other podcast recently, and cannot reccomend it enough. Above and Beyond are 2 of the hottest DJ's/producers in the music industry and I really like their style - its less bang bang bang music (can't stand hardcore), and more chilled beats... I can't wait for the release of the new podcast every week.

Below is a selection of tunes that are seem to fit that I enjoy listening to when playing Eve - when the above sources don't suit my taste.. If you use last.fm or Pandora, check out the below albums (or buy them on iTunes).

Oceanlab - Sirens of the Sea (album). This is a combination of chillout style music - my g/f likens it to Morcheeba (but I don't), and some dance tunes.

In compilations :
Above and Beyond, Anjunabeats volume 6 - 2nd CD of this is excellent imho.
DJ Tiesto - In search of Sunrise

CSPA Charges

Someone I was going to send an eve-mail and a convo request to had a CSPA charge set of 1 mln ISK (when he was online yesterday). I mean seriously? I may want to do business with you but I'm not going to pay 1mln ISK.... Crazy money to just talk. Added to fact person in question had asked me to contact him (and had failed to add me to his addressbook). Blerg, if he wants business from DSTIC he'll have to contact me now as I'm not persisting...

I honestly don't know why EVE-online even persists in these charges, sure they may cost spammers money, but in the past 4 months of play in busy systems I have not had a personal eve-mail or convo request from spammers.

So another rule to add, I'm not going to deal with folks with ridiculous CSPA charges.

Whats your opinion on EVE's CSPA?

EVE - another Timezone

Is it just me - do you lose track of time playing EVE?

Yesterday I seemingly went into the twilight zone... had a chat with Jax while running some L3 missions and setting up some buy-orders in different regions (far far easier to do this using EVE voice/teamspeak - and chat over different prices). Then it was midnight and I started Angel Extravaganza. Next thing I know it was 2am when I finished.... and I had work at 6am. Double Doh. EVE Timewarp, or warp-drive.

I also had major issues with my broadband at midnight with disconnects from EVE 4-5 times with a 10-15s connectivity loss. Most annoying and lost a few drones (but thankfully nothing else) due to this. On this subject wouldn't it be great if EVE coped with this better? - EVE voice certainally does - still shows me who's speaking, and they can still hear me... even if according to their eve client I'm offline.

Going back to subject of UPS a few months ago and why I have one... . This morning up late. Not down to tiredness, but due to no alarm due to house power being out. Was most annoyed.... indeed. Power came back as I left at 8... but have had 10 power cuts from 7am-2pm today... average length of ~10 mins each. UPS on my server thankfully lasted through all, but the battery is complaining as its not recovering enough between outages.. Oh for reliable electric.

Weekly update

Back from Germany and Gluhwein induced sleep... great great trip - and great company. But limited net acccess due to lack of European data roaming (it does cost the earth) so only now catching up on the blog-o-sphere.

In corp news - last week we finished some strands of COSMOS, we're going to leave the rest for another trip to that area of space, and in the meantime grind missions while we skill up for Battleships and L4 missions.

With the recent COSMOS missioning however, the standings gains took immediate effect - both of my personal characters can use the L3 & 4 Fed Navy agents whereas before they were stuck at L2.

I almost lost my T1 setup Myrimidon last night to rats, having underestimated a L3 mission significantly (I think it was "Break their Will". Got out with ~25% hull, and a long repair cycle. This reminded me that when missionrunning that I really should spec out this ship with rigs and other life-preserving T2 items asap (at the moment only the cap rechargers are T2). I've noticed recently that L3 missions have got significantly harder recently (even with the new "Quantum Rise" loadout of both small and Med drones) - this despite my skills being focussed almost 100% in combat and engineering/electronic support...

The plan to start doign invention is still progressing. At the moment around 1 day away from Research V, which will alllow me to train the skill that allows the use of multiple R&D agents (as using only one would be kinda crazy). Now just need the Mechanical Engineering and Gallente skillbooks trained.

Industry, well thats doing very nicely - even despite a recent drought in last 2 days in ship-sales. We have 40mln ISK of ships up for sale currently with not much movement. Corp still has > 100mln ISK of items for sale exclusing the ships, and a huge huge mineral stockpile, as well as >100mln in buy-orders outstanding. We still really need an industrial mining partner, but I havn't been able to reach the folks that commented on my blog last week... as they never are online when I am. I hope to be able to reach them on Sunday as thats usually a good time.. I could just eve-mail, but prefer to vet a potential partner with online or voice chat 1st...

Unfortunatly the volume of recent sales means I need to put some massive build's into production asap... but lack of certain minerals is stopping this from occurring unfortunatly...

More COSMOS missioning

The standings increase mentioned earlier this week worked! With connections trained, to level 3 both my characters could begin the University of Calle series of missions without faction getting in the way...

After 1 and a half hours of completing 2 strands of courier missions (10 missions total), I had substancial faction gain, and 6m ISK in the pocket, along with some unique storyline BPC's. Basically a surprising amount of reward - it appears the further you get into the COSMOS chain the better the reward gets- which I can't complain about as most missions could be shot through! Prior to signing out last night I got my first real "combat" mission in the series... and will report on that on my next blog post..

Personally I'm off on an out-of-pod holiday from Thurs -> Mon - so will not be online at all for this period, and blogging will not be occurring. The wonders of German beer & Christmas markets await due to a fortuitous cheap flight deal.. £65 for 2 people for return flights from London, England to Dusseldorf - both in the Earth planet in the Sol system.

EVE and stupid people

One of the reasons I love the EVE Market is it means stupid people can be punished.

In most other MMO's I've experience, you can't really do buy-orders - you can however buy stuff at someone elses pre-set price (and in some cases participate in a auction).

Recently the corp made 35mln isk from one persons stupidity, buying an item we had priced at 450k.. by what it seems was him placing a buy-order for a silly price (probably trying to place at 350k and adding two 0's) - or by him trying to buy a more expensive item on Market. I only wish the guy had brought more than one of the item in question - as 35mln isk for an item that costs ~250-260k to build is good business :)

I've mentioned before, but I also will punish anyone pricing an stack of items for below their mineral worth (its gotta be a stack to be worth me flying a hauler over for!), as with my 0% loss on item refines I'll take the cheap minerals thank you very much.

But how do I figure out whether its worthwhile? Simply put I work out the cost to build an item with perfect ML level with mineral prices that are 15% lower than buy-order rates for the region I'm working in... for this I use the brilliant EVE MLcalc tool which is also my main tool for finding out if a blueprint is profitable or not(based on current market prices).. If the price of an item is lower than this, its 15% cheaper than buying the minerals themselves... so I'll buy the stack.

I have 2 copies of the tool installed, one updated 15% below price of mkt, and one 15% above. This allows use in both building (with a safety margin) and for getting cheap minerals with the aforementioned setting. The 15% margin I put in means I rarely need to update MlCalc with daily updates - and also means I know I'll be buying minerals 15% below what they usually cost in the refine example...

Carebears/pirates can also use this tool to find out true costs for items they buy - so when negotiating on items player-player, it can be used for this vital information.

EVE Cosmos missions

Last week, I started my first steps into Cosmos (aka "Agents in Space"). Or "Pigs in space" if they are the enemy of my Gallente brothers... The Gallente COSMOS constellation is in Algintal consellation in Sinq Liason.

My aim - was to increase Gallente faction standings to raise Corp and personal standings with both my characters.. Cosmos is good in this regard as every 4-5 steps you get a faction gain vs every 10 or so missions in a normal mission-running scenario.

I did however get off to a bad start - having made a criminal mistake in not reading up on the Agent locations and relevant factions online, I started by doing a mission for the Thukker faction unwittingly. This was of course the 1st agent I found that would speak to me. This reduced my Gallente standings so was just a bit counter productive. Luckily I realised this after completing the 1st 3 part mission before starting the 2nd level missions - so it wasn't all bad fortune.

Once I found the correct agent to start L1 standings for Gallente, all was well, well apart from fact one of my 2 characters could not speak to him yet (the other could). This was down to a lack of the "connections" skill. I started training this, and moved over to doing some Gallente Datacentre missions - this was all good, until I hit a bugged portion of EVE, which has been Bugged since 2006 it seems.

Basically you eventually get to see Avrue Auz - and once I completed all the missions for her she asked me to take a token to Boismevier Mals. Now annoyingly... Boismevier Mals does not currently exist in the game. Checking forums, it looks like its been this way since 2006.... So I have a useless token.

Overall though so far COSMOS/datacentres have so far been remarkably fun and most importantly unique. I would 100% reccomend any character go and do them (even if experienced), as the faction gains are worth the grind. The stories are completely different from the "same old" missions you get when running for a normal agent - as eventually saving that Damsel who keeps getting into trouble does get somewhat tired. They are also very well written. Each mission can however, only be done once, so its not a source of unlimited faction. For some missions I should add you do need the Hacking/Archaeology skill available on your characters.

The loot is also unique in being T1 BPO's for "storyline" items, that are just below T2 items in their utility.

As of today Connections 3 has finished - thus I should be able to continue the COSMOS chain and I really can't wait to get back in there and find what happens next.

Industrial update for last week

Industry is progressing so well now.. turnover of at least 100mln isk last week (its hard to compute without going to excel right now!) Personally I turned over around 50mln. A turning point was hit earlier in week when mineral buy-orders exceeded sell orders for a 2-3 day period.

Ship sales - are going through roof and are definitely our top seller - in fact so successful we're putting around 45m isk of ships for sale tomorrow.... We make from 500k to 800k per ship depending on location.

At the weekend to save on build costs we even bought some low-priced ships and resold for the "going" rate successfully a few times. A maneuver christened "poaching". Its as if some folks don't want the huge margins possible on this line :)

Yesterday was almost 100% focussed on Industry in the period I was online, building massive amounts of stock (several of the manufacturing jobs were 4+ days in length) for frequent sellers we were low on. Whats nice about these items is the competition is low, and we can place an order on and leave it without micromanaging, and still make 50-75% profit over a month or so.

Mineral prices - stable, even decreasing slightly in past week from my mineral guidelines. High end minerals such as Zyd are available, and cheap. We now have a massive stockpile of Zyd and Megacyte - enough for a few weeks I think.. Problem is volumes, some weeks we fill a buy-order in a day, sometimes it takes a week. Now instead of placing a once-weekly order for the items needed to build, we're actually constantly buying items.

Mineral stockpile - decent, at least 100mln in stock currently although some holes - Mexallon and Trit in particular is lower than I would like.

Due to above, hauling is becoming an issue, in fact a Iteron V will be the next major skill trained for (above all invention/probe skills) on my main industrial character.

A question - does any corp want to contract for some regular mineral supplies (priced to be negotiated but should be competitive with buy-order rates) (to a station of our choosing)? With us growing exponentially, and buying 100mln a week on average - I'm thinking we'll need to start partnering with a mining corp to get to the volumes we need longer-term. We have no immediate plans to mine ourselves.

Ship production 101 & mineral price update

Well, at the weekned Jax started ship production after months of waiting for the blueprint to be researched, and its starting to pay off, 2 ships sold already. To the tune of 700K isk per ship profit. Thats monster profit and our highest per-item profit so far - and selling 2 per day = a nice little earner.

Downsides are the mineral stockpile is depleting quite quite rapidly. An example is Zydrine use. A couple of months ago, 4000 Zyd would have lasted a couple of months production. Now its lucky to last even 2-3 days. We purchased > 15k in the Sat->Sun period alone. The good news is Zyd appears to be being priced reasonably now, and availability of the high-end minerals is good and is "just about" keeping up with our demand.

Bad news is Trit, I don't know if its the release of the Orca causing this, but Trit is at 3.20-3.50 locally. A couple of months back, 2.91 or below was normal, and 3 was expensive.

Whats interesting though is despite the increase in costs of all items with Trit, prices of T1 items on markets are still continuing to fall. Watch out T1 producers (especially those with unresearched BPO's) as this may cause you problems.

Interesting ship piloting mistake

I hate to think of the cost to repair the station - I hope they don't charge me and their insurance covers it. The corporation couldn't afford to pay a few billion for repairs either! Thanks to Jax for the picture.

In news, corporation had total of 180m of items on mkt yesterday, and we've discovered a few new high-profit, but slow selling lines. As the profit is 200k per item its a nice little earner (selling ~5-6 per day)

We're also going to get into ship production due to the high profit we have identified in some classes of well-selling ships now we have both minerals and researched BPO's available. (note to those not in know, a non-PE researched ship BPO cannot make you money in many places from our experiences). Hopefully the ship business will result in faster turnover for corp (which will nessessitate us training for bigger haulers).

Industrial activities aside, will have basic skills for COSMOS missioning I hope for Monday. Archaeology will be available from then.. Then its onto the probing skills - then finally cov-ops. Then back to the basic skills to enable running of multiple R&D agents simultaneously. COSMOS to improve standings rapidly... thus allowing use of R&D agents... and probing to enable exploration. With the upcoming expansions next year, I think getting exploration/probing skills good will be a good start.

Certificates & Videos

Okay, in news, if you havn't seen it CCP have released the 1st batch of EVE online fanfest video goodness - in decent quality professional rips. So you can watch most of the presentations and love the Tech-3 goodness.

I've been off work sick the last 2 days - and I spent some of the day sat on the laptop computer in bed watching the above videos, and planning skills with evemon...

Certificates have been a great addition to the game, and have shown me that it may be better for me to get some basic all round skills to level 2/3 before skilling up to level 5 on the "specialist" skills. Specifically I was missing some of the armor hardening skills.. so these will be trained shortly...

Also, am preparing for COSMOS missions - should be starting those from this week/next - . Its all going to plan in the "survey" boat skill plan. Plan you see is that I have one character skilled to fly cov-ops, prober, codebreaker combined ship... its a long-way off, but should greatly help in low-sec. In the meantime I understand you need archaeology/hacking skills in cosmos, so will help with that also.

EVE Memory leak?

Last night myself and Jax did notice what appears to be a small memory leak in EVE post the new patch. Basically on every jump memory increases a little it seems (on both our PC's). As Jax had jumped all over Essence last night he'd ran out of ram.. and just restarting the client greatly sped him up.

In good news - post-patch as a general rule my clients are running a lot smoother.

We spent some time yesterday running missions - and Jax sorting out some nasty market undercutting going on in some of "our" systems !

This weekend, another venture into low-sec is planned - scouting another region to get an idea of if the residents are the yarr type. Will update results on Monday...

CCP - Please release fanfest videos

Okay, we have 24 hours downtime. Fanfest has just happened.

Why not... - release the videos from EVE TV of the fanfest presentations. It *may* just keep the EVE population from getting cold turkey withdrawal fever. At least it'll give all the Europeans something to do today. Call me crazy but the guys doing the server work will not be the EVE TV guys, nor the website content guys, so I really can't see why they can't do this.

Myself - well, I'm at work (this was written by email on the train on way to work), but er, once I get home, I'd love some fanfest videos in decent quality. Crazykinux done a great job doing videos and pics on his site during fanfest... but they are not the best quality, which I'm sure he'll admit.

If this doesn't happen, tonight/today I'll be doing non EVE related things for once, including catching up on the mountain of TV waiting to be watched on my Sky+.

What are you planning in downtime?

Low-sec shenannigins

Well, last night we went for a roam in low-sec... not local low-sec, in Essence, but more further afield.

In good news, we found a very unpopulated system and what appeared to be anti-pirate setup nearby. Its between 15 and 20 jumps away. The system has plenty of moons, and is .3 so is a possibility for pos placement.

First... need a covert ops ships to go moon scanning around all the moons in system that don't already have pos's... This requires use of a cov-ops and all the scan skills which is about 2 months off - could use a non-cov-ops, but one is required ideally.

Second... need a POS.

Third, need fuel for a POS. Which means we need (for emergency's only) ability to ICE mine at a reasonable rate. The cost for the pos, should in theory, be supplied by the moon minerals - at least in part - and thus should be able to pay for high-sec fuel services from a 3rd party.

Fourth, need a defense force situated in/near said POS to defend.

Downsides are the investment the above will take. I'm proposing saving starting now for the project..

As of this week we're moving mission hub system... now the main corp refiner has standings for 0% refines in Ours (allowing recycling without loss), we can move agent hub system.... so we can move to L3 Q17/18 agents or even L4 missions.

Eve CSM voting

Guys... please vote - its a good way of targetting how you want EVE to develop. I have already voted with my 2 accounts (for 2 different individuals both who I think will improve the CSM).

Now I know others have commented on this... but basically:
Don't vote cause they are in your corp
Don't vote cause they want a free holiday

What REALLY gets my goat on this is the amount of candidates without a campaign website or blog. Fair enuogh I COULD trawl the Eve online forums for this BUT... a blog/campaign website surely is the best way to get the message across. Put bluntly for furture reference CSM folks, if you don't have a website/campaign setup, you ain't going to get a vote from me.

Next year I have decided I WILL be running for the CSM personally. This year I'm not, as to too many of you I'll be too new a character/too new in the blogosphere... and I already have some campaign ideas. But I'm not going to blog about them until the website is setup and I'm confirmed as a candidate.

CSM represents a big time commitment, and is not something I'll be taking lightly (as personally I'll earn less real world money as the time I spend doing CSM commitments will conflict with my IT related overtime etc work!). Before that I may actually publish some information about myself and what I do in real life - and why I believe I'd therefore make an excellent CSM candidate.

Eve online infuences UPS...

EVE does influence me in subtle ways.

I tend to plan more both ingame and at work now.... with longer-term plans.

One more recent effect has been to make me realise what would happen in a powercut to my characters (especially if running a mission or worse pvp) - and just how financially disasterous (in terms of ISK, and in terms of loss of primary PC potentially) it could be for me in the longer-term of my characters development. I'd been planning a UPS anyhow for my gaming rig to replace a old broken one that I'd been putting off replacing. My advice - don't buy belkin UPS's - they die after 3 years consitantly... The office-rejig and a free older APC UPS I was donated from some of my old work colleagues meant this pressing need is now filled for no cost!

As of last night, my EVE rig (with both monitors (17" and 22") will last for ~ 10 mins in event of a power cut. Should be enough to avoid ship destruction style events I hope...

With the above some may think I'm taking things too far, but I've had a UPS for years (the last one died so badly it needed a full new unit) - and the power in my street fails once a month at least for 1-4 hours...
I can highly reccomend UPS's for online gamers of all kinds who live in the country like me with dodgy power. It's a shame my donated one needs new batteries to restore it to its full 30 min runtime... but that can wait, 10 mins will do for now...

I am also in process of buying a 2nd UPS - a small unit that should keep my wifi up for 2-3 hours in a power cut if I've sized it right - it'll ONLY run the DSL router. (wifi for the laptop, iphone and EVE PC once I transfer it from the other UPS). Its funny how when you use iplayer and other online entertainment a lot how much you can miss it in one 4 hour power cut!

Does your EVE rig have a UPS? Has EVE influenced any kit purchases for you?

Hints in devblogs. Jovians?

In this Dev blog there is a very interesting line of text...

There will be some totally new aspects to the game and possibly some old friends revived that you have long missed.

Old Friends. Jovians perhaps? How awesome would a new race and new ships be? Would it totally change the PVP landscape... I think so!

In game last night, I brought 20m of blueprints for some drone related items I want to "test" the market with. I have to fly around a bit to pick them all up later in the week.

Big big moment last night though. It was the 100m of items for sale on market barrier for me personally (corp wide this was beaten a while back). And got a new "big" seller. It made >500k ISK of profit in around 1 hour last night! The industrial factories will be beating again producing more of these hot items shortly... I almost can't wait to get home to see the profit made today.

Trading update, 4 months in, corp has around ~200m of blueprint originals, most of which are material efficieny researched at the very least... and as of this morning 60m ISK on-hand, with 140m of items on market, and with approx 60m of minerals in the corp mineral hanger awaiting production. Not a bad growth rate from humble beginnings for the 3 corp members. I don't know how much we have on-hand in terms of value from the loot we have not refined/sorted/kept right now, but I suspect its a reasonable amount.

Phew... that was close

My game time almost expired today, without me even realising it... Due to expire in 3 hours from now, and I simply hadn't realised. It does mean however, this marks the 4 month point in EVE for my characters...

I have bitten the big one and renewed both accounts I own for 12 months. With exchange rate fluctuations I couldn't bring myself to pay by GTC as I have the past 120 days. Paying in 12 month installments is a reasonable compromise. It works out roughly equal a monthly basis than I had been paying until now (without risk of the pound going down the toilet and me having to cut down to the one account).

The downsides are I havnt been able to log in except for skill changes since Tuesday... this isn't a good thing - but was down to unexpected work on Thursday, and ditto Sunday. It does suck being on-call. But this week I have a completely free week/weekend and not-on call. So lots of EVE-time at long last.

This weeks plans involve mostly missioning for ISK. The good news is some of the rig BPO will soon be finished research. Meaning I'll be making some rigs for my missioning Myrmidon with left over salvage. Sure.... I could sell salvage, but personally I like to use it for my personal ship customisation needs.

Stealthed Industrials are go go go

Read this dev blog
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.

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 :)

Industrial Dilema

Upon checking market prices last night I have ~ 50m ISK worth of salvage. I don't yet have enough of some components to make rigs (and my rig blueprints are unresearched anyhow). My question to myself is should I sell - (as 50m would allow 50m of materials to be purchased to allow my stockpiles for sales to increase to the point I can start manufacturing other items), or should I wait, as I can make a extra profit on manufacture of the rigs. I *need* the 50m stockpile of materials in ~25 days when a certain ship BPO is researched to ML20 as although ships = wafer thin profit, they also equal consistant sales. T1 component sales vary so often that I need to I think I'm going to concentrate on Capacitor control rigs, as if I'm not mistaken these are rather popular?

Oh and someone put a buy-order in for ~ 10,000 units zydrine at my home station. At 3000 ISK. Thats around a 10% market rise since yesterday! Annoyingly there are units for sale at that price on sell orders ~ 4 jumps away so he's just hoping to get someone else to haul.
I've put an order in for another 1000 zydrine... amazing that I'm using 1-2000 zyd a day currently... and also 1000 megacyte. Until recently I didn't use either mineral in day to day production (newer T1 items I'm producing require both in small quantities per item)

A chap I work with in office (but on another continent!) started playing EVE also recently and has been blown away by it all. I think his quote was "This is the game I've been waiting for..." - he's an old school strategy/fps man and is loving the depth complexity of learning how everything fits together. I handed over a load of named loot I keep in reserve for friends + a million isk to get him started on skillbooks, and showed him a level 2 mission and salvagers in operation. Then I gave him some skillbooks and a rough order to train to get some basic "support" and gunnery skills. I'll be updating with his progress over the trial, but I think he'll be signing up for EVE full time. Another convert to the church of EVE.

Mineral availability

Recently I'm having problems getting the quantities of Zydrine and Megacyte I need (at the right prices) for production. Zydrine in particular is causing me production delays as a lot of the modules I produce for market require it in small quantities, and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pay 3000 isk or higher per unit. My buy orders (best in market price) need monitoring every 6 hours as the shortage seems to be making prices rise by ~200 isk in last week. I used to be able to buy Zyd for ~ 2450, now its 2640 ish...

This doesn't appear to be limited to my region according to this post on the EVE Online forums - can anyone fill me in with any more background to this?

To a lesser extent, Mexallon is also taking a lot longer for best in region buy orders to be fufilled... Are less miners around at the moment?

Can I please ask miners to please help me and fill my daily Zyd, Mex and Megacyte buy orders in the Essence region (I'm generally the highest price)? I would also not be adverse for a direct non-market delivery of minerals per week (thus avoiding sales tax/brokerage for both parties)... remember I'm new at industry so where should I place an advert for such a delivery?

At the moment due to the shortages I'm considering setting my characters up with a new base in an area with higher mineral availability to haul the more expensive minerals back to my current production base. I think hauling is going to become a common thing for my industry character as in addition to the above - I'm probably going to move my production base in the next 4 weeks to a new location. Most places I've found so far don't have the mineral availability and competitive pricing of the Essence market - which potentially means higher profit as all minerals need hauling.

My Industry is now generating ~ 1-2 million isk a day profit after all costs- and I know I'm a small fish in a very big pond, but I'm happy with the growth in 2 months from a corp owning nothing to a corp making profit.... Though I am now extremely limited by the amount of buy/sell orders I currently can have, and I can't see this problem going away anytime soon as when I get Retail to level 5, the next skillbook costs around 65 million!!! So my combat char may be having to train trade/retail up a little (despite the tax etc he'll be charged it may be better for him to put sell orders in for the lower cost products, which generally have a higher % margin (though not profit per item) in any case).

Any tips you experienced industrialists could give me?

Industrial annoyances in EVE + some suggestions

As an industrialist, 2 things in EVE really annoy.

1/ Downtime delay for items to be returned on cancelled sell orders.

I often have 2/200 items left on market, and a hanger full of replacement items to sell once order expires. This means if I'm away for 20 hours or so, I need to cancel the order, and put the larger quanity on market. When I cancel the sell-order I sometimes have to wait until downtime to get my item back. This doesn't happen everytime, but when it does occur, its annoying. Ditto when a order expires. Its annoying and effectively ties my isk up for ages - or requires me to run a second sell order (meaning I need to leave a few spare to run in parallel).

2/ The 5 minute delay on cancelling an order.

Okay, I admit it I've priced something wrong, or set region wide when I mean system wide. When this happens I don't want to wait 5 mins to cancel. I understand the need for the delay in modifying orders, but I think you should be able to cancel immediately.

Do these annoy you too?

In good news - I'm still buying items priced below my "recycle rate" - thus cheaper minerals than buying even on a buy-order... are people really silly enough not to check the mineral price for an item out prior to putting a sell-order up :) I've found that using market powers, you can force price of an item down to below mineral cost, then suck up all your competitors, up price of your items, and recycle what you've brought for isk, or just keep in stock. On a few items this is quicker than building stuff yourself :) Not that I'd suggest such nefarious market tactics.

Any other suggestions the EVE players of the world can give?

Missioning

After a out-of-game experience involving paintbrushes, decorating... I got back into game last night.

Time away hadn't hurt DSTIC, in fact, it had meant I had 15 free sell orders (due to items selling), 20 million of ISK (huge for DSTIC to have that amount in wallet, despite the ~200m of assets the corp now has). Production was complicated by fact that pyerite and mexallon mineral levels were too low to be able to produce anything useful to sell, and sell-orders on market were criminally prices. So last night placed buy-orders for 200k Mex, 500k Pye, and 2M trit.. and this morning they were mostly filled - so the fires of industry are rolling again. Brought 4x new blueprints, and they are now in production.

After last weeks missioning led to quick standings gains.. and left DT able to run Level 2 missions, I went on some 2 missions with DP/DT and a trial character called OneStraw who I had met last week... enjoyed playing with him, but gives me a quandary - Should I accept someone else into DSTIC at this early stage.... its as discussed really not ready to supply all a new char needs currently (and won't be until funds available and blueprints for ships are available at ML20 - ~ 20 days)?

After last nights activities, new player development fund stands at 90k, personal wallet of DT at 1.9 mil, personal Wallet of DP at 5mil, Industry fund at ~ 2m after mineral purchases. DT/DP still need full advanced learning skills, meaning 40m is needed offhand in both personal wallets asap - so more missioning with Onestraw is essential, as it should make plenty of cash. DT also could do with some +3 implants.

Corporations

I've decided DSTIC will eventually take new members (public, and very limited in number), but only a few as I want growth to be slow, steady and have people we trust. As I've realised just how many corps rip people off compared to a Corp I was in during my last sting in eve.
I spoke to a new player yesterday who had moved into a corp with 25% tax that didn't provide hi, with anything for example, and done no real corp operations (hence why he was grouping with me).

Please comment on my plans for my corp:

• Will primarily be an industry corp.. focussing in T1 parts inititally.
  
• All Corp members should not have to pay for skills that cost under 2mill on mkt, Corp pays (to help startup players).
• All Corp members should not have to pay for ships and parts that cost under 2 million (subject to a max loss amount of say 5 a month). They should however pay to insure the ships and xfer the cash back to corp upon loss, so the corp wallet doesn't get hugely depercitated by this policy. T1 parts will be free, named and T2 will not be.
  
• Flat tax of 5%. This to pay for corp hangers.
• Corp payback. Corp pays 5% of all profits back to corp members every month. 95% gets reinvested in corp industry section.
• We will ask corp members to dump generic drops to corp hangers, these will be recycled to industry section to make profit from them, and also for the above ship/equipment policy - they can keep named drops if they prefer to. Salvage is not property of corp, except when on a corporate mission, when it will 50/50 split to corp (for module prodction), and the players in the mission (thus making all missioners extra mission rewards, but also providing some components to corp for rig production).
  
• Corp will provide rigs due to above policy at 25% below lowest mkt rate.
  
• Corp will run corporate missions.
  
• Mining I doubt we'll do as a rule currently, but if players choose to mine, corp will likely buy the unrefined ore (at better than best buy-order mkt rate)

Aims of DSTIC

• Get to be able to T2 build/research. Which T2 items is still to be investigated.
• Get a cov ops survey ship and search for low-sec hidden mining opportunties + exploration sites (mining here being exception to above rule).
• Get a POS for reasearch in highsec (hence corporate missions at day one, and also being picky abuot new members as need corp standings with Gallentite to be v.high).
• Make lots of profit for its corp members and pay for all combat activities out of industry section

Voice will be required (makes game more fun). EVE voice will be used - yes it crashes if game crashes, but I think the voice quality is really good having tried it...

So would any readers consider the above if they were a new player - I think its a fair system for the player and the corp!

Obviously the corp now need to put some money aside in a Player Development fund to pay for items such as skillbooks that we don't already manufacture.

Industrial Activities to date

My aim when restarting EVE this time was for my industrial character to provide the ISK and parts/ships (eventually) for my Combat character... as eventually (6 months time) I plan to move into PvP with this char.

2 months in, the plan is almost working. I'm making 2-10 million a day in trading and producing.. Deafturrett(DT) only can fly T1 ships and parts currently... the biggest fun I'm having is playing the market. I'm not going to mention individual components, ships etc I'm buying and selling or I'd have competition in the market as other people done the same, greatly reducing my profit margins.

The basics of my approach:

1/Buy low, sell high. Some items I simply do this with as people put sell orders in for less than I know the item will sell for (and still quickly).

2/ Buy minerals: Build items. Sell for 25% profit over build costs... if I can't get 25%, I don't build. Don't build unresearched ship BPO's. A tip: Remember not all blueprints available locally. Some BPO's from other regions when produced locally result in good profit... so a few trips to other areas = profit. Further tip. Use market prior to buying BPO to check demand for items. Don't buy BPO's for low-demand items, UNLESS you combat char gets through lots of them.

More advanced:
As a producer, I know the mineral cost to buy minerals off buy-orders and then to build say a ship (ie what my average buy price is)..... this leads to interesting results. Example, yesterday, competition in Ours led to Incursis's at one point being well below the mineral cost on market (with perfect BPO obviously and perfect refine skills). Simple process when this occurs - buy,refine, sell... Even if your refine skills not perfect like mine its a good thing to be aware of and there is profit to be made ...

I am truely amazed at the denseness of some industrialists on the market - selling any item below build costs is crazy, as a decent refiner can melt that item down for cheaper minerals. On slow moving items also this is useful to know - especially with some of the recent increases in mineral prices (even a .25 increase in pye's or mex for example on a large item has a huge isk difference on items already in market).


The downside to my new found trading activity is at any one point I have ~ 50m + of buy/sell orders outstanding, so my character and corp is still technically poor as all profit is immeidately reinvested.