PI is bugged- I think

I have to agree with Letrange:
This is an image, er, 2 days after I started a 96 hour job and I DID not start this this morning!. On a planet I regularly start other extractors on. And it has only 9 hours into the job. Its bugging me, mainly as I need to switch the job to a 5 hour one, as I have since Saturday.

Infinite monkeys, thanks CCP. :)

But seriously someone could abuse this - I can't replicate it yet, only thing for sure is I alter other extractors on same planet daily... but its not obvious HOW this is happening - but there is some logic wrong somewhere.

Just thought I'd add my voice to this based on my experience of PI so far...

I'm back, Planatary Interaction

For those who haven't seen me in game - I'm back. I'm still stuck with Real life stuff meaning I'm only getting 1-2 days a week online - but really enjoying EVE when I do get to play.

So I've decided to build a PI stack to manage in my "home" system, which seems great, and should, in-time, produce me a full set of materials to build Deathstars (well POS's). I'm lucky in 2 systems next door should give me a reasonable amount of all pieces needed... Right now, I have a process building a massive amount of P2 mats daily. Once that piece is ready, it'll start going to P3, then P4. I'm hoping P3->P4 will be one planet.

Overall its nice... as its one less thing to buy, and I can sell any spare "parts" on the Jita Market. Its been fun to workout ideal production setups so no nasty "waits" occur.

I had my first duel in ages with Krysania recently, resulting in a win for DeafTurret, but it was close. I'm a little rusty at duels, so will try and avoid, but engage if provoked....

Well done Mynxee on the CSM. No wonder you got chairwoman - great campaign!. I do still hope to participate in CSM when my life isn't full of wedding stuff (probably 2013!). BTW, we're getting married in 2012, but with the venue being other end of England (literally) - its a pain, as every other weekend we're going up to scout out "the venue", church, etc. We think both are now sorted, finally, but just need to finalise the date prior to booking....

Pyerite

On my trips into New Eden - the biggest change has been Pyerite... 6.72 isk a unit locally on buy-orders. Wow.

Usually my mineral basket buy-price (and my existing stock) is a 2.09 -2.5. So Pyerite has tripled in price inside last few months compared to previous buy prices experienced.

Rest of mineral basket has changed too, with high-end minerals such as Zydrine and Megacyte changing from high prices to relatively low....

My reasons I can determine for this are several fold.
1/ Wormholes - people concentrating mining high-ends only
2/ The recent ganking of Hulks in high-sec - leaving less minerals coming in from this route and refines from drops as a general rule having a low Pyerite count
3/ Less people mining Pyroxies potentially.

Anyone else got any comments on why this may be?

Real life and stuff

I can see CrazyKinux is reorganizing the Blog pack to remove inactive members and that probably includes me :)

I have a very good reason for being away though - asked Mel to marry me in January - immediately after last post - so we've been somewhat busy travelling to other side of UK to look at venues and stuff (getting married there to kinda save the travel time for 60% of the guests) - basically if we had a wedding in home town all those people need to travel and more importantly need somewhere to stay. Given there is no hotel within 15 miles with the capacity, and cabs cost a lot here, it really would up the costs for everyone. The wedding isn't until 2012, but looking at the books, to get the wedding the exact week Mel wants we have to book by this summer, so we don't have much time. So basically thats where I've been.

I have been online a little, but not enough time to basically get anything done. I've temporarily up-ed sticks from Low-sec to Dodixie, as doing missions fits my 1-2 hour playtime better than low-sec, where its more fun to me.

I will be posting a little more often and have prepped a post for next week on an auto-post shedule, but now need to move as have a weekend of "fun" activities. Thats English sarcasm btw.

Next weekend I'm actually totally not doing anything, so will be online. Hope to see you all online.

Blog Banter #14: A beginning is a very delicate time...

Welcome to the fourteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from the EVE Blog Father, in which I ask the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves "What Now?" What will I attempt next? What haven't I done so far in EVE? Was it out fear, funds, or knowledge? Have I always wanted to start my own corporation, but have never dared doing so? Is there a fledging mercenary waiting to come out of its shell? Or maybe an Industrialist? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

With the future you have to first look at the past. 2009 was a good year for me in-game, with industrial activities growing over the year, but eventually hitting a wall of making profit, but not as much as I'd hoped when I started. 2010 will start re-evaluating the trading decisions made, with an aim to get out of small profit items and concentrate on big 1 million profit per item minimums. So my first aim for 2010 is to move from a 500 million isk turnover a month to a few billion. How to get there? Well invention was the plan for 2009, and skills are finally coming online to invent just about every module in existance (plus the ships). Aim was to get every skill needed to L4, and that will complete in mid-March, allowing me to compete in all T2 markets, and not just concentrate on small minorities.

Big aim for 2010 is to get the POS up - I've identified a system for this, miles from my usual hangouts - we don't even have an office in the system. Out of the way as its not for moon mining, but for reactions. Carefully placed one jump of a jump freighter from Empire - as this will factor heavily in logistics once I can afford one. The POS will be for T2 moon goo reactions and research (copying) of BPO's. I expect I'll visit it once every few days to move the reactions around, but it will NOT be my main hang out. I've also started logistics of fuel over the past month and have 2 weeks of fuel for a large pos there now. I need more for safety as the aim will be to get to having a jump freighter to factor as mentioned, and hauling fuel is relentless when you are 27 jumps from your main hub!

My other aim is to actually join an alliance and get some 0.0 or wormhole PvP boots in the latter part of 2010 - not done that yet, but I think DSTIC's industrial roots will help many a 0.0 alliance in logistics in terms of being able to build vs buy.

2010 will also involve getting back to blogging 2-3 times a week again as far as out of game activities go - works been a nightmare, and blogging even on my phone on the way to work isn't possible right now...

Dust 514 is interesting, if its going to be released this year (I hope) - I expect I'll be getting whichever console is required. CCP hurry up and commit, as I don't want to end up with the wrong one (PS3 or xbox, I'm not getting both).

I have renewed EVE for all of 2010 (on annual subs) - so I will be about - and I will be blogging about EVE once more. Look forward to chatting in game and seeing everyone more in next couple of weeks when work winds down from the post Christmas madness.

List of Participants:

1. CrazyKinux's Musing - A beginning is a very delicate time...
2. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility - Words, words, words…
3. My God It's Full of Stars - What Now?
4. The Elitist - Plans for 112yc
5. Into the unknown with gun and camera - Show me the money
6. Ecliptic Rift - Enabling the future
7. Inanity and Doom - New Year's Resolutions, New Eden Style
8. Break Vol - Blog Banter #14
9. Guns Ablaze - What Now?
10. Adventures in Mission Running - The Way Forward
11. Diary of a Pod Pilot - Things I want to do
12. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - The Year That Will Be
13. Roc's Ramblings - WordPress ate my blog
14. Vive Virtual - Frontier Living
15. A Mule in EVE - Next on the chopping block
16. Prano's Journey - I Peer Into My Crystal Pod...
17. Life in Low Sec - Expanding the Franchise
18. The Light of Stars - Testing the claims of CCP
19. A Memoir From Space - A New Direction
20. The Chronofile - Blog Banter 2010
21. FlashFresh - What now for Flash?
22. EVE Opportunist - Fyreite in 112
23. Mike Azariah - Jiorj
24. Yarrbear Tales - Year in Review
25. More to come...

Melted Capacitor Consoles

Is it just me or Post Dominion has the drop rate, er disappeared for these?

Over past month been missioning in Empire (over 40 missions with full salvage from all of them), and now down in Low-sec for 2 weeks now (again ran many anoms, many belts, many radar sites etc). And er, not a single cap console. Whats going on? Prior to this I got a few at least.

This is all in Gallente space, but if I'm right this could result in a huge huge increase in price to these and modules that use them... (CCC rigs).

Can anyone comment so I can get an idea if this is just me or not - I've been playing EVE a lot this month (in preference to blogging sorry!) - with over 70 hours clocked up!!! - which is more than I usually would play!

The grind is almost over...

Now patching to Dominion 1.0.2 and thought I'd blog while it patches :)

Well finally last night I got to point where all bar one research agent in Core Complexion inc is available to me.

This is good news for me - and means I can return shortly to low-sec, and go exploring again from a FOB or two. The nice thing will be my invention/research will continue while I'm gone.

Dominion though - has anyone else noticed, is it quicker for you? On my machine it appears less memory hungry AND more responsive - a great improvement in fact - despite the new in game browser.

Apologies for lack of decent blogs on Industry recently (what its all about) - but my limited time gaming is best spent actually doing stuff rather than blogging for this last few weeks. Normal service will resume... shortly. What I can say is the corp right now has 600M in cash, 700M on market, and a mineral reserve that can support manufacturing for another 3 months. This despite some big spend outs recently in preparation for the move back to low-sec...

What am I hoping.... 0.0 alliances to er, remove some stakeholdings, and rent to small corps. This will allow more of us to move out there and upgrade. More pew-pew, more monies. But I'm waiting with tenterhooks to see if this is case or not. What I can predict is mineral prices will increase shortly with all of the freighters being destroyed in past week.

See you all online shortly, patching has completed on my 2 clients.

Post Vegas Musing

Well, back all safe - bit delayed last week, then jetlagged - whichpaid heed to me actually blogging, but I did manage to get back to skill change and restock the markets for the corporation. Vegas was aweesome. Makes me consider flying over from UK for eve-vegas. I do get lots of air-miles from work some years, so I've gotta hope for 4-5 flights uk-us next year to make that dream a reality. I should be able to get the hotel comped, so I only need a flight - the girl at the players club was offering all manner of deals to get me back!

This week - well, I've been in final phases of slog to get L4 agents for another corporation, which should mean I have almost all datacores covered once complete. Plan then is relocation into low-sec again and a set of hauling of the various items at each end of the pipe (loot from low-sec to high, and new ships from high to low) - that have been stocking up over the past few months.

Finally once all thats complete the rest of the corp members hopefully will be able to help with a POS deployment operation in the next fortnight - ideally pre-Dominion, but maybe after.

Work has screwed with me though - aim was to get a day off to play EVE post release - (booked a couple of days after release - but work has stymied that move by "unbooking" the Friday I wanted due to a colleague taking a flight to Nashville, TN, leaving us shortstaffed.

Can't wait for the deployment of Dominion - still dream of a 0.0 system of my own. Once day - but I'll need capital ship first, which is a few months away now. And I'll need the ubiquitious Cyno alt/alts once I have Capitals anyhow, which is more training.

Yes I have voted - do your stuff and Vote for the CSM now. Its the last day today for voting - and if you don't vote you *may* end up represented by a set of fools on the CSM. Of course, you could want that - but equally I think a bunch of Yarrr types may be resented by the carebear majority - so vote and make your choices known.

Hope to see you all online - I know its Turkey weekend in the US - so hopefully lots of people online to chat to this weekend - and have a nice holiday everyone.

Off on hiatus for 1.5 weeks

Apologies for lack of posts recently - been preparing for the 1.5 week trip to Vegas. Stressful - now on way to airport, and typically have forgotten my toothbrush. Always forget something, but at least it doesn't appear that anything important is missing.

The good news - I've been playing EVE a lot more this past few weeks, but havn't had a chance to blog about it due to actually playing. Highlights - sorting out the corporations mineral needs for the next 3 weeks with a bulk order, which should allow the rest of the members to produce stuff if they want while I'm away.

The good news is the other 2 coporation members will be taking up the mantle while I'm gone. Jax is back - he had computer hardware issues and work issues meaning he hasn't been able to play for a few months. Its glad to have him back though - as it means industry wise we're set for the next big expansion.

Dominion - we have been working on our plans for pre-Dominion - needless to say we have plans for all of the corporations cash reserves, and I'm hoping we sell 50% of the on market goods while I'm gone to assist in the cash-heavy investment in materials for the next stage of growth. If some of my math is right from word from Sisi, the release of Dominion could be very profitable for us.

The actual stats are 700m on mkt, 350 million in bank - and a mineral stash sufficient probably for another 700 m- 1 bln of goods for market sale.

Basically its great stuff and I'm happy with current growth. Hitting the 1 billion in cash mark will likely happen eventually, but we prefer right now to keep our investments actually fluid, and to reinvest every isk we make in order to make the growth keep occuring.

Anyhow hope everyone has a good Bonfire night (its a Brit thing) - and will see you all weekend after next.

Fanfest Video roundup

Okay, so I thought I'd post my thoughts on some of the videos from Fanfest 2009. I've been watching every day at lunch instead of writing Blog posts, hence the hiatus, but hours of video does tend to take hours to get through!

Videos + a brief summary of my thoughts from the weeks watching...

PVE/PVP Roundtable discussion - Awesome both of these, and some valid points being brought up in the discussions especially in regard to ECM power, and ECCM lack of it in PVP imho.

CCP Panel - great questions on future of EVE and Dust integration. In summary, initial integration is limited, but sadly we can't gank the Barges as they fly between planets. Shame.

CSM Panel - Nice to hear from the delegates from this round. I'm not personally going to be going in for next CSM elections, but will be on the one after. I would possibly be shot if I agreed to the Sundays and trip in February right now considering other commitments with work, I'd never get to see the girlfriend.

GM Panel - Great to hear GM's are involved in scrum with regards to tools development to help them help us. Nice to hear they play the game as much as us too! Certainally beats some games I've played before - where the CS and GM experience is sometimes somewhat outsourced and seperate from the Dev's.

To watch next week Scrum and Agile Development, Game Design and the Ecomomy sessions.

Oh, and you all so have to listen to the Orchestration of in game songs - DJ Margeir was awesome. PLEASE repeat this next year - I am defeinitely attending fanfest anyhow, but I love orchestras - and orchestras playing Computer tunes is great.

Oh and you have to watch the Alliance panel presentation that Goonswarm (Darius Johnson) gave. Its not on youtube yet, but tentonhammer has the goods. Made me die laughing.

Hope you guys all have a good weekend - at the moment DSTI is concenrtating on producing items enough for the holiday period (I leave for holidays in about a weeks time now - so the mineral queue and production is concentrating on making sure I don't run out of stuff in the interim).

Oh and Rojaz - I've not been ignoring you - just I typically am away from computer whenever you chat to me!

Fanfest

Thanks to all of the wonderful bloggers for showing us how good FanFest was this year. I'm not going to link them all as the other blog pack members have already done that this week already - but Ombeve and Roc specifically had great reviews up.

I will be going next year, the g/f has approved it, and may do the Sisters of Eve thing, she noticed my sad-face all weekend and realized why, great person she is :) I hope CCP release the dates asap for Fanfest 10 - why? Well, work leave is the only thing that will prevent me making it next year, and both early October and early November (previous Fanfest times) are somewhat contested times to go in my team. My boss likes the Caribbean in Oct/Nov, and my other colleague is actually off this week on a late summer break.

Right now, its only a few weeks until my big Vegas adventure though, so have been setting up ready for this in-game...

I've not been online much though just simply moving minerals and building vast quantities of ships (taking 20 days to build is not uncommon). This is so that I can reduce the mineral stack just a little prior to holiday...

The other big thing, is my annual accounts are due for renewal in November and I'm based in UK. I done the maths, and I've worked out that at the moment its close in price to go back to Timecards compared to buying annually (added to fact paying annually hits wallet a lot harder in Nov). At current exchange rates, a year of time codes = $209 - compared to €131.40 a year on credit card = approx £120 a year. At my banks's current exchange rates, to pounds, time cards = £134 for 360 days (ie time cards = only a 15 quid impact). I think I'll be buying in batches of ETC's - as if the Dollar falls against pound, ETC's will again beat yearly subscription prices with a movement in exchange rates. Link to Shatteredcrystal for those interested in this - disclaimer, I'll get some referral funds - but if you feel like making me happy, click on this link before purchase... I'm taking a risk that dollar will fall relative to pound basically...

Corporation update

Well, firstly we have a new industrial member, Rojaz, who is starting up a sales and production operation in a station we have identified is under-supplied for capsuleer demand - so I publically welcome this development.

Secondly, having now got standings with Creodron for my first level 4 agents, I am doing the same with Core Complexion - to be able to max all my R&D slots with L4 agents - Creodron only having a small number. So grinding of standings, again, not much fun for another month or so.

The biggest news in world of EVE had to be Pandemic Legion winning the Alliance tournament. Congratulations guys, its was a brilliant win, and showed the value of changing tactics upon every single match! The HD video feed was also omg awesome as the guys from CCP described it. Downsides are my shite PC couldn't handle the load of running the video and 2 EVE clients all that well - so for a lot of the final day I was watching with only one client up... It was great TV, and I really hope that CCP chooses to to a EVE TV broadcast again.

The other great news is the fact that the next patch will have a new browser embedded in game based on the same tech as Google Chrome- not the most obvious of good news - but excellent for app development. I'm hoping that once a decent browser is in there, that you will be able to use API hooks to in-game features. For example a spreadsheet updated using your current local market data may be possible. For industrialists, this part of the patch could be very interesting.

EVE + Netbook

Well, I jumped in yesterday and purchased a Samsung N110 - mainly for blogging on the road, photo retouching from my DSLR. I had minor hopes it would run EVE, but it wasn't essential.

To my surprise, it does. Its slow, probably 10-15f/s in space - , certainally wouldn't want to be out in space on anything more than a haul with one... BUT it works. Some niggles like it being slightly too small to sell full screen (min eve res is 1024x768 vs 1024x600 on the 10" screen), so corp-hangers hard to access.

Overall though its good. The best bit, the battery - even with EVE up for half an hour I only dented 5-10% of the battery. I think the battery with real world usage will last me 6-7 hours every time - and thats even with use of EVE, it doesn't seem to dent the cpu much despite the 100% usage.. Great when you consider thats enough time for a nice train ride in/out of London twice, or one with problems. I've already got a 3g dongle, and experience with watching TV on an old-phone via 3 and a slingbox says for 90% of the journey it should work without any disconnects, meaning I can use EVE for market fun when I'm travelling, or away for a weekend :)

The other nice thing for those considering netbooks - is the thing actually boots/is usable WAY WAY quicker than my desktop. Both are running same AV, same OS etc - its a nice benefit, along with the fact the hibernate is sweet, meaning the netboot is almost instant-on.

Brilliant purchase, and although EVE wasn't the main reason for it, its a lovely side benefit!

This weekend I may not be online much - real life means I'm tied up with some DIY projects with some friends prior to the winter setting in.

Also - expect to see me online next Sunday..... :) I'll be in London visiting a friend in hospital during the day, but will be online on my journey to & from :) I'll be online Friday/Saturday also in all likelihood....

I still need to purchase the HD TV and PS3 for Dust - but thats the Christmas present :)

Ghost Market manipulation

Okay, I'm going to blog about something I've noticed which I think may be an exploit....

I believe that one of my corp members has quit playing. His account appears inactive as the API key says Account disabled due to account status. So this probably means his account has expired....

Interestingly none of his corporate sell orders have expired (don't know about his personal ones) and have been being actioned the past few days, still feeding money to the corp wallet.... So I present Ghost Market Manipulation. Is this an exploit? Do you think its worth a bug report?

If this is true, I wonder how much this has to do with the current huge falls in price of Tritanium and some market side effects - after all, isn't it almost 3 months since the ban-hammer fell on bot accounts - so some 90 day sell/buy orders will be expiring. I've noticed huge falls recently in the price of Trit and even Mex in the short term. I wonder just how much the bot-accounts had on the market when the ban-hammer fell - and whether the lack of bots will be felt more widely than first thought starting now?

What do you think, exploit, or by design? Should CCP fix - as with ghost training being eliminated, surely this is the same thing?

The Big Industry update

Current stats: 300Mln available cash, 275M on market.

Good news : Minerals are officially no longer a problem. Have a stockpile of 100mln units of Trit, 40 Pye, 5 Mex, and enough of the high-ends to meet production for next few weeks.

Also have a buy-order for another 100million Tritanium out there. Its so cheap right now, it would be crazy not to - I can't honestly see the situation staying the same.

Production wise, I have my maximum 9 slots committed to builds for the next 10 days. I'm almost needing a production alt to get another 9 slots - the sheer volume of builds required is the problem.

The reason: Plan to expand the DSTIC empire to another 1/2 sales stations I've identified to speed up isk generation. Currently the build queues can support this - they only stop right now when minerals run out - this should hopefully double sales volumes as until now only 2 stations are "sales" hubs.

Jax seems to not be online at all now, so I'm reduced to a one-man corp effectively. This means recruitment is now open.... If you play UK hours of typically 7-12pm, and most commonly on 10-midnight, contact me ingame on the character Deafplasma. I can teach you production and supply access to the corporations blueprint stocks (use only access), and give you some pointers on where to sell stuff..... You need production efficiency 5, ideally voice comms via Eve voice (as its free), and a desire to make ISK for yourself and the corporation.

The other *great* opportunitie I've spotted needs a freighters to leverage unfortunately - basically its a double your money over time opportunity, with 83mln to be made every 30 days or so, and will only tie up half that amount of isk!!! :) But with this paying for a freighter over a year easily, I'm thinking of buying one, as it will also make mineral purchases interesting/fun. I've tried the method successfully, its the sheer volume to be hauled that causes the problem (its about 500,000 m3 needed every month).

I've also been online more recently.

And what would a post be without welcoming all the new members to the blog pack:

• Loaded Barrels, by Brutus
• EVE Newb, by Spectre
• My God, it's full of Stars!, by Jamenta
• Hands Off, My Loots!, by Cyberin
• Ecliptic Rift, by Casiella Truza
• Articulated Sky, by Godlesswanderer
• Munich Mataris, by DieRoteBieroness, Naanook and DocFloyd
• Diary of a Pod Pilot, by Myrhial Arkenath
• Nashh Kadavr's EVE Blog, by Nashh Kadavr
• The Captain's Log, by Prometheus09
• Level Cap, by Rakanishu
• Planet Risk Show (The), by Luminus Aardokay & Quivering Palm
• Corrupted Datacore, by Chainer Cygnus
• Yarrbear Tales, by 00sage00
• A Pirate's Life for Me, by Alagus
• Journey to New Eden, by Bill
• EVE Online Wormholes, by Star Defender
• A Rock in a Cold Place, by Abaddor
• A Ghost Blog, by Mr NOXx

Congratulations to all of the above....

Eve Blog Banter #11 - a ship called Starfury

It's time for the blog banter again... now I know I didn't take part in last months - or the recent PodCast competition.... However, its a good thing really as I've had a killer cold recently, lost my voice and I'd probably sound all strange if I won anyhow :)

This month's banter comes to us from Joe Brusati a long time reader of CrazyKinux's Musing, who asks the following: CCP states that T3 Strategic Cruisers are just the start for the T3 line-up. In future Eve expansions what would you like to see as the next T3 ship type. Please be specific on details about what role this ship would play, cost of manufacturing, and the different modules that would be available for it, and of course you must give your T3 ship a name!

Well , first, I'd have a T3 Battlecruiser, and I would name it "StarFury". I thought about T3 frigates, but then thought with the new "rigging" changes that actually that may not be super-clever. Also, swapping small components in/out of a tiny ship like a Frigate just didn't make sense.

Battlecruisers however make perfect sense, and you know I'd like several additional T3 rigs, including propulsion. The costs of some T2 battlecruisers compete right now with T3 cruisers, so the next logical step is of course T3 BC's. Cost, maybe 4-6 billion isk each ?

My ideal battlecruiser would be a stealth ship, able to cloak, and be able to evade untargetted warp bubbles. It also would have ability to use a Blackoperations Jump Bridge - ie, be able to be brought into current "stealth" gangs for 0.0 roaming. The difference, having a tank able to withstand a little beating, but with the downsides of its tracking not being super-awesome. T3 Cruisers are great, but a BC would have 2-3x the staying power in terms of shields/armor/resists.

The other role for it would be a pure DPS boat. Weaker armor and resists than a T2 BC, but massive DPS potential of maybe 4 or 8x of say a Drake or Myrmidon with bonuses. ie, the facility to totally go wafer-thin on shields/armor (like between frigate and cruiser levels) for even more DPS....

You know the thing I'd really want though - a T3 jump drive for use in T3 BC 's - able to jump straight into engagements if needed (if a friendly opens a cyno). But, with an additional ability to jump out if capacitor is over 25% and not-warp-scrambled - ie a jump in, do some damage, jump out style ship......

The other thing to match would be a T3 module ship offering a perminant cyno beacon, but allowing movement at normal pace (but greatly greatly reducing shield/armor etc and also maybe reducing warp speed). The fun thing being, there shouldn't be a sign on the ship as to which is the one that has the beacon emitter. Basically allowing instant re-enforcement and bait-traps if 2 ships roaming together get attacked, with the attacker not having a clue as to which is the master "cyno".... The cyno ship should not be able to fit a jump drive though!

So, what do you guys think, are these not great ideas, and do you think they would greatly change the tactics of 0.0, and make people wary of T3 BC's roaming?

A week of eve

This is a phonepost so apologies if the formatting or grammer don't
hit usual standards! Writing on the train on the way to the stag
night of the dead movie premier in London, which I was lucky enough to
be an extra in my holidays over the last summer/winter!

The last week had obviously seen the Dust 514 news (providing I
remembered that right) - this does deeply excite me - the news of a
major fps / strategy console tie in excites as ever. The sovreignty
impact makes me really sad my fanfest attenance got called off for
financial reasons as the chance to see a demo would be amazing..
What i'm hoping is that sovreignty is changed so individuals and small
corps can get a foothold in 0.0 without getting tied up in
alliances. But that's a personal hope and I doubt CCP will cater for
those!

My concerns are lack of a pc version being mentioned as I prefer to
play both RTS and FPS games on the PC due to me being a mouse and
keyboard freak for this time of game.

The thing I am waiting for confirmation of are the available platforms
as if Dust is say PS3 exclusive I see a PS3 being an Christmas present
for sure!

In Corp news - we now have low quality level 4 r&d agents available to
us - bur need to be getting more high quality - this is purely down to
lack of gametime - I've been logged in only 60 mins this week!

Biggest issue now to the Corp is a severe local shortage of well
priced Mex - could anyone supply 10m units to me anywhere in Ours for
say 300mln isk?

Hope everyone has a good weekend and hope to see you online next week
if not at weekend!

Almost a year of blogging

This blog started on 28th August 08, and given its now 10th Aug 09, I can't believe its been active almost a year...

Now I've not been online hardly at all this past week - mainly due to post-30th-birthday celebrations and some surprises, including a holiday that was surprised on me (to the North of England), meaning I've not been around....

Anyhow, thought I'd update with the status from the weekend.

The DSTIC empire is continuing to grow, limited only by lack of retail slots currently (which skills are being worked on to fix). I decided to expand the sales empire into another station, and its had a noticable increase in sales. The weekly turnover is now well over 100mln. Downsides are I'm being limited by minerals again, the constant building has decimated the Megacyte supply, so I now have 0 units left. The annoying thing is I've had a buy-order for 20k units of Megacyte for months now, but its just not being filled despite regular tweaking.

The skills for L4 R&D still are eluding me unfortunatly, but I am close now. Once this is done, the POS plan will start, and then we can hopefully have a permanent supply of T2 items being built/sold. This should hopefully increase profits nicely.

The big skill I've researched recently is the remote industrial skill "Supply Chain Management" - which is proving super useful. I can sit in my missioning system (where L4 agents being sorted), and directly control my main hub of operations, building items for sale. The advantage is I only have to actually fly the 8 jumps home to move goods/minerals every 2-3 weeks - as now I can remotely alter prices of buy/sell orders, and build replacements without actually visiting the stations in question - its only the logistics of mineral moves that really needs me 100% now.

That said, I'm still missing the fun of low-sec. I will be returning to the base of operations there as soon as I can, I seriously can't believe its a month since I left. Hopefully I'll be bringing a hulk back with me, so I can mine some of the sites that have been unavailable to me previously. This should hopefully fix the high-end mineral shortage problem in the short-term.

Hope you guys have a good week and hope to see you online again shortly

Industrial Endeavours update

Well the T1 market is going well again for me at least. The sell it low, but in quantities tactic is resulting in significant sales for me.

Current stats: 500mln cash, 300mln on market, another 100mln of goods sat in hanger waiting for market orders to complete (ie restocks), and a new 40mln unit stash of trit + a tidy amount of pye. All good, and amazing volumes for my stocks.

Basically I think in past week of market trading - I *think* I've made 2-300mln - which is a good result - all off the back of 4 key items which are the cornerstone of the "trading" operation. What does surprise me though is something that usually doesn't sell (200mm steel plates) - had a huge rush of 300 buyers in a short period last week - this despite the actual price making me a tidy profit.

The L4 R&D "project" has stalled until next week. At the moment can access L3 Q16 agents so its getting close to L4 agents now on both characters - shame only one of them has research skills trained!

I have a week-o-eve next week - where the L4 project will complete with any luck, the store will be restocked, and I will venture back into low-sec for a month with a hulk in the hold for use in mining operations down in deep Low-sec. I'll be using a deep space transport for the trip - which should minimise risk of getting caught - its still possible to be scramed by a big gang however, so I will be tacking a escort or two.

I hope your week in EVE is fruitful, and my next post will be my Blog banter submission.

Indusrial Meanderings and odd trading strategy

Well, I've been told that I need to post a bit more about industrial activities and whats going on in the world of DSTIC trading wise.

Current status: 500mln cash, 100mln in buy-orders, 250mln in sell orders.
Mineral stockpile: Reasonable, but needs replenishing for Tritanium and Nocxium.. all others have enough to restock the market between 3 and 5 times. (its about a 400-500 mil stash).
Build Queue: Just finished all 9 slots which have been building restock items last 5 days.

Blueprint/research status: Nothing in research, this is in preparation for the POS build - as easily can fill 1 or 2 labs currently...

What I've recently been doing industry wise, is more aggressively staking my claim in the market -Basically as almost 100% of the BPO's owned by DSTIC are more researched to within 0.01 loss, I can produce and only make a 8-11% margin rather than the usual 40%. Some may say "why sell low when you can make more money - the answer in my region is volume and time - I can make more in bulk than I ever can in small volumes...". This is meaning I'm aggressively pursuing a region wide lowest price in some cases, meaning my items are selling in bulk to seemingly T2 producers (who don't always have researched T1 BPO's meaning I can build/sell for less than they can build). Some items get sold out way before I get a chance to restock now due to this, and the turnover is amazing. Its not unusual to sell 250-500 of some items inside 5 days.

The change soon however will be the move to T2 production in-house. Some of the POS lab slots mentioned will be going to T2 component BPO's, which need research to "perfect" levels.
....

The other big big change in 10-15 days will be the ability to pilot a Hulk. Mining - I usually wouldn't consider it, but some of the sites that have been found via exploration in low-sec made me reconsider that assumption. The plan: To be self-sufficient in higher-end minerals, and maybe even supply market for a few of these.

The other aspect which I can't really discuss, is the move to market prediction - where I think a demand will exist in the future - I am pre-buying items to meet that demand - its a risky strategy, as I'm building a stockpile of what may be "useless" or low demand items now - but they may be highly profitable in 3-4 months time. Similar to share prices I'm speculating to accumulate, but with real items...

Its hard to be specific on the blog on some trading/industrial activities, as if I do, I may give away "insider" tips, which would result in my whole strategy being ruined ....