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.

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 ....

Back in game today

As mentioned in my previous posts, I now have a couple of weeks ingame in the evenings during the week - so I'll be cranking up eve-radio, and playing 7-11pm Mon-Wed. I'm also not-on-call for once, meaning I get to drink beer and play eve. A mix of danger and fun!.

Good news is CCP have offered me 5 days of no-risk, no credit card down, playtime on my old characters. Why is this good? Well, around 300million of "stuff", 100 million of raw isk - amongst other items can be traded from my old characters to my "current" character. This is a quick win for me :)

The plan:
1/ Earn lots of ISK - personal funds are at 75mil levels, which isn't great. Even with the above "isk injection", I'll still be lower than I want. Having a hanger of T2 goodies sure is expensive.
2/ Start the road to Battleships.
3/ In the meantime, I may have to go back to doing missions in high-sec, purely for status gains - as the plan is to actually sign up for 2-3 level 4 r&d agents asap. Datacores required asap.

The POS, well, shall be put up at *some* point over next few weeks I imagine. The big issue here is the time to refuel - I really need to fly enough fuel down for 6 months to stop fuelling being an issue.

I missed the blog banter

Apologies for lack of posting recently - I've been away for a holiday and a wedding and stayed a bit longer than expected.... Then I've been ill (thankfully not of swine flu variety), and not had energy to stay up past 9 at night, and thus have been limited in time available.

This resulted in not having much EVE time - still training is continuing as ever! Congratulations due to CCP on the 300,000 subscriber mark I've been reading today in the other members of the Blog Pack.

Scarily as I've only logged in for very limited period this past 2 weeks, I'm hoping I will get a chance to play tonight, as tomorrow the plan is to see the Star Trek film... and got visitors again this weekend and again for All weekend, so no EVE time :(

Industry wise, I've been keeping an eye via the API, and we have about 400mln in cash reserves available again. Slow and steady growth of monies to the corporation... The next job is getting some tech 2 component blueprints and getting the researched up for Material efficiency - but I think we'll deploy the POS first (even if only a research POS). After all we are now ready for this... Tonight I think I'll spend scanning moons again in another system - right now its 2 systems down - just on offchance I can find a free-ish moon. I can see the entire industry divisions funds being spent on the new setup, but it should save money and time long term in blueprint research and copy wait times..

As I missed the blog banter, I thought I'd pass on links for those who did contribute:

• CrazyKinux’s Musing, EVE Blog Banter #7: Eh, nobody told me you could do this in EVE!
• One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 7 - Expanding My Horizon
• I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #7 - What do you want to do today?
• Rifter Drifter, Blog Banter 7: Trinity
• Roc’s Ramblings, Blog Banter #7 - The me I am not
• Morphisat’s Blog, Eve Blog banter #7 - Treading waters unknown
• Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 7 - Roads Not Followed
• A Mule in EvE, DD, defend against a gank & POS gunning
• Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Choices
• The Ralpha Dogs, Road Not Taken… Or Not
• Melindhra’s Universe, EVE Blog Banter #7 - Where no one has gone before
• Life in Low Sec, Blog Banter #7: Possibilities
• EVE Guru, EVE Blog Banter 7
• Diary of a Pod Pilot, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #7: Stones left unturned
• Flashfresh - The Pirate, EVE Blog Banter #7: This isn’t me…
• Nefchast’s Gaming Blog, CrazyKinux’s EVE Blog Banter #7
• A Merry Life and a Short One, EVE Blog Banter #7: Syphilis Doesn’t Count
• Rip Lacunae, Past & Future (Eve Blog Banter 7)

Apocrypha 1.1 Update

As many of my readers will know - I like to explore - especially around low-sec now, so the scanning changes in the new patch intrigued me, so I knew I had to try it asap.

I didn't want to comment until I had had the chance to properly play in the past 2-3 days post patch. Overall though - I like it - yes occasionally the arrows disappear, and its hard to grab a probe to move it - but remembering sites once found, and allowing bookmarking of sites straight from scanner (ie without warping in first), its just plain brilliant. It means I can scan out a site, and then send in a more specialised team to retrieve the loot or do the combat site (and even swap to a salvager if needed)... Being able to tell which "hits" are from which site is also another positive improvement...

Unlike some I don't think the changes are bad - they just need refinement. Being able to see the arrows and squares a little better would surely help a little.

I had some fun yesterday sitting cloaked and scanning while a 6 strong low-sec roaming gang were trying to probe me out in my nice hidden covert-ops frigate. Guys... it ain't gonna happen. After 15 minutes they left local, and stopped searching for little me :)

In an hour, probed 1 combat site, 2 wormholes, 8 ladar!, 1 gravimetric, 1 radar and 1 magnemetric site - looting the radar and mag site. The rest I decided to leave to another day...
Before retiring I took my drones on a trip to a nearby repair station - as most were truely in a battered state. With the cost of T2 drones, taking a cargohold or two full for repairs is a weekly event for me - as my drones do tend to get battered a bit by the enemy...

Reasonable week - now got 500mln on market, a nice, although disparate mineral stash (some hauling of minerals is required in next couple of weeks)... But basically now my high-sec operations should not need touching for 2-3 weeks at least allowing me to concentrate on low-sec endeavors, and isk-earning for a short while.

Short term planning now is to:

1. Start T2 invention skills and get to reasonable levels
2. Get a full T2 equipped HAC - should be able to do this in about 2 months & also get some basic battleship/large weapons skills.
   
3. Finish moon-surveying and deploy a POS to moon-mine. (ready now, but funds a bit lacking). All moons locally with anything useful have already been taken so this will entriely depend on what is found.
   
4. Purchase and get full set of Caldari frigate/cruiser/destroyer blueprint originals researched. The POS may help with this but will not be essential.
   
5. Get full set of T2 drone skills

I also *have* to book Iceland flights and accommodation for fanfest... it keeps slipping my mind, but needs doing. Will try and do it this afternoon.ev

Market fun in 30 minute.....

Back from stag do, and managed to squeeze one single 1/2 hour of EVE time in the entire weekend. All down to matters outside my control, such as working the Easter weekend.

In that time however, I was productive, moving all the low-sec stuff back to high-sec. Next time I'll be bringing a different class of hull back to low-sec base with me however... so I simply can take more equipment each direction and more refinables back in the next batch.

I also moved 90% of the minerals in storage, in just 2 trips in the "Mighty Badger" - ie the rigged/expanded Iteron Mk 5. Discovered something very useful - the megahauler can carry enough minerals to build around 50 destroyers in a single trip.. Probably more for frigates. I'm considering running mobile "ship" building runs to populate ships in areas in which they are needed, but generally are not sold.

Stockpile of items for sale is "excellent". Got > 450million up for sale still - and the bulk orders for items continue to pile in. I think Gallente empire corporations may have realised I sell almost everything they may need in one single station at "reasonable" prices - only slightly above Ours, but available in greater volumes.

Future thoughts:
One issue is proving to be the POS fuel situation - lets just say POS fuel isn't readily available on market in my area. This means I'm going to have to use a POS fuel delivery service to get my 1st 2-3 months of fuel bunkered up in a storage facility. I'll still get weekly deliveries - but I think needing a good supply locally for the initial startup phases will be essential. This fuel can then be transported in from high-sec in a transport ship of some description.

I'm also running down the research for blueprints right now - so slots are free for some of the research that I'm aiming to run locally. I'll get additional BPO's to move to low-sec soon for the items that are planned in this space. With the Helios covert operations ships available to me, moving expensive BPO's though low-sec is a very low-risk option.

Hope everyone else has had a good weekend - looking forward to getting some time in-game this week - even if a lot of it will be focussed on Industrial endeavours.

Mineral price update

Its been months since I posted about minerals as they stand in Gallente/Mimmitar space (where I buy *most* of the minerals I use). This post is based on buy-order pricing.

I will however comment over average prices over time as I've seen it, over the 5 most common mineral types I use:

1. Tritanium - last 3 months has fluctationed quite drastically. 4.22 is the record price I have paid for Trit about a month ago, but the most recent batch (20mln) was at 4.01. Considering only 9 months ago in 2008, Trit could be had easily for 2.5 to 3.0, thats some inflation. Weekly prices cannot be predicted, so have taken to keeping considerable holdings of trit (25 mln units in holding right now)
   
2. Pyerite - Pretty constant - 3.8-4.2 as a general range - not really changed overall - but consistantly am finding Pyerite cheaper than Trit on the market
3. Mexallon - Constant 24.0 pricing on average, no more, no less.
4. Zydrine - "very" variable. 4000 used to be my benchmark in 2008, however was able to buy a 50k batch of Zyd for 1750 only a month ago.
5. Megacyte - 5000 used to be my bechmark price, now can be had for 1800-2500 regularly.

Supply for Zydrine/Megacyte seems to be a lot better - now taking only 2-3 days to fill reasonable sized orders (25k upwards). The biggest mineral issue from my point of view is Mexallon - 3 mln can easily take a week to fill. Of course its far quicker with a regional sales order, or a order in a mission hub.

I should add Nocx/Isogen havn't really moved - but I rarely need to buy these due to corporation holdings of these minerals being quite extensive for past few months.

I think I'm now "good" for minerals for a few months at least - having placed 175mln of buy-orders last night for the raw materials that fuel the industrial endeavours of the corporation - due to the poor state of the minerals hanger.

A question to other corporations - Have mineral prices been in your region been similar to the above picture? Where do you buy your tritanium?

I've got a Iceland pass

Somehow, somehow, I've persuaded the g/f that going to Fanfest is a good way to spend part of my summer holiday monies. And she's agreed I can go (without her!). Now all I need is CCP to confirm the dates and prices via IcelandAir (hopefully they are as I blogged about in my previous post) - so I can book!. I'm hoping the link from previous post is right in that it doesn't clash with the wedding I am attending in Vegas and thus I don't get stopped attending by mere unlucky scheduling!

Great great news and was pretty much a good week due to this...

Unfortunately my time in game has been non-existent apart from skill training and Industry for past few days - though thats to be made up for this weekend as I *will* be online for a good portion of Saturday and Sunday (although may miss Sunday night).... even during the day. Once the chores are done anyhow. Plans are to sort Industrial activities and the market out by Saturday evening, then travel up to the FoB again. Whats great is I'll be bringing the new covert operations ship with me, and should have use of the Covert Ops Cloak & improved scan strength by then! I will also be buying a Gravity Capacity upgrade rig or 2... However this is NOT the ship I'll typically be hauling from low->high sec in for the pirates reading this - its purely a scan ship for use to find signatures, and thus will 99.9% of the time remain cloaked in the low-sec areas surrounding one of my 2 FoB's. I will be buying a 2nd Covert Ops hull + Cloak shortly that will be purely for use in ferrying high-value items and skills from A->B...

Ref: Fit for Covert Ops ship I take it I should fit as below:
High: Core Probe launhcer + Covert ops Cloak
Med: MWD + whatever shield extenders I can get (or harderners maybe, as I think shield extenders increase sig radius and thus easier to lock?)
Low: Inertia stabilisers - or should I fit nanofibre internal structures? + the usual DCU 2...
Rigs: 2x Gravity rigs for additional scan strength.

Ideas on fittings would be welcomed by me if the above isn't optimal.

Industry wise:
Made some huge profits last week with the demand for certain items post-patch being huge. As the majority of my industrial efforts are T1 focussed - the influx of new players rapidly devouring ships and equipment have also lead to quick profit. So much so, the corporation had 400mln last weekend in its coffers in cold hard cash.

Since the above we've spent 100mln to restock some low minerals in the hanger, but now have considerable reserves.

So now we have a choice, go BPO shopping, or start to consider a POS (or both). Such exciting times.

Industrial/weekly update

Characters skills update:
Had to take a small diversion caused by a lack of market slots. I've got items stacked up waiting to sell, but no slots to use to do so...! Overall about 20 days until Deep Space Transports and thus hauling large quantities becoming possible from low-sec to high sec and vice versa with a lessened pirate risk.

Overall the corporation is doing reasonably despite my lack of attention. No new members and no sign of Jax for a week or so. Can't wait to keep playing, and its looking like I'll have a full weekend of hardcore EVE-time gameplaying coming up this month (Saturday 21 March -> Sun 22 evening). Perfect given launch of the new expansion on 10th March (which btw, I can't wait for!).

Corp Marketplace stats:

• 375mln ISK of items for sale on market in 48 lines of business in one station. This isn't growing as quick as I'd like as finding market opportunities in tech-1 manufacture appear limited. Going to have to bring forward T2 manufacturing I think from being a "would be nice" to being a must-have.
• 250mln in bank - this is going to have to be spent on datacore/decryptors I think.. or new BPO's for research.
  

Once the transport ship is ready am thinking of setting up a new corporation shop near low-sec (or even IN low-sec if preferred) full of items piratey types need but usually need to fly to Ours/a major hub to get. Mynxee/other trustworthy pirates - would this be useful to you? - if so, shout what you need to fly to empire for most of time in a comment and I'll start the process up of starting a new corporate hub for this reason - though will expect NAP or similar for my corporations ships in exchange for this.

This week expecting to be online on Wed, Sunday only (when not gardening) due to fact I'm away again over weekend, visiting a friend all day Sat and not arriving home until late Sunday...

Wormholes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are your thoughts on this?