Deep space scanner probe strength reduction

Okay, according to the Patchnotes for tommorow - Apocrypha 1.0.2 has :

• Deep Space Scanner Probe I and its variations have had their strength reduced.

Okay, this isn't good. If thats the case, it'll slow up my scans of systems?

Anyone else peeved by this - I think the strength personally is just right - 90% of the time you can get a stable warp in (with good skills) with deep space scanner probes - but 10% I need to resort to more specialized probes (core probes).

Be interested to see what this brings but I thought I'd bring it to attention of the bloggers.

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?

The tale of 2 Escalations

Despite finding many wormholes over weekend, I was particularly lucky when doing Unknown combat sites - I had about 4 escalations. This is the tale of 2..

The first escalation was mostly high-sec and thus 100% safe - but final part it put me in a 0.3 low-sec system "Oulley" only one hop from the PF346 gate in Orvolle. My experience with Oulley told me I knew it was typically a pirate area and I knew I'd been chased and seen gatecamps in the area before. As such I was fretting about going in, and decided to just "do it" with only the Ishkur Assault Frigate (with no backup or salvage operations in forces. I didn't want to risk the salvager, as I didn't have a cloak handy nearby to fit to keep the salvager safe when not salvaging, nor was there one on market. Basically I hadn't expected the escalation to take me into low-sec. The Ishkur is setup for PVP and is reasonably fast - so if I did get jumped I did stand a chance of getting out alive.

Scanner up to monitor the local acceleration gate for hostiles, I warped to the escalation and completed it with little hassle - and I didn't appear to be probed out (or no-one wanted to PewPew my Ishkur as they were afriad). Then safely got back to Oursaulert to sell the loot. My mistakes: Taking a full implanted clone into low-sec. Next time I'll be taking a clean jump-clone. Overall though it did make me think more about a proper full 0.2/0.1 low-sec FOB (because with lower system security status it does mean more nicer exploration sites and escalations in theory.

Escalatation 2 is still ongoing - its called "Booster R&D" and is my first attempt at this:
1st phase was in Placid, 2nd was in Genesis, 3rd is in Verge Vendor!

1st Phase in low-sec, somewhere in Placid (forgot to note system name): Warped in, and actually had to warp the frigate out as the 6 frigates that greated my little Ishkur were doing me serious damage - so much so I only managed to pop one prior to warp out. On 2nd warp in, I managed to take the rest of the pack reasonably quickly due to sending my T1 disposable drones to take aggro initially so I could take a few of the ships out (while they shot at the drones) prior to them switching target to my own Ishkur, and sending the T2 drone fleet out. There was a few BC's and Cruisers here also - but they can't really trouble the Ishkur at all providing I'm not webbed. They quickly died.

2nd Phase - in high-sec in Tar: Warped in, amazing amount of ships in here, including two full 1.2 mln ISK bounty battleships and one overseer Cruiser(500K) + around 12 other 230K bounty cruisers + a few webifying and warp-scrambling frigates (thankfully only a few of the latter variety). Again concentrated on the large fleet of frigates 1st, which took a longer amount of time than I expected, and almost got me into structure. Thankfully I prevailed, and the repairer then recovered the armor safely. Once the 2 BS's were dispatched, another 2 appeared, along with another defense fleet. Again concentrated on these.

Loot so far is disappointing in this escalation -both in savage terms & raw loot - although the bounties have been nice. Since stopping doing missioning last year, I've missed the big bounties, so it's been nice to see the wallet blink more often.

Tonight I'll be completing the 3rd phase of the "Booster R&D". I wonder what ships I will encounter and whether the Ishkur will be up to the job. Overall this last escalation showed me just how good the Ishkur is - it easily handled a job that would have been potentially a problem for my Myrmidon.

My next job: 100% Training up for HAC's - as if the Ishkur is this good, will the Ishtar be awesome?

Hardware woes

I posted this in game last night and forgot to mention - I think my 2nd 17" monitor is going up the spout. It stopped working 100% last night while playing EVE. Luckily I was mostly finished and was on way to dock for the day at the time - but it had to happen in low-sec. Only joy was it was the covert ops ship that I lost on that screen temporarily and it was cloaked so no big deal in the short term..

I disconnected all cables/reconnected this am, and it fired up again thankfully. It's what must be a 6 year old IIyama 17" TFT - from the days when such a thing cost me over £400 (with DVI & VGA input). It's a piece of my computing history and it will be a shame when it finally dies, as many years of service were had from it...

If/when it completely fails, I'll need a new one ASAP - in good news I have another spare, but its VGA only cable wise. Problem as my dual-head card is dual-DVI. Still another 17" monitor would be excellent.

Other hardware issues showing up now with Premium-lite (2nd client) are that Premium does eat a lot more ram. Its not causing a huge problem right now (except when converting videos to PSP format & running 2 EVE clients simultaneously due to a running out of ram/swap like crazy issue) - but I'm thinking another 2Gb of ram would not go amiss soon. (And yes I know I won't get to use it all with a 32 bit OS).

I'm also thinking of a Macbook for EVE when travelling/my photography habit. Does Premium on Mac now work on the standard non-pro Macbooks? (with 9400M Nvidia card) (I *know* the pre-Aprocrapha client did work) Whats the performance like Mac-people?

Launch of "The Mighty Mouse"

A very expensive shopping trip, and I have one Helios Covert operations frigate named "The Mighty Mouse". This one won't be seeing low-sec (much) - but is fitted with lots of cool technology.... 2x Gravity Capacitor Upgrade 1 rigs for a start, so its not a cheap ship. I think all-in, it cost me around 60 mln ISK. An investment in my scanning/probing career for sure.

The good news is, the investment has proved worth it. I had a radar site probed out around 60 seconds after entering a system yesterday, and had "hacked" the nice Invention tools (50mln ISK) out after about 3 minutes - way better than the 15 mins minimum I'd got pre-Apocrypha. Several other bloggers have been reporting just how nice the "Deep Space Probe" and I can attest to this. Scan once at 4 or 8 AU, and then centre in at 2AU. That simple, and now I'm practiced with probes (and have way more scan strength) it allows a very quick evaluation/warp in point to a hit.

The downsides are other people appear to have found same trick - so much so that the entire constellation and the one next door quickly had had every single probe hit (cosmic signatures at least) well and truly finished - only hits being wormholes. I need to pick up some combat probes, if only so I can keep an eye on my back when in W-space. Is anyone else doing similar?

I also finally last night found my first two wormholes. I swear they were hiding from me before - as

Next plans are to have an extended low-sec roam on Sunday for possible locations for another FoB. People probably know I'm a 'bear' at heart, and I want a nice "safe-ish" place to stay and probe in low-sec, where the bounties are higher.... I think I'll be looking at my eve-maps book for possible locations soon. Myself/Jax had made a run to one potential site down in Amarr low-sec, which is a nice amount of jumps from high-sec (8-9), and low population.... The downsides being I am KOS in high-sec Amarr space so logistics may be a problem. If only I had a jump-drive ship. Logistics though are dealable.

On subject of Industry, well, was amazed yesterday. Some kind individual brought over 100mln ISK of items from DSTIC stores (this is normal tech-1 gear). Corp cash reserves (even with 50 mln in buy-orders) now stand at 400mln, with 250mln on market. Mineral stocks are also okay - but Mexallon is becoming a problem (down to 250k, with 3mln outstanding in buy-orders). The issue is just how quickly the buy-orders are being filled - they are not keeping up with module production for sales. Planning to spend cash on a corporation hauler or two (or three) - for movement of goods quicker - and some POS parts to get ready for POS operations in the medium term (I accept this is a high-risk endeavor, so will be going "cheap" at first.

I'm also considering getting the region-wide market skills sorted, so I can place remote-buy-orders, and alter existing orders. It should allow some interesting market manipulation without having to jump 20 hops.

The training plan for next two weeks is looking like:
Deafplasma: Iteron V (4 days left), Transport ships, Anchoring to V (about 10 days).
Deafturret: Rapid firing V (4 days), Weapon Upgrades V (6 days), Medium Blaster Specialization/Medium Railgun..

What I am missing though is other corporation members/friends to hit w-space/low-sec with - so either need to get recruiting or wait for Jax's return. As I've got most of Sat evening (UK time) to play EVE you should be able to contact me online if you're interested (character is Deafplasma). Corporation primarily based in Ours, but have operations in a few other areas....

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.

Apocrypha is here

My first login was on Wednesday - as patching took my client all of Tuesday.

Due to a massive migraine on Wednesday I didn't get much chance to play though - until late in day after a sleep and the headache subsided.

Once in, however, I was actually pretty amazed. Prior to patching the lag on market operations was extremely noticeable and sometimes annoying. This lag had gone and thus on Industry operations for me at least, the game improved no end. This however was replaced by severe module and in-space lag for me when playing the game. Ship jumping around and saying it was at gate on client, then suddenly appearing in warp, then at gate again. Like client/server were completely desynchronized. This is on a system where I was only person present!

Once I had dealt with the Industry side of DSTIC's business (making a quick 50mln from a set of trades), I decided to move my implanted clones down to my exploration Forward Base, so I could experiment with the new scanning mechanics - but not actually enter a wormhole. I also wanted to test my improved drone skills (Drone Interfacing 5 had finished in last 2 weeks meaning my Drone skills were 20% improved). 20% is a huge improvement, and the tech-2 light drones now eat frigates & cruisers for breakfast. Dealing with the lag was not fun, so decided to limit exploration to the one site. The drone skills have made a huge impact on my DPS - so much so that a battleship that took an 15 mins to die from Assault frigate fire last month - and the same type took 3 mins last night - showing the skill gains in both gunnery and drones have greatly improved the amount of damage dealt.

I luckily hit on some modules (2x corelum c-type drops and one shadow serpentis) , which combined will sell for well over 150mln isk, so with the bounties, the total haul was around 156mln. Not bad for an hours work.

The new Apocrypha skill-training queue has been excellent - I now can fly my covert operations ship, but not fully fit it with the Covert operations cloak yet. That however will be fixed in a couple of days, and my "high value" courier ship will be ready for business. This is vital as I've got a lot of modules now stuck in low-sec - and carrying a billion ISK in the cargo hold is not something I want (neither do I want to carry 500mln). Once this is done, its back to skilling up for the Iteron mk 5, enabling transport ships for the low-sec transport duties we will *need* soon for hauling of minerals & items in both directions. After this it's onto basic mining skills so that ice mining is possible, followed by invention. I was hoping to be able to invent a lot sooner, but the reality is I have a lot of work before that is possible - one hurdle being the skills needed, another being the standings needed to get to being able to use L4 research agents. Basically I may have to buy datacores for a while even once I have skills.

Next plan is to get ready for a T2 cruiser of some description - along with getting basic skills for Battleships ready. Right now I can only use T2 small blasters/rails, and need to be able to use T2 large rails and large drones at the least before I consider the battleship as a weapons platform (even with a tech-1 hull). Right now I can use neither and thus the usefulness of a battleship platform for me at least does not exist.

Tech-3 for me is a long-off aim, and not one I'm particularly hurried about reaching.

Wormholes however, I'm planning my first (solo) trips into W-space with a multi-role destroyer (salvage + hacking + archaeology + tractor + probe) and assault frigate combination to see just how deadly sleepers are for myself. I know probing will be more difficult without the bonuses from the "survey" ships.... question will be how difficult... . If that fails, I have a reasonably fit Myrmidon that will be used to test next.

I just wish that EVE did have a proper native multi-role Survey ship available. Maybe the T3 ships will allow this... I do wonder.

My ideal ship for surveying would have (in addition to probe strength bonus and a reasonable cargohold of 800m3 base):
High: 3 tractor, 3 salvage, core probe launcher, cloak
Medium : hacking module, analyser-1 and a afterburner/MWD
Low: Cargohold expanders + cap recharge mods

Ie, a destroyer type survey ship - without the gun bonus but with scan strength.