07 December 2007

20071207 :: More Shots

I thought I'd take some screen caps of everything in the hangar. A few I took out for a spin.

I've got to admit that turning the bloom effects on make things look much prettier and don't put much more additional strain on the system. Granted who knows what it would be like in blob combat, but then performance always goes out the window during that.

Here's the snaps. Click for larger views:

The Arbiter



Catalyst



Drake



Hoarder



Jaguar



Mammoth



Probe



Retriever

06 December 2007

20071206 - Trinity

I read all official and non-official warnings about the graphics update. After verifying a few things I went ahead and patched up.

Running XP I dug through the root directory of my machine (yeah, Eve is installed there, too) and couldn't find my boot.ini file. I know there is one as I've modified it before using MSConfig, so I simply hit Start->Run and typed "boot.ini" in the command line. Up popped the file.

I saved a duplicate to my desktop and proceeded with the install.

After all was said and done I repeated the above process (Start->Run...) and low and behold the file was still present. No problems.

Does it look good? I'm thinking so.

The previously unattractive Thorax has a glossy new look:

20 October 2007

20071020 : Supplemental

Hands up, who reads this?

20071020 : Still Breaking

The exploration has been slow. I've dawdled a bit in it, to be honest, but also come up incredibly dry the last several systems I've scanned.

To break the monotony I've trained up Mimnatar and Caldari battleships and the necessary skills to make them viable. Currently I'm tooling around mid-sec trying out an Arbitrator loaded with medium drones and a pair of small lasers. The Arbitrator's a sexy cruiser, to be honest. I'm getting quite the kick out of its effectiveness. I haven't tried it on a mission yet, but could be tempted.

I think what I like the best about it is the voluminous drone bay. Against PCs drones aren't always the most effective, but facing NPCs they do an extremely effective job.

I've also skilled up to cruisers in the remainder of the races in the down time. RL be damned; I'm going to get this game sorted.

02 September 2007

20070902 : Chuffing Along

Working a slew of nonsensical skills atm just to catch up on a few things.

I've been thinking of scoring a Raven for level 4s and perhaps some low-sec hunting. I haven't quite got the 90+ mill just yet, but hopefully I will soon.

A skills update:
Levels Trained
Level 0 : 1 (0.88%)
Level 1 : 9 (7.89%)
Level 2 : 20 (17.54%)
Level 3 : 33 (28.95%)
Level 4 : 34 (29.82%)
Level 5 : 17 (14.91%)
Ranks Trained
Rank 1 : 32 (28.07%)
Rank 2 : 36 (31.58%)
Rank 3 : 23 (20.18%)
Rank 4 : 10 (8.77%)
Rank 5 : 10 (8.77%)
Rank 6 : 2 (1.75%)
Rank 8 : 1 (0.88%)
Skillpoints Ratio 94,407 skillpoints average per skill.

27 July 2007

20070727 - Taking a Break

After running full-stop at preparing myself for an exploration profession I've opted to take a break from it for a while to generate some much-needed ISK.

Currently running Level 3s in my Drake to pay for further treats.

Some stats:
  • Total Skills: 104 with 9,594,729 points
  • Skills at Lvl 4: 24
  • Skills at Lvl 5: 15
Looking back it's been a month since my last post (sad) and I've managed two million skill points in about two months.

27 May 2007

20070527 Industrial Intentions

Still training towards Cloaking IV with a target end date of some time around Tuesday morning. I still haven't buckled and bought the actual cloaking device yet, but I've found other ways to spend my money.

I knew I was going to want the Gravity Capacitor Upgrade rig for the Cheetah and there had been a number available in the region but as fate would have it they all disappeared over the past few days. I dug around through the markets and found blueprints for the rigs not only in my home system, but also ~8 jumps out through low-sec space. With the price differential being what it was (~a tenth of the price), I opted for the far-out bp and jumped in my shuttle for the (occasionally) hair-raising trip out west. While on the way I hit the market and started buying as many of the components I could find.

The gravity rig (-10% scan time bonus) calls for Charred Microcircuit Interfaces, Damanged Artificial Neural Networks, and Fried Interface Circuits. With my current skills and the way the market is swinging right now I estimated that I should be able to produce one rig for ~10.6M.

After fetching the blueprint and grabby Freddy Sanford I headed out to collect my new purchases. Eighteen jumps later I was back at my manufacturing hub plugging in the print and burning my new (albeit damaged) purchases into a wonderfully small component. After all is said and done the one rig (plus the cost of the blueprint) cost 10.05M ISK; far below the 17M ISK average price. After the brief time in the cooker it slid right into place.

I have since gone and placed buys in the market hoping to lure more salvaged goods. I figure after I gather the pieces for the second needed for the Cheetah, if I can make three more I will be ahead in the game, netting ~8.1M profit per unit.

With all this monkeying around my bank account has tanked, and is currently only 3/4 of what it was when I started this little venture, having burned through almost 60% of my savings in one day. I guess it takes money to (hopefully) make money.

24 May 2007

20070524 - Quick Update

Still running missions. My status with my (formerly crap) agent are climbing steadily.

I gave in and formed a corp. The main reason behind this hinges on having heard that mass player corp characters caught ripping about in cov-ops ships are often painted as spies and that's the last thing I either would be doing nor need.

Bank Account Update
+32.65% since start.

Still dreading buying that Cov-Op Cloak II.

23 May 2007

20070523b

Been reading Aeon's Eve lately and I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it so far. There's a lot of information in it, but so far it's mostly ground I've covered before.

20070523

Still working on Cloaking IV. I should have completely absorbed all the information in another six days or so. Once complete I'm facing having to spend c.24M on the Covert Ops Cloaking Device II.

Anyways, I thought to post my status to date:
Total Skill Points
7,862,222 points
Skills Trained 74 (21.57%) of a total 343 available skills, 365 including skills not released.
Skills Cost 32,266,350 ISK
Skills Count
Corporation Management 1 skills
Drones 2 skills
Electronics 12 skills
Engineering 7 skills
Gunnery 12 skills
Industry 3 skills
Learning 9 skills
Mechanic 4 skills
Missile Launcher Operation 5 skills
Navigation 5 skills
Science 5 skills
Social 1 skills
Spaceship Command 7 skills
Trade 1 skills
Levels Trained
Level 0 : 0 (0.00%)
Level 1 : 5 (6.76%)
Level 2 : 11 (14.86%)
Level 3 : 15 (20.27%)
Level 4 : 30 (40.54%)
Level 5 : 13 (17.57%)
Skillpoints Ratio 106,246 skillpoints average per skill.
Piloted Ships 20 (10.36%) of a total 193 available ships.
Not terribly impressive for a fella who's been in-game for so long. Then again he was inactive for quite a while when training/running my pirate Other.

21 May 2007

20070521

Finally got Min Frig V done. Now I'm realizing the penalties of not being able to use the Type II cloak.

Training the remaining Astrometrics levels now.

/sigh.

16 May 2007

20070516 Mission Running Update

I'm all of ~4 days off of Minatar Frigate V.

Bank account is up 13.4% since the start of this little debacle.

Watched DNightmare's video on probing. Not great, but a bit of a help.

14 May 2007

200070514

Yet more missions. Nothing to report except that the bank account continues to grow.

20070513c

Yet more missions. I cannot express how profitable salvaging can be.

Net Change in Bank Account to Date

+9.27% since start. Back in (the) black.

Learn Salvaging and take the time to use it. It pays.

2007512b New Salvager

I traded in the Scythe for a new Thrasher to better compliment my lucrative salvaging career. It put a small dent in the available funds, but not too bad.

Later the same day I traded it in for a Stabber. The Thrasher's limited targeting range was too much of a gimp. The Stabber isn't great in that respect, but it's faster than either the Scythe or the Rupture I was considering using.

20070512 A Foolish Idea?

Moving slowly through Frigate V. More than a week until it’s ready.

Foolish Idea

Thought of something the other day but haven’t figured out if it’s feasible or not: A cloaked salvager. Very few people it seems ever bother to fully salvage wrecks in low/no sec, and it’s those wrecks that can prove pretty lucrative. With a T2 cloaked ship equipped with a pair of salvagers one could roam about the low sec systems and simply wait for fights to end and parties to move along. It’s dangerous for sure, but could also be a nice way to make some monies on the side while waiting to find that next great location.

Net Change in Bank Account to Date

-12.5% (+.1%)

The Blockade – Pre-Mission Sit Rep

Running another crap mission for my level 2 agent (Quality 6, Effective Quality 13). I’ve never been sure what’s a good deal from an agent and what’s not – perhaps I’ll hear from someone reading this – but what is of more interest to me is to get a handle on how profitable salvaging these operations can be.

This mission offered has a reward/time bonus of 290K/339K ISK and 417 loyalty points.

The Blockade – Post-Mission

The mission and salvage operation took just under an hour.

Mission Gains:

Reward: 290K
Time Bonus: 339K
Salvage: 3511K
Bounties: 870K
---------------------------------
Total: 4,382K

Salvaged materials made up 80% of the profits from the mission.

20070511

Ran yet another mission last night, but also made some major purchases including Cloaking, a Prototype Cloak I, Signal Acquisition, and the Cheetah.

Net Change in Bank Account to Date

-12.6% from 20070506. What’s that mean? Since starting tracking this little endeavor I’ve blown almost thirteen percent of the monies I had stocked up, even with having made a decent sum from missions.

20070507b

Ran another mission waiting for the training to end. Salvaging the wrecks accounted for over half the monies made, and it wasn't that extensive of a mission.

Net Change in Bank Account to Date

+9.6% from 20070506. Profitable so far.

20070507

I was thinking of founding a corp to more legitimize my possible new business adventure. I haven’t looked into corp management at all, but I’ve come up with a name, which should be worth something.


In an ideal world I would come up with a clever name that would spell something filthy when abbreviated, but after drawing blanks for quite a while I’m leaning towards The Republic Expeditionary Company [REC]. Of course REC could already be taken, at which point I guess I would go for –Force or –Industries. I had toyed with the idea of Mapping and Interstellar Legends Foundation, but somehow I think [MILF] is either already taken or one of those they won’t let you get.

20070506 A Mission Example

I just ran a level 2 internal security mission that netted 290K in pay and time bonuses. Not exactly the fast route to riches, is it? But, take into account the 4,727,500 in salvaged parts and the trip seems a bit more worthwhile. 5.1 million ISK for a little over a half hours work isn’t bad.

The infusion of cash is welcomed given that I just shelled out 405K for Astrometrics and 3.6M for Covert Ops. I’m thinking I’m going to break with the aforementioned schedule and sneak in Astrometrics I before going onto the Cov-Op hunt so I can start screwing around with my probe launcher and start learning what to expect.

Manufacturing

I’ve started cranking out Multispectral probes every time I find myself with a little Megacyte. It’s the hardest to come by mineral required for the probe, but I have been able to bang out eight of them since the other day. I could buy the Mega in-system, but the differential between what I can purchase for v. what I could buy the probes pre-made isn’t convincing enough I need to make a buy.

Net Change in Bank Account to Date

+3.3% since start.

20070506

What and Why

I’ve been in and out of the Eve universe since the days of the beta and have played a few different styles of characters, never one hundred percent happy with the results. There’s been the carebear miner me, the corp security me, the manufacturing me, the solo mission runner me, the pirate corp me, and now – or at least at some point in the next few months – comes the next iteration of me.

I had been toying with the idea of trying out exploration for a while, but the article in the last issue of EON through me over the edge. The character I’ve committed to the path was born in September of 2005, but only had around six million skill points when I started heading towards exploration. He had been dormant for a while, tucked in a tube somewhere while I skilled up and got frustrated with my pirate alt. Now I’m back to training and aside from catching up with skills that prove useful (Salvaging, for one), I’ve chucked probably a half a million points towards Exploration.

I was going to track my bank account along this journey to give whatever readers I may have some idea as to the costs involved and profits reaped, but in hindsight that’s incredibly stupid. Giving hard numbers along the way could find me in some backwater system happening across someone who may have read this and think, “damn, that guy claimed to have x in his bank account. Maybe I can ransom him for a third of it …”. I still think there's value in tracking and providing some of the information, so whenever I mention my account it will be based in a percentage off of the balance when I started this little diary. Consider all mentions based off of 100% of today’s balance.

Skills

I’m currently working on Electronic Upgrades, which is the long haul skill out of all those required. Astrometrics V will take a long time, too, coming in currently at ~19.5 days, but that one is last on the list. I took the time to boost the secondary learning skills a bit on the advice of EVEMon (a highly recommended wonderful little program) and so far it looks like the skills won't be 100% complete until 15 July, 2007.

By scattering the higher train-time skills I can at least get out in the field and start getting a feel for the system and (hopefully) the rewards.

In the Meantime

I’m running missions and salvaging wrecks to keep the cash flow positive. What with the skill book purchases and all I’ve still got my nest egg, but I’m sure that will start being dinged when I start purchasing things like the Cheetah and the more specialized skill books.

As a relatively diverse character (read: Jack of All Trades, Master of None) I’ve got options. From my mining days I’ve still got my barge with it’s strip miners, so I can take an afternoon rock raping for some easy cash and materiel or I can run missions. The latter is profitable to a certain extent. The level twos I’ve been running typically net three quarters of a million in pay, time bonuses, and bounties, but the real money is found when I take the time to go back and salvage the wrecks. Undocking Freddy Sanford with his two tractor beams and four salvagers makes quick work of even the largest of debris fields, and the recent change involving wrecks holding loot makes everything so much easier. If you hadn’t noticed, under the old system you had to loot first, salvage later (the salvager wouldn’t engage on a wreck holding items). Now wrecks just kick a jet can if you salvage them while they’ve still got contents. It’s a massive improvement.