Pod Pilot

20090924 : Skillz

2009-09-24T01:12:00.003-04:00

Hey! Check it out! If you came her to find some information about a character from Eve Online, skip ahead to the bit after the "---". If you an Asian spambot, or some poor gradeschool sap paid a bowl of rice a day to spam sites, by all means, read on.

I don't k now why, but this post more than any other on this site (and I mean *any*, as in *no other*) gets spammed by Asian porn and pill freaks. Seriously, it's astounding. They try repeatedly to comment on this *one post* and I *never approve the comments*. One would think they would give up after a fashion, but I guess they're abysmally stupid, or something.

C'mon guys. Seriously. You're supposed to lead the world in mathly smarts, yet you can't figure out after the, what? 50th time? I'm NOT EVER GOING TO APPROVE YOUR FOOLISH FOREIGN LANGUAGE LINK-TO-MY-PORN-OR-PILL-SITE CRAP.

Seriously.

Go somewhere else.

---

I'm a scant 138K SP from having to upgrade my clone. Here's hoping I don't forget to do it.

Just an update. I'm bouncing between training Logistics, Commands, and Gallente battleship up to level 3. I thought I would distribute these as there's a far greater sense of gain at getting three l-1 skills than getting one to 3. By this time tomorrow they should all be to level 3.

Pew?

Planetary Control Part I

2009-08-20T16:58:00.005-04:00

The following is the fictional narrative portion of Crazy Kinux's Planetary Control Contest which I conveniently missed the deadline for.

---

The Mindrill Refinery in Taisy’s a filthy place with more than its share of reprobates, but it’s the first quasi-friendly place we could get to. The Cairn’s a mess. The crew repped the armor back as best they could but the hull’s breached in at least seven places. On the chase here we overloaded four of the five pulses, not to mention the microwarp drive. They’ll need fixing before we move on. I’ve got the scratch in my personal account to get the repairs sorted, but the company’s sit-rep is FUBAR at best. Sixteen billion down the corp drain; additional personal losses probably equaling four billion more.

And Barker made it sound so damned easy.

Two months ago when the news broke on the wire about advances ship tech Barker and a few other high-ups got it in their head that here, finally, was something the Foundation could make a killing at. "We’ll find ourselves a little spot," he said. Somewhere "out of the way," he said. "There’s ISK here for the taking." Some of us were skeptical that we could swing it. We’re a small group by most standards, numbering a little shy of two hundred. Even then weeks would pass when I won’t hear even a peep from most, but Barker and Tesh insisted.

My experience back with the Expeditionary Company down Hiematar way pretty much dictated my role in the folly. Those many months learning the finer arts of advanced electronics, cloaking techs, astrometrics and signal acquisition; all that may have just saved my and my crew’s collective skins.

Once the ball got rolling it took me the better part of two weeks to find it, but find it I did. An entirely uninhabited class 1-A. I couldn’t believe it when the hit came back off the globe probe. It was in the wee hours. Most of the crew was bunked down and only one other pilot was logged into the corp comms. I pinged Fedder.

"Fed."

"Hor! You’re up late. How goes?"

"I think I found it."

"Well, it’s pretty small from what I hear. You better check again before you call the ladies."

Nice. "I think I found what Barker’s sent me after."

There was a long pause.

"Serious?"

"Quite."

"Is it good?" he asked.

"Better than good, Fed. An zero-pop 1-A. Data’s still coming in but it looks like a 99.5 or .6 match. Gravity’s nominal. Weather looks … looks perfect."

"Where at?"

"Way out there. 85-B52."

Another pause.

"Nice neighborhood. How are the locals?"

"The usual types. Always looking to separate a pilot from his pod."

I waved Fedder off, we exchanged "fly safes" and I shut the comm channel. I desperately wanted some sleep but needed to finish the geologicals and ship them up the food chain.

And so it began. My findings proved to be just what Barker was looking for and three days later Carlisle and Qu’eser showed up in-system. Carlisle’s Pilgrim-class recon dropped a cyno and seconds later the upper atmo around my little find was peppered with fifteen ships, among them a Panther and two Widows, Possy’s Orca, and Barker in the Sower. I’d never seen one before, having only read the specs on it, but damn if she wasn’t an odd looking thing. Massive and odd. Barker moved her into position, giving minimal orders over comms. The Sower barely seemed to move, but slowly crawled into her high-orbit position.

Barker’s colonizer was fitted for a light landing. With no indigenous population to contend with he saw fit to only send down five hundred marines under the control of a green officer, a Colonel Ashram from somewhere in the north of Empire. Perimeter, maybe? No matter. There were only forty-five hundred colonists; nothing Ashram couldn’t control.

Once in position the Sower fired up her telemetry package. The instrument pulsed for a cycle as it scanned down a landing site.

Five minutes later Barker came over fleet comms. "Found a nice spot," his voice crackled. "Nice stretch along a river on number two land mass, hugging right up to a fat vein of Bistot."

Thirty seconds later the Sower was locked into geo-sync and the first of the twelve landers crept out of her hanger. That first one had the marines, I think. At least that’s what Barker said he wanted to start with. Marines then supplies, then the industrial kits, followed by the colonists.

The crew and I watched from the Cairn. Barker and the Sower were about a hundred and fifty clicks off starboard, with the remainder of the fleet bunched closely on the Sower’s far side. By all estimations we’d be done here by lunch.

Or not, as it all turned out.

I caught it first. A new ship signature came through the local beacon. Before I could open the fleet ops channel the local beacon started getting flooded. By the third I had the channel open, but local kept growing. Seventeen, then thirty-two, then …

Shit on a stick.

"Break," I said, my voice cracking against my will, "This is Horace. We’ve got company, people. Last count … Eighty-seven in local."

"Eighty what?" screamed Barker. The Sower was on its second lander. With no override on the geo-sync Barker and his eleven-hundred member crew weren’t going anywhere until the last of the ten remaining landers were planet-side.

That wasn’t going to happen.

The new fleet arrived within thirty seconds of appearing on the beacon. Maybe fifty ships in all, and mostly heavies. Glancing over HUD I counted three carriers, two Moros and a Nix; the rest being battleships, mostly, with some support including a handful of interceptors. This wasn’t going to end well by anyone’s standards. Fighters immediately streamed from the bellies of the carriers. The Cairn informed me she was picking up target acquisitions from no fewer than six ships. Six out of fifty-odd? I felt a bit slighted.

Barker dialed up the local comm channel. "Morning, gents. We’re all a bit busy here at the moment. Can we wrap up here and then reach some sort of an agreement?"

After a brief pause a familiar voice came through the wire.

"No, that doesn’t work for us," said Fedder.

Planetary Control Part II

2009-08-19T13:42:00.009-04:00

The following is the technical specifications portion of Crazy Kinux's Planetary Control Contest (the deadline for which passed fifteen hours prior to my posting this).

---

Technical Specifications

Planetary control is an extension/improvement on sovereignty. While there is some room for low-sec interaction (see section V below), issues of planetary control would be restricted to 0.0 space and akin to Firefly’s outer rim systems where lawlessness reigns until someone comes in and takes control.

With considering bringing planetary control into the Eve universe there’s the very real issue of creating an entire other level of meta-game that could be introduced depending on what macro- or micro-level of control is to be introduced. This post, while long, is more of a macro-level introduction.

I. Planetary Ratings

There would have to be a system for rating planets similar to the ratings currently in WH space.

It’s understandable (or expected, even) that the star systems within the Eve universe would hold habitable planets, but as is within our own galaxy the occurrence of those planets would be exceptionally rare, and a planet with an equivalent atmosphere to Earth’s being the rarest. With planet-side conditions taken into account, some places would be cheaper to colonize or control than others. Colonization of some planets (ie gas giants) would be just plain impossible.

Conditions to be accounted for include but aren’t limited to:

a) Gravity, Atmosphere & Weather

Affects the cost of infrastructure
Affects the cost of getting someone to live there besides the military forces required.
Could feasibly control the size of supported population
Affects cost and effectiveness of combat

b) Resources: Affects the value of the planet/colony as well as the cost of recovery of said resources.
c) Existing population and their pre-existing infrastructure: Can work for you or against you.
d) Ecology: Think critters.

II. Finding the Right Place

Planets already colonized wouldn’t require “finding” per se, being uniquely named within the system. Unclaimed planets -- possibly with minimal indigenous populations with varying levels of pre-existing infrastructure – would need to be discovered via an extension of probing.

III) Ships

Any ship that can fit (or, in the case of the Minmatar, spot-weld) a probe launcher to the hull can find a suitable planet. For taking control something more substantial would be required. These could be drawn from existing ship types (Battleships, the Orca, Carriers, etc.) or a larger new breed of T3 ships. Two things dictate the size and type of the ship required:

a) Planet-side resources required: The number of troops and types of ordinance/equipment required. Atmospheric conditions come into play including indigenous population. All this requires storage (probably) greater than available in the current line of ships.
b) Orbital Support: Warfare Link mods and the ability to launch landing craft. Orbital assistance could also include space-to-surface bombardment for softening of reinforced areas.

Immediately option a above raises the problem. Logistically a battleship currently can’t hold – much less launch – fitted ships which would be required for landing troops and equipment. This furthers the argument for the Orca or entirely new ship types (and modules and skills).

III) Taking Control

Terrestrial operations would range in increasing difficulty. From easiest to hardest:

a) Uninhabited & unclaimed planets scaled by planet-side conditions.
b) Inhabited & unclaimed planets scaled by planet-side conditions.
c) Inhabited & claimed planets scaled by planet-side conditions.

For the purpose of taking control of a planet troops would be required. This feasibly could be a tie-in to the recently announced Dust 514, but not necessarily. Anyone who has run missions for PVE is familiar with Marines. These are soldiers from the four races presumably coming from station or Empire planet populations and they could be given something meaningful to do, like colonizing other planets. The unit types could be expanded with higher cost prestige units being brought to market as well as equipment and armaments.

Time required would vary on circumstances (see a-c above). Uninhabited planets could be taken relatively instantaneously, with mitigating factors extending the time required. Reinforced or controlled populations, especially those with friendly forces nearby, could be exceptionally difficult. Think of a POS warfare, giving the controlling entities an opportunity to respond via warnings and countdown timers. Furthermore building (or repairing) infrastructure would take time and resources. Utilizing orbital bombardment on hardened structures would cause not only extensive strategic and collateral damage, but might not sit too well with an indigenous population. There is also the constant threat of someone else coming along with a superior force to disrupt you, possibly annihilating your forces and resources in the process.

IV) Skills

The pod pilots skills could come into play here as well:

a) Bureaucratic Connections: You could be dealing with established local gov’ts, after all.
b) Criminal Connections: This is 0.0 space, after all and there’s bound to be some nefarious types about.
c) Military Connections: Aides in effectiveness of marines and prestige units.
d) Leadership.
e) Warfare Link Specialist: Ship-based control.
f) Charisma: It doesn’t do much else, does it?

V) After the Fight and Low-Sec

Once you have fought and gained control of a system you can then start reaping the benefits. Controlling a system’s population – depending on size – would improve (or establish?) sovereignty in the system, perhaps with better or easier control of stations. This wouldn’t bring an end to POS warfare as it’s a different style of game; more an expansion on the established system. With planetary control comes the recovery and sale of lucrative resources and locally created products and technology. Also would come secured trade routes to your planet. Interactions between planets within a system would be conducted via stations. The ships to date in Eve aren’t atmospheric-friendly so there would be no direct Pilot/planetary contact; business would be conducted in stations perhaps with the introduction (again) of planetary vehicles for retrieval of goods.

For those not in control of a system – including planets in low-sec already under faction control – operations can still be carried out, including trade with the indigenous population. Player and corporation standings could come into play when figuring who will buy or sell from you, as well as the price they’re wiling to pay to deal with you. Lucrative markets for products in 0.0 would erupt if the controlling entity didn’t see to the needs of its population. Running with a cargo hold full of spiced wine might just prove profitable yet…

20090714 : Update?

2009-07-14T16:49:00.002-04:00

It's been ages. Things have changed and things have stayed the same. With the summer things have gotten RL busy. Work, especially, has been a bit more focused than it has been in the past as I really (really) don't want to have to look for other work, if you catch my drift.

On an in-game front, the corp was in 0.0. We also were in an alliance. Both of those went rather pear-shaped in a short period of time. Now free of the alliance (and its seemingly endless mass of fresh war decs) we've relocated about half way around the universal platter and are re-grouping. Of course I'm not privy to the particulars, but will move accordingly when the call comes. Hopefully as the summer winds down I'll have more time in-game. I know I haven't been the most useful of corpmates of late.

On the money side of things I've had some luck with invention lately -- about a 60% hit rate lately on some LSEIIs -- which is nice. The datacores for the attempts ran me 14.47M, so if I cook them all up now I would stand to clear approximately 57.53M prior to purchasing the other required ingredients. Now if I could just stomach dealing with research agents I'd be saving myself some cabbage.

My industrial alt has been cornering the market on Probes, Core Launchers, and crappy EMP S out in his region which is generating a steady (albeit small) revenue stream.

Eve Meme! The Places I've Been...

2009-05-27T09:58:00.005-04:00

I'm a willing participant in play along with Kirith's game. From Ninveah:

I'm starting an Eve meme and if you are an Eve player reading this you are compelled, COMPELLED I SAY, to make a post to propagate the meme.

COMPELLED!

Ok, so here it is. Take a screenshot of your in game map showing the systems you have visited and post it on your blog. There, done. That's it. Real simple. You can talk about it if you want but its not necessary.

Admittedly mine's not as impressive as his, though we've got some similarities.

The brief swath down through the southwest was during my Cov-Ops/Exploration phase with MIRE. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in any one place, but covered some territory.

Status : 20090419.1149

2009-04-20T23:49:00.003-04:00

Back to war.

Tomorrow begins the second war I've taken place in. Hopefully I can render myself more useful during this conflict.

If this cold doesn't go away I might just prove plumb useless.

20090405: Random Update FTW

2009-04-05T00:46:00.003-04:00

It's been 196 days since my last post.

I cannot do an accurate skills update as the current history only goes back to 20090216. Since the new cut-off, though, I've been focusing on some weapon systems skills. I've managed to get both large pulse and beam laser specialization up to 3 in anticipation of getting an Amarr battleship. While I haven't managed the purchase yet I'm currently skilled enough to bother.

In the meantime I also trained up hybrids and missiles, including Heavy Assaults as they look like they could be fun.

I know there are a few others sundry skills that I managed to squeeze in, but that's not important now.

My new focus, now is through Command Ships. The Nighthawk, in particular. A dead-sexy beast.

20080921 : The Black Hole That Is Jita on a Sunday

2008-09-21T15:47:00.004-04:00

Why? Why do I even bother?

To tell the truth a bit of desperation has brought me to Jita on a Sunday. I'm in need of copies of my Shield Power Relay print, but with every station within four regions of me running wait times of over a week I resorted to the contracts.

A nice guy in Jita is selling five BPCs of the SPR, along with about a dozen other BPCs for a nice reasonable price so I thought, why not? It's just a short jaunt to Jita, after all?

On a Sunday.

The ticker on the log-in page says there's 32K+ people on right now. Minus the 258 in the system I just jumped out of, that should make somewhere in the neighborhood of 31,742 people in Jita.

Sounds about right.

[UPDATE] A friendly GM moved me back to Perimeter and added, " I suggest you stay away from Jita for the time being." The up-side is I'm not stuck. I'm also not able to get at the stuff I bought.

I guess I'll just go to the mall here in Perimeter.

20080917 : Skills Update

2008-09-07T21:24:00.002-04:00

Just finished Caldari Battleship V, though I'm a bit uncertain what to do with it at the moment. I embarked on it with the idea of piloting a Golem, but after reading of some of the disadvantages I'm entirely unwilling (not to mention unable) to pay the price for the ship.

Now it's on to Shield Upgrades V in 11D 7H 37M.

The next thing to train? Perhaps Heavy Interdictors which is just Propulsion Jamming V and the base ship skill (~26D 21M) to effectively pilot the ship and the Warp Disruption Field Generator. To fully jam out this plan from BattleClinic will take 28D 8H 42M or so.

Opinions?

I'm hovering around 25.53M skill points and looking for somewhere to go.

Fly safe.

20080805 : Update

2008-08-05T22:36:00.002-04:00

What have I been up to? Not much, frankly.

I'm getting around to consolidating assets at the moment. I've been bad of late in allowing things to get scattered around a small-ish group of relatively close stations. Currently I'm shuttling off only about seven jumps to grab Halve Maen 3A, my Amarran Cov-Op class Anathema. I want her a bit closer to home. I've still got Halve Maen IIG out in Stac (a Helios), but at 17 jumps through not-so-nice locales that one will stay put for a bit.

I'm tossing around the idea of joining up with the local militia (Minmatar) to give my best to the Factional War. I'm also tempted to spend some ISK and buy a battleship to give the L4s a try in my neighborhood.

Just last night I realized that I had a bit of cash piled up and far too many points with the local corporations so I invested in Political and Military connections. The skills are handy to have when negotiating rates on missions. Hence the interest in the well-fitted Battleship. Probably a Typhoon.

That's the toss-up, really. Abandon the money from missions (and the BS) and join the Militia, or turn my back on the war and concentrate on more money via the connections, the BS, and the L4 agents's offerings.

Decisions, decisions.

On the training front I'm a scant 31.8 days from Minmatar Battleship V, which is a gateway drug to Marauders. I've got to admit, though, I'm almost fonder for the Caldari version of the ship. Oh, well. I'm only about 35 days off Caldari BS V, so if I get that far it's not that much more of a journey (relatively).

I've also got to get around to Metallurgy V at some point. I think there's 18 days left on it as I bagged it partially trained. The only thing that makes me think of it was that I found the Scrapmetal Processing book in a dusty corner of a hanger out in Lustrevik.

One of these days. Maybe.

That's all for now. Nothing exciting I'm afraid.

20080729 :: Industrialist with Teeth

2008-07-29T12:51:00.003-04:00

Industrialist with teeth
Take The EvE Personality Test today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

20080712.01 :: Supplemental

2008-07-12T23:26:00.003-04:00

Today marks (I guess) the first time I mention my actual in-game persona.

Yeah. I'm Wygg.

I'm also Badlanders. And Tinkur.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

20080712 :: Four Months On

2008-07-12T21:57:00.003-04:00

I'll take a bit to scribble on this piece of paper, only to throw it into the endless ocean. I'll expect no response. No readers. I'm at peace.

Current status report:

I left MIRE in Tinkur's capable hands for a bit. After a lot of internal deliberations I was thinking of joining a corp again. I corp of substance. I decided to link up with STRIFE Mercenaries. At the time STRIFE seemed pretty stable, but due to a number of issues (seasonal timing not discounted) the corp was short-lived.

Currently I'm tripping about the 'verse in a number of ships (Drake being the top one) trying to up my standings.

To any who haven't bothered, the COSMOS agents are well worth the visit.

I was admittedly tempted to try Factional Warfare, but with my main being so short on cash it didn't make sense.

What with the exploration skills trained up I'm almost tempted to go back on the road and do a pictorial collection of what I see. Sure it's been done, but there's a lot of sites to be seen out there in the verse. If I can avoid those who would do me harm it might be worth the trip.

Opinions?

20070325 :: Accounting

2008-03-25T22:34:00.006-04:00

It's astounding what a fella can do when he puts his mind to it. I knew I had over-extended myself a while back and it took the lost of the Cheetah to put things right.

First a touch of background:

The Cheetah, named the Halve Maen* ate it as you may recall from a previous post. I had a bit of an "awwww" moment with this one as was not only my first Cov-Ops frigate, but also the first-ever rigged ship I had flown. And, to top it all off, I had built the rigs myself. She was the ship I purchased after deciding to go into Exploration. At least she went out doing what she did best.

Note: there's still no sign of the five crewmen nor the janitor who were in the hold. Anyone finding them, please feed them and drop me a line.

Anyways, I found myself in dire straits after realizing I'd let her insurance lapse. CCP really ought to come up with a better system for that. I understand the hassles of sending out emails to every client with lapsing insurance, but currently the only way you find out is if you happen to open the insurance window to insure a new ship. While it does place the bulk of the responsibility on the pilot's shoulders to keep their insurance up to date, I'm sure a system could be crafted that pops something in the neocom client-side to take a load off the server. Needless to say, all that aside, I couldn't scrape up the 12 mil for a comparable replacement.

The first thing I did was to go and fetch my Drake, Sir Walter and set about cleaning up the den of Angels I stumbled upon that cost me the Cov-Ops frigate. And then for good measure I wiped up the two other locations in-system she'd uncovered. I never could figure out what the two Asteroid Stations were about, but there were two of them, too.

All told it was three hideouts, each running about 1.3 mil a pop in bounties alone, not including the loot and salvage. Among the salvage were a few choice items that run in the 4-8 mil range. Figure with the loss of the ship (~12 mil) and three hideouts, plus just the two heavy ticket items I'm getting about what I lost in the ship. Fittings were another matter though I had been able to salvage the Cov-Ops cloak and about 45 quest probes.

After triumphantly returning to station and looking at my new-found loot a bit of buyer's remorse set in. I had been on a bit of a buying spree lately, picking up items that were nice to have, but wholly unnecessary. I sold off the Rifter, Rupture, two Mammoths, and the Tyhoon. Some items are still stuck in market limbo, but already I've raised the bank account to over 96 mil.

And that's after taking into account the purchase of a new Cov-Ops ship: the Helios. And she can lob probes with the best of them. She's not been rigged out yet, so her time's a bit off with analyzing probe data, but already she's found a few places in the neighborhood.

If anyone reads this and has any comment on the Cheetah/Buzzard/Helios/whatever the Hell the Amar fly, then please let me know!

* The Halve Maen (English: Half Moon) was the name of a Dutch East India Company yacht which sailed in what is now New York harbor in September, 1609. [Wikipedia]

20080324 :: Successful Experiment #4

2008-03-24T23:34:00.006-04:00

I got yet another round of good news today:

Great news! You were successful in producing a new Tech II blueprint!

You have a good feeling this job is perfectly suited to someone of your talents.

Blueprint details:
Blueprint Type: Tremor S Blueprint
Number of Runs: 10
Material Level: -4
Productivity Level: -4

My third success in four attempts at Invention.

Now if I can just get a handle on selling the BPCs for the correct amount of money I might just have a cottage industry to call my own.

Hurting for cash ATM. Lost the Cheetah exploring a system in Empire. I warped on top of an Angel party and they were none too pleased. Silly me had let the insurance lapse and as much as I'm embarassed to say I haven't the 12 mil to replace her right now. I've got to liquidate some assets and then re-assess. I did manage to salvage the Cov-Ops Cloak, though, which will save some ISK.

20071207 :: More Shots

2007-12-07T10:07:00.000-05:00

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

20071206 - Trinity

2007-12-06T14:24:00.000-05:00

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:

20071020 : Supplemental

2007-10-20T22:27:00.001-04:00

Hands up, who reads this?

20071020 : Still Breaking

2007-10-20T22:14:00.000-04:00

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.

20070902 : Chuffing Along

2007-09-02T00:12:00.000-04:00

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.

20070727 - Taking a Break

2007-07-27T10:11:00.000-04:00

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.

20070527 Industrial Intentions

2007-05-27T12:49:00.000-04:00

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.

20070524 - Quick Update

2007-05-24T22:43:00.000-04:00

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.

20070523b

2007-05-23T12:49:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-23T12:26:00.000-04:00

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.

20070521

2007-05-21T19:48:00.000-04:00

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.

20070516 Mission Running Update

2007-05-16T22:49:00.000-04:00

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.

200070514

2007-05-14T22:29:00.000-04:00

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

20070513c

2007-05-14T22:25:00.002-04:00

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

2007-05-14T22:24:00.001-04:00

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?

2007-05-14T22:23:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-14T22:22:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-14T22:21:00.001-04:00

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

2007-05-14T22:20:00.001-04:00

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

2007-05-14T22:18:00.002-04:00

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

2007-05-14T22:18:00.001-04:00

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.