I voted in the CSM elections, did you? If you didn't then why not? You've effectively lost your right to complain about anything to do with CCP not listening to the player base. Well you will have in about six hours.
With fourteen voting slots available I had to do some more research than I would have thought I'd be doing but it was made easy with the forum posts and the community projects. The community projects in particular were eye openers. I used Vote Match and vote0matic and the excellent series of interviews over at Crossing Zebras. Sadly I missed out on other podcasts where there were some free ranging discussions between candidates as I simply didn't have time.
Being a Noob I voted for the new player experience, general eve knowledge, small scale pvp, and even a nod towards the future and specialised expertise with a vote for a couple of null sec bloc candidates though it was lower down my list. I'd have endorsed for Ripard Teg and Marc Scaurus but the latter pulled out and I endorsed Mangala Solaris instead (even if he does primary bloggers every time....). The big discovery though was Ali Aras. I hadn't heard of her before in any way beforehand and then all of a sudden we have a null sec living, new player friendly, eloquent, enthusiasic, EVE player appearing out of no where.
http://themittani.com/features/creation-carebears-risk-and-new-players
and the interview at
http://crossingzebras.com/2013/03/27/csm8-election-interviews-ali-aras/
Her forum post in Jita Park
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=213048
Now ideally I'd have jumped in and tried some lobby blogging before the point was moot. Three things stopped me. Firstly my lack of time recently to even play EVE, let alone blog. Secondly, I'm a Noob and a mainly hi-sec one at that. This isn't a bad thing but I'd like a little more experience and to have seen the entire CSM process before I start lobbying for a particular candidate. Third, I have no idea what direction I'll take in the next year but I'm considering breaking free of hi-sec once Odyssey arrives.
If you haven't already voted then go vote. You have about six hours left. EVE University has a good summary of articles and voting tools
http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?t=65812&p=578050
My tip : if you have a small screen then use the zoom feature of your browser to get all the candidates on screen then you can drag/drop easily without scrolling around.
EVE Track of the Day
Fight For Your Right - Beastie Boys
Thursday, 18 April 2013
Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Day 304 : EVE Wanking
I've mainly been playing EVE Offline. It started last month when my home internet connection went down for six days thanks to either some cable thieves or some muppetry at the local exchange, depending on who you believe. I tethered my phone and managed to play anyway. The bandwidth was fine but the latency pretty much ruled out any flying. I was reduced to updating jobs and doing things other than EVE in order not to be driven out of my mind by the delays. By the time my internet connection had been restored I'd fallen out of a pattern of EVE playing in the evening. I was locked into the behaviour of some kind of mindless morning industry drone. Not much of interest got done, and nothing of interest enough to write about.
Real life proceeded to throw a further spanner in the works with a series of busy weekends where there was no chance to log on at all. I became a fully EVE Offline player: reading blogs; watching #tweetfleet; reading the EVE Reddit; fitting ships in EFT; staring at EVEMon and willing the skill training to speed up; staring at EVEMon willing sales to happen; making ridiculous alterations to the skill plan in EVEMon in order to satisfy every sudden "plan" for my character. EVE Offline is great. It's so full of potential, so full of plots and plans and schemes, so full of news covered drama, so full of banter. It's not full of actually flying spaceships and as a result I decided to cut down on it and give it a more accurate name: EVE Wanking.
In order to escape it's clutches and prevent apocryphal blindness I briefly started another couple of blog type projects to play around with, one EVE and one very much not EVE. Then Iain Banks announced he had cancer. I was crushed by this news. I've met him briefly. Even with a hangover at a book signing he had time for a chat and a laugh. He is a great guy as well as the author of some of my favourite books. An ex Civilization playing addict (it delayed Player of Games) who writes science fiction. Thank god he never picked up EVE.
I thought the awful news would spur me to finally write some fiction. It's a good job I write into the PC because otherwise I'd be buried in screwed up pieces of paper by now. I just don't seem to have the skill to translate an idea into a story. Either the story turns out to be shallow and boring or I race through it and somehow exhaust the idea in writing a rather poor abstract of it. Then something happened.
A little frazzled from a few busy weeks I took a Monday off in order to recover and found myself with nothing to do and an itchy EVE trigger finger that was vibrating with the potential generated by EVEOffline Wanking ideas.
I jumped into my only pre fit PVP ship, scribbling a reminder in my ever present notebook to "Fit PVP shps b4 nd 2 use em". Fortunately the ship was my T1 go to ship, the Incursus. Fit with dual rep and the rigs to back it up (though I have further investigation to do here) I headed out into the northern Essence lowsec borders to see what I could see. Mostly things were quiet or too tasty for a solo pilot with no off grid boosting (which we'll not talk about as I'll start to rant).
I'm in a novice plex watching someone run away and beginning to reconsider EVE Wanking when another Incursus drops out of warp. I've become a lot better at DScan but spamming 360 scans in dangerous places is still a weakness. Nevertheless I didn't lose out and gleefully headed into a scrap.
It quickly became clear that I was up against another dual rep Incursus. My longest frigate fight ever ensued. Subjectively it felt like about an hour. I think it was actually around two minutes. I popped, my cap booster unable to keep up with the continual drain, and got my pod out. My opponent offered a 'gf' and some advice about cap booster charge choices. It turns out I'd flown out with the smallest available when I should have gone for something larger for a full cap boost, taking my chances on the reload. I've got some research to do into the trade off between reload and booster charge size but at least I met someone who passed along some advice. Cheers to Rhino Styx for the fight and for the advice.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=17155207
Having enjoyed that fight so much I jumped into another as fast as possible. This time a hastily fit Tristan, a ship I continually look to fly, a ship I keep messing with that always feels badly compromised whatever fit I try. Being a little giddy from the earlier fight I leapt straight into the first thing I could find without thinking and was promptly exploded by a Thrasher/Hawk team. I now fear Thrashers like Chief Brody fears Great Whites. I'm gonna need some bigger boats.
Another two ship losses and another two pod escapes complete. A couple more lessons learned the hard but only way. Exploding. It's the only way to fly.
Having been woefully understocked in actual EVE as opposed to mental dreamland EVE, I spent the rest of the day marshalling resources in an attempt to get some kind of fitting program together. Along the way I discovered possibly the most Noob mistake I've made in a long time. I discovered the the export format of EFT can be imported from the clipboard. I'd subconsciously registered the ordered nature of the format but shamefully, perhaps purposefully, not thought any more about it. I see a lot of data in plaintext delimited formats at work. I don't need more in my life.
You'll see a lot of EVE posts with fitting formats along the lines of
[Incursus, Dual Repper, T2]
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Small Capacitor Booster II
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Nanobot Accelerator I
Hobgoblin II x1
Get the entire thing onto your clipboard (select and Copy) and then open up or maximise EFT and you'll be asked if you want to import the fit. It takes 90% off the time of investigating fits. Import one, delete stuff you can't use and replace those mods with ones you can. It's one of those things that is so obvious that everyone knows it. Everyone apart from me. Somewhere down the line I'd skipped this lesson, so I'm passing it on to any fellow ignorant idiots that might also have missed the fact that it's an import/export format and not just export.
EVE Track of theDay Month
One Of These Things First - Nick Drake
Real life proceeded to throw a further spanner in the works with a series of busy weekends where there was no chance to log on at all. I became a fully EVE Offline player: reading blogs; watching #tweetfleet; reading the EVE Reddit; fitting ships in EFT; staring at EVEMon and willing the skill training to speed up; staring at EVEMon willing sales to happen; making ridiculous alterations to the skill plan in EVEMon in order to satisfy every sudden "plan" for my character. EVE Offline is great. It's so full of potential, so full of plots and plans and schemes, so full of news covered drama, so full of banter. It's not full of actually flying spaceships and as a result I decided to cut down on it and give it a more accurate name: EVE Wanking.
In order to escape it's clutches and prevent apocryphal blindness I briefly started another couple of blog type projects to play around with, one EVE and one very much not EVE. Then Iain Banks announced he had cancer. I was crushed by this news. I've met him briefly. Even with a hangover at a book signing he had time for a chat and a laugh. He is a great guy as well as the author of some of my favourite books. An ex Civilization playing addict (it delayed Player of Games) who writes science fiction. Thank god he never picked up EVE.
I thought the awful news would spur me to finally write some fiction. It's a good job I write into the PC because otherwise I'd be buried in screwed up pieces of paper by now. I just don't seem to have the skill to translate an idea into a story. Either the story turns out to be shallow and boring or I race through it and somehow exhaust the idea in writing a rather poor abstract of it. Then something happened.
A little frazzled from a few busy weeks I took a Monday off in order to recover and found myself with nothing to do and an itchy EVE trigger finger that was vibrating with the potential generated by EVE
I jumped into my only pre fit PVP ship, scribbling a reminder in my ever present notebook to "Fit PVP shps b4 nd 2 use em". Fortunately the ship was my T1 go to ship, the Incursus. Fit with dual rep and the rigs to back it up (though I have further investigation to do here) I headed out into the northern Essence lowsec borders to see what I could see. Mostly things were quiet or too tasty for a solo pilot with no off grid boosting (which we'll not talk about as I'll start to rant).
I'm in a novice plex watching someone run away and beginning to reconsider EVE Wanking when another Incursus drops out of warp. I've become a lot better at DScan but spamming 360 scans in dangerous places is still a weakness. Nevertheless I didn't lose out and gleefully headed into a scrap.
It quickly became clear that I was up against another dual rep Incursus. My longest frigate fight ever ensued. Subjectively it felt like about an hour. I think it was actually around two minutes. I popped, my cap booster unable to keep up with the continual drain, and got my pod out. My opponent offered a 'gf' and some advice about cap booster charge choices. It turns out I'd flown out with the smallest available when I should have gone for something larger for a full cap boost, taking my chances on the reload. I've got some research to do into the trade off between reload and booster charge size but at least I met someone who passed along some advice. Cheers to Rhino Styx for the fight and for the advice.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=17155207
Having enjoyed that fight so much I jumped into another as fast as possible. This time a hastily fit Tristan, a ship I continually look to fly, a ship I keep messing with that always feels badly compromised whatever fit I try. Being a little giddy from the earlier fight I leapt straight into the first thing I could find without thinking and was promptly exploded by a Thrasher/Hawk team. I now fear Thrashers like Chief Brody fears Great Whites. I'm gonna need some bigger boats.
Another two ship losses and another two pod escapes complete. A couple more lessons learned the hard but only way. Exploding. It's the only way to fly.
Having been woefully understocked in actual EVE as opposed to mental dreamland EVE, I spent the rest of the day marshalling resources in an attempt to get some kind of fitting program together. Along the way I discovered possibly the most Noob mistake I've made in a long time. I discovered the the export format of EFT can be imported from the clipboard. I'd subconsciously registered the ordered nature of the format but shamefully, perhaps purposefully, not thought any more about it. I see a lot of data in plaintext delimited formats at work. I don't need more in my life.
You'll see a lot of EVE posts with fitting formats along the lines of
[Incursus, Dual Repper, T2]
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Small Capacitor Booster II
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Nanobot Accelerator I
Hobgoblin II x1
Get the entire thing onto your clipboard (select and Copy) and then open up or maximise EFT and you'll be asked if you want to import the fit. It takes 90% off the time of investigating fits. Import one, delete stuff you can't use and replace those mods with ones you can. It's one of those things that is so obvious that everyone knows it. Everyone apart from me. Somewhere down the line I'd skipped this lesson, so I'm passing it on to any fellow ignorant idiots that might also have missed the fact that it's an import/export format and not just export.
EVE Track of the
One Of These Things First - Nick Drake
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Day 269 : Space Feng Shui
Fitting Fu, Space Feng Shui, call it what you will, it's the art of putting your own fits together with flight tactics in mind. I'm learning it slowly. I take occasional fits from various bloggers for various purpose but I want to put together my own PVP fits in this new, experimental combateer phase. It's my policy of learning by burning. Learning by rote isn't good enough for me, I need to experience the process of fitting in order to think through the consequences as I fit. You don't sit and ponder the concepts of "kiting vs brawling" and "active vs buffer" when you grab a "PVP blaster" fit from Battle Clinic, and roll it out as fast as possible like Henry Ford In Space. I need to etch the reasoning on my mind, it's the way I think. I have mild trouble with short term memory so this methodology helps plug stuff into long term memory and, by the way, what's your name again? I forgot.
Anyway, I learned a meta thing about fitting today and that is to have a clear mind while doing it. Having a clear mind doesn't happen after four hours sleep instead of eight. It doesn't get any better by the evening.
I started out the day as usual, shift some orders, line up some jobs, look for something to do that doesn't feel like a second job. I went out hunting for new markets and dropped off some experiments, dropped by Halaima to watch some miner bumpers in the ice field for a while. Then for some reason I decided to load up the Nautilus, my Algos destroyer, and go to null. It was quiet. Not too quiet either. I didn't laugh as I was suddenly ganked or anything of the sort. I did a little ratting and some navigation and scanning practice but didn't see any of the other pilots that appeared in Local until the end of my roam.
Considering a trip home I jumped towards a low sec entry gate, having assured myself there was no one waiting on my side of it. Just before the flash of transit the Overview shifted. An Iteron V. A T1 hauler running around NPC null on it's own, headed into low sec. Following my jump, and assuming that the hauler would have cancelled his on seeing me jump, I swiftly turned and burned gatewards. Just before the flash of transit the Overview updated. An Iteron V....... My incandescent rage was a thing to behold. I headed home before a building desire to leap into the first camp I could find took hold. I'll be back. T1 haulers in NPC Null you have been warned. I'd normally think twice, it's combat I'm after not sitting ducks, barring this bored whim. Now that whim has turned into a grudge.
I decide that a roam will purge the rage. Already I'm in a bad state to fly. Totally knackered from lack of sleep and pumped up on frustration from seeing a loot piñata fly by me twice in a minute. This isn't the frame of mind to go out learning.
I decide to attempt a Tristan fit. I have reasonable drone skills, have wanted to fly the Tristan since it became a frigate drone boat, and am still intrigued by my defeat the other day. I've had trouble fitting the Tristan before and today was no different. I fit it as a kiter, top T2 rails and the drones. When I get down to the last few slots I'm considering the need for a web which has far too low range to be any good for my proposed tactics but might allow me to build the range I need. Fitting constraints get in the way and instead of sitting back and contemplating I drop any old thing in there. Yep. This is gonna work. Both modules I drop in I haven't really used before so I'll be learning something (my subconscious rage monster announces smugly). Honestly. Part of me actually thought that. It's shitfit flight time.
There aren't many people about in low sec either so it takes a few jumps to find a suitable candidate, a Rifter in a small plex. I should say here that my general roaming skills have improved. There is more logic in my travel and my hunting than there was before. It wouldn't be difficult to improve on these skills. My roaming tactic before was called "Eyeballs To The Screen, Vibrating-In-Terror".
The Rifter warps out as I maneuver for range, and I experience a flash of the earlier Iteron V rage. Luckily another ship drops in. Another Tristan! I'm going to learn something new after all. It's a QCATS ship. Seeing this and suddenly recalling my fitting resigns me to defeat. Bad Move. I make range but he closes fast and I'm suddenly where I don't want to be. My response? Navigation. Bugger all effect that has too. I don't even switch ammo to the lower range version I'm carrying to compensate. I attempt some manuevers to regain my range but it doesn't work. I fail once more to overheat. This time I don't even overheat a single module! I've got worse! Essentially I do nothing good here. Not my finest hour. I contemplate storing my mid slots in the hold instead of fitting them. If I eject them at the right time there's a chance a pursuing assailant would be slowed by them and they'd be doing some good. Actually that's given me an idea.
My opponent was just under half armour when I popped I think. At 10% hull I'd already prepared for and focused on getting my pod out.
The "Fit-O-Shit" and my alarmingly more experienced opponent.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16761401
Lessons Learned
1. Don't fly angry
2. Don't fit angry, exasperated, tired, or randomly
3. NEVER resign yourself to defeat. NEVER EVER.
4. ALWAYS learn and practice something.
5. AMO: Ammo/Midslots/Overheat. I need better mnemonic skills.
6. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think, enjoy yourself while you're still..... no. I'm kinda joking, but actually not. Sorry for the singing.
Upsides
1. I got the pod out again.
2. I lasted longer than I thought I would against a more experienced opponent.
3. Despite my flaws, I still learned.
4. Unbelievably I still enjoyed it. A GF indeed. I was a lot calmer by the time I got out. It was a refreshing experience after the Dull of Null and playing Hide the Hauler down there.
5. Some awareness was still there, I attempted to navigate in a fight. Fights aren't lasting longer particularly but I think I've enough control of the adrenaline to not have time distorted perception.
6. I'm still ready to keep learning.
More upsides than down really.
Following a tip in the comments from the other day, I'm making a visual guide I can pin above my monitor. It will remind me of the options when the battered wastes of my mind can no longer cope with decision.
I'm thinking I should spend more time in EFT rather than my bad habit of fitting mainly to what is stored in my hangar at the time. I'm building up reserves of modules but a lack of consideration for some utility items and a lack of meta items is causing problems. Someone add ship spinning to EFT!
EVE Track of the Day
Feng Shui - Gnarls Barkley (what else?)
Anyway, I learned a meta thing about fitting today and that is to have a clear mind while doing it. Having a clear mind doesn't happen after four hours sleep instead of eight. It doesn't get any better by the evening.
I started out the day as usual, shift some orders, line up some jobs, look for something to do that doesn't feel like a second job. I went out hunting for new markets and dropped off some experiments, dropped by Halaima to watch some miner bumpers in the ice field for a while. Then for some reason I decided to load up the Nautilus, my Algos destroyer, and go to null. It was quiet. Not too quiet either. I didn't laugh as I was suddenly ganked or anything of the sort. I did a little ratting and some navigation and scanning practice but didn't see any of the other pilots that appeared in Local until the end of my roam.
Considering a trip home I jumped towards a low sec entry gate, having assured myself there was no one waiting on my side of it. Just before the flash of transit the Overview shifted. An Iteron V. A T1 hauler running around NPC null on it's own, headed into low sec. Following my jump, and assuming that the hauler would have cancelled his on seeing me jump, I swiftly turned and burned gatewards. Just before the flash of transit the Overview updated. An Iteron V....... My incandescent rage was a thing to behold. I headed home before a building desire to leap into the first camp I could find took hold. I'll be back. T1 haulers in NPC Null you have been warned. I'd normally think twice, it's combat I'm after not sitting ducks, barring this bored whim. Now that whim has turned into a grudge.
I decide that a roam will purge the rage. Already I'm in a bad state to fly. Totally knackered from lack of sleep and pumped up on frustration from seeing a loot piñata fly by me twice in a minute. This isn't the frame of mind to go out learning.
I decide to attempt a Tristan fit. I have reasonable drone skills, have wanted to fly the Tristan since it became a frigate drone boat, and am still intrigued by my defeat the other day. I've had trouble fitting the Tristan before and today was no different. I fit it as a kiter, top T2 rails and the drones. When I get down to the last few slots I'm considering the need for a web which has far too low range to be any good for my proposed tactics but might allow me to build the range I need. Fitting constraints get in the way and instead of sitting back and contemplating I drop any old thing in there. Yep. This is gonna work. Both modules I drop in I haven't really used before so I'll be learning something (my subconscious rage monster announces smugly). Honestly. Part of me actually thought that. It's shitfit flight time.
There aren't many people about in low sec either so it takes a few jumps to find a suitable candidate, a Rifter in a small plex. I should say here that my general roaming skills have improved. There is more logic in my travel and my hunting than there was before. It wouldn't be difficult to improve on these skills. My roaming tactic before was called "Eyeballs To The Screen, Vibrating-In-Terror".
The Rifter warps out as I maneuver for range, and I experience a flash of the earlier Iteron V rage. Luckily another ship drops in. Another Tristan! I'm going to learn something new after all. It's a QCATS ship. Seeing this and suddenly recalling my fitting resigns me to defeat. Bad Move. I make range but he closes fast and I'm suddenly where I don't want to be. My response? Navigation. Bugger all effect that has too. I don't even switch ammo to the lower range version I'm carrying to compensate. I attempt some manuevers to regain my range but it doesn't work. I fail once more to overheat. This time I don't even overheat a single module! I've got worse! Essentially I do nothing good here. Not my finest hour. I contemplate storing my mid slots in the hold instead of fitting them. If I eject them at the right time there's a chance a pursuing assailant would be slowed by them and they'd be doing some good. Actually that's given me an idea.
My opponent was just under half armour when I popped I think. At 10% hull I'd already prepared for and focused on getting my pod out.
The "Fit-O-Shit" and my alarmingly more experienced opponent.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16761401
Lessons Learned
1. Don't fly angry
2. Don't fit angry, exasperated, tired, or randomly
3. NEVER resign yourself to defeat. NEVER EVER.
4. ALWAYS learn and practice something.
5. AMO: Ammo/Midslots/Overheat. I need better mnemonic skills.
6. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think, enjoy yourself while you're still..... no. I'm kinda joking, but actually not. Sorry for the singing.
Upsides
1. I got the pod out again.
2. I lasted longer than I thought I would against a more experienced opponent.
3. Despite my flaws, I still learned.
4. Unbelievably I still enjoyed it. A GF indeed. I was a lot calmer by the time I got out. It was a refreshing experience after the Dull of Null and playing Hide the Hauler down there.
5. Some awareness was still there, I attempted to navigate in a fight. Fights aren't lasting longer particularly but I think I've enough control of the adrenaline to not have time distorted perception.
6. I'm still ready to keep learning.
More upsides than down really.
Following a tip in the comments from the other day, I'm making a visual guide I can pin above my monitor. It will remind me of the options when the battered wastes of my mind can no longer cope with decision.
I'm thinking I should spend more time in EFT rather than my bad habit of fitting mainly to what is stored in my hangar at the time. I'm building up reserves of modules but a lack of consideration for some utility items and a lack of meta items is causing problems. Someone add ship spinning to EFT!
EVE Track of the Day
Feng Shui - Gnarls Barkley (what else?)
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Day 264: The Deadly Lure of Choice
I'm now dedicated to practising a few scraps a week. I didn't have much time tonight and I was feeling a little sketchy from being out late on the date last night. Nerves plus lager plus empty stomach is the arithmetic of feeling like crap come the afternoon.
I head out. I'm about to learn three things.
1. Stick with your instincts.
2. Fighting Tristans is like kicking a wasps nest.
3. Stay Calm.
I roll through a couple of low sec systems, arcing over the northern Essence chain as usual. There doesn't seem to be anyone around and some of my safes are so safe that not only would no one ever find me, I'd never see another ship again. I take a couple of risks and zip down to some FW plexes to scan the inside. Not much is going on but three jumps later I locate a Tristan. Ah ha!
I've always wanted to try a Tristan out in PVP but the fitting constraints end up annoying me every time I try it. I figure I can learn some stuff by trying to kick one in the knackers. Yeah. It's that learning by burning thing again.
I warp into the plex and drop right on the Tristan. A single K and I'm good for my T2 ions. Flick on the afterburner and head in, there's no point worrying about the approach at this range. Well until the Tristan turns out to be way more agile than I thought. He's beginning to pull range and with blasters that means I'm in the shit. Here's my first mistake. I figure I'd take out the drones instead. I flick to my overview tab that has drones on it and CTRL click like a crazy man. I turn off the guns, reselect a drone and turn them back on again, cursing the delay. I hit nothing. NOTHING. I figured Ions would track fast enough. I've kicked a wasps nest and I'm trying to pick single wasps out of the crowd. Suddenly I think I'm Mr Miyagi and my Ions are chopsticks. They are not. It's like swatting with a cricket bat. Oh, I think, I'll switch back to the Tristan. That's right. In frigate 1v1 I switched targets and dithered like an elderly grandmother choosing which fruit scone she'd like. Round about the same level of combat effectiveness as that too as it happens.
The Tristan has a decent range on me now and I don't think I'm going to get back in there. By some miracle of screen clickage I get back there and overheat the guns. It's a death race now and I'll be dead before they burn out. Webbed and scrammed I'm not leaving here until one of us is atomised. Webbed...... webbbed...... DEAR HOLY CHRIST I haven't webbed him. THE WEB IS NOT ON. I didn't even web the drones. Honestly, I should just fly with empty mid slots and enjoy the breeze that blows through them as I speed through the black.
Of course I was toast. It was too late. The fight had us both down in structure. A real tussle that ended in me making a nice little explosive sound. Close but no cigar.
So what did I do wrong?
What did I do right?
I exchanged 'gfs' with the pilot in question. It was close and a damn fine victory for him whatever my mistakes since I was flying a T2 bullet. I hope he enjoyed my loots, and the thrill. He earned them. I learned more in thirty seconds than I have in a while, and did enough right that the victory truly belongs to my opponent.
Thanks to the pilot in question, and thank to Gedos who shouted me just to say hi afterwards. O7 guys. Onwards and upwards! Here is the link
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16687701
EVE Track of the Day
Try Not to Breathe - REM
I head out. I'm about to learn three things.
1. Stick with your instincts.
2. Fighting Tristans is like kicking a wasps nest.
3. Stay Calm.
I roll through a couple of low sec systems, arcing over the northern Essence chain as usual. There doesn't seem to be anyone around and some of my safes are so safe that not only would no one ever find me, I'd never see another ship again. I take a couple of risks and zip down to some FW plexes to scan the inside. Not much is going on but three jumps later I locate a Tristan. Ah ha!
I've always wanted to try a Tristan out in PVP but the fitting constraints end up annoying me every time I try it. I figure I can learn some stuff by trying to kick one in the knackers. Yeah. It's that learning by burning thing again.
I warp into the plex and drop right on the Tristan. A single K and I'm good for my T2 ions. Flick on the afterburner and head in, there's no point worrying about the approach at this range. Well until the Tristan turns out to be way more agile than I thought. He's beginning to pull range and with blasters that means I'm in the shit. Here's my first mistake. I figure I'd take out the drones instead. I flick to my overview tab that has drones on it and CTRL click like a crazy man. I turn off the guns, reselect a drone and turn them back on again, cursing the delay. I hit nothing. NOTHING. I figured Ions would track fast enough. I've kicked a wasps nest and I'm trying to pick single wasps out of the crowd. Suddenly I think I'm Mr Miyagi and my Ions are chopsticks. They are not. It's like swatting with a cricket bat. Oh, I think, I'll switch back to the Tristan. That's right. In frigate 1v1 I switched targets and dithered like an elderly grandmother choosing which fruit scone she'd like. Round about the same level of combat effectiveness as that too as it happens.
The Tristan has a decent range on me now and I don't think I'm going to get back in there. By some miracle of screen clickage I get back there and overheat the guns. It's a death race now and I'll be dead before they burn out. Webbed and scrammed I'm not leaving here until one of us is atomised. Webbed...... webbbed...... DEAR HOLY CHRIST I haven't webbed him. THE WEB IS NOT ON. I didn't even web the drones. Honestly, I should just fly with empty mid slots and enjoy the breeze that blows through them as I speed through the black.
Of course I was toast. It was too late. The fight had us both down in structure. A real tussle that ended in me making a nice little explosive sound. Close but no cigar.
So what did I do wrong?
- I changed my mind. I should have stuck with the Tristan and tanked the drones.
- I kicked a Tristan. It's a five drone hive these days people. Take note. I'll be fitting one however annoying it gets. The kill mail says all Rail damage. Not sure what to make of that.
- I didn't stay calm. With the web running I'd of had him, why the hell wasn't the web on? When range got a little dubious I should have considered switching to Null ammo as a bit of a surprise but it should never have come to that.
What did I do right?
- I overheated the repairer a little early but around the right time. I could have tanked the drones with it and left the laughed in the face of the Tristans rails. An overheated Incursus repper is a thing to behold. Then again, it did give me enough time to make several very bad decisions indeed.
- I overheated the guns at the right time. They were still viable, just, at the end of the fight. They had a killing blow in them and I didn't cripple myself early on.
- I got my pod out. Some post fight awareness remained. I've made the jump to understanding you can die TWICE in an EVE fight.
- For all my mistakes I had time to make tactical decisions through the haze of adrenaline. Completely incorrect tactical decisions to be sure, but at least I had the awareness to make them this time. All my previous fights have been seen through a veil of Red Mist that nullified conscious thought.
I exchanged 'gfs' with the pilot in question. It was close and a damn fine victory for him whatever my mistakes since I was flying a T2 bullet. I hope he enjoyed my loots, and the thrill. He earned them. I learned more in thirty seconds than I have in a while, and did enough right that the victory truly belongs to my opponent.
Thanks to the pilot in question, and thank to Gedos who shouted me just to say hi afterwards. O7 guys. Onwards and upwards! Here is the link
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16687701
EVE Track of the Day
Try Not to Breathe - REM
Monday, 4 March 2013
Day 262 : Guilt Trip to Heydieles
I'm done with industry. We've parted ways. It's been an odd month in Real Life which meant it was perfect for the clicking of many, many things in order to submit Invention jobs. It was a perfect month to be drifting down space lanes while composing playlists on Spotify or listening to EVE Radio. I had a couple of hairy moments when DJ Wiggles played the targetting sound but otherwise it was a nice and dull end to Winter. Winter is going. It's the new thing.
It was dull though. I'm loading up the weapon skills finally and considering my next step. One way or another I'll try my hand at spring time idiocy, I'll be the gamboling lamb of low sec. That reminds me of the old Waylander quote, that might be a nice aim.
Once I was a lamb, playing in a green field. Then the wolves came. Now I am an eagle and I fly in a different universe.’
‘And now you kill the lambs,’ whispered Dardalion.
Waylander chuckled and turned over.
‘No, priest. No one pays for lambs.’
Perhaps I do have an aim after all. It'll take some skilling after all the time I've wasted at the factory day after day but the queue is looking after me.
It's Monday night though, no time to be haring off on wild suicide missions before some elementary basics are covered. I decide to fit out a couple of ships. I like doing this in game. More time to spin my gorgeous gank mobiles. However, Monday and the distraction of a Tuesday which has a blind date in it collude in a way that results in me buying a rig from a low sec station. It's a low sec area I know quite well. I am pretty sure I got blown up there when a couple of months old while being amazed at the bounties of the sitting ducks. I'm sorry Serpentis Admirals, or whatever those fat boys were called.
Anyway. I decide to go get it. I've got a stored safe there that I can scan the station from. I hit undock. Let's go. It is going to be a terrifying and bumpy road.
It isn't.
It's Monday night.
There's not a single flashy in system and no one outside of a station or POS as far as some incredulous Dscanning could determine. I dock up and grab the rig and fit it. Like all my other fits it is a "shit fit" but who cares? I call them loss learners. I could go with conventional wisdom and fit the ships according to internet doctrine or I could fit to my own theory and witness the testing in person. Like Oppenheimer taking a vacation in Hiroshima.
I undock and leap to my safe point. I do some scans. No one. Sod this. Where is all this adrenaline going to go anyway? I need my sleep, I've got to be intelligent and chatty tomorrow. I warp to the nearest plex and scan it. I'm shocked. Someone is actually flying around in this system. There is a Rifter in there!
Before I can consider the situation I've already activated the gate. I've named my ship "Little Friend". I might even have muttered "say hello to my little friend" on the way through the gate. I'm in. Red mist descends. Spiral in. Time to die Mr Rifter Dude. Guns on, orbit achieved. No..... shield..... loss...... I did start to wonder what was happening at this point. The Rifter hadn't even fired back. There isn't much point wondering about stuff halfway through a fight with a frigate that isn't doing anything. There isn't enough of a fight to have a halfway. It's like the only place Zeno's paradox falls over. When you are halfway there you are actually at the end. It's that short.
Anyway. A slightly puzzled Red Mist in place, I torch the poor bastard and grab the loot and do a runner. No point hanging around waiting for people who fight back eh? I warp safe, flick on the 'burner and start flying out blackward while I check the kill. I'm not impressed by what I see. Which is essentially this
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16662834
Even worse, the pilot is only hours old.
Even worse, for a Star Wars fan, I just shot down Yoda. He was having a bad Force day. I can deal with this. This is payback for Lucas for Jar Jar Binks. I'm still pissed off about it and praying daily at the small and slightly sinister altar I've set up to JJ.
It's the age of the pilot that gives me the guilt trip. Even gleefully soaring around the nearest belt and wasting the usual dumbass Serpentis battlecruiser doesn't alleviate it. How can I head to low sec in future and feel like this? I'm not doing Show Info on everyone I see. There isn't time. I feel like I've shot one of my own. I feel too bad to even mail the guy to see if he was an AFK alt, which I do suspect on some level. If anyone knows him then let me know and I'll send him a Rifter that actually has some guns on it.
In the end I log off to wrestle with the discovery that my conscience and code might well be disposable. So much for not killing the lambs. I had better invest in some mint sauce instead.
EVE Track of the Day
Lighsabre Cocksucking Blues - Mclusky
Thursday, 21 February 2013
Day 250 : T2 : Lack of Judgement Day
This post has been hanging around uncompleted for ages. It was hard enough to contemplate writing in the first place and then Jester beat me to it with an article that's probably better for you unless you are a complete Noob like me. Go have a read of http://jestertrek.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/basic-t2-manufacturing-example.html. The whole thing caused bad writers block which caused a slight retreat from constant posting to become a total rout. So, I'm writing it. It may be boring. It may be wrong. It may be out of my head and into yours. EVE is a PVP game!
In the end this post may be deadly dull and since I'm not a sadist, this is your final warning about proceeding. Here is an alternative entertaining post http://nosygamer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/if-lore-fits-you-must-aquit.html with a potential, slightly mocking, lore reason for the new the duelling system. We all know that the hot pools of Iceland are refilled by CCP with the tears of super hardass vets whenever CCP changes things, but for this one time Nosygamer allows us to dream that a change in EVE isn't powering the tear-based Icelandic tourist industry.
Still here?
When I was but a young noob buying my first few BPOs I was already aware of T2 modules and their purpose. T2 blueprints were a shiny mythic thing that I had to wait to get my mits on. They would solve everything from my cashflow problems, to my inherent bad piloting and eventually cause World Peace. This is why, against better judgement, I decided to attempt some basic T2 production. Really I should have been out flying combat, learning those skills instead. However, despite a desire to go and explode or have myself exploded, something about the apparent complexity of Invention and the shiny nature of T2 blueprint copy items drew me in. In part thinking about the logistics of manufacture gives me something to occupy my brain on the way to work when I'm tired. It's like I'm jump starting my sleep addled brain by thinking about SPACE FACTORIES. When any of my previous pathetic attempts at carebear justification fail I play my ace in the hole - entirely fitting PVP frigates with T2 mods is going to speed up my return to combat. Yes. That excuse is pathetic. I am aware of this.
Whatever the reasons, I thought I'd do a quick entry guide to Invention. This guide is for total noobs. Read elsewhere for more advanced (and more correct) information.
"Invention" is the process by which you create blueprints for T2 modules. From the outside it looks complex, but actually it's not that bad.
What you absolutely need:
Science Skills: It depends on what you want to invent but you'll need some of the more esoteric sounding skills under the Science tree. I'll list these later but you'll invest anything from 20 to 200 million ISK in skill books.
Blueprints. You need a Blueprint Original of the item you want to invent if you want to do the process from scratch. I'm covering basic stuff here, not permutations based on sourcing your BPCs from Contracts. Grab an ammo BPO, or one for a commonly used small module. If you think the sub million price is expensive please stop now and come back in a few months.
Datacores. These items are consumed by Invention. There are a couple of sources of these but for now just look to the market and look into sourcing your own through LP or Research Agents later. Type "Datacore" into the Market Browse and look at the list.
Data Interfaces. A set of items that just sit in your hangar and are not consumed by the process.
There are more components that are handy for the process, not least your own POS with a Laboratory module but I'll deal with these as we go along. While vital for making reasonable income I'm dealing with the basic process here.
Spreadsheets. Technically these aren't vital but if you are thinking of moving on from owning a single T2 blueprint to making enough to make a business out of it then you'll probably end up spreadsheeting some stuff. If you can't stand spreadsheets then a) GTFO now before it's too late and b) WTF are you doing playing EVE?
Patience. You'll be doing some logistical runs to and from market. If flying a freighter, or market hubs in general, is your idea of hell then see what I told the people who hate spreadsheets. You'll also be doing a lot of clicking on multiple windows. You'll be managing copy jobs that take hours or days to complete. If you hate this or are prone to RSI then please see what I told the people who hate spreadsheets.
Seed cash. You'll need around 50 million for skill books, materials and BPO's to get properly started. It can be done for 20-30 million but no less.
The Basic Process
That's all, make a copy, invent on it, pick up T2 BPC. Nothing to it really. Shake And Bake Shinys. As if.
The Process In Detail
You run into the big bottleneck of T2 invention straight away. It's not the Invention process itself. For basic items like ammo, drones, and commonly used small ship mods, the Invention process is rapid. It takes just a couple of hours for ship mods, just over an hour for ammo even without a POS. It takes a lot longer for ships but lets stick to simple stuff for now.
Neither is the bottleneck Material Research on the original blueprint. While it is hard to find free slots for Material Efficiency research in NPC empire stations you don't really care at this point since the ME/PE of the BPO, or its BPCs, has no bearing on the Invention process. That's right. No waiting for those endlessly backed up queues for empire material research slots. Instead you get to wait for the endlessly backed up queues for empire copying slots. It can be hard to find them and this is the main reason why a POS is needed to make any reasonable business out of T2 invention and subsequent production. You'll not be able to supply enough BPCs for the Invention process to have enough to supply a constant manufacturing unless you have in built scheduling algorithms that make it seem as if you have a small personal time machine. That and easy access to some of the worst places in low sec.
1. Copying
a). Where and How?
b). Number of Copies
It looks like 20 is the maximum in my experience. I usually just stick 20 in here but occasionally I'll time it so that it finishes to coincide with the next morning or the evening so that I can run jobs of lots of different BPOs. When you hit OK you'll see the time estimate. Work out how many copies will best fit into cycling your copying around your normal playing hours.
c). Licenced Runs
There is a formula to the number of runs. The number of Licenced runs affects how many runs are on any resulting T2 blueprint. My formula : 1 for ships, the maximum for anything else. You can find the maximum under Show Info on the BPO/BPC as "Max Runs Per Blueprint Copy". For more information see the discussion on the following link. Ignore any mention of decryptors for now.
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Invention#Invention_BPC_Runs
4. Delivery
Once the job is finished and you deliver it, the BPCs, if any, will appear in the location of the Invention slot. If you've done this remotely then you'll need to go pick them up.
2. Invention
a). How and Where.
If in doubt, right click the BPO/BPC, select Show Info, select the Materials tab and then select the Invention tab. All the information you need should be there.
Right. You are going to need some stuff. You need to stash this in a hangar in the station (or POS module) you are going to run the job on. The BPC doesn't have to be where the Invention process runs but skills and hangar rules govern how far away the BPC, and you, can be from the Invention job. When early experimenting go there in person.
The first thing to get are the Data Interfaces. There are 3 variants of these for each of the four player racial backgrounds. You might as well go ahead and buy all but the Ship ones. Leave those four until you get around to inventing T2 ship blueprints. Inventing small T2 ships isn't particularly difficult, just more time consuming and the data interface might cost a lot. Wait until you've made some cash. Don't worry too much about the cost as Data Interfaces are not consumed by the invention process.
You'll need at lease two Datacores. The ones you need you can find under Show Info on the BPC. For more complex items you might need 2 or more of the two types. I've not used a BPC that needed three different types yet but I presume there are some. Datacores you can buy off the market. Shop around, prices fluctuate a lot. Buy Orders can save you a lot of money if you are prepared to wait. Generally this proves useful only once you've got a lot of planned jobs to run. You don't want to be waiting around for a Buy Order to fill just so you can run an Invention job. Datacores are associated with one of the more esoteric Science tree skills such as Quantum Physics or Mechanical Engineering.
You'll need some level of the science skill relevant to each Datacore. To get these skills you'll need Science to V and then buy the 10 million skillbook for each of the science skills. Learn them to at least level 2. Higher if you can. Some BPCs require three or more in that skill to invent it or to manufacture the result. In any case these skills affect the chance of success so anything over level 2 is a bonus.
You'll need a racial encryption skill, for example Amarr Encryption Methods, that is relevant to the type of racial Data Interface needed for the job. Learn these to at least II to begin with. Again they affect the chance of Invention success so learn them higher if you are not already crying about all the things you had to learn.
Right click the BPC and select Invention
The resulting form looks a bit forbidding but don't worry about it. TL; DR : ignore everything apart from Pick Installation
Hit the "Pick Installation" button and chose where you are doing the job. Once the location is selected a lot of the other details will be filled in. 95% of the time I pick the location and then click OK. Why?
i). I'm not using "Base Items". These effect the chance of invention success. They are meta level items of the same type as the thing you are inventing. Meta 0 items have no effect. The rest are too much of a pain in the arse to get hold of so I don't yet bother. When I get round to producing larger items that consume more time and money to invent I might take a look at this again.
ii). I'm not using a "Decryptor". There are various types of these and they can effect the chance of invention as well as the stats of any resulting T2 BPC. They are expensive. I don't yet produce anything that justifies their use and neither will you at the start. Ignore this box for now and later see the notes on Chances of Success below.
iii). Input/Output : Use the default. These are hangars, input will be set by your choice of BPC and output will default to that too. I generally just leave them at the default but you might be able to organise a piss up in a brewery whereas my organisational skills do not extend that far. I have no real hangar organisation theme.
iv). Output Type : This will be filled in once you select an Installation. Double check it to see if there is a choice but generally there won't be, I've only seen this have a choice when I attempted to make some t2 frigate BPCs.
2. Delivery and Chances of Success
When you deliver an invention job you have less that 100% chance of success. You may get nothing. You'll get nothing more than you get something. The chance that you'll get something is a base percentage further improved by your skills unless you are using a Decryptor (which I don't).
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/invention_chance.php
The base chance is 40% for stuff that isn't a ship. That's enough to make a profit with the right item. A lot of the profit in manufactured T2 items is sourced in the willingness of the inventor/manufacturer to click a lot of things, wait for jobs to finish, ship product to market, source Datacores. Basically the markup on T2 items is ,at least in part, the effective cost of renting the boredom threshold of the inventor.
TL;DR With base skills expect an average of 2 BPCs for every 5 Invention jobs.
Tinfoil Hat Crazy Conspiracy Noob says: You will get zero successes when you most want to get more than average.
Don't think like this. Ignore success rates for less than 100 Invention jobs, maybe more. It'll average out in the end.
3. Manufacturing
In short form, since it could be it's own post and we were supposed to be talking about getting that shiny T2 BPC.
You can easily do this in NPC Empire stations. Don't worry about it.
You will need crazy materials. See the TIPS section at the end and learn to use the market. One of the crazy materials are R.A.M. tech. See below.
You can save a lot of money with Production Efficiency V, especially since T2 ship mods will often have a T1 version as a build material. Plan to get there.
At some point time becomes a factor and then the entire thing will turn into an ISK/hour calculation. Don't neglect Time Efficiency research when making T1 components for T2 manufacture.
Don't neglect T1 industry as an income source. There are still profits to be made.
A short polite note on those fucking R.A.M. Modules
Robotic Assembly Modules are components in building T2 items. They will be partly damaged by the process. You will need 1 of these per item made even if the damage won't wholly destroy 1 R.A.M.
So - say I'm building 10 drones, each of which needs 1 R.A.M. Robotics Tech and causes 10% damage to it. You think : I need 1 of them and it will totally be destroyed in the process (10 times 10% damage). NO. You will need 10 of them to submit the job. After the job has finished you'll have 9 left. So even though you need the numbers to submit the job, only one of them is used. Did I dream this? Possibly. Please, someone tell me I did. It makes no sense to me. What are the other 9 for if only 1 is damaged? That's all I'm going to say on the matter since I've already included too many swear words in this post.
MINIMUM SKILL SUMMARY
As ever you'll be told a lot of things about minimum skills. I recall the amount of times I was told not to make stuff till I had Production Efficiency V. That's bollocks my friends. Lower skills mean smaller profit margins. They don't mean no profits and they certainly mean higher profits that sitting around with your thumb up your arse waiting for the skill queue to sandpaper its way across your sleep patterns. Manufacturing with Production Efficiency of one would likely result in cheaper modules than those bought from the market for your own use. Later I'll tell you to learn it to level V just like everyone else.
Science V - I don't think you can learn the required skills without this.
Lab Operation III - should give you the ability to run 4 jobs. Technically you don't need it at all but even I balk at running one job at a time. Build this up over time. Getting to V means Advanced Lab Operation and another exponential jump in the amount of jobs you can do, but it does take time. Start small with fast invention jobs. Look at the T2 ammo market. Try buying the ammo BPCs off people in the noob starting areas maybe. They get some in their initial missions.
Racial Encryption Methods I - Learn all four of them to II since it takes no time. You might need to run to III or higher for more complex items.
Physics and Engineering skills I - Each job will require two or more of the Engineering and Physics skills under the Science folder in the skill browser. Your BPO/BPC will tell you which you need and to what level. Start with getting them to II since that takes no time. Higher skills mean higher chances but don't go beyond III at the start unless a) The BPO requires it or b) manufacturing the item requires it or c) you like wasting skill queue time.
When manufacturing you might need skills such as Mechanics or Engineering or some skill associated with the use of the item. Generally they will be quickly learned or you've learned them already as core base skills. You do have V in Engineering, Mechanics and Electronics, right? Get them first. Just get them, get them now.
As you move through the process you'll find that other skills become handy. You don't need them for your first experiments but you'll end up getting them if you go any further. Don't worry about them at the start, you'll know the ones I mean when you start patching the fist shaped hole in your desk.
TIPS
Stock. If your experiments are successful and you decide to make a long term go of things then invest in stock, both for Invention (Datacores) and manufacturing (all kinds of crap) and continue to invest when profits start rolling in. When you start to make profit then forget about using it for something other than reinvesting in the process for at least a month. After that start using Buy Orders to get in raw materials. It might not look like you are saving much per item but it will add up in bulk and the time saved running around collecting things. Have stock ready for Invention well before you need it.
Markets. Markets fluctuate. Watch them carefully. I can't stand Trading which is a shame considering one of the inspirations for this EVE trip was the cash generating mechanic of trading in Elite. Traders understand market fluctuations better than industrialists do. They can deal with slimmer margins. Pay attention to what they say. Pay attention to demand and sell into places that aren't trade hubs if you can. Be careful of supply - are you outstripping demand yourself, or is someone else also supplying the same market?
Diversify. Protect yourself with diversification - reinvest some of your profit in new BPO's for different things. If you must specialise then specialise in an area rather than an item - for example all T2 hybrid ammo rather than Scorch. Ideally consider everything as a possibility and try it out. I've had several cases where I had to experiment with a new item just to prove my spreadsheet wasn't faulty. I was making that much of a profit margin.
Optimise - find a good base with everything you need either to hand or within easy jump distances. This includes your eventual markets. Cut down on flying time or get ready to build an infuriating network of contracted shipping and sales alts.
TL;DR TIPS
Plan ahead, fly less, watch the market.
WARNINGS
Clicky : It's clicky. Click all the things! Many, many times!
Management : it's a management, logistics, timing and trade game. Consider it a gym membership for the brain, it's dull hard work but you'll feel better for doing it in the end.
Skill intensive : If you include the optimal manufacturing skills then it is fairly skill intensive for the noob. Producing T2 BPCs for different things is going to involve a one time bump of skill book cost and training in all the Physics and Engineering skills under Science. Start putting aside 10 million ISK increments.
POS : to get the most out of it get a POS. POS cause people to wail and gnash their teeth to the extent that CCP saying they wouldn't do much about their current state recently caused a massive backlash on the forums. The only reason it didn't cause another Burn Jita event is that POS managers have too much to do attempting to manage and use POS's. Imagine:
POS role management would be a post all on it's own if it wasn't for the fact that I try to avoid thinking about or having to use it.
Resources
Basics
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Invention
Profit and chance
http://www.eve-market-guide.com/invention.php
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/invention_chance.php
Handy for the shops
http://eve-central.com/
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/market.php?group_id=2
Blogs
http://k162space.com
http://eve-prosper.blogspot.co.uk/
http://jestertrek.blogspot.co.uk
http://greedygoblin.blogspot.co.uk/
EVE TRACK OF THE DAY
Late Night - Foals (just because it's good and air guitar delayed this post even more)
THANK GOD THAT IS OVER.
In the end this post may be deadly dull and since I'm not a sadist, this is your final warning about proceeding. Here is an alternative entertaining post http://nosygamer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/if-lore-fits-you-must-aquit.html with a potential, slightly mocking, lore reason for the new the duelling system. We all know that the hot pools of Iceland are refilled by CCP with the tears of super hardass vets whenever CCP changes things, but for this one time Nosygamer allows us to dream that a change in EVE isn't powering the tear-based Icelandic tourist industry.
Still here?
When I was but a young noob buying my first few BPOs I was already aware of T2 modules and their purpose. T2 blueprints were a shiny mythic thing that I had to wait to get my mits on. They would solve everything from my cashflow problems, to my inherent bad piloting and eventually cause World Peace. This is why, against better judgement, I decided to attempt some basic T2 production. Really I should have been out flying combat, learning those skills instead. However, despite a desire to go and explode or have myself exploded, something about the apparent complexity of Invention and the shiny nature of T2 blueprint copy items drew me in. In part thinking about the logistics of manufacture gives me something to occupy my brain on the way to work when I'm tired. It's like I'm jump starting my sleep addled brain by thinking about SPACE FACTORIES. When any of my previous pathetic attempts at carebear justification fail I play my ace in the hole - entirely fitting PVP frigates with T2 mods is going to speed up my return to combat. Yes. That excuse is pathetic. I am aware of this.
Whatever the reasons, I thought I'd do a quick entry guide to Invention. This guide is for total noobs. Read elsewhere for more advanced (and more correct) information.
"Invention" is the process by which you create blueprints for T2 modules. From the outside it looks complex, but actually it's not that bad.
What you absolutely need:
Science Skills: It depends on what you want to invent but you'll need some of the more esoteric sounding skills under the Science tree. I'll list these later but you'll invest anything from 20 to 200 million ISK in skill books.
Blueprints. You need a Blueprint Original of the item you want to invent if you want to do the process from scratch. I'm covering basic stuff here, not permutations based on sourcing your BPCs from Contracts. Grab an ammo BPO, or one for a commonly used small module. If you think the sub million price is expensive please stop now and come back in a few months.
Datacores. These items are consumed by Invention. There are a couple of sources of these but for now just look to the market and look into sourcing your own through LP or Research Agents later. Type "Datacore" into the Market Browse and look at the list.
Data Interfaces. A set of items that just sit in your hangar and are not consumed by the process.
There are more components that are handy for the process, not least your own POS with a Laboratory module but I'll deal with these as we go along. While vital for making reasonable income I'm dealing with the basic process here.
Spreadsheets. Technically these aren't vital but if you are thinking of moving on from owning a single T2 blueprint to making enough to make a business out of it then you'll probably end up spreadsheeting some stuff. If you can't stand spreadsheets then a) GTFO now before it's too late and b) WTF are you doing playing EVE?
Patience. You'll be doing some logistical runs to and from market. If flying a freighter, or market hubs in general, is your idea of hell then see what I told the people who hate spreadsheets. You'll also be doing a lot of clicking on multiple windows. You'll be managing copy jobs that take hours or days to complete. If you hate this or are prone to RSI then please see what I told the people who hate spreadsheets.
Seed cash. You'll need around 50 million for skill books, materials and BPO's to get properly started. It can be done for 20-30 million but no less.
The Basic Process
- Copying. An original blueprint, "BPO", is used to make multiple copies, aka "BPC"s.
- Invention. An Invention process is run on one of the BPCs.
- There is a chance that a BPC for the T2 version of the relevant item will be the result.
That's all, make a copy, invent on it, pick up T2 BPC. Nothing to it really. Shake And Bake Shinys. As if.
The Process In Detail
You run into the big bottleneck of T2 invention straight away. It's not the Invention process itself. For basic items like ammo, drones, and commonly used small ship mods, the Invention process is rapid. It takes just a couple of hours for ship mods, just over an hour for ammo even without a POS. It takes a lot longer for ships but lets stick to simple stuff for now.
Neither is the bottleneck Material Research on the original blueprint. While it is hard to find free slots for Material Efficiency research in NPC empire stations you don't really care at this point since the ME/PE of the BPO, or its BPCs, has no bearing on the Invention process. That's right. No waiting for those endlessly backed up queues for empire material research slots. Instead you get to wait for the endlessly backed up queues for empire copying slots. It can be hard to find them and this is the main reason why a POS is needed to make any reasonable business out of T2 invention and subsequent production. You'll not be able to supply enough BPCs for the Invention process to have enough to supply a constant manufacturing unless you have in built scheduling algorithms that make it seem as if you have a small personal time machine. That and easy access to some of the worst places in low sec.
1. Copying
a). Where and How?
Where? Well as I said before copying is the bottleneck. I checked when writing and actually saw a free empire slot in Low Sec. If you can handle that then go for it. It's not too dangerous in a fast small ship as long as you know how to use Dscan. Speedy is the key I think. Warp stabbed and shield tanked cruisers (or frigates if you think you can run the undock gauntlet without being alpha'd). If you want to make copies in Hi Sec then forget making decent amounts of cash. The queues generally run from 10 to 15 days at minimum.
The other thing to bear in mind is that you'll need a Corporation office at the station you want to make the copy. As far as I know this will work for NPC corps but I've never tried it. It's another driver to get players into corporations. There are those out there that will rent slots on POS labs to you. Presumably you just join their holding corp and get busy copying or researching. Check the forums and ask around but be aware that your BPO and any other hangar contents are then under the control of whoever governs that corporation.
It looks like 20 is the maximum in my experience. I usually just stick 20 in here but occasionally I'll time it so that it finishes to coincide with the next morning or the evening so that I can run jobs of lots of different BPOs. When you hit OK you'll see the time estimate. Work out how many copies will best fit into cycling your copying around your normal playing hours.
c). Licenced Runs
There is a formula to the number of runs. The number of Licenced runs affects how many runs are on any resulting T2 blueprint. My formula : 1 for ships, the maximum for anything else. You can find the maximum under Show Info on the BPO/BPC as "Max Runs Per Blueprint Copy". For more information see the discussion on the following link. Ignore any mention of decryptors for now.
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Invention#Invention_BPC_Runs
4. Delivery
Once the job is finished and you deliver it, the BPCs, if any, will appear in the location of the Invention slot. If you've done this remotely then you'll need to go pick them up.
2. Invention
a). How and Where.
If in doubt, right click the BPO/BPC, select Show Info, select the Materials tab and then select the Invention tab. All the information you need should be there.
Right. You are going to need some stuff. You need to stash this in a hangar in the station (or POS module) you are going to run the job on. The BPC doesn't have to be where the Invention process runs but skills and hangar rules govern how far away the BPC, and you, can be from the Invention job. When early experimenting go there in person.
The first thing to get are the Data Interfaces. There are 3 variants of these for each of the four player racial backgrounds. You might as well go ahead and buy all but the Ship ones. Leave those four until you get around to inventing T2 ship blueprints. Inventing small T2 ships isn't particularly difficult, just more time consuming and the data interface might cost a lot. Wait until you've made some cash. Don't worry too much about the cost as Data Interfaces are not consumed by the invention process.
You'll need at lease two Datacores. The ones you need you can find under Show Info on the BPC. For more complex items you might need 2 or more of the two types. I've not used a BPC that needed three different types yet but I presume there are some. Datacores you can buy off the market. Shop around, prices fluctuate a lot. Buy Orders can save you a lot of money if you are prepared to wait. Generally this proves useful only once you've got a lot of planned jobs to run. You don't want to be waiting around for a Buy Order to fill just so you can run an Invention job. Datacores are associated with one of the more esoteric Science tree skills such as Quantum Physics or Mechanical Engineering.
You'll need some level of the science skill relevant to each Datacore. To get these skills you'll need Science to V and then buy the 10 million skillbook for each of the science skills. Learn them to at least level 2. Higher if you can. Some BPCs require three or more in that skill to invent it or to manufacture the result. In any case these skills affect the chance of success so anything over level 2 is a bonus.
You'll need a racial encryption skill, for example Amarr Encryption Methods, that is relevant to the type of racial Data Interface needed for the job. Learn these to at least II to begin with. Again they affect the chance of Invention success so learn them higher if you are not already crying about all the things you had to learn.
Right click the BPC and select Invention
The resulting form looks a bit forbidding but don't worry about it. TL; DR : ignore everything apart from Pick Installation
Hit the "Pick Installation" button and chose where you are doing the job. Once the location is selected a lot of the other details will be filled in. 95% of the time I pick the location and then click OK. Why?
i). I'm not using "Base Items". These effect the chance of invention success. They are meta level items of the same type as the thing you are inventing. Meta 0 items have no effect. The rest are too much of a pain in the arse to get hold of so I don't yet bother. When I get round to producing larger items that consume more time and money to invent I might take a look at this again.
ii). I'm not using a "Decryptor". There are various types of these and they can effect the chance of invention as well as the stats of any resulting T2 BPC. They are expensive. I don't yet produce anything that justifies their use and neither will you at the start. Ignore this box for now and later see the notes on Chances of Success below.
iii). Input/Output : Use the default. These are hangars, input will be set by your choice of BPC and output will default to that too. I generally just leave them at the default but you might be able to organise a piss up in a brewery whereas my organisational skills do not extend that far. I have no real hangar organisation theme.
iv). Output Type : This will be filled in once you select an Installation. Double check it to see if there is a choice but generally there won't be, I've only seen this have a choice when I attempted to make some t2 frigate BPCs.
2. Delivery and Chances of Success
When you deliver an invention job you have less that 100% chance of success. You may get nothing. You'll get nothing more than you get something. The chance that you'll get something is a base percentage further improved by your skills unless you are using a Decryptor (which I don't).
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/invention_chance.php
The base chance is 40% for stuff that isn't a ship. That's enough to make a profit with the right item. A lot of the profit in manufactured T2 items is sourced in the willingness of the inventor/manufacturer to click a lot of things, wait for jobs to finish, ship product to market, source Datacores. Basically the markup on T2 items is ,at least in part, the effective cost of renting the boredom threshold of the inventor.
TL;DR With base skills expect an average of 2 BPCs for every 5 Invention jobs.
Tinfoil Hat Crazy Conspiracy Noob says: You will get zero successes when you most want to get more than average.
Don't think like this. Ignore success rates for less than 100 Invention jobs, maybe more. It'll average out in the end.
3. Manufacturing
In short form, since it could be it's own post and we were supposed to be talking about getting that shiny T2 BPC.
You can easily do this in NPC Empire stations. Don't worry about it.
You will need crazy materials. See the TIPS section at the end and learn to use the market. One of the crazy materials are R.A.M. tech. See below.
You can save a lot of money with Production Efficiency V, especially since T2 ship mods will often have a T1 version as a build material. Plan to get there.
At some point time becomes a factor and then the entire thing will turn into an ISK/hour calculation. Don't neglect Time Efficiency research when making T1 components for T2 manufacture.
Don't neglect T1 industry as an income source. There are still profits to be made.
A short polite note on those fucking R.A.M. Modules
Robotic Assembly Modules are components in building T2 items. They will be partly damaged by the process. You will need 1 of these per item made even if the damage won't wholly destroy 1 R.A.M.
So - say I'm building 10 drones, each of which needs 1 R.A.M. Robotics Tech and causes 10% damage to it. You think : I need 1 of them and it will totally be destroyed in the process (10 times 10% damage). NO. You will need 10 of them to submit the job. After the job has finished you'll have 9 left. So even though you need the numbers to submit the job, only one of them is used. Did I dream this? Possibly. Please, someone tell me I did. It makes no sense to me. What are the other 9 for if only 1 is damaged? That's all I'm going to say on the matter since I've already included too many swear words in this post.
MINIMUM SKILL SUMMARY
As ever you'll be told a lot of things about minimum skills. I recall the amount of times I was told not to make stuff till I had Production Efficiency V. That's bollocks my friends. Lower skills mean smaller profit margins. They don't mean no profits and they certainly mean higher profits that sitting around with your thumb up your arse waiting for the skill queue to sandpaper its way across your sleep patterns. Manufacturing with Production Efficiency of one would likely result in cheaper modules than those bought from the market for your own use. Later I'll tell you to learn it to level V just like everyone else.
Science V - I don't think you can learn the required skills without this.
Lab Operation III - should give you the ability to run 4 jobs. Technically you don't need it at all but even I balk at running one job at a time. Build this up over time. Getting to V means Advanced Lab Operation and another exponential jump in the amount of jobs you can do, but it does take time. Start small with fast invention jobs. Look at the T2 ammo market. Try buying the ammo BPCs off people in the noob starting areas maybe. They get some in their initial missions.
Racial Encryption Methods I - Learn all four of them to II since it takes no time. You might need to run to III or higher for more complex items.
Physics and Engineering skills I - Each job will require two or more of the Engineering and Physics skills under the Science folder in the skill browser. Your BPO/BPC will tell you which you need and to what level. Start with getting them to II since that takes no time. Higher skills mean higher chances but don't go beyond III at the start unless a) The BPO requires it or b) manufacturing the item requires it or c) you like wasting skill queue time.
When manufacturing you might need skills such as Mechanics or Engineering or some skill associated with the use of the item. Generally they will be quickly learned or you've learned them already as core base skills. You do have V in Engineering, Mechanics and Electronics, right? Get them first. Just get them, get them now.
As you move through the process you'll find that other skills become handy. You don't need them for your first experiments but you'll end up getting them if you go any further. Don't worry about them at the start, you'll know the ones I mean when you start patching the fist shaped hole in your desk.
TIPS
Stock. If your experiments are successful and you decide to make a long term go of things then invest in stock, both for Invention (Datacores) and manufacturing (all kinds of crap) and continue to invest when profits start rolling in. When you start to make profit then forget about using it for something other than reinvesting in the process for at least a month. After that start using Buy Orders to get in raw materials. It might not look like you are saving much per item but it will add up in bulk and the time saved running around collecting things. Have stock ready for Invention well before you need it.
Markets. Markets fluctuate. Watch them carefully. I can't stand Trading which is a shame considering one of the inspirations for this EVE trip was the cash generating mechanic of trading in Elite. Traders understand market fluctuations better than industrialists do. They can deal with slimmer margins. Pay attention to what they say. Pay attention to demand and sell into places that aren't trade hubs if you can. Be careful of supply - are you outstripping demand yourself, or is someone else also supplying the same market?
Diversify. Protect yourself with diversification - reinvest some of your profit in new BPO's for different things. If you must specialise then specialise in an area rather than an item - for example all T2 hybrid ammo rather than Scorch. Ideally consider everything as a possibility and try it out. I've had several cases where I had to experiment with a new item just to prove my spreadsheet wasn't faulty. I was making that much of a profit margin.
Optimise - find a good base with everything you need either to hand or within easy jump distances. This includes your eventual markets. Cut down on flying time or get ready to build an infuriating network of contracted shipping and sales alts.
TL;DR TIPS
Plan ahead, fly less, watch the market.
WARNINGS
Clicky : It's clicky. Click all the things! Many, many times!
Management : it's a management, logistics, timing and trade game. Consider it a gym membership for the brain, it's dull hard work but you'll feel better for doing it in the end.
Skill intensive : If you include the optimal manufacturing skills then it is fairly skill intensive for the noob. Producing T2 BPCs for different things is going to involve a one time bump of skill book cost and training in all the Physics and Engineering skills under Science. Start putting aside 10 million ISK increments.
POS : to get the most out of it get a POS. POS cause people to wail and gnash their teeth to the extent that CCP saying they wouldn't do much about their current state recently caused a massive backlash on the forums. The only reason it didn't cause another Burn Jita event is that POS managers have too much to do attempting to manage and use POS's. Imagine:
- "I'd have blown Jita to fuck if only I hadn't had to hang around to Deliver some jobs in this Region"
- "I'd have blown Jita to fuck if I could have flown Fuel Blocks out at the same time"
- "I'd have blown Jita to fuck if I hadn't given myself a brain hemorrhage trying to work out optimal POS role organisation"
- "I'd have blown Jita to fuck if I wasn't sat in my space house enjoying the fact that I finally got the fucker in place".
POS role management would be a post all on it's own if it wasn't for the fact that I try to avoid thinking about or having to use it.
Resources
Basics
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Invention
Profit and chance
http://www.eve-market-guide.com/invention.php
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/invention_chance.php
Handy for the shops
http://eve-central.com/
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/market.php?group_id=2
Blogs
http://k162space.com
http://eve-prosper.blogspot.co.uk/
http://jestertrek.blogspot.co.uk
http://greedygoblin.blogspot.co.uk/
EVE TRACK OF THE DAY
Late Night - Foals (just because it's good and air guitar delayed this post even more)
THANK GOD THAT IS OVER.
Saturday, 9 February 2013
Day 239 : London Calling
Here we go. It's the London EVE meet up today and I’m tempted to blog the day live (semi live). My new Nexus 4 phone ( the long lost love of my life ) can handle the blogger app so I might as well give it a go. If this post vanishes or stops then you'll know that I just got drunk instead.
6am : awake for an hour listening to cricket on the radio while having a hangover. Cricket going well. Hangover not so much.
9am : Random industry jobs slowed down by said hangover
11am: Shave head. What? That's what I did.
12pm: Mining, internet nattering, trying to find the name badge from last time that @Heimdall_EVEO made, all while cooking a curry to line my stomach.
I say, this is really thrilling isn't it? You never know whether or not I'll find some paint drying that needs watching.
1pm: Eat curry with tentative, hair of the dog, bottle of San Miguel
2pm : Curse that I forgot the Six Nations was on TV. Head out to find transport.
3pm: ....
This blogging thing isn't going very well is it? That's because the Blogger app is shit. I'll update via twitter and fill this in later.
A wretched hive of scum and villany. We must be cautious.
I head in, grab a pint and head straight back out for a smoke a chat with the guys from RAZOR you can see hanging around that table looking disreputable. Good blokes all of them, I'm regaled with interesting stories about the life in null.
There are a lot of guys from PANDA around who a) are wearing silly hats to prove it and b) have some fun stories about helping out the Brave Newbies. I confess that I wish I'd shot at the Brave Newbies and shouted "LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER" at them in Local. Everybody confesses that they'd like to fly with or like the Brave Newbies.
4pm : Already a couple of pints down I head in to find Heimdall and proudly demonstrate that I still have my badge from last time. He hands me another. I now have two badges. This will help later when I get so drunk I don't remember my own name
5pm : I've forgotten about the rugby which is on the big screen. I chat to a few people and watch a bit of that, pacing myself.
6pm : I'm on the fifth pint already. POS fuel is doing the rounds. I avoid this like an old pro. I drank some of it last time. I get chatting to DJ Wiggles from EVE Radio along with Heimdall who made the badges. I tweet about it and some odd stuff happens. Heimdall stands in front of me and starts shouting "Space Noob!". He hasn't made the connection between Space Noob who I tweet and blog as and the name on my badge. I'm amused that I can tap him on the shoulder and say "I'm here". I'm about to do this when I realise other people have taken up the shout of "Space Noob". This includes @Stevie_SG. Having a highly attractive woman shout "Space Noob" out loud to a pub when you are standing there is a dream like experience I will never forget. I'm momentarily stunned. Before I do something stupid like leap over the table, throw myself at her feet and shout "ta dah!" I tap Heimdall on the shoulder and reintroduce myself.
7pm (ish - I have now lost track of time) : CCP Falcon buys me a drink at the bar. This is so the best meta game in the universe. After this I get recognised outside by some pilots "oh you are THAT Space Noob". This is so gratifying that I put my drink down. I shake hands with people. I pick the drink back up. Internet Spaceship Fame is fleeting but beer is forever.
Some time later : I run into In General who I met at the last EVE meet up. I commiserate about a future without VETO and then proceed to get more drunk and laugh about him having a coat that has way, way too many pockets. An ambulance turns up and I nip inside to double check the pint of Speckled Hen I bought Heimdall hadn't sent him over the edge.
Quite late indeed : I get involved in an intense yet amiable argument about whether they used an ambulance in Cannonball Run I. I say it only happened in the second film. A fellow fan claims it was the first film too. Even the internet can't help us (probably because I'm too drunk to read it). To that pilot (whose name I have, alas, forgotton) kudos on an entertaining drunken argument. I still claim it was the second film only. Get in touch and let me know what you found out.
Even later than that : Quite a few people about are beginning to look worse for wear. One Panda is outside with the smokers trying to get the "fresh" air to sort him out. The smokers are beginning to look like a real world gate camp. I join them and anyone who comes through the door is barracked by cheerful shouts of Internet Spaceship nerdiness.
Far far too late : Well, not that late in reality but very very late in terms of alcohol consumed. I head inside again and realise that I am, in fact, to put it nicely, absolutely fucking pissed. This is unfortunate for Arianne Stone who has to put up with me when I exclaim loudly and excitedly, introduce myself and start "talking". Sorry Arianne. And apologies also to Vincent Rlyeh who I really wanted to talk to but really, really, can't remember much of what I said. Turn up earlier next time! We must go drinking soon.
At some point I head out into the night, take a wrong turn and find myself completely lost. I'm so drunk I can't even read the map correctly so I employ Dirk Gentlys trick of Zen navigation and follow the first thing that looks like it knows where it is going. After a few tries I get the hang of it and wind up at an underground station. It's here that my memory fails me.
MORNING
6 am : I wake up sprawled across my bed. I have dim memories of watching a documentary on Chas and Dave. How surreal is that? One of my hands is lying in a bowl of Singapore Noodles. At least I ate. I watch Match of the Day while trying to recover but after a few hours it becomes clear that this hangover is going to be an all dayer. I head down the local shop for recovery snacks. A neighbour who passes by me gives me an odd look and I wonder if I've done anything to my face. Walking into the shop, I ponder the classic recovery drink Irn Bru. Small bottle or large? Actually, lets just get two large bottles and play it safe. The bloke behind the counter gives me an odd look too and this is when I realise I'm still wearing a badge that says "Cheradenine Harper" in large letters. I decide to drink my Irn Bru and hide from the world all day.
CONCLUSION
Amazing night out. If you ever get chance to go, just go. If you don't know anyone then say hi to a random with a badge when you get there. Every single person I met was open and friendly. If they are not, come say hi to me.
Downsides? Apart from this hangover?
1. The people who didn't make it, friends who I talk to everyday or just on the odd day. You know who you are. Tiger Ears also didn't make it. I've still not shook the hand of the Siren of Scanning that removed my fear of probing, which sounds rude but you know what I mean. Tiger Ears : sort it out.
2. Oddly I felt a little timid at times. The great and the powerful are friendly as hell in real life. I need to get over myself and say hi a lot more than I did.
3. CCP Guard was there and I don't think I said hi. I was a little in awe, I confess.
4. I didn't pace myself. I was still meeting new and interesting people when I was too far gone to enjoy it fully.
5. This hangover really deserves a second mention.
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Day 230 : Cannonball
UPDATED 15/04/2012 : see this http://eveoganda.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-tusker-deathrace.html
Yeah, no posts for a while. I've been stuck in industry which feels like an endless grind that's always but not ever nearly over. I'll post about that soon. Jester stole my thunder on the T2 thing but I'll post a noob guide soon.
On the other hand inspiration struck the other day with the Tuskers announced DEATHRACE
Another piece of epic artwork by Rixx Javix over at http://eveoganda.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/deathrace-is-coming.html. Rixx - if I've been a bad internet person using this Flickr embed then let me know.
Oddly this didn't make me think of Deathrace 2000. It made me think of the Cannonball Run. I couldn't get the theme music out of my head.
Given how cool the Tuskers FFA was I need to go to this event. Given my nature I need to go in the oddest ship possible. So if you see me in a logi cruiser named "Cap'n Chaos" you'll know what I've been channelling. It's not what you do, it's how you do it.
Back to regular posting soon. I promise. At least this one was short.
Yeah, no posts for a while. I've been stuck in industry which feels like an endless grind that's always but not ever nearly over. I'll post about that soon. Jester stole my thunder on the T2 thing but I'll post a noob guide soon.
On the other hand inspiration struck the other day with the Tuskers announced DEATHRACE
Oddly this didn't make me think of Deathrace 2000. It made me think of the Cannonball Run. I couldn't get the theme music out of my head.
Given how cool the Tuskers FFA was I need to go to this event. Given my nature I need to go in the oddest ship possible. So if you see me in a logi cruiser named "Cap'n Chaos" you'll know what I've been channelling. It's not what you do, it's how you do it.
Back to regular posting soon. I promise. At least this one was short.
Monday, 21 January 2013
Day 220: Nipping Down the Local for a Pint
http://freebooted.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/blog-banter-44-is-there-anybody-out.html
At this rate I'm going to be answering more BB's than anything else. I must get back to posting more. Until that point, and unless I decide to write up my epic drunken idea for TrekGateWars (all the Star sci-fi rolled into one) then I'll try a short weigh in on the current Blog Banter Topic.
http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/unbreaking-local/
http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2013/01/getting-rid-of-local.html
http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/more-local.html
When I read these posts I was blown away. In particular I was fascinated by the ideas of Rhavas. Here was a scheme that would transform EVE combat. It would transform it into the ultimate in starship submarine combat. By the time I'd finished digesting it I was practically wearing a sweat soaked Navy uniform and looking tensely at the ceiling as if expecting depth charges. All that was missing was the ability to jettison something from the cargo bay to fake debris before warping off.
Then I thought about it. I thought about when I first went to low sec. I thought about how I could see who is in system instantly. I thought about how I could run for cover when local spiked. I thought how I could judge a system, how I could begin to learn to judge the situation. That was the most important aspect. I had a handle to start to judge the situation in the absence of experience. It made me confident enough to keep trying, to keep going back. Everything else was up in the air. No combat skills, no real knowledge of the attitude of anyone else in low sec (that was provided at the point of a gun later on).
So, what if others like me are coming through? I'm not saying the removal of Local as an intel source is definitely going to make things harder for them. Everything I've read, which sounds cool, sounds more difficult, more complex. The last thing low sec needs is more difficulty. The last thing low sec denizens need is noobs avoiding low sec because it got more difficult. It's all about the New Player Experience these days. Add more skills to that, learned in reality or virtually and gaining that required experience becomes more difficult. Whatever the solution, if anything needs to be done at all, then, well, make sure it doesn't restrict the noobs and doesn't restrict the flow of noobs to those higher up the food chain. This is for everyone and in six months I'm going to need a low sec full of fat cats I can prey on. Don't add something new to learn then I have to keep running to keep up. The Noob Tax was bad enough. Don't add barriers. Keep the Local, local. Keep it full of faces you can recognise before they appear on grid and atomise you three seconds later. Local is fun. Local is a thing. The local is where you go for a pint. It's bad for you but enjoyable. It's almost as bad as that tenuous metaphor.
What about Null? I've hardly been to Null. The cloaky problem? Rhavas already gave you my aforementioned depth charges. I've hardly been there. You sort it out. I'm just a Noob.
Woah. Too serious for me, so here is episode one of TrekGateWars
Jack O'Neill and Han Solo take Kirk aside and attempt to explain the Red Shirt thing. Unfortunately they do this by parading random Red Shirts down the corridor who Solo then shoots. Kirk doesn't get it initially, Jack shouts "crap" everytime a red shirt gets blown away. Kirk is confused and thinks the Red Shirts are all the same guy. Eventually Kirk just says "but doesn't everyone think they are the same guy?", and at that point Teal'q sticks his head round the corner of the door and says "Indeed".
Fly Random.
EVE Track Of The Day
White Shadows - Coldplay
"The local chat channel provides EVE players with an instant source of intel of who is in the system. With a quick glance you can tell who is in system and what your standings are to them. War targets, hated enemies, friends and corp mates all stand out clearly. Is this right? Should we have access to this intel for free with no work or effort? Should the Local chat channel even exist? Should normal space be more like wormhole space where the Local channel appears empty until someone speaks?"
At this rate I'm going to be answering more BB's than anything else. I must get back to posting more. Until that point, and unless I decide to write up my epic drunken idea for TrekGateWars (all the Star sci-fi rolled into one) then I'll try a short weigh in on the current Blog Banter Topic.
http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/unbreaking-local/
http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2013/01/getting-rid-of-local.html
http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/more-local.html
When I read these posts I was blown away. In particular I was fascinated by the ideas of Rhavas. Here was a scheme that would transform EVE combat. It would transform it into the ultimate in starship submarine combat. By the time I'd finished digesting it I was practically wearing a sweat soaked Navy uniform and looking tensely at the ceiling as if expecting depth charges. All that was missing was the ability to jettison something from the cargo bay to fake debris before warping off.
Then I thought about it. I thought about when I first went to low sec. I thought about how I could see who is in system instantly. I thought about how I could run for cover when local spiked. I thought how I could judge a system, how I could begin to learn to judge the situation. That was the most important aspect. I had a handle to start to judge the situation in the absence of experience. It made me confident enough to keep trying, to keep going back. Everything else was up in the air. No combat skills, no real knowledge of the attitude of anyone else in low sec (that was provided at the point of a gun later on).
So, what if others like me are coming through? I'm not saying the removal of Local as an intel source is definitely going to make things harder for them. Everything I've read, which sounds cool, sounds more difficult, more complex. The last thing low sec needs is more difficulty. The last thing low sec denizens need is noobs avoiding low sec because it got more difficult. It's all about the New Player Experience these days. Add more skills to that, learned in reality or virtually and gaining that required experience becomes more difficult. Whatever the solution, if anything needs to be done at all, then, well, make sure it doesn't restrict the noobs and doesn't restrict the flow of noobs to those higher up the food chain. This is for everyone and in six months I'm going to need a low sec full of fat cats I can prey on. Don't add something new to learn then I have to keep running to keep up. The Noob Tax was bad enough. Don't add barriers. Keep the Local, local. Keep it full of faces you can recognise before they appear on grid and atomise you three seconds later. Local is fun. Local is a thing. The local is where you go for a pint. It's bad for you but enjoyable. It's almost as bad as that tenuous metaphor.
What about Null? I've hardly been to Null. The cloaky problem? Rhavas already gave you my aforementioned depth charges. I've hardly been there. You sort it out. I'm just a Noob.
Woah. Too serious for me, so here is episode one of TrekGateWars
Jack O'Neill and Han Solo take Kirk aside and attempt to explain the Red Shirt thing. Unfortunately they do this by parading random Red Shirts down the corridor who Solo then shoots. Kirk doesn't get it initially, Jack shouts "crap" everytime a red shirt gets blown away. Kirk is confused and thinks the Red Shirts are all the same guy. Eventually Kirk just says "but doesn't everyone think they are the same guy?", and at that point Teal'q sticks his head round the corner of the door and says "Indeed".
Fly Random.
EVE Track Of The Day
White Shadows - Coldplay
Friday, 11 January 2013
Day 210 : Just Gimme the Prize : BB43
I will respond to a Blog Banter again one day. Today is that day.
I've been playing EVE for over half a year. It's been a revolution. I'm not sure what the hell is happening to my capsuleer career at the moment, or why, but all that can be dealt with in another post. Here are the Noob Awards for 2012. Lets start with something light.
Best Ship Award
Shiny New Space Ships were my first EVE love. I'm basically a big kid when it comes to games. When could I get a new type of ship? How would I fly it? This feeling has faded somewhat but is in the process of returning as I move back to flight and combat skills in an attempt to try out all frigates and cruisers in combat. What was my favourite ship in 2013? The Federation Navy Comet? I love it for it's looks as much as the fact that I found it a flexible and powerful ship. I managed to speed tank a level three mission in it once. I can't pick it though, it hasn't been used enough and I haven't dared to lose one in PVP. The Dominix? My faithful Space Potato, the roving kennel for the "lads"? Nah. I've not done enough with that either. Level 4 PVE is a little slow for my tastes with my current skills. I'll return to it again once I raise those skills and see what happens. In the end the winner is the trusty, tough, lance weilding all rounder that is the Incursus. I like it's looks, I like it's handling, I've had my favourite fights in it. It was the first ship I wanted a T2 version of (and then couldn't bear to have explode once I had it). Incursus you win. You make me want to explode a lot.
Best Blog Award
Here is an award I wanted to give but almost proved impossible. It could be any of the blogs that appear in the sidebar on this page, plus a few more stashed in various feed readers in a vain attempt to keep up with the entirety of the EVE blogosphere. Who would I choose? Would it be Fiddlers Edge who posts rarely but instantaneously causes me to drop everything and read? He gave me my first review back in the day, dragging me from complete obscurity so I'm glad of that too but it might be a little self serving of me to award it. It could be Mabricks Mumblings, Mabrick who was my first hero in EVE when he defied the Goons way back when. What about A Carbon Based Life where I often find myself agreeing with Tur and his approach and who has now been joined by Mabrick in WH space? (By the way CCP - not a fansite? Are you insane?) The winner could be Jesters Trek, the indispensible juggernaut of EVE blogging. It could be Poetic Discourse, Poetic who is so forthright and brutally honest that he ends up being a drama firehose while at the same time having the calm to advise noobs like myself without looking down on them. Admittedly I love watching that drama from the gallery. Thanks also for telling me what a fleet anchor was ages ago. I could also choose Freebooted by Seismic Stan who runs this whole Blog Banter thing on top of his own great fiction and EVE journalism, a workload I can't even understand. I think I met him once. I was drinking something blue from a bucket though. It could have been anyone, or a hallucination.
I could go on and on and on, I could mention each blog and why I like it so much. Look at the blog roll in the sidebar. It's any and all of them who posted in the last couple of months. I can't choose a best blog but if I had to choose a First Among Equals Blog Award based on who I read most and most eagerly, every day, at the moment, then that award goes to Sugar Kyle for Low Sec Lifestyle. It's everything about an EVE life and, well, just read it ok - it's good and it gets me through the work day.
This award was so hard I can't even bring myself to talk about it any more. When you shave your head you look like an idiot trying to tear your hair out over a decision.
Best EVE Fiction Award
More accurately, who wrote my favourite piece of fiction. Rhavas? Sugar Kyle? I read their blogs regularly and I liked both their recent entries to the fiction competition. They both placed and so they already have awards but that wouldn't stop me giving them another. In the end though the winner is the author of the story that got me reading EVE fiction and in particular a short story that saved one Friday in August from doom and gloom. Drackarn wrote the story that had the most effect on me and the prize goes to him.
http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/fan-fiction-rocked.html
Best Thing I've Done In EVE Award
The Tuskers FFA. No doubt about it. I've been to both. I had to leave the most recent earlier than expected but still had a great laugh. My thanks to all the Tuskers for their hard work and ISK generosity in setting it up. My thanks to everyone who attended and made them great evenings. See you at the third one.
Best Thing About Playing EVE Award
Oddly enough the winner isn't just the glory of Internet Space. The winner isn't writing this blog though it could have been. I've never written anything for public consumption before this and it has been a great experience. The winner for the best thing about playing EVE is the EVE community. I've never felt part of something like this via the internet before. Sure, back in my Warcraft days I had the guilds I was a member of, one of which I still miss, but nothing compares with what I've found here. So to the bloggers, the redditors, #tweetfleet, the VETO London meetup players, the people I've talked to in game and the members of my quiet little corporation (Jax, Dave - WTF are you. Log back in already. The holidays are over) this award goes to you. Thanks for making the year of an nerdy internet space noob.
Worst Thing About EVE Award
Was it learning about ship loss? The fact that in EVE, unlike so many games, the "death" of your character has more impact than just requiring some form of simple resurrection?. No, that's a good thing though it took me a while not to learn not to take it personally. It's part of the game and part of what makes the game so compelling even when mucking around in my extensive periods of carebeariness. Could the worst thing be the Noob Tax? Noob Tax is my name for the need to skill up to avoid the split of Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills along racial lines. I know I'm complaining about gaining but I'm a Noob and it took over a sixth of my young capsuleers life to sort it out. The award was still going to the Noob Tax anyway until just the other day when I found out that the skill split had been put back to the Summer expansion. So, for making me remap too early and wasting my December, I nominate you Delayed Reason For Noob Tax! Here is a picture of your boot award.
For Blog Banter 43 I would like to invite every participant to nominate their peers for whatever awards you think they deserve. Let's start the year with some EVE-flavoured altruism and celebrate the best and the worst of us, the funniest or the most bizarre, the most heroic of the most tragic of the past year. They could be corpmates, adversaries, bloggers, podcasters, developers, journalists or inanimate objects. Go nuts.
I've been playing EVE for over half a year. It's been a revolution. I'm not sure what the hell is happening to my capsuleer career at the moment, or why, but all that can be dealt with in another post. Here are the Noob Awards for 2012. Lets start with something light.
Best Ship Award
Shiny New Space Ships were my first EVE love. I'm basically a big kid when it comes to games. When could I get a new type of ship? How would I fly it? This feeling has faded somewhat but is in the process of returning as I move back to flight and combat skills in an attempt to try out all frigates and cruisers in combat. What was my favourite ship in 2013? The Federation Navy Comet? I love it for it's looks as much as the fact that I found it a flexible and powerful ship. I managed to speed tank a level three mission in it once. I can't pick it though, it hasn't been used enough and I haven't dared to lose one in PVP. The Dominix? My faithful Space Potato, the roving kennel for the "lads"? Nah. I've not done enough with that either. Level 4 PVE is a little slow for my tastes with my current skills. I'll return to it again once I raise those skills and see what happens. In the end the winner is the trusty, tough, lance weilding all rounder that is the Incursus. I like it's looks, I like it's handling, I've had my favourite fights in it. It was the first ship I wanted a T2 version of (and then couldn't bear to have explode once I had it). Incursus you win. You make me want to explode a lot.
Best Blog Award
Here is an award I wanted to give but almost proved impossible. It could be any of the blogs that appear in the sidebar on this page, plus a few more stashed in various feed readers in a vain attempt to keep up with the entirety of the EVE blogosphere. Who would I choose? Would it be Fiddlers Edge who posts rarely but instantaneously causes me to drop everything and read? He gave me my first review back in the day, dragging me from complete obscurity so I'm glad of that too but it might be a little self serving of me to award it. It could be Mabricks Mumblings, Mabrick who was my first hero in EVE when he defied the Goons way back when. What about A Carbon Based Life where I often find myself agreeing with Tur and his approach and who has now been joined by Mabrick in WH space? (By the way CCP - not a fansite? Are you insane?) The winner could be Jesters Trek, the indispensible juggernaut of EVE blogging. It could be Poetic Discourse, Poetic who is so forthright and brutally honest that he ends up being a drama firehose while at the same time having the calm to advise noobs like myself without looking down on them. Admittedly I love watching that drama from the gallery. Thanks also for telling me what a fleet anchor was ages ago. I could also choose Freebooted by Seismic Stan who runs this whole Blog Banter thing on top of his own great fiction and EVE journalism, a workload I can't even understand. I think I met him once. I was drinking something blue from a bucket though. It could have been anyone, or a hallucination.
I could go on and on and on, I could mention each blog and why I like it so much. Look at the blog roll in the sidebar. It's any and all of them who posted in the last couple of months. I can't choose a best blog but if I had to choose a First Among Equals Blog Award based on who I read most and most eagerly, every day, at the moment, then that award goes to Sugar Kyle for Low Sec Lifestyle. It's everything about an EVE life and, well, just read it ok - it's good and it gets me through the work day.
This award was so hard I can't even bring myself to talk about it any more. When you shave your head you look like an idiot trying to tear your hair out over a decision.
Best EVE Fiction Award
More accurately, who wrote my favourite piece of fiction. Rhavas? Sugar Kyle? I read their blogs regularly and I liked both their recent entries to the fiction competition. They both placed and so they already have awards but that wouldn't stop me giving them another. In the end though the winner is the author of the story that got me reading EVE fiction and in particular a short story that saved one Friday in August from doom and gloom. Drackarn wrote the story that had the most effect on me and the prize goes to him.
http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/fan-fiction-rocked.html
Best Thing I've Done In EVE Award
The Tuskers FFA. No doubt about it. I've been to both. I had to leave the most recent earlier than expected but still had a great laugh. My thanks to all the Tuskers for their hard work and ISK generosity in setting it up. My thanks to everyone who attended and made them great evenings. See you at the third one.
Best Thing About Playing EVE Award
Oddly enough the winner isn't just the glory of Internet Space. The winner isn't writing this blog though it could have been. I've never written anything for public consumption before this and it has been a great experience. The winner for the best thing about playing EVE is the EVE community. I've never felt part of something like this via the internet before. Sure, back in my Warcraft days I had the guilds I was a member of, one of which I still miss, but nothing compares with what I've found here. So to the bloggers, the redditors, #tweetfleet, the VETO London meetup players, the people I've talked to in game and the members of my quiet little corporation (Jax, Dave - WTF are you. Log back in already. The holidays are over) this award goes to you. Thanks for making the year of an nerdy internet space noob.
Worst Thing About EVE Award
Was it learning about ship loss? The fact that in EVE, unlike so many games, the "death" of your character has more impact than just requiring some form of simple resurrection?. No, that's a good thing though it took me a while not to learn not to take it personally. It's part of the game and part of what makes the game so compelling even when mucking around in my extensive periods of carebeariness. Could the worst thing be the Noob Tax? Noob Tax is my name for the need to skill up to avoid the split of Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills along racial lines. I know I'm complaining about gaining but I'm a Noob and it took over a sixth of my young capsuleers life to sort it out. The award was still going to the Noob Tax anyway until just the other day when I found out that the skill split had been put back to the Summer expansion. So, for making me remap too early and wasting my December, I nominate you Delayed Reason For Noob Tax! Here is a picture of your boot award.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Day 200 : Space Noob in the ...umm... 21st Century
In the day 200 Space Noob Industries launched a very hungover mining ship.
Aboard this great big space hog a lone capsuleer, Captain S. Noob was to experience extreme boredom beyond all comprehension.
In a freak mishap his entire ship was frozen by lag beyond imagination.
Gold Digger I was blown out of its target belt of Scordite into a grid 1000 times more laggy.
It was a grid that was to return Space Noob to Caslemon .... 365.... DAYS later......
De de duh deeh deeh duh.. etc + Erin Gray (hopefully).
So here I am one year ahead of you, blown into the future by a tragic lag mishap caused by a half assed attempt at building my own shoddy Damage Control II. It's all different in this strange new world.
I undock and find out all my ships have a third more shield and armour. What the hell? It makes fights last slightly longer but perhaps it was the fix to the undock bug where you find you have a third missing from both. A bug where I never found the trigger conditions to report it. Bizzaro. Perhaps it was planned?
I visit themittani.com to see what's happened and use their link to the sov map. Before I can click it I notice the entire site has become crowded with Planetside 2 articles, hemmed in by various articles on big fat combat robots. Planetside 2 has become a dark warground of individuals sniping at their hated enemies. No one goes for the objectives anymore. Guerilla warfare against other outfits rules the entire game. The comment threads are full of DUST players mocking PS2 players for not being intelligent enough to find a fight. PS2 mock DUST players in turn for being nuked from orbit by passing, bored, capsuleers.
Switching back to the Neocom I notice a supercap in the belt. It's mining! When did they allow this? Before I can ask what is going on a horde of T1 cruisers hit the grid, spouting obscenity in local. They tear the supercap apart and then begin to fight over the remains. Most of the pilots are less than two months old, slavering maniacs in charge of guns. It is a cruiser blob. Reavers driven mad by the insane amounts of PVP they can engage in from day one.
I warp to a planet hoping they won't follow but misclick and end up floating above a belt. There are ships here projecting some kind of effect into the rings of the planet. What are they doing? Hoovering up stuff? Half the ships belong to Goons and have escorts of all sizes flying with them. I'm yellowboxed and completely jammed almost instantly by ECM cruisers in the cloud, but I warp to an old safe point just in time.
Something is still on grid! Investigating further I see a strange structure, modular like a huge NASA space station of old. Industry lights some corners of it and a right click reveals the production of biomass in a space conservatory. I fail to see any protection on it, perhaps it can be only dscanned down by randomly pointing into space? As I watch a Tengu uncloaks and begins to shoot at one of the modules, in turn a squad of Battle cruisers unclock, all year old pilots, yet with fearsome DPS, they tear the Tengu apart. I run in fear of noobs having fully skilled BCs.
This kind of space is too freaky for Space Noob, surely some bastion of sanity must exist elsewhere. I set my destination to Jita. On arrival I view a wasteland. Activating a cloak I drift slowly through the wreckage. Local is silent.. Where are all the scammers? Suddenly I notice a lone Iteron on the undock. Local booms out. It is the Knights of the New Order. Trade is now banned without subscription to the New Order and the promise to never autopilot between trade hubs! As I warp out in fear I notice the flayed body of James 315 pinned to the hull of a gank fit Thorax. It looks as if the Knights rose up and immortalised their founder in their quest to prevent anyone playing EVE by other than their own rules.
Where are all the personalities I've enjoyed reading about in the distant past? How many are still with us? A hint leads me back all the way to Old Man Star. I run the blockade of two month old Reavers only just intact and find Old Man Star to be a refuge for any vet' over a year old, fighting a rear guard action against faction fit cruisers flown by five day old characters who have flown out of null ratting sites. Should I call out to the Noobs as their father or should I join with the old guard as I'd originally planned? Null is a desolate wasteland following the cataclysmic war between the Goons and TEST, imitating real world history after a flare up in the Balkans that is the south and south east.
I choose to join the old guard as I had planned to back in the day, too many friends had been made in the past. Tur is there, the grizzled old WH vet with a much scarred Mab at his side, Kyle the Queen of the Rebalanced Nado is there, Kodachi the frigate king, Drack the Destroyer, Fiddle too mocking while Rome burns, Javix the pacifist (he killed too many and now only flies tackle) and too many other notables to mention. The number of pilots online is off the chart. It is time, as Tallahassee once said, to nut up or shut up. EVE is the land of the noobs and their father is coming to meet them with guns, overheated guns with the safety off.
07 EVE.
PS - Apologies all. Back to work tomorrow and that combined with a nice glass of Jura has led me to an irreverent look at the future of EVE. To all those personalities I've followed on Twitter or their blogs, thank you. To all those people I talk with in game, thank you. To all those people who read my drivel, thank you. EVE was the greatest thing in a rough 2012 for me. 2013? Time to nut up or shut up. I'll see you there. It's back to combat come the end of January. Goddamn PI......
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Day 196 : Space Noob P.I.
You have no idea how tempting it was to photoshop my characters head onto a picture of Magnum PI. I couldn't because this post isn't about me becoming a Space Detective and also because I'd have spent the whole time photoshopping perms and mustaches onto my character portrait and cackling like an imbecile. This post is instead about the much duller subject of Planetary Interaction. It is even less interesting than the fact that I don't have Adobe Photoshop and that photoshop has become a verb. I wonder if it is in the dictionary.
My quest for a regular source of income that mining supplements in an emergency rather than the other way around continues. The regular income is intended to get me being blown up more. It is intended to remove the time between losses rather than the negative impact of losses. The negative impact I want to retain, otherwise the fights won't feel as intense. This means the income doesn't have to be high. I'll be in cruisers with the odd BC at maximum. High sec Planetary Interaction is one such source. It requires minimal effort once set up and yet could yield a few cruisers a week if done right. Planned right it might also assist some basic T2 industry.
I finally got around to investigating PI last week. I had my alt trained up with the following skills which took a couple of days.
Command Center Upgrades III ( I was on II when I started and things got tricky)
Remote Sensing III
Planetology III
Interplanetary Consolidation III
(Update from Rhavas at http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/ who suggests getting Advanced Planetology to III at minimum, so do that if you have the time)
I put aside around 6 million. Experiments (or good mistakes) made this a little higher but I had just managed to sell my Christmas gift implants before the market crashed meaning I was a little flush at the time. I think I spent around 10 million. I made this money back but I can't tell you the exact rate as I funnelled some of the products into other purposes and made some more mistakes. After a week you should be generating around a million per planet per day (as long as it isn't just a factory planet but more on that later).
You'll also need to be able to haul a minimum of 1000m3
This allowed me to run three simple planets, none of them particularly efficient but enough to see what the whole thing was about. Whatever I read about PI it didn't seem clear to me what it actually was. Everything seemed to be a confusing mess of maps with circles on them, mentioning stuff while assuming I knew the basic concept. Assuming basic concepts are understood is a real failing in EVE.
DISCLAIMER : This is hi-sec PI. I haven't investigated low or null where resources are richer but taxes vary wildly. I may have made mistakes. This may be a better guide http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Planetary_interaction
WTF DOES PI DO?
PI makes stuff.
NO, I MEAN WTF IS PI?
PI is a method of producing some of the items you see in the market that don't have a corresponding blueprint available and are still on the material component list of other blueprints. An example is Robotics. Look it up in the market. Now look up the blueprint for a Gallente Fuel Block. There is more than one PI produced component on there in addition to Robotics. Some PI produced items are easier to produce than others, there is a tier system that ranks them all. I'll get to this later.
NO, I MEAN WTF IS IT?
Ah you mean that illusive basic concept? PI is a mini game. The nature of the game is I/O. Input/Output. You build a mine (aka Extractor) that produces raw material at a certain rate. This rate differs over time requiring your input at regular periods in order to restart the process before production drops off to nothing. The raw materials are consumed at a certain rate by factories and must be buffered in order that a fresh mine doesn't send stuff to a factory that can't accept it because it is at its processing limit. Excess is wasted without this buffer. The output of these factories can be combined in a different type of factory to produce more complex things at a certain rate. Your job is to design a system (aka Colony) where the rate of production from the factories is maximised by altering the extraction rate of the mines and by having enough factories. The number of things you can build is limited by the power and cpu supplied to the colony which is effectively your Command Center Upgrades skill. Clever designs can increase what you can fit into your colony. In areas other than hi sec you might have to balance the flow between buildings as output outstrips the ability to move it to the next stage. Variance in the location and concentration of raw materials on a planet provides the random element that ensures that there is no guaranteed layout but core concepts ensure some similarity.
HOW LONG DOES PI TAKE?
A variable amount of time to grasp the concept, then set up your planets. Mine took me around four hours to do both but I've since tweaked the setups. After that you'll need to regularly check up on each planet at an interval chosen by you. I've yet to determine the respawn mechanism for the raw materials but it looks like once per day, with a couple of minutes per planet should be fine. Eventually you'll have to collect the output which involves flying to the planet. Depending on the system you set up on a planet you might not have to fly to it for weeks at a time. So basically a single chunk of playing time and then some very small jobs every now and again.
IS IT FREE?
No. It takes a basic investment to build your colony, and later to install upgrades. There are export taxes when removing produced stuff from a planet and then later import taxes if you move that to a planet that needs off world input (eg Planet A and Planet B produce stuff that you combine in a factory on Planet C)
WHY SHOULD I DO IT?
Once set up it is a passive income stream with little effort can be kept up to date using very small segments of time. It won't make you rich in Hi Sec. Imagine 5 minutes over breakfast per day. Had I known that the barrier to several million a day was a 1000m3 hauler and 2 or 3 days skills I'd have done it from day one, seeding one planet at a time to pay for the next. If I ever have a third alt this will be it's first task. Lets say you have the basic skills above on all three characters on your account. It should be able to generate around 3 million a day, 9 million per account per day. With more planets and a second account it starts to look like PLEX money even in hi-sec although clicking around lots of planets every day is going to become highly monotonous and you'll have to research the market well. I am considering it given that I have a high boredom threshold (see earlier ability to mine). Normal mortals would be a drooling mess within days.
It is a very mild amount of fun at the start. Learning the concepts, planning of the set up of the colony and the greed of seeing loot accumulate for doing nothing. Not that much fun after that really, just simple logistics.
It can make you self sufficient in materials for more advanced industry cutting out some travel time and buy order costs.
SHUT UP AND SET ME UP WITH THIS SHIT.
Ok. This is a rough guide to setting up in hi sec. It won't earn much but hopefully should give some basic information on getting up to speed with PI. I learnt a couple of things while writing it so be careful that I haven't gone completely wrong somewhere.
1. The Products
Pick a product that you want to produce. You might want to produce it to sell or as the component for further industry. The product you pick will ultimately be composed of raw materials whose source will be one or more types of planet. Certain raw materials are found on certain types of planet. For example gaseous material like Noble Gas will need a Gas planet in your set up somewhere.
Products vary in their complexity. Firstly there is the raw output of your Extractors. These are "Raw Materials". It takes 3000 of these to produce 20 of the next type of material. These are "Processed Materials" and it takes 40 of two types of these to produce 5 of the next type of product. These are "Refined Commodities" and it takes 10 of two or three types of these to produce 3 of the next type of product. These are "Specialised Commodities" and Robotics is an example of them. There is another tier of products that I haven't investigated where the tiered nature of production isn't as clear. See the following link for the raw data :
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/schematics.php
My aim was Robotics which is made out of Mechanical Parts and Consumer Electronics.
Mechanical Parts are made out of Reactive Metals and Precious Metals (fuck knows why, maybe its like watches or something) which are in turn made from the Raw Materials "Base Metals" and "Noble Metals"
Consumer Electronics are made out of Toxic Metals and Chiral Structures which are in turn made out of the Raw Materials "Heavy Metals" and "Non CS Structures"
(Update from Rhavas at http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/ : try one product per planet in concert with Advanced Planetology for efficiency)
The Raw Materials govern your choice of Planet. This next paragraph is an example of how complex things can get when attempting to describe PI step by step. Read it and then ignore it until you get to the section on Extractors.
All four of my necessary Raw Materials could be found on Plasma planets but there wasn't one nearby and I doubted that with my skills I'd have the power to run four extractors and the necessary factories. I think I could run less extractors and have them extract one material at a time and change that by the day (time consuming and needs cost weighting). Unfortunately I'd have to be lucky with the distribution of the raw materials on the planet and have the willpower to determine the placings correctly and then to micro manage the colony by changing the extracted raw material every now and again. It is easier to plan for, and allowed by the skills above, two types of Raw Material on each of two planets and combining these on a third. Single planet production of tier 3 "Specialised Commodities" is best left for higher skills and planets outside hi-sec which have higher deposits.
The types of planet where Raw Materials can be found are summarised here
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Planetary_Commodities
2. The Command Center
This is where we get into the interface. The Command Center is bought from the market and transported to the planet by you. All the command center does is provide power and CPU to the colony which allow you to install other structures, much as you would fit modules to a ship. As far as I can tell the Command Center doesn't have to be linked into the rest of the colony to power it so we could place it anywhere and have it provide power and processing. However it has some minimal storage and export facilities that you might need later so its handy to position it as the focal point of the colony.
Command Centers are cheap, the cost comes after you position the center and then "upgrade" it which increases the amount of power it provides. The extent to which you can upgrade it is dependant upon your Command Center Upgrades skill.
Firstly scan a suitable planet. It's handy to set up a planet only Overview tab for speed when scanning the planets in system. You'll need the Customs Office around it later on but I dealt with that via bookmarks. You can scan planets in other systems at a distance governed by your Remote Sensing skill.
Right click the planet in the Overview, on screen, on the System info window, or whatever esoteric way you have of looking at planet entries. Select "View in Planet Mode". On the left of the screen you'll see the Viewing Planet Menus. The default mode is "Build" which just lists all the possible things you can build on the planet. You don't need them yet. Click "Scan".
You should be looking at a list of all the Raw Materials available on the planet. The component Raw Materials of your chosen final product should be on it. The graphs to the right of the name indicate the relative amount of deposits. Click on the lowest of your desired Raw Materials
The planet may not have changed in appearance since the default set up is to colour code the full range of deposit density. In hi sec this means that some of your desired deposits will be so low density that you'll have difficulty making out the colour range. The colours can be altered by the slider above the names of the Raw Materials. You should have a mess about with this right now and try the following
1. Increase the colour range of the high value deposits : move the right triangle to the left
2. Increase the colour range of the low value deposits : move the left triangle to the right
3. Alter the range of the scale : the whole set of colours is a slider and can be moved along the scale.
By now you'll have realised that you can get more accurate scans by compressing the slider and making the colour gradations a more precise indicator of deposit concentration.
You are looking for two things
1. The best deposit of the rarest of your desired Raw Materials.
2. A deposit of your other Raw Material(s) near to the first type of deposit.
UPDATE: from Chirality Tisteloin @ChiralityT
"@SpaceNoob1 look at other player's structures while surveying. PI is pretty pvp. Note compression isk/m^3 for higher tier commodities"
You can right click the planet and select "Show/Hide other characters networks". This will display other command centers you can click on to see if others are extracting nearby. I find the things very difficult to see.
How nearby the other deposits are is hard to describe, eventually the distance will eat available power when you start to link things up and I haven't found a useful metric to judge this visually. Let me know if you find one but until then know that the radius of planets differs so an arbitrary fraction of screen space on one planet will be more distance than the same amount of screen space on another planet. With Gas planets being so large this will come back to haunt you later on. As a rule of thumb zoom the planet so that you can see all of it on screen with as little space as possible around the edges. Try and make sure that your Raw Material deposits are no further than a third of the planet from each other. On Gas planets you might want to reduce this further. Of course you can get into the math based on the radius of the planet (the distance from the center to the edge when looking at it flat on) and the power and CPU required per km of link but for your first planet stick with "nearby". More on links later.
Once you have a set of deposits you like then place the command center near one of them. To do this you just fly to the planet, view it, select COMMAND CENTERS from the Build menu, click the entry that appears under that and then click on your desired location on the planet.
To make this permanent you'll need to click the Submit button that appears. This will appear when you make any major changes to a colony. If you've made a mistake you can click Cancel and not waste any money. You'll be clicking the Submit (or the Cancel) whenever you build or alter production.
You can "upgrade" a Command Center to make it provide more power and processing. Click on your newly placed command center and you'll see all the information on it. The button on the far bottom left of this window is the upgrade button. Click it and you'll see how far you can upgrade the center. It will cost money to do so and require a Submit. Don't do this until you get stopped from doing something you want to by running out of power or CPU capacity. While you are there looking at the upgrades check out the other buttons as they'll be used later. Don't worry about them though.
3. The Extractor - where the raw comes from
The next thing you want to build is an Extractor. This is more like the office at the top of a mine than the mine itself. All the mining is done by Extractor Head Units. You can make 10 of these per Extractor and spread them out all around the Extractor itself. Each Unit uses power so you'll start with 3 or 4 per Extractor and maybe increase this later when you upgrade the command center.
Extractors run for a set period of time. Longer periods mean a slower rate of extraction ( and therefore production) but mean you don't have to come back to look at it as often. I generally set the period of time to around 24 hours. The Extractor window will provide the average over time and the cycle rate of extraction (so you get enough out, fast enough to run the factories at the start).
Select EXTRACTOR CONTROL UNITS from the Build menu and then click near the edge of the first deposit you chose above.
Click on the placed Extractor and then click the "Survey for Deposits" button.
Select a Raw Material to mine from the icons in the top right of the resulting window. The planet should colour as if you were doing a scan. You can click back to the main Scan menu to alter this without dismissing the window.
Click one of the circular buttons on the left of the Extractor window, under the title "Extractor Head Units"
A blue circle will have appeared on the planet. Move this around until it is in the densest area of Raw Materials.
Add a couple more and make sure they don't overlap, you'll get red warning indicators where they do. In some cases it might be profitable to overlap slightly so look at the figures change.
Alter the slider at the bottom of the window under "Extraction Area Size".
While you've been doing this you'll have noticed the graph and the "Program Output" (bottom right of the Extractor window) changing. This is the rate at which you'll mine during a set period of time governed by the
"Extraction area size". Changing the "Extraction area size" alters the full duration of your extraction. It also alters the size of the extractor heads so you might need to move them around a bit. You'll be juggling the number of heads and the extraction time with a low power colony so have a mess around and see how high you can get the figures. I tend to aim for multiples of 3000 per hour so I can judge what I am providing to a factory. 6000 per hour of each Raw Material would be ideal as a basic factory consumes this per hour but it might prove difficult to get that at the start, without further upgrades, depending on what you are extracting. Extraction rates vary overtime but the Extractor window displays the average as well as a graph indicating the varying rate.
4. Storage, Links and Routes over those Links.
All that stuff you are extracting has to go somewhere before it can be used. Once it is used the ouput of that factory has to go somewhere. That output may even go to another factory, the output of which also has to be stored. All this can happen with a single storage unit.
There are three different units that can provide storage. Command Centers can store 500m3. It isn't a lot so ignore it for now. Storage Facilities (see the Build menu) can store 12000m3. Launch pads can store 10000m3 and also export stuff. The Launchpad uses the same amount of power as a Storage Facility but a lot more CPU. The CPU amount may become an issue if your Extractor heads are far apart but the storage is likely enough for a hi-sec planet, so unless you have a need for multiple storage facilities (you won't on a hi sec planet) or you have a lot of distance between Raw Material deposits use a Launchpad for storage.
Use the Build menu to place a launchpad. Its under SPACEPORTS on the Build menu. Drop it between your two extractors.
You now need to provide a method of getting Raw Materials into the storage at the launchpad. This is done in two steps.
i) Linking. A link is a railroad between units in your colony. It eats up power and CPU depending on its length. To create one click PLANETARY LINKS in the build menu, select "Create Link", click on your Extractor and then (you should have a white line trailing the cursor by this point) click on the Launchpad. The two units are now linked. Complete this step for the other extractor.
ii) By itself the link does nothing. You must tell the factory to "route" its output to another unit. This routing will utilise the link. Click on the Extractor, then on the Products button, the second from the left along the bottom of the Extractor window. You should see your Raw Material with the words "Not Routed" in red. Click the Raw Material and then the resulting "Create Route" button at the bottom. Click on the Launchpad and then click the Create Route button again. You should see that the link now has an animation effect on one of the two lines making it up. Make sure you click the Submit button above the Build menu. Repeat for any other extractors.
Links have a capacity that, as far as I can tell, you just won't hit in hi-sec. If you do they can be upgraded to carry more but I've never had to do this.
5. Processing. The Factories
With Raw Materials now being extracted, routed to the Launchpad and stored there you now need to do something with them. You could just Export them (see below) but I've never run the math or done market research for how effective that is. Instead I use them to build something else.
Raw Materials are consumed at a rate of 6000m3 per hour by a Basic Industry Facility, ideally your extractors should be routing this (or more) into the Launchpad. Build a Basic Industry Facility as close to the Launchpad as possible. They are under PROCESSORS on the Build menu. Build a Link between it and the Launchpad.
Click on the new Basic Industry Facility and in the new window click the Schematics button. Choose the product you want to make out of your Raw Material and click Install. The factory now knows what it wants to consume and produce.
Click the Products button and use the entry you see to create a route back to the launchpad.
You now need to route stored Raw Material from the Launchpad into this new factory. The Launchpad might not have any storage yet but so there will be nothing we can click in the storage section in order to create a route. Instead we use the Routes button on the Launchpad window. It will have the incoming route from the Extractor listed. Click on the material and a new Create Route button will appear. Use this to create a route to the factory.
By this point you should have Raw Materials routed into the Launchpad then out to the Basic Industry Facility and the results of that routed back into the Launchpad. Repeat this for any other Raw Material you are extracting.
If you have enough power left you can combine the output of two Basic Industry Facilities in an Advanced Industry Facility. The technique is the same as building a Basic Industry Facility. Build it, link it, choose the output Schematic, route the output, use the Launchpad routes list to route the required materials (the output of two Basic Industry Facilities) into the Advanced Industry Facility.
6000m3 each of two types of Raw Material is combined in a Basic Industry Facility to produce 20 units of Processed Material per half hour, or 40 units per hour. 40 units per hour of two or more types is the required input for an Advanced Industry Facility so this is what you want to aim for.
6. Export
After a couple of hours you'll have some final product. You either want to sell this or combine it on a planet that has another setup of factories. I've not got the skills or the hi-sec resources to have a single planet producing the next tier of product but I did use a dedicated colony of factories to combine two tier 2 products into Tier 3 products (Robotics in my case). This involved Exporting from two planets and Importing to a third. Once I have more upgrade skills I may experiment with the extra factory on one of the production planets, cutting out the need for one of the Export/Import steps. I need to have a think about how efficient this is against the saving because export and import cost money. How much more I could make by extracting more instead?
There are two methods of exporting.
You can launch stuff into space from a Command Center. I've only experimented with this. It costs 50% more than exporting to the orbiting Customs Office in hi sec and then you have to fly to pick it up, presuming someone else doesn't get there first. Such launches appear in the Planetary Launches tab of the Journal.
Launching from a Launchpad is the better way to get stuff off planet, at least in hi-sec. To do this you have to be in space. Click on the Launchpad to get the control window up, and then click on the Launch button. All you have to do then is to drag what you want transported from one side of the resulting window to the other and then click the transfer button.
If you want to pick this up then fly to the planets Customs Office and right click it. Select Access Storage and then drag the items from it into your ships cargo bay. You can also cause the launchpad to transfer material from the planet to the Customs Office via the Customs Office window. If you do this then don't forget the second drag step of transferring the result to your cargo bay. I've done this several times and had to fly back to pick up stuff I left in the Customs Office.
The price of export is based on a set base value for the type of material you are exporting. These values are:
Advanced Commodities: 1,350,000.00 ISK
Specialized Commodities: 70,000.00 ISK
Refined Commodities: 9,000.00 ISK
Basic commodities: 500.00 ISK
Planet Resources: 5.00 ISK
These values per unit are altered by the local tax rate. For hi sec this is 10%. So, for example, it costs 900 ISK to export 1 unit of a Refined Commodity (10% of 9000 ISK).
My quest for a regular source of income that mining supplements in an emergency rather than the other way around continues. The regular income is intended to get me being blown up more. It is intended to remove the time between losses rather than the negative impact of losses. The negative impact I want to retain, otherwise the fights won't feel as intense. This means the income doesn't have to be high. I'll be in cruisers with the odd BC at maximum. High sec Planetary Interaction is one such source. It requires minimal effort once set up and yet could yield a few cruisers a week if done right. Planned right it might also assist some basic T2 industry.
I finally got around to investigating PI last week. I had my alt trained up with the following skills which took a couple of days.
Command Center Upgrades III ( I was on II when I started and things got tricky)
Remote Sensing III
Planetology III
Interplanetary Consolidation III
(Update from Rhavas at http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/ who suggests getting Advanced Planetology to III at minimum, so do that if you have the time)
I put aside around 6 million. Experiments (or good mistakes) made this a little higher but I had just managed to sell my Christmas gift implants before the market crashed meaning I was a little flush at the time. I think I spent around 10 million. I made this money back but I can't tell you the exact rate as I funnelled some of the products into other purposes and made some more mistakes. After a week you should be generating around a million per planet per day (as long as it isn't just a factory planet but more on that later).
You'll also need to be able to haul a minimum of 1000m3
This allowed me to run three simple planets, none of them particularly efficient but enough to see what the whole thing was about. Whatever I read about PI it didn't seem clear to me what it actually was. Everything seemed to be a confusing mess of maps with circles on them, mentioning stuff while assuming I knew the basic concept. Assuming basic concepts are understood is a real failing in EVE.
DISCLAIMER : This is hi-sec PI. I haven't investigated low or null where resources are richer but taxes vary wildly. I may have made mistakes. This may be a better guide http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Planetary_interaction
WTF DOES PI DO?
PI makes stuff.
NO, I MEAN WTF IS PI?
PI is a method of producing some of the items you see in the market that don't have a corresponding blueprint available and are still on the material component list of other blueprints. An example is Robotics. Look it up in the market. Now look up the blueprint for a Gallente Fuel Block. There is more than one PI produced component on there in addition to Robotics. Some PI produced items are easier to produce than others, there is a tier system that ranks them all. I'll get to this later.
NO, I MEAN WTF IS IT?
Ah you mean that illusive basic concept? PI is a mini game. The nature of the game is I/O. Input/Output. You build a mine (aka Extractor) that produces raw material at a certain rate. This rate differs over time requiring your input at regular periods in order to restart the process before production drops off to nothing. The raw materials are consumed at a certain rate by factories and must be buffered in order that a fresh mine doesn't send stuff to a factory that can't accept it because it is at its processing limit. Excess is wasted without this buffer. The output of these factories can be combined in a different type of factory to produce more complex things at a certain rate. Your job is to design a system (aka Colony) where the rate of production from the factories is maximised by altering the extraction rate of the mines and by having enough factories. The number of things you can build is limited by the power and cpu supplied to the colony which is effectively your Command Center Upgrades skill. Clever designs can increase what you can fit into your colony. In areas other than hi sec you might have to balance the flow between buildings as output outstrips the ability to move it to the next stage. Variance in the location and concentration of raw materials on a planet provides the random element that ensures that there is no guaranteed layout but core concepts ensure some similarity.
HOW LONG DOES PI TAKE?
A variable amount of time to grasp the concept, then set up your planets. Mine took me around four hours to do both but I've since tweaked the setups. After that you'll need to regularly check up on each planet at an interval chosen by you. I've yet to determine the respawn mechanism for the raw materials but it looks like once per day, with a couple of minutes per planet should be fine. Eventually you'll have to collect the output which involves flying to the planet. Depending on the system you set up on a planet you might not have to fly to it for weeks at a time. So basically a single chunk of playing time and then some very small jobs every now and again.
IS IT FREE?
No. It takes a basic investment to build your colony, and later to install upgrades. There are export taxes when removing produced stuff from a planet and then later import taxes if you move that to a planet that needs off world input (eg Planet A and Planet B produce stuff that you combine in a factory on Planet C)
WHY SHOULD I DO IT?
Once set up it is a passive income stream with little effort can be kept up to date using very small segments of time. It won't make you rich in Hi Sec. Imagine 5 minutes over breakfast per day. Had I known that the barrier to several million a day was a 1000m3 hauler and 2 or 3 days skills I'd have done it from day one, seeding one planet at a time to pay for the next. If I ever have a third alt this will be it's first task. Lets say you have the basic skills above on all three characters on your account. It should be able to generate around 3 million a day, 9 million per account per day. With more planets and a second account it starts to look like PLEX money even in hi-sec although clicking around lots of planets every day is going to become highly monotonous and you'll have to research the market well. I am considering it given that I have a high boredom threshold (see earlier ability to mine). Normal mortals would be a drooling mess within days.
It is a very mild amount of fun at the start. Learning the concepts, planning of the set up of the colony and the greed of seeing loot accumulate for doing nothing. Not that much fun after that really, just simple logistics.
It can make you self sufficient in materials for more advanced industry cutting out some travel time and buy order costs.
SHUT UP AND SET ME UP WITH THIS SHIT.
Ok. This is a rough guide to setting up in hi sec. It won't earn much but hopefully should give some basic information on getting up to speed with PI. I learnt a couple of things while writing it so be careful that I haven't gone completely wrong somewhere.
1. The Products
Pick a product that you want to produce. You might want to produce it to sell or as the component for further industry. The product you pick will ultimately be composed of raw materials whose source will be one or more types of planet. Certain raw materials are found on certain types of planet. For example gaseous material like Noble Gas will need a Gas planet in your set up somewhere.
Products vary in their complexity. Firstly there is the raw output of your Extractors. These are "Raw Materials". It takes 3000 of these to produce 20 of the next type of material. These are "Processed Materials" and it takes 40 of two types of these to produce 5 of the next type of product. These are "Refined Commodities" and it takes 10 of two or three types of these to produce 3 of the next type of product. These are "Specialised Commodities" and Robotics is an example of them. There is another tier of products that I haven't investigated where the tiered nature of production isn't as clear. See the following link for the raw data :
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/schematics.php
My aim was Robotics which is made out of Mechanical Parts and Consumer Electronics.
Mechanical Parts are made out of Reactive Metals and Precious Metals (fuck knows why, maybe its like watches or something) which are in turn made from the Raw Materials "Base Metals" and "Noble Metals"
Consumer Electronics are made out of Toxic Metals and Chiral Structures which are in turn made out of the Raw Materials "Heavy Metals" and "Non CS Structures"
(Update from Rhavas at http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/ : try one product per planet in concert with Advanced Planetology for efficiency)
The Raw Materials govern your choice of Planet. This next paragraph is an example of how complex things can get when attempting to describe PI step by step. Read it and then ignore it until you get to the section on Extractors.
All four of my necessary Raw Materials could be found on Plasma planets but there wasn't one nearby and I doubted that with my skills I'd have the power to run four extractors and the necessary factories. I think I could run less extractors and have them extract one material at a time and change that by the day (time consuming and needs cost weighting). Unfortunately I'd have to be lucky with the distribution of the raw materials on the planet and have the willpower to determine the placings correctly and then to micro manage the colony by changing the extracted raw material every now and again. It is easier to plan for, and allowed by the skills above, two types of Raw Material on each of two planets and combining these on a third. Single planet production of tier 3 "Specialised Commodities" is best left for higher skills and planets outside hi-sec which have higher deposits.
The types of planet where Raw Materials can be found are summarised here
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Planetary_Commodities
2. The Command Center
This is where we get into the interface. The Command Center is bought from the market and transported to the planet by you. All the command center does is provide power and CPU to the colony which allow you to install other structures, much as you would fit modules to a ship. As far as I can tell the Command Center doesn't have to be linked into the rest of the colony to power it so we could place it anywhere and have it provide power and processing. However it has some minimal storage and export facilities that you might need later so its handy to position it as the focal point of the colony.
Command Centers are cheap, the cost comes after you position the center and then "upgrade" it which increases the amount of power it provides. The extent to which you can upgrade it is dependant upon your Command Center Upgrades skill.
Firstly scan a suitable planet. It's handy to set up a planet only Overview tab for speed when scanning the planets in system. You'll need the Customs Office around it later on but I dealt with that via bookmarks. You can scan planets in other systems at a distance governed by your Remote Sensing skill.
Right click the planet in the Overview, on screen, on the System info window, or whatever esoteric way you have of looking at planet entries. Select "View in Planet Mode". On the left of the screen you'll see the Viewing Planet Menus. The default mode is "Build" which just lists all the possible things you can build on the planet. You don't need them yet. Click "Scan".
You should be looking at a list of all the Raw Materials available on the planet. The component Raw Materials of your chosen final product should be on it. The graphs to the right of the name indicate the relative amount of deposits. Click on the lowest of your desired Raw Materials
The planet may not have changed in appearance since the default set up is to colour code the full range of deposit density. In hi sec this means that some of your desired deposits will be so low density that you'll have difficulty making out the colour range. The colours can be altered by the slider above the names of the Raw Materials. You should have a mess about with this right now and try the following
1. Increase the colour range of the high value deposits : move the right triangle to the left
2. Increase the colour range of the low value deposits : move the left triangle to the right
3. Alter the range of the scale : the whole set of colours is a slider and can be moved along the scale.
By now you'll have realised that you can get more accurate scans by compressing the slider and making the colour gradations a more precise indicator of deposit concentration.
You are looking for two things
1. The best deposit of the rarest of your desired Raw Materials.
2. A deposit of your other Raw Material(s) near to the first type of deposit.
UPDATE: from Chirality Tisteloin @ChiralityT
"@SpaceNoob1 look at other player's structures while surveying. PI is pretty pvp. Note compression isk/m^3 for higher tier commodities"
You can right click the planet and select "Show/Hide other characters networks". This will display other command centers you can click on to see if others are extracting nearby. I find the things very difficult to see.
How nearby the other deposits are is hard to describe, eventually the distance will eat available power when you start to link things up and I haven't found a useful metric to judge this visually. Let me know if you find one but until then know that the radius of planets differs so an arbitrary fraction of screen space on one planet will be more distance than the same amount of screen space on another planet. With Gas planets being so large this will come back to haunt you later on. As a rule of thumb zoom the planet so that you can see all of it on screen with as little space as possible around the edges. Try and make sure that your Raw Material deposits are no further than a third of the planet from each other. On Gas planets you might want to reduce this further. Of course you can get into the math based on the radius of the planet (the distance from the center to the edge when looking at it flat on) and the power and CPU required per km of link but for your first planet stick with "nearby". More on links later.
Once you have a set of deposits you like then place the command center near one of them. To do this you just fly to the planet, view it, select COMMAND CENTERS from the Build menu, click the entry that appears under that and then click on your desired location on the planet.
To make this permanent you'll need to click the Submit button that appears. This will appear when you make any major changes to a colony. If you've made a mistake you can click Cancel and not waste any money. You'll be clicking the Submit (or the Cancel) whenever you build or alter production.
You can "upgrade" a Command Center to make it provide more power and processing. Click on your newly placed command center and you'll see all the information on it. The button on the far bottom left of this window is the upgrade button. Click it and you'll see how far you can upgrade the center. It will cost money to do so and require a Submit. Don't do this until you get stopped from doing something you want to by running out of power or CPU capacity. While you are there looking at the upgrades check out the other buttons as they'll be used later. Don't worry about them though.
3. The Extractor - where the raw comes from
The next thing you want to build is an Extractor. This is more like the office at the top of a mine than the mine itself. All the mining is done by Extractor Head Units. You can make 10 of these per Extractor and spread them out all around the Extractor itself. Each Unit uses power so you'll start with 3 or 4 per Extractor and maybe increase this later when you upgrade the command center.
Extractors run for a set period of time. Longer periods mean a slower rate of extraction ( and therefore production) but mean you don't have to come back to look at it as often. I generally set the period of time to around 24 hours. The Extractor window will provide the average over time and the cycle rate of extraction (so you get enough out, fast enough to run the factories at the start).
Select EXTRACTOR CONTROL UNITS from the Build menu and then click near the edge of the first deposit you chose above.
Click on the placed Extractor and then click the "Survey for Deposits" button.
Select a Raw Material to mine from the icons in the top right of the resulting window. The planet should colour as if you were doing a scan. You can click back to the main Scan menu to alter this without dismissing the window.
Click one of the circular buttons on the left of the Extractor window, under the title "Extractor Head Units"
A blue circle will have appeared on the planet. Move this around until it is in the densest area of Raw Materials.
Add a couple more and make sure they don't overlap, you'll get red warning indicators where they do. In some cases it might be profitable to overlap slightly so look at the figures change.
Alter the slider at the bottom of the window under "Extraction Area Size".
While you've been doing this you'll have noticed the graph and the "Program Output" (bottom right of the Extractor window) changing. This is the rate at which you'll mine during a set period of time governed by the
"Extraction area size". Changing the "Extraction area size" alters the full duration of your extraction. It also alters the size of the extractor heads so you might need to move them around a bit. You'll be juggling the number of heads and the extraction time with a low power colony so have a mess around and see how high you can get the figures. I tend to aim for multiples of 3000 per hour so I can judge what I am providing to a factory. 6000 per hour of each Raw Material would be ideal as a basic factory consumes this per hour but it might prove difficult to get that at the start, without further upgrades, depending on what you are extracting. Extraction rates vary overtime but the Extractor window displays the average as well as a graph indicating the varying rate.
4. Storage, Links and Routes over those Links.
All that stuff you are extracting has to go somewhere before it can be used. Once it is used the ouput of that factory has to go somewhere. That output may even go to another factory, the output of which also has to be stored. All this can happen with a single storage unit.
There are three different units that can provide storage. Command Centers can store 500m3. It isn't a lot so ignore it for now. Storage Facilities (see the Build menu) can store 12000m3. Launch pads can store 10000m3 and also export stuff. The Launchpad uses the same amount of power as a Storage Facility but a lot more CPU. The CPU amount may become an issue if your Extractor heads are far apart but the storage is likely enough for a hi-sec planet, so unless you have a need for multiple storage facilities (you won't on a hi sec planet) or you have a lot of distance between Raw Material deposits use a Launchpad for storage.
Use the Build menu to place a launchpad. Its under SPACEPORTS on the Build menu. Drop it between your two extractors.
You now need to provide a method of getting Raw Materials into the storage at the launchpad. This is done in two steps.
i) Linking. A link is a railroad between units in your colony. It eats up power and CPU depending on its length. To create one click PLANETARY LINKS in the build menu, select "Create Link", click on your Extractor and then (you should have a white line trailing the cursor by this point) click on the Launchpad. The two units are now linked. Complete this step for the other extractor.
ii) By itself the link does nothing. You must tell the factory to "route" its output to another unit. This routing will utilise the link. Click on the Extractor, then on the Products button, the second from the left along the bottom of the Extractor window. You should see your Raw Material with the words "Not Routed" in red. Click the Raw Material and then the resulting "Create Route" button at the bottom. Click on the Launchpad and then click the Create Route button again. You should see that the link now has an animation effect on one of the two lines making it up. Make sure you click the Submit button above the Build menu. Repeat for any other extractors.
Links have a capacity that, as far as I can tell, you just won't hit in hi-sec. If you do they can be upgraded to carry more but I've never had to do this.
5. Processing. The Factories
With Raw Materials now being extracted, routed to the Launchpad and stored there you now need to do something with them. You could just Export them (see below) but I've never run the math or done market research for how effective that is. Instead I use them to build something else.
Raw Materials are consumed at a rate of 6000m3 per hour by a Basic Industry Facility, ideally your extractors should be routing this (or more) into the Launchpad. Build a Basic Industry Facility as close to the Launchpad as possible. They are under PROCESSORS on the Build menu. Build a Link between it and the Launchpad.
Click on the new Basic Industry Facility and in the new window click the Schematics button. Choose the product you want to make out of your Raw Material and click Install. The factory now knows what it wants to consume and produce.
Click the Products button and use the entry you see to create a route back to the launchpad.
You now need to route stored Raw Material from the Launchpad into this new factory. The Launchpad might not have any storage yet but so there will be nothing we can click in the storage section in order to create a route. Instead we use the Routes button on the Launchpad window. It will have the incoming route from the Extractor listed. Click on the material and a new Create Route button will appear. Use this to create a route to the factory.
By this point you should have Raw Materials routed into the Launchpad then out to the Basic Industry Facility and the results of that routed back into the Launchpad. Repeat this for any other Raw Material you are extracting.
If you have enough power left you can combine the output of two Basic Industry Facilities in an Advanced Industry Facility. The technique is the same as building a Basic Industry Facility. Build it, link it, choose the output Schematic, route the output, use the Launchpad routes list to route the required materials (the output of two Basic Industry Facilities) into the Advanced Industry Facility.
6000m3 each of two types of Raw Material is combined in a Basic Industry Facility to produce 20 units of Processed Material per half hour, or 40 units per hour. 40 units per hour of two or more types is the required input for an Advanced Industry Facility so this is what you want to aim for.
6. Export
After a couple of hours you'll have some final product. You either want to sell this or combine it on a planet that has another setup of factories. I've not got the skills or the hi-sec resources to have a single planet producing the next tier of product but I did use a dedicated colony of factories to combine two tier 2 products into Tier 3 products (Robotics in my case). This involved Exporting from two planets and Importing to a third. Once I have more upgrade skills I may experiment with the extra factory on one of the production planets, cutting out the need for one of the Export/Import steps. I need to have a think about how efficient this is against the saving because export and import cost money. How much more I could make by extracting more instead?
There are two methods of exporting.
You can launch stuff into space from a Command Center. I've only experimented with this. It costs 50% more than exporting to the orbiting Customs Office in hi sec and then you have to fly to pick it up, presuming someone else doesn't get there first. Such launches appear in the Planetary Launches tab of the Journal.
Launching from a Launchpad is the better way to get stuff off planet, at least in hi-sec. To do this you have to be in space. Click on the Launchpad to get the control window up, and then click on the Launch button. All you have to do then is to drag what you want transported from one side of the resulting window to the other and then click the transfer button.
If you want to pick this up then fly to the planets Customs Office and right click it. Select Access Storage and then drag the items from it into your ships cargo bay. You can also cause the launchpad to transfer material from the planet to the Customs Office via the Customs Office window. If you do this then don't forget the second drag step of transferring the result to your cargo bay. I've done this several times and had to fly back to pick up stuff I left in the Customs Office.
The price of export is based on a set base value for the type of material you are exporting. These values are:
Advanced Commodities: 1,350,000.00 ISK
Specialized Commodities: 70,000.00 ISK
Refined Commodities: 9,000.00 ISK
Basic commodities: 500.00 ISK
Planet Resources: 5.00 ISK
These values per unit are altered by the local tax rate. For hi sec this is 10%. So, for example, it costs 900 ISK to export 1 unit of a Refined Commodity (10% of 9000 ISK).
If you have a multi planet system of production you'll have to factor both this cost and the subsequent import cost into your profit margins. I need to look at this myself to see if it is cheaper in hi sec to have the third tier factory on one of the tier 2 production colonies. I'd have done this already if it wasn't the holidays. I can only think so much when I'm off work.
7. Import
Importing is the reverse of Exporting.
It too costs money, 50% of the Export cost (see above)
Fly to a planet with material in your hold, Access Storage on the Customs Office, drag the materials across, and then click the transfer button. If the planets Launchpad has routes set up then these materials will be instantly in use.
8. Examples
I have another planet on an alt which just has factories to produce Robotics but it needs cleaning up after being created with a useless storage unit. Think of it as a launchpad surrounded by factories and no extractors.
9. Further work
All this is just the result of a basic investigation one afternoon. I need to have more of a think about what I am producing and where I am producing it to see if more complex setups yield more ISK value. See the eveonline wiki entry in the References below for the 3 product planet example for another kind of colony I need to investigate.
9. References (aka better and non noobish descriptions)
http://eveplanets.com (thanks to Thighzen in the comments and a couple of other people who mentioned it)
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Planetary_interaction
http://community.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1332468
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/schematics.php
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Planetary_Commodities
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Colony_Management
http://talocanunited.com/wordpress/guides-new-wormhole-planetary-interaction-pi/
http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?436-PI-A-quick-and-dirty-robotics-setup
EVE Track of the Day
Still Life - The Horrors
PS. Thank Fuck that's over.
7. Import
Importing is the reverse of Exporting.
It too costs money, 50% of the Export cost (see above)
Fly to a planet with material in your hold, Access Storage on the Customs Office, drag the materials across, and then click the transfer button. If the planets Launchpad has routes set up then these materials will be instantly in use.
8. Examples
Two Extractors, two Basic Industrial facilities and a single Advanced Industry Facility. Produces Coolant for export.
Producing just Oxygen using a crowd of Basic Industry Facilities. This was before Command Center Upgrades III and needs another Extractor to be fully efficient with 5 Basic Industry facilities.
Another 2/2/1 setup but where I ran out of power to have enough extractor heads for fully efficient use. Again waiting for a third Command Center upgrade.
I have another planet on an alt which just has factories to produce Robotics but it needs cleaning up after being created with a useless storage unit. Think of it as a launchpad surrounded by factories and no extractors.
9. Further work
All this is just the result of a basic investigation one afternoon. I need to have more of a think about what I am producing and where I am producing it to see if more complex setups yield more ISK value. See the eveonline wiki entry in the References below for the 3 product planet example for another kind of colony I need to investigate.
9. References (aka better and non noobish descriptions)
http://eveplanets.com (thanks to Thighzen in the comments and a couple of other people who mentioned it)
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Planetary_interaction
http://community.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1332468
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/schematics.php
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Planetary_Commodities
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Colony_Management
http://talocanunited.com/wordpress/guides-new-wormhole-planetary-interaction-pi/
http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?436-PI-A-quick-and-dirty-robotics-setup
EVE Track of the Day
Still Life - The Horrors
PS. Thank Fuck that's over.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)