Day 24 : Back in the Saddle

I'm back in London. I have the day off. This is a good job considering the combined impact of eating a week long illness cake with an insomnia layer and a lager based icing.

I'm not for razzing 10 million on the retriever down in Gallente safe space, just because it is safe and nearby. I'm going to Jita. 30 minutes left on the skill queue. There is time enough to jump in a shuttle and head up to Jita. Time enough to forget all the upgrades I had planned to fit to the Retriever and leave them all behind...

I zoom up to Jita and get a Retriever for 8.2 million. A nice saving. I buy the Strip Miner lasers while I'm here. I'm hardly saving on these but I'm here. I have the Retriever now - on day 24! It looks like the bastard offspring of a TIE fighter and a 19th century cotton mill.

Jita is packed. Back in my quiet home system you'd be lucky to see 20 people locally. The Jita system has 1100 when I am there. It's noisy.

At this point I realise I have forgotten all the other gear and I've just equipped 5 million in mining laser tech. Remember the EVE rule about not flying what you can't afford to lose? I'm going to chance it aren't I? It's safe space. I could make the money back in a day or so. Idiot that I am I launch. I launch into the constant sound of local explosions from the constant PVP battles that go on outside the station.

I get blown to kingdom come by a ganker high on Monday afternoon day time TV. Jeremy Kyle is more terrifying when you realise the shows "guests" (contestants) might be out here flying star ships full of guns. 13 million credits down the pan in seconds.

Actually - that isn't what happens. That should have happened, and I spent a good 15 minutes expecting it to happen. 15 minutes of sheer anxiety and terror is what actually occurs. I've already realised that the ship I am now piloting is a beast. Slow moving and slow handling. A turn seems to take the same time as a trip round half the system. I'm jumping and warping on manual for safety but I don't realise the ships warp engine is a massive power drain. It cuts out at one point where the warp to the next jump gate is on the other side of the system. I nearly have a heart attack until I realise that no one is going to be floating out in the middle of nowhere. I'm at least 2 AUs from anything out here. Time to calm down and let the capacitors recharge. Floating in space doing bugger all does nothing for my nerves.

Fortunately I make it, the next few jump gates aren't positioned on the other side of the system I'm jumping from. Docking at home still causes me to jump up and dance around with relief. This is an idiotic thing to do. Not because I'm dancing around over a fake starship making a run through safe space where nothing was going to happen but because the first thing I'm going to do with said ship is sit in space mining and waiting for someone to turn up and blow it to hell.

Realisation of this becomes worse when I find out my intended "fit", the equipment I was going to carry, won't fit on the ship due to CPU restrictions. I need more skills in fitting shielding equipment. I can wait for ages for this or not. Sod that. I gear it in armour, further slowing it down. I include fighting drone ships rather than mining drones, decreasing my mining rate. It's better to burn out than to fade away right? I launch and head to my usual mining spot.

There is already a rat at my usual spot. I spend some time in seconds that feel like hours watching my shields take a pounding before I remember to set the drones on the rat. Another sigh of relief.

Here is the good bit. I've underestimated the mining yield. I thought it would be just under twice what I was doing. It's just under three times what I was doing. I feel like I'm printing money from rock here.

At this point I get a server shutdown notice. Typical. My first outside the regular morning slot and just when I got started. I can't leave the ship out here. I'd never survive until the server came back. The ship would, my real life self would not. You can only bite your nails so far until you are actually just chewing your fingers off.

At least my skills were be ticking over. After spending the last six days learning high levels in just two skills it is entertaining to get to level one in a series of many skill learning jobs I'd been putting off until the mining barge was ready.

I spend a while uber mining. It's a shame I have to pay attention to it every three minutes to transfer ore to cans. A couple of things slow me down. Caslemon seems to have got very busy. I might make another move. Not only are there more players around, some behaving very oddly, but there seem to be more rats. It might be me being paranoid about flying around in what is potentially 13 million credits worth of scrap metal.

The other thing that slows me down is that the buy orders on ore in the vicinity have dropped. The other day I could sell in system for 59 credits a unit. Today I can only get about 40. I can still sell at a decent price in the region about six jumps away but it is set at station range so I have two options. I can cart it down there myself or I can set up a courier contract to get someone else to take it down there where I can sell it remotely. The latter would probably wipe out half of the extra profit while allowing me to mine more. IF someone picks up the contract. Alternatively I can take a risk and autopilot it down there while watching TV. I can switch back and forth in the adverts and do the next run. I wouldn't make much of a target the ore is too low value by volume. If I do make a good target for a bored Monday evening suicide ganker then I'll just put the insurance money towards buying a bigger hauler! Win win. I'm off to watch some telly.

I'm about to start it when I hear the target lock notification going off in the background. Quickly I flip back into EVE. A Tornado, a half a kilometre tall battlecruiser is targeting me. He's probably noticed I'm on autopilot and is doing it just to be an arse, he won't waste 74 million credits of ship on the likes of my paltry cargo. He is drifting closer. Just to spit in his face I kick in the afterburner, match his speed, get to the gate and jump and warp on manual. I told you there would be some Monday dickheads around!

EVE track of the day.

I don't like a lot of the stuff on EVEs in built jukebox for some reason so I'm coming up with my own list. Today's track, dedicated to people (see the day 23 + day 24 post) who think the game is just a spreadsheet!

AC-DC : Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be