Day 87 : Margins Of Fear

I decide to invest some of my earlier windfall money. The way I decide to do this is an insane run to Jita from Dodixie in the smallest ship I can bear to do it in. I settle on the Incursus which is a bad choice because the tank isn’t enough to make a difference to a suicide ganker at all and it really isn’t that fast. Basically I’m headed to Jita with 160 million ISK in the boot of a ship which couldn’t resist the alpha strike of a battlecruiser fit by a noob with a hangover. I’ve been that noob. I know that hangover. I fail at alpha. In addition to my bad ship choice I’m also going to sell this 160 million straight to buy orders I know are waiting.

So basically I’m following the most stupid plan I’ve ever come up with. I’m not thinking clearly and some part of me wants the adrenaline rush to wake up. Another part of me is screaming at me to abandon this plan but fortunately it can’t scream loudly enough when I’m this tired, at least until two cups of tea have been consumed.

I’m selling to buy orders. Another big bad from the traders handbook of thou shalt not. Why am I doing this? Basically the whole run is an experiment. Firstly, most importantly, do I have the balls to make the run? I know I’ve got this sorted, more balls than sense and definitely more balls than skill. I’m really running it for the rush. Sometimes you have to go out and do something random to avoid skill queue born stagnation. It’s nice to have a reasonable excuse for doing so but it’s a bloody lie in this case. Secondly, least importantly, can I make money from it in the fastest possible way? If I can do that then I can definitely make more money from it later. I can optimise the details on subsequent runs so that the sales take longer but the profit margins are larger.

Heres a tip when it comes to profit margins on dangerous trade runs that you are running without actually having woke up, let alone thought through. EVE has sales tax. I know this. My brain chooses not to remind me of it at this time.

I get to Jita in around fifteen minutes with the only pause along the way being a cackle and certain gesture at my monitor as I navigate the gank rapids of Uedama. High on the rush I decide to sell one of the items, the highest priced one, at my own price. This is why I spend the next few minutes in a panic, because when partially asleep and at the same time pumped up on adrenaline I am apparently not good at typing the correct amount of digits into a box. You can only click so fast to cancel an order. I think I manage this and expect to get the item back after a delay.  Instead the money comes through for a sale..... It looks like I managed to enter the correct number of digits. The relief is enough to salve the wounds of unanticipated sales tax but it’ll be a long while before I do this little job again. It needs more planning and a faster ship.

I spend the majority of the day working from home while waiting for a plumber who never turns up. This too is annoying, but not quite as much as “holy crap I just flushed 100 mill down the toilet with a keystroke” would have been annoying.

Later I feel the need to go and do something relaxing with a guaranteed income. I wonder why? I go back to the mining missions. Easy, relaxing, guaranteed income, standing increase. It’s basically taking the drones (aka “the lads”) out for a walk, as if they were space dogs. 

I spend some time working out what the LP rewards are worth. I read somewhere that a rule of thumb is 1000 ISK  per LP. There seems to be a lot of variance in the market over what I can buy from the LP store and sell. Currently I’ve got around 10K LP with the corporation I’ve been doing mining missions for, and I should be able to translate that into around ten million ISK. I’m not sure what the pure ISK rewards have been while I’ve been rolling through the missions as an easy standings grind. I know that they aren’t as economically efficient as normal mining (or just about anything else for that matter) but it wasn’t about that, it was about a relaxing and easy way to make some cash and standings at the same time. If I’d played EVE by the economics book then I’d have a) gone mad or b) gone back to warcraft or c) bored myself, and anyone who read this blog, to death.

Playing the game in whatever way you want is more important than anything else. If you are in the game at the point where what you want to do requires stacks of cash then by all means grind it the fastest way possible. If you have carebear tendencies then play it like Elite as I often do. I’m just here to chill out after work, investigate how everything works, and entertain myself as much as possible.

Factional Warfare reminds me of this game vs game cash problem. Despite living in a Federal Defence Union station I haven’t got around to looking into FW. I read on http://jestertrek.blogspot.co.uk/ that there is stacks and stacks of cash to be made from manipulating the Factional Warfare system and I should be doing it. I’m intrigued by the Factional Warfare system, I’d like nothing better than to face off against the squids (as far as I can make out the term “squids” comes from Caldari-Amarr being merged to form calamari) with a bunch of Gallente and our rust belt pals. I just don’t want to do it now.

Far down the line I’m going to regret that I don’t have the cash from having not done this now. If the mechanic is still available in a year or two I don’t doubt I’ll be milking it faster than a dairy farmer on amphetamines. My regret, though, won’t be as great as it would had I done it and not had to worry about money during this early phase of the game. That ISK barrier is something to be enjoyed. Striving against it and raising cash your own way is part of the achievement and I’m afraid of removing it in case I ruin the experience. It’s like when you roll an alt in warcraft of a class you have never played. The experience isn’t the same as your first character not just because you’ve played the game before but because you inevitably mail it a ton of gold (if only you could rob the mail) and gear and so have less difficulty and less to overcome. I’m even  unsure of how I feel about my earlier windfall, which is probably one reason I’m so willing to risk it stupidly.

Sure, I could run Faction Warfare for ISK and then exclusively convert it to PLEX to pay for my subscription but I’d just have spent my time in game doing that. Playing to pay to play. It would feel mechanical without being “in character” mechanical (or mining as it is otherwise known). I’ve too many other fish to fry, or whatever the EVE version is (too many ‘roids to roast?), for now.

Or, possibly, I’m just a masochist and should get over myself and try it once.....

(Comedy) EVE Track of the Day

Money, Money, Money - Abba