A Scientist's Life in Eve

Welcome to the twenty-sixth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic was proposed by @KatiaSae of the much praised “To Boldly Go” blog. Katia asks: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As an astrophotographer, I’ve found it in the stars and planets of New Eden. Where have you found it? Perhaps you’ve found beauty in the ships we fly? Maybe it’s the sight of profits being added to your bottom line? Or maybe it’s the pilot portraits you see in the comm channels? Where ever you’ve found it, write about it and post an image.” Don’t be afraid go beyond the simple visual aspects of EVE as well. Is the EVE Community in itself a thing of beauty? What makes EVE the game, the world, the Community, so appealing to you?

Where do you start with a topic like this?  There is, of course, the obvious place, which is undocked in your favourite ship against some backdrop with all the graphics settings set to maximum.

My legion in front of an Amarr station

For me, Eve visually is nice but not superb.  That’s not to say it isn’t superb, but as I run Eve on a laptop computer (and regularly attempt to dual screen on such), I have to have all the graphics settings set to either off or low.  This will present a huge problem when Incarna is launched, as my visit to the Character Editor and Captain’s Quarters has prooved.  Rather ironically I do not think I’ll be able to dual box on my current set-up unless I’m actually undocked.

A Nemesis stealth bomber - usual graphics settings

A Nemesis stealth bomber - high graphics settings

However, on occassions when running only one client, and when I know I won’t be going anywhere busy such as Jita, I turn graphics settings up a few notches and admire the results.

Relaxing in the Legion in front of a lava planet

Beauty, however, is not merely skin deep, and when you look behind the pretty pixels, Eve reveals it’s true nature, that of flawed beauty.

For me, my experience of Eve revolves around my Corp, it’s members, our Alliance and my business and activities within that sphere of influence.   Eve is a harsh mistress however, and despite my best intentions and closest attentions, if I make a mistake or approach a situation in slightly the wrong way, Eve responds in a most brutal way.

My Eve life so far has it’s highlights of such brutal treatment, the most expensive of which to date is the time I undocked from Jita in a fully loaded, T2 rigged Crane and was 1 shotted by a Maelstrom piloted by a war target because I was being stupid during a war dec.  Other examples are less expensive, although equally instructive such as trying to attack a can flipper during my first couple of weeks in the game.

However, Eve has given me so many moments when I’ve been able to sit back and smile.  My first ever invention, where instead of aiming small with something like a T2 drone, I tried for an Ishtar – and it worked.  Selling over 1 billion ISK of T2 ships in less than 4 hours at Jita.  My first ever killmail, although I only managed to log on and undock right at the end of the kill, actually getting the first ever killmail was one of those moments when I could appreciate the excitement and draw of PvP that must be felt daily by those who are less carebear inclined than myself.

At this point it must be acknowledged that Eve is a flawed beauty – there are issues and problems that need to be resolved, and entities like Team BFF and the CSM can and do help with these.  But, like a beautiful person (and I talk here of somebody who you individually find physically, mentally, emotionally and intellectually attractive), would you hold a few bad habits against them and end the relationship, or would you mark that down as part of their character and continue to find them beautiful “despite” their flaws?

This is where BVS enters (aka Bitter Vet Syndrome).  In a failing relationship, those little niggles that were once “cute” or could be ignored, suddenly become epic flaws, and the relationship quickly spirals until it breaks down completely.  This can also be seen in Eve – the hi-sec missioner or faction warfare PvP expert who has finally had enough of the remote repping “feature”.  The foot-soldier in 0.0 who is just surviving through anoms to find them nerfed, yet sees hundreds of super-caps deployed against them – unable to operate at the same level.

But on the whole, when you turn all the graphics settings up to full and just look at the Universe we log in to, it can help to soothe the angst of the latest bug or update problem, and help you to realise that even stargates look great if you take the time to look instead of just warp to 0, spam jump and then warp to 0 again.

Even stargates look pretty with high graphics settings

Other participants:

1. CrazyKinux’s Musing: Beyond nebulas and shiny ships
2. Freedom: the beauty in EvE » A Mule In EvE
3. Achernar: The bike and the barbecue
4. where the frack is my ship?: Blog Banter 26: Love at first sight
5. BlogBanter 26: EVE … beautiful … « One capsuleer against all
6. Blog Banter 26 « Mad Haberdashers
7. » Blog Banter 26: Beauty of EVE – To Boldly Go To Boldly Go
8. Down By Law: Blog Banter #26: “The Beauty of EVE” (OOC)
9. Blog Banter #26 – Beauty « Roc’s Ramblings
10. Banter #26: Beauty is in the eye of the markets | Diary of a Garbageman
11. Progression’s Horizon: Blog Banter 26- Carry It With Us, Or We Find It Not
12. Freebooted: BB26: The Beauty Between the Lines
13. Eve Opportunist: EBB #26 : Beauty is destruction.
14. Blog banter #26: EVE shines, and not just visually « Diary of a Pod Pilot
15. Learning to Fly – Spinning ships since 2003
16. BB26: Beauty, in certain conditions | A Missioneer in Eve
17. Dying in Lowsec (One Hauler at a time)
18. EVE Blog Banter #26 – Beauty « Evehermit’s Blog

More to come…

There are many skills in Eve that you can learn.  I’m not referring to actually playing the game and learning how to PvP, or how to chain belt rats etc., but the little books we pay significant sums of ISK for to inject into our pixel heads and spend minutes, hours, days and, in some cases, literally weeks watching the skill points drip into our head until we hear those wonderful words “skill training complete”.

There are many things in Eve that make sense, and quite a few that cause you to raise an eyebrow and wonder.

I’ve listed a few of my favourite oddities below:

Indertictors pre-requisite skill of Interceptors.  I mean really – why?  So I need to fly a Destroyer hull to launch special probe thingys that stop people in the sphere from warping away.  OK, so I need Destroyers V, I need propulsion jamming V.  I need Interceptors?  I’m confused, I’m not flying an Interceptor, or even a frigate.  I’m not really intercepting something, but I am propulsion jamming it.

Hictors skill pre-requisites.  As if the above example wasn’t confusing enough, the heavy cruiser hulled brother of the ‘dictor doesn’t need you to be able to fly one to be able to fly the Heavy Interdictor.  Wait a minute, if I want to fly a recon I need Covert Ops 4, if I want to fly a HAC then I need Assault Ships 4.  What have I missed?

Ethnic Relations.  Eve is a harsh cold place with complicated structures, entire stations dedicated to burocrats and administration (although the latter usually involves killing people if the agents are to be believed!).  I can, therefore, understand the need to train Corp Management and Megacorp Management in order to lead people.  In the modern world, good leaders usually have a mixture of real life experience, natural talent and formal training in order to effectively lead large organisations and multi-national companies.  So I’m happily training Corp Management to 5 so I can train Megacorp Management a few levels – I rationalise this by the levels of Concord admin I will need to cope with.  But Ethnic Relations?  If I don’t train this then a non-Caldari can’t be in any Corp I was CEO (assuming I had the Corp set to my skills).  I’m not so comfortable with this skill, as we’re supposed to be “above” the level of non-capsuleers and so although I can’t imagine a strict Amarr and ex-slave Minmatar being best of friends, do I need to train a skill so they can both join my Corp?  In reality, if I train the skill, they can both join –  but the skill doesn’t mean they’ll get along

Outposts in Wormholes. OK to put up an Outpost, you need to hold Sov.  You can only hold Sov in non-NPC 0.0 space by putting up a Territorial Claim Unit and paying a bill to Concord.  Roughly translated, this equates to saying to Concord that this known space which none of the Empires or factions have claimed, you now wish to own and here’s a fee for Concord to ensure that all its systems (like Dotlan maps ) are updated to reflect you own it.  Now you own it, you can upgrade it (further bills) and even put up your own outpost.

So am I right, therefore, in arguing that the only thing stopping you putting up an Outpost is Concord, and that by fulfilling some conditions (set by them), it’s then OK to build the outpost?  If so, and if wormholes are truly unknown space not controlled in any way by Concord (further bizzare example next), then how could they control whether you built an outpost or not?

Clearly, outposts in wormholes would be a generally bad idea (well, I think they would be anyway – discuss!), but what’s the actual “reality” stopping you from doing it?

I guess if you did have an outpost in a wormhole, it could never be invulnerable as you can’t claim Sov as Concord don’t know about it, and if you did claim Sov how would you deploy Sovereignty Blockade Units when there aren’t any gates to anchor them near, or would one SBU always work?

Customs offices in wormholes.  Ah – ok, Concord does know about all wormhole space after all, and can get there quickly, even into your C1 where you can only fit a battlecruiser, Concord can hotdrop a customs office around the planet.  To be honest and reflecting back, this was probably the most disappointing thing about PI for me (apart from the endless clicking which has now been largely replaced by extractor heads and the annoying, but necessary, depletion mechanic).  If wormholes are truly the unknown, how would Concord suddenly manage to put up a customs office?

Maybe a future iteration could include player owned structures to replace wormhole customs offices.  These could be set for Corp and/or Alliance use and would have to be shipped in or built in situ (in a C1 due to space constraints).  You’d need to anchor them to a planet and then you can use them to get your PI off the surface.  If you don’t do this, then you’d only be able to use the launchpad to launch, not to receive.  Other players/corporations could anchor another structure, but maybe a limit of only 2 per planet?  Not that I’m advocating the sov grind migrates into wormholes, but this could provide additional infrastructure needs into wormholes, and could be another step in developing them.  The structures would only be able to be used in wormholes – i.e. if Concord know about your system in some way, then you can’t put one up.

These are a few things I’ve noticed that I find slightly odd.  Before the trolls set up camp, I’m not taking this all too seriously.  I really enjoy Eve, and my game is developing once more in a way I wasn’t expecting (I’ll have a presence in a wormhole soon), and I know there are lots of things in the game that are “broken” or will be coming Soon(TM).  None of the above really bother me, but are just things that don’t seem quite right.

What about you – do you have things you look at and think “why?”

As a parting thought – how about damage effect when a Phantasm bumps another ship?

So I logged onto Duality, showered the pod goo off and got into some casual clothes and started walking around.  This is what I saw:

I wasn’t finding the channel very interesting, fortunately it changed itself to something much nicer to watch:

So after playing around a bit in the room, I discovered you could:

• Look at the Corp interface
• Look up agents
• Click on a couple of placeholders on the mainscreen that will no doubt have a function soon(TM)
• Recustomise your character
• Squat (not sit) on the sofa
• Enter the planetary interaction mode

I walked around a bit and went up onto the famed balcony and saw:

I stood there and wondered if my pod would actually fit into the Imicus – it always seems so much bigger when you’re next to it, but from here it seems tiny.  I decided to swap out into something with a bit more room to see what that looked like:

This was much better.  I could purchase an Archon for 100 ISK, but sadly I can’t fly one yet, but the comments from the other people in the test channel chat suggested that capitals were a sight to behold from the balcony.

Now this is all very much alpha testing – the textures are rough and it crashed two or three times for me when moving around, but on the whole it was very impressive.  It felt much more immersive immediately.  Admittedly my laptop was really struggling to cope with all of this, and until you can use lower graphics settings, it may cause me a problem.  However, I could hit undock at any time, and could use all of the other interfaces or I could use the things in the room.  In lots of ways I really do think that this will expand the sandbox and add even more life to it.  I can see that there is a danger for people to become engrossed and stay in their room and not go out in their spaceship and play, however people station spin now.

When other things like bars, the inevitable games (like poker I’m guessing) and other in station content is added I can see that it probably will cause some people to undock less.  But you could ask what would be the difference in a Corp or Alliance taking in Vent or TS with Somer Blink open clicking through ISK, compared to the same Corp or Alliance in a private room in a bar with a poker table.  Maybe the difference won’t be so great.  CCP will need to ensure that there isn’t a significant fall off from spaceship undocking, as if fewer people undock, there’ll be less minerals to build stuff with, fewer ships to replace from PvP, and a serious effect on the in-game economy.  Or it could just create a more immersive atmosphere and encourage new players to stay longer, and also for people who would not have tried Eve to give it a go.

Whatever the outcome, so far it looks great.  I’ll leave you with a shot of my avatar looking back down the hallway to her Captain’s Quarters:

After completing scanning my home systems, I was presented with two mag sites, one radar site, and two NPC complexes.  I reshipped from my Helios co-ops frigate into my hi-sec exploration Harbinger and warped to the radar site first.  My exploration Harbinger is a basic PvE armour fit, but with a salvager in the utility high, and a code breaker and analyser in the mid slots instead of cap rechargers, so it’s not cap stable, but since the mag and radar sites in hi sec are usually devoid of rats this is a moot point, and if there are rats they tend to be frigates anyway.

I quickly cleared the radar site, giving me around 15 million ISK in decryptors and warped to the mag sites in turn.  The salvage was, as usual, rubbish and only worth about 400k ISK in total from both sites.  Honestly this needs to be rebalanced as one of the mag sites was actually quite tricky to scan down, yet the reward is terrible when compared to the radar site.

I dumped the loot back at station and refitted the Harbinger for “proper” PvE and then undocked and warped to the first complex… only to be told that my Battlecruiser wouldn’t fit through the gate to the drone complex.  Nevermind, I could come back later in an Enyo and sort that out, so I warped to the Guristas Watch instead.

I quickly turned the offending red overview marks into wrecks, and then as I shot the last ship (a Dread Guristas), a message pops onto my screen “Terriost Plot”.  Ah – an escalation.  I look at my journal while checking the Dread wreck for any drops, take the tags from the wreck and set destination for the 8 jumps to the next site and hit warp to gate.

I arrive and pop the rats again, and once again the destruction of the Dread results in no drops but a second escalation message.  Although I cleared the site, it was becoming a little more difficult.  Luckily my CEO was nearby in his Tengu (overkill I know) and since I was too lazy to return and get my Legion (it was getting very late and I should have logged to go to bed by now), he jumped in fleet and we jumped 4 gates to the next site.  This was quickly cleared giving the third escalation.  At this point I needed to log and so did he, so I jumped home and docked up.

The next day I logged back on, jumped in my Legion and started to warp to the third escalation site.  My CEO logged on half way and met me there, we quickly cleared the site and got the final escalation into a low-sec dead end system.  This needed more thought as a quick scout of the system revealed it to be quite busy, and the final site would have scramming and jamming involved.

We headed back to the home system and docked up and talked to some other Corp members.  A few hours later, as arranged, we headed to the target system with two Tengu’s, a Ferox, Zealot and me in my Curse.  All ships were fitted for PvP.

As we formed up on the in gate, a freighter arrived at 0 on gate and jumped in.  Now to start off this would seem like insanity with an obvious fleet on gate, but if you look further, you would notice that he was a member of a Corp who live in that low-sec system, and local count was around 60.  He did hesitate on the gate for a few seconds, which would indicate Corp mates getting ready in case the freighter had the opportunity to became bait.  Anyway, we were there for a reason and didn’t want to scupper that before we’d even started, so one Tengu jumped in, held cloak and watched him leave.

The order to jump in was given, I warped to the site and then the fleet warped in behind me.  The combat was quick, and the Dread Envoy was popped and a message appeared on screen and the wreck was checked in the hope of the A-type loot and Worm BPC.  The wreck contained nothing.  Well, nothing of any value.  Fail.  Disappointment.  The only positive was that we’d got a nice fleet together and had executed the site flawlessly.

The next day I scanned our home system to find a mag site and another drone type complex.  I jumped to the next door system and scanned there and found a Guristas Vigil.  This could escalate to the “Kidnapped!” story, so I reshipped to my Legion (I wanted this to be very quick) and entered the site.  The Dread was popped and… nothing.  I checked the wreck and… Low-grade Crystal Beta (about 45 million ISK), Faction Medium Smart Bomb, 1000 Faction medium ammo, 1000 Faction Rockets.

So in conclusion the two days before I spent a few hours (including warping and forming fleets etc) for virtually no reward, and the next day I spent about 20 minutes in total including scanning and got around 50 million ISK of loot.

In other news, I went and visited an Alliance friend in a wormhole and, after scanning the planets, found myself drooling at the PI potential again.  Having started PI in low sec, which was nicely profitable, and then moved to 0.0 which was very profitable, back to hi-sec which is terrible and really not worth the effort, seeing the scan results from the wormhole planets has me wanting to work out a way to sensibly set up in the wormhole, for which I have permission to do.

I’ve also now got my freighter/logi alt inventing and almost ready for produciton, having worked out what I’m going to be doing with him on a daily basis.  I’m only going to use 4 production slots, but should comfortably clear 15 million ISK profit a day for a fairly small outlay – I just need to finish training Mass Production 5 so I can get Advanced Mass Production trained for the free slots I need.

So it’s been two weeks since I set my goals, and just under that long since I talked about making ISK.  Time for an update!

Last night I did an hour of mining, which generated about 10 million ISK worth of Scordite (I have better skills in a Hulk now so ISK generation is up a bit), and I also ran a couple of exploration sites in my local system.  The mag site was, predictably, useless and yielded about 400k ISK worth of loot.  The radar site, however, gave me around 15 million ISK worth of decryptors and bits.  Total time spent just over 1.5 hours, total ISK generated 25 million.  This equates to just over 16 million ISK per hour, which would be about what I could expect when running (and salvaging) level 4 missions.

Since I wrote the previous posts I’ve started one character on Production Efficiency 5 (which he’s just about to complete), and he’ll then get to Advanced Mass Production 3 or 4, and the extra manufacturing slots I’ll use for my own ISK generation.  I’m also about 20% of the way to having all the minerals I need to build a carrier, and have purchased a BPC set for an Archon.  I simply was not prepared for how big the difference would be between a T2 fitted Hulk and a T2 fitted Retriever.  I now ideally need to get my main character into an Orca to support mining, as it’s getting annoying having to keep warping back and forward with a Badger Mk II in support of the Hulk.

My list of ships is growing – I now have fitted Gallente Assault Frigates to play with and am trying them out in lower level missions to get the feel of them.  I’ve also had a spring clean of my inventory and have sold a bunch of things I don’t need.

I’ve made no real steps towards PvP, however the Alliance we’re in has a solo tournament coming up, and I’m going to take part, even though I know I’ll fail in spectacular fashion.  It will be a first step and a good way to get used to my ship exploding under fire.  No.  I’m not anticipating winning even one round

As to the full financial goal, until I have the manufacturing slots sorted out with some invention and T2 manufacturing supporting it, I won’t know how achievable that is.  Hopefully I’ll be able to update you on that in another two or three weeks time when the skill training is completed and I’ve started production lines up.

After some “discussion” and “comments” yesterday, I’ve had to stand back and think a bit about how a hi-sec industrial type Corp operates, or at least how an effective one operates.

A few things are probably quite easy to analyse:

1. Mining – I’m guessing most Corps operate a policy of buying the ore from it’s miners.  Fleet bonuses are given and rates somewhere between market buy and sell are offered.  Maybe there’s a regular Corp mining op where all ore is Corp property.  However it works, this results in an income for the miners and ore for the Corp to build stuff with
2. Missions – Pretty simple.  Corp sets a tax rate, missioners do their stuff and Corp gets ISK from the agent rewards and rat bounties.
3. Exploration Sites – unclear.  I’m guessing the only income for the Corp here would be tax rate on any rat bounties.  Does anybody do anything different here?  I’m guessing this is essentially “off radar” and doesn’t really enter the Corp’s ISK generation cycle at all
4. Planetary Interaction – maybe the Corp requires each member to “donate” one or more planets to Corp activities.  Possibly the Corp states what it wants to buy (eg P4 products like Wetware Membranes) and the same thing with mining takes place, ie agreed price somewhere between market buy and sell
5. Manufacturing – this is where things developed yesterday

So 1 to 4 are pretty straight-forward.   5 however is not.  Maybe it could be, maybe it should be, but for the moment it isn’t

My thought process had been to set up a number of cans, each can had just one type of T2 BPC in.  All the materials were manufactured and then put into an equipment assembly array and the can labelled appropriately.  This would then allow people who wanted to build T2 things to simply grab a BPC, and make it, knowing that the materials had already been taken care of.  The output is collected and sold by Corp.

T1 things and other T2 items get made “as and when”, for example if we have 10 Oneiros to make, all the parts are made and then the ships put in to the cooker and run to market to sell.  This sort of T2 production tends to be undertaken by specific Corp members only as it usually involves fairly chunky purchases out of the Corp wallet, to which only specific people have access to ofc

The question here is how to pay people.

My thinking, rightly or wrongly, was that the “T2 can” approach would allow for easier tracking of manufacturing.  Let’s face it, you can mine and contract the ore across and then continue to mine, but if you have to wait for somebody else to complete your production slot to register it for payment then you can’t manufacture anything until that happens.

The idea was to help with accounting purposes.  Say for example we made 10mn Afterburner II modules.  Let’s say they sold for 2 million ISK each, cost the Corp 1.6 million ISK to make and sell, leaving 400k ISK profit after tax.  An agreement could be reached that say 25% of the profit goes to the manufacturer as payment and the other 75% is retained by the Corp (please note these are all just made up numbers and example percentages).

The net effect is that person A does 10 manufacturing jobs, 10 runs each of the 10mn Afterburner II’s.  This gives 100 units.  Corp takes those and sells them on the market.  Gross profit is 40 million ISK, 10 million to person A and 30 million retained in Corp wallet to be spent on rental bills, Alliance dues, Sov fees, new BPO’s, Corp ship replacement programme etc.

There are a couple of caveats to the above.  Clearly the market is constantly changing, and so the actual profit will change on a day to day basis, but the rough numbers would still apply well enough to allow you to keep things simple.

My question here is whether this is an example of a Corp exerting too much control.  By setting this up, am I telling people how to play their game?  But how could you do it differently.  I don’t really want to be in a situation where we maintain “stock” levels of the T2 components, as that could mean holding literally billions of ISK of stock, which imho isn’t a good way to use the Corp’s ISK, as those billions could be better employed on specific projects, or to react to a sudden market opportunity like building 20 Orcas or 1,000 Merlins (sorry, couldn’t think of any really good examples there).

I guess the main problem is that some form of payment needs to be set out and adhered to, and it needs require as little admin time as possible as there’s already enough of that to go around.

So – feedback please.  Am I a micro-managing control freak and completely missed the point, or does this sort of make sense but just needs a bit of adjusting and explanation?

At the moment I’m leaning more to the former than the latter, especially when comments suggest that person A can’t build things as the components always seem to get used for other things.

/end rant

I just hope that there’s a good viewing screen in the Captains Quarters and that it can display Excel Workbooks

For all of you that read this and run your own blog – a quick question:

How do you manage your spam comments and bogus user subscriptions?

I use WordPress on a private installation, and use Askimet to manage spam for me.  I also tend to have to delete 10 to 15 users per week due to them obviously being “spam” users.

I’m just wondering how everybody else manages, as my blog is (I know) very small time compared to most of the other Eve blogs, so if I scale up my spam amount, it’s a pretty scary thought.

I wish I did have that many real subscribers, but like certain activities in Eve, it appears that I’m suffering from the bots!  At least they’re not all flying cruise missile fitted Ravens doing level 4′s.

No, really – how do you make lots of ISK?

I’m starting to look at the goals I set myself and am wondering how I’m actually going to do this.  My immediate thought is to abandon the plexing all accounts goal, but I’m reluctant to do this.  However, on reflection I’d need to have a monthly income of at least 1 billion ISK, roughly translated this would be around 35 million ISK per day, every day.

Now I need to look at strategies for this, and it certainly can’t be just one thing.  My options include: (brackets shows rough ISK per hour)

1. Mining (8 million ISK per hour)
2. Missioning (15 million ISK per hour)
3. T1/T2 Manufacturing (?? ISK per day)
4. Blueprint copying (?? ISK per day)
5. Hi-sec Exploration sites (20 million ISK per hour)
6. Planetary Interaction (15-20 million ISK per day)
7. Incursions (variable)
8. Research Agents (2 to 3 million ISK per day)
9. Trading (regional and inter-regional)

I’m guessing at most of these figures, although I’m aware that internet research would indicate hi-sec mining income as between 8 to 10 million per  hour for a solo miner and for missions, 15-20 million per hour.

Manufacturing and blueprint copying is more problematic to work out as I tend to use every single slot I have available for my Corp, so none of the ISK generated from my manufacturing, copying or invention slots results in any form of ISK into my own wallet.  I could address this a little by getting my PI alt to production efficiency 5 and into the advanced mass production skill – a few science skills later and I could maybe get him to manufacture T1 ships to sell on the market.

To be honest, the mining I’ll be doing will be, initially, for one of my other goals, which is to build a freighter from scratch.  I’ve taken the plunge and purchased a BPC set for an Archon.  This prompted the immediate question of “why an Archon?” from an in game advisor.  The (probably fail) answer is that this is the carrier I’ll be able to fly with my main and my freighter alt sometime in the next 18 months or so, and therefore I selected this one accordingly.  I’m aiming for a Caldari carrier with my PI alt, and so if the Archon turns out easier to build than expected (unlikely methinks!) then I may go for two carriers for a laugh.  The PI alt will actually be able to fly a carrier much quicker than my other characters, and so tbh I’ve probably made the wrong choice in buying the Archon BPC set.  lol.  So mining is ruled out.

Missions.  So I could maybe make 15 mil per hour doing missions,  This would mean that every day I would have to spend just over 2 hours missioning before I can actually start to play Eve for other reasons.  This is an immediate fail for a whole number of reasons not worth listing.  I will spend some time doing missions, but not every day and not 2 hours every day on average.  So this income probably needs to be treated as “extra” to help achieve my other goals.

So I have a couple of “large” original BPO’s (with good levels of research on) which I could copy.  I need to do some research on the contracts market to see how much return I could expect from these.  Again it needs copy slots available, all of which are dedicated to my Corp, so I’d need to withdraw one or more from Corp activities (or train up the advanced laboratory skill and not add them to Corp) to do this.  A possibility, but daily income is uncertain at this point.

Hi-sec exploration sites.  Now this is very possible.  The radar sites give nice rewards, around 10-15 mil per site from memory, and aren’t too much effort to scan down and run.  Mag sites are ok, but the rewards aren’t great.  Ladar sites will be ignored and Grav sites will turn into Corp mining ops.  Combat sites are very worthwhile, especially if they escallate as I’ve had an 80 million ISK T2 implant drop from one escallation.  I think I should dedicate one or two of my Eve sessions each week to this activity for (a) fun, (b) scanning practice and (c) Additional ISK generation.

Planetary Interaction.  Now I’m much more comfortable with this.  If I go for a low or null sec system I’m sure I could get a really good passive income.  However, all of my PI is currently in hi sec, I’m not close to a low or null sec system, and hi sec PI sucks.  Also, all of the PI I do goes to helping to fuel my Corp’s towers.  This therefore is a non-starter.

Incursions.  Done one, want to do lots more.  In total I think I got around 70 or 80 million ISK from this.  It did take a few hours, but doing one or two of these a month would be very welcome.  Also the Concord LP points could be a very useful source of ISK.

It occurs to me that I haven’t included converting LP to ISK from missions, but then one of my goals is (probably) to get a Caldari Navy Raven using LP.  So this sort of rules out the LP to ISK conversion as a source of ISK.  However, if I decide I don’t want the CNR at the end then it will be probably worth almost two plex I expect.

Research Agents.  Already doing this, although I really need to get better standings to improve my income here.  I should also get my other alts into this to increase the passive income level.

Trading.  Now I’ve not looked into this at all.  I know from a couple of players (one now who has left the game sadly), that serious ISK can be made here, but that also serious losses can be incurred if mistakes are made or you just choose the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I’m going to start looking into this a bit, but I already spend ages updating lots of Corp orders, and so the prospect of increasing this endless mouse clicking by a significant degree doesn’t fill me with excitement.

So there you have it.  Not exactly the ISK guide, but I think I’m closer to understanding how achievable (or not) my goals may be.  Being realistic, I’m going to need to run some numbers and go for manufacturing as my main income source.  T2 preferred, but T1 will feature.  One thing I haven’t seriously considered is Capital construction – I have the skills, but am lacking blueprints so that is pretty much a non-starter.

To not affect Corp activities, I will need to train to increase my manufacturing and research capabilities, and will then use those additional slots for “me”.

If I can set things up to be able to (in theory) plex all three accounts with some form of surplus, then I may just plex one and use the income to fund my other goals.

So, this week’s task is to look at logistics (for moving raw materials and finished product) and pricing (profitability, initial investment required and contract prices for researched BPC’s), as well as loading up Evemon and making appropriate skill queues for my two alts.

Please note that I have not included scamming, pirating or ransoms in my list of options.  I’d be useless at all three and none of them fit in with my game style.

One thing I’ve noticed is that a great many bloggers, certainly the majority from what I can see, do not attempt to hide their identity.

Although it’s been proved to me in a very real way that I’ve not covered my tracks as clearly as I thought I had, I guess at the moment I’ve decided to keep my identity hidden from the general populace of New Eden.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is through no illusions of grandeur or over-inflated ego and self-importance.  I’m quite aware that in the grand scheme of things I’m actually mostly (although hopefully not completely) irrelevant – my identity, my location and my corp.

I do try hard to ensure that I don’t give away any specific information that could compromise details of my Corp’s activities and leave us susceptible to griefers and scammers.  I have the greatest respect and admiration for bloggers who play true to themselves, such as the ninja’s in Suddenly Ninja’s and the (from my perspective) more conventional play styles such as Kane Rizzel and Mike Azariah.  I’ve gone so far as to throw some things I made in Mike’s direction to help him in the fight against the Sansha Incursions.

But for me, certainly at the moment, I’m not sure what use it would be to disclose who I am other than to add risk to the activities of my Corp and myself, and I put the Corp before myself because that’s how I am in Eve.

I’m sure there’s some really nice people out there who donate millions of ISK and ships and modules etc. to bloggers they like.  I wouldn’t mind such attention, but I’m also mindful that there are some not so nice people out there who probably collect frozen corpses of bloggers they like / dislike, and I’m afraid that I’d probably present far too easy an addition to their collection at the moment.

If you’re reading this and you’re a blogger – what do you do?  Tiger Ears for example is certainly less vulnerable due to his location, the same goes for Hallan Turrak deep in the NC – having been there I understand the security this can afford.  However, do you get comments in local when you fly through on your way to a trade hub to collect goodies, or do you use anonymous alts?

If you’re the other person out of the two people reading this and you’re not a blogger, what do you do when you see Roc Wieler in local (apparently if you’re female you swoon).  When you see Mike in local, do you throw him some ISKies to help the war effort?  Do you simply do nothing and ignore them?

In RL some people make a living from being a celebrity (and not actually really doing anything except making headlines so they’re in the press), others have celebrity status because of their job (Bill gates / The Pope etc.).  How does Eve mirror this?  New Eden contains numerous people, for example our new CSM Chairman and Chribba and the blogfather himself, who have celebrity status within New Eden for various reasons.

I find Eve interesting because of its sandbox environment, and the way the players do (or don’t) form social groups, and as a function of this celebrity status is something some people will strive to achieve through their actions, and others who’s actions will result in celebrity status, whether they wanted such or not.

I’m pretty confident that I would fall into neither category, being insignificant enough on all counts :)

So why remain anonymous?  The question would really be why disclose my character’s name.  I tend to fly paranoid, assuming that I’m likely to get ganked at any minute (it makes low-sec travel very funny if you’re watching me).  I was better in null, and I sort of think that paranoia is probably a good thing in wormholes.  I guess that’s why I’m staying behind the mask at the moment, although if you really wanted to donate ISK, I could always set up an alt in Jita :O

I’m trying to think of my time in Eve through achieving goals.  Now understand that in a game like Eve, you may set goals with the best intentions, and then change them very quickly afterwards, or possibly when you’re close to completing them, due to other factors.

One example of this would be my original intention to really train my main character up to high levels in all of the science skills before really taking on combat skills.   A stay out in null changed that considerable

This is understandable – Eve, after all, is a sandbox (as we keep being told), and we all want to play the game (otherwise why are we here???), and therefore sometimes we need to change what we’re doing either short, medium or longer term, to adapt.  If we don’t adapt, we die.  Examples of this would be some of the more recent large Alliance fail-cascades.

But for me – I thought that now would be a good time to set some goals for the next year.  I’ve made it through a year of playing.  I didn’t suffer the “6 month blues” that apparently causes lots of players to abandon the game.  I’m even starting to get to grips with the user interface more (press F11 when using dscan – how did I not know about that! me = fail).

Goal setting is something completely different to my skill queue.  I have a definite aim with my skill queues.  For example, my main is going to fly a Damnation, and she is going to fly it very well to the stage that if/when I go back to 0.0, I will be wanted in fleets as a booster.  That will be a result of my skill queue though, not a goal.  My logi pilot will complete the cross training to fly all 4 races.  Again, not a goal, but a function of the training.  My PI alt will be in a nice Hulk fit – I haven’t at the moment decided whether to extend the training to move into an Orca or a Jump Freighter.  That will be heavily influenced by whether I’m likely to be operating in 0.0 or not.

I’ve decided that, skill queues aside, I need to set myself some goals.  And further than this, I’ve tried to split them into categories.  Do you sense a list coming up?  Good.  Then I’ll get started:

Section A – Fiscal goals:
1. Make enough ISK to plex all three accounts.  Maybe a bit of an obvious one, but I’m not disciplined enough (ooo look, shiney – click, wallet flash) at the moment and it honestly wouldn’t take me much to do this and have a good flow of ISK for spending on shiney’s too
2. Ensure that I have a good ISK buffer to cover serious issues.  I never fly what I cannot afford to replace, but on reflection I could probably be better organised about purchasing things like modules and rigs
3. Build up specific reserves to cover expenses covered in below sections

Section B – Ships and Stuff
1. Get a stable of ships for both PvE and PvP (multiple copies of these). I’m not very good at this at the moment and tend to just have one of something, and all in one location.  Not particularly good for wars of any sort really.  What I need to do is to set my jump clones properly, get the right implants into them and then have a group of ships fitted and ready for clone jumping into for fights.  As this will mostly consist of T2 fitted T1 ships, this actually won’t be very ISK intensive.  Again I need to think through what’s needed and actually organise it
2. What have I got that I don’t need – be more ruthless with my inventory and have  a bit of a clear out.  No – you can only have my stuff if you pay full Jita market value for it
Note to self – the downside of this is that when I do next move, I’ll have lots of stuff to actually move, and this might be a pain.  One consideration is to have multiple ships, but to only rig one of each version.  That way if I move I could repackage the unrigged ships and move them by freighter

Section C – PvP
1. A goal for the coming year is to do some PvP.  This will mean dying quite a bit, and so I need to get ready for this as the times I’ve lost my ship so far have been very uncomfortable.  I need to get over this and get involved
2. FC a fleet?  No.  Although I will have the skill training to do this, I don’t actually want to do this.  I want to learn to fight in a small gang and even solo first.  This could involve some reverse ganking of people can flipping new players, which I find distasteful.

Section D – Manufacturing / Shiney stuff
1. I’ve decided that I want to build a carrier from scratch.  When I say from scratch, I’m including mining the minerals.  I fully accept that I will not be able to actually mine some of the materials, so I will cover that by “exchanging” things like tritanium for the megacyte I need via the overpopulated Jita market.  I haven’t quite figured out what to do about the blueprints yet.  I certainly won’t be buying the BPO’s for everything, although I will be able to get access to copies for pretty much everything – I am considering buying a “BPC pack” from contracts, but need to look into the cost of this a bit as that will need to be factored in
2. My skill queue won’t allow for getting into a carrier on my main unless I drop the Damnation, which I’m not going to do, so for this year’s shiney goal, I’m going to go for either buying and fitting a Nightmare, or getting enough LP to get a Caldari Navy Raven.  Both will require me to cross train to Caldari Battleship (which I’ll get to 4 ofc).  But currently I’m not sure which to go for.  I’ll need to decide as I’ll either have to get T2 large lasers or T2 missiles of some sort (torps or cruise, not sure what to do here)

So there you have it.  My skills queues might be (mostly) set for the next year, but my goals are very different to the skills I have in the queue, and although the shiney requiring some skill training does actually break a bit of my earlier rule about goals being separate from skills, I’m pretty happy with them.

I’m going to concentrate on the fiscal one first though I think, as without that I can’t realistically contemplate the other three sections and fulfill the first.  So I will state that if it becomes quickly apparent that all or most of my efforts will be needed to complete just the first goal, I will abandon that quickly and then focus on the other three.  I’m not going to spend all of my time playing Eve just so I can make enough ISK to plex the accounts.  I’m not now, so that will be a goal that will be dropped if not obviously achievable within the next month.

How do you play Eve – do you set goals, or do you just log on and see what happens?  Is this different from how you want to play Eve?