A Scientist's Life in Eve

Well, I’m rapidly approaching building my first Capital ship – an Archon carrier.  The last parts come out of production later today, although we haven’t quite finalised our production system yet, so there will be a short delay of a day or two while we decide and arrange logistics.

It may be a small thing, but I am genuinely excited about building and selling my first capital class ship.  It’s another milestone and another production string to add to my bow as it were.  Sales look to be more challenging than production for capitals though, and I’m going to investigate a few things surrounding this to improve my chances.

On another note, my alt is now in a Manticore flying around Providence.  I had to pass through some gatecamps to get in, but now I’m in things seem to be actually very quiet.

It feels strange being in a null sec region that has so much history.  I’m planning to simply go around and take some pictures of things.  One thing I’ve noticed is that there are a serious number of player owned outposts in this region, so my pictures will probably include several of each of the outposts.  I’m trying to take at least one picture per system – currently I’ve just been snapping Territorial Claim Units and Outposts.  I’m hoping to find some capital ship production sites somewhere.

I’m going to set up a separate website and publish the journey and pictures there, supplimented by mini-posts on this blog as updates.

One thing is I’ve forgotten to include a scan probe launcher on my fit, so as it stands I’m probably unlikely to be in a position to shoot anything unless I get lucky on a gate or in an ice belt, but I’m not primarily here to shoot things, although the odd kill or two would be nice.  However, I’m sure that I’ll be the one being killed rather than the other way around as bombers are so vulnerable and I’m bound to hit a well run bubble camp with decloaking cans sometime soon.  On that note, I’ll also put up a killboard so I can keep track of my losses which will, hopefully, be few and far between.

So Providence first, and then I’ll head into Catch to see what’s happening there.  Suggestions for where to go after Catch are welcome.

After thinking things through with how my Eve experience is progressing, I’ve put my PI alt onto a diversion for skill training for about 5 days.

I had been starting to feel that some of the activities were becoming a bit of a grind, and that I was spending too much time in station and not enough time undocked “doing” things.

While I love the industry and research aspect of Eve, I’m just left with a nagging feeling that I need some sort of distraction – almost like a hobby if you will.

I went onto SiSi to get some PvP practice, and just ended up being blown up by pointless capital ship blobs in the “Frigate and Destroyer” area.  I need to rethink that somewhat!

So, I’m now training my PI alt into Covert Ops ships, and he will shortly be fitting up a nice cloaky ship and heading out to null sec to do some exploring.

I plan to snap pictures as I go and will hopefully post them on this blog.  I’m considering visiting some of the more (in)famous regions like Catch and Providence – maybe I can snap some of the Titan building facilities of the DRF deep in their space perhaps.

It will certainly provide a diversion, and I’ll probably put him into his own Corporation and set up a killboard so I can keep track of how many times I get popped and podded

Paul Clavet of “My Loot, Your Tears” has posted a rather excellent piece about situational awareness.  Read it here.

It made me think.  Often the hunter is the one who has the situational awareness while the prey (in his shiney Caldari Navy Raven) does not.  A lesson to be learned here, for me certainly, is that I need to develop this.  I’m not suggesting that everybody becomes paranoid, hitting dscan every 5 seconds wherever we are, but following the colour codes Paul talks about makes good sense.

For example – I’m flying to Jita in my Harbinger battlecruiser just to swap a module over or collect some new crystals (I don’t do this, but I needed an example!), low risk scenario as we’re not at war (the second war dec has ended btw!!! Yay!).  I don’t autopilot – I never autopilot, but other than that I’ll talk on TeamSpeak and might even be dualboxing with another client or fiddling with a spreadsheet, but I’m safe – right?  Well probably.

Second example – I’m in a freighter, I’m taking maybe a billion ISK of ships and modules to market, we’re not at war (I “almost” never undock freighters in war), this time I don’t dual-box.  I use insta-undock points on the station undock, I hold cloak and look through local after each jump.

Sadly, though, this is where my win approach ends and a bad case of fail sets in.  On most other occassions I don’t pay enough attention.  During the few times I’ve been involved in “proper” PvP, I go into “rabbit in the headlights” mode and forget to pay attention to things like range and overheating – and don’t even be crazy and expect me to pay attention to local during all of this.

Now, ironically, when I’ve flown logistics in PvP situations, the opposite is true, I look at all ships ranges, I have watch lists and I lock up specific people who will be obvious targets (read Falcon and not Drake).  I’m aligned or orbiting my anchor, I have warp-outs pre-rehearsed and I’m even checking local for more red things.

So, why can I do this with logistics and not with the shooty bit of PvP?

So the last couple of days have been quiet, following the POS repping exercise we undertook.  This part of a hi-sec war is always a bit odd, as Corp participation drops and war targets seem to find other things to do it leaves a sort of vacuum, which is sometimes hard to explain.

Manufacturing continues unabated with all production slots full up churning out various ships and T2 modules.

I’m currently in the process of purchasing a Slave Omega to plug into my specialised Command Ship clone.  The clone will also be plugging the Armor Warfare Mindlink into its head in around 8 days when the skill hits level 5.  After that it’s then on to either Command Ships V or Warfare Link Specialist V.  They’re both long trains, and at this stage I still haven’t decided which to do first.  Command ships will give me a nice bonus for both the Damnation and also the Absolution, which I’ve yet to really play with.  The Warfare skill would, however, allow me to to fit the processor to run more than 3 links on the Damnation.  However, as I haven’t got the other command skills to 5 yet, and therefore can’t use any of the other gang links like shield or information, Command Ships V looks to be the most likely thing I’ll go for.

As far as the Corp is concerned, the current war has made us pause on the Capital ship building programme.  One thing I want to research a bit more is precisely where we will be selling the ships from, as this will not be our manufacturing base.  The idea will be to manufacture, jump to the sales system, dock and then put the ship up for sale.  I also think that we will be including standard fittings for common fits etc. to sell at the same station (large CCC rigs anybody?).

The actual capitals to be sold is another matter and again will need to be looked at closely.  Carriers are an obvious ship, and will no doubt also be subject to reasonable market competition. 

Dread’s are another matter.  When we were in 0.0 they weren’t really that extensively used, although I did see a few in an outpost siege which was interesting to watch.  With the proliferation of the overpowered Super Carriers, the Dread market is, from what I can ascertain, very odd, and really quite slow.  Good margins appear possible, but the turnover of sales doesn’t exactly look quick.

We won’t, at this stage, be building super’s as we don’t hold Sov anywhere.  The idea of building a super cap sounds appealing, but with how things in 0.0 are turning out and the need for the Super Carriers to be adjusted in some way (in my opinion), I’m not sure I’d want to be adding to the problem by building more of the things right now.   Not exactly a display of ruthless capitilism.

POS modules and Sov infrastructure do appeal to me, and I’ll definitely be conducting more research on that.  Currently, my PI production is spooling up and I’ll be running the numbers on that to estimate output in the next day or two.  I’ve set up my PI simply to collect all of the base materials (converted to P1 ofc), and not really thought beyond that to balancing issues.  Unplanned and unprofessional, certainly, but the infrastructure is there and the hope is to produce all the P4 products myself.

As to the topic at the start of this post, I’m still not sure of how to play the war dec thing.   A few options have come to mind so far:

• Move mining and missioning part of Corp fully to NPC Corps with shared chat channel.  Not good as missioner’s dislike the tax rate and this severly weakens the Corporate bond and identity and in all likelihood would just not work
• Move the Corp activities to 0.0 or low sec.  Anything we see we shoot, and anything not blue we know will (almost certainly) shoot us, so it simplifies operations in that way.   Issues here involve logistics, which will be much harder work (not that I’m lazy, but why make it more difficult than you need to!), but also blueprint security and where you sell things.  Currently we can sell to two major trade hubs easily, meaning we can produce several hundred of one type of T2 module and know we’ll sell it all.  We discovered in 0.0 that this doesn’t usually apply as people often just ferry it in from Jita.  Even you flashy red people in low-sec have to admit you use neutral alts to bring stuff in – would you bother to shop in low-sec when you could get the precise fit you want in Jita?
• Do nothing.  Well, not exactly do nothing, but simply accept that we will spend, for example, two out of every four weeks in a griefer hi-sec war.  Now maybe I’m being pessimistic here (and I am well known for such!), but if you plan for torrential rain, but only get a brief shower, then so much the better.  How do we alter things to work this way?  I’m not completely sure yet.  We sell out of Corp, we move stuff out of Corp, so that’s fine.  But what about doing mining and missioning – see the point above.  My characters are tied to the Corp because of their activities, so unless I want to get yet another alt to do missions (I already have a hulk ready alt out of Corp for mining if I wanted), how do I have “fun” during a war in those situations where you’re being camped?

A lot more thought is needed here, and I’m expecting the wars to last for another 2 weeks or more, so I guess I’ll have plenty of time to consider things.

Suggestions are very welcome, but I do have some thoughts bubbling away in my mind on how to achieve this.

Bored of mining?
Fed up of sitting there in your Tech 2 Exhumer mindlessly collecting ore/ice into your hold?

Well – we have a new activity for you!

Yes that’s right, repping POS modules is the new mining.

What are the benefits I hear you ask?

1. No more can flippers – this time it’s war targets who will shoot you on sight
2. Fed up of not seeming to make as much ISK from your mining as you expected? Don’t fear – this will make you no ISK whatsoever, so you’ll never fall short of your expectations
3. Want to be semi-AFK?  Simply set your reppers going and choose “keep at range” on somebody who isn’t AFK – remember to check the screen occassionally to switch targets or alternatively to upgrade your new clone in case the person you were following was also AFK
4. Fly a logistics ship – yes, probably one of the most cool ships in Eve to fly, the skills will make you one of the first to be picked in any fleet!

But wait, there’s more!  Train Anchoring to 5 and then train the Starbase Defense Management skill.  If those pesky war targets return to annoy you (and you weren’t AFK of course), simply approach the tower, take control of some modules and blast away from the safety of the POS forcefield.  Yet another skill to add to your CV to make you one of the more desirable recruits for virtually any Corp.

Well, with this post, CrazyKinux has announced he has stopped blogging about Eve Online effective immediately.  I, for one, am sad about this as it was the blogpack set up by him that fired my desire to get more involved in Eve when I first started playing, and also the deciding factor in me starting my own blog, although you may not all exactly be thankful to him for that

For the record, I know CrazyKinux came in for critism over the years for a number of things, and mostly unjustified.  Yes, he set up the Eve blog pack, and he also ran the Eve Blog Banters, but I never found him or his actions to indicate some sort of tyranical power crazed dictator ruthlessly controlling the poor innocent Eve blogging community.  Instead, I found him to be somebody who worked hard at encouraging new bloggers, myself included.  Somebody needed to be a central “go to” point.  Now if (hopefully) a minority interpreted that as a need to control and supress, then that’s disappointing.  This is exemplified by his decision to not “appoint” somebody to take over the blog pack and/or blog banter.  He saw this as being potentially devisive and indicating some sort of favouritisim, and so left it open to the community to react.

On that note I’m pleased to see that Rixx Javix of Evoganda has immediately stepped up and started organising a blog pack.  I’m supportive of this and wish him well in what will probably be a choppy first few days/weeks while the dust settles.

He has plans to make some changes, and I’ll look forward in anticipation as to what they may be!

So, I’ve been away for over a week on holiday.  I come back, join the new Corp and…. war dec arrives within 24 hours.  Hmmm.  Didn’t this song just finish playing?

The war dec has, so far, been a complete non-event.  We’ve killed 2 ships and lost 1, and mainly the war dec corp stays 5 to 10 jumps away from us at all times, which is really confusing to be honest, but we’re staying on guard just in case it is some overly clever ruse designed to lull us into complacency.  Somehow I doubt it, but you never know!

However, we’ve now received a second war dec, which is more annoying as this Corp does actually seem active and a large number of their kills are in the systems surrounding us.  Their terms for retracting the dec were, to understate things, eccentric.  However, as with most hi-sec Corps we don’t pay off griefer war decs and so it looks like another week or (more likely) few weeks of war to be faced.

This gives us lots of things to think about as a Corp, but I’m wondering if this is just how Eve has progressed over the last year or so.  Anybody else have any experiences of living in hi-sec?  Is it a case of constant wars, or is it just something we seem to be doing, e.g. picking the wrong place to live etc.

I’d really welcome your comments on this one please.