A Scientist's Life in Eve

Freighters are slow.  I mean really slow.

Granted, if you have an oil tanker or a cargo ship, it is a pretty slow moving object, but the amount of things it carries is incredible and more than makes up for the lack of speed.

It’s still slow though.

Maybe because many things in Eve take little time to actually happen, that my current activity seems to be very annoying and… well… slow.

Still, I do only have myself to blame.  20 freighter loads spread across around 60 stations from buy orders I personally placed.  Because of the fact I’m usually visiting every station in a given system, there’s little point having a dual-box webber there, as I’m exiting station at full speed.

To make things worse, as we’re currently in a war I can’t even use more than one freighter, as I only have one out of Corp freighter pilot.

Wow – this post is bordering dangerously close to carebear tears

It is an interesting thing to consider however.  I’m moving over 15 million m3 of materials dozens of light years, and the total amount of time isn’t really that significant – a few hours work.

Eve, sometimes, seems truly vast, and then activities like this actually make it feel pretty small when the true scale is considered.

To speed things up eve further I have a number of options:

1. Change from a Charon to a Fenrir – more agile so it will enter warp quicker after undocking, however nerfs my total freight capacity per trip a little.  Probably worth considering except for my freighter alt it would mean training the entire Minmatar ship tree required for the freighter, as she can’t even sit in a Rifter hull.
2. Implants – lo-grade Nomad perhaps? Navigation implants.  How much ISK would I be willing to invest, and what sort of performance increase could I expect?  SiSi seems to be calling me for this one.
3. Out of Corp dual-boxing – I could roll another alt in a spare slot, get them into the same NPC Corp (I’m guessing that should be pretty easy) and then get them to web the freighter between gates.  Small increase in total travel time – but worth stopping doing something else with another account?  Probably not - it’s easier to mine in a grav site while the freighter pootles along from station to station and gate to gate.
4. Get a second out of Corp freighter pilot – I wasn’t that far from getting into a Providence with my main trader alt, maybe 12 days if memory serves.  I could possibly stop training the other person on that account and get into the Provi, however current costs (even if I build it myself, which I would do), especially if you include the freighter skill book, make it a pretty expensive option.
5. Just deal with it – rediscover the delights of the Eve Jukebox perhaps?  Mine harder?  Hit up one of my Corp mates to try some of the funny booster things he’s making?

For every upside – there’s a downside.  The buy orders I placed were much more effective than I had hoped for.  The downside is, of course, I need to go and collect it all at the end before I can then prepare it for market in whatever form I choose and then recover the ISK and make profit.

Before anybody comments to ask – the ISK I’ve saved from using buy orders more than covers my time to run around the universe collecting the deliveries.