Category: industry

Planetary Interaction III

Tyrannis has been delayed by a week, and planetary interaction even by three weeks. The new skills will be available and you will be able to scout for planets, but the command centers needed to actually start harvesting those planets will only be available two weeks after. Here is a list of the new skills and what they do.

Science Skills :
Remote Sensing (L1)  – The ability to gather and analyze remote sensing data from satellites in orbit around a planet and to produce proper calibrated surveys.

This skill allows you to survey for resources from bigger distances up to 9 light years.  Level 3 opens up the next two. Planetology skills increase the accuracy of scanning.
Planetology (L3) (The understanding of planet evolution and the fundamentals of resource extraction) This one is a prerequisite for
Advanced Planetology (L5) (Advanced understanding of planet evolution and the fundamentals of resource extraction)

Planet Management (charisma (!) / intel) :
No prerequisites needed for these.
Command center upgrades : Each rank in this skill improves the quality of command facility available to you, in turn allowing for a greater number of connected facilities on that planet.
Interplanetary consolidation: For each rank in this skill, you may install a command center on one additional planet, to a maximum of 6 planets.

My suggested skill plan would be to start out a few levels of Remote Sensing, it makes scanning for the right planet a bit easier (actually one level is needed to scan at all) so you can start scouting. It’s only a level 1 skill so it trains up fast. Also it’s needed at level 3 for some of the other planetology skills. Followed by Command center upgrades so you’re not stuck with just the basic command center, and then Interplanetary upgrades so you can build on multiple planets.

Although now that there are (at least) two weeks in between the skills being available and actually useable, the order doesn’t really matter that much. Try to get at least a standard command center and IC as high up as you can.

A lot more info can be found in the Planetary Interaction FAQ.

Planetary Interaction on Sisi

2010.03.13.11.27.09

As you can see in the above screenshot I have placed a command center on a planet and build some structures that extract isotopes and aluminum. No skill were needed or anything, I am not sure whether that will stay this way, but that’s how it is on the test server now. You just have to be in the same system as the planet and you can tinker with the plant stuff right off the bat.

The ui seems to be a bit clumsy at the moment, which was to be expected. And ofcourse we only have one devblog to go by, I hope a somewhat decent wiki page will be there once this goes live, since I didn’t have too much of a clue of what I was doing.

But after some trial and error I got some stuff setup. It seems to be rather passive at the moment, like moon mining on planets. And you can create NPC goods like nanite paste in a factory. All you need to do is put those structures down and link them up to the command center. There is no costs associated with the structures at the moment and they do appear out of thin air. No blue prints or anything needed.

One hint: you can click on the resources on the left side like Helium Isotopes and the planet turns blue with 3 striped spots (you’ll know what I mean when you see them) here and there. Those are the spots where you need to put the extractors in order to get the most of ‘em, I assume.

As you can see it’s all a bit rudimentary at the moment, a more flashed out version will be published on Sisi in three weeks, but so far it seems like a fun thing to play around with and earn you some isk. Once Dust 514, I am sure it will be even more interesting ;).

Dominion and T2 production

Unless you have a crystall ball, these is no way to tell how the supply of T2 components will turn out. CCP have stated that they want to end the moon mining madness. And that will make T2 production cheaper and hopefully more profitable ? Well at least more accessible ;).

They are also tweaking the BPC/BPOs. Take a look at a Jaguar invented –4/-4 one run BPC as it is now.

jag_now

And this is the same BPC on the test server.

jag_testserver

Especially a lot less Nuclear Reactor Units ! And those are usually the most expensive items, along with the Shield Emitters.

We probably won’t see a lot of T2 production in november, as everything will change once Dominion comes in December !

Market Square Heroes

So you trained up your industrial skill, got that production efficiency to 4 or even 5 and bought a few nice BPOs or BPC for your hard earned isk. Or maybe you’re going into the invention field and picked up some datacores from your agents. Now you’ll have to sell your goods otherwise all your efforts would have been futile. And that’s when the time comes that you have to study the market.

Actually the ‘buying the bpos’ might have been a bit too early. You might want to study the market for a niche you can fill before that time.

So far in EVE I have distinguished a few different type of markets. There are the trade hubs, mission hubs and ‘off markets’. Those aren’t really hubs of any kind, but more for people that happen to be in system, or live near that system.

The hubs tend to have slimmer margins but higher volume. Even the difference between two close by hubs can be significant though. For example Rens and Hek and only a few jumps from each other. Yet Hek tends to have higher prices. Also there are more 0.01 market warriors out in Rens. When you put up ammo there, don’t be surprised to find some one else undercutting you by 0.01 within an hour. Jita is the ultimate 0.01 undercutters paradise, unless you want to do daytrading, I wouldn’t go there, unless you want to sell your goods very fast and dump them there on the market.

market1

Pvp gear tends to shift quickly near low sec areas / hubs. I assume these are pirates or Factional Warfare soldiers picking up the goods, like 220mm cannons, T2 ammo, warp disruptors II, warriors II etc. Of course if you’re really gutsy, you can bring your goods to low sec and sell there for higher profits. Fit your industrial with warp stabbers, or buy a blockade runner, and don’t forget to scout for gatecamps ahead ;).

What this all comes down to, is where do you want to sell your goods ? If you’re making a high volume of products, you might want to settle for lower margins and try to sell your stuff at hubs. If your gear is mission oriented, like T2 shield hardeners, ravens, cruise missile launcher II, or ammo, you can settle for lesser volume, but higher margins at a mission hub.

Or you can find an area that doesn’t have a lot of your particular product and try and sell it there for higher margins, and less volume. Or spread your goods around and make a trip in your industrial or freighter ! It all comes down to a good study of the numbers, especially the screen above, will tell you a lot about prices and the volumes that are being sold in your region.

Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !

This month’s blog banter is a special one, as it is also a contest ! It even made the news on the Eve Online front page. You can read more about it at ck’s blog.

Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, 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 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 here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

"Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith "WebMandrill" Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?"

It wasn’t very easy to come up with something. I know a lot of things in the game could use some improvement or changes, but totally removed ? Even the things I don’t bother with in game, but other people might like, I wouldn’t want to remove.

roll_dice_small Then one Saturday morning when I checked my invention jobs, and 6 out of 7 Hammerhead II jobs had failed, it came to me: RANDOMNESS in invention ! Wikipedia says (amongst other things) : there is the sense of lack of predictability. And that is exactly why I hate it.

Sometimes you’re doing great and 4 out of 5 jobs succeed, then you hit a bad streak and you get one bpc for seven tries. Especially with things like HACs it is really a downer when three jobs, even with expensive decryptors fail in a row !

Of course the cost of invention would have to be changed. Six datacores for a hammerhead invention job, maybe up to 30 for a HAC (from 8 now) and so on. I am sure someone smart at CCP could figure out the economics. But at least you would know what you’re getting and how much it is going to cost ! Especially that last part is important, you can now estimate how much an invention job costs using the online tools, but it’s not ideal.

The title of this blogpost might suggest that I would want to remove all randomness in the game. Well, some of it is needed. Like officer spawns, exploration sites etc. Ecm as well, as loosing control over your targeting really sucks, especially when you would just totally get locked out in a fight, and you know it’s going to stay that way for as long as the falcon or blackbird is on the field. But I guess that could be the subject of another blog banter ;).

So there you have it, my blog banter #9 contribution ! Other participants:

  1. Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE! (ah just noticed someone else uses this phrase)
  2. EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
  3. Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
  4. The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
  5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!"
  6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
  7. Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
  8. EVE’s Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
  9. Miner with Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
  10. A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won’t You Die?
  11. Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
  12. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
  13. Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
  14. One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
  15. Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
  16. Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
  17. A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
  18. Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
  19. Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
  20. Facepalm’s Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
  21. Memoires of New Eden, You’re Fired
  22. Kyle Langdon’s Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What’s a Titan?
  23. Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
  24. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
  25. I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
  26. Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
  27. Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
  28. Estel Arador Corp Services, You’ve got mail
  29. Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
  30. Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 – Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
  31. Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 – Do we really need to go AFK?
  32. Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
  33. More articles as they are posted

What have you been up to ?

At the moment I don’t have a lot of exciting adventures to blog about. Or any exciting news, like taking over the Eve Galaxy ;). But in response to Eve’s weekend warrior’s weekend’s summary, I thought I’d write something like that as well.

hawk

Mainly I have been doing production ! And not the very exciting wormhole T3 kind. I did my first dabbling into T2 ship production. My first few Cerberuses I produced sold like hotcakes for 125mil, right after apocrypha. Enthusiastically I produced some more, inventions were a big success, using a prototype diagram helps ! It also gets you a better bpc as the ME get to –2 instead of –4 and saving a lot of materials needed. Unfortunately the next batch didn’t sell that well, but I got rid of em in the past few weeks at lower prices. I have put that project on hold for now. It’s quite a bit of work getting all the parts (and subparts I also produce some of them myself now), and with margins getting slimmer, it’s not that interesting anymore.

Also still producing Hammerhead IIs and Ogre drones. There always seems to be a demand for those. And I still mine and produce some drakes and ravens. These days I cruise around in my hawk to find decent belts. I have moved my orca and hulk to Sinq Laison as Caldari space has it’s belts usually cleared out very fast.

buzzard

Haven’t seen a lot of wormhole action yet, though I still scan from time to time, but haven’t had much luck lately. Only found a few Deadspace plexes that were good for a few million bounties and not much else.

So that’s it, not very exciting, but I am still out there, playing the game in a very relaxed way. Thats what I love about Eve, you can make it as exciting as you want :).

One more comment on Apocrypha:

CCP CAN YOU PLEASE FIX THE SOUND ???

The week in review

To be honest it’s more than a week in review, more the past few weeks or so, since I have been playing a lot more, and participating in the blogging community again, but the title sounded more catchy :). Also this post was getting a bit long so I am saving some stuff, like my thoughts on the upcoming expansion for another post.

First of all, I joined a new corp ! For me this is like turning a new page, a new step in my Eve career. I had been a member of Rakeriku for almost as long as I played, and it was so sad it just bled to death. But the people who were in there, and who are still active, still keep in touch through our own private chat channel which is pretty neat. Some have started a one man corp, some joined an 0.0 corp, and some are still looking around. Hidden Agenda is the corp I joined. After hanging out on various chat channels, webforums and the like (this is worthy of another blogpost entirely), they seemed to be the best fit for me. Thanks to Tarik for suggesting them in the comments ! I already picked up some good trade and invention suggestions, and we’re all looking forward on working together on the upcoming expansion to explore the wormholes. Honourable mention to Rising Sun Inc, they seem to be nice people as well, just thought HA would be more my style.

Ishukone_CorporationAbout missioning: I only needed few 10k of lps for the Ishukone corporation to get the 5 Caldari Navy BCU bpc, so I grinded that out in Hentogeira. They sold like hotcakes once they came out of the oven ! Must still be quite a demand for these type of items (ie. expensive mission gear ;)). I was getting a bit tired of being send into lowsec by the agent in Hento though and have now moved the mission gear to Gekutami, 4 jumps south. A bit crowded there but 2 decent level 4 agents in the system, and no lowsec missions. I don’t run too many missions anymore, but I just like having the opportunity.

On the industrial front: I cashed in the lp’s I had accumulated over the past few months (since late november I think) and did some invention again. Was quite lucky getting 4 ogre II bpcs out of 5 tries. Then 4 out of 4 thermal shield hardeners failed :(. That was a first for me !

2302 Of course I blamed it on Quantum Rise invention changes, but after some forum digging I think it’s probably just bad luck. I currently have some more in the oven and hope those will succeed. Not that big a profit on those, but every bit counts ;). Producing t2 items also comes with a bit of flying about to get all the parts at the best price. I invested in some bpos to make the ‘subitems’ myself, but the current price of ferogel and the like will still make expensive. But maybe I can shave off some expenses.

I was successful in inventing some Kitsune bpcs, so my first step in T2 production has been made. I am currently learning Cruiser Construction, so I might try my hands on somewhat more difficult invention later this month.

The eveblogosphere (including twitter) is currently buzzing with activity. Everybody is anxious to try the new expansion, it’s one of the biggest and game changing ones the game has seen so far ! More on that in a later post.

Thoughts on Quantum Rise

Quantum Rise has to be one of the most lackluster ‘expansions’ ever released for an MMO. It even touts serverside enhancements and ‘gamebalancing’ (ie. a whole bunch of nerfes) as features. I think it would have been a lot better to let the PR machine rest for a moment, and just say ‘sorry but this year we’re only doing one expansion’. The promise to do two expansions a year bit them in the rearend this time. At first the news was that this would be industrial focused, but that idea was ditched soon enough. Besides the orca there is hardly anything industrial related in this one.

Some ACTUAL features :
– the Orca, for now a very expensive ship that might be of some use in a bigger corp mining op.
– ui improvements / enhancements like the movable hud, weapon grouping. A rotating circle around my mods that is extremely annoying.

The load of problems it brought are a lot bigger though. Not even mentioned the patching process itself which was bugged once again and I had to download the complete client.

The client has a memory leak, lag is worse than ever. Battleships are even slower now (was that really necessary ? I can’t remember seeing a nano-raven) making mission with gates very annoying. Missiles have been changed to have very low explosion radius etc..

All in all a disappointment to be honest.

Tech 2 Ship Invention

Lately I have been thinking of going into the T2 ship invention business. I have a bunch of points stacked up for datacores. Also have all the skills needed, up to cruisers to build them. So I am all set to go.

Only thing that is holding me back is the entry price, the esoteric ship data interface, which costs about 120mil. It is sort of an investment though. Like a POS you can assume, unless CCP changes the drop rate of the bpc, that you can sell it again for about the same price.

Regardless of that I was wondering if there is actual any ISK to be made. Here are some calculations for a Kitsune, a t2 electronic warfare frig.

Kitsune Calculations

Part Aantal Price Total
Contruction blocks 23 480 11,040
Gravimetric Sensor Cluster 75 23,200 1,740,000
Graviton Reactor Unit 30 68,000 2,040,000
Griffin 1 200,000 200,000
Magpulse Thruster 53 29,180 1,546,540
Morphite 15 10,000 150,000
Quantum Microprocessor 45 11,400 513,000
RAM Starship Tech 4 40,000 160,000
Scalar Capacitor Unit 38 17,900 680,200
Sustained Shield Emitter 30 26,500 795,000
Titanitium Diborite Armor Plate 38 7,322 278,236
TOTAL     8,114,016

The materials are from a -4 ME bpc which is typical I think for an invented BPC. The Kitsunes go for about 14mil in and around Jita. So on face value that would be 7mil prophit a unit. BUT, the success rate of frig invention is 40%, so let’s say you need about 1mil worth of datacores. For T2 cruisers like Recons and Hacs, this drops down to about 30%, and you need more datacores to invent at all (8 even instead of 2 for frigs).

And ofcourse you need BPCs to invent, running a POS costs money as well, but thats a bit hard to calculate, if you’re lucky you also can make some money by copying your BPOs, and use some for invention on the side

So what am I going to do ? Well for now, I am just going to think about it for a while. It’s also a lot of hassle, once you have a few blueprints to get all the parts together, plus it doesnt seem to be really worth it, for just a few mil profit per unit sold. I haven’t looked / calculated the costs of other T2 ships yet, but I doubt they’re much more profitable than the above example.

Let me know what you think in the comments, and if I overlooked anything :).