Barely enough time to maintain research and production

It's been a lack of access to EvE time. I've barely had enough time to put in the manufacturing and research jobs. Good thing EvE keeps on trucking even when you can't.

Looks like I was wrong

I had forgotten that if you finish a mission, even if you don't turn it in, the dead space vanishes next downtime.

Bummer.

On the other hand I did manage to finish all 10 mission. Massively boosted my standing with the university and with Minmatar.

And work blows up my EvE presence for a few days...

Well, that's finally over! It's been a crazy few days. Rush to get some new code written because the marketing dude just can't keep his big mouth shut. It totally ate into my eve time. Good thing we're not in the production phase of the next project.

Meanwhile, back at the far, Doc is back. He's working on his standings. We may end up with a 6.0+ corp average in Minmatar space. This would be good as it would allow us to consider 0.6 systems as well as 0.5 systems. Meanwhile, I've gotten back to working on the 3/10 mission. I've finished it, but am busy mining out the ore in the mission. This will slow down my finishing of the belt but I need the minerals if I want to get my Typhoon built. I've got a week to mine out the mission ore. We've got Omber, Veldspar and Scordite in this mission. So I"m mining madly.

More later

Work and planning.

Gah, sucky weekend. Had to go to work for 7h on Saturday. Kinda blew my plans to shreds.

In other news my mineral bunker hit a low spot. So time to buy minerals. Just did so. Interesting changes in value. Trit and Mega bot up, trit slightly and mega substantially. Mind you Mega is soooo undervalued still. I just bought 59.2mil isk of minerals. But again without some cruisers in rotation, that should last me quite a while.

Just found out that to get a copy of the shield amplifier, I need Hydromagnetic Physics. Well I was going to get that anyways for the ice refining skill after I get the ability to fly hulks so no issue with getting it early.

Looks like I'm going to do some major hauling tomorrow morning while working remotely from home.

Half the isk rased in the first 30min

Well as I suspected, the isk came in in a torrent during the first 30min. As per the plan we need to raise 765mil isk. We were above 375 in the first 30min. I'm glad I instituted a 50mil isk cap on per entity invesment for the first 24 h. This allows enough people to invest to keep them interested without the project being owned outright by a few "institutional" investors. It also keeps the individual risk exposure low.

Like any investment opportunity it does involve risk. It's a good thing that our manufacturing start date would seem to project into the future quite nicely. Hopefully market volatility will stabilize out as the panic over the shuttle changes iron out.

Combat Wing, Mining Ops

Once the research is underway on our major manufacturing effort (Dominixes (-i?)), I will be taking the time to address a few issues that I've let slide lately.

The first is the lack of a combat wing. Should we wish to start getting serious about low sec or an eventual move to 0.0 we need to get training. This means the first few combat ops you can expect to die horribly. This is due to two reason. One we have a preponderance of newbie industrialists. The other is the lack of experience. Well there's only one way to get experience. Go out and do it. But in order to do this those of you who want to be in on this aspect of EvE need to do a bit of preparation. The first is setup your favorite combat frigate. As a tackler. With nothing but tech 1 modules since you can expect it to die horribly the first few times. Make two of em. Base them in Uttindar.

For those of you who will be getting more serious down this road, you may want to also get a couple of T1 cruisers ready. Maybe some specialist frigates. After the first few ops we'll be mixing up the fleet a bit - still expect to die horribly but we may actually get some kills out of it.

As far as location goes. I'm centralizing the combat operations in Uttindar. There are various reasons for this. The main thing is that no one else has stepped up to the bat yet and I'm kinda stuck in that area due to the presence of the towers.

The second is getting the mining operations going again (give Gaird some work to do). I've let this slide since we were winding down the Typhoon project. After various complaints regarding the mining split between the low volume and the high volume miners I've decided on some changes:

1) Haulers are requested to keep track of m3 total for each miner. The split between the miners will be based on the total minerals they mine. Regardless of type. Note we need ALL high sec minerals for our high sec manufacturing operations. So no reason to be picky. Alliance ops are in the business of popping belts, not only getting the most isk/h roids only.

2) As we worked out in the low sec op, spread out between the belts so you DON'T cross your beams. As we discussed this is not good due to it's way of messing up mining cycles. Which slows down

3) Can ready procedure: Miners please keep track of the capacity of the haulers that are servicing your cans. fill up your cans only to the nearest 1000 m3 of the hauler (so if it can hold 16.7k m3 only put 16k m3 then rename the can to "Ready xx:xx your name" The xx:xx is the eve time the can was created (or refreshed). Partial fills slow down haulers. Hauler's share will be split between the haulers based on m3 hauled.

4) The split between the haulers and miners will depend on the distance to haul. I need feedback on this. at 1 jump the ratio i can maintain is on the order of 1 hauler per 3-4 (hulk) miners. We need to find some way of getting a good ratio depending on the distance to haul.

Trit cap gone - Shuttles thru the roof

Hi all

The trit cap at 3.61 isk is gone. Shuttles have been removed from the NPC stations. Only player built shuttles will be available from now on. The next apparent price cap is from small containers at 8.49 isk per trit or so.

Go trit go!

Good time to be a miner.

Anonymous posting fixed

Doh!

Thought anonymous posting was turned on. Found out it wasn't. That's been fixed....

Guys... tell me when I mess things up like that.

AMC Dominix Project Dates

After talking it over and to make sure there's enough time for interested parties to prepare, the dates for the kickoff of the Dominix Project have been set. Note: all times are in EVE time. GMT. UTC.

Start of first day of Investment: 18th at 00:00h (Thursday Night)

I'd make it earlier but I only get home from work right before then. The first day of investment will see a cap of 50mil per investor.

Start of 2nd day of Investment: 19th at 00:00h (Friday Night)

Should I have to do over time - Teena will be able to handle things as the backup alt in the finance corporation. This time round I'm making sure that I'm not the only one who can handle things in the finance corp.

AMC Dominix Project

Welcome to those of you who haven't read the blog before.

We're about to start our 2nd large project at AMC. This involves the acquisition of a Dominix BPO and the manufacture of Battleships off of it for sale on the open market. With the lessons from the previous project in mind here is the budget for the project:

Corp Creation: 1.5mil
Dominix BPO: 562.5mil
Research and Copy: 5mil
Manufacturing Budget: 4 x 49mil
Total: 765mil isk

Phases of the project

1. Form finance corporation (underway)
2. Raise Capital. 765mil. This will take part in 2 phases.
1. For the first day there will be a cap of 50mil per investor (individual or corp) on a first come first serve basis.
   
2. From the 2nd day onward if the max isn't reached the remaining isk will be raised on a first come first serve basis.
3. Initial research
1. An alliance tower slot will be reserved for this activity.
   
2. The bpo will be researched till ME:6
3. 4 copies will be made.
4. Manufacture, Sale and Continuing Research
1. Once the first 4 copies are made the bpo will be put back in research and 2 bpc's will be made for every point of ME gained till ME:10 is reached. After that it's copies till the budget is exhausted.
2. As the copies become available the use of the manufacturing budget to acquire minerals, manufacture the ships, and finance the selling of them will happen. As per the previous project this will be distributed amongst the corps that have manufacturing capacity (PE:5).
3. After a BS sells, the revenues are pooled with any leftover construction budget and 49mil is kept back for the next BS. The remainder is sent to the finance corp (AMC Dominix Project)
4. Every weekend that there are profits to distribute they will be distributed thru the dividend mechanism.
   
5. This will continue on for a total of 3 months.
5. Closure of the project
1. At the end of the 3rd month since the start, we'll see if any corporation inside the alliance has the isk to buy the researched BPO at that point. Should one be able to buy it, this will start the closure of the project. If not, it will keep going till someone in the alliance buys the BPO.
2. Once the BPO is sold, we stop production of Dominixes and allow the remaining BSes at that point to sell. As the isk comes in from the sale of the BPO, BPC's and the last BS's it will be distributed, again through the dividend mechanism. Note that this will be funneling back the original investment isk to the shareholders.
   

Prep for the weekend

Busy day here at work. So I may not have time to get things down before I have to head to the bar and meet up with carbon and silverwolfe.

There are two things I need to get down on electronic pages. The first is the details for the next major project so said details can be argued about. Basically at this point it's the same idea as the Typhoon project but for the Dominix BPO, with a budget for 4 instead of for 2 battleships at the same time (in construction or on sale).

There is talk of maybe getting a 2nd BS BPO at the same time and part of the same project as I suspect that there is built up desire to invest isk. Please discuss. We know we wont' have problems with a single BS but with Norjia's corp also pumping out Typhoons, will we have enough mining/manufacturing capacity to handle 2 more production lines?

The other is the formal formation of the combat wing of AMC. ATM we're all either rusty or we've never really done low sec combat ops. So till we get the rust off, used to the techiques, we'll be running T1 Frigate/Cruiser ops. Note T1 - don't used named modules. The odds are VERY good you will loose your ships on these ops till we get good. Plan on it. Make sure you have access to a combat jump clone. Now AMC operates on a "no charges" basis. The alliance makes it's isk for alliance fees thru the mining ops and thru investment in the projects. This means that we won't be operating any ship insurance mechanism (use the in game one for now) and pilots are responsible for their own ships. This is not to say we won't help out the newbies who want to join, just that any other character should have enough income to maintain a stable of disposable combat ships. This is one of the other reasons we'll be sticking to T1 till we get good at it.

I'll post the details but at a minimum I'd like each pilot that intends to be able to fly in combat ops to own at least 2 disposable tackle frigates. Pilots who are going to specialize in these ops are requested to vary it up with specialized frigates (E-war) and cruisers and maintain a slightly bigger stable of ships to choose from when an op gets called. Due to our geographical spread I'll request that combat ships be based in Uttindar and we'll be operating in the nearby low sec areas (there's lots of directions to go low sec very fast in that area). Unlike some other ways of doing this, since we're dealing with very cheap ships it's simply easier that everyone have a few options as to type of ships available and we decide at the start of the op what everyone is flying rather than try to mess with the fits at the start of the ops.

I'll post more details of these two options later.

Some ratting, taking it easy

I took it easy the last two days. I've re-built my cyclone. It's got 17mil in named modules, tech 2 modules and rigs. Less than 1/3 of the parts needed for the rigs were on hand. I've used metalevel 3 artillery and metalevel 2 heavy missile launcher. So once again my premier mission ship is ready to go.

In order to help replenish my salvage stocks I've been ratting in low sec with my jaguar. Pretty quiet system. Only had to deal with a pirate once. This was a few weeks ago. Some interceptor had pointed me but then started orbiting at extreme range of his warp disruptor. I was kind of bemused. There was no way he was going to break the tank on my jag and there was no way I'd be able to get him in range of my autocannons. But on the off chance he was hollering on his channels for help, it was time to get out. The way to break someone doing this type of tackle is easy. Simply pick a direction on the plane of his orbit and hit the AB/MWD. Since this turns his orbit into an ellipse with your craft at one of the focal points, if he's orbiting at the outer edge of a circular orbit, when you stretch it into an ellipse, and he's at the equivalent of the winter solstice (maximum distance from the orbit point) he'll usually fall outside the range of his disruptor. At that point you simply warp away. Works best if you move in the direction of an object you can warp to - obviously.

The ratting has been going well I must admit. And I've resumed missioning since my mission boat is back. I'm going to have to think about getting a 2nd battle cruiser for low sec ratting. This one with simple T1 modules and ammo so it can be lost and not be a financial catastrophe. We'll see.

Missions, and bye bye Cyclone

Friday night and Saturday consisted of lots and lots of missions. Managed to get a few good pics out of it. These consisted mainly mining missions since I'm running for MMC. Overall a good relaxing time was had. I was able to run some numbers on our potential Dominix project. It'll be cheaper than the Typhoon project. I'm leaning towards a 3 month project with a parallel startup a month or a month and a half into the project with more distribution of the production and mineral aquisition to the mining/manufacturing corporations. Also budget for 4 BS simultaneously. More on that later.

Funky asteroid in a mining mission.

Mining some bountiful bandine.

On the other front there is the problem that with the towers being where they are, and the amount of research I'm doing I'm actually not as mobile as people think I am. The level of production I'm maintaining and especially the level of research with it's scheduling issues takes up a good portion of my time. I can do things like mine or haul while I do these tasks but anything more strenuous is out of the question if I want to get these done. With 510+ BPO's that I own personally and another 38 or so owned by the LCSC (my corp), my research queues are always full. Expecially since I've switched over to "use BPC's for personal production" methods. This consists of leaving the BPO's in the station in the system where the towers are located and making copies for use in manufacturing stuff I need.

The reason for doing this is eventually I'll be able to go anywhere with copies instead of originals. Copy costs when you are not selling to the contract market are negligible. But the big thing right now is that it simply takes time to get all the BPO's researched. It's coming along but
we're not there yet.

I've also started the expansion of my product line. Things that are researched get max run copied. Things that aren't get in the list of things to research with an accelerated priority. Plus special orders also get a higher research priority. The issue is that with all my research skills being used flat out, it can take 24h to 48h to react to a change in priority. But such is life.

At the end of the day on Sunday, I decided to go and help Carbon Freezer with a combat plex he found. This turned out to be a Minor Sansha Annex. Those of you who have run annexes before will cringe to learn we jumped into the 2nd room with a Raven and a Cyclone... The first room went rather well. I taught carbon about the joys of npc coordinated hardener choice. I also learned that my Cyclone setup can handle 5 Sansha BS (slowly going down while waiting for the Raven to get back). 4 without a problem. Good solid perma-tank on that now deceased Cyclone. But it can't handle 9 BS, 13 Cruisers and 5 frigates (with warp scramblers). The Raven went down so fast they were on me before I finished my turn to warp. I saluted it as it went down. It was a good ship.

I stuck around to to look at the ores in the 2nd room. O... M... G... Everything except the Hebergite was in it's most condensed form. There were over 100roids of all types - Golden Omber, Rich Plagio, Fiery Kernite, etc... etc... etc... I almost cried... Discovering the trigger that makes this plex disappear would be a priority for the next few times we find one. As would being able to survive the 2nd room. Namely having a massively tanked BS with logistics support. And having the miners on hand to exploit the room once the danger point has passed but the plex has not been de-spawn triggered.

The end result of all of this of course is over the next few days I'll be re-building my mission Cyclone from the ground up. That was my 2nd mission cyclone since I've been able to fly the things. It lasted over 7 months.

Hauling and man my corp account is low

After yesterday's balancing I figured it was time to re-fill the bunkers up to max. Since large production runs should be toned down till the start of the next BS project. I figured it was the perfect time to totally fill up the mineral bunker and see exactly where I stand. After the corp pumped 107.5mil into the POS ownership it was time to see where I stood with my market inventory full up or in production.

Damn I'm good. I managed to get all minerals full, all market duplicates on hand or in manufacture, with 5mil remaining in the operating budget. Since the monthly costs of running the corp itself only consist of the 5mil Eram office and the 500k Uttindar office (I closed down the Maspah office), and the bills were freshly paid, I'm sitting in a good spot as far as my manufacturing plan goes. I may have the corp copy some cruiser bpo's and run some limited quantities of those to boost the month's revenue, or I could expand into more frigate sized modules pending a large increase in order slots.

For the moment I'll work with BPC's from my main collection to expand my corp's product line. This will enable it to test out the markets involved without investing in a separate BPO. Of course this will take a bit of time to get rolling but that should allow for a smoother tool up to the larger production line.

In an "oops" move I traveled all the way to berta without one of the bpc's I wanted to move there AND I left the appartment while the ship was traveling (simply forgot about it in my rush to get going to work). Hopefully I'll still have my prowler when I get back this evening.

Ballancing things and getting a new corporation

Over the last two nights, I've managed to get all the remaining BPC's disposed of. This means that once the two remaining Typhoons sell, I'll be able to close down the Finance corp in preparation for creating a new one.

I did another trip down to Berta to bring some bpc's down to StarHomer and Cozmik R5. Once again the Prowler proves it's worth as I was able to handle the large quantity of corp/alliance/external chat that is the life of an alliance leader while auto piloting the way down there.

As per discussions with Carbon Freezer I rationalized the ownership situation of the corp station. Now that all the isk has changed hands, this means that the ownership is as follows:

Domination Control Tower Small: 50% Letrange, 50% Carbon Freezer
Lab #1: 100% Letrange
Lab #2: 100% Carbon Freezer
Lab #3: 100% Chaosstorm Corporation
Corporation Hangar: 100% Chaosstorm Corporation
Ship Maintenance Array: 100% Chaosstorm Corporation
2 x Small Autocannon Battery: 100% Chaosstorm Corporation
2 x Small Artillery Battery: 100% Chaosstorm Corporation

Since the lab that was invested in by Guyverman is totally in his possession, and that was his only investment in the tower, we don't need to worry about is part of the lab situation.

A lot of isk changed hands for this. My corporation isk reserves are now dangerously low. I'm prety sure I have enough isk to fill up the mineral bunkers but after that I may need to re-activate the production of ships since that gives the most bang for the buck. Also I need to start expanding my product line to include more of the small modules as well as expand into the other frigates even if they are not going to be volume sales at the prices I'll need to put them up at. Once again this is simply to turn Eram into a good newbie sales point. I'll use the max run BPC method of getting into this.

I also remembered to take some screen shots finaly.

Prowler starting the warp to Hek from Uttindar VII moon 4 station.

Monday I did a it of exploration and managed to find a low sec exploration plex and a low sec hidden belt. Unfortunately the hidden belt was gone by the time I got back to it on Tuesday and the I was unable to finish the combat site as I was unable to break the tank on some of the drones in the last room with my assault frigate.

My Jaguar firing at a drone in the first room of the rogue site.

We also accepted a new corporation into the AMC fold. It is a newbie trading corporation. I hope to be able to leverage their trading skills down the road, once they get good at it and learn their markets, to enable the alliance to market their goods in a more aggressive manner.