Storyline done

After some concentrated missioning (with a sidestep of about 2.7mil units of Tritanium in one of the missions) I got a Storyline mission done. The result of this of course is that my Corp Minmatar 8.4 and Gallente 7.67. Think I'll be able to have my alts setup a high sec pos anywhere in Gallente or Minmatar space?

I finally hit 600mil as well. I realy do need to get serious about mining over the next few days. The store is working fine, but I need much more in the way of minerals to put BCs back up not to mention making myself a Typhoon and a Maelstrom. The Maelstrom is going to be my future high sec mission runner for level 4's. The Typhoon will be for 0.0 (I'll probably loose it quite quickly in 0.0 but what the heck).

Bit o missioning.

After working on various things I noticed that my corp standings had not moved. DOH! back to missioning. Grumble, grumble, grumble...

This might delay things just a wee tad. Not by much but still.

And I'm back

Stuff sold over the holidays - I'm going to need to go on a mining spree over the next week I think. I hope to make the 700mil isk mark some time this week, as I'd like to start making the move towards 0.0 sometime next weekend. We'll see how that goes. Either way, not having an alliance or a corp to work on really has upped my personal income. It can only get better when I get my BS skills in place and actually run level 4 missions.

Well off I go

Well I'm off to TO for 3 days so no blogging or playing EVE for me for the xmass holiday itself. I'll be back hopefully the evening of the 27th.

Merry X-mass

Fly safe all, and if you can't, fly aggressively.

And I run the numbers on Tremor S

Well those of you who like numbers should like this post. The rest of you should run screaming into the night.

Right onto those who are left. As you know I've been slowly getting into Invention and T2 manufacture lately. After goofing rather radically on my first invention attempt and ending up with rather expensive ammo, I'm currently running a MAX run BPC Invention attempt with Carbonized Lead S BPCs. This will lead me to some Tremor S BPCs on each success. With those it will be nice to know exactly what my results and manufacturing costs will be and what the invention costs tagged on to the manufacture will be. So first the invention.

step 1: Get a Max run copy. I made 10 copies of my Carbonized Lead S BPO. Cost per copy: 24561.71 (note that it would probably have been lower had I been using a tower - a fully occupied tower is cheaper than high sec research and copies - trick is keeping it fully occupied to justify the fuel use).
step 2: Acquire datacores. Well I already had these from some research agent and exploration results but you price them at what it would cost you to buy them or what you could sell them for. So 245000 isk for the Nuclear Physics Datacore and 315000 isk for the Rocket Science Datacore. Your area may vary.
step 3: run the invention jobs. Costs 10508.73 isk for me. Again a tower would be cheaper if it was in constant use and especially if the ME research was bearing the lions of the fuel costs. The raison d'etre of high sec towers due to the serious over use of ME slots. It is justifiable to allocate the lions share of costs to ME research on a multi-use tower. If you go way back to when I was running a tower for the alliance as a break even proposition I charged way more for ME slots than for the other slots. Most research corps do.

Total cost for one invention attempt to get a Tremor S BPC with ME-4 and PE-4: 595 070.44 Isk. Now comes the tricky part. The percentage chance of success is known. Sometimes you'll get lucky and get more successes than you expect sometimes not. But this can skew costs radicaly if you try taking it into account by batch. In my case I prefer to look at it as the costs will tend to line up with the given success ratio over the long haul. So what I prefer to do is Prorate the invention costs on a per T2 BPC basis based on the %chance of success. In the long run the lucky runs will balance out the unlucky runs so this is just a statistical way of spreading the invention costs around the BPCs. Others may like to price this on a batch basis and go with the successes of that particular batch. Whatever works for you.

In this case my success chance was 48.26% So this works out to 1 233 051.06 Isk per 10 run Tremor S BPC. Or 123 305.11 Isk per run in invention costs (on average). Since there are 5000 rounds per manufacturing run this works out to 24.66 Isk per round in invention costs (before we make a single round).

Now on to manufacturing.

For this I'm simply going to cut and paste part of my spreadsheet.

Costing calculations

Here you can see the quantities and values I assigned to each of the materials. The T1 minerals are based on Metropolis prices. The complex materials are based on the price I paid for the batch I bought that will go into this. The cost of the R.A.M. is based on what the 10% sales point on one made by myself would be. So the materials and manufacturing costs of Tremor S from a ME-4, PE-4 BPC work out to 30.84 Isk per round. When added to the invention costs per round and then finding the 110% minimum sales price this gives us 61.06 Isk per round. That would be the minimum I would put some Tremor S made from invention on the market.

So time to check the market and find out if we are in the ball park. Well there are 2 batches available in all of Metropolis atm. there is close to 500k rounds available at 49.97 isk per round and a further 1.3mil rounds available at 99.99 isk per round. So I can't compete with the 49.97 isk price but I could compete with the 99.99 isk price.

That should give you guys a feel for how to cost and value T2 Tremor S ammo. Some things to bring out of this. For ammo Invention costs are a significant portion of the final cost of the finished goods. Datacore prices will have significant swing impact on this portion of the final cost. For the manufacturing cost itself note that a ME-4 will use 50% more materials compared to a fully researched BPO so a BPO owner will have a SEVERE profit advantage when compared to an inventor In the above example his cost would be hovering arround 20.5 isk per round. But again there are only so many BPOs out there and they were always insufficient to meet demand. So when the cheap stuff hits the market it tends to sell out quite quickly. It's interesting to note that in this case The two advanced materials and the morphite represent the lions share of the material costs.

So the 5 elements that affect invented Tremor S ammo costs at the moment are in order: Rocket Science Datacores, Fullerides, Nuclear Physics Datacores, Fernite Carbide and Morphite.

Note that the cost to invent Tremor M and Tremor L will remain the same. But the material/manufacturing costs will go up significantly. So those rounds will be tied more closely to the advanced materials. Also I spoted a single Tremor S BPC on the market for 2.3million or so. With the average cost of invention hovering arround 1.233mil per BPC this represents a decent profit but not outrageous sales price. I did a quick calculation (thru a purchased bpc in the above spredsheet and found out that had I purchased that BPC to manufacture the ammo the minimum sales price jumps up to 85 isk per round. Still competitive against the 99.99 isk price point but definitly not against the 49.97 price point. I should note that looking at the price history graph 50 isk per unit seems to be the historical value going way back when. In the last month the daily volume seems to have picked up from it's historical values and is now 20-30k per day. This is consistent with an upsurge in popularity of the T2 frigates with the advent of the speed changes.

Jumping to Heimatar - omg the situation is different. The daily average moved seems to be hovering around 50k units. However the price has been shoved way way up. A month ago it stabilized around 100 isk a unit (which matches the 99.9 price point in Metropolis) and within the last week all price points are around 250 is per unit (hell even my "initial oops" ammo is profitable at those prices. There not being any significant materials movement to account for this I can only speculate that this is entirely due to speculators or a market manipulation attempt trying to take advantage of nearby FW operations.

And that concludes the lesson for today.

Late edit: made a materials mistake - now corrected.

Not much

As the preparations for xmas proceed apace and my car has a sudden need for maintenance (punctured exhaust pipe before the muffler - gives a nice throaty growl but probably a ticket magnet). I'm finding I can't put in as much time as say just last week.

Over the weekend I had a great mission belt mining session (anyone you end up with over 8mil trit in a single solo op is pretty decent)

I did find the time to start 5 more Tremor S invention runs - this time with max run bpcs. If what I'm told should happen - namely that I'll get 100 run copies - this should drop the invention costs per round from over 200 isk per round down to arround2-5 isk per round. Which when slapped on top of the manufacturing costs will make them more expensive than the market but not outrageously so. Depending on how many BPCs I end up with this shouls last me a good chunk of forever. The BPCs will probably go into storage and only come out if there seems to be a run on the market or something.

As with all T2 manufacture - the BPO holders have a serious advantage. They always will. But with attrition over time (as accounts with them leave the game or get banned etc...) and as the population continues to increase the proportion of BPO manufactured goods vs BPC manufactured goods should go down. Then there is always the items for which there are no BPOs - that came out in the game after the lottery stopped. Those should be priced arround manufacture + decent invention costs + sufficient margin.

Is it December Banter time already?

Once again it's banter time. This month’s EVE Blog Banter idea comes to us by Roc Wieler of Roc’s Ramblings.

Write a story about a fellow EVE Blogger, or an EVE player whom has inspired you or affected you in some tangible way. After your story, describe why you chose them, and any Holiday wish you have specifically for them.

Gah! that's a nasty one. The stories accumulate in almost 2 years of playing. There was the pilot who ganked my hauler in low sec that almost caused me to rage quit when I was a newbie. Thereby teaching me a valuable lesson in EvE. Cerui Tarshiel one of the great EVE diplos and all round solid pilot (with the occasional lapse into debatable decision making - like getting out of his Hawk to go check a POS out in low sec - not one of his more brilliant moves). Sue AGPlant who one day when getting on vent uttered the memorable words "Um... How did these 10 corpses get in my hangar?". To which the reply was "We don't know but the last time we saw you you were charging a low sec gate camp solo". Drunken scotts, great fun to fly with (if slightly hard to understand). From the highs (successfuly completing two alliance wide projects with solid profits for all shareholders) to the lows (Having to mothball the alliance due to a lack of PvP pilots - and closing down the ongoing project - still with a small profit for those involved).

What to choose, what to choose. I know. The EVE pilot who most affected my path thru EVE. Quebnaric Deile.

I was flying thru Anmatar space, near Maspah, trying to figure out which Matari systems would be best to move my corp tower to. The alliance had moved to the Berta area in preparations for a move into 0.0 space in Curse. But as the CEO of a research corp I would be responsible for maintaining a research tower in high sec for the alliance to allow the alliance to research BPOs. So the things I was considering were: where to place the tower such that it was safe in high sec, relatively close to the main pipe we'd be using to get to our objective systems and where nearby ice systems were to source fuel.

Then a call came over coms from the alliance leader that a small CEO meeting was to be held. So I docked up in station and wandered over to the meeting room. Inside I found my Alliance leader and FABUL CEO Quebnaric Deile and DAFT's CEO sue AGPlant. sue says "welcome to the hot seat" and I knew immediatly something was up. And then Q pipes up "Ok, I'll make this short. FABUL will be leaving the alliance to form a 0.0 PVP only alliance with a corp from UFA". With that stunning bombshell out of the way he proceeded to lay it out to us. "sue and Letrange, you are the only two CEOs out of the rest of the alliance I feel have a chance of keeping the alliance alive after we leave so it's up to you two".

Still reeling from this news I was fighting for time to be able to digest the idea. "So. What brought all this on?" I ask. "Basically the lack of reaction on the part of the more industrial corps when the call came to move to our new locations has me pissed off and I've decided that a pure PvP alliance is more what FABUL should be part of". I had been suspicious that something like this was bound to happen eventually. "There is also the fact that the original charter of the alliance as setup by Apoge was to be a mixed alliance of PvP and Industrial corp with aspirations to be a space holding alliance in 0.0. This means that I can't justify simply booting all the industrial corps out of the alliance. So, FABUL is leaving. The only question left is who will take over the alliance once we leave." My first though on this one was followed by .

"Could you give me a bit of time to think this over?" I ask. "Sure". So I wander off to think about the situation. While I am weighing the pros and cons and working up the nerve to lay this on sue AGPlant's lap. He gets in touch with me to let me know that DAFT will be following FABUL into the new PvP alliance. I figure this will eventualy lead to the scintering of DAFT as they are a mixed PvP/Industry corp. Turns out I was right. Devorik is now the CEO of DAFT and has the Industry remnants of the old corp. FABUL, the PvP pilots of DAFT, Teister's UFA corp were eventualy merged into the Clown Punchers and form the core of the BOZO alliance still hunting arround Curse. And my blog kinda details the post FABUL history of AMC.

But in the end this is how I ended up as the leader of an alliance at the tender age of about 8mil SP. In the end I concluded that this is probably what saved me from the "six month blahs". I think a year and 3 months on that I should have had my head examined. Although the alliance is currently in hybernation, my current plans remain unchanged.

As for what I wish for Q his holiday season? Lots of targets. Its what he wants. Possibly with a large dose of POS warfare since that's what he fears. Hehehehehe.

The EVE Notepad and spreadsheet use

One thing I'm sure you've all been wondering is "how do you keep track of all this information"? Well one of the things I do is make use of the in game notepad. You must realize that unlike the Windows Notepad, this one can actually make use of hyperlinks. Yep that's right you can easily embedd the link to a URL or to an EVE info page. Here is an example:

Linkies

You will note that I've been flipping back and forth between invention and manufacture to figure out what the necessary skills are for both invention and manufacture. Using the links setup in the notepad, I'm able to quickly get to the right info page to look something up regarding my plans.

The other tool we don't have yet however is an in game spreadsheet. In a way it's too bad, but then again spreadsheets are rather involved pieces of software and using a full powered one makes more sense.

You PvP'ers may want to avert your eyes

See the thing is as industrialists we need to figure what price the stuff we make should be sold at to make us isk. Or to analyze whether it would be good to get into a specific market. The manufacturing system is complicated enough that it can get quite tricky to figure out so a spreadsheet is called for. I give you a screenshot above of the T1 manufacturing section of my costing spreadsheet. This allows me to simply put in market valuations on minerals (that's actually a reference to my minerals page since I like to average the value of existing stocks with any purchases I make). Then it goes and calcualtes manufacturing costs for specific runs of the time and it pops out a minimum sales values for any goods I can make. I tend to operate on the "10% above cost is the MINIMUM I will put stuff on the market".

The T2 stuff is much more complicated. An interesting part not shown is off to the right, where I can pop in the number of any particular item I want to cost out an entire ship or run of ships. This is how, when I build my Slashers for suicide frigate gangs in FW I calculated that the value of my fit was 120k per Slasher if everything was priced at about 10% profit over manufacturing costs.

And a fly apears in the ointment

Crap! Can't research those T2 component BPOs yet. I need Metallurgy V. Oh well I always wanted to get Scrapmetal Processing. Not that these will take a lot of research. The Antimatter Reactor Unit only needs to go to ML 1 and both Thruster Units need to go to ML 2 to be perfect. Not a lot of individual savings but with the extra number of modules necessary due to ML-4 BPCs they add up. I don't know where I'll schedule that though.

More T2 stuff

Been doing quite a bit of mining lately. Trying to catch up to my burn rate. This is actually good. It means my store is working fine and what I mine will quickly get turned into goods to be sold. After mining enough goods to make another battlecruiser, I took a closer look at my skill and research plans as X-mass approaches.

As you all know from previous entries, I'm waiting on some BPCs to come out of the copy slots so I can do some Tremor S and Barrage S invention runs. This time with max run copies. We'll see if this dilutes the cost of the manufacturing side to something reasonable.

While I'm waiting for the empire slots to finish their jobs I'm slowly planning out the next steps. In this case it's a matter of getting the skill for Hail S invention and it turns out that skill, with my already acquired science skill will also unlock Afterburner and Microwarp Drive invention. I also stated that the science skill after that would be High Energy Physics, which I need to put in my head.

So I then look into the manufacture of Afterburners and Microwarp Drives. After all it's pretty useless to be able to invent something but not to be able to build it. It turns out that both Afterburners and Microwarpdrives need the same tech 2 components in their manufacture. Convinient that. They need the Antimatter Reactor Unit (Amarr), the Ion Thruster (Gallente) and the Plasma Thruster (Minmatar). Now manufacturing these components takes a BPO and a Science skills to level III each. So after a few missions I head on out to acquire these 3 BPOs (long trip to Amarr space for the Antimatter). Looking at the BPOs it turns out that I'll also need High Energy Physics III and Plasma Physics III to manufacture these. Now this isn't so bad I've already got Plasma Physics II so it's just a matter of getting the High Energy Physics and getting it to III at some point before I'm ready to manufacture 1MN Afterburner II or 1MN Microwarpdrive II. So I also pick up the High Energy Physics along the way from someone who was selling it for less than the NPC price.

Between now and the trip to Toronto for x-mass I should be able to get Retail V down to 2 days, all 3 science skills I'm working on to III (I'll still have to get Molecular Engineering to IV). I should also have the chance to put in some more copy jobs for max run copies. This will allow me to head off to Toronto for a few days with my nephews and niece while Molecular Engineering is IV is ticking down. When I get back, I'll just have to polish off Retail V and Molecular Engineering IV between x-mass and new years and pick up Wholesale I and II Then it should be a while before I need High Energy Physics IV as I need to put some research time in on the 3 BPOs I just picked up to help reduce the cost of the individual components. This means it will be a while before I need High Energy Physics IV which I want for Quake S invention. Which will give me the time to work on my BS skills as of the start of the new year.

At the moment I'm trying to arange 5 invention runs of a new module/ammo I'm trying out at a time while making enough copies for 5 more runs. I'll need to see what datacores I'll be needing but I suspect that as the number of modules I can handle increases, I'll seriously need to consider gettting Research V and the skill to run multiple research agents to be able to keep the supply of datacores coming. This is because my datacore reserves were probably fine for occasional invention but as I get more seriously into T2 I can see the day when they will be a bottleneck. My standings however are sufficient to run level 4 agents. This should work fine for keeping me in datacores.

Ah well on with the missioning today in hopes of finding a mission with decent roids.

Ruptures like hotcakes

Weird, ruptures have been flying off the racks lately. It's all good mind you. The nice thing about a store setup is that once it's established you are building stuff that sells. Managed to find a medium hidden Omber belt. Wiped it out, worth 14.6mil in minerals or so.

I did a double check on the science skills I'll be needing both for invention and for manufacture of what I first want to be able to invent/manufacture. Looks like I'm only missing 2 science skills but 11 of them need to reach level 4. That might take a bit o'time. So not so bad. I really do need to do an inventory of modules that the minmatar can research even if it's not something I'll need right away.

I currently have 5 ships in research (high sec slots - yeck). I'm thinking that when 2 of them finish up this weekend, it'll be time to start making copies of modules and ammo and ships for the future invention runs.

Stuff to do while mining

Last night consisted of getting on. Checking the manufacturing lines and heading out to do some mining. I'm going to add Cyclones to the list of things I sell out of my high sec store. They also use medium modules so the'll be a good complement to the cruisers I currently sell.

After looking at the T2 skill sets and checking what would be necessary to manufacture Stilettos from A to Z and afterburners and the other Minmatar ammo, I've decided to get Molecular Engineering and High Energy Physics as my next two science skills to 4. This will unlock Afterburner and Hail then Quake Invention and Manufacture. This will complete the T2 Projectile ammo. Then Mechanical Engineering will be next to unlock some of the Autocannon Invention (need to check if it unlocks all of them). As you can see I'm slowly adding the skills necessary to manufacture the components that go into ships at the same time. I want to get to the point where the only skill I need to learn to manufacture all T2 components and the Stiletto itself is the Minmatar Starship Engineering. Once I get that unlocked getting into the modules and ammo of the other factions will be quick since most of the science skills will already have been acquired.

As I slowly add these skills it will allow me to slowly get copies of the relevant BPOs made. The necessary components BPOs will also need to be acquired. Lucky they are relatively in-expensive. Getting them researched without a tower will however be tedious. As I get these I'll be running some invention jobs and mostly saving the resulting BPCs in my BPC collection. The objective of course is to be able to do some A to Z manufacturing of T2 ships and modules and ammo. I doubt I will immediately jump into the T2 manufacturing for profit game.

If you get the impression that mining gives a lot of time to investigate and plan this stuff out, you'd be right. What? you thought miners only stared at rocks the entire time? The truth is that with high sec profit margins being as thin as they are, most industrialists need to plan out their manufacturing and sales quite careful. Rushing into a market without research is a good way to get your ass handed to you in economic PvP. But just sitting in a station is not horribly productive. So figuring this stuff out while mining is a good way to pass the time.

On a more Pew Pew side of things I think it's time to unlock the interceptors and also get the electronic attack ships up to snuff (level 4). Once I do that I'll be able to fly all the Minmatar T2 frigates and it will be time to get the BS skills up to snuff. So the plan atm is to 1) finish getting Retail 5 and get into wholesale one or two. Get Molecular Engineering to 4 (unlocking AB and Hail and maybe some other stuff on the T2 side). Get Minmatar BS 4 and all relevant T1 combat skills to 4 (Large Projectile, Cruise Missiles, The BS rocket equivalent which escapes me atm, Heavy combat drones, Sentry drones). I may intersperse the BS weaponry with some more science skills to 4. We'll see.

Tagged

I just got tagged by Sarah Conna so he're da things:

The Rules

• Link to the original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
  
• Share 7 facts about myself in the post - some random, some weird.
  
• Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
  
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.
  

Ok I don't mind sharing 7 things. But I'm not going to tag onward see fact #1

7 Facts About Me

1. I absolutely LOATHE chain letters. I think they are the worst form of internet spam and people who create or forward them should be banned from the internet for at least a year.
2. I'm single and tend to live alone. However I am also a downtowner. This has lead to some strange and amusing situations. I have come home after a 16h work day to find a strip show in my living room. Good friends with keys - amusing situations can ensue.
3. I'm a grognard and used to have an extensive collection of board war games. Then the internet happend.
4. One wall in both my bedroom and my computer room is brick. Yep the actual firewall break to the units next door. Looks cool as hell.
   
5. I used to live in the town of Chapais in the Jamesie region of Quebec when I was around 10 years old. We lived on the north eastern edge of town. Once you stepped out of my back yard that was it. There were no roads to be found in that direction. Ever. Ok I guess once you crossed the arctic ocean and got into russia you might eventualy run into a road or the trans siberean railway or something but that would be the first sign of civilization in that direction. Absolute great fun as a kid. Not so sure my mother was in agreement with this.
6. I taught sailing for a year when I was a teenager.
7. I live in a 4 1/2 appartement that has 7 bookcases. I need more bookcases. I will let you draw your own conclusions.
   

Jumping!

Well I'm off to low sec for a day or two. I simply don't have a lot of time to log in these days. I also decided that moving those last combat hulls from my old haunts in Amarr space over to Minmatar space (where I have better refines) would be a good idea. I'll probably jump back up to high sec tonight or tomorrow depending on what happens.

I may putz around low sec for a bit once the ships have been moved. We'll see.

One thing that I did notice when manufacturing the T2 items. They do take quite a bit more time to manufacture than the T1 stuff. Tremor S for example:

It typically takes me 2 days 6 hours to manufacture 100000 rounds of ammo. This works out to 1.5h per 5000 rounds. It takes 8 hours and change to make 5000 rounds of Tremor S or over 5 times longer. I can see that having 10 manufacturing slots in my skill set is going to come in handy if this lengthening of manufacturing time holds for all T2 stuff.

Frigates of the Minmatar

As I head down to low sec for a day or two moving ships around and as I examine the requirements for eventually inventing and manufacturing T2 ships I thought I'd go over all T1 and T2 Minmatar frigates. Their uses and their relations to reach other.

There are 6 Tech 1 Minmatar Frigates:

Slasher
Burst
Probe
Vigil
Breacher
Rifter

And there are 7 Tech 2 Minmatar Frigates:

Claw
Stiletto
Cheetah
Hound
Hyena
Wolf
Jaguar

Let's cover the "Interceptor Class"

Slasher
This is the cheapest T1 non-noobship frigate. It's intended fleet role is that of cheap, disposable tackle with plenty of offensive power for something that cheap. It used to suffer in it's intended role by only having 2 mid slots, but with the speed changes a warp scrambler is now useful again so its utility has actually increased. Generally speaking once a pilot has moved on to a bigger budget and better skills this ship falls by the wayside a bit, as other ships can do the job better (a Vigil is faster and a Rifter more resilient. But it remains one of the cheapest ships to fly. Even the rawest newbie can afford an unlimited supply of these prety much. They still make prety good scouts as if you loose one you shrug and go get another.

Stiletto
This is invented from the Slasher and is one of the two tech 2 versions of that ship. And oh bippy did they improve this ship at it's job. This is intended as the fleet interceptor. It's job is to pin down an enemy so the rest of the fleet can come and kill it. It's 4 mid slots give it plenty of of kit to do just that. It's speed is it's armor. Fit in consequence. It, along with the Cov-ops, is one of the two fastest classes of ships in warp.

Claw
This is also invented from the Slasher and is the other of the T2 versions of that ship. This one is geared for combat and damage as opposed to interception. Think of it as an "anti-interceptor". Obviously it will also excel at killing any and all T1 frigates. Like it's brother the Stiletto, speed is life.

The mining frigate

Burst
There is no tech 2 version of this ship. It is the mining frigate. It is rather quickly outclassed by other ships in this role. The mining cruisers and barges. It will rarely be used outside of newbies.

The stealth frigates

Probe
This is the astrometrics/courrier frigate. It serves 2 purposes. First it is used along with the probing skill and modules to discover hidden ships and sites. In this role it is superseded rather quickly by the Cov-ops ship itself as that has a better bonus. However this ship remains rather cheap and if you can afford the longer scan times, a disposable option for operations in hostile territory. It's second role is as a cargo vessel. Once you've skilled up to Minmatar Frigate 5 it can hold 400 m3 of cargo - the same as the Thrasher and close to most T1 cruisers. This makes it the courier vessel of the frigate world. It's also the Minmatar drone carrier frigate, so it can pump out quite a bit of firepower or utility. This really does make it the jack of all trades frigate of the Minmatar frigate fleet.

Breacher
This is the missile chucking frigate of the Minmatar fleet. This is not to say that just about all Minmatar frigates can't be equiped with missiles, but it is the only one where they are intended to be the primary armament. It's only real problem is that it is a titch less maneuverable and has thinner armor than the other main combat frigate making it MUCH less popular. Also the typical Minmatar pilot concentrates on projectile skills before missile skills therefor it tends to lag in effectiveness the other frigates. The changes in missile mechanics mean that it probably would do well with a Target Painter of flying in conjunction with a TP equipped Vigil.

Cheetah
This is the T2 version of the Probe. Fast. Invisible. It's role is defined by it's capabilities. It can fit a cov-ops cloak and it has a big bonus to scan times. It is your advanced scout/flank security and hound dog. A side note about cloaks, all cloaks cause targeting delays when you un-cloak. Only certain ships do not suffer from this (Stealth Bombers and Black-Ops). In this ship however it is not considered a disadvantage as if you see a Cheetah, the pilot has made a mistake. It is one of the 3 ship classes that can equip a cov-ops cloak and warp cloaked. This is a powerfull ability. Use it well.

Hound
This is the T2 version of the Breacher. It's a stealth bomber. This means it can equip and fire cruise missiles (BS sized missiles), has no targeting delay on dropping cloak and can even equip a bomb launcher. It is a rather specialized ambush predator. It works best in packs with others of it's kind and as part of a black ops squadron. Tricky ship to fly.

EWAR

Vigil
Target painting specialist. This module is probably one of the most miss-understood ewar modules in existence. Being a totally offensive only EWAR module and most effective at helping larger ships deal with smaller ships. Therefore this ship rarely sees use in it's intended e-war purpose. However it's speed lends itself very well to being used as a tackle ship. It also caries a single drone.

Hyena
This is the dedicated electronic attack version of the Vigil. Again Target painting and tackle. With the changes in missile mechanics this role may become more popular but it's doubtful. It's MicroWaprdrive, webifier and sig radius bonuses however mean that it is an excellent tackle meant to survive while long distance tackling the enemy. It can almost be considered as the third interceptor of the Minmatar frigate fleet. The target painter equipped version will prove popular supporting Caldari fleets I should think though.

Combat frigates

Rifter
Ah the Rifter. What can be said that has not already been said about this excellent class of frigate. It is considered to be the best of the T1 combat frigates. It has that golden mix of speed, defense and combat power that seems perfectly balanced. This ship has stood the test of time never feeling out of place no matter what fleet you're in. A good solid frigate.

Jaguar
T2 assault frigate derived from the Rifter. Probably intended as the "tackle" version of the assault frigate. It's a bit of a mixed bag. Originally had all the problems of it's entire class except it could be setup to fit a massive (for a frigate) passive shield tank. As with all assault frigates, the speed changes seriously upped it's viability in roaming gangs.

Wolf
T2 assault frigate derived from the Rifter. Probably intended as the "DPS" version of the assault frigate. It can pump out a ferocious amount of damage if setup for it. It's T2 resists allow it to survive a little longer than it otherwise could. Again the speed and warp scrambler changes seem to have given this ship new wings.

Invention and T2 manufacture

I am now a T2 inventor and manufacturer. Woot! Made some mistakes getting the first jobs done but remember I'm just learning this stuff.

The first mistake was using 1 run Ammo BPCs. My success ratio was 5 jobs = 5 BPC so rather pleased with that but with the cost of the BPC itself was rather large for just one run. Running the numbers it looks like the standard price is right arround an ME-4 cost without counting the cost of inventing the BPC. Which would make sense for those people with the actual BPOs being in the market. So moral of the story? Use max run BPCs at all times for module and ammo so that you spread the cost of invention across the runs.

Then again I'm not doing this at this point to compete in the market place I'm doing this to insure my independence from the market so that if something has a "popular" premium, I'm in a position to manufacture my own. Or if I'm in an area without the item on the market I can also manufacture my own. As my skills increase and I start collecting the T2 component BPOs and getting them researched then I'll probably get into the T2 market.

Having dug into the requirements of T2 Frigates end to end manufacture (All modules and ammo included) T2 Invention and Manufacturing is fairly skill intensive. But once you've started it can be tackled one skill at a time. The biggest problem I can see will be getting into the ships as they seem to take quite a bit of skill to invent (for example if I want to be able to build the Wolf class frigates I'll need to get Frigate Construction 5)

I'm still hopefull one day that we'll be able to manufacture named components. And also sized rigs. The later will be especialy good as currently it's way to expensive to make rigs for frigates but if we had sized rigs then it would definitly be worth while to make rigs for frigates.

Either way I'm well on my way to my "If I can fly it I can build it" long term objective.

Post #200

Well, I've managed to reach one of those milestones in a blogger's life: post number 200. You're reading it. As I look back to my slow beginnings and the upswing in blogging that was due to CK's challenge to blog at least once a day for a month, I realize this blog has been a bit all over the place. That's fine since it's that type of a blog. It's format allows for regular output, don't know what to write? write about what you did last night. Got something to say? get it off your chest. Does a prety good job of preventing writer's block although an editor would probably kill 80% of it.

Still reaching 200 posts is nice. I will point out that I have no metrics on this blog. I'm realy not interested in how many people follow it or not. Some find it interesting at times - That's fine. Others not. Also fine.

Anyways I'm still in the process of building up the store and liquidating non-relevant assets. This is putting rather huge pressure on my sales slots. Basicaly I am running out. I will have to go get some more trade skills to increase the number of sales slots I have. Time to take 10 days out and get Retail 5. Clone updated to handle my new SP total (I'm over 25.7 mil now).

We'll see how things go.

In other news I've made it to 430mil. So the isk total is climing nicely. Slowly but nicely.

Thouths on the latest drama

Ok, so people are going crazy over the latest exploit. My only comment here is that the only reason that they are going crazy is that the exploit was described in detail on a 3rd party site and has been in existence for 4 years.

1. Chill people. The PvP whiners have no cause to bitch about this one (mainly since it's their bitching that allows things like this to slip thru).
   
2. In a system as complex as EVE things will slip thru. Depending on the way the bug report is worded something else may have been addressed, without the original (and any subsequent) bug reports we'll never know.
3. Not all but most of the developers are more worried about PvP. So it's understandable if the PvP centric developers and bug hunters let stuff like this get thru - "it's industry, who cares, where's the pew pew".
4. The industry and corporate management level of EVE is some of the most bug ridden arround. Hell it's realy easy to accidentaly create too many shares for a corp but have them reported wrong. Still.
   
5. Probably due to the concentration on "PvP stuff affects the most people". Well no actualy industry does, since everyone is affected by the market and the guys who sit inside a station and trade all evening long arent' particularely affected by PvP.
6. From the looks of it the team in charge of industry is actualy quite a small portion of the CCP work force, and does not get a lot of resources to address industry issues so it's not surprising that stuff like this can slip thru (heck take a look how the supposed industry update got sidetracked into a performance update).
   
7. Maybee we'll get lucky and this will cause CCP to allocate some resources to continue to clean up the industry side of the game. There's still plenty of irritants and bugs (and probably as yet undiscovered exploits) left on the industry side (Veldspar cap anyone?).

Look, the biggest driving force behind new development at CCP has always been the Pew Pew side of things. Industry is there to provide the tools and be sitting ducks for the most part. It's hardly surprising that stuff like this slips thru nor that it's not caught for 4 years. The industry side of the EVE player base has learned to live with the situation because the industry and market are WAY more interesting than any other MMO out there. As I've pointed out before. At the end of the day, the offending parties have been banned. That's all we ask.

Who cares which alliances were involved - that's highly un-important, since it directly affected a minority of pilots. Those involved would have been part of the 13% of pilots that operate in 0.0. The most affected by this issue are the moon mining alliances in 0.0 (dont' kid yourselves, most of the low sec moons with actual value are owned by 0.0 alliances anyways - remember when the Black Rise area came out and the russians were on a moon claiming rampage?) also a minority. The indirect effects of an over-supply of T2 ships and modules in the game simply mean that T2 has been cheaper than it should have been which is probably a bonus for all those of us in low sec and high sec who want to use T2 stuff.

What's important is will CCP allocate a few more resources to address the industry issues?

And the refit is done

Last night, due to the shoveling in the morning, I got home, started EVE and adjusted some sell orders and manufacturing. Then took a quick break to lie down and basically passed out... Sometime later in the night, my sleep schedule now totally FUBAR'ed, I decided to look into refitting my missioner Cyclone.

After playing around with EFT for a while I've discovered the following: The cyclone is a wee bit short on CPU for a full T2 fit. Which is fair enough as it's a T1 ship. This left me with some decisions to make regarding the fit. So I had to approach the fit logically. This is a mission fit Cyclone. The active tank is actually and advantage for a mission boat in that so long as the rate of incoming damage does not exceed a certain level you can just keep pounding away at the rats. This means that the tank is the most important part of the fit.

Take note that this particular fit is a perma-tank. Core Defense Capacitor Safeguard I's are a wonderful thing. The fit is barely cap stable with 1 Invulnerability and 1 active hardener but it is cap stable (with the AB off). Two active hardeners are not a problem of course (Invulnerability modules drain more cap). The AB is for tactical movement to pull away from high damage situations and is not normally operating so that's not ususally a consideration for cap stability in an PvE situation.

So, a reduction in gun size from the T1 fit is called for. I did some checking and this should allow most of the modules to go T2 when I get the skills for the modules that aren't currently T2. T2 HML are going to be the sticking point I think.

I also did a quick check of the Sleipnir and yep it has no problem with the same generic setup (720's(6), HML(2), cap stable when AB off and defenses including booster all turned on) with all modules T2 so it will be fine when I get one one day.

We'll see over the weekend whether the new layout with the 650 T2's works out well in practice. Incidentaly I checked. I can't sacrifice a power module for a CPU without loosing cap stability. I could possibly loose the Gyro - I'll have to think about that - which is better 650's with a Gyro or 720's without but more range.

A combat plex

I did not have enormous amounts of time last night. But I did have time to find a combat exploration complex. It was the one with the drug farm in it: Angel Watch. Not a lot of stuff for the time spent doing it, but then again I kinda like these types of plexes. Fun was had and that's all that counts.

I am however dis-satisfied with the performance of the 720's Mainly the fact that I only have 4 Tech 2's and 1 named in the ship. Mainly for grid reasons. Since I'll eventually need to upgrade the missile launchers as well one day I think I'm going to try the 650's instead and see how that works out. The tank is still excellent but I do need to address the drone changes (need more light drones in the mix) and work on my shield support skills.

Only one day to go till I've got 4/4/4 for the first set of invention I'll be doing. So things are progressing on that front. After that it'll be adding an extra science skill or encryption skill at a time to expand what I'm able to invent. And manufacture. I'll need to acquire the component BPOs as well. But they are relatively cheap and it will depend on what BPOs I unlock as my skill set for invention grows.

Refining issues

Well I managed to find a good belt in high sec. Of course the minute you find a good belt in high sec you can immediately deduce there is a problem with it. Indeed there was. As experienced miners will tell you 0.5 systems without stations usually have more intact belts. This is because a lot of miners are lazy. This one I found does have a system next door that has a station. There is a problem though. The station is an Amarr station. Well that explains the belt.

Now as you may surmise, most pilots in Minmatar high sec have high status with Minmatar corporations. Which is normal. This means that systems that must rely on stations without Minmatar NPC corp stations in them are not very popular. The first mining op I did, I shiped all the ore I mined 4 jumps to my usual system. Although this did get all the minerals from the ore I brought in refined, it was not a cost effective way of doing things.

Last night I did a small mining op and melted 1/3 of a belt. I decided that the time saved refining in the Amarr station was worth the taxes that they charge me since it saves on the number of back and fourth trips I need to do. Please take note that I'm talking about myself AND my alt and we both are using rigged ships with about 29k m3 capacity. With GSC to boost up their internal capacity to about 36k m3. After refining I was able to get all the minerals (using both ships) to my manufacturing station in a single trip. Much more acceptable.

Just to give you guys a feel for the order of magnitude of such an op, My take home ore ended up being worth about 25.6mil on the metropolis market. But the minerals taxed by the npc corp were worth 1.1mil. There was an enormous savings in time involved however. This means that I can be out mining much faster and for much longer so my overall NAV goes up faster. I would have prefered to have all the ore but that cost too much in time.

One solution I may look into is getting my alt into a freighter. The problem with that of course is the investment in isk. If I didn't plan on buying the alliance BPO I'd probably do it. It's an option for down the road anyways. With a freighter there would have been no problem simply loading up all the ore and in one trip getting it to the production station.

Ah back to exploration

Took a break from the mining to do a bit of exploration. Managed to find a Radar site and got 20mil in decryptors from it. Nothing spectacular but it is a high sec site. I also decided to sell all my decryptors currently in stock. By the end of the day I was up to 298mil note that I started the day at 198mil. Not a bad day. I should note that I ended FW with 232mil. But I knew that re-starting teh store would call for some investment in Megacyte and Zydrine and Nocxium. The 3 BPOs finishing their ME run at the same time and necessitating putting back in for a PE run also put paid ot over 15mil of the initial cash. The biggest problem I have with getting rid of relatively high value items is that I don't have enough slots atm to handle those and the store effectively. I think I need to get some more trade skills once the start to invention is done.

EVE - the game that truely will drive a jack of all trades nuts.

Unfortunatelly my time was cut short trying to find a Grav site and I found it at the end of the day but had to leave the large omber field to the hulk that had already found it. Such is life sometimes.

Burning thru the Mexallon

Oh man did it feel good to make use of my alt for the intended purpose of said alt. Yesterday I managed to do a mining op which melted 2/3 of a belt. I also got going in fleshing out my product line. I've decided to go into cruiser hulls, modules and ammo.

So far I've had initial manufacturing runs of 2 Ruptures, 2 Stabbers, 2 Bellicoses, 2 Scythes, 10 Thrashers, 100 Dual 180mm, 100 220mm Vulcans, 100 425mm, 50 650mm and 50 720mm built. The basic plan is that half of that (except the 650's and 720's) goes right up on the market, the rest goes in a warehouse can. Now I made the Thrashers by habit before really making the decision to concentrate on the cruisers. Those I will probably let sell out and not re-build. The 650's and 720's (in fact all the autocannons) make disproportionate use of Mexallon in their material lists so I went from having a relative oversupply of Mexallon to a distinct shortage. The wharehouse supply for those will wait till I get more Plagioclase mined.

Already I've sold a Rupture a Scythe and a Thrasher and have had to re-list from the warehouse and re-build a Rupture and a Scythe. So the precess is underway. As I've stated earlier I tend to price things at a minimum build cost +10% with the minerals valued at what I could sell them for on the high sec market. Now I've noticed in the past that one of the things that happens is that some people under cut below these levels but even then if you're off hub the stuff that is priced higher will eventualy sell. One of the advantages with the "store" method is that you're always building something because something in your productline is always selling. It does represent a larger mineral sink than more targeted manufacture, but it's able to survive shifts in the marketplace much more easily.

I do admit that I'm putting up my initial quantites based on my frigate sized manufacturing runs. I may need to adjust the quantites down in the future for the modules and slightly up for the ships (maybe like 2 hulls at a time and 20 modules at a time) to get a decent mix. The nice thing about getting a store up is that once it's going, you're only manufacturing stuff that sells since by definition you only manufacture something when the warehouse runs out. Bit of a mineral sink to setup though. And yep this means that a good chunk of the first week back on the carebear side will be spent mining.

Going to take a bit of a break and do some high sec exploration today.

T1 Astrometrics Frigates

This particular article will be about the lowly T1 astrometrics frigates. These ships consist of the Magnate, the Heron, the Imicus and the Probe class frigates. For all intents and purposes these should be considered the "jeep" class vehicle of the T1 fleets. Let's take a look at the common capabilities of all these vessels.

Cargo capacity: As a class of vessels these ships all have a base capacity of 320m3. The exception is the Probe. It's capacity will vary between 352 and 400m3 depending on the skill of the pilot. This is better than the mining frigates (which vary between 236.5 and 293.75m3 depending on specific class and pilot skill). It is this specific capability that gives this class of vessels their main application.

Drones: These are the drone carriers of the frigate fleet. All of them can carry at least 10m3 of drones and the Imicus can carry 15m3.

Two high slots: All of them are restricted to only 2 high slots which limits their offensive ship born armament. On the flip side, they have enough CPU to mount recon and scan probe launchers as well as cloaks, tractor beams and salvagers. Even with these modules they maintain a minimal self defense capacity with their drones.

An astrometrics bonus: Not as good as the cov-ops but it's there. Because of this they will rarely be used in this capacity except by newbies learning the ropes of exploration. And even those who use it in this capacity will graduate quickly to the cov-ops before getting serious about exploration. The bonus differencial between the cov-ops and the astrometrics frigates kick in at cov-ops skill level 3 but everyone who flies cov-ops at least gets cov-ops 4 asap so that's hardly a consideration.

Uses

Jeep: The WWII Jeep is classified as a 1/4 ton truck. This is usualy an indication of it's carrying capacity. It's also indicative of it's primary intended usage: Light cargo movement in and arround the battlefield. It is in this capacity that this class of vessels most resemble the Jeep. With mission running one tends to favor the destroyers/battlecruisers for dedicated salvage operations. These vessles are vulnerable in low sec due ot their horrible 0-warp characteristics. My standard probe fir has 2 Inertial Stabilizers on the lows and a Tractor Beam/Salvager combo in the highs. Some will argue that cargo expanders are more useful. It must be pointed out that there are better ships if you want to move volume arround - even in low sec. The whole point of using an astrometrics frigate as a cargo ship is that with inertial stabilizers it becomes much more survivable in low sec. Adding Inertial Stabilizers on the lows significantly enhances it's 0-warp characteristics. Hence it's survivability. It is also rather in-expensive to lose. This makes it rather ideal to move ammo and modules arround low sec from base to forward base and back. Policing up recent battles. Taking care of low sec rat/mission/battle wrecks. The point here is that even with a Prowler available to me, having one of these at my forward base became rather useful all the time.

Recon/Exploration: Slap a cloak and a probe launcher in this ship and it becomes the poorman's cov-ops. This role should only be reserved for newbies trying out the mechanics before going down the road towards cov-ops ships.

Drone boat: Should the pilot be working on their utility drone skills (e-war drones/repper drones) or want to work out the mechanics of working with larger drone formations early in their career, these are the boats to take. This can add some rather tasty options to a frigate fleet and should not be discounted as a valid tactic.

Cyno ships: With their large cargo holds these can usualy contain two to four loads of cyno generation fuel (more with expanders) depending on pilot cyno generation skill. This makes them useful when on extended ops moving capital fleets around. Thier cheap price usualy means that the most expensive part of being a cyno ship is the cyno modules itself.

All in all using these as low sec salvager/light cargo carriers is rather useful. If you decide to use them in high sec for this purpose, you could exchange expanded cargo holds for the inertial stabilizers but generaly I tend to keep the IS anyways. The other roles are rather situational. The greatest thing about these ships is their inexpensiveness. If you get unlucky and get jumped by an on the ball oponent you are never out a lot of isk. Note that it is a BAD idea to use these to transport expensive and valuable BPOs, but for most light cargoes (salvage, bpc, ammo etc...) they make great little courriers. Their warp speed of 6 and their nimbleness with inertial stabilizers make them rather quick to get arround as well.

Faction Warfare - Thoughts

I've just finished about 3 months of fighting in faction warfare. I must say the experience has taught me much about PvP. It's time to get my thoughts in order and contemplate what I have learned about PvP in faction warfare and the mechanics of faction warfare itself.

1. This can be an excellent tool to tech small gang warfare. It won't teach you much about the larger (Full wing and up) fleets but it will help with the smaller skirmish style warfare. One of the main reasons for this is the pull out of the pirates from FW. They were the ones who were providing the BS backbone for the larger fleets. On the flip side such BS fleets are rather easy to dodge.
2. I can confirm that frigates can make a very significant contribution to any FW op, so newbies should not feel "I can't PvP cuz I don't have the skillz". You need to PvP to learn the pilot skills necessary to fight in PvP. Learn how to scout, learn how to tackle, learn how to get out of dodge. Learn it in a frigate.
3. There is a significant lack of rewards in faction warfare. Most pilots spent over 50% of their time in high sec doing missions. Although there are FW missions these tended not to be run as you would need significant coordination with other pilots to make a go of them. This is the major failing of FW. Unless a pilot specificaly tailored his fighting to his budget and income stream he would be out of the fight for significant stretches of time.
4. FW fleets are harder to run than corp or alliance fleets. This is due to the at times dispersed nature of these fleets. And at times due to the fleet members doing more what they want than what the FC wants.
5. The plex mechanics themselves weren't too bad but the respawn mechanics and the NPC AI leave a lot to be desired. I think a slightly different mechanic would have made things much more interesting (ooo thoughts percolating - must note down). The actual deaspace mechanics and warp gate limitiation part of the mechanics work wonderfully however. Some of the more interesting battles have happend in and arround the FW complexes so that part of the mechanic is a win.
6. Due to the mechanics of plex re-spawning and now that they are for the most part understood and more of the remaining FW pilots grasp the mechanics, it is VERY difficult to make solar systems switch hands.
7. The lack of rewards is a big problem with FW. Without an integral income stream, most pilots have to spend a good portion of their time NOT PvP'ing but making isk one way or another.
8. The more join up randomly style of PvP means that when you have the hulls available and ready there just about always something happening somewhere. As others from 0.0 have commented, this is great for logging on and going straight to where some action is. But the quality of the fleets and action can vary enormously.

Those are my general thoughts on Faction Warfare. All in all it still feels half complete and I would have prefered a different system occupancy/control mechanism I would also have prefered more consequences/rewards for controling the system. CCP keeps telling us that there is more they want to do with FW. That's fine and dandy but they need to get off their asses and start doing it. The system will have been in effect for 6 months soon, it's time for CCP to do a bit of a revision on how it's all working and maybee tweek a few things. I would like for them to analyze total time spent in the low sec areas of FW and time spent elsewhere for all pilots in FW. This may or may not be imposible to do with the existing database but I think it would be revealing.

Of ship movements and plans

I decided to move my low sec operation from it's place in Amarr low sec to another place in Matari low sec. The main consideration was that I find a base that I had perfect refines at that was in or near a 0.1 or 0.2 sec status system. I found one and started moving ships.

That took most of a day to move about half the ships. Most of the pure combat ones were still at the old location, but all the utility ships and two combat ships did get moved. Since I'll be operating alone for a month I know I'll be at a disadvantage, so once again I'll be operating mostly T1 incurred stuff down there and paying attention to local. I did however find out that Blarpies (blaster armed Harpies) are back in a big way. I was taking a break doing some light ratting in my arty Rupture, when I got pounced by a 0.7 sec status pilot. Since this is a new area for me, it'll take me a while to find out which pilots that aren't -5 or lower are actually pirates and will attack. But the ship was fully insured and I knew the risks it really didn't affect me all that much. This particular ship had been used to run medium FW plexes quite a bit so the amount of isk it made me in the long run before it's untimely loss means paid for the net isk loss many times over. I was also able to loot the wreck as the pirate didn't bother with the T1 loot, again reducing the net loss. The 5 T2 drones that the guy did hurt a bit - but then again they did come from loot on kills I did and not the market.

The fight was rather one sided - a mostly because I got pounced close up before I could warp away. An arty boat is always at a disadvantage against something up really close. No scram or web to slow down the Harpy and it killed me faster than my light drones and light missiles could get thru it's shields. No big surprises came out of this fight except that he was really well tanked.

I then decided rather than continue to move ships arround it was time to go to high sec and start mining and getting my industrial stuff underway. I'm going to have to build up the mineral bank over the next few days, then come up with a list of ships and modules I want to sell and start manufacturing to the plan. I'm thinking it's time to move into the cruiser sized ships on a more consistent basis. We'll see how it works out. I'll be using my "storefront" method.

May I state: "wow, look at all those empty belts". I've seen high sec in a picked over state before but that is ridiculous. I suspect that these high Tritanium prices we've been seeing will continue to remain rather high. I did manage to find a system without a station that still had rocks so I went mining there but wow were things empty. I will probably have to hunt further a field to find a good spot to mine away on a regular basis. The Orca is proving to be mighty popular and I suspect a gigantic drain on the mineral density of high sec. More so than dreads and BS for 0.0 wars. Expect things to remain high until the Orca prices drop to around 500mil or so and demand tapers off. People are buying it at around 800mil and paying for it at those prices due to it's capabilities. It must be remembered that from a corp/alliance op point of view a single Orca tends to replace two ships in the previous fleet org. It effectively replaces a BC and a hauler from the previous full sized op organization.

The initial plan: Make around 500mil isk and buy the Typhoon BPO officially from the alliance thereby replenishing the alliance coffers a bit. Then make a good 500mil more and head to 0.0. Initially it'll be a bit boring to listen in on as I'll be running mining ops on a regular basis, till I get the store firing on all cylinders. Then I'll see about level 4 missions as I work on my BS skills. I suspect I'll be working on my combat skills mostly until I actually revive the alliance. ATM I'm in the place holder corp just as a convinient place to put myself. Should I get wardec'ed I'll simply drop to an NPC corp for a bit (It'll be amusing to see if anyone bothers - since it'll cost em 50mil per week). The only real reason to be in the corp is to push it's standings up to my current levels. This will be rather convinient as my current standings would allow the corp to setup towers down the road in 0.3-0.7 systems in both Gallente and Minmatar space. Very convenient.

Out of faction warfare

Well it's official. I'm out of faction warfare. I hit my 6.7 standing with TLF and pulled out of my FW corp. For now I'm in my old corp that's place holding the alliance. I intend on making some isk for a bit in preparation for 0.0. I also am working on a quick intro to T2 invention and manufacture for the next 12 days so I can try my hand at that and get my feet wet so to speak.

Once those 12 (now 10) days are up I'll be working on some BS skills so I can mission in battleships. At the moment I'm relocating my low sec base to some other low sec system. I'll be using this for the occasional break from high sec mining and produciton. Besides it'll take me a while to move the ships from the existing system to the new base.

Later this week I'll be writing down my thoughts on Faction Warfare.

We bit of plex running

My decision being made to move to a month or so of mostly high sec isk making, the only question remaining is when I would be leaving FW. The answer to that is simple: when I get to 6.7 standing with the TLF. The reason is fairly self evident: it will allow for perfect refines at militia stations. This will be useful in Matari low sec.

This means I was running plexes like mad getting my standing up. I am now realy close to getting 6.7 so one or two more evenings should be all I need to get the standing setting I have set myself. Once that is done I will be leaving the FW and donating my un-insurred remaining ships to the FW corp I am currently a member of. At that point I will probably be re-locating my low sec forces to some quiet low sec corner.

Most of my time will be spent up in high sec mining and running missions though. The low sec stuff is more of a "need a break from high sec" force.

Some changes

As you may have noticed, although I still run FW plexes and stuff I've been getting out of the big fleets lately. The reason for this is that although I like the bigger fleets, they seem to be put together purely to go hunting Amarr with little regard for the strategic situation. Which is one of the reasons I've been dis-satisfied with them lately. Sure when all you want to do is find someone to kill they are fine. But lately that's been mostly pirates instead of Amarr Militia. Now I apreciate a good fight as much as the next person (in fact I had an absolute classic 1v1 match up happen randomly over the weekend - more later). But PvP only for the sake of PvP never interested me as much as PvP in pursuit of a tactical or strategic objective.

So although I'll run a few more plexes this week, at some point I'll be leaving faction warfare this week. Just want to run enough to get my standing with the Tribal Liberation Force to 6.7 (this is the no taxes on refines level). At that point I'll be donating all my un-insured loaded out hulls to my corp. 40 Rifters, modules and ammo included, have already been donated. Then will come a refocusing of efforts.

I suspect I will go hunting for a new low sec base for any low sec operations I may want to pursue, but most of my efforts will be located in high sec and will involve mining and mission running until I build up a nice big isk reserve for my foray into 0.0. Not to mention build up enough isk to pay the Alliance for the Typhoon BPO so that the alliance itself starts re-building it's isk reserves.

On to the happenings this weekend. Friday I had a soso encounter with a realy good pirate gang (blasterranis equipped) who really did a number on me and a fellow FW who were running an un-restricted plex in frigates and a dessy. We really were out-classed under those conditions and being out-numbered and out shipped at the same time was a recipe for loosing ships. Sure enough we lost some ships - a T1 equipped griffin and a T1 equipped Thrasher. Mine was insured, so no great loss there but valuable lesson about over-confidence. Know when to fold em (this time with me as the guy who should have folded).

Saturday I was plexing madly and doing a good stint of Ninja mining. Note that when I offensive plex solo I tend to salvage up all my wrecks. I realize that larger gangs of cross militia composition can't stop to salvage the wrecks the fleet generates. However those wrecks represent about the only "Rewards" that FW has (apart from standing changes) so I tend to police up my plexes. Since I tend to kill off all mobs in small and medium plexes this can add up to quite a bit over time.

At a point in time I was finishing off salvaging some wrecks, knowing there were no more plexes to find in system, a war target comes into the system. So I dock up and having not scanned them down, and switch to a Slasher (cheapest T1 Minmatar frigate) to check out what they are doing. As soon as I undock I spot an Executioner (cheapest T1 Amarr frigate) on scan. I immediately deduce that they are scanning for FW plexes. So I start planet hoping hoping to run into them. Sure enough I manage to find em and only 40km away when I come out of warp. I charge into battle figuring they won't run away from an even fight and sure enough they don't.

What ensued was a nice 1v1 dogfight between two of the cheapest frigates available armed with nothing but T1 equipment. Pilot skill and knowledge would carry the day. First difference once we tackled each other: I notice I was orbiting faster than they were. Since I was scram equipped I assume that this is because they were MWD equipped. I was also having trouble hitting with my AC at 1000m. So early in the fight most of my damage was coming from my rocket launcher. This however was not too much of a problem as practically no damage was coming the other way. At one point I slow down and sure enough both ships start damaging the other one more quickly so I quickly re-engage the AB and once again both ships damage goes down but mine keeps coming due to the rockets. Eventually I get through the Executioner's structure. I miss the pod. As the enemy pod warps away gf's (good fight) are exchanged in local. It's not often one gets a chance to 1v1 an equivalent opponent.

Lessons learned from this little encounter:

1. If you're in an MWD equipped ship and the opponent is in an AB/Scram equipped ship - you are in trouble. However it's the MWD equipped ship that will control whether the fight will happen or not (in all situations where someone doesn't land on top of the other side). This lesson and other observations I've made lead me to believe that AB/Scram and MWD/Disr/Web will become the two standard fits for a lot of frigates. The first is good for follow on tackle/ frigate vs frigate fights, the second is good for interceptor like operations and can control whether the engagement happens. Fleets should have a mix of both.
2. I need faster tracking autocannons on a Slasher. 150mm's just dont' track fast enough. I'll have to try out 125's to see if they work. Also seeing if a nano will substitute for the OD effectively or not.
3. IS are useful for getting out of dodge, but don't help you in a fight. Two nanos would probably have been better for that executioner - the
   

All in all I was quite happy with the little encounter.

The rest of the weekend consisted of putting in my first Invention job (left over bpc for trying to make some Tremor S ammo). It did not succeed but then again I haven't got my skills to 4/4/4 for that try so the odds were against it. I did shove in a 20 copy job of the BPO that should be ready in 14 days (high sec slots... sigh). This will work out great as it will take 12 days to get the skills to 4/4/4. I also used my Prowler quite a bit getting things (ore and loot) up from low sec and am finding the Prowler to be very nice for low sec cargo operations (low volume cargo but at least it's pretty useful).

Once a pilot reaches Frigate 5 and gets a cov-ops the astrometrics frigates become the Jeep of low sec. I used mine as a salvager/low volume cargo carrier with 2 IS. Fast warping frigates are highly survivable in low sec and it's cheap enough that should I use it I'll just build another one. It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of T1 ships for their isk endurance. Sure T2 ships will win more often. But the pilots that use them exclusively spend a disproportionate amount of time running missions to fund them. One of the reasons it's sometimes hard to find pilots to join up with in FW is that a good portion of them are in high sec running missions to fund their Pew Pew.