Alts, T2, Exploration, and the small things

So much for Dominion being a "so-so" patch since it was mainly focused on sovereignty mechanics. So I started last night on my research alts. The immediate dive was into the spreadsheet to check out the changed BPs. I took the opportunity to update my T2 manufacturing spreadsheets. Going to have to split the Invention from the Manufacture at some point and make it more akin to the way I have my T3 stuff setup. But not last night - too much to do.

The only real change in T2 components: all 4 armor plate components now take 1/3 less Syl. The rest stayed essentially unchanged. I also completed my set of T2 component BPOs recently and am grinding up thru the ME and PE on them until they all reach 10/20. Should be done in about a week.

Stuff I noticed: In your personal assets you can "show contents" on cans in remote locations... However they did not extend this to corp assets.... :[

Then it was onto the main to check out the tech 2 BPCs and adjust their manufacturing info in my spreadsheet. Woah, ok, those are some radical changes allround. I will admit to getting instantly distracted by the in game browser (bookmark Google, my blog, the wiki and the forum. Booooo can't upload pictures to the blog but can post). Mess around with the jutebox (quickly throw together a playlist in Winamp, then go set it up. The cut-thru on yourself or other people talking can knock out the jutebox so it's evident that it's not quite ready for prime time, but it works relatively well. People need to adjust their volume properly for it though.

And I drag myself back to the T2 BPCs... Start plugging in the numbers and man oh man if the T2 materials prices had stayed at their previous levels of about 2 months ago things would be cheap as hell. I then log onto my Jita alt. Plug in the current speculated numbers (they are going to go like a yo yo for the next month or two). Wow did manufacturing costs shoot up. I suspect that anyone who did not pick up a ship in Jita yesterday is going to be kicking themselves. Re-listers have already snagged the now dead cheap (compared to manufacturing costs) popular T2 ships and re-listed them at more inflated prices. The interesting thing is that this has no impact on T3 costs at all. This could end up being a short term boost to T3 manufacturing as the T2 ships go up 30-40% in the short term. They may eventually come down but until things stabilize they will probably remain high due to speculation.

Control-tab no longer works to get rid of the interface, use alt-F9.

I also slipped in some short term ship handling and medium weapons skills in order to be able to fit and fly all faction T1 cruisers. All I'm missing is Caldari cruisers at the moment. Just need Caldari frigates to 4 and that'll be done as well. Still working on getting the gas harvesting to 5 so that those core gas sites in my future will be doable in a relatively reasonable time.

Then it was on the scanning alt for most of the rest of the evening. Starting off in the un-inhabited class 4 system I logged off in, I was able to confirm that it had a single static heading to class 6 systems. Then I went into the fresh class 6. It was uninhabited and not too bad (12 sigs). So I ground down that one and got 11 of 12 sigs id'ed before the probes ran out (sent em back to the frigate with 1 min 30 seconds of flight time left. Checking out the two wormholes that showed up I simply jumped into the fresh class 5 and after determining it was empty, I simply logged in the system. It was getting late, I'll continue the scanning tomorrow.

Still I'm liking this patch as it's the small things that are so nice: Going to Jita and not seeing a single isk spammer the entire time I was there. I'm assuming that new "report Isk spammer" was seeing liberal use. Lord knows there should have been ample opportunity to use it justifiably on any normal day. And as GM Spiral said in THIS thread:

As a side note, this does make our job quite a lot easier.