In other news

In preparations for changed in the month of September, I have taken down the tower of my high sec research corporation.

I can see everyone going "wait a sec... what high sec research tower?".

It works like this: I've blogged on the workings of towers and high sec research towers in specific before. So subject covered. This time around I decided that operational security demanded that I not reveal anything about it's existence out side the obvious. So for over a year I've had some alts up in high sec quietly researching and copying my entire blue print collection (currently at 822 BPOs). True if you knew what to look for you'd have found it quite easily. Any spies who spotted it (we're pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of EVE so its unlikely large alliances we have sent too many spies our way) congratulations. Pat yourselves on the back. If not, *shrug*, it's not like it matters now, does it?

Now for the major reason for taking it down: It used to be that researching at a tower, IF you could keep the slots fully occupied, was not only faster than research at high sec/low sec slots, it was actually cheaper. Now it is just faster (both in the literal per job sense and in the wait sense). Fuel prices have increased to the past the tipping point. I also reached end of the projected research needs for the foreseeable future. All my current ship BPOs have reached ME:20 (30 in the case of the Typhoon). All rig BPOs have been researched to perfect ME/20 PE. Just about all modules, ammo, and deploy-ables have been researched to 20 ME/20 PE. I've made massive "copy sets" for deployment to POS'es to enable them to be "self supporting" in T1 gear (damn handy if you don't want to risk your BPOs in wormhole space).

The point here is that the amount of PI necessary to support the tower, while not excessive was a bit too much considering I was reaching the end of what I want to research. Sure there's more PE research I could do, but CPP Chronotis never pushed through his desire to make PE more relevant. So time to close down the shop pending a pile up of serious research.

Of my 3 research alts, two of them are able to run 10 slots each of plain Jane research jobs, with the 3rd also at 10 slots but with a few necessary science skills thrown in to handle research on items needing science skills (Prototype Cloaks anyone?). Not up to T2 levels but that would be the next plan. These 3 guys are spread over two accounts, but hey can't have everything.