Saturday 28 December 2013

Why invite pilots to your corporation?

Gevlon asked why he should invite other pilots to his corporation. I suspect there is also an element of asking why should he endorse others inviting pilots to other corporations.

In essence, there is a "large POS" fuel bill to be paid, of roughly 500m/month.  This bill is the same whether covered by 1 pilot or 7.  Why not allow others to pay your fuel bill for you? 

Pilots will pay for division rental and POS research slots (especially ME and copy slots).  Pilots that have a safe home will often take advantage of PI, and pay additional taxes.  Depending on the month, this ranges between 400M and 600M for a Foo corporation. 

I am sympathetic to Gevlon's question.  Inviting a pilot to your corporation is to trust them to a degree. In Eve, trust is not a desirable attribute.  At no times more undesirable than when you are under a wardec, and it is not merely (protective) paranoia making you think someone is out to get you.

No one needs to be in the same corp to run missions, mine, haul.  These are all roles done very easily out of corporation.  Today, I ran some wormhole anomalies, with 3 different corps involved.  It made zero difference what corp we were in, especially with mobile depots to refit.



What a corp does give, is the ability to use facilities in a POS.  These facilities are valuable to players, and those players are willing to spend ISK to use them.  We charge per division (manually), for research slots (game mechanic), and for PI tax (mix of manual and game mechanic); with the goal of ending up in front of costs, with a small margin.   We don't charge for simply being in corp and using bookmarks, SMA's to refit and PHA's; though these are also valuable services.

POS permissions are not easy to understand, but we have used them to good effect; and prevented a known theft/awox attempt from taking anything of value (and they ended up taking nothing because they didn't want a couple of industrial ships).  Better POS permissions would allow me to grow the Foo corps size rather than the number of Foo corporations, but we take what we are given, and do the best we can with it.


In a 1 player corp, the player has to bear the entire cost of running the POS by themselves.  For some that is trivial.  For others it is a huge 'tax' on their activities.  They might be trying to plex 1 or 2 accounts, and the cost of the fuel is 30% to 50% of their income.

There are other ways to subsidise this cost. I did try reactions using gas that other corp members farmed and I bought.  I ended up shutting this down due to lack of profit.  It however can go some way towards paying for some of your fuel bill. 

Many corps use a wormhole buying program, so that those with 'moving things' skills can do that, while others who prefer other activities can do so.  While this does not need to be done in a corp POS using divisions, it is more convenient and more secure to move large items directly into secure storage, especially as this can be done while one player is offline.  Such services can be charged for, and the Foo corps charge a small margin on this.

Due to wardecs, the Foo corps are not currently recruiting. F2P is another industry minded alliance that I have relations with that are recruiting (in game channel F2P).  However, if you are willing to set up your corp in a similar manner to ours (preferably without the wardec) and want some assistance or advice, please either evemail Dotoo Foo or drop into the "FooPub" channel.

Thursday 26 December 2013

How to transfer a Mobile Depot in deep space

Scenario #1; So called organised pilot brings in different guns and Mobile Depot for different pilot on a dead POS bash, and a mobile lab. So called organised pilot can not work out how to give different pilot the mobile depot.  Both give up and refit at POS.

Scenario #2; So called organised pilot brings in a cloaky transport and a frigate on 2 different pilots (one of them with lots of T2 skills), intending to swap into bigger ships held by a different corp.  I have a pilot with access to the SMA, one pilot with depots and can fly a cloaky ship, and one pilot that can fit the modules but not the cloaky ship.  The challenge is to get the modules out of the cloaky hauler and fit to the big combat boat.


Mobile depots are wonderful things for wormhole space day trippers.  The ability to refit without needing an orca, put up a POS & SMA, or head back to NPC space is wonderful.  To use one, the pilot in question must deploy and not corporation.

We know is where you can not launch them from the in game description : May not be deployed within 6km of another Mobile Depot, within 50km of Stargates or Stations, or within 40km of a Starbase.

They also take a minute to deploy.

What you might not know is that they are a Plank Container.  This means no jet canning.  This starts to make it difficult to deploy for additional pilot without some thinking.

They can not be scooped by another pilot even if launched but not anchored.

The methods that can be used to swap a depot.
  • A station, whether by trade or contract. 
  • A POS, where both pilots are in corp and have access to a common division
  • An Orca in space, deep space transport, carrier, or Nestor (edit 27 Apr 2016)
  • Ship swapping.  
If I have access to the first 3, the chances are that I don't need a mobile depot.

Ship swapping takes 2 forms.

The first method is :
  • Pilot 1 (with depot) and pilot 2 (wanting depot) eject into pods,
  • Pilot 2 boards ship with depot, deploys and anchors where they want, and ejects,
  • Both pilots board their respective ships.  
This works where both pilots can fly the ship that has the depot in it.  However, in my most recent case the depots were in a cloaky hauler, and only one pilot could fly it.

So the second method is
  • Pilot 1 (with depot) launches depot and ejects.
  • Pilot 2 (wanting depot) takes a ship that both pilots can fly to the lauched depot and ejects
  • Pilot 1 boards the commonly flown ship, recovers depot, and ejects
  • Both pilots board their own ships.
  • Pilot 2 deploys and anchors depot where they want. 
So, now I have a method of getting a depot from pilot and giving it to another

Monday 23 December 2013

The alternative newbie wormhole experience

Another blogger has a grand idea on how to set up in wormholes for new corporations.  What I like is the defence force.  What I don't like is that such a defence force is currently lacking the backing to make it happen.  It seems a very expensive plan.

For the last 2 weeks the Foo corps have not been recruiting, as we been under wardec.  Now a highsec wardec is not much of an issue for existing wormhole players.  We do our PI and sites with a certain level of paranoia, as it is wormhole space and there are cloaks everywhere.  What a highsec wardec does mean is that we potentially have pilots actively trying to access our 'special secrets', namely our wormhole entrances.  Then a stupid CEO logs out in the entrance highsec system and can be found with locator agents.  Such a stupid CEO might just share the same surname with this blog.

For those players looking to set up something similar to what we are running, the costs are roughly as follows:

  • 300M for a bookmark to an empty system  (wormholesales.com)
  • 1B for a large tower and fittings
  • 1B for customs office gantries and upgrades
  • 500M/month for fuel
For the large tower fittings you will want:
  • 1 Personal Hanger Array.  This provides a small amount of secure storage to pilots, for sleeper loot, ammo, fittings.
  • 1 Large Ship Assembly array (or X-large, probably does not matter either way: they hold the same volume). This provides bulk 'secure' storage to 7 players (i.e. one or more pilot/player)
  • 1 SMA that is online for holding ships and refitting.
  • Optionally a second off-line SMA, requiring elevated privileges containing defence ships, a large industrial with spare guns and fittings, and a hoarder with spare ammo.  Advantages are that it is secure storage.  Disadvantage that is makes your POS look 'expensively full of loot'.  According to my tests on duality, this SMA can be onlined even if the POS is re-inforced, and new guns (not missiles) can be onlined and restocked.
  • Optionally 1 Mobile Laboratory and/or Advanced Mobile Laboratory charging 10K/hour for ME and Copy slots.
  • Guns and hardeners to suit.  Look at http://talocanunited.com/wordpress/designing-a-pos/ and http://talocanunited.com/wordpress/pos-permissions/ . Have at least sufficient guns so that even if the POS is re-inforced, you can use your entire powergrid on newly onlined guns.  Consider even more guns that this.
The divisions in the SMA can be hired out for those doing large amounts of PI and mining, plus those looking to store expensive ships securely.  Somewhere in the vicinity of 50-100M / month is reasonable.


You will probably want to own your own customs offices. On a structure bash; you can never have too much DPS.  They are boring.  At 700 DPS, a pos bash is an all night affair.  At 3000 DPS it is a couple of hours. At 5000 DPS, it is 'short work'.  Consider the merits of taking the time to roll wormholes vs the time lost by leaving a scout on the wormhole.  This is a challenge for a couple of newbie pilots.  3 afk cruisers (vexors or coercers) with drone and laser dps can do the job, albeit with a certain risk of ending up in highsec with a replacement


In 2 of our 3 wormholes, we blew up the existing customs offices, and replace them with our own.  In the third wormhole, we purchased the POCO's in place from a corp that we thought was 'zombie' but had a 'low profile' approach.  It was so low profile we thought that it was abandoned and moved in.  We paid a little over the replacement price for the Poco's, but did not need to spend the time to bash them down.

POCO tax can be set wherever you want it.  As a simple option, roughly 5% tax is considered OK by most pilots.  You can have a lot more tax flexibility if the corp that owns the poco's is not the corp with the pilots.

In terms of defence, having big friends is useful.  Gevlon found Noir to be good hired friends.  He also found that his dread was a trouble magnet.  I previously found Daktaklakpak. a wormhole PVP corp looking for something to kill to be valuable.  A large POS and a small wormhole are a daunting proposition.  Gevlon's fleet took 4 hours with a dread.  Not many pilots are willing to devote a 1B ship to evict another pilot on the off chance that they might have something worth looting.  If you ever do have a hostile dread attacking in a low end wormhole, advertise it.

Having ships set up to fight at a moment's notice is also needed.  Having ships to escape a blockade (covops frigates and haulers, interceptors) should be considered high on your todo list.

You must be able to 'eat' ship losses; they are a fact of life.  Sometimes you will be the cause of other pilots losing their ships.  Bashes of properly set up POS with fuel happen far less often.

The thing I most dislike about Gevlon's plan for wormholes, is that "replacement tanking" is cheaper.  We are in our wormholes for the long term.  I would replace my entire infrastructure several times over by not paying his rates.  We are however interested in mercenaries to defend us when there are significant fights to be had, and are willing to enter into 'mutual invite' best intention groups.

The single biggest risk for any wormhole corp is having a CEO that is prepared to worry about logistics and keeping the POS fuelled.  This a far bigger risk than setting up an undersized POS, or hostile fleets or awoxing.  I have seen corps suffer due to invasion. I have personally seen more corps die to lack of fuel.

The Foo style of wormhole corp does rely on a moderate level of trust, but certainly not excessive.  It certainly seems more reliable than trusting that highsec customs offices will have a reliably accessible customs office with a reasonable tax rate.


If you would like advice on how to set up the same style of corp that we have, please contact me; either on this blog as a comment or in game (DoToo Foo).

Monday 16 December 2013

PI one month into Rubicon

I knew that Rubicon would change pricing.  There was a strong possibility of more highsec manufacture concentrated on a few planets, and the masses might withdraw from extraction.

Before Rubicon, Bacteria, and Biofuels were on our 'always import' lists, at a cost of roughly 80 isk/unit.  Most items made from Bacteria were worth manufacturing.

Bacteria pricing month to 15 Dec 2013
Since Rubicon, that has changed.  Bacteria are now in the top 5 of the 15 PI mats, and very worth considering to extract.

I have a spreadsheet, with prices based on eve central. Please feel free to make your own copies of this and tweak it.  It has several pages of interest.
  • Prices
  • Manufacture. This assumes a pure import/export. POCO tax rate is set at B1 and is set to our corp's default tax rate.
  • MakeImport . This page assumes you are extracting 1 P1 item, and pairing it with imported materials.
It is influenced by and based in part on Wkye Mossari's PI spreadsheet.  I do not know if he has one updated with Rubicon prices (I went looking and could not find it).

As shown on the MakeImport page on the spreadsheet, even if I turn tax of entirely if you are extracting and initially manufacturing Bacteria, consider stopping at bacteria unless you are making Test Cultures.  Even then, the last time I remember making test cultures, it was very easy to saturate the market.


Tax Rate0%




Bacteria BasedLevelAve Sell%EarningsEarnings Per UnitImportUnit2ImportAmt2
Nanites P26,027.06-2%-123.22Reactive Metals 40
Viral Agent P26,663.81-14%-905.05Biomass 40
Fertilizer P26,924.02-4%-297.22Proteins 40
Test Cultures P28,080.6626%2,083.06Water40

I can only guess as to the future of customs offices; PVP corps seem more interested in muscling in on Industrialist's customs offices than actually owning any; with the possible (and somewhat bizzare) exception of the (previous?) Goon and RVB alliance.

What I do know is that some of us are overproducing some items and actively destroying value.  I include myself in 'us'; or at least I was until I produced this spreadsheet.

I don't like to tell players what to make.  Your circumstances are not mine.  Numbers come out different depending on what space you are in, your tax rate and whether you are doing daily resets or fortnightly resets or anything in between.

What I can recommend is having another look at your planets.  At the risk of mentioning PI 101, re-consider :
  • Your planet/customs office selection
  • How much you can extract of each raw resource.
  • Your tax rate and prices of P1
  • Manufacturing to improve the value at each step

Tuesday 3 December 2013

Shooting red crosses

Eve is a game where you shoot spaceships; or so they tell me.  So far, it has not been my Eve.

I have done my share of 'total damage done'; just on various customs offices that don't shoot back in and of themselves, but I can assure you they do get re-inforcements - even the NPC ones.

I still get alarmed whenever I hear the chirping of a ship locking;  Even when that ship is mine and I am targeting a customs office.

Ok alarmed is an understatement.  During our last bash; I had a rookie ship/empty clone sitting on a lowsec exit, and we had an activation.  I got the shakes so bad I was nearly unable to use the mouse.  Unwarranted; we had sufficient control of the situation, and with a little effort probably had control of the incoming ships.

It is time to fix this; we have a C4 with sites that are underutilized. Lets start there, and deal with the inevitable PVP that brings.  Step 1.  Take the ship training I have done so far for structure bashes and turn it into something capable of doing C4's.

Now the last time I remember shooting red crosses was back in February for those sisters and their epic arc.  According to my notes, the only thing I could not do in an algos was blow up one of the structures.

So.  I have a couple of pilots with reasonable Dominix skills; that is reasonable drone and Gallente Battleships.  One pilot might even be considered good, with several relevant skills at 5.

I know better than to just tackle a c4 combat site using my previous SOE epic arc easy mode missions as a basis.

Do some research on what might make a reasonable domi fit; and find http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/67342-C4-C3-RR-Dominix-The-Real-Fit.html

One of my pilots can fly this with the T2 fit; the paired pilot can not yet. mmm.  However another corp member wants to run these sites with me; so we are looking at running 4 of these ships, most with T1 (meta as appropriate) to start with.  With 4 domis, the things I am worried about is drone control range and will I know what I am doing?

We start off in highsec running L4 missions with 4 Domis to get a feel for both fleet work and to get me used to shooting red crosses; something that should be a small challenge, but still baby steps.

The first time we went out ..., it was a good thing we were overpowered for the mission.

Eve's default overview for running around customs offices is fine; remove the moons; order by range. Plenty of space for what an industrial needs.

When you turn up at a combat L4 site, with collidable structures, drones, where are the hostile ships? Remove collidable objects from overview; remove this, remove that.  Must lock friendlies to do RR, must lock hostiles to shoot.  Must drop drones, on all pilots.  Must ensure all pilots drones are shooting.  Oh, running out of cap ...Arrgh.  Ok .. We survived; but was messy.

Ok.  How do I set my overview up better?  I thought mine was good enough; it was not.  sarahs-overview-pack rel 030 to the rescue.  Make sure one tab has friendlies to enable targeting for remote reps.  Make sure you know how to see drones when you want to.

We go out a few more times; and run a few more sites; and I finally think I might have a clue.  I still have problems locking up friendlies for chains and then the mobs in a timely manner.  (I am told later that I need to target hostiles to shed invulnerability - that will save a few seconds of setup).

We finally get to having the missions be routine; warp in; drop light drones and take out frigates; recall and swap to sentries, and blap away.  I am incapable of dual boxing and hitting the same targets so ... drone assist and try a gun.  Large gun.  Blapping NPC's with a cycle; wait even longer for gun to cycle. Mmmm.

I am told that a civilian gun works well.  Really?  No.  I just can't do it.  A target painter on the other hand seems reasonable.

Ok, so I head out another night, this time by myself; and finish off a few more missions.  Good, that worked, now becoming routine.  Tweak my setup a little, not much.  One last mission.  The Assault.

Uggh.  So much damage.  I have my Domi's fit how I thought I would run the C4 sites; so a non-optimal hardener.  And webs.  Webs, more webs.  I finally clear off a set, warp away and repair; warp back.

More Webs.

More Battleships.

More Damage.

Shields Gone.

Armor gone; still webbed.

Hull Gone. Still webbed.  Sigh.  I think this is where I am meant to say I didnt want that Domi anyway.  Its not true.  I wanted it very much; if only to convince myself I am ready for c4 sites.

Warp alt away.  Reship and refit.  Go and do some industry.

I organise for a friendly logi to go finish the mission off later.  He actually has run enough L4's to be bored with them. We head back in.  He repairs me.  I need it.  We finally break the incoming damage with my lead ship on 30% armor.  It has also helped that the NPC's swapped some damage to my second ship; meaning I can use all the repairers I have.  I think I pulled every ship in the room.

The remaining rooms are a piece of cake.

Lessons learned; 
  • Highsec is dangerous space.  Apparently I don't need to worry about pulling additional mobs in our C4.
  • Read http://eve-survival.org before the next L4 mission.  Don't pull every ship; at least not at once.
  • A few more % on capacitor regen on my second pilot will be very worth it.
  • I am also short on drone control range on my second pilot; I need to fix this.

Thursday 28 November 2013

Reminder about Epithal flying

The Foo paranoid method of flying Epithals in wormhole space to and from Customs offices.


Do you really need to warp to every planet every PI cycle?  Customs offices hold a lot of PI.  You are vulnerable at the customs office.  Consider deferring some planets until next cycle.
  • Dscan
  • Warp to Static Safe Spot.
  • Warp to Tactical Bookmark (or Tac) off Customs office.
  • Warp to customs office.  Transfer goods.  Warp out.  A bookmark in your current tac to customs office line is best (similar to an insta-undock but from space) good enough is POS or safe spot.
  • If you still get caught then empty hauler back into customs office; and align to a warpout to get pod clear.
  • Mix order up.  If you have just completed PI on planets 1, leave planet 2 until later.
Fit includes: DCU; stabs, alignment rigs; cloak; offline probe lancher; shield extenders, adaptive rigs.
 
I have mildly edited the evemail exchange below, with commonly used terms, and removing names and fits to protect the guilty.  If you really care, zkillboard and eve-kill exist.

Epithal kill ...
From:
Saissore Foo
Sent: 2013.11....
To: yyyy, xxxx (where yyyy is hunter, xxxx is hunted)
Hiya

You caught one of our so called perfect fit Epithals the other day, I assume at a customs office.
Loot fairy was mean; the only thing you got of any value appears to be the T2 invuln field.

Congrats; If our pilots get caught, its our pilots fault.

Secondly, what were you fit with?

Thirdly, did he warp directly from POS to Customs Office?

Fly well

Foo



--------------------------------
Re: Epithal kill ...
From: yyyy

Sent: 2013.11....
To:
Saissore Foo,  xxxx
Hey,

It actually was quite tough.

I expected the epithal to have more stabs so i tackled him with three short points.

I hard a hard time following the pilot but it was when I realized he was running the planets in order so I was able to get ahead of him.

As well, I'd recommend your pilots fly to a safe above or below the POCO prior to starting their PI run.

No hard feelings, Hope to you see you out there.

Fly safe
yyyy

--------------------------------

Re: Epithal kill ...
From:
xxxx
Sent: 2013.11....
To: yyyy, 
Saissore Foo


Good to know information. I'll mix it up more. Safe -> Random POCO  -> Safe -> Random POCO, instead of in order. Isn't it funny how the mantra of when you get lazy you lose your ship holds true still? Right Foo ;) ?

I had 3 stabs on it. Would 4 of made a difference? I thought for a SB that is fit for catching Epithal (like I think yours was), then it doesn't matter.

When you mean above or below having a tac at a POCO, do you mean on grid or off grid? I take it this is for someone who might be following? They uncloak on the POCO, while I would uncloak 150+ km and then warp to safe to play with my goo another day.

Thanks for the feedback! Fly Safe!



--------------------------------

Final comments.

An on grid tac at roughly 200k makes it even harder for hunters.  If they decloak too soon (to shed recalibration delays), then you can see and be somewhere else instead.

Our Pilot had 3 stabs.  The hunter had 6 points.  No stabbed fit Epithal can escape from 6 points by themselves.  Potentially an Epithal gun/damage mod fit might have saved the day in this instance?  Maybe.  Another friendly pilot with ECM may also have assisted.  I think it is worth the very occasional loss of between 5M & 10M ISK rather than tie up another pilot for guard duty.


PS.  I agree with some other bloggers that these structures should be called COCO's (corporation owned customs offices); or maybe even PCOCO (player corporation owned customs offices); but I will get more google hits using the common terminology, regardless of technical correctness or otherwise.

Saturday 23 November 2013

Goon defense of POCO's in Perimeter

The Goons own customs offices in Perimeter.  They are wardecced by D A R K Homeworld.  Many of the customs offices are re-inforced.  Perimeter is 1 jump from Jita.

It looks like RVB are coming to the Goons defence, as assistance against D A R K. (from viewing the war in-game).  Rumour has it that Goons and RVB are forming a cartel, and now it looks like mutual assistance pact.

I am an observer, not a participant (at least not yet anyway).

I missed one CO repair effort.

The second had a lot of suspect repairers on field; with opportunistic ganking of those ships.  A few went down.



 The third CO had only one ship with a suspect flag.  Given the number of ships on field, the single suspect lasted seconds.  A few more ships were involved.


https://zkillboard.com/system/30000144/


Friday 22 November 2013

So, you want to set up in a wormhole?


A wormhole has the following characteristics that you look at:

  • Class of wormhole.
  • Wormhole effects.
  • Class of static(s).
  • Planetary Interaction.
  • Current Occupants.
The bigger the class of wormhole; the bigger the ships that fit (c1 is BC and below; c2-4 is Battleship; c5/6 is Capital); and the more ships that can fit in.  Site difficulty matches as well.

Wormhole effects determine how well your ship performs.  Black Holes are disliked by site runners (penalties to almost everything useful - apart from speed), Cataclysmic variables lend them selves to remote repair instead of self repair; and there are other possible effects.  The higher the class, the more profound the effects.  NPC's are not affected by wormhole effects.

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Wormholes

The class of static is important for two reasons.
  • You will want access to markets (or icefields if you want to mine your own) to bring in ice products for POS fuel if nothing else.  A direct highsec, then c1 to c3 all make this easier; but then you get more day trippers based on the same rules.   Our C1 with highsec static has far more visitors than our higher class wormholes.
  • Your static is an obvious place of alternative activity.  PVP groups might like a c2 with null/c5 statics;  A well equipped PVE group might like a C5 or C6 with a C3 or C4 static for solo/dual box solo play.
Planetary interaction is a source of ISK by itself.  If you make your own PI for fuel blocks, then it reduces the required hauling for fuel.

Current occupants are also important.  Whether it is a previous corporation with cheap (or expensive) customs offices; or a currently active tower for those PVP inclined, or even a clean system.  All these things change your first interaction with your new environment.

Further reading

Saturday 16 November 2013

Singularity Highsec Poco placed

So my afk Dominix did the job; bashed down an interbus customs office.

I bought the gantries, and upgrades.

Launching and anchoring the gantry,taking 3 seconds.   Placed the upgrades in and hit the upgrade, probably taking another 2 seconds.

Upgrading the gantry is quick; taking 30 seconds to become a full customs office.

Note about ninja customs office placement : in about 5 seconds, you have decloaked, launched and put upgrades in, and clicked the upgrade button.  Your customs office gantry has far more HP than can be bashed in 30 seconds in highsec, and even then you can place it 100k away; enough to be on grid, not enough to warp to.

So, for the effort of keeping an eye unexplained BS in your systems (or fleets of other afk bashing ships), you might get your customs offices placed. 

For the attacking corp to return the favour, it will cost them 24 hours to apply the wardec, finish a timer that you have specified; come back when the timer expires, and is favorable to you, some 24-48 hours later.

The default player corp customs office is 10% player, 10% NPC (on untrained pilot), making a total effective tax rate 20%. Many corporations will start out with the default.

Customs code expertise does not appear subject to diminishing returns. My pilot currently has this skill at 3 and learning more, and is reducing tax by 3%.  My reading suggested this, but it is better to see the numbers in game.

Even with customs code expertise 3; I have no reduction in interbus tax rates from 17%.  The same as my Singularity pilot without any customs This surprised me.

Given the prevalence of 0.1 isk undercutting nature of many Eve players, I expect there to be many 11.9% taxed player corp customs offices, especially if any cartel or 'protection' groups form.  11.9% + max skilled customs code expertise makes for 16.9% effective tax; cheaper than NPC, but only just.

There will be a limit to the number of groups capable of bashing out regions of customs offices. 
  • customs office gantries are limited by concord LP.
  • DPS to quickly kill a customs office.  500dps to break tank; 700dps to get there eventually; 2000 dps to do so in a several hours.
  • ISK to buy gantries and upgrades; This will cost very roughly 1B/system.  Some of us are comfortable buying a system or 2 of upgrades;  Only a few have the ISK for buying a region of customs offices; 

Whether it the 7 Marauder pilot years or the 2,500 billion ISK (using planet numbers and DPS from greedy goblin's post) ; this is multi 'alliance' level task to take on all customs offices.

Much less of an issue to bash out 'high value' customs offices in preferred regions.

Dominix poco bash fits

I am no EFT warrior.  Some generally laugh at my fits, but I can cope.  My ships are to do a job, not to fit someone else's idea of what a good fit should be.

With current skills, DPS is 1019.

[Dominix, poco bash laser]
Damage Control II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Inertia Stabilizers II

Large Micro Jump Drive
Prototype 100MN Microwarpdrive I
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Improved Cloaking Device II

Large Energy Burst Aerator I
Large Sentry Damage Augmentor I
[empty rig slot]

Garde II x5
Wasp EC-900 x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Hornet EC-300 x5
Hammerhead II x5

Notes: if EFT says not cap stable, turn the microwarp drive 'off'.  if still not cap stable remove it, looking at afterburners, then looking at cap rechargers.



With current skills, DPS is 1138.
[Dominix, poco bash laser highsec afk]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II

Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L

Large Energy Burst Aerator I
Large Sentry Damage Augmentor I
[empty rig slot]

Garde II x5
Wasp EC-900 x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Hornet EC-300 x5
Hammerhead II x5

Notes: improve the guns according to your skills.  While mega modulated pulse energy beam has slightly higher DPS, dropping out a low slot damage module for additional power to drive it has a worse outcome.

With my skills I am better off with more drone damage mods than energy mods; this choice depends on your particular skills.

Friday 15 November 2013

Singularity CO bash

As of writing this post, I have couple of ships, on singularity; Avele V customs office,   doing a bash.  Friends, enemies welcome.  Over the next few days, I will be poking in ad out of Avele, mostly around downtime bashing AFK.


Well, I finally have my singularity installer working.

Log into wormhole space.  When the copy was taken, I was sitting in a battleship and battlecruiser, in wormhole space, without any probe launchers on those pilots.

So ... I self destruct; telling myself that it's only the backup server, and I can buy everything for 100ISK each.  And yes, that includes navy issue battleships.  Clones are still full price. But my isk is play isk on test.

Why am I bothering? Well I want to know now what will happen next week, in a disposable environment.

I expect Highsec battleships on extended afk bashes will become a familiar site over the next few months.

I can confirm that highsec interbus customs offices are 17%.  This, by itself, even with the reduced tax rates, means that for the first few weeks, there will be increased taxes for highsec PI pilots.  (Reminder to self; update corp advertisements).


I will put up a singularity customs office tomorrow.

Is it profitable to suicide gank glass cannon fit meta gun dominix?

Thursday 14 November 2013

In praise of Warp Core Stabiliser fit Epithals, and their counters


I have been reading about some recent ... strong feelings towards warp core stabilisers, and about how evil they are.

You know, how an Epithal fully fit with them might actually survive a gank in wormhole space.

Or maybe how a they are a blight on faction warfare plexers.

Well I am a proud user of warp core stabilisers, on my Epithals.

I also want you to know that they are not the last word when it comes to surviving.  We have been caught by well setup warp disruption bubbles. 

The Interdictor or Heavy Interdictor is still our nemesis.  Sure, you might need to know where we are going; but there are clever hunters out there.  The interdictor currently has a warp speed of 9au/s; our Epithals travel at 4.5au/s.  If you guess where we are going, in the right ship, you have us well and truly caught.

But you want to run a covops cloak fit ship, and still want to catch us? Nothing stopping you fitting 3 Warp Scramblers on a Recon, Covops or or Stealth bomber ship.  A terrible fit you cry?  Well if that terrible fit catches us, and a 'proper' fit lets us go, maybe it's time to re-evaluate 'terrible' and 'proper'.

Previously, industrials had evasion tanking.  i.e. Don't be where the gankers were.  If caught then dead.  Now we (temporarily) appear to have choices.  I expect this to change in the future; whether due to small gangs, or 'terrible fit' covops cloak ships.  Now, in wormhole space (and I assume null), we are relying on hunters not having 4-5 points of warp disruption.  This too, shall pass.

I have not done faction war, but I know a certain corp member who is going to have a minor fit (*cough* DJ *cough*) when I say that Warp Core Stablisers are good for the game.  It means that hunters have to choose between maximum gank and maximum catch.

Now if you wanted to give industrials an option, how about a low module for fitting to industrials (and plexing frigates), when such a ship is hit with a point, both ships are disrupted and neuted for 30 +/- 10 seconds. Call it a warp core feeback module, and give it a 3 minute reload.  A standard fit for such a module might be DCU, Feedback,(edit) Buffer hull tank

For those that object, do you feel that only hunters should be able to pick fights?

I would be very interested in fitting such a module.

P.S. I appear to be both very 'chatty' today, a little more belligerent than normal.

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Crystal Ball gazing : Rubicon

This is a speculative post, with all the risks and rewards inherited in that.  Let the industrialist beware.

The higher up the list, the more confident I am that I know what I am talking about.  Conversely, by the time we get to the bottom of this list, the more likely you are to find speculative waffle.


Lets look at what we know about rubicon features

Highsec customs offices.

Lots of semi at keyboard battleships and steath bombers; going mental bashing out customs offices.  Large T1 ammo consumed. SB torps consumed.

Lots of players with experience in structure bashes; and much less likely to want to take part in the future bashes because of this.

Demand for Customs office gantries and then the upgrades needed.  Somewhat countered by a large stockpile already gathered.  Has more been stockpiled than will be needed?  I don't know.

New higher NPC tax initially, eventually countered by pilots learning the new Customs code expertise skill.

A drop in taxable values by 20% for basic, 11% for advanced.  For P1 items easily found in highsec PI (Biofuels, bacteria), this will almost entirely end up being passed on.  For P1, highsec limited items (industrial fibers, chiral structures), this will make no difference.

For highsec manufactured P4 (Integrity response drones), were roughly 10% of the cost, and about 1/2 of the profit.  With more highsec barren/temperate planets being used for manufacture, will have a dropped price even further.

Pirate corps will own some customs offices.  Highsec industrialists beware; Pirates can see who, where and when expensive PI transport is performed.  There will be more highsec ganks on epithals holding 100m +.

Short term : Increased demand; increased supply via stockpiles.
Long term : Demand to return to before the announcement of Rubicon. Probable decreased highsec taxes. Probable increased highsec supply. 

Sisters of eve ships

Lots of ground out sisters of eve LP turned into sisters ships.  Lots of demand for ships.  I will be buying several frigates for lowskill scanning alts

A temporary peak in demand for covops cloaks. Probably a demand for more sister launchers and probes.

Lots and lots more covops visitors to wormhole, lowsec and null. 

Warp changes

Lots of pilots will be trying out small fast ships.  They will be 'fun'.  Also moving pods into different parts of eve just got a lot faster, assuming you wrap your pod in a suitably small ship.  Should be a small spike in the buying of frigates of most varieties.

For WH based planet gooers; it is more important than ever that you always warp to customs office via a safespot, and never travel directly from customs office to customs office. 

Depots

I expect these will see a lot of use in wormhole space, and potentially low/null systems where either (A) there are no stations, or (B) players have been locked out of stations.

We have used both small POS and Orca's as refitting services before.  This will be a lot more convenient and cheaper.  I expect to see quite a few of these around.

Tractor Units

I would not want to be a tractor beam manufacturer.  Sell your stock and blueprints for whatever you can get for it.  Consider reprocessing.

Interceptors

An improved cloak and sisters core scanner probe is not what everyone would think about with interceptors.

We will have  a few of these on hand in case of another wormhole blockade.  One favourite trick of WH evictions is to control wormholes and prevent the locals escaping by setting up bubbles on the gates.  Now this can be somewhat overcome by covops frigates, but covops frigs can be decloaked inside a bubble (but not by the bubble). 

Racial Frigate 5
Evasive Maneuvering 5
CPU Management 4
Interceptors 1
Hull Upgrades 1
Cloaking 3
Astrometrics 4
Astrometric Acquisition 3
Astrometric Pinpointing 3
Astrometric Rangefinding 3
Total time: 32 days on a newbie pilot, no implants or remaps


For bonus points: a covert ops frigate for
Electronics Upgrades 5
Covert Ops 1
Cloaking 4
Total Time 49 days on a newbie pilot (including the interceptor), no implants or remaps

Isis ship guide and certificate overview.  

Some players that could know better, will use this.  I use the existing certificate system to guide skill choices.  I also have trouble recognising what a ship is; this should help.

SMA changes

Ship maintenance arrays can drop ships again.  This makes Foo a sad panda; as we are far more likely to receive an eviction attempt than make one.  For the record; nothing to see in our SMA; just a fleet of warp core stabbed Epithals.  Please move along.

Fortunately for us, there is going to be so much structure bashing with highsec customs offices, that everyone is going to be worn out from bashing until the next expansion comes along.  (That is; you feel like bashing something?  Look - just over there in highsec, there is a gold rush happening - you know you want to beat up on those wicked interbus customs offices ... and look, they don't even have warp core stabs fit)

Marauders

Some new interest simply because they changed.  And maybe the bastion mode will make them appear overpowered for a while (in which case there will be a huge interest).

Siphon units

I assume that the aim of this is to encourage POS owners to pay attention to their systems.  I just hope it means that Wormhole gas reactions become profitable again.  (No; not terribly interested in a system full of double reaction towers)

Ghost sites

Ghost sites appear to be interesting; the ability to source new implants.  One day I will run some more sites and see if I am up for fast DPS races.   Or then again, maybe I have another PI planet to update.

Electronic Attack Ships

Umm buffs mean more of these get bought, flown and sold?  Who flies ewar frigates anyway?  I thought frigates were for their scanning bonuses?  Nothing to see here??  ( I did say that the further down the list, the more speculative waffle)

Cynosural Inhibitor

Umm.  I give up.  You don't see many of these dcinosaur things in wormholes.



Maybe I am starting to get a hang of parts of this game I spend too long playing.  I am actually in a position to consider patch notes, and understand what some of them might mean.

Fly well.  I hope to not see you in those sister cloaky ships; and that is because you entered someone else's wormhole, rather than just the new covops cloak you can now use.

Tuesday 12 November 2013

Highsec POCO cartels

Normally, as a consumer, I am anti-cartels.

However the Greedy Goblin is considering a cartel for Highsec Poco's come Rubicon.

As we run more than one wormhole PI based corp, in more than one wormhole, highsec customs offices are a threat, both to our members, and to the corp incomes. Our income derives from a mix of POS space rental, and a choice of either monthly fixed rent or PI tax; as well as a buying program.

My best guess is 5% long term drop from reduced taxes (both base costs and skill based), with significant volatility until then.  I expect prices to rise post Rubicon both from additional demand, as well as initially higher NPC and Player based taxes, with the tax take falling as pilots gain skills to reduce NPC tax, and player corps drop prices to become competitive with each other.

Higher taxes on highsec customs offices is good for our corporations.  Cartels would be interested in keeping taxes high.  I have some advice to those considering such an endeavor.

Consider the order of priority of planets to obtain.

You are planning to control all the planets in highsec?  Really? Do you know how long that will take?

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Good_Planets

Even if you "only" manage to control temperate planets in the main hub regions, you could maintain a (highsec) monopoly on Industrial Fibers.

Similarly Lava planets for Silicon

While on the surface, it appears that owning Gas would be a control on Oxidizing Compounds, or Barren for manufacture, there are a lot of Gas and Barren worlds in Eve.

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/region/planets has a list of planets to target.

Cartel Defection

In game theory, there will be 'defectors' from any cartel.  I see the most common defection will be granting select players cheaper tax rates based on standing.  This will be invisible to most of the cartel; though alliance diplomats might be able to check various customs offices tax rates by setting alts to various standings (from deep red to deep blue).

Defection of extraction based planets is somewhat limited; as extraction PI has diminishing returns with too many pilots.

There are no diminishing returns on manufacturing PI.

Bashing NPC customs offices

People get tired after hours and you miss significant damage done from forgetting to reload ammunition.  Drone + Laser glass cannon boats are best for POCO bashing.  That said if you currently have T2 large blasters but only skills for T1 small lasers, you work with what you have.


A glass cannon boat is fit for maximum DPS, with tanks only an afterthought.  Of course, pay at least some attention if you see a large spike in local.

Energy Collision rigs, Energy  Burst Aerators, Heat sinks, Drone damage amplifiers, Cap rechargers (until you are cap stable), and of course pulse lasers.  Be aware that not all boats can field a full set of highest DPS meta lasers, you may wish to fit slightly lower DPS guns that have much easier fitting requirements.

For lasers, faction crystals are cheap and reduce the time taken for a bash, and don't need reloading often, but may not last an entire bash (depending on fleet size). 

Ungroup guns.  On recent bashes, I noticed that not all of my faction crystals were burning out at the same time.  Just because you lose one gun should not mean you need to lose others.

Watch your fleet members, especially those that are ammo based.  Target them if you see their guns go quiet.  Most industrialists startle amusingly when targeted.  I sometimes still startle when I target others.

During the initial land grab, be aware that others are grabbing land too.

Ninja POCO's.

Do you want to really upset someone?   When you see a large bash occurring, keep a cloaked large industrial or Orca with customs office gantries and upgrades in storage.

When you see an attacking force destroy an interbus customs office, drop yours before they drop theirs.  It takes only a few seconds before you have a fully upgraded customs office, requiring a reinforcement timer to destroy.

I believe anyone using this tactic will be immediately wardecced, but some corporations would enjoy someone else paying for their highsec wardecs.

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Too many Industrials.

One of the Foo wormhole corps lives in a C2 wormhole.  (i.e. we have more than one; and we are recruiting for our C1)

We do a lot of PI.  We also have a self-sufficient (or 'bring your own everything') mentality.

This is causing us issues, as in how many empty Industrials does it take to fill an SMA?  80.  Well actually less than that, because you also have PVE fit ships, PVP fit ships, scanning ships etc.  So lets say you only allow 50% of the SMA for industrials.  Is 40 is still too many?

Well, the thing with PI alts, is that some of them have really poor ship skills.  Do you really need to give your 3rd pilot Hull Upgrades 4, Shield Upgrades 4, Tactical Shield Manipulation 4, Cloaking 3 etc?  No?  Well T2 equipment is out for that alt then; T1 Meta's will do.

But on your "main"?  Well that pod is worth wrapping with all those nice T2 modules.

All pilots want a spare Epithal for their goo.  We are getting better at avoiding ganking. Some of this is extra WCS, others is *always* fly to a safe or 200k off POCO (or both) bookmarks before picking up goo.  But ganks still happen.  (and ... some players have been know to fall asleep at a POCO)

Other pilots want a Miasmos for their gas or ore. Some want an max fit industrial for emergency evac or simply to bring in more command centers.

So, with 6 spare industrials per player; and lets say that we try to fit 7 players per corp; makes ... 42 Industrials.  But ... we have space for 40.

In our C2 corp, We are solving by communal ownership and standardised fits  (With a hundred goblins all crying out in terror).
* Players are allowed 2 private fit Industrial in the SMA at any given time, but expecting average of 1 each  Planed total of 7 industrials.
* A standardised base skills fit Max Hauler, PI hauler, (and soon Ore/Gas hauler).  Planed total of 6 industrials.
* A max skills fit Max Hauler, PI hauler, (and soon Ore/Gas hauler).  Planned total of 6 industirals
* The most popular variant of some of these ships. Planned total of 4 industrials.

This still leaves us with 23 industrials, but has freed up just over 20% of our SMA for what should be more interesting uses.  Our players are also still welcome to use their share of the LSAA space for ship storage, and of course log off in their ship of choice.

Surplus (empty) haulers will be kept in offline storage.  Our offline storage is 'secure', requiring no CPU/Powergrid, but also requiring someone with elevated permissions to withdraw from.  At the moment, this is an offline LSAA (large ship assembly array); but might be changed to an SMA later.  The offline SMA has the advantage of being available even if the POS is re-inforced; has the disadvantage of attracting additional attention, especially as SMA's will drop ships again come Rubicon*.  Mind you, I am not sure that an offline LSAA is any better in that regard.  Some days I wish those things could be scanned.

We acknowledge that standardising our fits will not be best for any given pilot.  The alternative is making us a more attractive target by lessening our defences to increase online storage for more ships. 

For those pilots that want their special sauce fits; with the exception of rigs, you can borrow one of the base skill ships and re-fit it as needed, providing you put it back the way you found it.

* sob sob; I am supportive of other corp's POS being bashed for their ships. PVP types breaking things means there is a need for replacement ships... Just leave mine alone.

Friday 1 November 2013

K162 descriptions

In our wormhole corp(s), we have rules on bookmarks: never warp to a bookmark unless you plan on using it (or at least deliberately planning to reset it).

Sometimes, all we want is a route to empire space, so we have no plans on unravelling the chains.  This means we can occasionally ignore certain bookmarks because all we want is the fastest route to empire space.

Taken directly from the wiki.eveonline.com K162 Wormhole page
Description Origin System
Unknown parts of space C1, C2 or C3
Dangerous unknown parts of space C4 or C5
Deadly unknown parts of space C6
High security space Highsec system
Low security space Lowsec system
Null security space Nullsec system
For Foo corp members, if you find a K162 that you don't need to go down, at least note the description obtained by selecting the K162 and looking at it's info. Other corps may like to do the same

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Multi Blog RSS aggregator - help requested

Once upon a time, there were sites that did a good job of mixing the various eve blogs and combining them into an easily consumable view.   That was then, and this is now.

TL;DR:

What easy to maintain method can I use to create, maintain, and distribute a consolidated Eve Blogroll, across multiple platforms?

Research and suggestions are welcome, but what I am really after is hosts and processes that people have direct, recent experience with.

Test feeds are available at :


http://rssmix.com/u/3827027/rss.xml (nearly looks readable directly in firefox and chrome) and
http://rssmix.com/u/3827027/rss.json


The existing resources

There are a few initiatives out there to try to rebuild this.  In my not so humble opinion, I have one of the better (bigger?) meta lists that have current posts viewable in a browser at http://foo-blogroll.blogspot.com.au/

Sugar Kyle has possibly the best (biggest?) master list of eve websites at https://sites.google.com/site/newedensource/ ; followed closely by the OPML list at http://cognitiveindustries.com/opml/index.php

I use feedly to consume my own reading list feeds.

The Whine

Both my list and Sugar's lists suffer from being somewhat manual and painful to maintain.

The cognitive industries site suffers from not having a web or phone browser wrapper around it.  I know how to import an OPML list into some RSS programs, but not very well,  I consider myself  technically competant.  Syncing additions is even harder.

I can't work out how to synchronise my feedly reading list with the published blogroll.  (Yes there is manual processes, but it works so

I find it hard to read my own master blogroll site from my mobile phone.  I believe others would consider it unusable (with some justification).

Restrictions

I want to leach off free solutions; that are not advertising based.
  • Free means that I am not reaching into my own pockets, and that I can leave a solution running even once I move onto a new project.  I am not planning on going anywhere; but realistically some form of what happens when I move onto a new game needs to be considered.
  • Not advertising based means less work for me blocking undesirable adverts.
I would prefer a simple to set up solution. There are already enough days that I would rather play eve rather than blog about it.  I am not looking for a 3 month job to set up a cloud hosted app.

I don't want to use a home server; my internet connection is neither fast nor reliable enough.

I don't like what the outcome I have with Yahoo pipes; I could not get it to sort in date time correctly. 

http://www.feedcombine.com did not let me create an account.

A possible solution

What I want is a feed consolidator; something that I can easily add and remove sites from, but give users an easy to use and consistent RSS feed to consume. I am prepared to pay a small amount out of pocket for this; but would prefer free

I would then replace my existing blogroll contents and feedly subscription to both point at the same list.  I would also make this feed available for other RSS users to read on their travel time / lunch breaks on their phones/tablets.

But the devil is in the detail.

The best I have come up with so far is http://rssmix.com/

It looks like I can consolidate the 70 or so feeds that I currently consume into a single feed and get what I want to read (and have read) in one spot.  The trick is that, while I can create a new list easily enough, modifying an existing list seems tricky.

I might get away with two layers of technology; one using rssmix.com to build new feeds quickly and easily, and a 'wrapper' feed that gives a consistent end point but takes the rssmix.com.

I have no idea about the people behind rssmix.com; where to get support, how long they plan to be around under their current guise.

So I leave up nearly where I started.

Is rssmix.com the best tool for what I am looking to build?  Has someone else already built it, and I am missing something?  Surely what I am trying to do has already been done.

I threw together an RSS mix based on the current cogntive industries OPML file; and it give us

http://rssmix.com/u/3827027/rss.xml
and
http://rssmix.com/u/3827027/rss.json

I have no idea if this feed process is going to work, or if this is the right tool; but bash it around a little.


Monday 28 October 2013

It aint over till the lady sings


As readers of this blog know; we had our C1 wormhole invaded.  We organised for a successful defense. 

I am now prepared to announce what we paid for the defence.  0 ISK.

During the initial invasion, I announced to everyone we knew; and some we didn't, that we were being invaded.  I paid attention to what was on kill logs; and what we saw.  Names, Pilots, Ship types.  We found a "friendly" wormhole corp : Daktaklakpak. with their friends Cold Moon Destruction  (since closed I think?)

Daktak and Cold Moon came for the kills of shiny ships.

I did provide Daktak and Cold Moon ammunition.  Some players received more ammo than they consumed;  Others would have consumed more than they spent.  I considered the time spent in logistics and ISK spent in organising ammo well spent.  I would rather the players that can PVP do PVP, and the players that can do ferrying do the ferrying.

However one of our unwelcome guests did leave a scanner in our system, and ran a guerrilla action.  This was annoying.  It never stopped me from doing what I do; PI, industry, research.  Our guest did however crimp the playstyle of some of our member, and then we crimped it even further by putting in a "don't feed kills" policy.

Our solution; move those players that cared into another wormhole, and stop recruiting.  The stop recruiting bit was mildly annoying.

Well, two can play at the lurk as unwanted players in wormholes.  We started asking various corps that we knew had statics to our unwanted guests home wormhole type.  We stalked eve-kill looking for players that had recently lost ships in their home.

We used locator agents to track down their corp members; and noticed that many were highsec missioners. 

Lo and behold; our unwanted guests had their home c4 invaded; their T3's and capital ship destroyed; and were wardecced by 2 different corporations.

We had a hand in some, but not all of this. The enemy of my enemy may be my friend.  Or they may attempt to blow us out of the skies too.  Regardless, we have talked to the relevant parties.

We note with mild interest that our unwanted co-inhabitants have reduced by roughly 40%, with their previous CEO and diplomats moving to new ventures.  Our membership  is largely unchanged.

Without meaning to tempt fate, I think our recent C1 troubled times are over.  The problem with waiting for the lady to sing, is that sometimes you are not around to hear it.  It's not as if invaders will evemail you and say they have given up.  And I am not sure I would believe such an evemail even if I got one.

I don't fly T3's yet.  Given how much effort some players will go to get T3 kills, I am in no rush.  I am tempted to stick with solid, mildly boring ships and learn to fly them better.

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Is there money in LowSec? An experiment.

I finally found the time to conduct a little experiment that has been itching me for some time. It had to do with Booster production, Gas harvesting, and being a newbie. I planned to do newbie stuff, with less than 200.000 skill points and see where it gets me. In LowSec. How long until I get killed?

I looked around a bit and since I wanted to explore the Solitude region anyway, it was as good as any other gas cloud region. I podded a new Character to the region and used my JF to bring in some supplies, about 40M worth for the new pilot, the rest to set up camp. Half of that 40M was for one skill: Gas Cloud Harvesting. I trained up Astrometrics first, got him a T1 scanning Frigate  and with absolutely minimal skills I started mapping out the LowSec parts of Solitude, gathering Bookmarks of sites and trying to get a feel for the activity in the region.

The moment I could, I got into this (terrible) little ship:

[Venture]

Gas Cloud Harvester I
Gas Cloud Harvester I
Core Probe Launcher I [Sisters Core Scanner Probe Ix8]

Survey Scanner II

Warp Core Stabilizer I

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

This. Is. A. Bad. Fit. Don't use it. No tank and fit for what the ship should not be used for: Scanning. It is amazingly cheap to fly, skill and ISK wise, though, and about the only thing you can get fit on it with my limited skills. But that's what it was about. A newbie would fly this.

I ditched the scanning Frig I had and only flew this ship, scanning for the Gas sites I was looking for, cherry picking. Look at it again. No cloak, no tank. I scanned in LowSec sitting there visible and vulnerable, sometimes in a safe spot, but mostly on expired site bookmarks I had found earlier.

Of course I first tried it out in HiSec, and it yielded about 5M/hour worth of gas plus scanning and travel time. I was doing the newbish stuff... selling to local buy orders instead of shipping it out. But 5M isn't that bad, is it?

Next, I set out into LowSec. Getting the good sites there yields nearly 50M ISK an hour, but also requires more scanning and travel time. (The low tier Gas is more abundant here, but really look for the higher tier gases!). In average, I could find a site every 30 minutes, and empty it within an hour. Still, I'm flying in an uncloakable, untanked ship on a character a couple of days old and in an NPC corp.

After 6 (!)days, I got killed for the first time. I was targeted once before on station and docked while scanning, and I was scanned down twice before that but escaped by warping out when DScan showed incoming ship to my location. Ok, the watching DScan is considered a level up for newbies, but everyone tells you to do it... so I went along and did that.

The kill happened like this: I was harvesting Gas (the third cloud of the day) when local blinked and DScan showed a Buzzard in the system for a second, after that: scanner probes. I had seen this before, often people were just flying around updating their bookmarked sites in the area. I caught the Buzzard a couple of times on DScan again while orbiting the Gas cloud at 1000m. (Newbie thing: Not aligned, you know).  New neutrals blinked into Local, and DScan showed me a Jaguar and a Cynabal, and one I didn't catch. I was hauling my gas in shortly before and saw the Buzzard warping close, so I assumed it was on the gas site at the time I got back and started harvesting again. And just as the Jaguar and Cynabal were warping close it uncloaked at 13km off the cloud. I had already initiated warp as it uncloaked and docked on station. There I waited for a bit to see what happens. The Jaguar and Buzzard logged or left system, the Cynabal pilot stayed. I undocked and did a directional scan toward my cloud bookmark to see a Cynabal and some drones. I warped to a nearby planet and verified. The Cynabal was on the site. So I warped back to station and logged on to another character for a bit. When I returned, the Cynabal pilot was docked with me on station. (This was not so newbish, but I wanted to know).

Another newbish thing to do: Undock and start harvesting again. The Cynabal undocked shortly after I started harvesting again. I only got two cycles so it must have been less than 2 or three minutes until he landed on grid after I undocked. From my POV he got me as I was already warping out, probably a skill level or two of any useful skill would have saved the ship. Or a tank if I would have been able to fit one for that matter. Lesson: More skills will make things a lot safer. More skills means: Less time scanning, less time harvesting, a cloak and a lot more survivability. Obvious, right? Except for a newbie, perhaps.

The result of this experiment, thus are:

- 1 Lost Venture (Around 10M ISK, those Sister Probes are expensive)
- 400M in harvested Gas, ready to be processed.

(So much for Risk vs. Reward)

- 100M ISK reward transfered to my killer after this post is published. (I just can't resist).

- The lesson from my killer that I should buy a light saber to bounce his shots back to him. I'd rather fit a tank, thanks, once the alt gets the skills.

All in all, a fun experiment. Also, maybe it's time to deploy some people to gas harvesting regions. The margins seem fair enough, and maybe together with a tank I should fit some tackle on a Venture and look for fun. Hero Venture with T3 Cruiser Drones should be fun. All considered, I really need to do the math on booster production. A single gas site can provide one POS with one day worth of material for standard Boosters, two sites from different regions for improved or strong Boosters. I wonder how the market looks.

There are of course other ways to make money in LowSec. Once you are able to set up a POS, that is.

Tuesday 8 October 2013

How to set up POCO's to have different tax rates to different groups

Player owned customs offices are the essential infrastructure that a player corporation needs to set up.

I was chatting with an otherwise experienced player in our corp, and he didn't know that I could set up different rates to different pilots.

We are doing this because in our corps; some pilots would like no fixed commitment. They might only be on a few times/month and are not sure the next time they will be on.  Other players have Command Center 5, Interplanetary consolidation 5, with more pilots than they are prepared to count.

The first pilot wants casual, easy come, easy go.  The second is considering putting up their own POS, bashing their own customs offices.  However even the most ardent PI player considers the cost of a wormhole POS, and many solo pilots will have difficulty bashing their own customs offices.

Our method of distinguishing between these two types of player, both residing in the same POS, is to use two corporations.

We have more than one wormhole; we have more than one corporation anyway.  Each corporation has 7 divisions; so I can provide 'secure' storage many players (depending on a certain lack of large hostile fleets); one corporation based in each wormhole.

Our C2 corp but owns the customs offices in our C1 wormhole.
Our C1 wormhole owns the customs offices in our C2 wormhole.

(No I have not said where we live;  anyone with a modicum of research can work it out).

We have a corp tax POCO rate of 4%, light blue tax rate of 4% and a deep blue tax rate of 0%, and a default tax rate of 5%.

The apparently simpler (but I could not get to work) method of selectively setting your own pilots to deep blue within corp did not seem to work; Corporation rate overrides standing.


I never expected to use our default tax rate.  Who would ever setup to do PI in a system with an established tower, with customs offices all owned by a player corp?  Well it happened.  After our 'interlopers' set up, they then found our towers and ... decided that ours looked far more 'prickly' than theirs did and sued for peace before a shot was even fired.  I like industrialists, and we exchanged light blue.

Monday 7 October 2013

Copy a bookmark between corporations

Sometimes you have two friendly corps that want to share bookmarks.

Corp A has the bookmark, Corp B does not.

The process is :
Corp A Pilot
  • Drag the corp bookmarks to your personal bookmark. This makes a copy
  • Drag personal bookmark to your inventory
  • If in station; contract or trade your bookmarks to your friends
  • If in space; jetcan your bookmarks where your friends can pick them up
 Corp B pilot
  • Takes bookmark from contract/trade/jetcan
  • Drags them into your personal inventory.
  • Drags the to personal  bookmarks.
  • Drags them to your corp bookmarks.  This makes a copy
  • Roughly 10 minutes later everyone in Corp B has the copied bookmarks.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Highsec Customs office revisited

There have been some updates on highsec Corporate Owned Customs Offices : otherwise misnamed POCO (player owned customs offices), but I assume COCO sounds like a fashion designer or maybe a misspelling of certain drinks and food.
  • Highsec POCO can only be attacked while at war.
  • Highsec POCO can not be transferred while at war, or with war pending.
  • Base rate reduction to PI, reducing tax.  This ranges from 11% for advanced commodities to 20% for basic and refined.
  • Highsec POCO to still have NPC tax, with the new Customs Code Expertise skill enabling a NPC tax reduction from 10% to 5% on base rates.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/player-owned-customs-offices-in-hi-sec

Ok, now I have parroted the CCP announcement (a lot of bloggers do stuff like that), here is my take of semi-random thoughts.

There will be a short term spike in PI as players stockpile customs office gantries and upgrades, even if they make little sense to put up for the average user.  This may spike even higher when Rubicon drops, depending on how flooded the market is by stockpiling speculators.

The reduction of base rates is a nerf to POCO owners; but does somewhat make multi planet PI more attractive where players are currently paying tax.

EDIT : http://evehermit.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/should-have-seen-that-coming/  I think Interbus tax at 17% on exports, so this would drop to around an effective 8.5%.  If this does occur, I need to re-think the value of below for PI farmers owning your own customs offices; and it's ultimate effect on end prices.

There is little value in pure PI farmers owning or even using a highsec POCO over an interbus one.  POCO's are too expensive to put up 'defensively', and for those without the means to defend, simply become a war target magnet.

After the initial land grab; there will still be highsec Interbus customs offices available, just like they are still available in lowsec and wormhole space.

The best value for a highsec POCO is for it's 'shoot me' between these times value.  Owners of customs offices can set within a 2 hour window when their customs offices will be vulnerable.

The next value I see for a highsec POCO is for existing large nullsec alliances to attempt to drive PI prices up by putting their 15% tax on all conveniently placed customs offices.  At roughly 1B ISK per system this seems to have a very poor return on investment.  Targeting all Temperate for Autotrophs/Industrial fibers, or Lava for Felsic Magma/Silicon makes some sense.  No point in specifically targeting Gas for Reactive Gas/Oxidizing Compound as there are far too many gas planets.

POCO owners that charge tax will be able to see who, the value and timing of PI collection.


Forget ice; Industrial Fiber interdictions anyone?

Finally, there might be some value in advertising to highsec PI farmers.  Some of them will click on the customs office to work out who owns what, and read the odd corporate bio.

Highsec PI farmers will get Customs Code Expertise, often to 4, reducing their tax rate to (approx?) 6%. Combined with the drop in base rates; for many players, export tax on Processed commodities will drop from 50 ISK/unit (500isk * 10%) to 24% (400 ISK * 6%), and export tax on advanced commodities will drop from 135,000 ISK/unit to (1,350,000 * 10%) to 72,000 ISK/unit (1,200,000 * 6%)

My guestimate is that the price for demand limited items like Bacteria and Biofuels will fall from roughly 90 ISK (1.8 * tax of 50 ISK)  to 45 ISK (1.8 * tax of 24 ISK).  As I said before, I don't see supply limited items falling anywhere near as much.

I do see some attempt to strangle cheap supply on Temperate and Lava planets, pushing the value of Industrial Fibers and Silicon up.

My expectation that the long term prices for advanced PI will probably drop by 15%, being a combination of more advanced PI being manufactured in highsec at lower taxes, and falling prices on some (but not all) components.


No update on attacking Interbus customs offices. I still think you should be tagged as suspect when attacking one.

Monday 30 September 2013

Rubicon on a planetary scale

This is a speculation post.   As such it is subject to the vagaries of herd behaviour.

The single biggest change for me, is the player owned customs offices.

When bashing a customs office, you can achieve a lot given time and a t1 AFK fit glass cannon battleship or 2.  I understand that concord will not intervene, but really hope that players are given a suspect flag while shooting one.

I confess to a 'rent seeking' desire; that is, to complain about how the evils of highsec player owned customs offices will destroy wormhole/null/lowsec customs office ownership.

But it won't; not significantly.  Those doing extraction based PI will still suffer huge penalties in highsec; those wanting better returns in exchange for potentially higher risk will still seek out lowsec, null or wormholes.

There probably will be a difference in factory planets.  I can see many barren planets being set up as P4 factories, with 0% tax. 

I see many small industrialists doing so; then enjoying the attention of the bigger players, especially with planets close to trade hubs.

I have noticed already a large spike in certain P4 (advanced commodities) used in the construction of customs offices.  My personal speculation is that this will continue until after the expansion drops and the rush to build customs offices is over.

Long term, I do see a probable fall in both the P3/P4 prices, as more players do highsec import based manufacture on low/no tax planets. 


I also see a probable fall in lower priced PI commodities (Biofuels, Bacteria); as these are often lower bound by the highsec PI tax rate.

I think that the rest of the materials will remain largely as is, especially supply limited items.

There may also be a move away from single planet PI and towards multi planet PI as more players get access to reasonably taxed customs offices; I am unsure if this is enough to counteract a resurgent interest in PI long term.

Thursday 26 September 2013

Research numbers

A corp member would like me to do some research for him.  That makes sense to me, I have specialised research skills that take time to get; he does not. 

Please find below the email exchange, including his request and my response

--------------------------------
Research
From: <xx suppressed xx>
Sent: 2013.09.16 21:18
To: DoToo Foo, 

Hi

Do you have time to research some BPO's for me?

I'm interested in the following BPO's:

Hobgoblin I Blueprint
Cap Booster 50 Blueprint
Phased Plasma S Blueprint
Incursus Blueprint

If you could come up with a price for those BPO's ME researched.
--------------------------------
Re: Research
From: DoToo Foo
Sent: 2013.09.18 13:12
To: <xx suppressed xx>

Hi

Absolutely happy to research for you.

I do my research (primarily) in POS.  We are currently charging our highsec researchers 11,500 isk/hour for ME (Materiel Efficiency) (10,000 isk/hour for wh based research).  I suppose I should also charge a token for the use of the character research slot, but lets ignore that for the time being.

The question is how much isk/how long you wanted the research to be done.  POS based research is faster.

The other thing with research is that 1 point of ME has a huge impact; the 10th point of ME research less so, and the 90th point very little.

Hobgoblin I has an ideal ME of 91, taking 5 days, 17 hours, each ME takes me 1h 30.
Cap Booster 50 has an ideal ME of 90 taking 1 day 10 hours; each ME takes 23 minutes
Phase plasma S has an ideal ME of 29, taking 1 day 4 hours; each ME takes 57 minutes
Incursus has an ideal ME of 2400, taking 1875 *DAYS*; each ME takes 19 hours. 

To put the Incursus in perspective:
0ME : unit cost 328,453 ISK
1ME : unit cost of 313,026 ISK
10ME : unit cost of 300,672 ISK
50ME : unit cost of 298,671 ISK
1000ME : unit cost of 298,133 isk
2400ME : unit cost of 298,119 ISK

A rule of thumb is nothing needs more than a month of ME research.

0 ME has 10% waste
1 ME has 5% waste
10 ME has 0.9% waste
50 ME has 0.2% waste
Ideal ME has no waste.  That is the rounding errors on the formula is less than 1 unit of any mat.

So in summary, what ME do you want on each blueprint?