Alliance Tournament X Wrap-up

The Tenth Alliance Tournament has come and gone, and it was quite a show. In my opinion, there isn't an event more representative of the best parts of Eve. The AT runs the full gamut of planning, meta-gaming, and small gang pvp execution. From the first match to the last, it was an impressive display.

My initial impression is that this is the closest Alliance Tournament I've ever seen. There was a bit of a cookie-cutter feel to some matches with all of the Vindicators, Sleipnirs and Vargurs, but match outcomes were determined far more by skill than simply by bringing the right setup. Speaking of setups, there were a few noteworthy ones. The first one that has to be mentioned is the HUN Reloaded Vargur team. This one general team anchored around the two or three Vargurs pushed them all the way to the final round. The team was well put together and even more so, well piloted. 

My other noteworthy setups both belong to Pandemic Legion. I've already discussed the team with the flagship Bhaalgorn and the four Malices. PL failed to disappoint on the final day as well, packing a very impressive ECM team, anchored by three Widows. This team absolutely handled Darkside in a near-flawless victory. A part of me wonders if they should have saved it for the HUN match against that Vargur team, but I suppose you have to make it to that semifinals before you can use it there. And Darkside was not to be taken lightly after last year.

Rather not be on the receiving end of this one

I have to say, I'm damn proud of both PL and RvB. I thought the latter was performing especially well despite many people not taking them as serious contenders. As Raivi commented, I'm a bit disappoined PL couldn't manage to find their way through just one more match, as that would have at least secured 50 Cambions. I have a feeling that we may be able to get our hands on either Cambions or Etanas somehow though ;-)

Out of the Alliance Tournament, I have two new goals for my own career, and they're both a bit ambitious. The first is to own an AT prize ship of my own. I'm especially partial to the Freki, being a Rifter hull. My second choice would be an Adrestia, the Thorax-inspired HAC. I make enough isk that its plausible to procure one of these little treasures at some point. 

The second goal is to someday fly in the Alliance Tournament. The AT is a "fair" fight with everything on the line and everyone watching. That's something special. I've got some work to do over the next couple years, but that's the next step for me. I can't think of a more rewarding experience.

As a final wrap-up, CCP and all of the commentators who put in their hard work deserve a great deal of thanks. These people gave up their weekends for a month straight and put on one hell of a show. Congratulations as well to all of the competitors, especially Verge of Collapse and HUN Reloaded. Enjoy the new toys.

Three Quick Fixes For Eve

I'm no CCP Dev, but there are a few quick things that Eve needs to have implemented. There would be almost zero opposition to them. My points aren't complex, but they make sense.

Recently I've been doing a lot of logistics over two accounts. I finally started moving my Carrier about to get some ships across the universe quicker. With that comes both cyno alts and for me, different jump clones. All of these points fall under making life easier for alts and jump clones.

The first thing that needs to be changed is the jumpclone timer. Twenty four hours is just too darn long. If you log on the same time every day, wait a bit, and then jump clone somewhere, you're going to be constantly fighting the jump clone timer as it gets pushed back. The overarching idea with the timer makes sense though. If there were no restriction, you could take off in a fresh clone whenever someone camped you into a station. What about twenty hours though? Or twelve? Either of those timers, or even less, would make the mechanic a lot more useful. It would never put a damper on getting into the action, and it leaves no room for abuse. I missed out on a couple of corp fleets because I was in another jump clone, and that's not a fun part of the game.

The other changes are related to characters on the same account. I realized once I wanted to start jumping the Carrier that I didn't have a dedicated cyno alt I wanted to use. There's no need to muddy up the killboard for a developed character, so I rolled another one as a cyno alt. In doing this there was a lot of flipping skill training and switching between characters. This process is too tedious at the moment. Switching skills involves logging in on one character, logging off, logging back in to the other, and starting the skill. Painful.

Here are the changes. First, let skill training be interrupted by another character on the same account. If Character A tries to start training a skill while Character B is already training, just pop up a window that says "Do you want to pause skill training on Character B?" If you click yes, the skill should start right away. My borderline OCD tendencies had me going off the wall when I had no skill training for a minute or two. Its not a huge deal, but its a pain in the ass and presumably an easy fix.

The last fix is the general switching between characters on accounts. A switch character function would be much appreciated. I tweeted about this in the #tweetfleetbacklog hashtag a while ago and it was one of the most popular RT's according to CCP. Again, its the logging out, logging back in with full-credentials-again deal. Why can't you switch more seamlessly? Most people would have no problem with a session change timer or something similar for switching between characters, but the current format is not useful.

These changes aren't monumental in any way, and its not the first time they've been suggested. But seriously, in ALTs Online, we need better functionality with multiple characters and moving around. None of these are absurd, nor absurdly difficult, but they'd make a world of difference in using multiple characters. End Rant.

BB 37: The Double Edged Sword

Welcome to Blog Banter 37, the mass-community bloggery your mother probably didn't warn you about. Don't worry, it is legal and it won't hurt a bit (more info here). The question being kicked around the blogosphere this month is possibly a sensitive one, but it's certainly topical.

"EVE Online sits on the frontier of social gaming, providing an entertainment environment like no other. The vibrant society of interacting and conflicting communities, both within the EVE client and without, is the driving force behind EVE's success. However, the anonymity of internet culture combined with a competitive gaming environment encourages in-game behaviour to spread beyond the confines of the sandbox. Where is the line?"


------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Our little sandbox is a pretty dangerous place. Our playmates' behavior can get a little bit out of hand sometimes, but we like it that way. It keeps it interesting. Where do we draw the line though? What becomes too much for the average player to handle?

Simply put, the line is where it becomes too personal for a player in terms of out-of-game experience. Across the board, other bloggers are pretty unanimous on this point. My biggest problem with this definition is that its vague. What is too personal for you might not be for others. We're playing in an international and incredibly diverse game here. The casual smack talk seen in local might be more than enough to turn some away, but I think most would agree that type of stuff is still solidly in the "not-so-bad" category. Griefing goes the same way. Is it a behavior that everyone finds acceptable? Absolutely not. Too far? The general consensus is no on that one as well, despite some vocal opposition from the minority.

For me, it goes a little deeper than some of the examples above. Griefing and smack talk can be considered "soft" lines in the sand, if you will. My "hard" line is where people start interfering with actual home computers, other assets, or real people. If you read Emergent Patroller's Blog Banter Entry, those incidents were well over the line. In fact, it was enough to make me consider shutting down the blog and just get back to solely playing the game. Stalking someone is far, far over the line. "Lesser" offenses like DDOS attacks break the boundary for me too. Say someone had a bill to pay online that night after their dedicated Eve time. You just cost them real money, and I'm not talking about Plex. Even if they just felt like watching Netflix, its still a real disruption to their lives outside the game, and that's unacceptable.

The most interesting part about all of this though, is that deep down, we secretly like that its a part of our game. I'm not saying everyone is out there hoping and praying that the opposing alliance gets DDOS'd into submission. No one roots for the internet stalker gathering others' private information. But it is intriguing. We like that people are willing to go to these measures. Its part of our culture at this point. It is very much a part of our "Eve is Real" notion. Its an extension of the old saying, "if you aren't cheating, you aren't trying," and in this game, everyone is trying.

Simply put, Eve is a double edged sword. On one side, no one really wants others property destroyed. On the other, it wouldn't be the game that we know and love without that base level of slightly malicious intentions. That's the Eve we know. Don't expect any drastic changes to these lines in the sand any time soon. Eve's dark side is here to stay.

Recruiting My Roommate

Settling into my new place IRL, I was chatting with my new roommate about Eve. He's a big time gamer, but had never taken part in our lovely little universe. On the first day we got down here I tried to sell him on it, but he refused, saying he had never really gotten into MMOs. "Just wait," I thought. Its been a little under two weeks, and I got him to fire up the client and log in the other day. Man, its a different take on the New Player Experience when you actually have a new player in front of you.

When he first logged on, the character creator was the first part that popped up, naturally. He'd never really been interested in creating characters in previous games and so he decided to randomize until he saw an option he liked. Then he got to the screen where you have to take a picture of the character and was amazed by the level of detail in facial expression. After a "Wow," he was back to the previous screen, making sure his character was done exactly how he wanted. Hooked already.

Once he got in game, I directed him towards the tutorial missions. He's generally been PvE focused in other games, and I told him that it would be a great way to learn general controls. Its pretty funny watching him buzz around in a Velator doing approximately 45 DPS. He's enjoying it though. He turned the graphics up to high and fell in love. I'm surprised that two things I take for granted (character creator and graphics) were two big selling points for him as a new player. As a side note, the one thing he hasn't liked so far is the general UI. Fair point.

I have to say, its been an experience for me so far, and I can't imagine what he's thinking. Questions like how do I warp and how do I train a skill are beyond foreign to me, but that's the level he's at. I think my biggest problem is trying to get him involved in too much. I want to get him set up with EFT/PyFa, Evemon and iPhone apps. I want to get him into Pvp. Its a bit frustrating for me because he's just not ready yet. Hopefully he can get it relatively figured out soon and I can take him out on a roam or at least point him in the right direction. Regardless, it could be a lot of fun having some more RL friends get hooked on Eve. Let's hope CCP's work on the NPE works like a charm this time.

Three Years in Eve

My first character's three year birthday in Eve was two days ago, and I can't believe its been that long already. The best part is I'm having more fun now than I've had yet in Eve (Note: If you're a carebear, please, please, please go try PvP somewhere. It doesn't matter what form, just go freaking do it).

Let's recap the journey over the past year. I finally stopped being a little bitch and started shooting other peoples ships. I have just shy of 60M SP and just over 400 kills. Its nothing crazy, but I'm starting to come into my own, I'd say. Also, just like CCP's prediction regarding the three year mark for players, I shouldn't be going anywhere any time soon. I think I'll be in Eve as long as my schedule allows it and the game doesn't tank (dont mess this up, Dust 514).

What's next? I'm glad you asked because I have some goals for my next year in Eve. First and foremost, its about PvP. I plan on getting over 1000 kills lifetime, and hopefully over 1000 on the year. Its ambitious, but I want it. In line with that, I'd like to cross into Battleclinic's top 10,000 pilots. I'm around 40,000 right now, but I've been trending upward pretty rapidly. I'd also like to start FC'ing. I feel like its the logical next step in my internet spaceship career. I feel pretty confident that I could step into that role. I'll probably welp a couple of cheap fleets first, but I'll get there.

I suppose my last goal is monetary. I'd like to cross 20 billion in liquid isk. That might actually be the toughest on the list, especially as the more I PvP, the more isk I spend.The most difficult part about this one is just keeping motivated to log in and change orders regularly. I usually use that time to catch up on podcasts though, so life isn't too bad.

To wrap it up, cheers to my best year yet. Here's to year four being better still. No bitter vet syndrome here. See you in space.

BB36: The Expanding Universe

Welcome to the thirty-sixth edition of the EVE Blog Banter, the community discussion that brings the collective minds of the EVE blogosphere together to chew the cud, exchange opinions or troll the world.

"With the Inferno expansion upon us, new seeds have been planted in the ongoing evolution of EVE Online. With every expansion comes new trials and challenges, game-changing mechanics and fresh ideas. After nine years and seventeen expansions, EVE has grown far more than most other MMOGs can hope for. Which expansions have brought the highs and lows, which have been the best and the worst for EVE Online?"


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

 Closing in on the beginning of my fourth year of Eve, I've had a few expansions under my belt at this point. My first character was started on June 20, 2009, as I was spurred on by a few very excited coworkers at an internship. This was just after Apocrypha came out, with the introduction of all of the wormholes and T3 Cruisers. Read that again. Three years ago, CCP introduced 2500 new systems, an entirely new mechanic for transportation between systems, and some of the most versatile ships in the game. I'd say that's some pretty solid expansion right there.

For me, it comes down to a case of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's break it down. I've been through Apocrypha, Dominion, Tyrranis, Incursions, Incarna, Crucible, and now Inferno. That's 7 expansions, and its been quite a mix in quality.

The Good
Apocrypha: As alluded to above, Apocrypha was a fantastic expansion, and I didn't know how good it was until subsequent ones came out. In fact, I'd argue that its the best one to date that I've been around for. The magnitude of what CCP did with this one is absolutely unreal. Wormholes & T3's. Enough said.

Incursion:  I've never actually participated in an Incursion, but the expansion itself was pretty solid. It brought a much needed new NPC challenge, the character creator and the removal of learning skills. None of these are "incredible! WOW!" features, but they have all made the game better.

Crucible: Crucible introduced almost zero new content outside of the Tier 3 Battlecruisers, but it was one of the most successful expansions to date. It fixed a ridiculous amount of things the players wanted done, and it did it well. Eve can't live on expansions like this long term, but this was a much needed one.


The Bad
Dominion: On my first patch day misery, Dominion was released. Honestly, as a carebear in highsec, I was hardly concerned about Sov mechanics, but its still something that many people complain about.  Having just reread the patch notes, the only thing I found of interest was the introduction of Navy Battleships (Tier 1). It had lots of little fixes as well, but not nearly on the level of significance as Crucible.

Tyrannis: Farmville in space and Spacebook. I looked into doing Planetary Interaction once, but it didn't seem worth the trouble. I am one of the few that actually does use Eve Gate, but it is still flawed, and this has been almost two years now. Outside of PI, I find nothing really memorable about this expansion.

The Ugly
(We all know which one was saved for this category.)
Incarna: This was a shit storm. Walking in stations turned into walking in one and a half rooms by yourself, graphics cards were fried and Jita rioted. This can be termed as the expansion where CCP totally lost focus. Subscriber numbers dropped and CCP knew it. Trying to pass off WiS as an expansion was a joke, and the players knew it. Worst expansion to date.


To lay out my career in term of Eve expansions, it started off with a bang, sunk for about a year, recovered, tanked and recovered. Where does this leave us? Well that's the thing that people don't realize. It has almost always left us at least marginally better, still playing the same ridiculously awesome internet spaceship game. I mean look at the Dominion Patch Notes. The very same patch notes that I earlier described as "a lot of nothing" have a ton of little fixes that made this game better. With the exception of Incarna frying GPU cards, CCP has worked hard and made the game better. Even if you don't like the new content introduced, you can usually ignore it if its not for you (although that's clearly not the goal with these expansions). We have a great core game, and the expansions are icing on the cake, giving us new features to play with.

Inferno brings the return of Faction Warfare amongst new modules, ship rebalancing, and war mechanics changes. It has all the makings of a pretty solid expansion, though not a ton of it affects me (outside of the new modules). FW has a few thousand players, and to be honest I don't think that war declarations are that important. They only really apply to a subset of highsec warfare. Again, I'm not saying the changes are bad, I'm just not sure it was the most necessary thing possible.

What should Eve expansions be then? My proposal is that each expansion should be some cross between Apocrypha and Crucible. Things should be changed and rebalanced as necessary (per Crucible standards), but significant new content should be introduced like Apocrypha. And when I say "significant new content," I mean content related to spaceships and combat. I have no interest in harvesting planets or walking in stations. Its perfectly fine to add these things to the game, but not as the focus of an expansion. Inferno has come close to doing this, but I'm not sure it quite made it. Regardless, it is a step in the right direction. I'm much happier with CCP's current path as opposed to recent years, and like I said, we still have the fantastic core game without expansions. At the end of the day, its all about MOAR COMBAT and MOAR SHIPS. If CCP can keep that going, it'll be smooth sailing for years to come. Cheers to Inferno!

Station Trading 102: Day-to-Day Operations

In the second part of the station trading guide, I'll look at item selection and the direct practices involved in day-to-day operations. As I've said before, station trading is not a difficult task, but there are a lot of little nuances that you can learn from in order to start trading more effectively and sooner. Let's start by taking a look at choosing what items to trade in.


Item Selection
You can't trade in everything. You are limited by number of orders (even with an army of alts), the isk you have available, and most importantly, your time. The point of having a station trading alt is that it is a source of semi-passive isk, and in order for this to work for you, choosing what to trade in is essential. The question, then, is how to decide what you should aim for. In my opinion, it breaks down to four essential factors, which you can then analyze based on your own desires and capabilities. The four categories are Price, Margin, Volume & Volatility. Let's break it down step by step.

Price is pretty straight forward. This is simply how much you pay for the item. If you can't afford to have a couple of Marauders in your hangar or on sell orders waiting for someone to take them off your hands, then you probably can't trade in them (to start, at least).

Margin is the difference between the top of the buy orders and the bottom of the sell orders. Obviously you want to maximize profit, so finding ships and modules with higher margins is often a very good thing.

Volume is the quantity traded per day (or month, year, etc). Higher volumes lead to quicker turnover of items. This affects how quickly you get the return on your investment. For example, Gyrostabilizer II's have a much higher volume traded than Naglfar dreadnaughts (see below). The in game market browser is great for this. Go to Price history --> Show Table, and look under quantity. Note that this is regional data, so the number in station would be ever lower than this quantity typically.

Quantity: Greater than 200 traded every day

Quantity: 1 traded over the last couple weeks

The final factor is volatility. This relates to how much the price can change and how quickly it does so. This is especially important because you don't want to buy at one price and end up losing on the sale if the market price drops. The in-game browser is again an excellent resource though. If you go to Price History --> show Graph, you can see the general price trends for up to a year in the current region. Typically, higher volume traded leads to lower volatility. An interesting example is the Tornado. The Tier 3 Battlecruisers have been trying to stabilize under a period of overwhelming inflation, and you can see the price wavering over the last 3 months.

The problem with these four factors outlined is that they are often at odds with each other, and this is where you need to decide for yourself what is important. Margins increase with increasing price, but you also often find lower volumes and higher volatility (Check the table for an Obelisk, for example). On the other hand, you could trade in items with lower margins at generally lower prices, but you will have high volume and low volatility (Gyrostabilizer II). In the latter case, however, you're also going to have to update your market orders more frequently because there are so many people competing for these common items. 

My recommendation is dependent upon your status in terms of commitment and capability. If you don't have a ton of capital to start with, then you have no choice but to start in lower priced items and work your way up. There is nothing wrong with trading in Magnetic Field Stabilizers and Ballistic Control Units. One of the first groups of items I traded in was +4 implants, although I wouldn't necessarily recommend it now. All it comes down to is managing your risk and deciding how often you are willing to update your market orders.

Daily Operations

Running trade operations is relatively simple. In the first few months, it will be a lot of trial and error, and you should constantly be evaluating your performance. Especially in this early phase, it is crucial to review your item selection and keep an eye out for some more lucrative industries (higher or similar margins with better volume, for example).

Ultimately, it comes down to updating orders in such a way that you get them filled and put on sell orders. Personally, I'm one of those traders who increments by 0.01 isk when I have been beaten out on a buy order. There is no reason to jump up by any higher amount or round it off to a cutesy number. You are a trader, and you make your living based on the small margins available to you. Why would you cut into your own profit? 

I try to update my orders 1-3 times a day depending upon how busy I am. That number is often just one time a day though, and sometimes not at all. Generally, one update takes me about 15 minutes, but you'll find very quickly that your profit in a given day is very closely tied to how often you update your market orders. I find that about 40-60% of all of my trades occur within the first two hours of updating my orders. Its exponential decay in frequency of sales after the two hour mark. To put it simply, other traders just move in too quickly for you to stay on top in market hubs. I've also found that updating orders is more beneficial at certain times of day than others. For example, when all of the Americans come home and update their respective orders around 5pm (GMT -5), its not a great idea to refresh your orders at 4:45. 

I also have a specific way of updating my orders, although you can definitely find something else that works for you. My method is this: I update buy orders first, followed by sell orders. Then, I put all of my stock on sell orders (as long as I'm not competing with myself), and as I go through, I replace buy orders if need be as well. I have found that this is the best way to do it because after you update buy orders, you'll often see items come through very quickly. This way, by the time you get to selling ships and modules, you can put the very recently acquired items right back on the market for a quick turnaround.

Those are the basics of how I run my trade enterprise. It is not overly complex, but there is a lot of thought in it at the end of the day. The fundamental part of trade operations is choosing items that give you a good return on the investment of capital and your time. The more you can update your orders, the more you can expect to see in your hangar for resale. Next time, we'll take a look at some of the more advanced topics in the trade industry. Stay tuned for Station Trading 103 coming up later this week.


If you missed Station Trading 101, check it out here.

Station Trading 101: Getting Started

This is the beginning of a three part series on my particular variant of station trading. I've thought about writing about my trading practices for a while now. When the EON Isk Guide came out, I was disappointed because their rundown on trade involved actually moving around space, and that's not for me (trade-wise). I like station trading because it involves minimal effort and it keeps me with more than enough isk to fund pvp, skills, etc. To kick it off, Station Trading 101 will start with the basics of acquiring skills, attaining capital and understanding the basics.

 The Skills
A quick and easy part of trade that is absolutely essential is the skill training. The first two you want to look at are Trade and Retail skills. These both allow more orders per level of the skill (+4/+8, respectively). If you find that these still aren't enough orders, look towards Wholesale and Tycoon, which give you +16/+32 per level. Personally, I have Trade IV, Retail V, and Wholesale IV, and that is more than enough for me at the moment (125 open orders).

The next two skills that I would also call essential are Accounting and Broker Relations. Accounting reduces the transaction tax for each order by 10% per level. Broker Relations drives down the costs associated with setting up a market order by 5% per level as well. As a general rule of thumb, taxes and fees come to about 3% of your market order total, so utilizing this skills will allow you to trade on razor thin margins, and as any trader knows, a couple percent here or there can go a long way over time.

Margin Trading is a skill that wouldn't technically qualify as must-have, but its very close. Marginal, you could say (I'm sorry, that's a horrendous pun). Each level cumulatively lowers the amount of isk you have to put on escrow for your orders by 25% per level. Going from level 1 --> 5, you have 75%, 56.25%, 42.19%, 31.64%, and 23.73%. What does this mean exactly?  If you place a buy order for 100M isk, for example, with Margin Trading V, you only have to put down 23.73M isk when you place the order. The remaining 76M isk is covered when someone fills that order. This is a beautiful thing, especially for budding traders. Essentially, you can trade with money you don't have. Not all of your orders will fill at one time, so you can have the following situation: the combination of your stock and your buy orders actually exceeds your net assets and isk. It can be confusing, but it's an awesome skill once you've got it figured out.

The last set of skills that I have for trade are somewhat non-essential, but it depends on your intended trade style. Daytrading, Marketing, Procurement and Visibility all relate to your ability to trade remotely. If you intend to just have an alt sit in a station (like Jita 4-4), these won't be necessary. I'll cover these explicitly in Station Trading 103: Advanced Topics.

Attaining Capital & Understanding the Basics
You can't start your trading enterprises until you've got something to offer the seller. Honestly, you can start pretty small and still make it, but it'll be a tougher road to go down. Having more capital always affords you more opportunity. Missions, Incursions, Mining or otherwise are all suitable, but you need somewhere to start.

Down to the basics then? Its pretty simple actually. Let's look at Magnetic Field Stablizer II prices as an example. As you can see, I chose Dodixie for this example. We'll talk about location selection just after this. Looking at sell orders (Sellers), you see the lowest price in Dodixie is just under 1M isk, but on buy orders (Buyers), the highest bid is 772,310.65 isk. The basic principle of station trading is to get someone to sell to you at the buy price and resell at the higher sell price. Simple right?

On buy orders, any order that is green means it has range selected such that any seller in your station will fill that order if it is the highest available. Note: selling to buy orders always fills the highest available buy order that meets range requirements. So as a station trader, you have to beat out the bids that are in your range in order to get your items to resell. 

The last thing I'll cover in Trading 101 is location. Location is everything, right business owners? For station trading, there's really only a few places you'll want to go, and those are the major trade hubs. There are a few tiers of trade hub. Tier 1: Jita, Jita, & Jita. There is no doubt that Jita is the economic hub of Eve. Here, orders will be updated more frequently, and margins may be smaller, but the turnover will be quicker (If these terms seem unfamiliar, see Station Trading 102 -- I'll get into it). Your Tier 2 hubs are Rens and Amarr. Tier 3 hubs are other systems such as Dodixie, Hek, Oursulaert, and miscellaneous mission hubs. Blake over at k162space wrote an awesome article about the importance of location. Its from 2010, but most of the information is still pretty spot on. Side note: I have no idea how or why I was able to recall a random blog post from a year and a half ago, but it happens.

That's the quick and dirty of station trading. In the next post, I'll cover item selection & some direct practices in the station trading game. This is the heart of what we're going after, so pay attention if I haven't lost you yet!


See the later posts below:
Station Trading 102

Passive Isk Sources

Over the weekend, I was examining my trading enterprises. Currently, I make about 100 million isk per day just by updating market orders. I tend to log on and change orders anywhere from one to four times a day, depending on how busy I am. Based on the 100 million isk per day estimate, I should make about 36 billion isk this year, which is awesome. I've started to look though, and I realized I'm not using my full potential. At any given time, I have around 1.5 billion isk tied up in buy orders, plus anywhere from 400 million isk to 2 billion isk on sell orders and associated stock. That means I can run my trade operations with a maximum of 4 billion isk at any given time. Given that I've got over 12 billion right now, I feel like I need to find a way to reinvest, and I'd prefer a relatively passive income source.

I started to consider ways to make isk that are semi-passive, and I didn't come up with too much. Manufacturing seems like it would be a bit too intensive for me. I don't feel like doing the mineral roundup in a freighter and jumping into the T2/T3 market without any access to moon minerals or wormholes would seriously cut into margins.

My next thought was just to look into researching BPO's and trying to make a profit off of research, copying and resale. For example, the first thing I looked into was a Megathron BPO. Market value is 945 M isk right now. Now the inital investment isn't too bad (relatively speaking), but what's the return on investment? I saw well researched BPC's selling for 0.5-2 M isk. It would take a few weeks to research the BPO before I could even turn out these BPC's, and even at 2 M isk per copy, that's still only 0.212% of the initial investment. To put it another way, I'd need to sell over 470 BPC's to break even on the Megathron BPO. Ouch. The market for Megathron BPC's cannot be 470 in any reasonable time. I have no hard data for that, but I'm pretty darn sure its true. The other option is to research it, roll a bunch of BPC's and then just sell off the BPO immediately. This holds some potential, and I almost certainly wouldn't lose value on the investment. I'm just not sure how worthwhile it is.

The last thing that jumped right out at me was Datacores. I have one character already collecting some, but the grind to get standings for datacores is too much right now. There's no way I'm spending my time online grinding for +8 standings with the corporations that supply datacores right now.

I haven't seen a lot of good options in terms of passive isk sources. I suppose it all comes back to the old adage, "Time is money." I can't expect to do nothing and make billions while I sleep. Maybe I researched the wrong BPO's when I was looking around last night. It still seems like one of my better options right now though. Regardless, I'm in a pretty good spot right now. I have plenty of ships to PvP in, and that's all I really need. But in the words of CCP, Greed is Good. Am I right?

Weekend Review 4/2

This weekend was nothing too crazy, but glad I got some solid time to log in. Saturday I was having some serious connection issues, which I tweeted about. I was getting disconnected about every 20 minutes -- max. I did manage to snag a few kills in fleet, but it was extremely frustrating. It was bad to the point where I was starting to do research on WiFi repeaters/signal boosters. Luckily, I decided to pull the plug on my router and give it one last shot, and of course that fixed all problems. Derp.

Sunday morning I logged in for a bit of a drunk roam. I have no idea how, but I managed to go 7-0 in that state, with somewhat smaller fleet sizes too. I think I'm starting to get a bit more situational awareness piloting. As I've said before, I'm not one to brag about my piloting skills because frankly, I'm not all that good. It is nice to see improvement though. My basic realization is that the orbiting and engaging part of the fight is second nature and I'm starting to get a better feel of when I'm about to get primaried. It sounds simple, but knowing when to disengage is certainly a skill too. I'm of no use to my FC if I'm dead.

Also, I had a pretty good week in trade again, eclipsing 1 billion in profits for yet another week (not consecutively). I'm going to put out a longer post about trade and general isk-making tomorrow, but here's the short version: trade is going well, but I have more isk than I can use in my current operations and I need to reinvest somewhere. I suppose there are worse problems to have.

In terms of blogging, I'm really hoping the Mittani Gate starts to calm down. As I've said before, I think the whole situation was blown out of proportion and that he was a bit of a scape goat. Regardless, he's accepted the 30 day ban, and I think we all need to move on to internet spaceships again. I expect a lot of great banter upcoming with the Inferno escalation starting later this month.

To close it out, just wanted to say thanks to the Eve podcasting community, especially Voices from the Void and Lost in Eve. I don't tend to have time to listen to these guys straight through or even necessarily soon after they're released, but I always try to eventually get to them. Keep it coming everyone, love what you've done so far.

Fanfest 2012 -- Initial Impressions

Fanfest has come and gone at this point, and it certainly seemed like an experience. I was not able to go this year, and I actually had some difficulty even keeping up with the Twitter feed, let alone the live video from Eve TV. I had class Thursday, and I was on the shooting range all day Friday, so I missed a good deal of the coverage.

Here's what I picked up though. It seems like Fanfest is an awesome event for players. I think that CCP has done a great job creating an environment that gets players excited about the game and upcoming changes, and the Devs really reinforce this with such close interaction with the players. That said, I'm not sure I saw a ton of concrete information that I was excited about. I saw a lot of DUST coverage, which I expected. The game play does seem to be pretty cool, but I'm not sure its enough for me to run out and buy a PS3.

Other than the DUST link, the only things that I got to see directly were U/I and Art/Graphics coverage. Honestly, that doesn't do much for me. I play Eve on low settings to get the best possible performance. I don't need a pretty camera showing the ship I'm shooting. I understand that many people really do want the best possible graphics, and they should. I'm just saying its not a huge draw for me personally.

I'm eagerly awaiting CCP uploading all of the videos from Fanfest to YouTube. I still have a lot I want to review before giving a comprehensive breakdown of my thoughts. As it stands right now though, I'm a little underwhelmed. I've heard some murmurs of changes in Crime Watch and FW, and I'm not sure CCP is on track from what I understand. The jury is still out for me. As I said before, I think Fanfest is a great event for the players and the larger Eve community, I'm just not yet very excited about the actually changes to Eve that I saw out of it.

BB 31: The Game Outside Eve Online

The 31st Blog Banter is out and the topic is an Eve Community Review. This also happens to be my first crack at a BB \o/  Its fun to be an active part of the action as opposed to just the regular reader. 

"As any games journalist would probably tell you, a true and complete review of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is impossible. MMOs are vast, forever evolving entities with too much content for a single reviewer to produce a fair and accurate review. However, a collection of dedicated bloggers and EVE players (past and present) with a wide range of experience in various aspects of the game might be able to pull it off.

This special 'End of Year' Blog Banter edition aims to be a crowd-sourced game review. Using your gaming knowledge and experience, join the community in writing a fair and qualified review of EVE Online: Crucible. This can be presented in any manner of your choosing, but will ideally include some kind of scoring system.

With each Blog Banter participant reviewing the areas of EVE Online in which they specialise, the result should be a Metacritic-esque and accurate review by the people who know best."

 Eve Online. Where to start? I know where I started. I began playing Eve at an internship almost three years ago, just after Apocrypha was released. Its been my first and only MMO, and I still remember asking, "So, how do you win at Eve?" I was of course greeted with a bit of a laugh, and in hind sight, I definitely deserved it. "Winning at Eve" is really more of a meme than an actual objective at this point. But as I talked to the guys at work, I could see their eyes light up about how excited they were about this game. They talked about all of the possibilities and all of the roles you could play. They showed me a couple diagrams online to give me the idea. First was all the ships of New Eden:

I didn't realize I'd be flying the barely visible ones..

So at this point I was interested to say the least. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about it, and I knew I had to at least give it shot. Just before I headed home that day, they showed me this graphic too, which I'm sure we've all seen by now. Okay, a little intimidated, but nothing I couldn't overcome.

Not too far from the truth

I spent hours that first weekend flying around in a freaking Velator. I couldn't wait til I had the funds for that 26,000 isk Atron. I was hooked though. So I kept playing, and after a while, my friends from the internship slowly faded out of Eve. I spent a while (way too long) running missions aimlessly. Its only really been recently that I've been getting into pvp legitimately, and I guess I'm still a bit of a noob in that respect, despite that fact that I'm about to cross 50M SP.

Its been a long ride, and its mostly been a blast. I think there were a few things that CCP and my friends didn't initially tell me about though. First of all, no one ever told me how much time I'd spend doing things other than flying internet spaceships. I've spent countless hours managing POS's, parsing through market windows for trade and jumping from system to system for any other reason. Eve can often be more of a job than a game. 

The second thing that no one told me about Eve was that I'd spend so much time out of game talking, thinking and strategizing about Eve. I've spent an absolutely stupid amount of time in applications like EFT and Evemon. Why do I do it? Because its so damn interesting. Why did I listen to hours of Eve podcasts on the way home to my Dad's house this Christmas? Same reason. Theory-crafting about Eve is a beautiful thing. How can I beat this fleet composition? Where will they move next? How can implants/boosters/etc give me the edge I need? All of this doesn't even scratch the surface of inter-alliance politics and null sec in general. Its everything. I've probably spent even more time out of game thinking and planning about Eve than I've played. 

What all of this comes down to is simple. CCP got it right when they said Eve is real. I wasn't too thrilled with their promotional campaign at the time due to the state of Incarna, but they were right. Eve is a great game, but its so much more. Look at media like the Clarion Call or Clear Skies series. Eve is virtual blood, sweat, and tears. Eve is real.

So my review of Eve? Its a pretty solid game. Its certainly still a work in progress, and Crucible has been a fantastic step in that direction. At the end of the day, its so much more though. Its a full immersive simulation in an alternate universe, and it can be so addictive it should come with a warning label. That's the Eve that I know.

-- Rollins

Crucible: Thoughts

Official Eve Crucible Trailer

Well I've gotta say, Crucible seems to have had an incredibly warm reception, and I can see why. As a player who started in Apocrypha, I didn't realize how incredible that expansion was. T3's and Wormholes -- wow. I remember my thoughts about each expansion, and I've never been as excited as I have been for Crucible (although removing learning skills with Incursion was pretty nice).

To begin -- HYBRIDS. I've been primarily a Gallente pilot for quite a while, and its freaking fantastic to see a boost for them. For a long time, Gallente has had the closest range, highest damage, but most of their ships are relatively slow, and they lack the resist bonused ships that Caldari and Amarr have. I haven't had a chance to test out the new bonuses yet (increased damage and tracking for both blasters and rails), but I'm optimistic.

Tier 3 Battlecruisers are another awesome feature of the expansion. These glass cannons, or pocket-battleships as Kirith Kodachi is calling them, are intriguing to say the least. They seem to be a potentially potent anti-capital weapon with the new fighter bomber balancing. The Tr 3 BC's also give us a huge new ganking toy. I'm looking at you, Mittani (PS: Big fan of the Ice Interdiction. Not a fan as someone who needs it for his Thanatos, but I love the idea). I'll definitely pick some of these up as prices come down (200m+ for a BC? No thanks).

I am a little disappointed by the Dramiel nerf, but I understand it. All in all, it doesn't look too bad (I'm pretty sure I can still fit a dual-prop, 150mm AC/Rocket Dram with some meta 4 gear, but I haven't run the numbers yet). I was trying to go out and lose these before the patch, but I just couldn't lose one ;)

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14692727

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14690926

Overall, there are a ton of little features in this expansion, and all of them together should make this a great one. I'm going to pick up an Enyo at Jita tonight and see if I can undock sometime tomorrow to test out this blaster balance. Enjoy the new expansion, and here's to CCP doing more like this one in the future!

-- Rollins

The New Eden Experience: An Introduction

Hello World. Or... well, maybe Universe..

I'm your brand new host, Tommy Rollins. I've been in Eve for over two and half years now (its the whole "long time listener, first time caller" deal), but just starting to really come into my own. Let me give you a quick background about me.

I started in June 2009 (wow, quite a while ago) playing with some friends from work. I was a TOTAL carebear for a few years, and I'm finally starting to come around to the darker side of things. My first character is TFirish3 (didn't realize people used actual "names" in MMOs at the time), and he's well specialized in Gallente/Minmatar subcaps. My other primary character is Tommy Rollins, who's just getting started in RVB as a Rifter pilot.

I first started reading Eve blogs in a Solid Mechanics class in Undergrad, and I've been hooked ever since. The urge to become a member of that community has been nagging at me for a while now, so I figured I'd finally give it a go. Look forward to a post regarding the new Crucible expansion later today.


-- Rollins