The Other Account...

I spent this weekend mining my ass off, but somehow I have LESS money on my toon now then when I started. I think it’s because I spent a lot of it on skills. I have a training build I call “A million little skills.” I use EVEMon to find out all the skills I COULD train but haven’t, then I put them all in the plan and go buy books. I que up the skills as I buy them. I’ve managed to get myself up to 150 total skills, but there’s about 9 skills that cost about 30 million isk each and I haven’t bothered to buy those yet because, enh, that’s a lot of money!

I also gave 20 million to my alt toon, who also spent about 16 million on skills. He needed to get his “extra” learning skills and I think I’m going to use him as a second miner (read: more income!)

I’ve floundered back and forth on what I wanted that second account to be responsible for an I THINK I’ve decided to make him my Corporation Management character. I’d like to setup a new corporation so that I can hold a POS in .7 space. Of course, that means I have to get his status up to 7.01 and…ugh! So much work. But, whatever, that’s what it takes.

So, why do I want my own POS? Well, mostly because I want to have someplace to research blueprints. Right now BPO research in public facilities has about a 2 week wait and that’s just not acceptable. So I think setting up a POS will allow me to research BPO’s better and will also show me a part of the game I’ve never seen before. Hopefully I’ll be able to manufacture from that location as well and all that will supplement my mining income.

We’ll see, and I’ll post about :-)

The Best Laid Plans

I wrote a blog posting a while back which distressed me. In it I talked about how I really didn’t know why I was playing EVE. Well, I’ve decided to correct this. Despite my inability to define why I played I found myself compelled to play, interested in playing, and enjoying myself. So, when I caught myself developing a long-term goal (manage a POS) I forced myself to sit down and describe some other short, medium, and long term goals:

Short Term – Procure more money, procure more skills, level up current skills to support medium and long term goals, increase standing with NPC race so I can put a POS into their space

Medium Term – Establishment of a more “permanent” presence in game through the establishment of a POS and the creation of various platforms to fill needs in the game (a ship to haul in, contacts who buy minerals, etc.)

Long Term – Securing a presence in 0.0 or low sec using ISK to purchase a “safe” area or piggybacking into a weak corporation, etc. I’m still a little fuzzy on the details but ideally I’d like to join a corporation who is ok with EVE Agent (I’m sure they exist, EVE player comes to mind).

So, as you can see my plan goes something like this – get rich mining, develop a relationship with an NPC corp so I can put up a POS, use the POS to make more money, move into low-sec to make even more money.

Yeah…I’m into money. Sue me!

An out of cycle post...

So as you may, or may not, have noticed I tend to post only at midnight. This is because all my posts are pre-written and scheduled (that's how I'm able to post every day.) But, today I had to break the pattern because an Event happened - I was linked to from the official forums!!!

I'm pretty excited about this and I wanted to say thanks to Kance Tzu for the blast. I, of course, wish he'd been a bit more flattering but hey, free press is free press, ya know? I certainly don't think that I HAVE to AFK Mine - I can, so, I will, ya know? If you can do something, and not get caught, and pay no real penalty, then...why not do it?

"But the morals of it!!!" Right right...I start crying every time I go above the speed limit in my car, too :eyeroll:

April 16, 2009

Oh ladies and gentlemen, today is a patch day that changed the UI! It will be VERY interesting what happens to the price of minerals. I'm glad I have 8 million Titanium saved up. With the UI change I bet the macroers are going to produce less, and the price of Tritanium goes up!

Today they moved the cargo hold indicator, and changed it's color. It's now much simpler to determine when the hold is full. I don't know why it was so hard before but the solid color is simple to key on.

This change caused the items list to move down a bit as well.

Tritanium has been added into my dictionary now. No more red squiggly lines.

The Eternal Thread, and a Destroyed Covetor...

The EVE Online Forums have a policy – any thread which is not posted to for 45 days is locked. This is to prevent what’s known as “necro posting.” So I consider it nothing short of a MIRACLE that this post, created in 2006, is STILL active. It is the post that was created by Wrangler and it was intended to be a “One thread to rule them all” sort of thing.

In 2006 the forums exploded with posts about macroers and what to do about them. Before then they’d been problematic, but for some reason it came to a head in 2006. So Wrangler made this post and said that any new threads talking about macro mining would be closed. I don’t know what the intended or anticipated affect was, aside from having only one place to discuss macroers was.

It seems that the post’s entire point was to reduce the “spam” and give people a place to vent, but, nothing more seems to have come out of it. None of the dozens of changes have been implemented. No one seems to have noticed a decrease in macroers. It was just a post to get everyone to STFU about people who macro I think.

Anyway, my covetor got blown up last night. It was my own damned fault, of course – I thought I’d be cute and run in a .6 system. The rats there are too tough, and I knew it, but I wanted to try anyway. So tonight when I get home I’ll be spending that insurance money, and then some, on a fully equipped Hulk. Hey, I’ve got the cash and nothing else to spend it on right now, I might as well mine in style. And the extra slots should help me bolster defense. Oh, and my agent makes about another 1 million ISK per hour in a hulk (thanks to the larger holds) so I should be able to make up the cost in about a week’s worth of mining.

Assuming I don't get shot down again!

About Bumping…

Today, for the first time, I watch myself get bumped. It broke my agent.

I was wandering past my computer when I noticed that I was about 40k away from the nearest asteroid, and there was this guy charging at me moving very fast. The nose of his ship almost collided with mine but at the last moment my ship veered away, sending me still further away from the asteroid field. I sighed, set his standing to -10, and locked onto him hoping he’d be dumb enough to attack me. He wasn’t, so I just warped away.

I then opened up Agent EVE and added a few more lines of code that would make me approach the asteroid I was mining. I went back and the bumper was still there, bumping other people. I resumed my agent and sure enough he came charging back at me, only this time he had a much harder time keeping me away from the ore. He did, eventually, get me a good distance away, so I fitted an afterburner in my mid and modified the agent to use it. After that bumping was no longer a problem.

Another day, some more progress!

Ice Ice baby

Ever since I found out that an Iteron Mark V can be fit to hold over 39 thousand cubic meters of items I decided I simply MUST have one. So far I’m about 17 days away from completion (JESUS that’s a long time!) It’ll be nice to be able to haul over 4 million tritanium in one shot.

I spent most of yesterday flying back and forth, mining Veldspar in a system that only had three asteroid belts. I’m finding these systems are better for mining for two reasons. First, they tend to have a lot of Veldspar which means a lot of Tritanium. Since Trit is so valuable, this means a lot of ISK profit. Second, people tend to not “clear” these belts, leaving them open for people like me.

I tried mining (harvesting?) Ice the other day and I was impressed with how much I could get for it. And I was also impressed with how much easier it would be to macro. Being killed is a lot less likely because there are usually a lot of other people mining the Ice as well. Further, it’s fairly profitable. I figure I can sell the harvestable for about 100k ISK each, and I can fit 6 in my holds per trip, meaning a profit of 600k per round trip. I can do about 6 trips per hour, meaning a net profit of 3.6 million ISK per hour.

Finally, it’s almost impossible to “dry up” a piece of Ice. They contain thousands of pieces, each of which is 1000 cubic meters, so you only get a few pieces per trip. This means that my faulty (but effective) “Am I mining?” check isn’t necessary – all I have to do is start up the lasers and wait for a certain amount of time.

Still, I’m hesistant to move into a high-sec system with Ice and just grind out Ice all night – I’m paranoid like that. Usually when things are too good to be true, they are, ya know? Maybe I'll train to fit Ice Harvestor 2's after I can fly my Iteron.

Irony Took My Hulk

Want to know what irony is? Irony is being killed by an NPC rat when you just quit your Corporation because you didn’t want to be killed by someone in High-Security space. Yup, I lost my Hulk at some point yesterday. Christ, it wasn’t even overnight! I have no idea what could have packed that kind of firepower in High-Sec, but what’s done is done. I’ve still got my Retriever and Covetor, so I’ll be using them until I get enough cash for another Hulk. And this time, I’m going to actually armor the damned thing, and maybe not AFK in .6 space again.

I might actually have enough to buy a replacement Hulk right now though. I spent about 70 million on implants and riggings (lost the one in the Hulk) but I’d made about 40 million in minerals I haven’t sold yet. In addition, I’ve got about another 20 or 30 sitting somewhere in empire. You know you’re making a lot of money when you can’t be bothered to go GET it all.

After thinking about it for a while I decided to NOT get a replacement Hulk. The extra 4k worth of cargo space would be nice, and it's tougher than a Covetor, but until 100 million is "nothing" money I'm not going to risk it.

Corp Life, Day 2

Well after losing about 40 million ISK worth of ships/fitting, it’s time to limp back to high-sec (using a jump clone) and macro some more money into my holds. Macroing when someone has declared war on your corporation is dangerous, but I need money!

Let me tell you why Corporations suck for AFK Gamers and, in general, people who aren’t PvP whores:

1 – Call To Actions (CTA). Basically, when you join a Corporation you give up the right to freedom. Perhaps you come from a country where freedom isn’t very valuable, but I’m from the United States of America – I’ll kill you before I let you have my freedom. Well, in Corporation whenever there is a CTA you are expected to be involved, with limited exception. No, you’re not going to get cussed out for not being at one or two of them. “I’m only on for 30 minutes” will get you out of one and “Oh, sorry, wife agro!” might get you out of another. But, eventually you’re going to have to help them and what does that mean? At least 2 hours of being on Ventrillo, hearing people with funny accents tell you what to do. I swear, I had thought there was nothing worse than having an 11 year old tell me what do with my WoW time. But, at least that 11 year old in WoW spoke English well, and without an accent! Try replacing an American teen with one from Ireland and the annoyance factor increases exponentially.

2 – You’re never safe! Like, EVER! I know a lot of people think that you can be blown up no matter what, no matter where you are in EVE. That’s only technically accurate. In reality, High-Security space is about as safe as you can be in reality. Did you know that in reality you can be shot at any time, for any reason? Same in EVE, and you’re about as likely to be attacked for no reason in Empire as you are in real life.

3 – Whatever goals you had in game, just forget about them. You’re now a corporate entity. You’ll do what they say, you’ll like what they like, and you’ll agree with corporate management, even when they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.

4 – Taxes, AND dues?! I had monthly dues in the corporation (10 million ISK is about 5 hours of AFK Gaming, but it’s the principal of the thing!), as well as a 7.5% income tax. Fuck you, very much!

I Joined A 0.0 Corporation!

I know, I know, I’m a AFK Gamer, why join a corp? Well, because why write a simple agent that can mine in High-Sec when you can write a complicated agent that mines in low-sec? :-D

But beyond that, there’s a lot to EVE and players tend to focus on one, two or maybe a handful of sub-systems through the game. I’m not that player. I’m someone who likes to see how all the pieces fit together. I’ve always tended to explore all areas of a game and after over a year of playing EVE off and on, I never once got to see the 0.0 side of it.

After joining a Corporation I have one immediate observation – these are some needy mother fuckers! One of our systems was being attacked and the amount of vitriol generated about people being online but not defending the station was intense. This one player kept comparing the number of people online in the Alliance to the number of people in the group and saying “Where are the rest of you?!”

Hey, buddy, save it for the fleet chat, k? Thanks!

It’s not that I refuse to help; it’s that I’m about 40 jumps away and I’m not spending 2 hours jumping “home” only to have to log out halfway through. Sometimes I only get an hour to play, and I’m not logging out just because there’s a fight I can’t get to.

But, that’s EXACTLY what this player was asking people to do – if you’re not going to help, then log out now!

What an asshole!

Not that it really influenced me. I just turned blink off on alliance and focused on local instead.

Decisions…

EVE is a game of decisions and Opportunity Costs.

That’s part of the draw, for me. “What’s the most efficient and effective method?” is a question I am always asking myself while playing this “game.”

For instance, right now I’m wondering “Should I add more cargohold room to my Hulk, or should I increase its yield?” My gut tells me that I should increase its carghold capacity to the largest I can get in order to reduce the wasted time spent moving back and forth between field and refinery. This is the least profitable time in mining and you should reduce it whenever possible. This is part of the reason that “jetcan mining” is so efficient – you have two ships, each focused on its role and tailored for it. Your mining ship doesn’t have enough cargospace to haul a large amount of ore, but it can mine very quickly. Your hauler can’t mine for shit, but its huge cargohold lets you move a lot of ore in one trip.

So where does that leave the intrepid AFK Gamer? Well, our mining vessel must serve two purposes as efficiently as possible. It must mine quickly, but also be able to store a large amount of ore in order to make the trip back and forth efficient. This is why the Hulk is SUCH a good ship for mining in – you can get its hold up to more than 10k really easily, and that translates into more ISK per hour.

Right now Agent EVE earns a profit of 2 million per hour in a Covetor and 3 million per hour in a Hulk.

Still Writing...

Last night I finished my rewrite of EVE Agent’s code. Well, mostly. There’s still one small bug in it that I can’t quite figure out, but I think one or two lines of extra coding will catch that exception.

My Agent used to warp out to an asteroid field, lock three targets and mine for about 6 minutes. It was all done on timer and if the agent's lock on an asteroid was broken it would not try to acquire a new target. And, as it turned out, the agent's targets were being broken a lot. Pirates would do it sometimes. Other times he’d be mining a rock when it would unlock because it had run out of ore. Well, the old agent would simply wait until it was time to warp home and do so, regardless of how full his holds were.

Not the new the agent! This guy has achieved what I call “Target Continuity”. He maintains three locks on asteroids (the three nearest ones) and whenever one of them fails he reacquires a lock. This agent can even tell when a mining laser is firing and so he can literally mine until his cargo hold is full. I’ve also got a trigger to tell me when the cargo hold is full so I know when to warp home and empty my load.

This last bit (the cargo hold trigger) is what failed last night, leaving me in space trying to mine with a full cargo hold for some amount of time. I’m thinking about putting a failsafe into the code so that it’s “when your cargo hold is full, or when 20 minutes have passed, whichever comes first.”

But, even with that bug I managed to make something like 30 million ISK last night, I think. I can’t recall if I left old ore sitting in my inventory and, if so, that’ll taint the average. I’m hoping to get more accurate numbers tonight.

Best Mining Ship?

I was talking about EVE yesterday when a friend said he was pretty sure that the Hulk wasn’t the biggest/baddest mining ship in the game. There simply MUST be a capital ship which was bigger/better at mining. So, we looked in EVEMon and, it would seem, he’s wrong – the Hulk really is the best ship for mining for a single person. Now if you want to expand the question to include gang mining then there are better ships than the Hulk, but for a single player the Hulk is the shit.

But that got me to wondering – once I have riches untold from all my AFK Gaming, then what? What do I want to spend my money on? What are my goals? What the fuck am I doing here?!

I looked up some of the more expensive things in the game and to be honest they are truly and amazingly expensive. They cost far more than I have and more than I’m likely to ever have (ISK tends to burn a hole in my pocket.) So, what I’m left with is that I’m going to make a lot of money for a single person, but not enough to be a Corporation unto myself. And, really, being a one-man Corporation is dangerous. Other Corporations can declare war on you and you’ve only got yourself to rely on. Not worth it!

So, again, what the fuck am I doing here?

I don’t know!