doosansv-blog

[doosansv-blog]

F this

I am leaving you, Tumblr. Forward everything to my new home.

[doosansv-blog]

A New Fail

Actually I have two stories of stupid! I'm a bad.

First, the other day I was exploring the neighboring wormhole chain and had scanned down everything and was ready to jump into the next hole. The phone rang or my wife wanted something, so I stepped away for a minute and took care of that. When I sat down again I noticed I'd not reloaded probes.

As an aside this is a good thing to know: the proper order is to jump, launch probes, cloak and scan. When I was younger I was doing this wrong. We obviously want the probe launcher loaded for the next jump, and the easiest (most efficient?) thing to do is to launch and then wait for the launcher to reload (always carry two sets of probes) and then cloak after. There's little risk -- but doing it this way just wastes one of the best things about having a cloak, especially in a wormhole! There's no good reason to give away your advantage even for a few seconds of keeping other pilots from knowing what you are flying. Reload on the way out, not the way in!

So yeah, that was my thought... time to reload and resume exploration. Uncloaked, popped. What I forgot was that I had went to a combat site to bookmark one of the LCO's so when I came back later in a combat ship I'd be at the right range. So dumb, couldn't say what was on my overview or screen but I'm sure there was some clue.

BUT surely not as foolish as my last combat loss, and if you looked at related kills it appears I was just unfortunate or something. The truth is more like penny wise, pound foolish. Our FC chose a great engagement, put us in the right place, got some kills and then boogie. But the way it went down he's all, "blam, OK take this warp" and we're like, "muh drones". I was sporting the good ones and decided to cancel the warp and wait a second. That's all it took, the fleet warped back to the spot and... now it's just a cautionary tale, haha.

tl;dr: I found a couple new ways to screw up, add to the list of dumb ways to die

[doosansv-blog]

Hunter

This kill is significant: I found the target, called in my team, assisted in the explosion, and accepted the high-five as we GTFO.

Otherwise perhaps not so interesting but it's another first for me! The last time I lived in a wormhole many of the corp were discouraged because we weren't getting enough fights. I understood (somewhat) but was satisifed to just PvE and otherwise try suffer the fate of my recent victim. If you've spent any time in the wormholes you know how easy it is for somebody to sneak up and blow up your ratter. I sort of understood the complaints but...

Now I know better what the guys were talking about! We saw other 2 Gnosis that were probably crabbing but decided to go for it anyway. We weren't sure we could break him and it was exciting to see if we would win, or he would, or maybe the sleeper -- it did top damage by a significant amount. My partner said it instantly switched aggro as he went in for the attack.

Big adrenaline and a fair bit of shakes, addiction warning, so fun. Only after we got home did we notice the nice drop. It would have been a tough catch as the guy had a MTU out but in any case we didn't think about it until it was too late warping out and checking the killmail. Next time!

[doosansv-blog]

New Month, New Direction

What a month it’s been. I managed 3x the industry reported earlier, started a new career, really just had a lot of fun even while the majority of my time sounds more like “space job” than what most others enjoy about Eve. I did have some nice times doing exploration and flew in a couple fleets.

It’s time for more change! I’ll go ahead and announce it early (since nobody reads this anyway). When I came back in January, Faction Warfare was on the top of the list of things to try. Six months later I have a good handle on what it’s about. I may post some thoughts on that later but for the moment... in the next few days I’m going to gather my stuff up and move on. Mostly.

It is funny how this has come about. As a young man I learned, well to say it simply and hope it makes sense, we pull in what we need. I’m talking about cosmic stuff on a space blog ha ha. When it’s time to change and grow, we will attract people and situations that can help us. In this case it is certainly true; I’ve been dissatisfied with the game I play on my main character for months. Since my alts are in NPC corps I get hailed from time to time and invited to join others’ ventures. I had a chat last week with some kid who was trying to put together a corporation to do industry in a wormhole. Suffice it to say I turned him down, but it did get me thinking once again and more specifically about leaving FW and finding a new home.

Last night someone pinged me as was on an alt moving freight out of Jita and described a somewhat similar venture. Different than the first fellow, however, this guy had great answers to every concern I could think of. Even better it turns out we’ve flown before! Weird huh?

So I’m saying yes to a new thing. I guess that’s all I want to say about it at this point. If the price of plex doesn’t climb too fast July’s going to be awesome!

[doosansv-blog]

Steersman!

I christened my first (best, and needs to be only) jump freighter this week after being accepted into Black Frog Logistics, Eve’s version of the Spacing Guild. I now know first-hand the hunger for the spice after completing my first contract. Between having to fly out to Catch to get a “good” price on the Rhea and getting the cyno pilots into place to deliver the goods it was quite a day. I’ve now got my first few caches of cynos and liquid ozone so things will get a bit easier with time.

Heighliner One cost me a cool 8,000,000,000 and the price appears to just be going up so yeah, I’m totally freaked out about making a mistake. The math is grim if 100M profit is the average rate per contract. I think it will always take some time to calculate a good route and then get the stuff in place to make the jumps. I did keep a T1 freighter moving almost the whole time so I didn’t quite make nothing while jumping around in interceptors (or on my second cyno alt, beginner frigates, ugh) preparing for the trip. Obviously some well-placed jump clones will make a lot of difference. There is no getting around it though; losing a jump freighter will be a remarkable expense in ISK and the time required to earn it again.

For the moment I’m sticking to the “green” stations, and will use both the emergency cyno and also the scout/web for those last jumps in hisec. Things were really quiet for the first go – no cynos popped, nothing interesting getting into Amarr. There was one douche who held up the show for more than 2 hours waiting outside the first station but I waited him out, he finally went to bed and I got the job done.

Otherwise, pins and needles and butterflies in the stomach, sweaty palms and yeah generally a too-much-coffee sort of feeling going in, and a nice feeling of relief and accomplishment when it was done. I’m a jump freighter pilot!

[doosansv-blog]

Hush now

I decided to not respond in this thread about BPO research profitability.

But I have to tell someone, when I logged in this morning I found 120M in my wallet from selling 4 half-assed somewhat researched small blueprints overnight. What a crappy sentence but I won’t fix it because you can figure out what I’m trying to say:

They sat awhile and I probably spent 20M so yeah, not a ton of money but definitely worth doing!

[doosansv-blog]

Industry Update

Well let’s hope this is one of those “oh isn’t he cute” posts. In a few months I hope to be doing a lot better, but am pleased with my progress in the first full month of industry.

In May the numbers indicate I spent 10B across all jobs with a 13% margin, so 1.3B profit. My best item hit 31% and the worst 4.8% (not counting taking a bath on a small batch of T1 ships, I spent too much on the minerals and lost about 1M in 24 hours which isn’t too expensive a lesson I guess).

Rolling into June with 4B invested in jobs and unsold products. Not too shabby! I need to be careful and not burn out on the space jobs but for the moment it’s not too bad. I almost typed tolerable, hmm.

Goals are being met so that’s fun enough! If I could source my materials more efficiently it would be fat city.

[doosansv-blog]

The Skillz

I am very, very happy to hear they’ve successfully mirrored Sisi! My hauler has been training jump freighter skills forever (and still not done, 17 days remain in my plan) and I’m ready to try stuff out! Something went wrong with my credentials, I blame 2FA but whatever. Sounds like soon I’ll be able to do some testing and learning without putting crazy isk on the line.

My main is also looking at a long train. I’ve enjoyed roaming with my crop and they seem happy enough to have another Caracal, but I want to be flying a Machariel! So three weeks of training there too.

Man I sound like a newbie, 3 weeks isn’t too bad. Speaking of, I just found Eve Skilltracker, check it out! A new player would benefit from another opinion on what to train, and even with skills it’s a great way to make sure nothing is missing. I just noticed I really need Nanite Engineering before I try something like this fight again. I remember it was close, maybe next time I’d come out on top.

[doosansv-blog]

Closer

So the other night, I found myself in a relic site ready to hit the first can when a new pilot entered the system. Quickly cloak up and see what happens. It's not long and I learn it's an Imicus, and I watch as the probes get closer and closer. And then nothing.

Fine, my little Astero will eat his lunch if he comes in, right? But then another pilot jumps in. The KB of the Imicus didn't bother me too much, but the new pilot... grr Goons, and a hunter. More probes out, and then... more waiting.

The Imicus comes into the site! But then, after looking it over a little, leaves and jumps out. Now it's just me and the Goon. The Imicus might have seen my ship but I'm confident the Goon did not, so I wait. 10 minutes becomes 20. I know, just know, it's a Stratios out there and so I wait.

At about 30 minutes I'm ready to make a move, and in warps another pilot. The names are similar, and sure enough the new arrival warps directly and immediately into the site, flying an Astero.

Well, 2 against 1 but I've sat a long time, so I pounce about 5 seconds after the hack begins. That is, I get close, uncloak, unleash the drones and lock and... I'm too far away to hit the scrambler. The pilot warps out, and the other one goes too. I ran the site and made a bunch of ISK but left feeling a bit disappointed.

tl;dr: In my second attempt at cloaky camping a relic site I didn't get myself killed (yay) but didn't kill anybody (boo).

PS: I typed all that while a pilot and I considered our options in a system tonight... two relics, we both scanned them down at the same moment. After about 20 minutes I just started running one of the sites. For whatever reason he uncloaked his Helios, sitting like 150km from the cans. This is why I fly an Astero now, he had no response. I finished the can and then warped to the other site. Sure enough, as I ran the first can from site two... he had to leave.

Not the best story but yeah, that happened too.

[doosansv-blog]

This is a great review of the game. I recommend playing a bit more than he does but can’t really disagree with much of it.

Also, this kill really happened, crazy!

[doosansv-blog]

Manufacturing Update

Materials are rolling in, products are rolling out, DSV is making money!

Blueprints are a big part of the operation. We’ve purchased some good ones and for the moment all production is based almost entirely on BPO’s. Last month did include a metric crap ton of T1 destroyers built from a great deal on a set of BPC’s. We’re also researching and making some money there, but of course it is slow.

To the topic, it’s going well so far with production runs of 3-4 days and quick sales, high volume low margin. I’m about to complete Advanced Mass Production IV and shortly will need to come up with a new plan to keep the production lines busy. My approach is capital-intensive, and since I’m building from Jita buy orders the trading takes a lot of time too.

Most annoying, I haven’t quite figured out how to do the accounting very well yet. Google spreadsheets and API calls appear to be a good path forward but producing those tools takes time as well. I suppose I could simply compare all material purchase transactions against all product sales transactions to get the totals, but for the moment I’m tracking COGS, revenue and by production batch.

So far so good!

[doosansv-blog]

Relevance :)

[doosansv-blog]

Builder

Finally, Doosan Space Ventures realizes the vision we had when we started. One of the first things I heard of that makes Eve special is the economy and the industry. As I was creating my first character I thought about what I wanted to do — and decided to role-play a South Korean fan of industry. After a short visit to Google the choice was clear: Doosan! Before I knew what RMT was or how unlikely in this game I created a second account which has a login name of one of the VP’s there (you know, just in case I decided to sell the account later, ha ha). 

And thus DSV was born. Of course I trained a bunch of stupid things on both characters, and now I’ve got two great miners who can PvE and trade and sort of do all the stuff. Again and again over the years I’ve went back to look at manufacturing, and came way with no clear option to get started in any meaningful way. 

All that changed this week! First, I figured out enough about EVE Isk Per Hour to make the Manufacturing List emit a possible candidate or two. I’m still struggling with that program, because if the prices aren’t accurate the results are not especially useful, but it gives some clues. Qoi’s EVE Industry Blueprint Calculator really nails it on the head, providing accurate prices and really everything one might want to know about making a specific thing. Some lurking on the official Science & Industry forum also pointed to a winner or two. 

Last night I pulled the trigger, bought a fully-researched BPO and half a billion worth of materials! I flew my freighter out to a system with a low cost index and found a Raitaru with a low tax rate. Now in addition to the BPO research jobs I’m actually making stuff, for another 1.5 days. 

The math says I’ll do well on that batch. I found another thing and bought a pile of BPC’s (couldn’t get the BPO right now at any reasonable price). Tonight I’ll fly that stuff out there, fill my remaining production lines (the BPC’s run about a day each), and have two batches to bring to market soon. 

At this point I don’t dare calculate ISK/hour. I saw some advice that said don’t worry about it until the money is flowing, which sounds OK with me right now. It’s a little early to pop the champagne but I’m really pleased to get this started!

[doosansv-blog]

Security

I am not a bad person. 

When I was young I proved this by killing members of the evil Angel Cartel. My team met nightly and did our job, running mission after mission for the Republic Fleet. CONCORD took notice. By the time we were done I had a gold plated 5.0 Security Status. 

Now about all I have to show for it is 237,841 loyalty points with Republic Fleet.  

Since enlisting in the Caldari militia I’ve responsibly done my new job, killing the Gallante and defending our space. The thing is, see, beyond war targets our home is continually invaded by unaligned, so called “neutral” pilots. Without joining their militia these scum are doing the work of the Gallante. 

We kill them too. 

CONCORD sets the rules of engagement, and takes a dim view to engaging in combat with these “innocent” combatants. As Po Huit pointed out to me recently, perhaps that is fair when we encounter them near the star gates; it is total crap when we find them claiming our complexes. They are there for one thing, to get paid to reduce our control of our systems, and killing them is fair combat in my book. Of course I don’t write the rules. 

So, my security status is sliding down, and I can see where it will end up.   

Many of my mates don’t dare appear in high security space, because faction police will attempt to destroy them or worse, they are just plain “outlaws” and a fair target for any wanna-be Barney Fife. At the moment I intend on following their example — for the State! — but it bothers me to be given such a harsh label. Some day it might be fun to, oh I don’t know, cash in that Minmatar LP. So it’s time for planning and scheming. Because that’s what bad guys do from their lair, right? 

Lately I have spent some spare minutes hunting the Serpentis. With some fast talk (which doesn’t seem to do much BTW) my standing has improved a little. More importantly from time to time I have spotted the vile Clone Solider. The souvenir collection is growing nicely and this morning I was looking into how to put it to good use.  

Years ago CONCORD announced we can visit their Security Offices with ISK and tags and make a deal. At this point it appears I have about all that will be required to clear my records and move on, some day. When my militia career is over I’ll go see The Man and walk out a respected citizen once more.   

And meanwhile, I’ll just keep telling myself I’m not a bad person.

[doosansv-blog]

Solo

Wow two entries in a row that aren’t all LOL at my expense, I’m on a roll...  I got my first PvP solo kill! 

It was exactly as I anticipated when I enlisted for Faction Warfare: I jumped into enemy space, warped into a complex, waited for a challenger and when he came I engaged my weapon systems. Two men enter, one man leaves — and it was me! 

So there are a couple exclamations, but I’m finding it funny how I feel about the whole matter. Yes, I did get the job done. Yes, a good plan came together. No, it wasn’t exhilarating or addictive or anything like that.  

For sure the cost of the ships is a big part here. I don’t have the skills to feel good about flying around in anything very expensive at all. One thing I’ve learned in the last few months, a key factor that makes a good pilot (or FC) is knowing the capabilities of the different ships. “Ooh let’s take that Eos, it has a big explosive hole, load Nova”. I had to Google that example so you see what I mean. I could be out there in a Worm or something but at this point it would seem like it would be ISK wasted... more exciting though, hmm.

I joked with a friend last night that I could quit now and be a winner at FW. Of course that’s not true. I didn’t look it up but I bet I’ve tried this about 6 times. 

I’m 1 and 6!

[doosansv-blog]

Respect the Tingles

Finally a blog entry that isn’t just venting about how bad I am!

So I went to Stain a few weeks back and had some success, until it ended abruptly as will happen. The thing I noticed though, in order to not get jumped, I had to skip over a bunch of systems and opportunities. My little covops frigate does well at scanning and hacking, not so well with the combat.

Next time, I decided, some weapons would be a good idea. I fitted out an Astero with some drones and waited for the time to be right. Tonight an open path from Black Rise into Stain became available in an hour when I could take advantage, so it was time to pack up the bags and jump!

Awhile later I found my first relic site. For grins I cloaked up to see who might come to me. Killing an explorer isn’t exactly a great fight to talk about, but I’ve been on the receiving end and it’s legit combat so why not. I didn’t have to wait long for a possible target to enter the system.

The pilot’s killboard spoke to wormholes and explo! Better, I saw the core scanner probes come out. Yes! And I saw them get closer and closer... and then some time past... and the pilot left the system. Thinking about it I realized this will never work. Just like I was checking their killboard, they were checking mine and thining, “gee that guy is a long way from home and he does (try to) kill ships, I better be wary”. Whatever, OK, I hacked the cans and moved to the next system.

It’s FULL of sites, and my prey is in there somewhere. I quickly scan down a relic site and warp to it. Just as I arrive, they do too. Anathema, and it quickly cloaks up. So now we’re both sitting there looking at the cans. After a few minutes I decide to give it some more time. 30 minutes pass, then 40. I’m waiting it out.

At 45 minutes I'm ready to do something else, when a pair of new pilots enters the system. The first guy's killboard is all red, terrible, yummy.

The second guy, not so much. Here's a resident of Stain and clearly a meat eater. I’m safe where I’m sitting so I chill. Sure enough, he warps in a Astero. Boom go the cans, he just blows up 4 of them quickly. But then he’s sitting by the 5th and I’m starting to try to talk myself into attacking. It’d probably go badly but who knows, right?

Well before I can assert the upper hand, I somehow accidentally uncloak myself. This of course triggers the well-practiced “oh shit get out” mode. I managed to clear the objects and cloak back up before he locked me. Whew.

Looking closer, I can assure you if he was flying this fit he would have eaten my lunch. Instead, no, I got the hell out with my skin. OP SUCCESS.

[doosansv-blog]

Worst ever

Sometimes I look at the killboards and wonder how such a large loss can be sustained, how the Number One Rule of Eve matches with the cost of the victim’s ship?

Today my worst mistake ever I set a personal record. For no good reason I left my hauler in an old “for our alts and friends” corp, got wardec’d and didn’t notice, and now I’m poorer and feeling stupid.

The free insurance policy paid 555M and the collateral was “only” 700M (not 1B as usual). All in I’m down -1.6B (write it with zeros 1,681,000,000 color it red) and will need to focus to have a profitable March. 

So yeah, to the question... I can afford it, in the last 30 calendar days I’ve earned 4.5B. This month won’t be so profitable but I’ve reshipped and Garoun Investment Bank is now in the hauling biz.