Remote Eve

I have been traveling for work in London this week, and been working on Evemon skill plans and Excel T2 construction worksheets.  Working on Excel without a mouse and a subpar keyboard is frustrating at best.  It's been hard to keep at it. 

Evemon has shown that my autions haven't been going so great.  It's wonderful checking evemon to see that the biggest item your selling has dropped 25% in price.  I really hope it recovers, because -25% would be an ugly 9 figure loss.  Hopefully, the prices will rebound; which they should.  The prices are at a four week low, so I'm not too concerned, but it is still discouraging.

Hopefully, I can update my POS this weekend, and my partner was able to restock reactions.

PI income

One of my board game friends has reactivated his accounts (2) and I have talked him into joining my laid-back corporation.  I was finally able to point out how lucrative PI actually is with less than 5 hours of training.

Standard Command Center : 12k CPU, 12k Power = 1 Launchpad + 15 Advanced Industrial Facilities + links.

Looking at something simple… like say Coolant (easy to comprehend need with POS fuel) using all Jita 3day rolling average sale prices.

Water = 337 isk / unit

Electrolytes = 413 isk / unit

40 of each = 30,000 isk

5 Coolant @ 7,651 = 38,256 isk.

Now there is import and export costs.  30 isk to import, 45 isk to export, plus sales broker fees.  So, to make things, ‘easy’ profit per 1 hour cycle is 38,256 – 30,000 – 256 = 8,000 per hour, per factory.  This is about a 26% return on investment.

15 factories = 120,000 profit per hour or 2.88 million isk per day.

For three planets (lvl 2 interplanetary consolidation) that is 8.64m per day or just over 207 million isk per month.

What is the time commitment?  Well, first you WILL need a hauler that can haul 10k m3.  Any race industrial cruiser should be able to do this relatively painlessly.  (Expanded Cargohold II and cargo rigs make 10k transport rather trivial.)

A launchpad can hold 10k m3 of goods.  This is 26,315 TOTAL water + electrolytes.  So if we put 13,000 of each commodity into the launchpad, and spider out everything from there, it will take (13,000 / 40) / 15 = 21hrs 40min to deplete the launchpad.  So back and forth 3 times (3 planets) a little for frequently than 1x per day is the time needed to make 207m / month, plus swapping materials out and buying / selling raw materials.  If you’re slow, this would be at worst 30m / day or 15 hrs / month.  This income is basically 13.8m / hour of work.

Is it worth it?  That depends on how you view almost 14m / hour in Eve.

Oh, and this is just for Coolant manufacturing, other items can give a larger return.  I’m over 100m/hour on my PI production.  So, eve-players please abandon the boring PI game play.

It only helps my profits.

Mission alt update

Drones.  Very useful… takes forever to train.  I’ve been working on drones for my missioner for almost 2 weeks now.  Drones 1-5, Scouting Drones 1-5 and then the drone support skills to lvl 3 or 4.  (pondering whether I even want logistic and/or heavy drones.)

I am now flying a Harbinger.  With T2 drones now a reality, it has become quite nice.  I am still lacking in firepower, but I am planning on training Medium Energy Turret 5 while working in London next week.

My Harbinger can handle lvl3 missions consistently, and I haven’t needed to refer to the web for reference.  My current set up is to send the harbinger with armor mods activated into the fray, and eventually send a salvaging Rokh in afterwards.  (I know there’s better ships, but the Rokh looks kewl, and I didn’t need extra training for my Caldari pilot.)

My Rokh has armor repair drones, which I have needed on a couple missions, like Recon where I didn’t notice that I just had to warp in.. not kill everything, or on a couple other missions where killing was, um… optional.  (I’m here to pew pew with this guy, after all.)

Now I’m beginning to approach a decision… should I A) go for a T3 cruiser, or B) go for a BS.  I am tempted to cruiser since I could afford it, but the BS may be more practical .  Regardless, I have swapped missioning people so I need to work back up to lvl3 missions before deciding.  I found a nice combat mission agent to help me along for the pew pew.  I should hopefully be done with drones before too long (need EWAR drones still), and then it’s back to pew pew skills.  Cruiser V may be worth it for T2 ships and a T3, I need the lvl5 core skills anyway.  Although the BS may just make more sense from a cost perspective.  Hopefully, I can have time tonight to read up on Legion T3 PvE feasibility.

Next day- having looked.. Legions stink for PvE.  So, while there may be a lot of utility for a Legion, my goal for this character is to have him only mission.  Looks like BS route for me!  My current plan (with tons of travel coming up) is to train Medium Lasers 5, grab the specialty skills and more gunnery, then dive right into BS training.  During this time, I should hopefully have lvl4 skills open in Amarr space for the new corp I’m working on.  (Searched for a corporation’s final lvl4 agent that is near my industry base, so my salvager doesn’t have far to travel.)

Manufacturing

Work has been crazy for the past several days, so I haven't had much time to post.  At night, I've just refueled my POS, kept invention and manufacturing going,and that's it.

I do feel like I need to improve my spreadsheet for invention, and the datacore cost and success % from the blueprint tool i'm using may not be entirely accurate... but that would require time.

Precious, precious time i do not currently have.

Haven’t had my usual time to play this week, and it looks like it’ll be just PI and attempting to keep my invention / manufacturing going, with a little logistics.  My latest set of sales pushed me above 3.2bn, for about 10seconds before I bought down below 2bn again.  I’m going to need to decide soon regarding my specialization as to what I’m going to make.  I only have 10 slots to play with (1 base + 5 production + 4 adv skill) and those are quickly becoming the bottleneck. 

Currently, I’m using:

2 for T2 missiles (2wks / pop for 11m ea or 780k/day)

4 for T2 indy/frig (1wk for components + ships for 225m total or 803k/day)

4 for T2 modules (1d for 4m)

Which means my T2 research / manufacturing is generating ~20m/day (600m/month), with modules making the most isk (by far).  I may be dropping the missiles, saving them for times when I know I’m going to be away on a business trip, although 2wks is still quite awhile.  I believe I’ve been doing the T2 ships ‘wrong’, and may be able to reduce the producing time on them.  I am tempted to anchor and online a component assembly array to decrease manufacturing time, but I need to figure out if the waste increase makes it worth it.

Equipment Assembly Array – 25% faster to build, same cost, 6 slot, high sec anchor

Rapid Equipment Assembly Array – 35% faster to build, 20% more cost, 6 slot, high sec anchor

Ammunition / Component / Drone arrays – same cost, build

So, an equipment assembly would increase profit for pretty much anything, and I’d be able to move my 4 reserved module slots into the array.  The POS could easily handle the CPU / Power load with minimal changes.  The question remains, would a 17hr construction cycle on station mods being reduced to 13hrs be worth the hassle?  .

I login every morning and evening.  6pm -> 7am ->8pm->9am(work).  So the 4^th  cycle on a station 17hr job would fail, only to start up again.  Compared to: 6pm -> 11am (work) or 24 hour cycle = a 17 hour cycle for me.

The hassle of an equipment array component managing would basically squeeze in 1 more production every 2 days. This alone may be worth the hassle.

Rapid assembly would push the 17hr cycle down to 11hrs; which has pretty much the same effect, but I’m paying 20% more materials.  Ship arrays don’t appear to be worth it, unless I’m remote… which I’m not.  I have a feeling they’d also scream “juicy target” to bored pirates as well.  I’d rather not have a bull’s eye tattooed on my POS shield.

I would like to finish up my T2 missile BPCs (still ~30 left), but with 2 slots of 2wks each, I’m looking at six months until all those missiles are completed, unless I load up for my 1 week trips.  Thinking I should save up and launch multiple indy/cruiser builds during that time instead.  I currently have 4 different frigate BPOs, 4 different indy BPOs, 2 cruiser BPOs, and 10 components.  I’m going to hold off on further acquisitions until I get these workstreams / markets fully appreciated.  In the meantime, it’s T2 joy all around.  Although, I am burning through some datacores pretty fast.  (~100 mechanical engineering over this last week)

Hopefully, I’ll have time to update my spreadsheet further, putting more into the planning portions.

I will be off to London soon (for work), and should have time on the plane to update my spreadsheet / evemon plans... hopefully.

Memorial Day POS joy

This weekend started off pretty normal in Eve. PI, manufacturing, invention, light missioning, etc. I also spent quite a bit of time updating my T2 manufacturing spreadsheet. I didn’t like how manual everything was, so now I have an automated shopping list working for anything that gets invented. (Now I just need to add a profit component.)


During this process, I ended up checking out some corporate numbers, and discovered that we are slowly losing funds to our research POS upkeep. To solve this ‘problem’ I set up 3 more POS for reactions this last Memorial Day. I acquired all the materials Sunday and moved them to my staging area, then spent time Monday on-lining towers, reactors, silos, coupling arrays, moon harvesting arrays, guns, more guns, and some EWAR batteries. I make it a point to not go after the ‘best’ moons in system, and to be one of the most defended POS in system. This way, the entrepreneur will easily discover that there are more profitable non-alliance corporations to assault than ours. If that fails, I have full strontium bays, lots of guns, and my EU time zone partner and I can each have Starbase Defense Management 4, and can fly a shield repairing Osprey. If it looks bad, we’d need to activate one of our alliance mercenary contracts, but fortunately, that hasn’t been an issue.

Putting the towers, reactors, and silos online took the same amount of time for 3 towers as it does for one, with the difference being no down time. Fly to tower 1, anchor, fly to tower 2, anchor, fly to tower 3, anchor, go pick up more stuff and repeat.

I like how I have my reactors set up: raw material silos are physically underneath the reactor, with the final product being physically above. Final product reactors are ‘pointed’ to the Corporate array, which makes storage of goods easier. I have shield hardening arrays aligned, so if war declarations come, I can online 8 hardening arrays and all of my guns / EWAR easily.

Keeping everything fueled is a continuous task, but my partner and I have things going fairly well. Now, our research POS will be continuously fueled without tapping the main corporate wallet, and my personal quest for a Jump Freighter will get a harsh reminder every 10-14 days.

Skill planning mini-game

I am heading to Europe again on a trip. With my latest work laptop ‘upgrade’, I am now unable to install Eve due to some downgrading of the graphics drivers. (Don’t get me started). This means that I can no longer update skills while traveling, and have to, once again, plan skills on my four accounts to be training for my week long trip. With my work changing, I will be heading to Europe one out of every four to five weeks; so this will be a frequent activity. My four currently training characters include: My main, who is working on missile support skills, My POS managing alt, who is working on energy laser skills, My industrialist, who is finally learning drone skills; and my new missioner, who is learning drones as well. The week long skills I have planned include (in order) Caldari Cruiser 5, Some Gunnery support skill @5, Jump Drive Calibration 4, and Medium Energy Turret 5. For Cruiser 5; I’d swap out when back so I could finish that skill after my next couple trips, being over a 20d skill to train.




This will continue to be tricky, as several lvl5 skills finish in 4d; so I either live with a few hours of no skill training, or plan those for other times. I am aware I can queue up 23hrs of skills before doing the 4d skill, but the total time away from eve would average 121 hours (5d 1hr); so I’d miss 2hours of training… IF everything lands on-time.



After several trips, a T3 cruiser may not be so far off, as I would get all my requisite skills to lvl 5, and would have as much time to get distracted. Although I am not too keen on paying 1bn to minimally equip such a ship. I wouldn’t be able to fly one to its fullest capability, given how much I do industrial things. Getting a Charon is probably a more reasonable purchase, as I’d probably use it more.



What will be the worst is time away from Industry jobs. Several things do take 5d+ (missiles 2wks), but with 10 manufacturing + 10 research slots on my indy character, I have plenty of things to queue up. I have these items normally queued up pretty well, but few things take 5d+ that don’t require proper prior planning. This will take quite a bit of thought.



PI income will drop 70m/day. 



On the Indy front last night, I ready to queue up my 10 Viators and 3 Manticores. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough RAM Starship Tech units, So I queued up 50 more to fill that hole. This morning, I was able to queue up my last Viators and manticores. May wait a bit on the Viators before batching up more, I still have 6 up in local regional markets. I may need to send these 10 off to Jita. That will be 4 sold in current region, 6 sold in 2 adjacent regions, and 20 sold in Jita. I also spent 90m on T2 component BPOs, and have been researching those instead of inventing. The times on the BPOs are small to make perfect. I am only doing PE10 on the long time frame parts (armor and microprocessors), with the others at PE5. I have also acquired 2 BPOs of each armor and microprocessor to further reduce the required time.



I feel like I may eventually need another Research manufacturing alt to help with components and BPC creation. Right now I am producing around 100k T2 missiles, 80 T2 modules, and 15 T2 frigate/cruiser/indy ships a month. I feel like I could do more, but am restricted by queue. Maybe I should spend the time and increase my slots by 1 more.



The average manufacturing queue is: 2 slots on missiles, 4 slots on ships, 3 slots on components. (1 base + 5 Mass Production + 3 adv mass production). My average research queue is 1 long term research (currently ME perfect adv. mobile lab), 6 inventions, 2 copying/component research. (1 base + 5 laboratory research + 3 adv laboratory research). My T2 indy character has so much I want her to learn… eventually lvl5 slots for manufacturing /research, lvl5 science skills, T2 sentry drone capable for Orca, better armor resist skills, carrier capable (already JF capable)… and of course those support skills. My industrialist is also my salvager.. so I may need to train for a salvaging Dominix to go with my freshly trained drone skills. Realistically, the carrier + support skills will probably wait. I am having a hard time justifying lvl5 science skills as well, outside of the racial encryption skills. Maybe if I move away from generalist… nah. I like playing any part of the market if I obtain a BPO. I would like to acquire some Cruiser BPOs, more module BPOs, and a Cloak BPO soon. This will put off my Freighter dreams even more however…. I am also tempted to acquire T2 capital component BPOs, but I’d rather wait and blow that when I’m ready for true JF construction… which is quite awhile off. AND I should probably grab T1 capital construction BPOs first.



While pondering these things, my missioner completed enough missions to be eligible for lvl3 missions. I am not sure if I want to move that far away. It would place me in an adjacent region, which would mean I couldn’t launch new research / copy tasks in-between missions like I am currently. Before starting to mission, I send my Viator through low-sec to team up with my missioner… jumping into a salvaging Catalyst. Due to time constraints, I may rotate my main or BPO alt into that role, so I can train my indy alt more in indy stuff. I just need to check to see if a Rokh would work well as a salvager (I’m guess that’d be better than a Raven; plus a Rokh just looks kewl.)

Jump Freighter dreams

I want a jump freighter. I want one really, really bad. I have a pilot who is Anshar capable NOW, and one that could become Ark capable in about a month. (Just need Jump Drive skills).


I am managing 3 POS in low sec. I transport ~180k m3 of goods every 10days. Now, this is easier with PI, as most of the PI materials are in-system. Discounting those items, I am still moving around 154k m3/10days. *Ice product takes up a lot of space*. With my trusty cloaky transport, that is almost 20 trips. Ugh. Now, I do bring online 4 transports to move, so It’s 5 trips from the entire crew, but still. It’s painful. I devote 1 night of Eve / 10 days entirely to POS refueling management. An Anshar would be able to haul over 390k m3 in a single jump.

Drool.

That means 1 jump, I can transport all the goods I need to the POS for 20days of fuel. I’d need to ferry it around from POS to POS, but this is a HUGE time savings. Damn, with this amount of freedom, I could set up another 3 POS with the same RL time burden. (And JF every 10d, as opposed to every 20d.)

In the meantime, I make angst decisions of: T1 ity 5 / Bestower / Impel to transport through low sec… 1 Indy trip = 5 transport trips, so I sometimes pull those out after doing a few initial trips with the transports if the coast is clear. I do fit my transports with Inertia Stabilizers II and/or a Warp Core Stabilizer II. It cuts down on the cargo space, but they’ve saved my ass before, and I wont’ venture an indy into low sec without at least one of those mods.

I’ve only been locked in low sec once, and that was for less than 1second as I warped through the gate. After that I warped to POS and sat there for a couple hours (huzzah for alts!) until I could scout the gates with an assault frig and warp back to high sec. (I think the pirate got bored waiting for a motionless Indy in an armed POS bubble.)