It's been a while...

WOW. What can I say... It's been a while since I've updated this blog. I guess it's time to make public some of my ventures again. A lot has happened indeed since my last post. A lot of invention has been done and T2 items successfully manufactured. As I got financially bitch-slapped in inventing/manufacturing the Minmatar AF's, I got quite discouraged and left the invention for almost 4 months. Then I slowly re-entered the invention scene and especially after the POS/Moon mining exploit unraveling I started to get more involved. This time I chose simply modules and what do ya know: profit to be made! The mods so far:

- Armor Explosive Hardener II

- Armor Thermic Hardener II

- Armor EM Hardener II

- Armor Kinetic Hardener II

- Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

- Gyrostabilizer II

- Invulnerability Field II

- Damage Control II (Invention stage - none manufactured as of yet)

So far I have managed to make a healthy profit out of the above mentioned modules, at least enough to kepp up the interest:) On a more political note, FEN retired from The Polaris Syndicate Alliance but has now rejoined it's ranks and we are about to make a big move and hop all the way to the other side of known EVE universe; could happen even within this week. Let's see where we end up. With all this wormhole-business to be had 0.0 is really worth investigating and I intend to set up a few moonmining tower as soon as I find a suitable system/moons. It would certainly make T2 manufacturing a whole lotta easier, not to mention profitable. I have to add a thought to the end... Take a look at the picture below. Sometimes people just take EVE too seriously... after all it's just a internet spaceships game, for crying out loud.

Cooling down a bit...

Greetings to all you peeps! Has been a quiet period in EVE for me: RL-responsibilities can sometimes wear one down quite efficiently. Got a position as vice-MD in real life so thats why things have been quite slow lately.

So, where were we? I resigned TRAPS and fell into the bottomless abyss known as afk-mining. Not that it was a bad thing financially: built myself a Fenrir-class freighter and then a Nidhoggur-class carrier. The Fenrir came in quite handy in hauling all those assembled parts into a lowsec-system for manufacturing of the carrier itself. 8 days left on the clock until my carrier is ready from the production line. However, got a huge list of skills to improve/study to be able to fly that sucker: Minmatar BS lvl5 is 30 days away and also missing Advanced SSC lvl5 (21 days), remote armor repair lvl5, remote hull repair lvl5, energy emissions lvl5 and then I have to get the respective capital skills going, so theres lots to read and estimated virgin-voyage of the carrier is around x-mas holidays :)

In the mean time I have been more active on my alt, who is refining his piracy skills in the form of Amarr/Minmatar AF and respective T2-weaponry. Also next in line is the damn evasive maneuvring lvl5 for the Interceptors - can't wait to fly Malediction with my alt's rocket spec lvl4! I reckon it'll be a while until I post again here as the skills take time and got more fun on the alt, so let see us after the summer!

Things change

Well, some time since my last post. A lot has happened during this time: As you remember, I joined TRAPS for some empire-warring about a month ago. No disrespect to TRAPS but it wasn't all that dandy - our wt's proved to be lame asshats who REALLY did not want to engage in any fighting. Fair enough, there's always other targets around. So one of our wt's joined IVY League and I thought now, theres some nice kills to be scored for TRAPS. No such luck - the IVY pilots were strictly denied rights to undock if hostiles in system etc. Of course there's always the couple of twats who think rules don't apply to them, luckily:) Some not-so-epic IC vs Destro kills scored. Later they were dec'ed by The Privateer alliance also and that changed alot. TRAPS is just a small bunch of ppl having fun, whereas PRVTR are bigger and thus able to counter-blob IVY League. This resulted in IVY staying in their Korsiki stronghold and not much action outside Caldari space. To top it all, TRAPS joined PRVTR-alliance to continue war with IVY and to get some extra wt's. Unfortunately most of the wt's are big 0.0-alliances like BRUCE and Southern Cross Alliance and so on. That means most of their peeps are in 0.0 and oblivious of any war going on...

Anyways, I resigned from TRAPS yesterday: RL-issues force me into a state of inactivity so I joined my own corp [FEN] again. No big plans so far, let's see what comes around the corner:)

Until next time!

War is (boring as) hell.

Greetings dear readers of my blog (and the third guy who just showed up). I have to say that the new empire war TRAPS is involved with is boring as hell, to say the least. Our latest target corporation Kinetic Vector [KVEC] has quite successfully vanished from known space: only a small portion of the 100+ members are online at all, some in their HQ Hedaleolfarber (Molden Heath) with some random wanderers in Gallente space. Yesterday saw the camping of Trossere gate for maibee, a Domi pilot, who was finally killed in Vittenyn. It is fair to say that I am disappointed in [KVEC] for not bringing more to the fight and this will only help to prolong the war. My only hope is that our CEO will declare another war soon, which would keep us in shape for the duration of [KVEC]-inactivity. They will come out and play in the end, I am sure:)

Hopefully I have more joyous things to tell you next time!

More PVP!

And so I have - after much contemplation - come to the conclusion that I want to take part in an Empire war. So much so that I have resigned my position of Alliance Chief Diplomat and director [HGR] and joined the ranks of the infamous [TRAPS] aka The Really Amazing Players.

I tried to steamroll the idea of an Empire war into the [HGR] ranks but with no success. It seems to be so, that in order to get all peeps actively behind a common goal, you have to cunningly disable their other activities. In the case of [HGR], where people whine about the lack of prospect and joint operations and where PVP would do much good to train the young "padawans", an Empire war is the best option because it neatly rules out the possibility of Empire carebearing. Thank goodness this is obvious to all members and no explanations have been needed so far:)

So... a new career for me. First 5 days after joining no action - the sixth day I engaged a LostSheep Inc. n00b and her beam laser/missile/projectile/shield boosting/armor repping wonder-Hurricane (tm) outside a Pimebeka station in my Blasteranis (name ruthlessly copied from Ka Jolo - see the link for his blog on the right). Unfortunately I was unable to bump the Hurricane off docking range with my Taranis, so it was a dock-undock-hide-and-seek. I would have required just a bit more time to chew through her tank with my set of three Light Neutron Blaster II's and two Hobgoblin II's but hey - you can't win every time.

Luckily there is a new war coming active today afternoon EVE-time, this time against Kinetic Vector [KVEC], a decent enough crew of peeps that I know from a past life when we were all in the Freelancer Alliance and roaming the rich systems of Deklein. I am actually looking forward to this war as I predict we will get our money's worth with this lot:) I am soooo looking forward to breaking the cherry of my newly bought BS's.

Oh - btw - I scored my first kill in a long time, YAY \o/. I originally set out to test the shield tank of my Broadsword against sentries and headed for Old Man Star (0.3) which is usually filled to the brim with wannabe-pierats just waiting to be podded, and I was not mistaken this time. As I entered the system there was a Tristan pilot at the gate with a slightly negative sec status - seemingly just afking there. I made some safespots in the system and started to scan for possible pray. Nothing:( Eventually I went ratting with the intention to either get a faction frig to cover my wasted time or getting some sucker to steal my loot. However, everybody seemed to be afk at stations or missioning, hence out of my reach. Finally I decided to warp to the gate to maybe get a sentry tanking test and swell enough - there was the same guy - Shane Schofeild - in his Tristan at the gate! I initiated my target lock sequence but the bugger woke up and warped to a belt like a rabbit into the grass. Well, I thought to myself, let's see this to the end - and warped to the same belt. There he was 30km away - he had started fighting belt rats like there was not a worry in the world! Unbelievable tosser! I locked him pronto and caught him with my ~30km warp disruption field generator, moved close enough for my five 425mm AC's to start the pounding on his ass - *snap & crackle* there goes the frigate, followed by *pop* there goes the pod:) Damn, it felt good! Long time no pod. Actually it felt way better than bad sex :D After much rejoicing I proceeded to loot the wreck - nothing to write home about but loot nevertheless. I have to do this more often:)

Now that there is a war coming active I hope to have more to write, so stay tuned...

Invention v2.0

Another try at getting some sweet T2-gear invented, this time I gave a go to EANM-invention. OK, so the invention required - as usual - a meta item (Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I, which btw is 100 cbm in volume; a real drag to haul to the POS-lab), A data interface (Occult data interface for an Amarr job, such as this), a max run BPC, Nanite and Hydromagnetic datacores (2 of each) and a decryptor. I got my hands on "Sacred Manifesto" with relatively low cost, so thats what I used.

The invention itself took only 1h 15mins - not bad. And behold - a success!

Great news! You were successful in producing a new Tech II blueprint! You're happy with your success, for succeeding this job was far from certain. Blueprint details: Blueprint Type: Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II Blueprint Number of Runs: 12 Material Level: -3 Productivity Level: 0

Now, my last invention - the Jaguar AF - and it's manufacturing costs in mind I calmly start to study the details of the newly invented Tech2-BPC:

Well, 12 runs is not exactly instant bliss, but way better than my 3-run Jaguar print. What worries me here is the low ME of -3, meaning a wasteage of 40%. Now what remains to be done is the market study of components needed for manufacturing and calculations of cost-efficiency.

Invention

Hurrah & dibi-di-doo! I have so far managed to produce 3 Jaguar-class Assault Frigate BPC's with 3 runs each and a Wolf-class Assault Frigate BPC with 9 runs in it. Invention 4TW! Or what? Having done some market analysis on the prices of the stuff needed for T2 production, I have come to the conclusion that in order to make any profit one must manufacture the components too, so the component BPO's (abt. 5M isk each) have to be purchased and studied too. For example, the Jaguar BPC I got from invention requires the following components (amount):

Deflection Shield Emitter (56) à 39,000 isk = 2,184,000 isk

Construction Blocks (56) à 470 isk = 26,320 isk

Electrolytic Capacitor Unit (42) à 15,074 isk = 633,108 isk

Fernite Carbide Comp. Armor Plate (56) à 10,800 isk = 604,800 isk

Nanomechanical Microprocessor (28) à 12,184 isk = 341,152 isk

Laser Sensor Cluster (28) à 30,000 isk = 840,000 isk

Nuclear Reactor Unit (56) à 150,000 isk = 8,400,000 isk (!)

Plasma Thruster (42) à 41,000 isk = 1,722,000 isk

R.A.M Starship tech (4) à 30,000 isk = 120,000 isk

TOTAL = 14,871,380 isk

Market price of a Jaguar = 12,000,000 isk

The above calculation does not even count in the price of the small amounts of various normal minerals that are needed for manufacturing, (Morphite among others) nor the costs of the invention itself i.e. datacores, decryptors, data interfaces and Rifters used as a meta-item etc. Of course these prices are Domain market prices, so some reduction may be possible if stuff is bought from Jita or Rens.

I have to say, this really calls for a proper cost-efficiency calculation on my part. If I can't reduce the price of those components enough, it's best I just keep on buying my ships from market as a regular Joe. Damn, what a downer... no sudden riches in invention, it seems.