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.

Activity!

Wow! It sure is nice to have an alliance chat with the liveliness that was witnessed on the evening of 19th Feb:) A total of 18 alliance members chatted actively as we had the new corp moving their gear from Minmatar space to southern Domain, where we have been active for a good while. Silent-I.K.Y members were cruising down to low-sec in their haulers and [LSL] kindly provided the scouting services needed. Yours truly was FC with Hyperion which had last been seen in Frarn, engaged in killing the same guys it was now escorting - life has it's twists and turns, eh?

Everything went as planned - well... if not counting one of the Silent-guys afking in a Hulk on Mamet (0.1) gate of all things (dear-oh-dear). Apparently he had decided all of a sudden that it was time for tea (those Brits - crazy peeps:)

To top it off for the evening the guys had a decent kill too. Way to go - alliance killpoints as a "house-warming gift".

The Alliance grows

Only a short while has passed since the formation of our alliance. The original founding corporations [HGR], [FEN] and [LSL] have been joined by a corporation which has only recently been put together when a former war-target of ours - Chaos Affliction - split into several smaller groups. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the new member-corp *slaps self* and besides it's downtime so I can't go and see the stats either:) [edit: The new corp is called SILENT-I.K.Y. and I wonder if it stands for silent-I-kill-you:)]

Anyway, it's really nice to see our alliance grow and these new blokes really gave us a run for our money in the war and put up a respectable fight, especially given the average character age, which is way lower than ours. With each joining corp and player we come closer to reaching our main goal of getting a home system of our own.

Let's see where the dice fall:)

Enough with the POS business!

After four months of POS-caretaking, ice harvesting and hauling various commodities to be used at POS operations I thought to myself: "This can't be all there is". I expressed my feelings to my associate Lex Diaboli, who had been a great help in keeping the POS running and with whom I had done some lvl4 missioning too. He was not too happy about my decision to halt the operation and move to (supposedly) greener pastures. Thanks to a loyal partner for all the help, but I had to move along.

During all my time in [KAR] and [FEN] I had kept contact with a handful of the peeps I worked with in Erasers. One of my closest [ERAS]-friends, Camcalen, had also had his cup filled to the brim with the unsatisfying Erasers protocol and had formed a corporation of his own, The Howling Griffins. I had followed the development of the corporation from the start and had been idling on their public communications channel from the beginning. Somewhere along the way I helped Camcalen by making a full set of max run missile BPC's and thus we started to talk more in detail. It wasn't long before he asked for the first time to join [HGR]. At this point I was pretty bored with all the carebear shit and was ready to try something new. I told him I would wait until my last ME/PE/Copy jobs would be ready from my POS and I would then take it down and join his corporation. Just a short notification here: I never terminated my own corporation but named an alt as its CEO and it is still running, though in more or less"desk drawer" -mode.

Today, after some 9 months ín the service of [HGR], after 2 POS adventures (one in Providence and one in Detorid), after loosing 2 jump clones with +4 implant sets + HW's, we are back in Empire space. We had a quite a successful two-week war against a corp called Chaos Affliction who were allegedly can-flipping SOB's and generally pestering the newb's in Heimatar hi-sec. All in all the war gave the corp the enema it needed: peeps were all scattered throughout the known universe doing their own thing and there was no mutual goal or operations. The war gathered us all once again under the corporate banner to fight the enemy. A lot of our members had had absolutely no PvP-experience before this war and this rather succesful war boosted the morale and self-confidence of all the members, I would say. At the end of the war we also received reinforcements in the form of Eugen Ladder, a fighter and experienced FC who had joined a different corp some time earlier in search of more PvP-action but was now ready to come back and retake his position as a respectable damage-dealer with his notorious Megathron-class battleship fitted with second generation hi-power blasters. The Howling Griffins Killboard shows the degree of his devotion:)

The Howling Griffins has recently formed an alliance with two other corporations: Fenris Polaris [FEN] and The Legion of Steel Lions [LSL]. The newly formed alliance is called "The Polaris Syndicate" [HRR]. What the future holds for us is unknown but we do know what it is we want: a place of our own where you don't have to pay anyone for ratting or mining rights and don't have to take shit from no-one. Of course, this means we have to be prepared to fight for our dream and I am certain we shall do so. I sincerelly hope we can rally up all the members to form a working community, all doing their bit for the common good. Thumbs up!

Hi-sec POS is like a big baby

So I set up my laboratory-POS in Jaschercis. It didn't take long for me to realize that having a hi-sec POS to look after was quite similar to nursing a baby (and if anyone should ask, yes I speak of experience), no matter what the hour of the day - if the fuel is running out it starts to whine in the most annoying way - sending low-fuel warning mails every hour. Then you have to run to your hangar, hop in your industrial and warp to POS for refueling, that is, moving fuel from your corp hangar floating in space to the fuel compartment of your tower. I'm not sure as to what are the current stats of control tower fuel compartment sizes but back then you couldn't fit more than 7 days worth of fuel in a small gallente tower. I can tell you it sucked big time. Especially as I was alone at the start. Luckily I had a bit earlier managed to convert a RL-friend into EVE-addict and I had him join my corp:) This did take some of the pressure off of my shoulders, thank goodness.

Introduction

My greetings to all you folks out there. Stumbling to my blog gives a 95% chance that you already know what is EVE-Online and the rest of you peeps go check http://www.eve-online.com/ to get an idea what I am about to share with you.

I am a so-called "carebear" in the world of EVE, although I'm struggling hard not to be. A carebear is a member of the EVE community who is involved in the indirect PvP-action in the game (check this link for a blog on the subject of PvP's different aspects). This includes mining, production, trade and all the other walks of life that are possible without target locking anything more menacing than an asteroid in this vast universe we live in.

My career as a carebear started with - you guessed it - mining. Mining is the cornerstone of income for nearly all new EVE players, excluding alts (second account of the same person) and ISK-buyers (people who spend massive amounts of RL-money in buying InterStellar Kredits and thus taking a short cut to being rich in-game and missing on some key elements of character development). I made the choice of attributes in the beginning of my capsuleer career by choosing a character of Minmatar race and Sebiestor in bloodline and assigning bonus points on intelligence and memory. The result of this was that I soon discovered that I am quick to learn all int/mem skills and respectively thick-headed in anything remotely resembling warfare, ships or guns *duh*

Starting a career

I did not stay for very long in my newbie-corporation, Pator Tech School but talked my way into the ranks of FinFleet just a few days after graduating as a pod pilot. FinFleet was at that time the place to be for a new player: battle-hardened directors who had been in the game since beta-testing, a wide network of corporate offices and hangars etc. All in all a promising corporation. I continued reading the skill books of the industrial category, being confident that I would benefit my employer the most in mining.

Only after a couple of weeks was it announced by the board of directors that the whole corporation was to move into null-sec space, namely Wicked Creek and Curse to kick some ass. Not having any battle related skills did play a part in my reluctant attitude towards this change. Luckily I was not the only one. Some gang-mining-ops and a lot of chatting later a new industrially inclined corporation was formed: The Erasers Inc. "Erasing a belt near you".

The business was good for a year or so: corp getting bigger and expanding in production into the lucrative T2-ship manufacturing. One of the corporations directors had been lucky enough to get his hands on a T2 BPO for the Gallente assault frigate Ishkur. Having a corporate POS in a nearby 0.1 system, harvesting a moon for some moon mineral suitable for Gallente T2-manufacturing did not hurt either. Soon after came ideas of acquiring the BPO for the recently introduced Gallente Carrier "Thanatos" and all the capital components needed for it's production. Not bad ideas at all but I was starting to feel a bit bored with the endless mining and hauling, especially as all the profit was going to the pockets of a few directors and all I got from the hard labour were two Cyclone-class Battlecruisers I got as a replacement after some major mission bloopers by your truly.

This is when I first started to think about a corp of my own. Having slowly but steadily accumulated some wealth by trading and missioning and having bought and studied about 150 T1 BPO's of my own I thought I was on my way to success. But first I would have to quit Erasers Inc.

The End

Finally it was time to say goodbye! Or I should have... During the last months of my membership in Erasers Inc. I had sort of become an invisible part of the machinery that kept the production lines rolling and I wanted to see if my resigning would be noted at all. So I resigned all grantable roles, waited for 24 hours and then resigned. Not a word to anyone. A few days later I got a mail from my former CEO, saying I have something that belogs to the corporation, namely I had bought (as agreed with CEO himself) 2 skillbooks (advanced mass production and advanced laboratory operation) with corporate cash and he now wanted the money back. Wow, talk about Uncle McScrooge! The other skillbook I had already trained and used for the corporations manufacturing for quite some time and the other was still in my hangar due to pre-requisite not met. Fair enough - I returned the other skillbook and paid 20 million for the other. I also escrowed (thats what the predecessor of contracting was called) him a BPO of a Rupture-class Minmatar cruiser, which I had also bought with corp cash and had set to a laboratory installation for some Material Efficiency (ME) development. Thats all. No thanks, no interest in my reasons for quitting the corporation. I guess I had overestimated my role in the corporation. Having resigned from duty and back in the steady service of The Brutor Tribe, I received disturbing information: I was being accused of corporate theft behind my back! As soon as I learned about all the rumors flying around I contacted my former CEO and asked what the hell this was all about. The reply was something like "...umm... I'm not really involved in these industrial things... you should ask Divitys". What a load of horse manure! Where is the fucking back bone of the CEO, trying to avoid a straight confrontation from a former member, who's just trying to get a clarification!? Nuff said, the guy has since retired to Dungeons and Dragons Online (rofl). Divitys was the one responsible for spreading all these lies about me and was (and still is, to my knowledge) one of the directors using the corp members for his own agenda and fuelling his own private POS with corporation assets. Even if I had rubbed him the wrong way - this was too low a way to get back at me, I think. That is why he is the only person I name in my story. If you're reading this, Divitys - you're one fucking numb-nuts, mate:)

A run-about in 0.0

After a couple of days in Brutor Tribe, I was already bored silly, so I applied for a position in another pod pilot corporation by the name "Karjala". A former member of Erasers had joined them earlier and was ready to speak for my acceptance. So it happened, I was accepted but the shadow of past still haunted me: The directors of Karjala had heard of the accusations from Divitys and wanted to hear my side of the story. I spilled my guts and they were satisfied. Hats off to Karjala for using their own intellect and not believing all the crap you hear.

So here I was in my new home region of Deklein. Wow! Karjala was at the time a member of the Freelancer Alliance and that finally made it possible for me to go to 0.0 with relative safety as we had allies all the way to 3JN9-Q where our alliance held a conquerable station. The only tough system was the entry point EC-P8R, which was crowded with hostiles camping the gate at certain times of the day. The following 4 months or so passed with mainly ratting and some chasing hostile gangs back from our neck o'the woods into the waiting arms of our neighbours, The Imperial Republic of the North (IRON). They held sovereignty in other parts of Deklein and some of Cloud Ring too, if I remember correctly.

Although the 0.0 period was very educating and I made some friends too, I still thought about startin my own corporation. Having accumulated a shiny 5.0 Concord security status and taken my wallet to new spheres with lucrative ratting at the expence of The Guristas Pirates, I finally decided to go solo. Thank you Karjala for the trust and friendship, all duly appreciated! Now was a time to turn a new page!

My own Corporation!

Finally, after playing EVE-Online for about 17 months, I create my own corporation "Fenris Polaris". The name derives from a combination of my love for wolfs (Fenris being the big bad wolf that will eat Earth at the end of time - Ragnarök - according to Norse legends of Gods) and Polaris representing my Scandinavian roots.

My first action as the owner and CEO of my own corporation is to start looking for a place for my first hi-sec POS. As I have decent standings with the Gallente Federation it is only suitable that I start my search in their territory. As my standings start effecting the corporations standings gradually, I have about one week before my corporation gets the full 7.5 Faction standing I have personally. I start my search primarily in Everyshore and Sinq Laison and before soon I find two viable candidate systems for my POS, Jaschercis and Misneden. However, Misneden seem s abit more crowded and has poor connections, whereas Jaschercis is situated smack in the middle of some sweet level 4 manufacturing agents! The choise is made and I'm off to Oursulaert to buy the small gallente tower and related gear: corporate hangar array, some railgun- and blaster batteries and of course the core of the whole operation - two mobile laboratories to use for BPO research and copying. Dad always said: if you pay peanuts, you get monkies. This was the philosophy I used while shopping and as a result bought some totally unnecessary stuff like the guns - at this point hi-sec POS' were the new hype in town and there was not really need for guns on a lab-POS. Once I had anchored and onlined them and grasped how much CPU and power they use and thus add to the fuel consumption, I offlined them without further delay. I calculated that I had enough strontium clathrates at my POS to withstand any attack until I could online my guns again. Lucky as I have been, there was never a single attack on my POS.

OK, time to let the keyboard cool down and maybe play some EVE:)