On Break

It's been over a year since my last post on this recording of my pod life. I don't regret it either. This past year saw me slowly losing my interest in undocking. And then, when the glorious CCP gave us our own quarters, and the ability to leave the pod... I guess I lost interest for some time in ever getting back in it. (not to mention my "brain" nearly melted when trying to explore the oh-so-wonderful CQ) But perhaps I should mention that CQ was really just the final drop for me on a growing pile of negative experiences.

I guess it started when the corp I was with chose to join a low-sec alliance. Not that it was a bad thing but at that time I was really just in the mood to sit comfy in high sec for awhile. Slowly the corp member base began vanishing from our high sec system and thus things started to get a lot quieter. So I chose to move on.

I ended up creating a corp of my own. Really just because I didn't want to be in the default corporation. But with my associates, the corporation Hellhound Productions was given birth. It was a temporary thing, something to make tracking my various associates efforts a little more effortless for me. It was a good endeavor but not really one I had any intention of growing. The problem is that I am a bit of a social bug. So after awhile, the need for a more fulfilling existence grew beyond my ability to contain it. Thus, I sought company with a corporation I felt I could mesh well with. Deep in nullsec with the Mostly Harmless alliance.

Things were going alright at first. However, it was nothing like life with SSE and Sys-K. The leadership for the corp/alliance was a bit more fragmented. I had a more difficult time comprehending what was even going on. What really didn't help was that the corp and alliance relied heavily upon a forum board for getting news out. A forum board that was consistently screwed up to the point of where I could never even get on it, and thus had no idea when ops and other important info was being posted. So even though I was living where I wanted to be, I still felt a bit detached. It was also a bit of a pain in that given I hadn't acquired a carrier yet, I was moving my gear ship by ship through some rather turbulent areas. Moving stuff this way can be excruciatingly taxing.

And then a real bomb dropped. Without much notice, the corporation I was in was booted from the alliance. Everyone was so caught up getting their own shit out, I was pretty much stranded as my calls for assistance went unanswered. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I left the corp and sought employment with another corporation in MH. By then I'd decided I just wanted out and so my only real reason for joining a MH corp was to get my gear out. Unfortunately, that's when shit REALLY hit the fan for all of MH. My routes out were suddenly under constant attack from invading forces, jump bridges where being decimated and often JB passwords would be changed (and of course i still had no access to the forums so I couldn't retrieve the new ones).

To top it off, stations where I still had ships and gear stashed were quickly falling into enemy hands and thus cutting me off from retrieving them. So here I find myself, sitting in one of those stations that is now an enemy controlled with most of my gear spread around me, deep in enemy territory. I guess all I can do now is sell my stuff in a sudo-fire sale, hoping to get a decent amount, and then clone jump to empire. That is...whenever i reactive my pilot's license.

OMG!! I'm an Industrialist!! :O

I’ve gotten lazy in writing. (as if that’s not evident) It’s not entirely for lack of interest or sitting in my pod, but simply lack of anything really worth writing about. I’m certainly no teacher and most of what I’ve been doing as of late can be found and learned in much better formats and guides than I could ever detail.

So what have I been up to?

Lately, I’ve been doing things I thought I’d given up entirely when I moved to Nullsec. PVE was never really my thing. Of course, in order to make isk, it was a necessary evil really but ratting in 0.0 is, in my opinion, a lot different than running missions in Empire. First, you’re constantly on the move. Warp into a belt, kill the rats, salvage if you want, then move on to the next. Second, while ratting, you have to maintain constant visual on the intel channels as well as local. A ship designed for ratting is a lot different than one you’d want to get caught in a pvp confrontation with. However, a confrontation is always still a possibility and as such, you should be prepared. So needless to say, it’s not quite as mind numbingly boring as running missions in high sec.

Second, I thought as well that I would never touch another mining laser if my life depended on it. Yeah….umm…that’s changed a bit. Given the current event, Hulkageddon, my exhumer, Universal Stripper, has been packed away nicely in its hanger until it’s safe to once more undock. Yes, it is possible to avoid or elude suicide gankers, but frankly, my associate lacks proper tanking skills at this time and so I prefer for him to just avoid even a possible loss of the ship. Given the cost of the ship, it’s just not worth the risk. So mining will resume when the festivities have passed.

Fortunately, to deal with the time, my associate now has the skills to both manufacture as well as step up his research. I’ve been amassing a fairly large amount of BPOs in the past few months and he’s been working diligently to research the M.E. levels of said BPOs. I’ve also stepped up his trading work. Something I hadn’t really gotten into before was placing buy orders, instead having favored the buy low from sell orders in one region, and sell high in another. Sometimes, for quick isk, I just sold to a high buy order. Other times, if profit was more favorable (though I understand it usually is) I’d put up my own sell orders. This past weekend however, I stepped out on a limb and gave buy orders a try.

I have to say, I’m quite surprised at the results I’m getting! The buy orders I’ve placed have been filling up unexpectedly fast! And given they are less than half the price of what said objects are being sold at in other regions, I can easily see now, in full, how traders can amass so much wealth in what really equates to a rather short time. Currently, I only have about 200mil on the market in buy orders. However, as long as there isn’t a drastic change in the market, I foresee turning around and selling the goods at 500mil, thus netting me an easy profit of 300mil. And as fast as the orders are filling, I could easily take it to Jita, and sell it to buy orders there for an easy 200mil profit or sell it myself and get the full 300mil profit. That just comes down to how much time I’m willing to wait to turn a profit. Frankly, I’ve got nothing but time.

The other option I have, and this might be giving away a little bit about my market focus, is to actually take the products I’m buying and use them to manufacture an end product. That was my original intent really in placing the buy orders, but given the prices I’m acquiring the goods at, I’ve only grown curious to see how well they’d transition into an end product and then sold. Would the profit be better or worse? I’m horrible with making spreadsheets so I’ll have to keep my eye out for one that would suite my purpose and track the financial gain better than I could by mental power alone.

In the meantime, while my associate has been taking care of business back at home, I’ve drifted over to the nearest Federation Customs station and resumed running level 4 missions. Given my excellent standings with Federation Customs I’d gained while stationed in Solitude, the agent was really quite elated to work with me. So much so that she gave me a mission titled Angel Extravaganza right from the start. I’ve heard this to be one of the better missions so I really was somewhat excited by my good fortune. I still haven’t given up on running missions to gain standings with the R&D level 4 agents, but found myself in need of earning some more isk and quick.

Reason? One of the ships I’ve been wanting to get my associate was an Orca, a giant industrial command ship. It would make a great addition to his growing fleet of industrial ships. At present, he has all the skills to fly it, minus the actual industrial command skill, and can fit it fairly decently. However, I just haven’t had the spare funds lately to invest in what is a fairly expensive ship at current market prices. As luck would have it though, it seems a corp mate has been churning out Orcas about once per week and offered to sell me one at a greatly reduced price under market. It’s an offer that is just too good to pass up. I could have my associate skill up some more to build one himself, but I’d really like to get my hands on one for him sooner than that would take, not to mention how it would deviate from my current objectives.

Speaking of current objectives. Here is how he stands currently:
1. Production lines operational….operational yes, producing not yet.
2. Trade investments escalated….check.
3. Research wing operational….check

Things still needing work (in no particular order):
1. PI (Planetary Interaction) installations set up and operational. (have the skills trained, just haven’t implemented them yet)
2. R&D agents accessed and researching (Working on that myself..sort of..and will then piggyback his standings up to par)
3. Skills to efficiently reprocess mission loot drops.
4. Skills to efficiently refine ore into minerals.
5. Standings with the sovereign station corporation to have a location in close proximity of where the associate mines, whose refinery services he can then utilize at minimum expense. (Not a rushed necessity as other stations are close enough to just haul the ore to in the freighter)

I know this seems like I’m really stretching my associate’s skills out to fully accomplish all this, but that is the overall objective. Eventually, I intend to have him as the ultimate industrialist, starting from the base up, but able to work in any aspect, to some degree of efficiency, within the industrial side of New Eden. And so far, at roughly 11 million skillpoints, he’s doing quite well. It will still be awhile before he could even consider T2 production…but I’m thinking that by next year, he will have all the things listed above covered to an above average level and then be able to start working towards that. Oh, and hopefully by that time, I’ll have both a dreadnought AND a carrier and he’ll own and fly his own Rorqual, along with the Providence freighter and the Orca. Now that would make a pretty nifty personal capital fleet and would thus make my associate and me a very useful and beneficial member to have on any corporate roster. Only missing capital ship would be a jump freighter but um….yeah. At around 4 to 5 billion, that’s a good ways down the road. (oh, and this does NOT include Super Capitals, but frankly, I have no desire to ever fly them)

The Right Corp

Finding a corp that suites you, one that you can feel completely at home with, isn’t easy. In Eve, there are so many different types of playstyles, so many different personalities and goals and other aspects, that can make choosing a corp quite difficult. When I left Silver Snake Enterprises, it was not that I didn’t like their way of playing, it was simply a timezone issue. They had some awesome FCs, held some very entertaining ops, and just in general were some really good people.

It was a difficult decision leaving them, especially after they left Systematic Chaos (Sys-K), which was in my opinion a very good and timely decision, and joined Against All Authorities (-A-). I had some high hopes that my only qualm with being in the corp would change…. but in the end, I just wasn’t seeing what I was looking for. Most of Sys-K and -A- were European players and thus my chance for running ops with everyone were almost non-existent since I’m in the US. If I wanted to rat, mine, build or do other general PVE stuff it was a great corp/alliance to be a part of. But that’s not what I wanted. I wanted PVP, and I prefer the company of others when doing so. It’s entirely frustrating and demoralizing when 95% of the planned ops take place prior to you even logging on.

So when my real life buddy/roommate joined the pilots of New Eden, I took that as an opportunity and persuasive push to leave them and head back to empire. I spent a short amount of time helping him get his feet wet until we met the corp known as Valor.

Again, they were a good corp but just a few things began to bug me. First, although they did have a somewhat active presense in Empire, their primary focus was their home system out in NPC nullsec and they were regularly pushing for people to make their way out there. At first this sounded like a good idea but I wasn’t willing to go until I at least knew my RL friend could effectively live out there. Now, I totally agree that a new player could, in theory, survive out there. But without the base skills to effectively tank NPC rats in order to make isk, it really becomes a tough place to grow and develop. On top of that, I was not so sure, at that time, whether or not I wanted to go back to life in nullsec. I guess you could say I wanted a vacation. Eventually yes, but not at present. Plus, I’m Gallante, and thus, my main focus is on armor tanking. Pretty much all of their ops were centered around shield tanking and..well…I’ve been down that road before of attempting to shield tank Gallante ships and really had no desire to do it again. (plus my shield tanking skills are crap and really don't want to spare the time right now to train them further)

So when my roommate threw in the towel (actually, he decided to go back to cartoon land, otherwise known as WoW….ugh…), I decided to leave the corp and strike out on my own once more.

About 2 weeks passed and that brings me to the here and now.

I’ve been actively watching the recruitment channel as well as the forums. There were a few names I wrote down as possibles but most of them had one or two details that I just wasn’t so sure about. So I kept looking. Then, the other day, when I saw one that peaked my interest. I joined their public channel on Friday and after speaking with a couple of their directors/recruiters for a bit, I really felt that they sounded like the corp I was looking for.

My requirements were/are:
-Large US presence……check
-Heavy industrial focus and capabilites…..check
-Low tax rate……check
-Desire and capability for lowsec/nullsec PVP…..check
-No qualms against pirate activities both in lowsec AND highsec…..check! (hell yeah to Hulkageddon 3!)
-Can handle my often times sarcastic humor….check (a lot of em are active duty military or vets which I completely relate to being a vet myself)
-Room to grow and develop even further….check

So with those desires fulfilled, I feel I might have found a good group of people to fly with and really look forward to seeing how this plays out. Maybe someday I'll decide to return to Nullsec and once again join the battlefront. However, for now, I feel I have found what should be suitable for my current interests.

Oh, and I didn't realize this till after I joined but it seems the corp is also the home of another fellow blogger, miningzen, and his blog K162space.