Rakeriku is recruiting !

My corp is now recruiting new members. You can read more on the official forum or at our own forums.

A little teaser here:

What we offer:
– A launch pad for those wanting to learn.
– We wont exploit you and force you to work for free.
– 0.0 access to some of the best ores (Arkonor) and ratting.
– Regular mission runners (who don’t mind folks tagging along).
– Plenty of salvaging for those folks not ready to join in the mission running.
– Carrier support for getting your gear in/out of 0.0
– Jumpclone access (both in empire and 0.0)

0.0 Revisited

This past week was a lot more fun in 0.0. Hardly any roaming gangs, think I only saw one or two reds (as we say in 0.0) in the system I was in. I made some nice isk ratting and scooping up loot and salvage. What is also great, is bringing the T2 modules I produce to 0.0. Prices are ofcourse higher, which is good for business. For example my Hammerhead II’s sell for 800k in empire (though recently I have seen prices as low as 750k), but I can get 1.2 – 1.3 mil in 0.0 :).

Cyno2

Went back to Empire this weekend for some invention and mission running. In the weekend the number of hostiles increase exponentionally in 0.0, so might as well dwell in empire and do some business there.

I am starting to like invention quite a bit, I am now looking for other T2 modules besides drones and BCUs that I might want to invent and was thinking Large Shield Extenders II or X-Large shield boosters. Or maybe T2 guns ? Will have to look a bit more into it, to see what’s profitable.

Life in 0.0

It’s definately different ! You have to keep a keen eye on local (no I am not using BACON), and even then it’s easy to get caught. Wicked Creek’s got a problem, roaming nano-gangs. Not just one or two ships, but sometimes even 20. I’ve seen a Bob gang, AAA, and a few other major alliances roaming about. Another problem is that RA is blue to TCF and TCZ, but red to most other people. We have been a victim of them a few times, and when thats reported in the security channel, people say ‘don’t report them they’re blue‘ ! Which then results in an interesting discussion ;).

What they do is trying to catch you in a belt with an inty or a rapier and then out of nowhere the rest shows up, blowing you to pieces. We’ve had a few skirmishes with them, but if you’re not jammed, your missiles hit for like 9 dmg, as they move so fast. I made a bit of money ratting, but that was offset (and then some) by the loss of a HAC, that Bela my alt was flying.

So for the weekend I am in Empire, the gangs get worse in the weekend as we saw last weekend. Just doing some trading and missions. If I go down there again, I am only going to fly something I can insure and equip it with some cheap looted modules, as you’re bound to loose your ship sooner or later.

What I don’t like at all in 0.0, is that you basically have to dock up as soon as there is a neutral or a ‘red’ in your system. He might be harmless, sitting in a safespot while making coffee, or he might be part of a larger gang out there to hunt you down. Other people dictating what I can or cant do in a game is no fun, so I wonder whether I am cut out for this. It’s been an interesting experience so far though.

Upon Wicked Creek

OMG I R IN THE 0.0 !

The ceo of Rakeriku and Otaku Invasion Carv stepped down due to being to busy a while back and the new Ceo Rag, wanted to blow some new life into our corp . The best way to do that was to go into 0.0 ! We have a close group of people in Eve, very skilled and knowledgable as well, but everybody was getting a bit bored and the corp was slowly dieing. So the move to 0.0 seem to be a logical one. Some people already had 0.0 experience and they’re helping us 0.0 noobs along, answering all our questions.

Cerb ratting in wicked creek

So yesterday we moved some of our stuff over by carrier jumps. I now have a sacrilige for Belautis and a cerberus for morph in 0.0. Have only done a little bit of ratting, and it looks good so far. Already made a few million and got my cargohold filled with loot (which isn’t too hard today). Wicked Creek has Angel rats, so explosive ammo seems to work best. Though on the cerb, due to bonuses, the kinetic missiles are nice. It takes a bit of time to take the big BS’s down, but as long as tanking isn’t a problem, it’s not too bad. Luckily Bela can help me out if I step into a 3 BS spawn, like I did today, they spawned right on top of me and had my heart skip a beat ;).

Ofcourse playstyle is a bit different out there. You have to keep your eye open on the security channel and local. And because you’re renting space, that doesn’t mean there are no pirates or people with ill-intend around. Already yesterday when I was just going to put up a Cyno for the last jump, two hostiles got into the system. But luckily they buggered off, so I was able to put the Cyno up in the end.

Putting up a cyno

I am sure i’ll keep you all up to date on this new step in my Eve Career !

Trinity Patch 1.2

Training a long learning duration skill ending after the scheduled return to service is recommended.

Please note that we have added two hours to the downtime for deploying this patch, Tranquility is expected to be up at 1600 GMT and not 1400 GMT as originally reported.

As usual totally forgot / didn’t pay attention to the announcements and had a skill end right before the extended downtime. Found this out when I couldn’t log on to change my skill and found the new patchnotes ;). They seem to be testing stuff at the moment (16:00 Eve time). Seven players online, but the cluster is not accepting new logons.

The patchnotes can be found over here . Mainly bugfixes, though from what I read from the readme.txt after installation of the patch, a lof of cans in space will be removed after 30 days, which is ofcourse very nice.

Invention II

As you can see in the screenshot of my inventory, I have been fairly successful lately with invention. Got all the related skills at 4 now, and the hit / miss ratio with the drones has been a lot more hit than miss ;). I also invented a few Ballistic Control Unit II bpcs. Those and the Hamerheads seem to have a success-rate of about 30%, the hobgoblins are lot higher, I would say 70% or so ?

Eve Online Invention

Luckily I found a backwater Gallente system that only had 5 days or so que time for copying blueprints. Our alliance has some laboratory facilities, which is fine for ME research but copying is still buggy or cumbersome, so I was told. But it didn’t matter too much as I needed the time to get some more data-cores from my agents. I now have two electronic engineering and two mechanical engineering agents, which gives a nice source of income as well, for the cores I don’t use.

Overall I wouldn’t recommend doing this all, as it doesn’t seem to be worth all the trouble. The past week I produced drones from the above mentioned bpc’s and am now selling the Hammerheads for around 1.1 mil. The hobgobs go for about 200k. So I might as well hang on to those. The producing part is a bit of a hassle as well, as you need these weird parts (and you have to produce the t1 drone as well) and have to travel quite a bit to get the best deals. It’s fun to be using your own drones though, and the investment wasn’t that bad since the price of the data interfaces and encryption skills have dropped considerably. Which is of-course the reason why there is so much T2 stuff on the market at the moment. But if you got a few million isk (and then some) to spare and want to see how it all works, and you have an industrial character, feel free to give invention a shot.

I have no idea if the starship production is more profitable. Probably also in bigger numbers as the starting investment is a lot higher. The starship interfaces needed are a lot more expensive.

There is an interesting analysis on the Eve-O forums that agrees with my point of view :

I would persuade small-time inventors to stay out of the business (unless it’s for personal use in remote areas of the galaxy) for the time being, because they tend to ignore the long-term (average) costs, and usually undersell their “lucky chance” products, only to hit a bad bump when the unlucky streak starts. You’re really better off just buying off the market most of the time.

Due to the chance-based nature of invention, I would recommend that you ONLY go into invention at all if your skills are good (L4 each of the 3 relevant skills) and you have a starter capital that will cover (on average) at least two, preferably three successful invention jobs per “investment batch”.

And ofcourse the invention guide if you want to get started or just see how it works.

The Seven Month Itch

From studies it seems that Eve players start to drop out after seven months. Some people probably never make it past the trial period, but lets forget about those for a moment and examine why this might be. Around 6 / 7 months of skill training, the average player will be able to fly a Battleship competently, and/or might be mining in a Hulk. As has been shown from the Economy studies (which only confirmed what most people had already seen in game) 80% of the players dwell in Empire. This probably means they are running missions or mining / trading.

So around the 7 month mark, they have a T2 fitted Raven, a few hundred million in the bank, and have seen every Level 4 mission multiple times. They might be in a nice corp of similar players, maybe do a mining op once a week, and then the boredom sets in.

“Is this all there is ?”

The player starts to log on less and less and eventually fades from the game. The same thing happened to me after about 8 months of playing enthusiasticly and being in a nice corp with a great group of people. I took a long break but eventually came back after a few months.

So what can you do about this ?

    Try something different than what you have been doing:

  • Set a long skill and take a break, you’ll be back :).
  • if you have been using missiles, get the skills for gunnery and a gunboat
  • get some jumpclones, buy a thorax and pew pew in lowsec. This might be tough as lowsec is usually empty or there are other pirates and your corp might not approve of your evil actions
  • discuss the issue with your corp, maybe there are other people that feel the same way and make plans to do something else
  • this is probably tough, as you might have grown attached to your current corp, but you might want to look for another corp that’s different from the one you’re in now. Might require some corphopping to find one that fits you
  • go to 0.0 either with your corp or join an alliance / corp that’s in 0.0
    What could CCP do ?

  • Make missions / PVE more exciting. I know this is not the direction that CCP wants to follow. Although they do try a little by adding some new ones every now and then. It seems there is a high demand for this kind of thing, as we can see by the 80% empire dwellers.
  • Give lowsec a better reward / risk ratio. At the moment, there is a lot of risk and not that much of a reward. This would give corps that are not ready for 0.0 more reason to do something more exciting, ie. have mining ops in low sec, do lvl 5 group missions (that need to be more fun / profitable) there etc. What I would not suggest is moving lvl 4 agents to lowsec, as has been suggested numerous times on the forums. People will just speedrun lvl 3 missions, or quit all together.
  • Make 0.0 more accessible. Too many gatecamps make it very hard to travel there, if you’re not part of some big alliance. But then when you’re there with no friends and no help, it’s hard to live out there. So I am not sure how to improve this situation.

So there it is, my thoughts on the seven month itch.

*update* : In episode II of the Drone Bay podcast there is a nice section on how to look for a corp, what to look for in a corp etc.. A good corp will make you enjoy Eve a lot more, so make sure to check that out.

This post has been discussed on ep. 4 of the Drone Bay Active podcast !