Because I'm a geek I like to play with data, so, I've been pulling data from the Eve Online API and with a bit of code-fu I arranged it all into this 4 minute time lapse of 2 months in new eden
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
The Latin Peace Deal - How I made Billions of Burning Bibles
Last night CCP removed all NPC sellers of Pax Amarria from Eve's market, bringing to an end one of my longest kept money making secrets and restoring the mineral market to the 'nerf drone goo' panic we should have been seeing for a few weeks now.
Last year when the noctis launched I had two BPOs that I was feeding with minerals, and, while I'd stockpiled minerals I hadn't really put to much thought into the larger market dynamics, so when nocxium started rising I was unprepared, my stockpiles ran out and as I was accustomed to silly margins on my Nocti I found myself unhappy at paying 600 isk/unit for my nocxium.
I wrote myself a bit of perl that analyzed the static data dump to find things I could buy and reprocess for nocxium, I shared this data with a friend and we bought up piles of mining crystals, smartbombs, shield transfer arrays and other garbage before I found Pax Amarria in my list. I could buy piles of these from NPC sellers and immediately resell the minerals in jita for a small markup. The Breakeven price with my skills and standing was about 532, so any buy order above that was an opportunity.
The margins were slim but me any my friend were making billions at least until the price dropped below our magic number an I was reduced to only making a couple of hundred mill a day on the Dodixie market. Nocxium can't be mined in Gallente or Minmatar hi-sec so those markets always tend to have higer prices.
We looked at the market histories and by combining our numbers it was clear that we were the only people doing this in Winter 2010/2011. We looked for evidence that other people knew we even found this post that must have gone ignored in December 2010. Indeed people had been talking about it in 2005 and nothing had happened then.
I think the reason it was so underused was a combination of people thinking...
a) It's a book - why would a book reprocessable into minerals?
b) There aren't enough Pax Amarria on the market to supply jita - people not realising that NPC stocks were infinite.
c) Pax Amarria are only available in small stacks, so you have to click buy a thousand times to get any number. I literally found a stupidly rich trade baron who told me this. He should learn how the markets work.
Now the prices returned to unprofitable levels for a long time, but when the drone changes started to become more solid we started doing it again, but, it actually became real effort keeping up with the demand on the Jita Market. I a few more people in on the secret and whenever we saw market activity that wasn't ours we'd place sell orders in the relevant stations to find out who it was. We'd contact them with stories of 'The Nocxium Cartel' referring to it as 'The Latin Peace Deal' (Pax is latin for Peace) and encourage them to keep it a secret and back off on their sales to let the price rise (instead we'd sell more).
And then it finally went public, people still denied it was possible, no doubt the same people that had buy orders for 600+/u - of course, they can finally make a profit at todays prices..... but I can make a bigger profit.
Last year when the noctis launched I had two BPOs that I was feeding with minerals, and, while I'd stockpiled minerals I hadn't really put to much thought into the larger market dynamics, so when nocxium started rising I was unprepared, my stockpiles ran out and as I was accustomed to silly margins on my Nocti I found myself unhappy at paying 600 isk/unit for my nocxium.
I wrote myself a bit of perl that analyzed the static data dump to find things I could buy and reprocess for nocxium, I shared this data with a friend and we bought up piles of mining crystals, smartbombs, shield transfer arrays and other garbage before I found Pax Amarria in my list. I could buy piles of these from NPC sellers and immediately resell the minerals in jita for a small markup. The Breakeven price with my skills and standing was about 532, so any buy order above that was an opportunity.
The margins were slim but me any my friend were making billions at least until the price dropped below our magic number an I was reduced to only making a couple of hundred mill a day on the Dodixie market. Nocxium can't be mined in Gallente or Minmatar hi-sec so those markets always tend to have higer prices.
We looked at the market histories and by combining our numbers it was clear that we were the only people doing this in Winter 2010/2011. We looked for evidence that other people knew we even found this post that must have gone ignored in December 2010. Indeed people had been talking about it in 2005 and nothing had happened then.
I think the reason it was so underused was a combination of people thinking...
a) It's a book - why would a book reprocessable into minerals?
b) There aren't enough Pax Amarria on the market to supply jita - people not realising that NPC stocks were infinite.
c) Pax Amarria are only available in small stacks, so you have to click buy a thousand times to get any number. I literally found a stupidly rich trade baron who told me this. He should learn how the markets work.
Now the prices returned to unprofitable levels for a long time, but when the drone changes started to become more solid we started doing it again, but, it actually became real effort keeping up with the demand on the Jita Market. I a few more people in on the secret and whenever we saw market activity that wasn't ours we'd place sell orders in the relevant stations to find out who it was. We'd contact them with stories of 'The Nocxium Cartel' referring to it as 'The Latin Peace Deal' (Pax is latin for Peace) and encourage them to keep it a secret and back off on their sales to let the price rise (instead we'd sell more).
And then it finally went public, people still denied it was possible, no doubt the same people that had buy orders for 600+/u - of course, they can finally make a profit at todays prices..... but I can make a bigger profit.
Friday, November 4, 2011
New Ships and Nebulae On Singularity
If you head over to singularity there's a ton of new features, I started out making a video of the new ships and nebulae, but I'm probably going to have to make a follow up to cover the new ship textures and gameplay enhancing functionality.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
6yo Skye Explains How to Setup a Coercer
I'd planned to make this for a while, but never got around to it until TEST made their 'Lasers Are Magic' video
Of course the TEST video about about a million times more magic.
Of course the TEST video about about a million times more magic.
Friday, October 28, 2011
CCP Art Department Video - New Raven Model!
New video from CCP on Youtube
The New nebula system really appeals to my astro geek nature, and, I do own a Raven, Navy Raven and Golem so the new model (which I predicted yesterday on failheap-challenge) will make my hangar look nicer.
The New nebula system really appeals to my astro geek nature, and, I do own a Raven, Navy Raven and Golem so the new model (which I predicted yesterday on failheap-challenge) will make my hangar look nicer.
Updates.... at last.
I have been terribly remiss in updating this, I haven't postend anything since May. In a large part that was because Incarna sapped my desire to play Eve Online, instead I spent hours learning Pro-Guitar mode in Rock Band 3.
The second summer of rage came and went, I chose to keep my accounts active with PLEX, and in recent weeks I rediscovered some level of interest in New Eden. Mostly because I can see another bunch of long needed fixes actually getting some development priority. Yes, I'm one of those pilots who can use Large TII Hybrids, so the hybrid rebalance and Talos are looking like they'll play into my hands. I've also finished training all the basic ships skills and have level V in every racial Frigate, Cruiser & Battleship skill. The only subcaps I still have to train for are the Amarr and Minmatar Transport ships. In theory I'm a skillbook and a couple of hours away from any carrier or dread in the game, buty I'm saving my money until I need to fly one.
I have a friend in Rooks and Kings and would dearly love to fly with them, but realisticly I still don't get the dedicated screen time to PVP.
And I've found that I like making game videos, so I started publishing regular updates on my youtube page, I posted my own look at new graphics for the CQ's and cynos in te brief time they were on Singularity. And it got a decent amount of interest.
I've also taken to twitter, because writing whole blog posts can seem like too much work, you can find me at:
http://twitter.com/#!/DJSnM
The second summer of rage came and went, I chose to keep my accounts active with PLEX, and in recent weeks I rediscovered some level of interest in New Eden. Mostly because I can see another bunch of long needed fixes actually getting some development priority. Yes, I'm one of those pilots who can use Large TII Hybrids, so the hybrid rebalance and Talos are looking like they'll play into my hands. I've also finished training all the basic ships skills and have level V in every racial Frigate, Cruiser & Battleship skill. The only subcaps I still have to train for are the Amarr and Minmatar Transport ships. In theory I'm a skillbook and a couple of hours away from any carrier or dread in the game, buty I'm saving my money until I need to fly one.
I have a friend in Rooks and Kings and would dearly love to fly with them, but realisticly I still don't get the dedicated screen time to PVP.
And I've found that I like making game videos, so I started publishing regular updates on my youtube page, I posted my own look at new graphics for the CQ's and cynos in te brief time they were on Singularity. And it got a decent amount of interest.
I've also taken to twitter, because writing whole blog posts can seem like too much work, you can find me at:
http://twitter.com/#!/DJSnM
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Whooops!
In 10 seconds of madness I managed to go from +5.0 sec status to -4.21 - there was a mining operation that consisted of half a dozen toons all clearly struck from the same mold. It was early in the morning and I was feeling like a laugh so I decided to drop a discogeddon on top of their little operation.
The first volley of SB's killed the retrievers, but the covetors were more robust and I was faced with a split second decision over whether to save my sec status, or to kill the covetors and the pods.
The ship kills were all about -4% each , so a bunch of those would have still left me in positive territory, but the pod kills are -21% each, so those last 2 covetor kills cost me dearly. Still I'm not totally excluded from hi-sec space, I can still work in 0.5 sec systems. Also, I notice the I got a sec status loss for a 6th ship, bringing me down to -4.4 . there was another covetor, but somehow It survived and died 10 minutes later, so I get the security hit without the killmail. (can someone clarify - it must have been the same ship? or could he have swapped ships at a station or the orca and lost a different one, but still had me take the sec status hit?)
The first volley of SB's killed the retrievers, but the covetors were more robust and I was faced with a split second decision over whether to save my sec status, or to kill the covetors and the pods.
The ship kills were all about -4% each , so a bunch of those would have still left me in positive territory, but the pod kills are -21% each, so those last 2 covetor kills cost me dearly. Still I'm not totally excluded from hi-sec space, I can still work in 0.5 sec systems. Also, I notice the I got a sec status loss for a 6th ship, bringing me down to -4.4 . there was another covetor, but somehow It survived and died 10 minutes later, so I get the security hit without the killmail. (can someone clarify - it must have been the same ship? or could he have swapped ships at a station or the orca and lost a different one, but still had me take the sec status hit?)
Friday, May 6, 2011
Long Time No Post....
I think the whole CSM 6 thing made me lose interest in writing about Eve for the last few months and we've had quite a busy few months so It really has been remiss of me to ignore this blog and its handful of occasional readers.
My in game wealth seems to be stuck around the 30bill mark, the PI revamp came and managed to introduce rendering bugs and general slowness on my system so it has fallen by the wayside, the noctis market stabilised and I stopped making billions from manipulating the nocxium market. Trading became dull again, and my trading alt is now relegated to selling the piles of mission loot that I'm farming using a passive tanked Rattlesnake, a ship that can easily pull full aggro on any level 4 mission so I can get on with other more interesting things. This is the mission equivalent of AFK mining.
That rattler however couldn't tank a pirate who I was foolish enough to engage, I jad a whole plan related to my my alt flying a noctis fitted with neuts and other ewar, but I messed things up and sat around for 15 minutes while rats shot me and his orca brought in a tengu. Yes... I should ahve shot the rats while I was waiting. I've no idea what I was thinking. but in the end we talked a lot and while the loss was embarrassing the contacts I have made may still help me turn a profit. I've since bought another rattler and fitted it with t2 Purger rigs, which gives it an omnitank north of 1700dps, more if I use fleet boosts. If I'm actually paying attention, I have more important things to do than running missions, incursions are the PVE activity of choice these days.
But yes, the most embarrassing loss was my noctis that was salvaging in a mission, while my main was droning rats to death, and meanwhile I was playing Lego Rock Band with my kids, specifically I was playing 'We Are The Champions' while a new wave of rats spawned and killed my salvage ship. I haven't been afflicted with this level of Irony since I lost a ship to a bubble camp while watching The Prisoner's escape attempt prevented by a pink bubble.
And while I didn't lose my ship on Ganknight 28 I was one of that elite group of retards who though that shooting Black Jack would be a good idea - indeed, many regular GN attendees seem to think it was the *best* idea in retrospect. The crow I was flying that day was the one I'd found abandoned outside a station in Empire, and it served me well, getting me on half a dozen killmails. Shame I lost it the next day while heading into nullsec to try running one of these pirate mission arcs, I could have easily pulled range on the dictor and AF on the gate, but instead activated my cloak after getting some range. Even more of a shame that I also managed to lose my scout's stealth bomber due to fat fingering my mwd-cloak maneuver. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to visit this agent on a sunday, better to wait to a quieter time.
Anyway, I'll leave you all to chill with your Quafe Zero (one day I hope to push my lol-dramiel above 25km/s using this)
My in game wealth seems to be stuck around the 30bill mark, the PI revamp came and managed to introduce rendering bugs and general slowness on my system so it has fallen by the wayside, the noctis market stabilised and I stopped making billions from manipulating the nocxium market. Trading became dull again, and my trading alt is now relegated to selling the piles of mission loot that I'm farming using a passive tanked Rattlesnake, a ship that can easily pull full aggro on any level 4 mission so I can get on with other more interesting things. This is the mission equivalent of AFK mining.
That rattler however couldn't tank a pirate who I was foolish enough to engage, I jad a whole plan related to my my alt flying a noctis fitted with neuts and other ewar, but I messed things up and sat around for 15 minutes while rats shot me and his orca brought in a tengu. Yes... I should ahve shot the rats while I was waiting. I've no idea what I was thinking. but in the end we talked a lot and while the loss was embarrassing the contacts I have made may still help me turn a profit. I've since bought another rattler and fitted it with t2 Purger rigs, which gives it an omnitank north of 1700dps, more if I use fleet boosts. If I'm actually paying attention, I have more important things to do than running missions, incursions are the PVE activity of choice these days.
But yes, the most embarrassing loss was my noctis that was salvaging in a mission, while my main was droning rats to death, and meanwhile I was playing Lego Rock Band with my kids, specifically I was playing 'We Are The Champions' while a new wave of rats spawned and killed my salvage ship. I haven't been afflicted with this level of Irony since I lost a ship to a bubble camp while watching The Prisoner's escape attempt prevented by a pink bubble.
And while I didn't lose my ship on Ganknight 28 I was one of that elite group of retards who though that shooting Black Jack would be a good idea - indeed, many regular GN attendees seem to think it was the *best* idea in retrospect. The crow I was flying that day was the one I'd found abandoned outside a station in Empire, and it served me well, getting me on half a dozen killmails. Shame I lost it the next day while heading into nullsec to try running one of these pirate mission arcs, I could have easily pulled range on the dictor and AF on the gate, but instead activated my cloak after getting some range. Even more of a shame that I also managed to lose my scout's stealth bomber due to fat fingering my mwd-cloak maneuver. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to visit this agent on a sunday, better to wait to a quieter time.
Anyway, I'll leave you all to chill with your Quafe Zero (one day I hope to push my lol-dramiel above 25km/s using this)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
If I Were Coding Eve I'd Fix.....
Ships I would fix... if given the opportunity.
The Belicose and the Vigil are the two minmatar tech 1 ewar ships, specifically target painting, and I think they both need some tweaking.
The Vigil is actually a pretty cool ship, with a 5%/level speed bonus that makes it very popular for things like stealing loot before someone else can get to it. But the target painter bonus is essentially only useful as part of a fleet, since the weapons that a vigil has are frigate sized they won't benefit from the increased signature radius on the target. The other Tech 1 ewar frigates have bonuses for ECM, Sensor Damps or Tracking Disruptors - in theory these all have some use to a 'solo' player and even some limited use in PVE. So, I'd switch the Painter bonus on the vigil to a webber bonus - this fits in with the super fast nature of the vigil, giving it a bonus that has actual utility for the ship itself.
The Belicose has a bonus to guns, but I've always felt that it would be better with a missile bonus, specifically a bonus to explosion velocity of 10-15% per level, and give it an extra missile hardpoint. This would make it highly effective against frigates, especially when you factor in its 40m^3 drone bay. As it stands right now, if you're a mission runner working your way up through the ships you don't really have an obvious choice of t1 Minmatar cruiser to run those level 2 mission.
The Caracal, Vexor and Arbitrator are all exceptionally good at clearing the large numbers of frigates frequently found in Level 2 missions, but right now the minmatar ships just can't bring their firepower to bear on small, fast targets. If you want to run those level 2 missions quickly then the Thrasher does a great job a taking down small targets but has no tank. The stabber is nice and fast, but even with the smallest medium guns you need tracking mods to give them a decent chance of hitting those pirate frigates, plus is can only field one drone. The Rupture does a pretty good job, but it's still slower at cleaning out these easy missions compared to the other racial anti frigate cruisers.
And one other pet peeve came back to me over the weekend when I encountered a special ship in a mission:
Yes that is an Ibis, the Caldari rookie ship with a camo paint job. WTB Navy Issue Ibis, I would sincetely hope that the fix the issue that the basic Ibis has and give it hardpoints for missile launchers. It still annoys me no end that the Caldari ship that can't use the Caldari's weapon of choice.
The Belicose and the Vigil are the two minmatar tech 1 ewar ships, specifically target painting, and I think they both need some tweaking.
The Vigil is actually a pretty cool ship, with a 5%/level speed bonus that makes it very popular for things like stealing loot before someone else can get to it. But the target painter bonus is essentially only useful as part of a fleet, since the weapons that a vigil has are frigate sized they won't benefit from the increased signature radius on the target. The other Tech 1 ewar frigates have bonuses for ECM, Sensor Damps or Tracking Disruptors - in theory these all have some use to a 'solo' player and even some limited use in PVE. So, I'd switch the Painter bonus on the vigil to a webber bonus - this fits in with the super fast nature of the vigil, giving it a bonus that has actual utility for the ship itself.
The Belicose has a bonus to guns, but I've always felt that it would be better with a missile bonus, specifically a bonus to explosion velocity of 10-15% per level, and give it an extra missile hardpoint. This would make it highly effective against frigates, especially when you factor in its 40m^3 drone bay. As it stands right now, if you're a mission runner working your way up through the ships you don't really have an obvious choice of t1 Minmatar cruiser to run those level 2 mission.The Caracal, Vexor and Arbitrator are all exceptionally good at clearing the large numbers of frigates frequently found in Level 2 missions, but right now the minmatar ships just can't bring their firepower to bear on small, fast targets. If you want to run those level 2 missions quickly then the Thrasher does a great job a taking down small targets but has no tank. The stabber is nice and fast, but even with the smallest medium guns you need tracking mods to give them a decent chance of hitting those pirate frigates, plus is can only field one drone. The Rupture does a pretty good job, but it's still slower at cleaning out these easy missions compared to the other racial anti frigate cruisers.
And one other pet peeve came back to me over the weekend when I encountered a special ship in a mission:
Yes that is an Ibis, the Caldari rookie ship with a camo paint job. WTB Navy Issue Ibis, I would sincetely hope that the fix the issue that the basic Ibis has and give it hardpoints for missile launchers. It still annoys me no end that the Caldari ship that can't use the Caldari's weapon of choice.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
If....
While I still haven't decided whether to throw my hat in for CSM 6 I have spent some time ruminating on what my hypothetical campaign message might be. There will no doubt be some candidates who will campaign based on promises to deliver feature X and defeat exploit Y so that players who like to do Z will be happy once more.
And when they get elected they'll find out that actually working in this esteemed political position has essentially no ability to do anything concrete, at best sugestions can be made, comments can be offered and maybe you'll get some super secret information that can't be shared or acted upon without violating the NDA. So people casting their vote for candidates who promise to get CCP to do anything should prepare for disappointment.
I know I'm not the only person who's run for CSM that has made a living as a software engineer, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had hands on experience with Stackless Python. Whenever I encounter a bug in the game it's annoying enough, but having a full understanding of just how easy it might be to fix something can be truly frustrating. For example the hilarious 'divide by negative number' problems that were exposed by Rooks & Kings assault on Aperture Harmonics wormhole HQ. It was easy to imagine how to hunt down and fix the problems, but instead CCP devs just removed the wormhole effects that were triggering their bugs. I did hope that this was to give the devs time to fix the underlying code, but since the WH effects have yet to return to the game this may not be the case.
It's easy to see how the whole CSM process might ultimately drive people who would be valuable assets out of the process and into bittervethood.
Regardless, while I continue to consider running, I shall spend a few blogs commenting on what I personally would do if I really could have a direct influence on the development of the game. No crazy flights of fancy like those found in the features and ideas forum, but actual concrete suggestions with math and maybe even pseudocode....
And when they get elected they'll find out that actually working in this esteemed political position has essentially no ability to do anything concrete, at best sugestions can be made, comments can be offered and maybe you'll get some super secret information that can't be shared or acted upon without violating the NDA. So people casting their vote for candidates who promise to get CCP to do anything should prepare for disappointment.
I know I'm not the only person who's run for CSM that has made a living as a software engineer, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had hands on experience with Stackless Python. Whenever I encounter a bug in the game it's annoying enough, but having a full understanding of just how easy it might be to fix something can be truly frustrating. For example the hilarious 'divide by negative number' problems that were exposed by Rooks & Kings assault on Aperture Harmonics wormhole HQ. It was easy to imagine how to hunt down and fix the problems, but instead CCP devs just removed the wormhole effects that were triggering their bugs. I did hope that this was to give the devs time to fix the underlying code, but since the WH effects have yet to return to the game this may not be the case.
It's easy to see how the whole CSM process might ultimately drive people who would be valuable assets out of the process and into bittervethood.
Regardless, while I continue to consider running, I shall spend a few blogs commenting on what I personally would do if I really could have a direct influence on the development of the game. No crazy flights of fancy like those found in the features and ideas forum, but actual concrete suggestions with math and maybe even pseudocode....
Friday, January 28, 2011
Forget Hulkageddon - Try Bumpageddon
I've suicided a few things in my day, and I've even had Skye blow some unsuspecting frigates from the sky using a gank destroyer, but really my heart isn't in this 'sport' due to the general lack of skill involved. And I'm sure there are other people out there who want to take part in the general harrassing of bots but maybe don't want to mess up their perfect security status.
So, may I suggest Bumpageddon - use very fast ships to bump Mining Barges away from the rocks they're mining, and maybe if you're lucky, away from the jetcan they're sitting on. If you work with a friend it's nice to be able to warp a hauler in on top of their ore can and just steal their stuff, but don't go killing them, that's slipping from Bumpageddon territory into Hulkageddon. Some of the bots are really dumb and if you hit them right after warping into belt they'll fly off, come to a stop and then just sit there mining nothing for 15 minutes before warping back to the station. You'll be helping 'fix' Eve's mineral oversupply without getting your hands dirty.
Bumpageddon is also great for EFT warriors who can try to find the best way to fit a 100mn MWD on a cruiser hull and balance maximum speed with enough cap generation to get it up to top speed, there's some fun theorycrafting that can get cruisers speeds well above 10km/sec - depending on how much you want to spend on faction hulls, implants and friends providing cap transfer and ganglinks. There's also something of a real thrill in seeing your speed crawl past the magic 10km/s mark (and if you like that then I'll tell you that it's theoretically possible to get a dramiel up past 20km/s).
And of course it's not just miners, you can sit on a hi-sec gate along one of the main trade routes and watch slow, lumbering freighters land 15km off the gate and slowly make their way in only for you to bump them off before they get there. With a bit of practice you can 'juggle' multiple ships until you get bored, so far my record is 4 charons which were kept from approaching the Jita gate in Perimiter. Freighter juggling is more of a delaying tactic though, you're not really affecting anyone's bottom line if you're delaying their arrival, they're on automatic pilot and it'll never get bored. If you're bumping people to annoy them it's better to hit freighters that you know have active pilots in them, get them when they're aligning for warp, or when they're undocking.
Anyway, Hulkageddon is coming, if you're a miner I suggest staying out of the main belts and mining in a mission site, and give up some of those mining laser upgrades for a damage control. The damage control will get you more buffer than anything else you can fit on a Hulk, but many miners refuse to fit them because they would have to give up either a Mining upgrade or a cargo expander. And, if someone does come along and bump you off your rock the best defence is to just go elsewhere and not complain in local, complaints will just encourage more griefing.
So, may I suggest Bumpageddon - use very fast ships to bump Mining Barges away from the rocks they're mining, and maybe if you're lucky, away from the jetcan they're sitting on. If you work with a friend it's nice to be able to warp a hauler in on top of their ore can and just steal their stuff, but don't go killing them, that's slipping from Bumpageddon territory into Hulkageddon. Some of the bots are really dumb and if you hit them right after warping into belt they'll fly off, come to a stop and then just sit there mining nothing for 15 minutes before warping back to the station. You'll be helping 'fix' Eve's mineral oversupply without getting your hands dirty.
Bumpageddon is also great for EFT warriors who can try to find the best way to fit a 100mn MWD on a cruiser hull and balance maximum speed with enough cap generation to get it up to top speed, there's some fun theorycrafting that can get cruisers speeds well above 10km/sec - depending on how much you want to spend on faction hulls, implants and friends providing cap transfer and ganglinks. There's also something of a real thrill in seeing your speed crawl past the magic 10km/s mark (and if you like that then I'll tell you that it's theoretically possible to get a dramiel up past 20km/s).
And of course it's not just miners, you can sit on a hi-sec gate along one of the main trade routes and watch slow, lumbering freighters land 15km off the gate and slowly make their way in only for you to bump them off before they get there. With a bit of practice you can 'juggle' multiple ships until you get bored, so far my record is 4 charons which were kept from approaching the Jita gate in Perimiter. Freighter juggling is more of a delaying tactic though, you're not really affecting anyone's bottom line if you're delaying their arrival, they're on automatic pilot and it'll never get bored. If you're bumping people to annoy them it's better to hit freighters that you know have active pilots in them, get them when they're aligning for warp, or when they're undocking.
Anyway, Hulkageddon is coming, if you're a miner I suggest staying out of the main belts and mining in a mission site, and give up some of those mining laser upgrades for a damage control. The damage control will get you more buffer than anything else you can fit on a Hulk, but many miners refuse to fit them because they would have to give up either a Mining upgrade or a cargo expander. And, if someone does come along and bump you off your rock the best defence is to just go elsewhere and not complain in local, complaints will just encourage more griefing.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sansha's Surprise Attack isn't so Surprising
So, yes, a bunch of constellations are now Incursion sites and so far the results have been predictable
The enemies are actually a challenge, almost too challenging, the sites are like those found in Class 4 through Class 6 wormholes. And the rewards are centered around actually accomplishing the task at hand rather than driven by rat bounties or hoovering up loot.
But I'm not convinced that in the long term the loot will be a sufficiently strong driver, most of the rewards from the loyalty point store are destined to get sold immediately to the highest bidder. I'm not sure that's really a sign of Loyalty to be honest, but lets not get hung up on semantics here.
Most hi-sec carebears will have no direct use for the Capital module blueprints, so those will go straight on the market at crazy markups. The implants might be of interest to the mission runners, but I'm thinking that the demand for cap modules will mean that these will likely only get cashed out by people who have had it with incursions and are looking for something cheap from the Concord LP store to cash out with.
Essentially, there's nothing in the Concord LP store to get hi-sec carebear corps excited about running the equivalent of hard wormhole sites.
What made people head into wormholes originally was the promise of T3 ships, so, the Concord store might be more attractive if the Concord ships were added as LP rewards. Now, obviously these wouldn't be the OMGWTFBBQ versions that get triggered because you're remote repping some stranger who decides to shoot someone else. No these would be simply equivalent to faction ships like those already being flown by the actors in the live action incursions.
Factional warfare got a bit of a boost when they intoduced new battleships which were only availble through the FW store, and this would be an excellent avenue to introduce concord hulls to the player market. Maybe CCP is just keeping this in reserve for when they iterate on incursions....
sure.
- AFK Miners losing their ships to superpowered sansha belt rats - and by AFK I mean macros.
- Pimped out mission ships dying in seconds as they try to solo incursion sites - lol!
- Logistic chains dying to concord because CCP still haven't done anything about the GCC mechanics despite being warned for months that this would be an issue. CCP Soundwave finally posted to let everyone know that CCP is looking into the issue (Facepalm!)
The enemies are actually a challenge, almost too challenging, the sites are like those found in Class 4 through Class 6 wormholes. And the rewards are centered around actually accomplishing the task at hand rather than driven by rat bounties or hoovering up loot.
But I'm not convinced that in the long term the loot will be a sufficiently strong driver, most of the rewards from the loyalty point store are destined to get sold immediately to the highest bidder. I'm not sure that's really a sign of Loyalty to be honest, but lets not get hung up on semantics here.
Most hi-sec carebears will have no direct use for the Capital module blueprints, so those will go straight on the market at crazy markups. The implants might be of interest to the mission runners, but I'm thinking that the demand for cap modules will mean that these will likely only get cashed out by people who have had it with incursions and are looking for something cheap from the Concord LP store to cash out with.
Essentially, there's nothing in the Concord LP store to get hi-sec carebear corps excited about running the equivalent of hard wormhole sites.
What made people head into wormholes originally was the promise of T3 ships, so, the Concord store might be more attractive if the Concord ships were added as LP rewards. Now, obviously these wouldn't be the OMGWTFBBQ versions that get triggered because you're remote repping some stranger who decides to shoot someone else. No these would be simply equivalent to faction ships like those already being flown by the actors in the live action incursions.
Factional warfare got a bit of a boost when they intoduced new battleships which were only availble through the FW store, and this would be an excellent avenue to introduce concord hulls to the player market. Maybe CCP is just keeping this in reserve for when they iterate on incursions....
sure.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
So Much For Excellence....
And things had been going so well.... but then, Incursion 1.1 arrived.
First there was the last minute announcement that they would have to deprecate support for older CPU's due to compatibility issues with third party libraries, CCP promised an update on this right after last weekend, but we've gone an entire week without CCP divulging any new information.
Most evidence points to the new PhysX libraries that have arrived with the new character creator, specifically the simulation of cloth and hair as seen in this tech video:
Now, I can see why CCP might have reneged on their promise of more details when they realised that it would be a little bit embarrassing to admit that they cut off support for thousands of players over this 'feature'. The cloth and hair simulation only happens during character creation, and even then the feature can be disabled so it has essentially zero impact on the gameplay. There are foolish people on the forums saying that CCP needs to discontinue support for this older hardware so that the rest of the players can experience the features that would otherwise be impossible, I wonder if they would be so sure if they knew what the feature was.
Regardless, this was merely the first and most public problem with the latest release, since Tuesday the list of hilarious gameplay bugs has been quite extensive:
Meanwhile, they've annnounced the timetable for CSM6 and Mynxee has made it clear that she's not interested in fighting CCP any longer and will not be running. That more than anything discourages me from running again.
First there was the last minute announcement that they would have to deprecate support for older CPU's due to compatibility issues with third party libraries, CCP promised an update on this right after last weekend, but we've gone an entire week without CCP divulging any new information.
Most evidence points to the new PhysX libraries that have arrived with the new character creator, specifically the simulation of cloth and hair as seen in this tech video:
Now, I can see why CCP might have reneged on their promise of more details when they realised that it would be a little bit embarrassing to admit that they cut off support for thousands of players over this 'feature'. The cloth and hair simulation only happens during character creation, and even then the feature can be disabled so it has essentially zero impact on the gameplay. There are foolish people on the forums saying that CCP needs to discontinue support for this older hardware so that the rest of the players can experience the features that would otherwise be impossible, I wonder if they would be so sure if they knew what the feature was.
Regardless, this was merely the first and most public problem with the latest release, since Tuesday the list of hilarious gameplay bugs has been quite extensive:
- Covert Cynos became usable by regular capital ships, thus rendering cynojammers useless
- Ganglinks stopped working
- The new super easy weapon grouping (which, I had been asking for) was exploitable to allow firing guns out of sequence and therefor delivering almost 4 times the regular dps
- If you could kill a target in a single volley then concord would not show up, look at the number of podkills in Jita on wednesday.
- A buggy mission was introduced that was delivering *billions* in tech 2 salvage components.
- The new fancy portrait selector, didn't actually pic the portrait, instead the last image taken was used.
Meanwhile, they've annnounced the timetable for CSM6 and Mynxee has made it clear that she's not interested in fighting CCP any longer and will not be running. That more than anything discourages me from running again.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
The Eve Equivalent Of The Kids In The Back Seat?
You know the scene, driving down the highway, kids in the back asking to get snacks or use the bathroom.... and in your distracted state you make a mistake.
Like when Orion kept showing me his latest lego creations and somehow I pointed my orca, with a billion isk in cargo, at the wrong gate and managed to jump into low-sec.
oh
shit......
Still, the gate was clear, and I warped to station and back to the gate without seeing anyone. And in a stroke of luck a pirate rat spawned on the gate, a commander spawn too, I could have easily killed it with my drones, but I figured there was a small chance of someone jumping in an knocking me off gate before my jump aggro wore off, so I left it behind for someone else.
Like when Orion kept showing me his latest lego creations and somehow I pointed my orca, with a billion isk in cargo, at the wrong gate and managed to jump into low-sec.
oh
shit......
Still, the gate was clear, and I warped to station and back to the gate without seeing anyone. And in a stroke of luck a pirate rat spawned on the gate, a commander spawn too, I could have easily killed it with my drones, but I figured there was a small chance of someone jumping in an knocking me off gate before my jump aggro wore off, so I left it behind for someone else.
Friday, January 7, 2011
New Modules in Incursion Hark Back To Old Days
The main feature that Incursion is supposed to deliver is the multiplayer Sansha incursions for which the rewards are LP from Concord. These LP can be spent on blueprints for shiny new named capital modules, meta level 2 items that will give dedicated cap.
Now, we're all very familiar with the named items dropped by rats all over new Eden, many simply end up recycled because they're so darn common, while a rare few ( Mining Upgrades, Shield Boost Amplifiers etc) are worth silly amounts of money. Some very common modules don't have named versions - Remote Hull Repair systems are the most prominent example, you can't even invent a T2 version of those (fix this!).
Until the announcement of the new capital modules I thought CCP had forgotten about the named items. With the magic of the item database I can go and look into the history of Eve to reveal that the most recently added named item were Heavy Assault Launchers and Signal Distortion Amplifiers. These were added to the database about the same time as Salvaging, so that dates it to the Revelations expansion back in November 2006.
Now, we're all very familiar with the named items dropped by rats all over new Eden, many simply end up recycled because they're so darn common, while a rare few ( Mining Upgrades, Shield Boost Amplifiers etc) are worth silly amounts of money. Some very common modules don't have named versions - Remote Hull Repair systems are the most prominent example, you can't even invent a T2 version of those (fix this!).
Until the announcement of the new capital modules I thought CCP had forgotten about the named items. With the magic of the item database I can go and look into the history of Eve to reveal that the most recently added named item were Heavy Assault Launchers and Signal Distortion Amplifiers. These were added to the database about the same time as Salvaging, so that dates it to the Revelations expansion back in November 2006.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
The Main Characters In Eve Are The Ships
Incarna is supposedly appearing in 2011, concentrating on giving the avatars more personality - what we really want however is ships with more personality.
Look at the Millennium Falcon was a spice freighter, but it's through a lot it's been shot at, repaired at unlicensed facilities, upgraded, patched up, pushed beyond its limits, surfed an explosion and even vomited out by a giant space slug.
Or the USS Enterprise which went on it's 5 year mission, got beat around more than a few times, had some crazy scotsman work miracles to hold it together and push it beyond the limits, it eventually got upgraded just in time to deal with Vger, and later got the shit kicked out of it by the Reliant. After that Starfleet decided that repairing it was not economically viable so it was scheduled to be decomissioned only to have the former crew steal it and ultimately self destruct the vessel over the Genesis planet.
Don't you want that kind of history to be etched into the hull of your favourite ships?
So maybe it's time to completely redo the life cycle of ships to give them a real life, so here's a few ideas to think over.
1) Give Assembled Ships a Serial Number and Registration Date
I sold a noctis to some desperate pilot for 360million isk, at the time he had one of the first of the production line and for a few hours he could feel pretty pimp in his new ride. Now, there's nothing that betrays this fact I could build a noctis today and claim that this was one of the first, nobody would be able to prove otherwise. Similarly, maybe there's a ship collector who's prepared to pay a premium for a ship that was involved in some famous event, but again there's no way to prove this. So when a ship is assembled give it a unique serial number, and a date of registration, these will not be changeable, unless you repackaged the ship. Killmails would display these registration numbers as part of Concord's bookkeeping process, in space you'd be able to see the serial number of any ships on grid by doing a 'Show Info' on the vessel.
This simple feature would enable killboard developers to track individual ships, it would let people collect sightings of Supercaps, provide collectors with an unforgeable ship ID and even let Chribba realise when RMT'ers are selling the same titan again and again. (allegedly)
2) Add a combat log and travel log and other random statistics to ships
Sure, you could just use an external killboard to track kills in a specific ship, but I can't imagine it would be a huge technical stretch to add the same kill logs to the ships and make them visible inside the game. Similarly we could easily track systems visited by that ship in the same way that you can view systems visited by your character. And to satisfy the spreadsheet fans out there include all sorts of other numbers like 'Time spent in space', 'lifetime shield/armour/hull damage taken'.
3) Put all those logs in a black box which can be salvaged after destruction
The ships equivalent of a frozen corpse - either a memorial or a trophy, depending which side of the killmail you were on, the logs might even reveal important data on the victim's behaviour...
4) Long Term Wear And Tear
Ships in Eve can be restored to pristine status by on board modules, nothing ever wears out, well time to change that! The long term stresses due to combat will slowly wear out the shield emitters, power relays, thrusters, warp drives and general structure, internally the game will slowly apply penalties to the ship as daily use wears it out. Now, this means that used ships suddenly are no longer quite as good as new ships, so this in turn creates an actual reason for a used ship market to exist.
Now to offset this slow decline in your chariot of the gods you can take it in for servicing, where the engineers will take your ship into dry dock, take it apart and fix all those things that nanobots just can't deal with in deep space. This takes spare parts, time, and a facililty that's capable of building ships - the amount of time would be similar to the time taken to build the ship in the first place, but the material requirements would be along the line of 10% of the ship cost - now, owning a ship in the Eve universe costs money to keep it running, and maintaining those Titans is going to cost you about half a billion isk a month, after all it would be a shame if your jump bridge or Doomsday weapon failed to activate at an inopportune moment.
After the service it comes back almost as good as new, maybe, even better... I mean maybe you decide to pimp your ride a little more. Sure, you can put those fancy faction modules on your ship, but those can be unplugged at any time, no I'm talking about using the fancy Iridium plated fusion spike initiators as opposed to the plain old tungsten ones....
5) Only The Best For My Ride
So when you're getting your ship serviced you provide a pile of spare parts, which are of course built by players from blueprints, but for each type of spare part you have choices, you can use the designers recommended replacements, or you can save a bit of money and use cheaper bits and pieces which don't work quite so well, or last quite so long. Or you can blow money on fancier parts that eke out more performance. Installing these parts normally needs a complete strip down and rebuild of the ship, but, for those who are impatient we could make an exception for the ships coming straight from the factory. Upgraded spare parts could be added when the ship is assembled for the first time, before any rigs or modules are added, after that the only way to pimp the core ship would be as part of a maintenace service.
6) Packaged Ships = Factory Fresh
Anything that changes the core attributes of a ship, either making it better or worse cannot be stored once a ship is packaged, so if you want to sell a ship on the market it needs to be in pristine condition. This might mean you have to service a ship to bring it back to factory specs, but why bother, there's a contracts system that'll let you sell it 'as is'.
Indeed, with a decent customization system, it opens up the possibility of known ship builders who specialise in putting together ships which come with a bit of an edge out of the box.
7) Exterior Design
More options to personalise ships, alliance logs should be no problem, and you can put those notches on your nose every time you get a kill in that ship. It's not too much of a graphical stretch to add a ships name on the exterior, or the registration number if you've stuck with the default "CaldariCitizen376298's Ibis". And then there's the space dirt that makes your nice shiny Apocalypse look a little less shiny over time, or in the case of Minmatar ships, the rust decals start to peel off and have to be reapplied when your ship is serviced.
Sadly, for simple CPU/GPU load reasons other pilots may choose to disable these features and choose not to see your vessel in all its glory.
I'm sure there's more to this, but I come back to the core idea - ships need more personality and after Incarna is upon us it would be remiss if the ships of the Eve universe were nothing more than cookie cutter copies of each other.
Look at the Millennium Falcon was a spice freighter, but it's through a lot it's been shot at, repaired at unlicensed facilities, upgraded, patched up, pushed beyond its limits, surfed an explosion and even vomited out by a giant space slug.
Or the USS Enterprise which went on it's 5 year mission, got beat around more than a few times, had some crazy scotsman work miracles to hold it together and push it beyond the limits, it eventually got upgraded just in time to deal with Vger, and later got the shit kicked out of it by the Reliant. After that Starfleet decided that repairing it was not economically viable so it was scheduled to be decomissioned only to have the former crew steal it and ultimately self destruct the vessel over the Genesis planet.
Don't you want that kind of history to be etched into the hull of your favourite ships?
So maybe it's time to completely redo the life cycle of ships to give them a real life, so here's a few ideas to think over.
1) Give Assembled Ships a Serial Number and Registration Date
I sold a noctis to some desperate pilot for 360million isk, at the time he had one of the first of the production line and for a few hours he could feel pretty pimp in his new ride. Now, there's nothing that betrays this fact I could build a noctis today and claim that this was one of the first, nobody would be able to prove otherwise. Similarly, maybe there's a ship collector who's prepared to pay a premium for a ship that was involved in some famous event, but again there's no way to prove this. So when a ship is assembled give it a unique serial number, and a date of registration, these will not be changeable, unless you repackaged the ship. Killmails would display these registration numbers as part of Concord's bookkeeping process, in space you'd be able to see the serial number of any ships on grid by doing a 'Show Info' on the vessel.
This simple feature would enable killboard developers to track individual ships, it would let people collect sightings of Supercaps, provide collectors with an unforgeable ship ID and even let Chribba realise when RMT'ers are selling the same titan again and again. (allegedly)
2) Add a combat log and travel log and other random statistics to ships
Sure, you could just use an external killboard to track kills in a specific ship, but I can't imagine it would be a huge technical stretch to add the same kill logs to the ships and make them visible inside the game. Similarly we could easily track systems visited by that ship in the same way that you can view systems visited by your character. And to satisfy the spreadsheet fans out there include all sorts of other numbers like 'Time spent in space', 'lifetime shield/armour/hull damage taken'.
3) Put all those logs in a black box which can be salvaged after destruction
The ships equivalent of a frozen corpse - either a memorial or a trophy, depending which side of the killmail you were on, the logs might even reveal important data on the victim's behaviour...
4) Long Term Wear And Tear
Ships in Eve can be restored to pristine status by on board modules, nothing ever wears out, well time to change that! The long term stresses due to combat will slowly wear out the shield emitters, power relays, thrusters, warp drives and general structure, internally the game will slowly apply penalties to the ship as daily use wears it out. Now, this means that used ships suddenly are no longer quite as good as new ships, so this in turn creates an actual reason for a used ship market to exist.
Now to offset this slow decline in your chariot of the gods you can take it in for servicing, where the engineers will take your ship into dry dock, take it apart and fix all those things that nanobots just can't deal with in deep space. This takes spare parts, time, and a facililty that's capable of building ships - the amount of time would be similar to the time taken to build the ship in the first place, but the material requirements would be along the line of 10% of the ship cost - now, owning a ship in the Eve universe costs money to keep it running, and maintaining those Titans is going to cost you about half a billion isk a month, after all it would be a shame if your jump bridge or Doomsday weapon failed to activate at an inopportune moment.
After the service it comes back almost as good as new, maybe, even better... I mean maybe you decide to pimp your ride a little more. Sure, you can put those fancy faction modules on your ship, but those can be unplugged at any time, no I'm talking about using the fancy Iridium plated fusion spike initiators as opposed to the plain old tungsten ones....
5) Only The Best For My Ride
So when you're getting your ship serviced you provide a pile of spare parts, which are of course built by players from blueprints, but for each type of spare part you have choices, you can use the designers recommended replacements, or you can save a bit of money and use cheaper bits and pieces which don't work quite so well, or last quite so long. Or you can blow money on fancier parts that eke out more performance. Installing these parts normally needs a complete strip down and rebuild of the ship, but, for those who are impatient we could make an exception for the ships coming straight from the factory. Upgraded spare parts could be added when the ship is assembled for the first time, before any rigs or modules are added, after that the only way to pimp the core ship would be as part of a maintenace service.
6) Packaged Ships = Factory Fresh
Anything that changes the core attributes of a ship, either making it better or worse cannot be stored once a ship is packaged, so if you want to sell a ship on the market it needs to be in pristine condition. This might mean you have to service a ship to bring it back to factory specs, but why bother, there's a contracts system that'll let you sell it 'as is'.
Indeed, with a decent customization system, it opens up the possibility of known ship builders who specialise in putting together ships which come with a bit of an edge out of the box.
7) Exterior Design
More options to personalise ships, alliance logs should be no problem, and you can put those notches on your nose every time you get a kill in that ship. It's not too much of a graphical stretch to add a ships name on the exterior, or the registration number if you've stuck with the default "CaldariCitizen376298's Ibis". And then there's the space dirt that makes your nice shiny Apocalypse look a little less shiny over time, or in the case of Minmatar ships, the rust decals start to peel off and have to be reapplied when your ship is serviced.
Sadly, for simple CPU/GPU load reasons other pilots may choose to disable these features and choose not to see your vessel in all its glory.
I'm sure there's more to this, but I come back to the core idea - ships need more personality and after Incarna is upon us it would be remiss if the ships of the Eve universe were nothing more than cookie cutter copies of each other.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Skye's Turning 6 Today
So, a perfect excuse to link some of her Eve related exploits.
So, we played around for a bit a couple of weeks ago - ratting in hi-sec and running some missions nothing you haven't seen before. Then she got in a rebellious mood and decided she didn't want to follow the autopilot markets, instead she picked a gate and even though I warder her that it would take her into low sec she wanted to go....
You have my permission to share this with any hi-sec carebears who think they can't survive outside of Concord's domain of guaranteed vengeance.
And for all the critics that seem to think the Skye is losing her childhood because she occasionally gets to fly a spaceship, here's Skye and Orion doing some colouring.
Best bit is at the 4 minute mark where the kids discuss the merits of the Rifter.
So, we played around for a bit a couple of weeks ago - ratting in hi-sec and running some missions nothing you haven't seen before. Then she got in a rebellious mood and decided she didn't want to follow the autopilot markets, instead she picked a gate and even though I warder her that it would take her into low sec she wanted to go....
You have my permission to share this with any hi-sec carebears who think they can't survive outside of Concord's domain of guaranteed vengeance.
And for all the critics that seem to think the Skye is losing her childhood because she occasionally gets to fly a spaceship, here's Skye and Orion doing some colouring.
Best bit is at the 4 minute mark where the kids discuss the merits of the Rifter.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
No More Planetary Vehicles From GM (Gallente Motors)
The market for Planetary Vehicles in New Eden showed massive movement this week as a CCP Big Dumb Object revealed that the biggest single source of planetary vehicles in New Eden had stopped working since the start of the month.
No doubt all the production line workers are out joyriding in their shiny new noctii.
You see, Planetary Vehicles was one of the planet products that was most difficult to make, requiring Supertensile Plastics, Miniature Electronics and Mechanical Parts - made more expensive by the fact that Mechanical parts are in demand as a POS fuel and for making robotics. However there was never any need to do this because like most commodities that existed prior to the introduction of PI there were stockpiles to be eaten through first, but unlike other commodities the stockpiles showed no sign of depletion over the last 6 months. While many of the commodities were still dropped in small amounts by various mission structures there was one specific mission which would drop enough vehicles for a thousand joyriders, so with such an abundant supply, relatively low usage and complex production chain only a moron would spend time making them.
Now, that mission no longer drops these, and CCP has confirmed this is intentional the speculators have been out in force buying them up all over the cluster. The prices have gone from a few thousand to about thirty thousand isk, but this is still less than half the price you would expect based upon the cost of the input materials so while it's a big jump in cost for the planet industrialists it's still a bargain compared to producing them yourself.
However, I did some checking and managed to find a few missions that I knew dropped PI loot, and I can confirm that this loot nerf isn't just removing one giant drop from one mission, but it's a more pervasive change that may have removed all PI drops from missions. So while everyone has been panic buying Planetary Vehicles there has also been a lesser rush for Guidance Systems.
I think this may be backwards to be honest, Guidance systems are used in TII drone production in addition to it's place in PI production, so the net demand may be higer in the long run.
Not that it matters too much to me, I have large, cheap stocks of both ready to use/sell when the time comes.
No doubt all the production line workers are out joyriding in their shiny new noctii.
You see, Planetary Vehicles was one of the planet products that was most difficult to make, requiring Supertensile Plastics, Miniature Electronics and Mechanical Parts - made more expensive by the fact that Mechanical parts are in demand as a POS fuel and for making robotics. However there was never any need to do this because like most commodities that existed prior to the introduction of PI there were stockpiles to be eaten through first, but unlike other commodities the stockpiles showed no sign of depletion over the last 6 months. While many of the commodities were still dropped in small amounts by various mission structures there was one specific mission which would drop enough vehicles for a thousand joyriders, so with such an abundant supply, relatively low usage and complex production chain only a moron would spend time making them.
Now, that mission no longer drops these, and CCP has confirmed this is intentional the speculators have been out in force buying them up all over the cluster. The prices have gone from a few thousand to about thirty thousand isk, but this is still less than half the price you would expect based upon the cost of the input materials so while it's a big jump in cost for the planet industrialists it's still a bargain compared to producing them yourself.
However, I did some checking and managed to find a few missions that I knew dropped PI loot, and I can confirm that this loot nerf isn't just removing one giant drop from one mission, but it's a more pervasive change that may have removed all PI drops from missions. So while everyone has been panic buying Planetary Vehicles there has also been a lesser rush for Guidance Systems.
I think this may be backwards to be honest, Guidance systems are used in TII drone production in addition to it's place in PI production, so the net demand may be higer in the long run.
Not that it matters too much to me, I have large, cheap stocks of both ready to use/sell when the time comes.
Monday, December 6, 2010
The Noctis Economy
While the Noctis May be designed to operate in a vacuum the rush for its construction has not taken place in an economic vacuum. Many people looked at the new ship and saw profits in moving the BPO's to hi-sec and selling at a profit, industrialists looked at the market and knew they could make profit selling these ships.
But for many, the speculation didn't go further, and they missed out on many more ways to make money. The first thing is that those new ships needed fitting so there was an increased demand for Tractor Beams and Salvagers, but many newly minted Noctis pilots considered this an upgrade over their existing destroyer based salvage boat and simply moved the modules over. What they couldn't move over was the Salvage Rigs, and I made a handsome profit selling those rigs, and, on the back end, I placed buy orders for the destroyers at below mineral cost.
Mineral cost quickly became a big issue for the manufacturers, all the minerals showed a bump in prices and today Nocxium is now selling at 40% more than it was a week ago. It should have been obvious to anyone who looked at the BPO before its release that nocxium would be in demand, since this ship contains a much higher proportion of this mineral compared to other ships. Smart speculators would have acquired a stockpile a couple of weeks ago and sold it for a handsome profit once the demand started picking up.
I'd like to say I anticipated the mineral market but even my stockpiles got eaten up quickly after I decided to manufacture from multiple prints in parallel. Instead, I ran the numbers and started buying up battleships and reprocessing them for minerals, for nocxium I was able to buy up large numbers of mining crystals, shield boosters and other nocxium rich items to make up the shortfall and keep my production lines running and profitable. So, of course, the prices of ships are now rising to keep in line with the mineral basket, and somewhat amusingly, the cost of running a mining fleet has risen slightly as there are no more cheap crystals available.
Not that the average miner will notice, after all they think the minerals they mine are free.
But for many, the speculation didn't go further, and they missed out on many more ways to make money. The first thing is that those new ships needed fitting so there was an increased demand for Tractor Beams and Salvagers, but many newly minted Noctis pilots considered this an upgrade over their existing destroyer based salvage boat and simply moved the modules over. What they couldn't move over was the Salvage Rigs, and I made a handsome profit selling those rigs, and, on the back end, I placed buy orders for the destroyers at below mineral cost.
Mineral cost quickly became a big issue for the manufacturers, all the minerals showed a bump in prices and today Nocxium is now selling at 40% more than it was a week ago. It should have been obvious to anyone who looked at the BPO before its release that nocxium would be in demand, since this ship contains a much higher proportion of this mineral compared to other ships. Smart speculators would have acquired a stockpile a couple of weeks ago and sold it for a handsome profit once the demand started picking up.
I'd like to say I anticipated the mineral market but even my stockpiles got eaten up quickly after I decided to manufacture from multiple prints in parallel. Instead, I ran the numbers and started buying up battleships and reprocessing them for minerals, for nocxium I was able to buy up large numbers of mining crystals, shield boosters and other nocxium rich items to make up the shortfall and keep my production lines running and profitable. So, of course, the prices of ships are now rising to keep in line with the mineral basket, and somewhat amusingly, the cost of running a mining fleet has risen slightly as there are no more cheap crystals available.
Not that the average miner will notice, after all they think the minerals they mine are free.
Friday, December 3, 2010
3 Incursion Releases, 3 Names.
Playing through the new release, I'm deeply happy with the work that has been done by CCP and the contributions of the player base. (I'm also quite happy to have made billions, but that's another story). However with the actual Incursions of the name still a month a way I feel that the name need reconsidering to reflect this - here's my proposal for release names:
Incursion 1.0: "Excellence" - because this release represents a tangible manifestation of CCP's much touted 'Commitement To Excellence'. I committed to making obscene profits from the noctis rush and the related market movements.
Incursion 1.1: "Emancipation" - No More learning skills! Noobs are now free from the needs to waste their early days training learning skills, the vets no longer feel nagging guilt about not raising their advanced skills to 5. Free SP to spend on training for new toys, industrialists will make a killing selling new toys. Pirates will no doubt catch some extra tears as new toys get turned into wrecks.
Incursion 1.2: "Invasion" - Sansha Claus finally arrives and hopefully starts killing macrominers. Invasion is a way better name than Incursion, just because a dev accidently leaked the name doesn't mean that the marketdroids need to change the name.
Incursion 1.0: "Excellence" - because this release represents a tangible manifestation of CCP's much touted 'Commitement To Excellence'. I committed to making obscene profits from the noctis rush and the related market movements.
Incursion 1.1: "Emancipation" - No More learning skills! Noobs are now free from the needs to waste their early days training learning skills, the vets no longer feel nagging guilt about not raising their advanced skills to 5. Free SP to spend on training for new toys, industrialists will make a killing selling new toys. Pirates will no doubt catch some extra tears as new toys get turned into wrecks.
Incursion 1.2: "Invasion" - Sansha Claus finally arrives and hopefully starts killing macrominers. Invasion is a way better name than Incursion, just because a dev accidently leaked the name doesn't mean that the marketdroids need to change the name.
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