Dev Blog: Introducing What's in EVE's Big Industry Release

CCP released a Dev Blog detailing the upcoming industry changes in the Crius release.

You can find the Dev Blog here: Introducing What's in EVE's Big Industry Release

I'm just going to bullet point the highlights.  Reading the full Dev Blogs, you can glean the scope of all the major changes.

* Crius is set to be released on July 22nd, 2014

* Complete revamp of UI and tools

* Science and Manufacturing slots will be removed

* New job costings factored by solar system activity & workforce/specialist allocations

* Change to blueprint research, ME and PE levels

* Bonuses for POS manufacturing/research

* You can now fit modules on ships you don't have skills for (they cannot be onlined) so          corp FC can fit doctrine ships for other players

* More to come as the release date draws near.

A New Pilots Guide to Mining Ops

Greetings all.  It's been a small while since I have posted.  RL is really busy, so I haven't really had the time to gather some thoughts and throw them up on the blog.

A few of our members (Heinrich Skalde with assistance from Veleck ) have produced a well-written and highly informative guide to Mining Operations.

You can find it on the EVE Industrialist Blog pages.  It is far to long to post in, so I have dedicated an entire page to it.  You can check it out here: A New Pilots Guide to Mining Ops.

Please check it out and as always, fly safe-ish.

Alternative Method for Large-Scale Mining Ops

Recently, our corp has run some mining ops and we had an overwhelming turnout.  Now, when I say overwhelming, I mean that we had way more than expected, especially for a smaller corp.  I was not able to attend, but our mining director, Zel, handled it with ease.  I believe we had around or over 25 members participate.  That is excellent for any high sec mining op.  Due to the size of the asteroid belts and the high level or participation, the flaws start to show.  In order to fully and efficiently utilize the time mining, it is apparent that we need to do things a little differently.  That is where this post comes in.

If you read my previous post, Mining Op Basic Management, I put out some ideas and wrote about my experiences with mining ops.  In this post, I will throw out a few more ideas in hopes that it may help you run a more efficient mining op for your own corp.

Let's start with participation and the pitfalls that it brings.  If you a large mining op and (especially) running it in high sec, the asteroids are not as big so they are quickly popped.  What generally happens is that often, multiple people are mining the same asteroid.  This wastes a lot of time because it can happen very often.  If jet can mining, people don't want to move too far from their can and this can cause some issues with fleet members being to close to each other when the asteroids get close to popping.  The time wasted on cycles where the asteroid was popped prior to your cycle ending can add up quickly,  With small to medium ops with Orca and hauler support, I would scout out asteroid belts and bookmark asteroids in the belt.  I would usually go from left to right and tag 1 on each end and one or two in the middle, trying to keep at least 5-10km between bookmarks.  I would then jump in my ship and have specific people in the fleet warp to the corp bookmarks I had placed.  This would keep everyone relatively separate and reduce the chance of tag teaming the same asteroid.  You can also have specific people mine certain asteroids.  That could lead to people moving around a lot more to reach the asteroids they were tasked with mining.  Moving around in a mining barge or exhumer is not exactly the way to go.  Having an Orca tractor full cans to take or to hand over to a nearby freighter makes whole-belt mining tolerable.  

If the op is larger, splitting belts is the way to go.  This does open up a fleet to defensive weakness.  If you don't have combat air patrol (CAP), it is a bit easier for gankers/can flippers to mess with you.  If you only have one freigter or one Orca, logistics will suck.  The best way to do this is to have one Orca in each belt and one freighter jumping back and forth.  It is pretty demanding (and boring) for the freighter pilot so remember to pay him/her well.  Having an Orca in each belt being mined is pretty critical.  They can tractor the ore to their holds and then dump it to the freighter when he warps back into the belt.  It is not a good idea to keep cans scattered across the belt, so having multiple Orcas is the key to a successful mining op.  

I cover the high sec ops because it is the most likely place for large mining ops with barges and exhumers to happen.  Low / null / wh locations are way more of a challenge.  If you are lucky enough to be in an alliance that holds a large area of space, secure from outsiders, it can be a whole different animal.  

In the future, I (or a collaborator) will expand on mining operations in more detail.  This will give you another method of running a large mining op.  Multiple belts is a must when you have a lot of hungry miners on your hands.

Have fun and as always, fly safe-ish

Dev Blog: Starbase Changes for Crius

It's been a while since I was able to find the time to post.  Since this topic is all about the Industrialist, I figured its a good time write up a post.

CCP has released the newest information on POS changes for Crius.  You can find CCP Ytterbium's post here: Starbase Changes for Crius.  Back when Crius was actually Kronos (or at least the industrial changes from Kronos), CCP announced some major changes to the refining system.  Transforming minerals into modules to transport across space (taking up much less volume than the minerals themselves) and then refining it for zero loss will no longer be viable.  

Here are some of the changes announced for POS owners/users

Regarding the "Reprocessing Arrays"

The Reprocessing Array can be placed anywhere, where as the Intensive Reprocessing Array needs to be in 0.4 space or less.  Looking at the other specs, everything looks the same, so not sure if the Intensive Array is redundant.  According to CCP Ytterbium, reprocessing is "instant".  It no longer takes time to reprocess (like it did in the past).  Player skills WILL be taken into account when using the arrays.  Ore, Ice and Gas Cloud items can be mixed in the reprocessing array.  Modules cannot be moved into reprocessing arrays.

Regarding the "Compression Arrays"

Compression Arrays can be placed anywhere.  I believe when first announced, they were going to be restricted to low sec and lower.  That is not the case.  Compression only requires 100 units of ore which equals 1 unit of compressed ore.  Compression blueprints are no longer required and will be removed.

The ratios of volume have been tweek'd so that the end ratio didn't change.  In the example given, 100 units of Veldspar, compressed will go from 10m3 to 0.2m3.  Due to the reprocessing changes, using a compression array will make moving massive amounts of minerals easier.  This makes "module compression" obsolete.  The compression will also be instantaneous.  No need to wait for the array to process.  

Regarding Lab Usage

Manufacturing and Science slots will disappear.  There was some concern in the past that only the NPC stations were undergoing this change.  According to the blog post, this change does encompass player owned stations.  One change that can impact the industrial player immensely is that you can no longer remote install jobs into a POS from an NPC station.  This means that you need to have the blueprint in the lab IN THE POS.  You CAN remotely "start" the job if the blueprint is already in the POS.

Regarding Assembly Arrays

There won't be any manufacturing line slots, so you can have as many jobs going as can fit (volume-wise) in the structure.  One of the cool things is that multiple like-modules will have an effect on some factors.  There will be a stacking bonus for POS modules.  Here are a few examples:

• Medium Ship, Advanced Medium Ship and Subsystem Assembly (will be the group) and each module after the first one will give you a 2% boost to cost reduction, but to a max of 26%.
• Laboratory (group) will have a 1.5% cost reduction upto a max of 22.5%

Regarding POS Anchoring

Newly formed corps will need to wait 7 days before being able to install a POS at a moon.   As far as I know, the requirement for security / faction standing will no longer be relevant.  

There are some other details in the Dev Blog, so if you want to view them, check it out here: Starbase Changes for Crius.

I can't wait.  

Mining Op Basic Management

This will be a quick one and it is based on my experience.

Running a mining op, at any scale, requires the mining foreman to multi-task.  Anything that the individual miner can do to ease the burden on the foreman is much appreciated.  These simple steps can help make the mining op much smoother.  It also has a side effect of increased efficiency, allowing for quicker payouts.  

Here are the bullet points for the individual miner.

• When Jet-Can mining, always name your can and put the deployment time on it.  Example: Vexed 01:00.  This means that it is my can and that I jettisoned it at 0:00.  Cans last for around 2hrs before they implode into oblivion.  If that happens, all the contents of the can are lost.  It is the foreman's job to grab that can before it pops.  
• When your can is full, change the name on the can to 'your name' and add FULL.  Example: Vexed 0:00 [FULL].  Keep the original time.  You might want to put in the fleet chat that such and such can full and named.  The foreman will grab the can.  
• You might not be able to fill the can before the time runs out.  You then must communicate this to the foreman and change the name of the can appropriately.  Example: Vexed 0:00 [READY].  Post in the fleet chat as well.  Also, this can be the case in the event that you run out of asteroids within your range and have to move farther than 2.5k from your jet-can.  

These are some foreman tips.  They may or may not work for you.

• Set up your overview so that you can see the entire can name (including can status).  Pay close attention to the older cans and make sure that you grab them around 1-1/2 hours old.  I still think there is a random timer and it doesn't explode at exactly 120 minutes.  That may not be the case, but I have never left a can out longer than around 1 hour.  
• Make sure your fleet window is either active or separated from your regular chats.  That way you can see important fleet messages and not have to click back and forth.
• When logging incoming cans, you might want a spreadsheet or a notebook and log what each can contains and who gave it to you.  If you are paying out on a fixed cut, percentage yield or anything similar, make sure to keep an accurate tally of who is flying what as well as what they are bringing in.  Even if you don't use all the data, it can settle an argument if things don't go well for a particular miner.  

This is basically it.  This will work in 99% of the situations.  Have fun and fly safe-ish

Wholesale Trading EVE Email List [Update]

Not a whole lot going on right now, but I have been using the 'wholesale trading' mailing list and have had outstanding results.  My listed items have sold in 24 hours or less.  If you want to move items, use this list.

The forum post is here: "wholesale trading mailing list forum post'

I just wanted to update you and tell you it works!

Fly safe-ish.

May 2014 Revenue Report for Manu Fortius Industrial Division

This might be the last detailed report I will do for the public, but this might help out some CEO's and directors with ideas for their very own corporation.  You can always contact me in EVE if you have questions.

Vexed Nova

Here is the page.
May 2014 Report