Adding Game Reviews to the EVE Industrialist

I am a gamer, and as such, I play much more than just EVE Online.  I do a ton of pocket gaming as well as a swath of PC games.  I have been thinking of adding in a game review blog, but I really don't want to start another one.  While my focus remains on EVE Online-related topics, I will try out a side topic on a separate page.  Hopefully you will all check it out and give me your feedback.  My thought is that we are mainly gamers.  The EVE community is probably a large majority of mature (well, by age) individuals and working-world folks who look for a little relaxation in their day.  I am a huge sci-fi nut so maybe this section will strike a chord with all of my readers and it will be successful and maybe expose you all to some games you may not know about but find they are in your niche.

April Station Trading Update

I have supplemented my industry with a little station trading.  While it isn't necessarily an industrial task, many industrialists do some trading.  If they are selling their wares, they have to have some trading skills, so this is kind of a "filler" while waiting for production runs to finish.  It isn't combat, so you can do it while under a war dec.  If you are hauling/trading, that will not be the case.  BEWARE!!!

Below is my trading schedule for April 1st to today.  This is only my top 6 finished/completed trades.  There are many that are still active.  it might not be too impressive on paper, but this is per unit statistics, not total profit.  

Here is a little chart on a few items.  I am only showing the category and not the actual item.  I need to protect my business but I want to be as forthcoming as possible.

Item Groups shown

• t1 Frigates
• Propulsion Upgrades (low and mid-slot items)
• Drone Upgrades (low, mid and high-slot items)
• Propulsion EWAR (bubbles, disruptors, webs, scrams, etc)

(Click to Expand)

If you are keeping track, this is some insight into what sells.  This is per unit profit, I make it up on volume.  You can see here that it can be pretty profitable.  Most of these trades were bought and sold in about 2-3 days or less.  Have fun experimenting and give me a hollar and share your story and as always, fly safe-ish.

By The People

I have been working on the EVE Industrialist blog for a few months and before that, I had a PDF newsletter called, The Industrialist.  I enjoy doing these blogs, but since variety is the spice of life, I like to include others in my endeavors.  Having collaborative writing helps to keep from the content getting stale.  Successful collaborations include blogs like The Mittani (and of course others).  

With that all being said, I would like to invite those who would enjoy blogging (even once in a while) to contact me.  I will keep the blog going and you can write about what you want when you want to.  It doesn't need to be industry related.  I would be interested in anything you have to blog about, but I am lacking in wornhole experience and null sec industry knowledge.  

Warcalibre, author of the "Shadow of the Serpent Kingdom" web-story series is also a member of Manu Fortius.  He did some work on the original Industrialist newsletter.  You don't have to be in my corp, just be a writer.  I will only entertain serious submissions.  So if you are interested, please send me a sample of your ORIGINAL work.  If I like what you do, I will make you a collaborator on the EVE Industrialist project.  

As always, fly safe-ish

CCP Dev Blog: Building Better Worlds

So... CCP just announced planned changes to the industrial side of EVE Online in their latest dev blog:  CCP Dev Blog: Building Better Worlds.  I for one think it is high time for some changes.  Some of the things that come up are lab slots and usage costs, POS setting requirements and changes in the "extra minerals" mechanic.  Some of these I like.  I will admit, I am a bit weary on a few of them.  

CCP's big plan is (and I am paraphrasing) to make the industrial profession more robust, meaningful and to provide more reward for more risk.  They want to increase the value received from playing the game as an industrialist.  Something I applaud.  The indy side of EVE is uber important, but it is overshadowed by lack-luster game play and predictable results.  These changes, I feel, will make the profession more appealing to the casual player.  Don't get me wrong, industry is a huge part of EVE.  I think it will be better once these changes take place.  

One of the very cool things CCP is doing is reorganizing the market tabs for industrial items.  Instead of a hodge-podge assortment of items in the marketplace, they will try to make sense out of them.  Faction materials, gas cloud materials, raw minerals, etc.  The will also break up the components and research items better. Reactions have been moved out of the "manufacturing & research" category and placed in its own.  It should make traversing the market tabs a hell of a lot easier.  Yay!

Another very cool change is to remove the damage from RAM's and Research Databases.  I'm not going to go into this deeply, but if you are a T2 manufacturer, you will now use more RAM's and R.Db's.  So instead  of using 10 RAM's and losing 2, you will now use more RAMs and lose all of them.  Same thing happens with R.Db's.  They are factoring it by 100. So 100 x % = ram requirement. 

The example of an Adaptive Invulnerability Field II:

• requires 1 RAM - Shield Tech with a damage of 60% per run
• after the change, it will require 60 RAM - Shield Tech

This makes the mechanics of manufacturing easier because what you need is exactly what you need.  Hopefully the price of RAM's goes down to counter the increased requirement, but I expect them to soar in price until the supply catches up.  Either way, it makes job costing a lot easier for you pencil and spreadsheet folks.  Speaking of removing mechanics, the "extra material" mechanic will disappear.  This is due to the refining mechanic change announced in a previous blog.

Another highly awaited change is the lab slot cluster-f.  They are removing the slots and charging more for usage.  So, they are going to have a cost-scaling feature at NPC stations now instead of the bottleneck at the station, they are now going to charge way more depending on the popularity of the station's lab/manufacturing services.  Without careful consideration, your profit margins could diminish quite rapidly.  They threw out 0-14% numbers.  Who knows what the actual numbers will be, but better find a quiet station and keep it on the down-low.   Stations without labs will not suddenly gain them.  So as always, location. Location. Location.

This next change is something that I don't necessarily agree with.  POS's will no longer require a faction standing requirement.  Anyone can hang a POS anywhere in high sec.  This doesn't include places like start systems, Jita, etc.  They will still not allow POS anchoring. To me, this makes POS access far too convenient and effortless.  It could also lead to more war decs as they don't appear to be adding more planetary systems with moons.  I might be flamed for it, but I think they should focus more on POS/Corp management mechanics than add a bunch of rookie-run POS's and wasting valuable moon space.  I don't know if that is better than corps setting dummy POS's on moons and leaving them anchored but offlined.  

There are some UI changes that look pretty decent.  I will review and blog about them as I see them.  Stay tuned for more and as always, fly safe-ish.   

EVE Boston Meet up and PAX East

This is the first year I have ever gone to PAX..  I was lucky enough to score a ticket.  A friend of mine put in for a contest that was being run by Grey Box (who is making the RTS game, Grey Goo).  He had already bought his 3-day pass, so he asked if I wanted to go.  I was only able to attend one day, but it was awesome.  I consider myself a techie-geek, but I had no idea I was on the mild side.  It was a lot of fun though.  Its unfortunate that CCP didn't have a booth and pulled out of Occulus Rift at the last minute.  There was still a bunch of other cool stuff to fill the gap.   On Saturday, I met up with a Sir Happy Pants and a bunch of other EVE players at JJ Foley's Cafe in Boston.  I met a bunch of cool people and had a lot of fun while drinking Guinness and trying to figure out the subway while drunk.  I was about an hour from home and I had to catch the 11:10 train out of South Station.  My time at AJ's was too short and I was disappointed to find out I missed some drunken singing.  Alas, there is always next time.  If you ever get a change to go to a PAX event or meet up with a bunch of EVE players, do it.  You wont regret it.  And as always, fly safe-ish.