Video: Dead Men Tell No Tales solo in Stealth Bomber

I've been recording my attempts at Gallente Faction Warfare missions of various levels and wanted to share this one specifically. If you're Gallente FW pilot and the lure of those 50,000 loyalty points rewards (in tier 3, which we usually are) has been countered by the crushing need to train up to a Proteus, Tengu or blingy Hecate, look no further.

You can run Dead Men Tell No Tales solo in a stealth bomber costing (see fit below) about 30M ISK. Simply orbit the Caldari Tactical Command Post at 50-55km, activate your afterburner and open fire. Make sure you see Large Collideable Objects in your overview, if you don't see it when you land.

When you've done a significant amount of damage to the target, reinforcements will arrive. You may want to overheat your torpedoes and afterburner at this point, to lessen the incoming damage. Ideally you would like to kill the target in the first attempt!  If you have to leave, repair and come back, another player may be waiting for you at the site, since the beacon identifying the mission is visible to everyone when you warp to it.

Dead Men is one of ten missions on offer from you friendly Level 4 FW mission agents, so you may need to ask several agents (twice, don't forget you can ask twice!) before it gets assigned.

You can also do Cutting the Net in a Tristan, but you need to carry an object back to the agent for that one to complete successfully. Dead Men can be turned in at any station after you have blown up the tower.

Now go forth and get rich! At the time of writing our LP are worth about 1100 ISK each if you buy certain datacores, Comets, Navy Maulus, or 1200 isk each for Fed Navy drones; Hammerhead, Ogre and Hobgoblin. Prices fluctuate, so check before buying!

[Nemesis, Dead Men]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II

Sensor Booster II
1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Phased Scoped Target Painter
Missile Guidance Computer I

Prototype 'Arbalest' Torpedo Launcher
[Empty High slot]
Prototype 'Arbalest' Torpedo Launcher
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Prototype 'Arbalest' Torpedo Launcher

Small Bay Loading Accelerator I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I



Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo x406
Nanite Repair Paste x30

More low level Faction Warfare missions

Following on from my last post about doing lower level faction warfare missions I decided to see what it was like to get a lot of them at once - pretty good, as it turns out! My plan was to fly my usual route of agents and ask all the agents for missions. I'd accept any level 1, 2 or 3 mission in those in systems close to home: Nagamanen, Hasmijaala, Oto, Onatoh, Sujarento etc. I also moved an Algos and Vexor to a station in the area for quicker deployment and running of these missions.

You might like to open this google docs spreadsheet for reference (there are two tabs - one for level 4, one for all others): I'll be filling it out as I go through all this testing. And remember, you can ask each agent TWICE for a mission. You can decline the first offer, request again, and Delay the second if you don't like it. Look in the lower left of the agent conversation window to see if you can safely decline the mission: I wish CCP would make this more prominent! If you see "4 hours" mentioned, you can decline. If it says something else (like 2 hours 46 minutes) that means you decline his offer 1 hour and 14 minutes ago and you'll have to wait to decline another one. But you can ALWAYS Delay safely until the timer has run out.

For the level 4 agents in station I would accept missions further afield, but only a couple of missions would be acceptable. After just 4 or 5 agents I had accepted about ten missions! The low level missions were in general very easy: arrive in Algos (even a Tristan for level 1 missions), drop drones, target "the commander", kill him and warp out. But I'll be avoiding Supply Interdiction - the target industrial ships take a while to kill and the rats put up a lot of resistance.

I had another go at The Reprisal with a stealth bomber, without success. Orbiting at 45km my Nemesis was applying about 420 dps to the Sector Commander, which he was able to tank. I tanked the incoming damage at around 50% shield...stalemate. With a second stealth bomber I know we could knock him off. The most successful part of this test was only getting jammed once in ten minutes of orbiting/shooting. Oh, and getting through a forty-man gate camp on the way there!

To summarize: do a tour of all the FW agents in your area and get missions from all four agents. If you can handle level 4 missions, take Dead Men (stealth bomber) and Cutting the Net (Tristan - easy!). For level 1-3, take them all except Supply Interdiction and Precursor To Rescue, which involves taking an item back to the agent (like Cutting the Net does).

Level 1 missions pay about 1,000 LP, Level 2 about 3,500 and Level 3 around 14,000. If you're new to faction warfare or space-poor, these missions are a quick and easy way to get some LP and at about 1200 ISK per LP, it will get your wallet balance to decent levels.

Three Workhorse Ships: Ratting Atron, Probing Imicus, PI Epithal

This is a quick post to write about three ships that I use a lot: a belt-ratting Atron, a probing Imicus and m'lovely Epithal which carries the juicy PI products around

[Atron, Fly, You Fools!]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Medium Shield Extender II
5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier

Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II

Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I



Void S x1163
Null S x1263

This shield tanked Atron is a tight fit but a joy to blap rats with. It has about 4k EHP and delivers about 200 dps. It will kill anything up to and including Serpentis clone soldiers (not Guristas, which fire missiles that have no problem finding you) and Serpentis Baron/Commodore vessels. Just orbit your target at 500 meters and open fire. A pulse from the MWD will cover about 35km, letting you get close quickly. You may need to downgrade some of these modules to make it fit for you.

--

[Imicus, Looky]
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I

5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Acquisition Array I

Core Probe Launcher I
Prototype Cloaking Device I

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

A simple scanning and probing Imicus for finding cosmic signatures - there's nothing special about this fit, it's just a good workhorse to have around for digging up content. The warp core stabilizers is just me being paranoid. I have probing ships with Sisters probes but this simpler fit is a good place to start.

--

[Epithal, Blue Night]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Deluge Enduring Burst Jammer
50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Improved Cloaking Device II

Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I

A good Epithal is a must for those doing Planetary Interaction. It has a specialized cargo bay that carries at least 50k m3 of PI material. The modules I'm using are for running away - I usually pre-overheat the burst jammer and activate one of the  invulns. It can do the Cloak+MWD trick that will get you safely away from gates as quickly as possible. Here's a longer video specifically about transports.

Cutting the Net - a level 4 Faction Warfare mission - in a Tristan

Mistakes were made...but it still worked easily!

(Update 1/22/16 to show four successful runs)

I like doing level 4 faction warfare missions when I get the chance, but being in the Gallente militia means you have to run them in a pretty expensive ship. Tengu/Proteus (at least 700M ISK) are recommended, though I know a guy who uses a 100M ISK Hecate.

I follow a couple of guides written by experienced mission runners, both of whom said Cutting the Net (CTN) should be declined. Why? To complete the mission you need to retrieve an object and get it back to the agent. This is annoying and time-consuming, not to mention you run the risk of losing your ship and failing the mission.

There was, however, a tantalizing throwaway line in one of the guides about CTN. "It can be completed in a frigate."  Which frigate? How frigatey is this frigate? Assault frig? Blinged-out pirate frigate? A Tristan?!

Why This Mission

It pays about 30K to 55K LP, depending on agent location and which tier your FW side is in. Converted to ISK at the average 1500 isk/lp, that's up to 70M isk for a low-risk, few minutes work in a ship costing a few million isk at most. And I'm pretty sure this will work without any Tech II modules too. I think it would be a good mission for risk averse players who don't mind the slightly aggravating process of getting the CTN mission.

I found a video of CTN being run and tried to estimate incoming damage, and also asked mission runners that had done the mission. "About 200 dps" was the consensus, though they had done it in an Ishkur and other similar ships.

Being a good Gallente I figured I'd try getting a Tristan through the mission, despite having no shield-tank bonuses. I've also had almost no experience with Medium Ancillary Shield Boosters (can't you tell from the video?) and failed the mission a few times before getting the fit right.

[Tristan, Cutting the Net]

Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Medium Shield Extender II

Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 50

Limited 5MN Microwarpdrive I

[empty high slot]

[empty high slot]

[empty high slot]

Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I

Small Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I

Small Core Defense Field Extender

You will also need a mobile depot and three warp core stabs to stay safe en-route to/from the mission. The rigs I picked were for Serpentis rats - adjust to your preference.

I think it's possible to do this with a wide range of frigates. An obvious suggestion is a dual MASB Breacher, which gets a bonus to shield reps.

Note: this was done in an old version of EFT, so the names might not work in-game. You get the idea though.

How to Run the Mission

The mission consists of two rooms about 80 kms across. At the end of the second room is a container with the 80 m3 item. Overheat your MWD and zip across the first room really fast. Try to arrive just ABOVE or BELOW the gate so you don't bounce off it like I did in the video.

Don't activate the MASB too early or let it auto-repeat, as I did in the video. I didn't realize how well the speed tanking would work at cutting down on rat DPS.

In the second room do the same - overheat and burn to the target and hit ctrl+space when you're about 15km from the target. You should come to a halt in looting range of the container (which is a Spawn Container, not a regular kind - you'll notice it wasn't on my overview in the video!) Grab the loot and warp out.

This fit ends up being 10 m3 short of cargo space for taking the mobile depot back home. You could try just two WCS and a cargo expander instead (I recommend this!), or just jettison the micro aux power core and buy a new one.

How to Get To/From the Mission

Put three warp core stabs on the ship and carry a mobile depot. When you reach your target system, make a safe, safe up and refit your ships.

Risks and Consequences

What if you fail the mission? What if you get blown up? Failing a faction warfare mission has no consequences. You'll get an email from the agent after twelve hours saying they're disappointed in you, but that's it. If you quit the mission (with the "Quit" button in the mission window), you'll take a standings hit, so never do that...in fact, why is that button even there? I can't think of any reason you'd want to click it.

If you get blown up, you're out a few million isk. Rebuild the ship and try again.

How to Get Offered the Mission

This is where we have a drawback. There are ten possible FW missions and you have, I believe, an even chance of being offered any one of them. If you specifically are looking for CTN, you need to fly around as many FW Level 4 agents as you can, and request the mission until you get it. Remember you can decline ONE mission, then request another and click "Delay" if you don't get CTN. You have a week to accept a delayed mission.

So with two attempts at each agent you'll get CTN once per five agents. It might take a while longer, or it might come up right away.

Another scenario might be that you're an experienced mission runner who usually turns down CTN. This post might give you an incentive to accept CTN along with your other regular missions, and run it in a dirt-cheap ship that you won't mind losing.

I have started doing a "farming" loop where, if I want to while away 40 minutes, go visit 12 agents and "delay" any CTN offers I get, with the intention of coming back later to run them.

Notes From the Future

I have run this a few times more and the fit is definitely sound. I didn't realize, however, that to accept a mission you need to be in the same station as the agent. So if you want to accept a delayed CTN offer you'll need to fly back to the agent. In one hour I was able to run two missions, with all the travel made necessary by it. But in a triple-stabbed Tristan I was very safe and got 94K LP for the two missions.

Notes From Even Further in the Future

I tweaked the travel fit to use only two Warp Core stabs and a cargo expander. Why? It lets me keep all my modules and carry the loot back to the agent. The ship is immediately ready to undock and use again, instead of having to obtain another Micro Aux Power Core. This lets me, for example, leave a copy of this ship at every Galmil FW agents' station. If they give me Cutting the Net I can jump into the Tristan, run the mission and come back.

--

I'm very happy I came up with this! It's very satisfying to find a way to use a 3M isk ship to generate a 70M isk return with very little risk. If it works just one time, you have enough funds to pay for dozens more attempts - give it a try!

Bits and Bobs, This and That

Narcotics Warehouse, India

Refuge --> Narcotics Warehouse

My main activity of late has been testing how quickly I can run Serpentis Refuges so I can find lots of Narcotics Warehouse escalations (difficulty 3 out of 10). I can then run those with corpmates or solo, or give bookmarks to corpmates if I'm unable to play.  I'm now running the Refuges with a Vexor Navy Issue; the five sentries with three Drone Damage Amplifiers make short work of them - about 2 minutes each. The escalations are up to 10 jumps away, so I take my railgun Algos there with 3 warp core stabilizers to give me a reasonable chance of avoiding gate camps. Once there I make a safe, deploy a mobile depot and put my fighting shoes on. I'll put both my fits at the bottom of this post.

Here's why I've chosen this combination of sites: Refuges are plentiful in highsec and often overlooked. They can be run quickly and seem to have about a 1 in 9 chance of escalating. The Narcotics Warehouse site has four rooms and the first can be bypassed by having a Traffic Management key in your cargo. That means anyone who probes me down and wants to chase me will have to clear the first room themselves, or know the site and go get a Traffic key too. That gives you a nice buffer of safety, unlike other sites where interlopers can reach you immediately. I think this will produce a really nice results, having a 10M isk ship producing 30-100M of loot per site.

So last night I ran two of these sites and it was a very interesting experience. I took a blaster-fit Algos Ane (a low sec island in the middle of Essence) and Aeschee. I thought Ane would go easily, but locals seemed to know and hate Aideron, naming our CEO, a present and a past pilot and insulting them. I figured this wasn't going to go well, and it didn't. They probed me down, so I refit my warp core stabs and left. They even tried to catch me on the other side of the out gate. Back in highsec I saw another Refuge so I ran it, got a nice, and quite rare, 70M Shadow Serpentis loot drop!

Here's where I had a brain fart. The route to Aeschee took me through the Genesis region; just before jumping into Villore, a know heavily gate-camped system in Essence, I decided that dropping my 70M of loot in Genesis was inconvenient (because I use public contracts to move loot around) so I'd just take it to Villore and drop it there. And I forgot or didn't care that I was not wearing my Warp Core Stabilizers. This was really quite stupid. I jumped into Villore and got caught by a Garmur and Legion. I'm just glad the 70M loot didn't survive - hah! If I'd had my stabs fitted I'd have slipped away. Next time, fit the stabs and avoid Villore if at all possible.

I was expecting Aeschee to go badly too: it's Shadow Cartel's home system and a Sisters of Eve mission hub; how could an Algos go undetected for 15 minutes or more?  Luckily my Narcotics site and my safe spot were both out of dscan range of everything in system. I ran the site (badly, as it turned out) for about 30 minutes and never saw anyone on dscan, let alone scanner probes. I picked up about 30M from this site.

Why did it take so long? The idea of putting blasters on the Algos didn't work - I had imagined the rats all swarming close my ship, but they stayed a little too far away, even with Null ammo. I had to leave at one point because I couldn't tank the incoming damage. I'll switch back to railguns for the next attempt, keep my distance and pick them off.

Fightin' 

I joined an RDraw fleet that was running Faction Warfare level 4 missions in stealth bombers, we had a slow start but eventually got rolling. Gallente pilots usually have problems running FW missions because the Caldari rats use jammers, but the jams were defeated by having large numbers in fleet. We accepted missions in a limited area of the war zone to minimize travel - five people requesting them, came up with about 20 missions total, yielding about 65k LP at the end, which I've already spent on high-grade spur implants that trade nicely at Jita if you're patient.

I also helped with RDraw attack on a Carpe Noctem Gila fleet, I derped and warped to 0 in my Griffin but got on 2 kills worth 1B isk :) We won the fight and the FC kindly directed dps ships to send 2M to each logi and 1M to each ewar, which was a nice way to do it. Next time, warp at range!

Trade

T1 rigs are making 200-300k per unit profit, up to 300% profit in other cases, and various datacores and PI items all had price spikes...I made a killing. I spent the 800K LP I earned running FW missions a while ago, and those items are all sold too. I'm pretty sure I've reached my 100B net worth target, so whee! for that. I have 8 Jump Freighters again, but 20B cash to go with it this time and the prices are healthier. I'm holding out for higher prices yet :) I also found some skillbooks to trade using eve-central trade finder - it's nice to have a trade where one of the prices is fixed in stone, since you buy them from NPCs.

I found a nice way to help new pilots: I created a buy order for tritanium in a starter system and I'm sending 5M to whomever sells to me. I figure only actual new players will be mining in the perpetual "Asteroid Remnant" anoms in those systems...though so far nobody has written back to me.

Speaking of writing to me, I got an email in-game from a pilot who moved some of my public contracts around. He wondered what the hell I was doing and was it some sort of scam?! I guess not many people use that technique :)

Fits Used

This is a very tight fit, and is the next variation I'll be trying. Downsize it by swapping the MWD for an Afterburner, 125s for 75s or removing the Salvager. Rig to taste.

[Algos, Narc Warehouse]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Damage Control II

Small Armor Repairer II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

Salvager I

Small Nanobot Accelerator I

[empty rig slot]

[empty rig slot]

Hobgoblin II x5

Hobgoblin II x5

Hammerhead II x1

--

This is the Vexor I used before getting a VNI for the job. It's almost as fast and will do fine. See my earlier posts for usage.

[Vexor, Highsec Anom Runner]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Damage Control II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator II

Garde II x3

Hammerhead II x2

Hobgoblin II x3

Hobgoblin II x1

Hammerhead II x1

--

Here's m'new baby: 760 dps, leaning heavily away from tank and into gank. The VNI can only fit two guns and is NOT bonused for gun damage, so I went with 3 DDAs and only 1 Mag Stab.

[Vexor Navy Issue, High Anom Runner]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Damage Control II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

[empty high slot]

[empty high slot]

Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I

Medium Drone Scope Chip I

Garde II x5

Ogre II x2

Hammerhead II x2

Hobgoblin II x1

Running High-sec anomalies for fun and profit

If you travel through high sec you've probably seen at least a few low-traffic systems that had a lot of cosmic anomalies in them, piled up and unloved. They seem too easy to be worth running and don't pay very well, so why bother? Well, I found a few good reasons; there's a lot of valuable loot connected with these anomalies and you can easily run them in 2-3 minutes a piece.

Escalations

Most high-sec anomalies have a chance, I'd say about 5%, to escalate to a more lucrative mission, the kind you'd usually have to probe down. For example a Serpentis Refuge can lead to a Serpentis Narcotics Warehouse (3/10) and a Serpentis Den can lead to a Serpentis Hydroponics site (5/10).  These have a good chance of dropping much better loot, and only you know the location!  The escalation will be between 2 and 10 jumps from the original anomaly and can be in ANY security space. If you're lucky it will be in high-sec and you can run your mission without the threat of being jumped by pirates (see Jonny Pew video on this subject).

You'll know you got the escalation when you kill the last rat if you see a pop up message with the name of the site you've got a lead to. Then you look in your Journal (Alt+J) under the Expeditions tab to see what system it's in.

I had a lucky streak a few nights ago; my favourite high-sec target systems (0.5 and 0.6 security level) were crammed with Refuge and Den anoms. I cleared them in a couple of hours and had SIX escalations for my troubles (including one in high-sec). With only 24 hours to run them, and not fancying the prospect of dragging a big ship through lowsec, I offered them to corp mates. Nobody wanted them either, so I turned to Tweetfleet, the Eve-wide slack chat. Two people contacted me and I contracted them bookmarks to the sites (I had to travel to each one first and make the bookmarks) in exchange for a total of 170M ISK. That's a great result for a couple of hours of high-sec ratting!

Faction Rats

There's a small chance, much smaller than the chance of escalation, that the anomaly's waves of targets will end with a special rat making an appearance. This would be a Shadow Serpentis or Dread Gurista or Sentient Drone, for example. They will not be hard to kill and will contain special loot -- no travel necessary for this payout! The loot will most likely be a cheap tag (<200k isk) and 1000 rounds of faction ammo (e.g Shadow Iron Charge S), or Drone goo which isn't worth much. BUT I've also had three shiny drops, so the odds are you can find them too - I got a Serpentis Warp Scrambler (100M), a Rogue Drone 46-X and 43-X chip, which can be turned into an Astero BPC and Stratios BPC respectively. Or, y'know, sold for 65M and 235M instead. These happened during, I'd estimate, about 70 anomalies over a couple of weeks.

Loot and Salvage

At first I was very thorough about cleaning up these sites, hoping for a chance for valuable loot from the regular rats, but it never happened. Each Refuge or Den is worth about 200-300K in salvage and loot. The best item was a BZ-5 Caldari jammer, of which I found a few, worth about 300K. Drone sites such as a Gathering (4/10) are worth about 500K in salvage. After a while it didn't seem worth the time, but the most efficient way to do this, if you must, is to bookmark one wreck in the middle of the wreck field as you fight through all the sites. Then switch into a salvaging frigate with a Mobile Tractor Unit, salvage drones and salvagers. Warp to each bookmark in turn, and use the MTU, drones and salvagers as quickly as you can. Pro-tip: press "F" with NO targets locked to let the drones repeatedly find their own targets. You can also lock the farthest-away wrecks and force them to go out there, leaving the wrecks closest to the MTU for you to salvage.  If you have multiple MTUs, just drop one at each site and loop back to the first one for salvage and pickup. I'd assumed the Medium wrecks would have a better chance of good loot than the Small wrecks but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What Ship Did I Use?

This is a railgun Vexor with sentry drones and a flight of light drones in case the rats get close. You warp to 30km on the anomaly, deploy sentry drones then start shooting and DON'T MOVE! The light/heavy missile batteries will hit you hard a couple of times but they're your first target and will die fast. The rats will be around 30km from you, plus or minus 10km. It's a matter of luck how far you'll be from them; most of the time it's around 30km, but if it's 20km that's a bit too close; try and move away to about 25-30km before stopping. When you're standing still your rail guns will do a lot more damage...I think it's double what I was doing when I was orbiting my sentry drones.

The italicized items should be tech 2 variants if you can use them - I used meta versions because that's what I had lying around in hangers. I've never actually EFT'd this fit; it just sort of grew and evolved; hence the mix of armor and shield tank :)

Honestly, the fit is probably still TOO defensive; one by one I'm changing it by removing defense modules (ENAM, armor repair) and adding offensive ones (tracking/damage enhancers). The rats in these anoms are weak and your best defense is a good offense; kill 'em quick. The guns will hit (for me) between 18-38km (antimatter) and 25-40km (Uranium). The Gardes will hit between 18 and 48 km. This covers 99% of what you'll need, and you have Iron ammo (55km optimal) for the long-range shots and the light/medium drones in case the waves of frigates get past your defenses.

You'll never be scrammed or webbed, and most of the time you won't reach armor damage. I've gone with tracking speed scripts instead of range increase. The sensor booster speeds up the process of locking targets, which is handy because you'll be chewing through them fast. I have the drones set to Aggressive and unchecked Focus Fire, so they can spread damage if they want to.

If a number of rats get closer than 18km or so, pull your sentry drones in (it will be instant since you're right next to them) and deploy your light/medium drones. Move away if you wish, and let the drones clear the threat. Once you're safe you should recall them, stop the ship and deploy the sentries again.

The rigs are what I had previously installed on this hull for a different fit. I think I still need the Overclocker, but the armor pumps would probably be better replaced with offensive rigs instead.

[Vexor, Vexor]

Damage Control II

Magnetic Vortex Stabilizer I

Medium Armor Repairer II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Tracking Computer II

Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Alumel-Wired Sensor Augmentation

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I

Hobgoblin II x4

Hammerhead II x3

Garde II x3

Uranium Charge M x3365

Antimatter Charge M x2398

Optimal Range Script x2

Tracking Speed Script x1

Iron Charge M x2000

You could experiment with variations; for example make it work at 50km with different sentry drone and ammo, then warp to 50km on the anomaly and see what happens.

Mixing It Up

From flickr user lintmachine

I tried some new solo activities in the last couple of weeks, including learning how to navigate wormholes, spending time in Nullsec (Venal region, Guristas NPC space) and trying to be a ninja-salvager in Osmon. Osmon is a mission running hotspot, where I never saw less than 70 people in local. They're mostly there running level 4 combat missions for the Sister of Eve and many of them don't bother salvaging or looting.

What these activities have in common, I've found, is that I like activities that have a small chance of a big reward, for very little risk. For some reason, at the moment, I like playing it safe!

Wormholes To Nullsec

It took at least eight wormholes before I found a connection to nullsec, so if you're going to try this method, be patient. I took a Helios out there into the ever-changing maze, and it was a weird feeling when I first logged off in one, knowing my route back to my home system of Fliet was gone.  But I pressed forward, using wormholes.es  as a reference. My nullsec exit was 20 jumps from Venal, but a look at the map revealed that the route there was, statistically, quiet. I made the trip there without incident (noticing, by the way, how many combat anomalies were around), found an NPC station, docked and jump cloned back to my main clone in Fliet.

Over the next week or so I jumped back to the Venal clone a couple of times, where the streets are paved with pirate relic sites...or so I thought. Despite combing through the backwaters with the least number of jumps I found only one site in about five hours of exploration. Clearly the few people in this area all have the same idea. What I saw the most of was combat sites, both in anomalies and signatures (the ones you have to use probes to find).  If you want to make money in Venal I would recommend taking a combat ship out there and running the anomalies.  I gave up on the area, though, taking my Helios into the first wormhole I found and getting back to Fliet.

My nullsec itch has been scratched and I don't see any reason to head back out there, not solo anyway.

Cosmic Anomalies

I've taken to running highsec anomalies on both my characters, mainly as a short, easy combat activity. They are 3/10 or 4/10 difficulty and you have a small chance of an escalation to things like a Guristas Scout Outpost or similar. The escalation may be in high-sec too, where they don't "naturally" occur, so it's a nice opportunity for a better reward. Johnny Pew just made a great video about this. The occasional Dread Gurista (or Shadow Serpentis) will appear in these ordinary anoms, and drop more valuable loot. 

If there's someone else in the site already, which can happen, I leave it to them. Other pilots are not so polite :) I'm not sure what the Eve-etiquette dictates here, but I'm fine with them staying; it's not a big deal to have some competition.

Osmon

In the spirit of looking for easy activities with a small chance of a big payoff, I turned to the Osmon system, six jumps from Jita and home to a Sisters of Eve level 4 combat agent. I'd seen it mentioned on reddit/r/eve as a good place to try ninja salvaging, wherein you invite yourself into someone's mission (via combat probes) and start salvaging their wrecks. If they are feeling generous, they may also abandon their wrecks and leave the loot in, so you can harvest the contents.

It occurred to me that asking permission was easy and risked only social embarrassment. With 150 people in local chat, I asked and got lucky right away! A Russian guy invited me to fleet and told me to warp to him. I entered the deadspace pocket as he was leaving, trusting his assurances that the rooms were clear and indeed they were. I picked up a couple of million in salvage and had a nice chat with him.

The next guy I had to find the old-fashioned way. I combat-probed a battleship down, one that was well-above the plane of the solar system, and warped to him. Surprisingly there was no acceleration gate. I tried to open a chat with the pilot who was there. He rejected the conversation...but all the wrecks turned blue! I thanked him in local chat and returned a few minutes later to pick up about 5 million in loot and salvage.

That was my last success, though. I was unable to find any other willing salvage donors, and the next three guys I scanned down salvaged their missions themselves. As I headed back to station to log off, though, I'd shot myself in the foot. I found one unlooted wreck at a site I'd bookmarked. It contained about 500K of loot, but I'd be suspect for stealing it. "I'm docking up anyway...it'll be fine." I thought. I looted the wreck and warped to the SoE station...where I saw a blue cargo container labelled "wreck location bookmarks" 10km off the undock! Unfortunately I was already docking, had 10M of cargo on me and really need to log off. Drat, a missed opportunity.

I did, however, have a lot of fun talking with the locals, and one guy sent me a nice donation, possibly for the entertainment value I'd offered. I ran a sales pitch from the "Space Litter Removal Service", which got some replies, but no offers, and we talked about web comics (xkcd and The Oatmeal).

The main thing I picked up, though, was some trade opportunities. I looked over the local market, figuring that with hundreds of mission runners there, they'd need some supplies. I found one good trade already and I'm looking for more. It's my first experience with trade between systems, and so far, so good.

Other Stuff

I finally sold a Nomad! I've written over the past few months about how I have an enormous sum tied up in 6 or 7 jump freighters, just as their prices went south. Well, the Nomad market is finally stirring and the price is close to 6.7B. I sold one and I'm holding on to the others, since there are very few sellers and there's potential for a 7B+ price to be reached. My three Arks, sadly, are still going for only 6B, which is less than I paid for them.  

My PI and datacore trades are doing well, and the wallet balance is now 23B. I'm aiming for a 100B isk total value before the end of the year...I'm around 85B isk now.

Vacation in dark places

Ace Rimmer - what a guy!

I'm on vacation with my family this week, so I thought it was a good time to get one of my main's clone into an exploration adventure. I put a couple of cheap probing implants in his head, jumped in a Helios and found a wormhole. I'm torn between running pirate relic sites in C1, C2 and C3 wormholes vs the same thing but in nullsec. I think I'd prefer nullsec, since I'll definitively know if anyone is in the system with me, thanks to the local channel.

It took me a couple of days (just a couple of hours of play time though) to get out of the first wormhole, since all the exits closed while I was out with my family.  The locals were very helpful, letting me what system their lowsec static had re-opened upon, but I was already in the next wormhole, searching for that elusive nullsec exit. I did actually start to run a relic site in this hole, but warped away when an uncloaked stratios warped in.

I've scanned five wormholes so far and found no exits to nullsec. This may not be as easy a way to get there as I'd hoped. I believe CCP recently reduced the number of wormhole-to-nullsec connections, to prevent their fleets from easily using them as shortcuts.

Being stuck in chains of wormholes means I also can't jumpclone back into my "main body", which is sitting in Fliet. If I can't get to nullsec soon I'll take the first exit that lets me find a station at which I can dock, then jump clone back to Fliet.

I found one wormhole today with three pirate relic sites: exactly what I'd been looking for! Sadly, my risk aversion told me that, with the killboards showing explorer ships being ganked there today, and a high-sec static exit, this probably wasn't a safe place to risk running relic sites.

--

August 5th

Success! I made the 21 jump trip across nullsec to the Venal region, docked up and jump-cloned back to Fliet. I had looked at the system map and it said there was almost zero activity along the route, so I took my chances and jumped. Only one system had anyone else in local, so it was an easy trip. Later I plan to jump clone back out there at probe/run relic sites.

It was kind of awesome to see new (to me) anomaly names, and find that they included maximum difficulty combat sites such as "Drone Horde", just sitting there un-run. I guess its true nobody runs drone sites.

* I tried to find a picture of Arnold Rimmer on vacation, touring the diesel engines on Red Dwarf, but couldn't find one :( Internet, you have failed me!

Level 4 Agents Unlocked

Finally unlocked all level 4 Caldari agents

Missions

I reached another milestone, completing the last storyline mission I needed to push my Caldari State standings over 5 (5.18 to be exact), thus making all Caldari level 4 agents available to me. I ran a few level 4 distribution missions just to get a feel for it: they pay about 500 LP and 200-300K ISK each, and require up to 7000 m3 of cargo space. I've found a loop of systems around Hirtamon, 2 jumps from Jita, and doing all the level 3 and 4 distribution agents there will be a nice sideline. The level 4 agents tend to want to send you further away, though, so remember to ask twice if the first offer's destination is too far away. If the second offer is bad too, just click the Delay button and wait four hours - no standings hit :)

You can see from the picture that the storyline missions came pretty quickly; I did six of them on Feb 15th alone. Those include level 2 and 3 missions...remember, you get a storyline mission for every 15 regular missions at each difficulty level, regardless of which corp you run them for.

Jump Freighters

The jump freighters are all tradeable again, with a 300-400M gap between the buy and sell orders. With my broker fees reduced from 0.54% to 0.36% (thanks missions!) I'm saving about 20M in fees on each flip. So I currently own four, one of each model! They're all listed for sale, but the sale is usually slower than the buy.

First Wormhole Visit

I finally made a trip into a wormhole - there was a class 2 entrance in Fliet so I got my exploration Helios and went a-scanning. I'd always wanted to try the nullsec relic and data sites and since CCP added them to wormholes a few months back I'd be able to do so more easily. I'd read a couple of guides to handling wormholes, so I knew to d-scan a lot and also bookmark the entrance and any exits I used. I checked who owned the POCOs in the system and looked up their corporate zkillboard, and did the same for the wormhole itself. Not much activity in either place, so I was probably safe.

I found and started a data site, but quit halfway through: the loot was worth very little...about 500K from 3 cans. I kept probing the system and found a relic site...15M ISK, that's better! I'm going to follow the advice I've read recently and remove the data analyzer, replacing it with a rangefinding midslot module to make the probing go faster.

On the way back to my home station I flew through what I heard described on corp comms as "an instalocking gatecamp" - my Helios wasn't caught, thanks Cov Ops Cloaking Device!

Boosting Standings Through Distribution Missions

• The Jump Freighter trade that has been so lucrative for me has dried to a trickle; I haven't successfully bought, let alone sold, one this month.
• Planetary Interaction is also minimal this month.
• I've added Small Energy rigs to my manufacturing rotation, make for ~15K, sell for 60-100K.
• I skilled up to running 9 production lines at once.
• I've bought a Proteus and some Asteros and can, time allowing, go run some level 4 faction warfare missions and small exploration combat sites.

My Distribution Mission Layout (approximately)

Why Run Distribution Missions?

Those are the bullet points for what's happened in the last couple of weeks, but the area that's been the most fun is running Level 2, then Level 3 distribution missions in order to raise my standings with the Caldari State, which I'm doing to try and cut my tax/fees bill, currently running at 2-3B ISK per month! Prior to doing these missions, my broker fee was 0.54% (it's now 0.46% after maybe 8 hours of missions). The Caldari Navy corporation, which owns Jita, already loves me lots (7+), so boosting my Caldari State standings (it was 2.7) is the most obvious improvement I can now make.

Faction standings are more than twice as important (says Eve Uni wiki) as corporate standings when it comes to determining your broker fees, so you want the Caldari State to think you're the bees knees. You can most easily raise this by running 15 missions of one type and level (i.e 16 level 2 security, or 15 level 3 distribution) for agents of ANY (ANY!) Caldari company. The company doesn't matter, do 'em all.  When the 15th is completed, a Storyline Agent will contact you and offer you a "mission which will greatly impact your faction standings." This is the juice!

The missions are easy; so far I've seen "Clear The Path", killing three easy waves of Gallente ships (done in a Rapid Light Missile Caracal), Materials of War (buy and deliver 10,000 Omber). I've done each of these several times and my faction standing is now 3.8.

Many people will advise you to track how many missions you've done, and make sure the last mission is near a Storyline Agent, because their missions give a big boost to your standings for the Storyline Agent's corporation too. I was less interested in that, so I didn't bother tracking; I just chewed through as many missions as I could.

So I bought a Nereus hull, equipped cargo optimization rigs and Expanded Cargohold IIs, learned the MWD+Cloak trick and brought up the Agent Finder. I set the Faction filter to Caldari, mission type to distribution, and went to the nearest cluster and picked up missions.

Backtracking a little: I've already done some security missions, but its been a slog. Each one takes a while, and though you can accept more than one at a time, you can only been in one mission site at a time, shooting one set of rats.  The nice thing about distribution missions is that after accepting three, four, five missions and setting off on the journey, you're working on all of them at the same time! And when you dock to deliver one cargo, you can often pick up another at the very same station! Put simply, you can do a lot of these missions, and quickly. In four hours of play, I received and ran THREE storyline missions. This raised my faction standing from 2.7 to 3.1, which unlocked all the Level 3 Caldari Agents.

Shaping The Cloud

You want to avoid accepting missions that send you too far out of the way, and I also prefer to avoid low-sec deliveries, which carry greater risk but offer no higher reward. My Nereus carries about 15km3 of cargo (soon to be more), and Level 3 missions require cargo between 1800 and 4000m3 each, so I'm usually working five or six missions at the same time. In my experience (hah!) a Level 3 Caldari distribution agent is never more than 1 or 2 jumps away.

When you talk to an agent, look at the delivery point. If its on your current route, take it: easy decision there. If not, make a note of current length of your route. Then right-click the deliver system and Add Waypoint. Then click Optimize (you're going to be using this button a lot!) If the length of your route changes by more than 2 or 3...meh...if it changes by 4 or more..that's a long way to go for just one guy.  Are there more agents along the way, and do you have the cargo space to pick up more? The more full you are, the more you want the delivery system to be very close to where you're already going. You ain't got no time to go wandering off your route for a single delivery.

With each agent you get two bites of the cherry; you can decline their first offer. Here's the new trick I just learned. You can talk to them again AND "Delay" the second offer if you don't like it. I used to never Request Mission a second time because I thought I'd be obliged to take it or have to Decline, thus taking a standings penalty. But you can safely ask again, then click "Delay" if you don't like it. The mission offer will eventually (a week later) expire and you'll get an email from the agent expressing disappointment, but you'll not be penalized. Or you can wait four hours and safely decline the mission.

The Agent Finder (I've mapped Shift-Alt-F to it) won't indicate if you're carrying cargo for an agent, so keep the journal handy (Alt-J) and make sure, before fly to talk to an agent, that you're not already working for them!

Ignore the fact that you'll miss out on most of the bonus payments; you're probably doing this for standings, not for the ISK or even the loyalty points.

Safety and Mistakes You Might Make

The stuff you're carrying is mostly worthless, but gankers sometimes kill industrial ships for the lolz. You should learn the Cloak+MWD trick, and use it if you see any combat ships at the gate when you arrive on the other side..I saw a surprising number of Tengus that just sat on the gate. Most of the time, however, I've seen mostly industrial ships or nobody at all.

Mistakes in the missions mainly means you're flying less efficiently; try not to get sent really far out of the way, especially if you're close to full already. You'd like to be making a pickup or delivery every 2 or 3 jumps.  Just last night I flew an extra five jumps to a station, just to talk to an agent. And my ship was already full, d'oh! I couldn't have accepted his mission even if I wanted to! Don't add too many agent's stations to your route just because you'd like to get missions from them. Three or four agents can fill you up.

It can be hard to remember, after a lot of adding/deleting waypoints, why a particular waypoint is on your route. The "Agents and Places" screen (Alt-E) will help a little, but you have to look at each set of places yourself. If you don't see a delivery to that system listed, you had planned to talk to an agent there, but maybe you've already picked up all the cargo you can handle.

Helping Out The Little Guys

You can, of course, work for Level 2 and Level 1 agents as well. They have, remember, their own counter to 15 missions and will generate storyline missions for you, albeit less lucrative ones. Their cargoes are much smaller and they tend to send you to closer systems, which can be a nice easy gain. I won't fly to a system JUST to talk to them, though, I pretty much only use them if they happen to be in the same station I'm already in.

I don't accept these cheaper missions if they require me to go somewhere else, pickup a thing, and bring it back to this agent. "They, Robots" comes to mind.

UI Improvements

It's easy to lose track of why a particular station or system is on your route: am I delivering there, or is there an agent I wanted to talk to? Looking at the agent finder, do I already have a mission from that particular agent? Which of these agents are along the route I'm flying?

The information to answer these questions is available, but its in several windows. One easy improvement I see is for the agents in the Agent Finder to have their names colored green if you already have accepted a mission from them. Their system name, or agent name perhaps, could be in a different color (yellow?) if it lies on your current route, just like the Market window already does.

It would be nice if the "System" list on the agent finder was restricted to the current region you were in. If I choose "The Forge", that's where I'm interested in looking.

Extra Benefit

You can run these missions easily while doing other real life tasks, such as cleaning the kitchen, and earn spouse LP :) I put the laptop on the stove and click the "jump" button every 45 seconds or so.

A really good month of station trading

Piling up the ISKies

Before reading my post, if you haven't seen the new "This Is Eve" trailer, watch it now! I'll wait.

My fortunes shifted in a pleasant direction over the last month or so. I had been saving up my datacores and Planetary Interaction (PI) output, waiting for price spikes....and they all came at once. And other stuff spiked too. In a few short weeks my cash balance went to 12B ISK.

Looking for something to do with it, I trained up another level of Retail, allowing me 53 simultaneous orders. I looked through all the apparel items, including a lot of new stuff recently added to the game, with good profit margin and put up my offers. I also tried my hand at Jump Freighter trading! I'm currently training Retail V, so I can unlock the Wholesale skill and get another 64 order slots in a pretty short amount of time.

Here are some of the trades I did.

It's worth keeping in mind that I did most of the following without undocking -- this is all at Jita, on a character with about 500K skill points in trading.

My best trade was a tattoo that I bought for 800M and sold three days later for 1.9B! It took about 2-3 weeks to actually acquire it, though. Next up, a Rhea and Ark jump freighter, netting 780M and 490M profit each (not including taxes/fees around 150M each). It takes 6-7B to acquire these, so it's definitely not a starter item. During a price spike on Gallentean Starship Engineering datacores I sold 5000 of them for 200K each; a nice 1B ISK sale for around 440M ISK profit.

I pulled in 1.4B profit on my level 4 PI products, all of which were going through price spikes. I'd bought the P3 inputs for them a long time ago, when the prices were lower, so it was pretty easy to sell them in a strong market. The P3 and P4 prices have stayed high, so I'm not sure where this will go next. Remember, the PI stuff I do only works because my main's corp, Aideron Robotics, has 0% tax on its POCOs.

There were a couple of really satisfying sales too. I have a pile of 60 cheap tshirts that I bought for about 500K each, several months ago. I've been waiting for something interesting to happen and it finally did. The sellers all dried up! There was only one guy offering a single shirt, asking 2B for it. I joined the party at 1.5 billion with all sixty shirts...hey, you never know when Chribba might go drunk shopping! We drifted lower on price and I was able to sell one for 340M.

Small Remote Armor Repair IIs made a surprising price swing. They cost about 800K to make and usually sell around 1M each. But they soared to 4M and I had a good amount to sell, making about 500M profit. I'm acquiring more, waiting for the next swing.

There was also 425M profit in trading faction navy ammo, which has surprisingly frequent price swings. I highly recommend this for new traders.

In summary, Eve Mentat says I've made 6.5B profit on my station trader this month (10.5B profit in two months), and I have around 7B JUST in apparel sitting in the hanger. There's another 4B of assorted stuff, waiting for price spikes, to be sold too.

My PI efforts have ground to almost a halt over the past couple of weeks; we have unfriendly guests making life interesting in Fliet :).  I need to have corpmates escort me to/from the POCOs to deliver/pickup from the factories, but I don't have much chance to play Eve at home at the moment, and co-ordinate that activity, there's lots of RL stuff going on.

How Much Should Things Cost?

My homework involves finding out what the base price is for more items. Manufactured items are easy: you ask a blueprint calculator how much it costs to build. Items sold in the game's store are easy too: you check the price of Aurum and convert; i.e many Cybernetic Arms cost 1500 AUR, which is 250-300M ISK.

But there are many items which are not manufactured or bought in the store, including some apparel. I need to find out where they come from and what the "natural cost" would be.

Why? Because one of my rules of thumb is to look for stuff selling below its manufacturing/acquisition cost. That number usually acts as a price floor, especially on manufactured goods. It's not always true, though, especially in apparel. Most of the items available in the game store sell for less than the "real" cost.

Catching Up

Phew! It's been a busy few weeks for me in Eve and real life, which is why I kept putting off posting. But here goes.

My wife has started playing Eve! She had bought a new laptop and wanted to try this game that seems to have its hooks in me, so I installed it (three days of download attempts! In the end I needed to use the repair tool to make it right.) and taught her one basic maneuver. How to approach, orbit, web and shoot a target. She ran a few tutorial missions before I convinced her to leave them (she'd done them before, a long time ago) and just head out and run level 1 missions. They provided a steady source of red crosses to shoot and it was interesting to watch her progress from only watching one thing at a time, with a long lag between actions, to correctly monitoring everything around her and thinking about the next target while the current one is being shot.

She came out with Aideron for an Open Fleet last Sunday and survived it! It was a quiet night with only one big fight, which, unfortunately, we missed due to having to reboot her laptop. But she *did* get a neutral Catalyst killed :) While sitting at a gate with the other Atrons in fleet, a Catalyst appeared and yellow-boxed her. "Should I warp off?" she asked. "Yes." I said, and while doing so the Catalyst got one shot off, taking out most of her shield. The gate guns opened up on him, and the other Atrons too, and Irene was very happy with how that went.

--

My manufacturing activities have reached a new and interesting point, with a friend researching some BPOs for me. I'm making various rigs in Jita and Fliet and turning a good profit.  I'm really looking forward to the new industry changes, since, with slots disappearing, I'll be able to research or build wherever I want. I don't mind flying supplies around to quiet systems to get a good price.

I've started using plex to pay for my account, and having referred two people to join the game, I've had a little boost in that department. But eve mentat tells me that my PI operation alone is generating 800M profit per month, which is enough by itself to pay for my game time.

--

My Jita alt has started running level 3 missions in a Drake, the basic fit suggested by Eve Uni, so that my broker fees with the Caldari Navy will decrease. So far it's down from 0.74% to 0.67%. I got stuck, temporarily, on a mission called Cutthroat Competition, which featured jamming rats that shut down my ability to target them.  It should have occurred to me, a seasoned vet of 9 months, to use ECCM, but it did not...instead I tried buying rapid heavy missile launchers (nope, battleship only). After a few attempts at various failed tactics I googled the mission name and found people suggesting ECCM, so I fitted two of the appropriate modules and the rest was easy.

Had I been a new player, though, I might have ragequit instead. The flavor text of the mission, and for any mission with an unusual element (i.e anything other than just shooting red crosses) should have the agent's text include a warning like "You may encounter jammers in this mission. Perhaps you should fit an ECCM module like [insert-module-name-here] or two to make sure you get through it."  This is an easy change and I hope CCP considers it. It's a shame that such a good game requires third party web sites to get me through sticking points. I like to think I'd have eventually thought of the ECCM on my own :)

Rats!

Picture from flickr user Jeff Howard

My training queue for the past few weeks has been concentrating on raising various support skills to level four. This included some drone skills, plus getting Combat Drone Operation to level five, so I wondered what kind of drone damage I could put out in a useful scenario. I remembered that when I joined faction warfare, one suggested way of making ISK was to hunt Clone Soldiers in asteroid belts. They each will drop a tag worth between 1M and 30M ISK, depending on which type of them you encounter. The type is based on the security level of the status you're in: the real money is to be found in 0.2 and 0.1 systems.  I checked the map and found a few systems to go check in my new kiting Algos.

[Update from the future: This fit doesn't work any more for hunting clone soldiers, though it's fine for general ratting. Clone Soldiers got a buff that make them able to hit out further and harder.]

[Algos, Clone Soldier Hunter]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines, Targeting Range Script
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
PL-0 Shipment Probe

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
Drone Link Augmentor I

Small Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I


Hammerhead II x2
Hobgoblin II x3

With all my drone skills at IV (and Combat Drone Op at V), this does about 250 DPS and can lock targets at 80km, and control drones at 74km. I warp to asteroid belts at 70km and see what is there. I mostly ignore the cheaper rats (when you click on one, your "Selected Object" window shows what bounty will be paid if you kill them.) I carry some spare Hammerhead and Hobgoblins, but so far none of my drones have even been attacked.  I use the "Shipment Probe" module to check the content of the wrecks to see if its worth crossing 70km of space to pick it up.

Originally I had a Cetus ECM burst in place of the Shipment Probe, anticipating that I'd encounter human pilots that wanted to fight. But so far I've seen nobody, though I have avoided crowded systems. When I find rats that I want to fight, I burn straight up to get out of the warp-in plane. If a pilot happened to warp in at 70km too, they'd land right on top of me, which would be dangerous.

Sadly I found no Clone Soldier rats in the half-dozen or so 0.2 and 0.1 systems that I spent about 3 hours in. But I did get a few high-level Serpentis battleships worth 500-800K each, plus their loot, and lots of other rats worth between 100-200K. The best find was a Shadow Serpentis Infantry that dropped an 8M ISK smart bomb.

[Update: I'm probably doing it wrong: the recommended way is to enter a system and kill all the rats in the belts. Twenty minutes later (start the clock from the first belt you cleared) come back and see what new rats have appeared. Hopefully you'll find a Clone Soldier and can take him out!]

Fliet continues to be a busy system and my T1 manufacturing operation has produced a lot of useful items to sell there. Also, while scanning down signatures in Fliet last night I found a Minor Serpentis Annex, a tough PvE combat site. I didn't have time to run it myself, but I let my corpmates know about it and several of them got together and ran it - I hope it turned out well! (Update: yes it did! A Serpentis nano membrane was found, and it sold for 962M ISK!)

Planetary Interaction For Maximum Profit

from flickr user nixter

Most of my planning/thinking time has gone into Planetary Interaction (PI) lately. With a free JF service available to members of Aideron, and our 0% tax rate on Player Owned Custom's Offices (POCO) in Fliet and Heydieles, I realized that the best way to maximize my PI profits (see fuzzwork's PI list for guidance, set to 0% tax)was to go straight to the top end of town, by making 100-200K profit per item, and making as many items as possible per day. This occurs at the P3 to P4 levels, making, for example, Broadcast Nodes, Sterile Conduits, Nano-Factories etc. This yields me about 43M ISK profit, per planet, per day, if the markets don't swing too far, with each world producing 270 finished P4 items in 30 hours, or 216 per 24 hours if you prefer to measure that way.

Starting up an operation like this is pretty capital-intensive: a full load of P3 inputs averages about 160M or 240M, depending on which P4 output you're building. I've spent over a billion isk so far, but the returns are starting to come in.

You will need access to a POCO that charges 0% tax and also a cheap jump freighter service to Jita.

Layout

I currently run three barren/temperate planets, (later expanding to five) each of which has a PI layout with 3 launchpads (LP) and 9 High-Tech Industrial Facilities (HTIF). I buy all the inputs I need from Jita and have them shipped to me (thanks, free JF dude!), then use an Epithal to ferry the inputs out to my planets. Each LP is linked to 3 factories, and is loaded with one product only, and of course that output is routed to every factory. Each factory will chew through its inputs in 30 hours, so maintaining a steady supply of inputs is important. The outputs are sent back to the LPs, then picked up each day and shipped off to Jita for sale, again with 0% tax paid and our excellent corporate jump freighter service delivers to Jita at very low cost (woohoo! Join Aideron!)

I spent some time considering the use of Storage Facilities instead of Launch Pads. SFs use much less CPU, which would let me have more HTIFs chewing through the inputs, and creating more output per day. But the realities of "cooldown time" on transfers between storage units made that unfeasible. Yes, you can get cooldown time as low as 5 minutes, but 5 minutes delay, twice, per planet would make the logistics of doing a pickup AND reload run too annoying. Let me know if you found a way to make it work, I'd love to hear it!

Market Fluctuations

At 200K profit per item, and about 216 (9 factories times 24 hours) items made per day, this works out to about 43M ISK profit per day, per planet.

BUT!

The market for the outputs can be fairly volatile. For example, by the time I got my Broadcast Nodes to market, the sale price had dropped from 1.4M to 1.2M...profits all gone. What's more, the cost of Neocoms, one of the inputs, had jumped from 50K to 70K, making the process unprofitable. Luckily I had secured a good amount of inputs at good prices and was able to continue with building. Look around for sources outside Jita and, if you find them, use PushX or RedFrog to ship them to you. And buy from buy orders, not from sell orders. Even though the price of sell orders went up, for some reason the buy orders stayed cheap. And if THAT isn't possible, just wait till things cool off, buy large amounts be ready to ride out the storm.

I'm continuing to produce Broadcast Nodes, since I got my inputs fairly cheap, and am waiting for the price to increase before I sell it.

My second planet is making Sterile Conduits and things are better there. For 600K of inputs I get 800K of value out and just completed my first sale at Jita overnight, selling 207 of them for 160M, yielding 40M profit.

My next world will probably make Nano-Factories. I'm hoping that by diversifying across other P4 commodities, there will always be something selling at a good price.

[Update from Oct 2014: I'm also making Self-Harmonizing Power Cores now. All the P4 items fluctuate in price and so do their P3 inputs. When the input prices drop below about 40K I buy a lot of stock. I hold the P4 output at Jita until there's a price spike.]

Loading Your Launch Pads

This is important! Don't load your launchpads to full, because, remember, the completed P4 items will be stored there. Leave room for them! Each LP has 3 HTIFs routed to it, so every hour 300m3 will arrive. If there's not enough room at the LP, your expensive output will be destroyed!

Broadcast Nodes eat 108m3 (6 x 6 x 3) for each 100m3 item created, and all inputs are the same size. So this one is easy: load 1616 units of each input into the LP. That occupies just under 9700 m3, leaving 300m3 for the first 3 completed items to arrive in. I don't know if the game, when faced with output and input on an LP at the same time, takes the inputs OUT first, or tries to put the finished items IN first. Playing it safe, I left room for the finished items to be placed in first.

Sterile Conduits are an example of the other kind of P4 item: six each of two P3 inputs of 6m3 each, and 40 input of water at 0.38m3 each. You should build a spreadsheet (This! Is! EVE!) to figure this out, but I came to 1616 again for the 6m3 inputs and 11,000 for the P2 inputs such as water. Both types will run out after about 30 hours.

I'd share my spreadsheet, but it's a messy piece of crap that should not be seen by human eyes.

Final thought: most people do PI covering more than one stage of production; that is, they go P2 to P4, or raw materials to P2. I've done that too, but if you have the ability to pay 0% tax and can do very cheap or free transport, it seems to me that going straight to the most profitable stage of the process makes the most sense. I'll write more posts on this as the story unfolds! One of my Aideron PI buddies prefers having 2 LPs and 2 storage facilities, which would allow me to fully load the LPs, direct the output to the SFs, and let the factory run for longer.

(BTW if you can't do free/cheap transport, consider making a huge amount of output before paying PushX or Red Frog to move it for you. A JF can holds 337500 m3, or 3375 items of P4 output. If you're making 200K profit per item, that's 675M ISK profit, of which the cost of transport would surely be a small-ish part.)