So, things were looking easy, things were looking great, and I had things set on the right path. Problem was, I forgot the main thing that draws most of the people on EVE to the game's universe. Namely, the ups and downs.
Last you guys heard I'd moved stuff to the new system and set up shop. I even got Jorus Merrill's writer involved in EVE and tossed him one of the PLEXes I'd managed to snap up with the newfound wealth. Currently, he's enjoying the hell out of mining space rocks. Why? Because it's frigging space rocks. What else do you need? Dude sniffed out Kernite asteroids in I think all the asteroid belts in the system. At least all the important belts. Plus, he did it without a survey scanner that scans the immediate area to find out what asteroid types are nearby, how much ore is in them, and how far away they are. He did it manually. Frigging manually. Sure, it's not that hard in some ways. You just gotta know what to look for. But with someone relatively new to it in a 0.2 security system doing it manually with a rookie ship? Some ballsy work lol!!
Anyways, when I moved my Blueprint Originals out that way to set up shop, I wasn't able to haul all the raw materials as well. I moved most of the specialized kind that are harder to find and more expensive. Got it all out that way fast and easy, speeding on through the low sec space there. It was when I went back to get the more common minerals that form the basic building blocks of my industry was when I hit trouble.
I jumped through the gates and hit Seydana. Remember that system? I mentioned it last time, I think. The one with that hostile corporation of hardcore, veteran PvPers and pirates? I showed up at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Jumped through after catching the glimpse of a red hostile on my side of the gate. I didn't have enough time to stop the ship and go back to a station for safety and move the haul later on. Right after I caught the glimpse, I was jumping with the full knowledge that there was someone on the other side who may have caught the glimpse of me as well and was waiting on the other side.
I land in Seydana and my worst fears are realized. I just landed within about 15-20km of the hostile that had just flown through. As I race to align and get to speed to warp, he locks on. He must have upgraded the hell out of his targeting, because he was zeroed within a second or two. From there, he hits me with a warp jammer. Warp jammers put a negative mod on your warp speed ability. If you have 1+, you can jump. Anything less and you can't. A jammer only hits a -1 which against a standard ship would bring it down to 0. Me being the canny bastard I am, I'd placed a warp core stabilizer on board which gives me a +1, leaving me at 1 for my warp drive and still able to warp.
I'm almost at speed, just maybe another second or two to jump and get away when he hits me with a second jammer. I only have one stabilizer, which means I'm sunk with my warp drive at 0. I immediately do the only thing I can do at that point. I try and burn back to the gate in the hopes that I can go back into the other system faster than he can shred me. Turns out I wasn't fast enough.
The dude nailed me in my hauler and ended up podding me before I could attempt to do much more than align. I appear back over in Futzchag where Jorus and I sit around and mine all day a few moments later. My immediate reaction is anger and annoyance. I'd built that ship, I'd mined that ore, I'd reprocessed those minerals, and, outside of one or two modules, I'd built the modules on that ship. That ship was made from start to finish with my own two hands and how dare that pirate kill my ship and how dare he have the nerve to pod me.
After my few seconds of anger and desire to go and kill what I discovered was a highly balanced pirate cruiser piloted by a dude who's been playing since 2008 died out, I sat back and thought for a moment.
Outside the modules I had to buy, I had literally lost no funds. I lost time, sure, but I have time aplenty. I didn't lose money from the blueprint as the blueprint was an original and, therefore, had infinite runs. So I sat back and thought about it a moment or two while talking with Jorus on the game. I'd lost nothing. Even with the modules I'd bought, it was chump change. It was vending machine money, if that. I didn't do the whole "lemme congratulate the dude who killed em" bit, but I did take a nice, hard earned lesson from it all. Two, actually.
First, I needed to be more careful and wary of everything going on. That means scouting, planning, plotting, and setting my own waypoints.
Second, it was time to start using the guns, ammo, and ships I was making.
After some mails and questions, I got some advice from the most unlikely of places. Namely, the very corporation that had tried so hard to kill me on so many occasions. Turns out, they're not one of the usual "internet spaceships is srs bizness" groups. Sure, they're elite and want only experienced PvPers, but as the dude I spoke to told me, we all have to start somewhere. He gave me some great advice and linked me some nice tricks to do while hauling. Turns out, both my grasp on EVE economics and hauling were a bit off.
The only time you should haul in bulk is in high sec, apparently. If you need to shift stuff in low sec, you do it in small freighters and small amounts. Failing that, you hire a shipping company (Yes, there are shipping companies lol Who'd have thought) to haul really big orders that you can't haul safely yourself or don't want to take the time to haul it. On top of that, you don't haul in Null Sec. The only time you haul in Null Sec is with Jump freighters that can bypass the stargates entirely. As for the economics, I was under the assumption that you sought out contracts. Turns out, while that's one way to make money, it's not the best way. Corporations all stockpile to an extent and only the small corporation keep ships stowed away for members when they lose them. Larger corporations entrust their members with the task of keeping their ships running. Sure, you make money from the corporation, but apparently there's few free ship perks. Turns out, selling all the components for ships that PvPers use is high profit as well as selling popular PvP ships. Now, apparently the best thing to do, though it is the hardest to do as well, is to make 'Prepackaged' ships. This is less marketplace sales and more contract sales.
What you do is take one of the standard PvP fits that most people in your area do, which can be found by researching and looking around online or even by just asking around. You then make the ship and the modules needed. Once you get all the modules together, you bundle it up and sell it in the contract for the price you desire. Apparently, this is very hard to do as most PvPers prefer Tech II modules (more advanced items). This is because Tech II Blueprint Originals are... nearly impossible to find. I've seen maybe a handful over the time I've been playing and, even then, only one of them was for a Tech II ship. If you can find them, they're real, real, real damn expensive. You occasionally find copies, but even those are pricey.
That said, you can invent Blueprint Tech II and Tech III copies. You can't invent BPOs, but with some work, funds, time, and trial and error you can make BPCs of stuff. That said, Invention is a hit and miss ordeal and you're not liable to make a huge amount of funds off of it.
As for the guns and fighting back, it's slow going. I've spent more time skill training my industrial skills and buffing my manufacturing abilities and mining abilities than learning how to shoot pew pew lasers at things. I've picked up the necessary skill books, started looking at ships and modules, and started asking more and more questions on how to do things.
With luck, time, and determination I should be able to start defending myself far better than I do now. That said, it's gonna be a while of skill training lol
In the meantime, I shall enjoy what I can do: taking internet space ships with internet mining lasers and mining internet space rocks because that's what internet space ship miners do, gosh darnit!
Last you guys heard I'd moved stuff to the new system and set up shop. I even got Jorus Merrill's writer involved in EVE and tossed him one of the PLEXes I'd managed to snap up with the newfound wealth. Currently, he's enjoying the hell out of mining space rocks. Why? Because it's frigging space rocks. What else do you need? Dude sniffed out Kernite asteroids in I think all the asteroid belts in the system. At least all the important belts. Plus, he did it without a survey scanner that scans the immediate area to find out what asteroid types are nearby, how much ore is in them, and how far away they are. He did it manually. Frigging manually. Sure, it's not that hard in some ways. You just gotta know what to look for. But with someone relatively new to it in a 0.2 security system doing it manually with a rookie ship? Some ballsy work lol!!
Anyways, when I moved my Blueprint Originals out that way to set up shop, I wasn't able to haul all the raw materials as well. I moved most of the specialized kind that are harder to find and more expensive. Got it all out that way fast and easy, speeding on through the low sec space there. It was when I went back to get the more common minerals that form the basic building blocks of my industry was when I hit trouble.
I jumped through the gates and hit Seydana. Remember that system? I mentioned it last time, I think. The one with that hostile corporation of hardcore, veteran PvPers and pirates? I showed up at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Jumped through after catching the glimpse of a red hostile on my side of the gate. I didn't have enough time to stop the ship and go back to a station for safety and move the haul later on. Right after I caught the glimpse, I was jumping with the full knowledge that there was someone on the other side who may have caught the glimpse of me as well and was waiting on the other side.
I land in Seydana and my worst fears are realized. I just landed within about 15-20km of the hostile that had just flown through. As I race to align and get to speed to warp, he locks on. He must have upgraded the hell out of his targeting, because he was zeroed within a second or two. From there, he hits me with a warp jammer. Warp jammers put a negative mod on your warp speed ability. If you have 1+, you can jump. Anything less and you can't. A jammer only hits a -1 which against a standard ship would bring it down to 0. Me being the canny bastard I am, I'd placed a warp core stabilizer on board which gives me a +1, leaving me at 1 for my warp drive and still able to warp.
I'm almost at speed, just maybe another second or two to jump and get away when he hits me with a second jammer. I only have one stabilizer, which means I'm sunk with my warp drive at 0. I immediately do the only thing I can do at that point. I try and burn back to the gate in the hopes that I can go back into the other system faster than he can shred me. Turns out I wasn't fast enough.
The dude nailed me in my hauler and ended up podding me before I could attempt to do much more than align. I appear back over in Futzchag where Jorus and I sit around and mine all day a few moments later. My immediate reaction is anger and annoyance. I'd built that ship, I'd mined that ore, I'd reprocessed those minerals, and, outside of one or two modules, I'd built the modules on that ship. That ship was made from start to finish with my own two hands and how dare that pirate kill my ship and how dare he have the nerve to pod me.
After my few seconds of anger and desire to go and kill what I discovered was a highly balanced pirate cruiser piloted by a dude who's been playing since 2008 died out, I sat back and thought for a moment.
Outside the modules I had to buy, I had literally lost no funds. I lost time, sure, but I have time aplenty. I didn't lose money from the blueprint as the blueprint was an original and, therefore, had infinite runs. So I sat back and thought about it a moment or two while talking with Jorus on the game. I'd lost nothing. Even with the modules I'd bought, it was chump change. It was vending machine money, if that. I didn't do the whole "lemme congratulate the dude who killed em" bit, but I did take a nice, hard earned lesson from it all. Two, actually.
First, I needed to be more careful and wary of everything going on. That means scouting, planning, plotting, and setting my own waypoints.
Second, it was time to start using the guns, ammo, and ships I was making.
After some mails and questions, I got some advice from the most unlikely of places. Namely, the very corporation that had tried so hard to kill me on so many occasions. Turns out, they're not one of the usual "internet spaceships is srs bizness" groups. Sure, they're elite and want only experienced PvPers, but as the dude I spoke to told me, we all have to start somewhere. He gave me some great advice and linked me some nice tricks to do while hauling. Turns out, both my grasp on EVE economics and hauling were a bit off.
The only time you should haul in bulk is in high sec, apparently. If you need to shift stuff in low sec, you do it in small freighters and small amounts. Failing that, you hire a shipping company (Yes, there are shipping companies lol Who'd have thought) to haul really big orders that you can't haul safely yourself or don't want to take the time to haul it. On top of that, you don't haul in Null Sec. The only time you haul in Null Sec is with Jump freighters that can bypass the stargates entirely. As for the economics, I was under the assumption that you sought out contracts. Turns out, while that's one way to make money, it's not the best way. Corporations all stockpile to an extent and only the small corporation keep ships stowed away for members when they lose them. Larger corporations entrust their members with the task of keeping their ships running. Sure, you make money from the corporation, but apparently there's few free ship perks. Turns out, selling all the components for ships that PvPers use is high profit as well as selling popular PvP ships. Now, apparently the best thing to do, though it is the hardest to do as well, is to make 'Prepackaged' ships. This is less marketplace sales and more contract sales.
What you do is take one of the standard PvP fits that most people in your area do, which can be found by researching and looking around online or even by just asking around. You then make the ship and the modules needed. Once you get all the modules together, you bundle it up and sell it in the contract for the price you desire. Apparently, this is very hard to do as most PvPers prefer Tech II modules (more advanced items). This is because Tech II Blueprint Originals are... nearly impossible to find. I've seen maybe a handful over the time I've been playing and, even then, only one of them was for a Tech II ship. If you can find them, they're real, real, real damn expensive. You occasionally find copies, but even those are pricey.
That said, you can invent Blueprint Tech II and Tech III copies. You can't invent BPOs, but with some work, funds, time, and trial and error you can make BPCs of stuff. That said, Invention is a hit and miss ordeal and you're not liable to make a huge amount of funds off of it.
As for the guns and fighting back, it's slow going. I've spent more time skill training my industrial skills and buffing my manufacturing abilities and mining abilities than learning how to shoot pew pew lasers at things. I've picked up the necessary skill books, started looking at ships and modules, and started asking more and more questions on how to do things.
With luck, time, and determination I should be able to start defending myself far better than I do now. That said, it's gonna be a while of skill training lol
In the meantime, I shall enjoy what I can do: taking internet space ships with internet mining lasers and mining internet space rocks because that's what internet space ship miners do, gosh darnit!
