Saturday, April 21, 2012

Bubbles Burst

I recently discovered a new 3rd party program called "EveRefinery" after googling "is it better to reprocess than sell straight to market?" I've been ratting in Angel Forsaken Hub anomalies in our Alliance's new backyard and salvaging a tonne of loot. This is the first real effort i put into isk making since last year when we were on holiday in Querious. I didn't think much back then or in the past about how the market was; to me it always seemed like demand by players that used the items drove prices up and that traders would capitalize on buying up whatever module was in demand by the player base. A couple weeks ago i trundled off to market through a wormhole and took some time to compare how much i'd get from reprocessing versus selling to buy orders traders put up...i figured the REALLY expensive items were worth way more than the mineral price of reprocessing the same item. Boy, was i wrong. massively wrong about "if it's expensive it can't possibly be worth it's weight in minerals", and especially now.

Dev Blog - what is going on with mineral prices? 

Today i braved the weekend warriors in the Curse pipe (namely K-Q) with my smuggler (newly outfitted - the ECM burst sucked from my earlier fit) and got my pigs to market...
Had some scary moments, but for the most part it was a successful jaunt with some excitement at one point early on when i had to crash the CL gate in K-Q with two of my pilots at the same time - my hands were shaking so much i couldn't use my mouse properly. lol. I was stuck for a bit so waited around for some poor schmuck to get shot instead...

Waiting for a bison to run over took a while so i amused myself by making extreme range pounce points off the CL stargate with one of my three pilots until said bison showed up and i got all 3 in system and safely on my way to high sec. Unfortunately, on the way back my main character got shot in a drive by and lost a set of implants worth a total of 100m isk. ouch. and some rifter blueprint copies (whoop dee doo) 

 I got out fuel block BPOs (3 amarr;3 caldari) researched to max, about half dozen other original blueprints that were surplus (junk basically) although one is a small anti-explosive pump rig BPO researched to max that is going to be useful at my research complex (still Kourmonen's 5 lab stations.) Along with 3000 faction large ammo, some more tags for my collection, and a bunch of items worth more selling straight to jita buyers than reprocessing for the mineral value including a "Domination 100mn afterburner" that's worth about 100m isk right there.

 ***

Oh, as for other news i finally unlocked the last of my blueprints in my research complex stations and have been losing many ships by seneschal, in that area, from either game mechanics bugging up or pure stupid "ooooo shiny thing" lack of concentration and being AFK in low sec - just a symptom i've gotten lazy about safety near my research complex:
kerblam,
and,
then,
and,
then.
Hereticus fared a little better although he did lose a shiny Sabre interdictor inside a cargo hold of a viator. them's expensive! am i mad, bro?  
My main character has been really happy with a new ship (Sacrilege) and has, after many weeks of ratting, and very little dying (or killing) has gotten an iteration of the perfect fitting for PVE.

So, yeah, i'm happy raking in about 7m isk every 15minutes. I hope this new iteration makes alot more, especially once i successfully get the proper implants from high sec (see "shot in a drive by" killmail.)  Escalations off these lowly anomalies i'm doing aren't worth doing, so i'm missing out on juicy drops but i think i can manage - it's way more than i'm used to.  

*** 

 Do i want to really get back into mining? not while i'm on vacation. I do hope to get an Orca bought at some point when they get cheaper. 700m isk for one? yuck! here's the fit i'll be using: 
[Orca, Supertanker JesterTrek] 
Damage Control II 
Reinforced Bulkheads II 
Domination X-Large Shield Booster 
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II 
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I 
Medium Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 800 
Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization II 
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter 
Small Tractor Beam I 
Large Core Defense Field Extender I 
Large Core Defense Field Extender I 
Large Core Defense Field Extender I 
Vespa EC-600 x5 Hobgoblin II x5 

 Will i stick with this Alliance? Probably for a long time although i am being very careful about how much i invest in expensive things i might lose if things go tits up. I'm trying to keep it lean and mean in null sec and keep the fat transferred to my high sec carebear alt corp regularly. Speaking of which i just re-rented a couple dozen offices now that i have the income to maintain them, although i'll drop some of the more expensive ones once i'm sure which Ministry of Internal Order agent i want to go with - yup! I've gone from Theology Council fan to Sarum Family boi to finally the hated Ministry of Internal Order NPC corp as my favorite to run missions for. I didn't like the roleplaying aspect of doing that, but after learning about the amarrian epic arc storyline mission lvl4 agent belonging to said corp i couldn't say no any longer. I seriously want to get my corp's empire standing to a high enough level to get a 0.5 sec system POS system set up in the future and this corp is my ticket to that (especially since getting high empire standing means i can run the rest of the COSMOS agents for Amarr) 

Anyways, that's my current goals. My current fear is shown in a comment i made in Jester's blog, although while i wait for my penmanship to be cleared by the censors i just have the link to the comment i replied to  ...my reply's point had to do with how the insane risk aversion the more vocal members of the eve clientele tends to warp the "reality" of eve (in this case that "PVP is the core of the game"; aka Griefers) as a whole that outsiders hardly see as the reality at all, let alone the "perception" of eve in the mainstream (being "Eve is pro-PVP. yuck!"; aka Carebears)
The whole thing is a straw man. What I mean by that is outsiders are the silent majority who let the wallets do the walking, see the game as just another multiplayer game full of carebears and griefers as any game is - full of human folly - and leave the 'insiders' (aka the vocal griefers & carebears) content to weave a web of white/grey/black lies to their heart's content among the killers, socializers, achievers and explorers of a MMOG called "eve-online" who for the most part enjoy the element of risk in a game (but i think it got deleted out of hand for being flippant and poorly written)
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." ~Mark Twain (who attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli)

ah...my original comment was cleared. haha. here it is in all it's confuzzlement:
Hmmm...There was a sci-fi space simulation MMO called "JumpGate" that i played through beta and into retail. They were crippled just after trying to branch out into another MMO that tanked horribly.
That's one opinion. The other opinion was that the developers were sucked into the same "perception is reality" spiel touted by the vocal and rabidly vicious minority who wanted more player killing "because the core of the game was pvp"...
The game base dwindled and it is no more. Will that happen here? IMHO no it won't. there's a critical mass of carebears (the socializers and achievers) that attract the explorers such as myself. A critical mass that simply cannot be killed off by the griefers.
Besides, griefers and carebears alike abhor risk. each are prone to risk aversion. I think this colors the "reality" itself. The "perception" merely seduces the developers and clients alike to buy the 'straw horse' of the so called "reality" being beaten between opposing poles of the 'risk aversion' camps.
Outsiders neither care nor see the "reality" because 'reality' is soooo much different. The minority shout long and loud and the silent majority whose wallets do the walking have the last laugh. As long as CCP never lose sight of this i'm confident this game will never die.