Transitioning

I've been progressing as a miner ever since I entered the world of EVE 5 months ago. Other than a few minor skills to shore up here and there, Ive gotten about as far as I wish to go at this time. My character can fly a Hulk and process any non 0.0 ore with 100% efficiency. I have not yet trained Exhumers V nor do I plan to at this time. I think there are more important things I could be training in the 28+ days it would take.

I've been dabbling a little in manufacturing already. I understand the basics but I need to get more serious. What I really need to do is sit down and crunch some numbers. I've started to write my own program to help with this. I've looked at some of the ones already out there but I know the numbers and layout I'm looking for and I've not been satisfied with what's out there already. Writing my own program will also help me learn manufacturing better, too.

Tagged!

Well, I've been tagged by Blackheart. I am both surprised and humbled people actually read my blog. Most every EVE blog I read has been tagged already so I won't bother perpetuating the game, but I will list my 7 things.

Here are the rules of this game of tag:

• Link to the original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share 7 facts about myself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

And here are my 7 random and/or weird things:

• I am an alumni of The Ohio State University with a Computer Engineering degree. Go Bucks!
• My favorite television show is Stargate. I also watch a few of the reality shows like Survivor (I was a Bob fan) and The Amazing Race.
• I am a very Introverted person. Social situations are very difficult for me.
• My wife and I got our SCUBA certification earlier this year. We then went on a cruise to celebrate. The diving in Cozumel is awesome.
• I'm learning to become a real pilot. It's been a dream of mine since I was like 5 years old.
• I work for a company specializing in Grocery stores. Specifically, I work on Point of Sale systems.
• I am a member of Mensa.
  

Now that didn't take long at all

The Hulk is an amazing machine. I've already earned back my investment and then some! I suppose the current Tritanium prices are a huge help. Also, timing was good too. I bought my Hulk before the T2 market went all to hell (Hulk prices are up at least 20% in my area) due to the exploit fix.

Now I have a new problem: It takes frigging forever to haul all that ore and mineral to market. I'm seriously debating taking a month or so detour to train up Freighters (i.e. a Charon).

Sony RMT

Wow, the blog world sure is abuzz today with the announcement of Sony's new Station Cash RMT system. When Legends of Norrath and loot cards came around I figured it was just a matter of time before something like this appeared. Sony isn't dumb... if there is money to be made in a more direct manner they will implement and take advantage of it.

I think what we are seeing now is mere stepping stone. I predict "real" armor and weapons (not the "fluff" type) in the not so distant future. I don't think they will offer anything as good as raid "Fabled" drops for sale; but I do imagine they would offer something on par with "Legendary" gear.

Interesting.

Your tax dollars at work

The crew of people in every station that repackage things amaze me. No matter how worn or old something is these guys come in and clean it up to look brand new! And these are government people! I even saw one of them going around spraying that new ship smell over everything.

I've offered to pay them in the past (I had them come in and repackage my old Osprey mining ship) but they always politely refuse. I wish more people were like this. They know their job and they do it very well. No frills or drama involved, just results.

Hulk just a day away...

And I can't wait! Its taken a bit to save up all the ISK to buy a brand new Hulk (82 mil) and the Exhumers Book (25 mil) but I did it. I've got a day left now in Exhumers training and I'm there!

When I get my Hulk I'll be focusing on getting my coffers back up to pre-Hulk levels and training Drones. I've been so focused on Hulk training my other skills are lacking. After Drones I need to get a good PvE ship and fit it nicely for missioning. I've been thinking a Drake for this. My newly acquired drone skills should offset all the missile nerfing as of late.

After that, I'm not sure. Probably I will get those last few skills in Industry where I want them then switch to Science for Invention.

My PvP alt is almost ready for some fun now too. Just a little while left his learning skills then I'll start in on the core, frigate, and gunnery skills.

Progress Bar

Or is it progress circle? I love the new progress timer CCP added!

My Retriever can only hold one strip miner cycle worth of ore. So I stagger my strips with a 10 second or so delay in order to give me time to drag out ore from the first strip before the second strip completes. If the second strip miner cycle completes while the ore from the first is still in my cargo hold, I loose out on much of that ore. In addition, I need to restart that second strip which takes more time.

When I mine I do a lot of other things in the background and try to keep a loose eye on what's going on in EVE. I would try to look at my clock and estimate the cycle end time. Most of the time this works but occasionally I loose track of time and loose out on some ore.

But now, with the new progress timers, I can see how close to cycle end I am with a single glance! Very nice indeed!

Geeking Out

Had a great EVE weekend! My wife let me geek out pretty much all day Saturday. Did a lot of mining and catching up from my hiatus the last few weeks.

Spent most of the morning mining. I replenished the stock of most all my minerals and sold what I had excess of. Tritanium is going for the highest I have ever seen it so I concentrated a lot of effort here. Made a small bundle but it was short lived.

I spent the afternoon identifying BPO's worth purchasing. So I bought about half a dozen BPO's in the late afternoon. ISK is easy come easy go I suppose... Threw most of the BPO's into ME research and then threw some of my older BPO's, which have already have ME, into PE research. I wish the ME research queues were as short at the PE ones. I've been wanting to get PE research done on my older BPO's for some time, it was nice to finally start this process.

Now I have a conflict though. As I mentioned a few days back I am less than a month from flying a Hulk so I really need to start saving for that. There are also some some expensive skill books I will be needing to buy here in a few weeks. I probably should not be spending the ISK like I did this weekend. But you need to spend ISK to make ISK.

More than I asked for

I was checking out my sales log last night and to my surprise there are people paying more for the stuff I am selling than I asked. Sometimes way more!

Is there some sort of mechanic in the game I have missed? When I look for goods to buy I open up the market window, search the item, and then figure out the cheapest price in a reasonable amount of jumps. I don't really see a way to pay more for an item than is asked unless you actually type it into the buy window.

Perhaps people are just so thrilled to be paying out ISK they feel obligated to tip me for the opportunity.

Update

Sorry for the lack up updates recently but I had some last minute work related travels a few weeks back. Then as soon as I get home I was off to the Caribbean for a week long cruise. Did some Scuba diving and shopping. Saw some Mayan ruins too. Fun times! Anyway back now.

My first batch of manufacturing goods were all sold. Made a decent profit of around 15%. I stuck another few jobs in the oven. They will be ready for sale end of week. My main is still working towards her Hulk, under a month of skill training now. I can't wait.

My PvP alt is still skilling up learning. It's going to be a while before I do anything serious with him so nothing much else to report.

Back in Business! Again!

Ugh... I seem to be having the worst luck lately...

I booted up my computer this past Friday evening and ended up with a black screen! I would get my Vista login prompt just fine... I'd log in... and that was that. I had a black screen with only a mouse cursor visible.

I rebooted and rebooted and tried safe mode... nothing seemed to get rid of my black screen. I even tried a restore point (using the Vista install disk restore function) and still nothing worked.

After consulting the all knowing Google, this is apparently a known issue. And the only way to fix is a re-install of Vista. I read that there was some luck with a settings change but that presumed you could get into Vista at least in safe mode.

So that is how I spent my weekend... re-installing Vista and recovering my data.

Everything is back up now though. My BPO's come out research early next month so I will start manufacturing soon. Should be fun and interesting.

Back in Business!

Yay! Power got restored yesterday! What a relief. Did two loads of dish washing, a load of laundry, went to the store to partially repopulate the refrigerator. Life is getting back to normal.

In my downtime I decided I will be getting a second account for sure. Was thinking of doing this tonight. Going to create a Caldari (all my other chars are Caldari) PvP build and get him started on learning skills. It will be a while before I do anything serious with him so training will be good.

Haha! I said "him"!

Its odd... all my other chars are industry types and female. But for my PvP I want a male. Not sure why... just how it is I suppose. In EQ2 all my healers were female. I couldn't bring myself to roll a male healer. Not trying to be sexist or anything, just pointing out an oddity.

Still No Power...

Entered day 10 of no power a few hours ago. This is why there have been no updates here.

On the bright side there are rumors of power trucks in my area at home. I called the power company and reported my outage again... for the 25 time. Sigh...

IKE

IKE means no EVE :(

The remnants of IKE rolled through my area Sunday afternoon and wiped out power to my house. Power has not been restored yet either. Hopefully it will be back soon.

Thankfully I switched to a long skill Sunday morning!

Second Account?

I'm seriously considering the Power of 2 promotion from EVE. I've been debating now for a while on getting a second account to train up a PvP alt. Seems this is a perfect opportunity to do so at a reduced rate. I'm not quite when I would start playing the alt, but I could at least start a training program.

I rolled an alt on my primary account last night and formed a corp just to play around. I'm still trying to make heads and tails of how to setup all the Divisions and Wallets. Not sure if they are used for specific tasks (i.e. BPO purchases, research) or more generic/broader purposes (i.e. Industry, Trade). Also, I need to figure out how to partition off corp members and what they have access to.

One would think a handy corp setup guide would be out there somewhere. Seems like there are guides for every other topic. But alas, I couldn't find one...

My eventual goal is to get my current main in the corp and then generate lots of ISK to support my PvP.

Your virtual life is real!

At least if the many-worlds interpretation is correct...

Personally, I don't care for this particular theory. But if it were true then everything you are doing in EVE is a reality somewhere. There is really an asteroid belt with the same configuration you are mining currently. The region you are in exists in the exact same layout. The ship you are piloting is real, and stations exist! There is another person in that ship at that point in space moving in the same direction.

Basically any configuration of matter you can think of exists in an alternate world somewhere. The EVE virtual world presents such a configuration. Therefore your virtual life is real.

I think the theory breaks down when teleportation comes into play (i.e. clone jumping, jump gates, faster than light travel). But if you can ignore this and just think of strict matter/material configurations, I believe the EVE virtual universe is a valid realization of many-worlds. It is out there somewhere, amongst the infinite realities.

Incidentally... this would also make a lot of movies and television possibly real too. At least for the most part (can The Force really exist?). Also a lot of other MMO's.

An Experiment

I was out mining Friday night when in warps some random Pirate to the belt I was in. For the most part, I'm not to worried about these guys because I mine only in high sec currently. But this one made a line right for me, targeted me, and orbited me for a few minutes. I just kept mining away and few minutes later he warped off... but it got me thinking.

Next time this occurs I think I'll have a little fun. I'll target back and drop a jetcan with one Veldspar in it or something (or multiple jet cans). Basically, try to take as much of their time up as possible just to screw with them.

Should be interesting. I figure if they can have so much fun with poor little defenseless miners why not have some fun back?

Level II missions available

Well, as the title suggests I finally have a few level II mission agents available to me. I earned enough standing with Caldari Navy over the weekend. Have not tried any yet... I need to get my drone skills up and find a good Cruiser build first.

I will finally have the magical Refining V, Refining Efficiency IV, and Ore Processing I in a few hours. So I can refine at a 100% minus whatever the station takes. I'm working on that though (see above)...

Skill points

I was thinking today and had an interesting thought...

Would you pay double subscription price to earn skills twice as fast?

Basically you get double the skill earn rate for paying twice as much money in EVE. If your subscription is $15 per month you would pay $30. If you are earning 2000 skill points per hour, you would now earn 4000.

I bet a lot of casual players (such as myself) with limited playing time who have RL responsibilities and family might do this. Heck, I read a lot of players pay for two accounts already... one for earning ISK and one for PvP.

Could EVE's economy support this? Would there be massive inflation? If enough people did this a lot more ISK would be available per player. But then again, a lot more spending would be going on as players would access better ships and better fittings quicker.

Jet Can Booby Traps

I think CCP should introduce a new item called Jet Can Booby Trap. The idea is, you place this item in your jet can, arm it, and there it sits waiting for a victim. When an unsuspecting can flipper comes along (perhaps anyone not in your fleet?) and opens your can, BLAM! It goes off, dealing lots of damage to the can flipper.

Of course this may flag you attackable to the can flipper.

So much to do, so little time...

I am nearing the 2,000,000 SP mark and there is so much I want to accomplish! It's hard to pick an area to skill up when there lots of areas I would like to get into.

I've got 7 skill plans currently:
1) Trade (to make buying and selling easier)
2) Industry (for manufacturing things)
3) Learning (to learn skills faster)
4) Retriever (for better mining capability)
5) Science (get into T2 research)
6) Drones (for better defense and offense)
7) Engineering (for better defense)

My plan of attack is to train whatever will net me more ISK first. Problem is this isn't necessarily the funnest route to follow. So I find myself drifting from plan to plan saying "oh, that would be cool lets train that!"

Trivia

There was a fellow by the name of Star (his last name escapes me at the moment) in NPC Corp chat last night doing trivia for ISK (the in game currency). Wow... good times. He was giving away anywhere from 1 million to 5 million for each correct answer. And to a bunch of noobs, this is big bucks!

A lot of his questions were NES and SNES RPG related. He brought back a lot of memories. Memories of Dragon Warrior, Crystalis, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy III. Fond times those were.

I remember one time in particular in Dragon Warrior. There was a boss battle that you were supposed to loose to. Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would reboot the console anytime I was loosing. So this went on for a week or so until one day I must have forgot... I died... and low and behold the game continued! LOL!

Rating Fun

Saw this today over at CrazyKinux's and it got me thinking:

Does every game need to be a grade-A blockbuster title? Would you be willing to play more average games or should every game shoot for the 10.0 rating?

For me, the answer is no. I believe its more about fun for me. Is the game in question fun to play? If it is fun, I will invest my time and money whether or not the game is considered a blockbuster. Take the game Peggle as an example... this is a fun game to play (the wife loves it). Certainly not a blockbuster... nor a very long lasting game... but it is cheap ($10 on Steam) and definitely fun to play.

The second question, should every game shoot for a 10.0 rating, is a bit more complicated. I think every game should shoot to be the best it can be. But I don't believe a game needs to be a perfect 10.0. However, there is a line in their somewhere between what's acceptable and what's not. Let us say this line of acceptance is a X rating.

If your game is below X rating, it will simply not keep an audience for very long (despite how much hype you put into it). MMO's that fail to deliver content are a prime example of this. Single player games that repeat the same boring crap over and over are also in this group. If your game is at or above the X rating, you are doing okay.

Where is this line though? That is the real question. This line varies from person to person and genre to genre. In my opinion, systems like Metacritic do a pretty decent job in figuring this all out. Super Mario Galaxy is 97 (of 100), it is probably fun for a lot of people. Team Fortess 2 is rates 92, its probably fun too. Beijing 2008 is 60, probably not as fun.

I'd like to get back to the first question again though. I think there is a more interesting discussion here. CrazyKinux in his post mentions money as a factor.

Does more money equate to more fun? Is it possible to create a fun/dollar measurement?

In the above, I gave my $10 game of Peggle as an example. Let try and create a fun factor measurement for this game. This game is fun for 10-20 hours... so 15 hours of fun over $10 is 1.5.

I also play EVE, which is $15 a month. I play for a few hours each night most nights a week... lets say 60 hours a month. Now half of this time is grinding to get money or whatnot (not fun) so 30 hours over $15 is 2. This sounds logical... I'd rather play EVE over Peggle, and its higher rated.

Blackjack is a fun game to play. Using basic strategy (if you don't you should!) the house odds are approx. 0.5%... which is $0.05 per $10.00 bet. Lets say a good dealer performs 3 deals a minute... that's 180 deals an hour... or $9.00 an hour. So the fun rating here is only 0.11. But I'd much rather play blackjack over any computer game.

Since blackjack costs more money does it make it more fun? Is it more fun to own a home that is twice as big and expensive? What about a car?

You read all the time about people grinding to get epic weapons or armor in various MMO's. Or bigger and better fitted ships in EVE. These are very expensive in game items that take a lot of time/money to earn! It is more fun to own these items?

I'm not so sure I have an answer to these questions. I'm also not so sure one can put a price tag on fun.

It sure is fun thinking about these things... and that doesn't cost a whole lot. Hmm...

Manufacturing

I've been doing a bit of reading and have decided I would eventually like to get into manufacturing. I'm still a while away from doing this... I want to get my refining skills and manufacturing skills up to par before I begin.

BPO's (blueprints) need to be researched for a while to make them profitable. Apparently there are two types of research to perform on a BPO: ME (material efficiency) and PE (production efficiency). ME will make it so you spend less resources when you build and PE will reduce the time it takes to build.

To do ME research you need to create a job on your BPO. I read that the ME queues for NPC stations are horrendous... apparently they are averaging 30 days! That's crazy! When I got in game I decided to check it out for myself, and it was true.

But this could work to my advantage somewhat, as I am not quite ready to manufacture. So I invested about 8 million ISK on 5 BPO's and researching them to ME 10. They will be ready in about 40-50 days.

I have 40-50 days to get my manufacturing/mining skills up to snuff. I was kind of disappointed in having to spend the ISK now, but hopefully it will pay off in the long run. I was saving up for my last 3 advanced learning books. They will just have to wait a little while longer.

Why I won't go near Low Sec

As I wrote earlier, I am a complete newb to EVE. But I've read enough pirate blogs and visited the forums often enough to realize low sec is a place to avoid at all costs!

So when I saw Letrange's post today right here, I couldn't believe it. He explains the reasons so well!

I was not aware CCP had balance/population issues here. But it makes sense.

My life as an Industrialist

So I started playing EVE a few weeks ago... really fun game. There is so much depth and complexity its amazing (almost daunting even). The skill system is nice too, makes me feel like I am accomplishing something even while I am not logged in (I only have a few hours each night to play). I've found the EVEMon and EFT utilities already and use them. How anybody could anyone play EVE without them?

After getting through the tutorial I took up life as a miner in Lonetrek. I've worked myself up to an Osprey and Badger II already, so I'm generating a fairly nice income, at least for a newbie. A RL buddie of mine also started playing.

We were doing some jetcan mining a week ago when a griefer (Nathaniel Hull) warped into our belt. I quickly warped out to grab my hauler in hopes I could make it back before the pirate could flip our can. Unfortunately I didn't make it back in time and the can was flipped. It was actually quite funny... we were both watching him and he was watching us. He trying to get us to react by sending us messages by changing the name of his jetcan. My friend had a cheap ship so he attacked while I grabbed the ore and warped back to the station. My friend lost his ship, but the ore was enough to recoup his loss. It was actually a lot of fun, in spite of losing a ship.

I looked up on battleclinic this Nathaniel Hull guy... hes got history in this game going all the way back to April of 2006. It seems really pathetic to me to be still flipping cans after 2.5 years... wonder why he hasn't moved on.

The Goofy Challenge

It all started with a shirt... A simple orange shirt with Goofy (the Disney character) and the words "race and a half" on it. That's all it took. The idea was planted... the seed was sown. Orange isn't even my color... but I knew at that moment I had to run the Goofy Challenge. But when?

My wife decided middle of last year to run/walk the 2008 Disney marathon in Orlando. She trained for the latter half of 2008 and we both went down to Florida for the event. I intended this marathon to be my second... I wanted to run the 2007 New York marathon but ended up with a knee injury that prevented this. But my knee was better at the time and good enough to join my wife. I hadn't done any serious running for a few months...

So there we were, a few days before the marathon at the expo. That's when I saw the shirt. And I really wanted it! I bought a navy blue marathon shirt that day as inspiration/reward to complete the marathon. My wife had no confidence issues but she does wish she had bought a shirt in hind sight.

Race day was gorgeous. We had some mist in the morning so it was cool outside (perfect running weather if you ask me). It did get a bit warm as the day progressed... but the experience of the race was just phenomenal. It was great! I knew shortly after crossing the finish line I was signing up for the 2009 Goofy Challenge. And dragging as many of my family into it as possible (my father and brother are runners too).

So here I am today, having not run even a mile since the marathon in January. I'm trying to find inspiration. I've been pretty much burnt out on everything lately... in a rut of sorts. And tired...

I plotted out my training schedule for this year. My formal training starts week of June 15th. I need to run a little before then though. And I need to do my knee exercises. When I got my knee injury the doctors found some mechanical issues in my knees and gave me some strengthening exercises to perform. Of course I have not been doing them...

Sigh...