PoS shenanigans
Posted: 2010-01-22 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: eve online, gank, heavy interdictor, interdictor, lowsec, occator, onyx, pos, pos management, viator, wormhole 2 CommentsLast night, I had an Eve-related dream. I was dual boxing, moving one character on a haul run to empire out of a wormhole, and running a sleeper site on the other in a dominix. In the dream, I kept falling asleep, and waking up and seeing the hauling character floating visible at a WH with a dude flashing red approaching me. I kept telling it to run, then tabbing to the sleeper fight and managing drones, falling asleep again, ectera. Eventually, I screamed “I can do this” in the dream and woke up.
The probable reason behind that dream, besides too many cheese sandwiches, was that the day before, through a varying series of coincidences, I found myself with 900 mil and no idea what to spend it on. After laughing and joking with several people, the responses were:
Market investing
“give it to me lulz”
buy a rattlesnake
Save it
Go capital.
Buy a covetor BPO
After realizing that none of the above options really had any profitable reward, I remebered one of my Eve-resolutions: to manage a PoS. So, asking around in corp, ny alt’s corp, my alt’s alliance, the channel “wspace colonists” and “pos funtime” I had a general idea of what to expect.
Most of the responses told me that Pos management was like trying to keep plates spinning, and managing W-space PoSes was like keeping plates spinning and only being allowed to touch them every six hours.
Disregarding the negative comments(like the idiot I so often am), On the next trip out I bought two simple reaction arrays(24 mil), some minerals(10 mil), and some silos(15 mil). I anchored them, onlined them, took them back offline, put the right BPs and materials in them, onlined them, put them online again, unanchored them and moved everything closer together, onlined it again, cursed at the PoS management tab for a few minutes and finally had everything running smoothly, with cadmium and mercury going in one side and unrefined dysporite coming out the other.
Later, while buying iced tea, saltine crackers and nacho cheese I thought about tech II components, how everyone was whining about how much they cost, so, figuring it was only a small step forward, decided to revamp from small time alchemy to big time minerals to complex materials reactions.
Later still, while enjoying nacho cheese, saltine crackers and iced tea(10$ for three day supply), I scanned an exit to lowsec and headed to jita, buying a large tower(350 mil), fuel for a few days(10 mil), materials for a few days(150 mil, effing dysprosium), a complex array(22 mil), a simple array(10 mil), and assorted blueprints(10 mil), and a small amount of guns and ammo(15 mil). Hauling all of this to our lowsec entered(lowsec->c3->c5->c6->c6->c6->c5->us), I got into home WH, and started anchoring the tower. Things went well, I put the fuel I had purchased in the fuel thingy, and pressed online.
I was immediate informed that I had forgotten liquid ozone and heavy water, and that the static had just gone end of lifetime.
Sneaking over to the PoS already established by a corp mate, who also handles the K-space hauling(Let’s call him Captain Forgiveful), I removed some heavy water and liquid ozone from our rorqual fuel tab in the corp hangar, leaving an IOU. Fifteen minutes later, I realized I had forgotten strontium. Another trip and IOU followed.
Eventually, I got the complex array and simple array anchored, the silos and coupling arrays arranged in a tasteful, yet convenient fashion, and everything running smoothly. I went to bed(4 am) and woke up the next morning, waited for the static to collapse, scanned a new one, scanned a route to K-space(c5->C6->c4->c4->c3->lowsec).
Have I mentioned that I reeeeeeeally hate scanning?
Getting a tally of fuel and materials, I only had 7k m3 of product to haul out, but was going to need like 35k m3 of fuel and materials. So, I fit my Occator for maximum escaping capability(+6 warp strength, 33k tank), and headed through lowsec with 50 mil of product in my cargo, as well as the can “Haav’s painful memories”, a can with a long and meandering story. Essentially, I had it with me mining in highsec, had my first hulk in it when I went to nullsec, was the only cargo container to survive when we were violently pushed out of nullsec, used in W-space to hold personal belongings for the last three months, ectera.
The first jump went smoothly. On the second gate(I was scouting w/ my alt in a capsule), there was a red pirate Abbadon. Hoping he didn’t have four warp scramblers fit, I started warping to the next gate. To my surprise, he warped with me. The next gate had a typhoon and two other Bss, one of which opened fire. Panicking, I jumped through the gate and warped to the next one before the other two could lock me. The gate was clear, I jumped and saw two BSs and an Onxy. I briefly mused on what an Onyx was, and getting no other mental connection than a rock-type pokemon that evolved into Steelix, engaged warp and watched unhappily as he scrammed me completely, painfully reminding me that in addition to tail whip, tackle and screech, an Onyx was a heavy interdictor that could fit a script to get a warp scrambler with infinite strength. The The Occator popped, I warped my pod out, posted a humorous comment in local and continued onto Jita. With my meager funds, I purchased a day of fuel, and went back through the pipe in a Viator (cloaky hauler) and an unfit itty to distract people so the Viator could hide. Both ships made it back into the WH safely w/ a day of fuel.
Reactions are currently underway at a projected profit of 5 mil/hr, and I am currently flat effing broke :P.
Later, I bought the container back from the scramming dudes for a mil, after selling some product. I know it could’ve been another container but figured my odds were good.
i havent checked reaction prices lately, but i quit running them, and sold back my silo/reaction blueprints because the margins of profit were too small. maybe it’s picked up in the last month but i’d check your numbers again.
reactions can be decent passive income as long as you keep up with fuel, I run 3 towers (1 for simples, 2 for complex’s) and it can be fun, theres a pretty decent program i use called MyPOS i use to setup and calculate fuel costs, usually for a few months at a time, also if you want to do any bpo research you should have enough space to anchor a couple labs, decent investment over the long run, youll make your money back 😉