Son of Dominion nullsec mining
Posted: 2009-12-23 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: changes, dominion, Dominion mining changes, eve online, mining, wormhole 12 CommentsLet me just start this with a phrase I’ve always, always wanted to use but could never achieve the correct context:
I effing called it.
As of Dominion, WH mining is no longer the best mining profitable task, having been completely outstripped by nullsec mining. For the chain of logic that lead to this conclusion, look no further than the following paragraphs:
I was sitting in a WH belt, mining and thinking about how much I love mining in WHs, when I saw probes on the directional. Entering a professional state of panic, I told my ship to warp to PoS and waited the agonizing seven seconds before my 200 mil ship was safe, all the while asking if the probes were ours or someone trying to kill us for the fun of it.
The probes weren’t ours, so you can imagine my surprise when I wasn’t trapped in a bubble on my way to the PoS; and the greater surprise I had when the pilot convoed me to say hi and not “Grrr, Grrr, you win this time, but we will have your very expensive ship for our killboards. Arrrrgh” or whatever pirates say. Apparently, through some act forgotten to me and him, our respective corporations had set each other to blue, which was strange, as his corporation was a nullsec habiter and we were a highsec mining corp. He revealed himself as an old WH miner that left the WH for nullsec come Dominion, with good reason, so he said. He invited me for a look around his nullsec, as his alliance and all nearby alliances were NBDS. Immediately suspicious, I took my sister gear off my covops, slapped on a normal scanner and flew after him. After flying past an impressive warp bubble on a gate:
We made it to his alliance’s industry V system, and he excused himself while I scanned out some gravs. The small ones were easy to get too, and contained about 80k of ABC ores, and the large ones were slippery, but similarly had a goodly amount of ABC ores and some BS wrecks, one of which I found a survey scanner on, one of the items we never seem to have in the wormhole.
The dude explained to me that the belts would refresh themselves about every 36 hours, and were able to support thirty hulks with orca and rorqual bonuses happily, aside from some hostile stealth bombers who liked to AFK in system.
The feeling I was experiencing at this moment was akin to beating your head against a brick wall when suddenly someone walks up and points out a Styrofoam wall a few feet to your left. That… dispenses candy or something when you beat your head against it. This nullsec system had cyno jammers up for five systems in any direction, local chat, an intel channel to point out threats five jumps before they came near, and most mortifying of all, a station where the ABCs that in the WH we had been carefully compressing and hauling slowly to Jita, were being refined at a 4% tax w/ a 100% yield.
In Apoc, the WH was king. It seems that the WH has been king for too long, and I have heard from CCP from somewhere that “We never intended to have long-term habilitation in wormholes”, which would probably explain why grav sites stop appearing in our WHs after a week and a half, and why we can’t set up moon miners.
If CCP wants to shift focus from WH mining to nullsec mining, that’s fine. I mean, Apoc made WHs king, now Dominion comes along with vast changes to nullsec, they’re gonna want attention to nullsec more, and better belts seems the best way to do it. It just seems ta me that they overdid it just a tad. Unless a nigh-infinite source of every conceivable ore type next to a perfect refiner seems reasonable to someone out there?
(Actually, the dude told me that they don’t have enough tritanium for their manufacturing, so they’ve been jump freightering it in. I kid you not)
Similarly heard from the dude, CCP made the belts overly rich because they expected the changes in sovereignty to make everyone and his dog start fighting bloodily over every square mile of space-dust. Since in actuality, the big alliances are consolidating their space to conserve cash and there really being no reason to expand, there’s much, much less fighting than expected, the market is going/already has been flooded w/ lowsec minerals, ecetera. I really hope that CCP makes a few small tweaks to these gravs before WH turns into the equivalent of mining veldspar in lowsec with local minimized, one jump from highsec.
Also, the dude explained to me how to use that newfangled sovereignty button for something other than remembering how to spell sovereignty, and it’s pretty detailed on every concivable system, but it is odd that there’s been seven ships and one pod destroyed in my wormhole’s “region”, whatever that is.
Overkill isn’t fast enough!
Posted: 2009-12-22 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: battlecruiser, caldari, cruiser, eve online, level one, level two, mining, mission running, ships 6 CommentsWhen I first started Eve, after struggling through the tutorial, giving up halfway through, getting lost twice, losing a cruiser in nullsec, lowsec and to some very prepared rats with a warp scrambler(Still have no idea how that happened), I started mining in, in order, rookie ship, navitas, two navitas’, an exequror, a brutix, a retriever, a covetor, a borrowed mawkinaw and my first hulk, followed soon after by my second, third, fourth and fifth hulk.
With highsec mining, you can practically fall asleep at the laser with no problems (Only practically, lost hulk #3 that way), and with WH mining you need to constantly be aware, but with good returns promised. Grinding level one missions, however, is the most annoying thing I’ve done in Eve since I got into an argument with some Dead Terrorist gate campers on whether or not they were simply stargazing. After they blew up my industrial
“We thought it was a comet about to hit us and took preemptive measures”
With what I would laughably call my combat alt, a month old character able to fly up to Caldari BS and baseline missile skills, L1 missions have that special combination of arduousness and simplicity that leaves me irritated out of my mind. This ironically coming from the person who mines for five hours straight often and doesn’t complain about the monotony.
Even with my inhuman tolerance for boredom, these things are irritating. My alt is compitent enough that her caracal eliminates frigate threats before they even know they’re threats, which was fun for the first ten-odd missions, but every other mission, the frigates take three to four missiles before they’re blown ta smithereens, and when you can’t tell which kind of frigate is going to take three missiles, I usually assign two assault launchers to my first two targets and a heavy missile launcher n target painter to the third and hope my missile find some sort of exhaust port.
And, even with the mission type I’m running (Internal security), I’ll eventually get chain missions with courier requirements, which are similarly samey while different enough it takes conscious thought to work out where to go.
Here’s my problem: with mining, you can unfocus your brain to the point that every three minutes, you drag the ore to the can then unfocus your brain again, hence the name “miningzen”. WH mining isn’t too different. You click the mouse every ten seconds, if your directional doesn’t scream at you, you get to live another ten seconds. The excitement and terror wears off about three days after your last ganking encounter and it’s back to monotonous clicking over and over.
With l1 missions, you have to click the mouse all over the place, finding where to go for the mission, who to shoot/not shoot/look at until you get a complete flashy journal, warp back, ask for a new mission. It’s so mind-numbingly boring while at the same time requiring enough thought that I can’t fall into a stupor while doing it.
While missions are the way they are, I’m afraid to ask CCP to change them or for people to rally behind me for more excitement, since if I do they’ll probably make mining more exciting in a completely horrible way, like make you keep your ship pointed at the asteroid or something silly. What I’m asking from the missioners who read this blog to laugh at miners or for something to do as their t2 fitted domi’s slice through L4 missions, is what Caldari ship n fit should I be using to make this task easier? I’m currently running w/ 4 assault launchers w/ random missiles, one heavy missile launcher, two ballistic controls, a medium shield booster, target painter and afterburner. Suggestions?
P.S. Anyone else find it silly that “prototype exploration ship”, the Zephyr, is one of the ship types acceptable for combat missions?
Fly to the warp-point and wait for your serpantis contact to show up.
It’s where they keep the nuclear wessels
Posted: 2009-12-21 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: english, eve online, german, russian, translation, translator 6 CommentsAt first, when I heard that eve was worldwide in its player base, I thought nothing of it. There were corps that didn’t speak English well, there were language channels for people that spoke other languages, there was some huge russian alliance I didn’t want to mess with, etc, etc.
It’s been a few months since then, and in three years, four weeks of which were spent on an exchange trip in Germany, the language barrier has never been more of an irritant.
Months ago, I logged onto the WH pos to find a bunch of interceptors flying around our guns, exhausting our missile ammo. I politely asked why they were doing this, and they replied that they were showing us why we needed webbers. After a few more minutes, they started talking amounst eachother in German, and me, with my year and a half of high school German, tried to join. Predictably, I was laughed at in ways that I couldn’t understand.
A few weeks before that, I was able to hold a pleasant conversation for a few minutes with Cold Steel alliance for a few verbal rounds before they defaulted to eve-german and totally lost me.
Ad of course, there was the whole Black Wing incident with the carrier bounce and whatnot, but they knew enough English to be confused for a native speaker. Anyway, language isn’t too much of a problem because in WH space, you rarely see anyone and even rarer see anyone who isn’t trying to kill you before you can say “Wie stehts du?”. So, I’ve attributed the four to five encounters with Russian players in the WH to be entire coincidence.
First, we scanned down a nullsec WH that went to the middle of shadow of xxdeathxx territory. We weakened the WH considerably, so all they could send in was a few frigates. They buzzed us, we ran to the pos, they left, we found one of the wrecks in a sleeper site later on. In hindsight, leaving cans named with insults clumsily translated with an online translator wasn’t the most mature response, especially since we couldn’t find them after I launched them…..
Well, if anyone finds an empty C5 with several cans in clumsy Russian questioning your ancestry, you don’t have to care.
Then, we scanned a neighboring WH with a tower called “cool breese” or something, in Russian. Since we hadn’t yet found a way to dislodge the cans, we left a secure can at the WH exit saying “Please ignore insults” with some spirits and tobacco in it. We checked back in an hour with the can untouched and the WH closed.
Anyway, getting to the actual language portion, I was hauling 500 blocks of compressed ABC out a WH in my trusty itty V when I ran into another Itty V doing presumably the same thing. I opened a convo to say, essentially, “Hi, don’t shoot me, I’ve got 3 cloaked BSs defending me” while simultaneously asking in corp if there was anyone who could guard me as I moved the last hundred blocks out. After the second paragraph of threats and assurances, the dude informed me that he couldn’t speak english and to please type slower. Immediately switching gears out of embarrassment, I pulled up an online translator and through his two years of english and my typing, we managed to say hi. I friended him, in case I needed his advice or translation.
Only two more russky encounters, stand firm.
First, the time I lost my covops in a covops fight was against two russian dudes, one of which linked a video of a person laughing at me and the other said
“Понятно, это как старый русский говорили в советские дорога Россия вилки вы”
If anyone would mind translating that, it’d be appreciated. Anyway, the last and latest encounter was earlier in the week, when, trying to find an exit, I ran into a c6. Subsequently, I ran into another C6. On the third C6, I was getting irritated but found a dark blood medium POS on the scanner. Taking a quick look, the 1.2 bil tower had a webber array, four large laser turrets and four small laser turrets, several biochemical, polymer reactor arrays, ect. I noticed sister scan probes on the directional and went back to the first c6, jettisoning the can w/ the neighboring WH BMs, figuring that he’d find them eventually and if I saved him some trouble, he might tell us, say, an exit he’d found. Eventually, the same number of scan probes he had been using appeared, and I tried drawing him out in local. No luck was too be had, but as I sat 50km off our WH, I watched as a Minmatar covops uncloaked briefly and jumped to our C5. Convoing the pilot, I said hi, explained that our WH had no exits, and asked if he had found any.
He replied that he didn’t speak english.
After a few short sentences he told me that he was russian, so, with the handy-dandy in game browser I opened a free translation software and translated “Can you understand this?”.
He replied with “your talk crazi”.
At this point, he closed out of the convo and presumably closed the WH. I say presumably because I closed out after him and made a turkey sandwich.
It seems to me that people in an international game are going to need translators at some point, and xxdeath is definitely going to need them come Dust, since I can probably count the number of native russian consolers on one hand with four fingers missing (hyperbole).
It looks to me that there’s a niche for people who speak two languages, with a possibility of a “translators channel”, or maybe it’s the foreign corps duty for them to have an English speaker. Or is it just me, and everyone else never has to talk with someone who can’t talk to them? I mean, I’d pay for someone to help me explain a problem to a dude in Deutschland. Not very much, but I’m sure Entity would trade several ships for a translator if he was trying to buy officer mods from a lucky 10/10 plex runner.
Disclaimer: I in no way resemble, know or otherwise interact with Entity. Also, I tried asking in the Russian language channel for translation services and they ignored me >.>
сейф мухи
Ooooo, shiny. Heere, shiny shiny shiny
Posted: 2009-12-20 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: gank, profit, ships, sleeper, wormhole, Zephyr 3 CommentsDon’t propel footwear at me, but I’m gonna reference another MMO. Most if not all of you were young at some point.
For those of you who have suddenly been transported to the hippie era, catch up to me when you can.
When I was in middle school, a friend told me about a new, free, exciting online game called Runescape. By Eve standards, a terrifyingly simple game where in your dps was determined by your strength and attack stats, your tank was your defense stat and whatever armor you happened to be wearing at the time, and that was it. The market would sell items and buy items from players at a price set by GMs, it was infested by L33tspeakers, ect, ect.
The reason I cornered you and started rambling about how online games stunted my childhood is because of one specific item in Runescape, called the Party hat. Way back in 2000 or some year before I started playing, Jagex (the makers of Runescape) released party crackers on new years eve. These things, when pulled, would make a small sparkle animation give one of the pullers a party hat, an equippable, tradable item that had no effect on anything at all, except to make the players around you think “Hey, that guy knows how to pull a party cracker”.
At time of last checking (six months ago), party hats are worth 30 million gold pieces. In Eve terms, that’s about two to three bil, and in comparison, the last thing I did before quitting Runescape was utilize the game’s only passive income mechanic and, after four or five months, buy a set of the best, coolest-looking armor there was, with a matching scimitar, battleaxe, longsword, 2-hander, and boots for 10 mil.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make somewhere was that, even in a carefully-controlled market, people want what can no longer be found. The Zephyr is an example of this, since the moment people got their hands on them for the first time, they were going for 50 mil in dodixie. The big difference from Runescape, tho, is that resentful people who want the Zephyr and don’t want to pay for it are going to blow you out of the sky faster than you can say “Hai guyz lookit mai cul ship”.
Functionality wise, it’s a scan ship without bonuses, slower than a shuttle. It’s only saving feature, that Sleepers won’t try to kill it, will lead to some nice screenshots but that’s about it. The lack of defensive, offensive, or cloaking capabilities means that you had best know how to avoid combat probes should someone else be in the WH with you, with an actual scan ship which, from past experience, has enough offensive capabilities to kill a frigate sized ship. Since the average new eve online player as of a few months ago doesn’t know what combat probes are, I’d say that as soon as killmails start accepting the new ship data, we’re gonna see lots of wrecks in wormholes.
Actually, it’s other saving feature, the fact that you can fly around pretending to be Count Dooku for a few brief, wonderful moments until the aforementioned blowing out of the sky shenanigans, makes it a nice ship IMO. The unique model and jerks(read again: players) destroying everyone else’s Zephyr will ensure that four to five years from now; you’ll probably be able to trade one for a Mothership. Sorry, super-carrier.
Hulkamania running wiiiiiild!
Posted: 2009-12-19 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: history, hulk, industry, mining, profit, scanning, ships, wormhole 8 CommentsPlease don’t throw something at me, but I’m going to draw a comparison to WoW and Eve. In WoW, each server has about 2-3 thousand people. The equivalent of our market is an auction house, of which there are three of. There is no “Want to buy” option, and you can only post auctions, with buyouts.
Here’s where I’m going with this: cornering the market is fairly easy. For those who enjoy shooting things instead of making spreadsheets, let me explain: cornering the market is basically where you feel like increasing your wealth by 30% or so, by making other people complain. The only requirement to do this is to have so much ISK or gold pieces or whatever that a new player would sell a kidney to get as much as you have. In Eve, by comparison, with fifty thousand players online on a good day, you need so much cash a new player would murder a small town for their organs before you can think about cornering. Add to that that the issue I’m griping about today cost 100 mil before the cornering, don’t wonder if you see 3-4 towns go off the map soon.
Where were all these rich players when I was mining in a navitas?
The base concept is simple: pick something that everybody wants, say, hulks, or something, and buy all of them on the market, and relist them at 120% of the price you paid. As regular people see your sell orders for 120 mil, they will either undercut you by a little or a lot. If it’s a lot, like, say, 105 mil, then buy their order and relist it at 120 mil. If it’s around 119.5 mil, either buy it or ignore it if you’re low on funds and might need to buy more of the ships at 100 mil. Anyway, what this does is make all the miners very upset because they still really, really badly want hulks but they have to pay more, and since you have all the hulks, they have to buy from you. eventually, your strategy makes critical mass and you either run out of money and the price goes back down, or the new price becomes the norm and you get rich and everyone poorer than you whines when you pour that money into cornering the exotic dancer market or whatever.
Anyway, according to marketeers who enjoy making spreadsheets and some normal people, the cost of hulks first rose to 140 mil because the moon rebalance made some new goo expensive and the old expensive goo cheap, but no-one wants to sell the old goo cheap, so the prices now include twice as many expensive components as before. The fact that hulks are now at 190 mil is because jerks (read: players) with lots and lots of isk want more isk for some reason so they are all cornering the market AT THE SAME TIME. As such, hulks are spiraling high.
Way, way back in my life, my dad told me a story about the zebra… tulip? I forget. Anyway, the story was that people sold the tulip to other people, and the other people would sell it to other people for more, and on and on and on until one dude said “Why the hell am I trading my house for a case of flowers”. And the price went back down, to the sadness of all the flower sellers.
Since I mine in WH space with several friends, all in hulks, we’re being more careful than usual with our scanning tomfoolery, since 200 mil to replace a hulk doesn’t sit well with any of us. A quick check of EFT shows hulk max yield at 1360, and my yield at 1166. Covetor max is 1234, and 1019 for me.
So, according to that, first:
My mining yield is really sub par, so I should stop training drone interfacing and get back to ABC IV refining skills.
and second:
A Covetor isn’t that big of a step back, and I can certainly weather using one until hulk prices balance back out. God, I hope they balance out. WH mining is stressful as it is without feeling like you’re flying a ming vase.
As a parting note, why the heck can’t I moon mine in WH space? Seems reasonable to me. I suppose the counter argument would be that no-one can attack your PoS without a goodly time investment and luck, but considering we’re limited to one system before the logistics increases exponentially while tied to a fuggin rocket ship, woudn’t that balance things out a bit?
Fly… very carefully.
k162space 