Summer Time! -or- Why I'm Not Writing Much

Hello!  Not dead over here, just resting.  I figured now would be as a good a time as any to let people know that my slowdown in blogging is due to a few factors, and will likely continue for the next few months.  A lot happened over the last two weeks, and few things are coming, namely:

• I got a full time internship that pays real money, and lasts all summer!
• I had to (got the chance) move to DC for the internship!
• Sightseeing!
• I'm getting married in two months!
• It's summer.

So yeah, Eve is a bit back seat for the short term, and if Eve is back seat, the blog comes after I get to play :).  Anyhow, thanks to those who are coming by to read!  I'll still be posting, and still playing, but I'm focused on some other things for the time being.

Inferno First Impressions

The Good

• The new missile launchers are very pretty.  Staggering launchers is now really fun!
• The Wardec screen is much more legible.
• All the new screen revamps look pretty.
• Most of the new SB models look nice.
• Once you get used to it, looting no longer has the slight movement every time you get to a new wreck.

The Bad

• Right clicking on a corp in the wardec screen only gives "Declare Mutual" and no option to "Show Info".  That's frustrating.
• It is now much harder to see into two "containers" at once, such as your ship's hold and a loot can.  Grr.  Shift clicking is an extra step.  I didn't try it, heard it works, we'll see.  It's still an extra step...
• The new Tree structure on the Inventory eats screen real estate.  This is challenging when you open, say, Inventory, Market and Wallet screens to manage market orders.
• The Inventory takes longer to load.  Not good.
• The "ghosting" effect of text in the new inventory.  It's harder to read. 

The Ugly

• The missile launchers on my Tengu.  I would really like to see either larger wings with an over/under turret placement, or place them in a nice line on the slant of the hull.  Right now it looks... wonky.
• Drone Battleship explosions seem to be MIA.
• Directional lighting for 3D models in the Market.  Not bad, per se, but it's always been hard to really appreciate the ships with the dark lighting.

Adding Weight to Wars

After reading a lot of post about wardec changes, and thinking about the new v the old systems, and then digging into my own thoughts, I keep finding myself asking:  What is the point of War Declarations in High Sec?

At the core, a war dec allows Corp A to pay a penalty (isk), and in exchange Corp A gets a free pass to kill anyone in Corp B for a period of time.  Simple enough, you are paying to suspend the normal rules of the game.  But what is the point of this suspension of rules?  It is clear for Corp A, if ship destruction and loot, or the more esoteric value of tears are considered valuable.  Corp B gains very little.  A change to learn how to harden up, possibly get some kills or loot, or a chance to sit in a station for a week to hopefully bore the attackers into not paying for more rule suspension.  Oddly imbalanced no matter how you look at it.  And if you have made it this far, I promise there is an actual point to MY ramblings on this topic.

What is missing in this whole equation of war decs is meaning.  Corp A and Corp B will gain two things out of the conflict:  Killboard info and maybe isk.  This seems like a poor trade for disruption of the rules. I think there should be more at stake for both sides.  Defenders should have a reward for actually defending.  Attackers should have a reward for succeeding.  You could play with this in a lot of ways.  Kills could reward LP or Standings.  A loss (for either side) could result in station rights or office access changes.  Wardecs could become a tool to bring Faction Warfare into High Sec in a very limited way.  I'm not sure what the right answer is, but it seems odd that wardecs are allowed by the Empire factions if they do nothing but act as an isk sink.

And this could go deeper into how Corporations work.  Perhaps if you found a corp, your office and HQ locations become de facto Faction indicators.  So if you HQ Fancy Pony Bros in Rens, you are a de facto Minmatar corp, and can only be wardecced by non Gallente or Minmatar corps.  Low sec HQs would be unaligned, or choose a FW group to affiliate with.  Null corps would obviously be outside the purview of faction standing.  A huge portion of Eve's fiction and story is tied to the interplay between Empire and Pirate factions.

This is obviously a half-baked set of thoughts, but I think wars need more meaning to make them matter beyond how they hit player wallets.  Let's make player corporations a part of the larger story of Eve.  Let's make wars matter when moons are not being fought over.

Flame away!

Fail Fits and Rookies

Edit: A commenter noted that I am wrong about the tutorials teaching players to use multiple tank types.  This is very probably right.  I do no think that alters my fundamental point.

Read this over at Poetic, and the comments.  Always a fun time, reading the comments.  I'm torn on how to handle fail fits.  I'm sure I have some fail fits that I like, elite players be damned.  I also want to laugh at fail fits.  But then I wonder, did that fail fit player buy some PLEX and go nuts, only to get his investment all blowed up and not understand why?  And why do so many people ignore advice from those that blew them up?  Questions without answers.  But one thing could be done.

CCP could make the tutorials actually teach people about fits instead of having tutorial missions that encourage fail fits in a roundabout way.  I'm talking about those starter tutorial chains that give you a frigate, then give you an armor repper, then give you a shield booster.  And each mission tells you to use that specific module.  Not very good.  Arydanika talked about this on her blog a few weeks or months ago with some low-sec style guys, and they came to the conclusion that there should be fitting tutorials.  I agree.

So I propose, in the same vein, the following tutorials to be added as a Capsuleer Ship Fitting chain, given to you at the same time as the other newbie tutorials, or possible after the military/combat chain:

1. Charge the Batteries: Teaching capacitor basics.
2. Plugging in the Chips: Fitting to CPU requirements.
3. Turning on the Lights: Fitting to powergrid requirements.
4. She Can't Take Anymore, Captain!: Shield tanking.
5. Structural Integrity: Armor tanking.
6. Fire When You See the Whites of Their Eyes: Close range fitting.
7. Get Under Their Guns: Close range combat
8. One Shot, One Kill: Long range fitting.
9. Tack to Starboard: Long range fighting and kiting.
10. We're Going to Need a Bigger Ship: Moving up to a destroyer.

There, I made names and topics.  CCP can do the rest.

Faction Warfare in Inferno

I just read the new dev blog.  My two main accounts are faction standing agnostic, in that they decline any and all anti-faction missions because I have a habit of relocating to various areas in space.  Grimmash so far has 8+ standings with the Amarr Navy, Federation Navy and Ishukone Watch, as does my industrial pilot.  On those characters I value the ability to get perfect refines and jumps clones anywhere, and I like being able to fly in any area of space without wondering if gate guns are going to light me up like Paxista smuggling a certain book.

But my third account has a frigate pilot that does not care a whit about faction standings. She's only meant for fun.  The new FW changes excite me, and after a week and half of the trade alt training for more order slots, I may have to get that pilot up to Tech II projectiles.  The thought of having meaningful, structured pvp appeals to me.  I spent an all too brief stint in RvB, having fun blowing people up, and I have... 50 or so Rifters and half as many Thrashers languishing over in the RvB systems.  I could up fit those to real pvp fits without too much trouble.  By real I mean not meta 1 modules meant to be thrown against the rocks of Blue Fleets.

All of this is my long way of saying Faction Warfare may get some attention from me soon, and that is exciting!  High sec wardecs are pointless, but the new changes to FW are adding some persistent sandbox goodness to the mix.  If you want a much better look at FW, the changes, and reasons to get excited about it, go check this site out.

Day 30: 30 Day Market Challenge

Final Results:

THE END!

And a record setting day!  And this gem happened today:

Lesson:  Pay attention to your buy orders when you type them in.  This guy put an extra "1" in the hundreds digit, and I made about 70 mil off his mistake.  Woo!

Recap 

30 days ago I gave a fresh alt 5 million isk and just the basic trade skills.  Then I almost exclusively traded in stations, setting buy orders and flipping those to sell orders.  I started in Jita, moved to Amarr and then to Dodixie, and ended up back in Jita.  5 mil was turned into 1,461 million, or a 29,236% increase is value.  Here is the overall chart of the daily reports:

You can see the dips when I moved, as I cleared out stock before moving on.

My final Trade skills are:

• Accounting 4
• Broker Relations 4
• Marketing 4
• Procurement 4
• Retail 4
• Trade 4

I didn't even use all of those skills.

Hypothesis:  You can pay for a PLEX with a new character just by station trading.

Results: True.

Addendum

The full guide will be coming with lots more info.  I expect to have it done sometime over the weekend.  As promised, here is the complete list of items I traded in, pulled from EveHQ, so I make no claims for the accuracy:

Transaction Trading Report
from Tuesday, April 10, 2012 to Friday, May 11, 2012
Item	Amount Traded	Average Unit Profit	Total Profit
100MN Afterburner II	10	696,441.72	6,964,417.21
10MN MicroWarpdrive II	2	168,664.68	337,329.36
1200mm Artillery Cannon I	7	334,995.60	2,344,969.17
1200mm Artillery Cannon II	12	1,229,084.83	14,749,017.98
1200mm Heavy 'Scout' Artillery I	28	583,923.12	16,349,847.39
125mm Prototype Gauss Gun	6	136,897.88	821,387.30
1400mm Gallium Cannon	8	458,853.80	3,670,830.38
1400mm Prototype Siege Cannon	15	625,820.00	9,387,299.97
1400mm 'Scout' Artillery I	36	787,499.77	28,349,991.81
150mm Light AutoCannon I	70	24,171.72	1,692,020.58
150mm Light Prototype Automatic Cannon	22	87,572.32	1,926,590.95
150mm Light 'Scout' Autocannon I	15	334,822.67	5,022,340.08
1MN Afterburner II	10	528,613.80	5,286,138.03
200mm Compressed Coil Gun I	14	95,853.95	1,341,955.32
200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I	20	198,975.35	3,979,506.96
200mm Light Gallium Machine Gun	40	106,199.89	4,247,995.50
200mm Light 'Scout' Autocannon I	32	489,007.61	15,648,243.50
200mm Prototype Gauss Gun	26	785,169.97	20,414,419.22
200mm Railgun II	5	640,696.27	3,203,481.37
200mm 'Scout' Accelerator Cannon	10	153,799.95	1,537,999.53
220mm Medium Gallium Machine Gun	22	479,051.07	10,539,123.64
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II	5	339,150.96	1,695,754.80
250mm Light Artillery Cannon I	20	52,497.07	1,049,941.41
350mm Compressed Coil Gun I	9	507,837.39	4,570,536.54
350mm Prototype Gauss Gun	20	505,361.42	10,107,228.33
425mm AutoCannon II	69	402,053.09	27,741,663.39
425mm Medium Gallium Machine Gun	31	585,406.90	18,147,613.77
425mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon	10	749,791.81	7,497,918.10
425mm Medium 'Scout' Autocannon I	27	956,597.56	25,828,133.99
425mm Railgun II	1	972,111.00	972,111.00
650mm Artillery Cannon II	4	228,790.37	915,161.48
650mm Medium Prototype Siege Cannon	20	203,999.03	4,079,980.60
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I	32	83,366.64	2,667,732.63
720mm Howitzer Artillery II	6	646,737.61	3,880,425.67
Acceleration Control	10	11,847.45	118,474.47
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II	68	157,413.69	10,704,130.74
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I	133	200,958.95	26,727,540.72
Afterburner	8	95,136.75	761,094.00
Anode Electron Particle Cannon I	7	302,799.97	2,119,599.80
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I	15	164,052.64	2,460,789.65
Anode Mega Neutron Particle Cannon I	22	44,514.23	979,313.03
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I	56	298,895.81	16,738,165.45
'Arbalest' Heavy Missile Launcher	13	2,814,736.79	36,591,578.24
'Arbalest' Rocket Launcher I	37	266,534.99	9,861,794.46
Arkonor Mining Crystal II	3	496,999.20	1,490,997.60
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I	22	737,147.67	16,217,248.82
Basic Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane	36	65,316.19	2,351,382.99
Beta Reactor Control: Capacitor Power Relay I	10	143,621.09	1,436,210.89
Beta Reactor Control: Diagnostic System I	10	134,489.90	1,344,898.95
Broken Drone Transceiver	265	36.39	9,644.33
BZ-5 Neutralizing Spatial Destabilizer ECM	20	352,944.31	7,058,886.29
Cap Recharger I	97	20,483.91	1,986,938.83
Command Processor I	10	304,994.96	3,049,949.55
Conflagration L	10	332,865.95	3,328,659.50
Core Probe Launcher II	1	226,997.99	226,997.99
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II	3	1,466,335.07	4,399,005.21
Damage Control I	6	452.02	2,712.12
Damaged Artificial Neural Network	111	179	19,869.00
Drone Synaptic Relay Wiring	171	2.1	359.1
Dual 180mm AutoCannon I	23	109,948.96	2,528,825.99
Dual 250mm Prototype Gauss Gun	26	182,865.51	4,754,503.16
Dual 650mm Repeating Artillery II	11	1,047,128.78	11,518,416.57
Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I	10	324,178.02	3,241,780.23
Dual Light Pulse Laser II	25	234,712.98	5,867,824.46
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I	13	443,497.86	5,765,472.21
Electron Blaster Cannon II	3	988,993.19	2,966,979.56
Energy Grid Upgrades	2	168,853.45	337,706.90
Energy Systems Operation	2	49,999.99	99,999.98
Enfeebling Phase Inversion ECM I	40	278,241.61	11,129,664.40
Evasive Maneuvering	1	47,473.95	47,473.95
Expanded Probe Launcher II	3	1,875,631.86	5,626,895.57
Experimental 100MN Afterburner I	50	61,888.10	3,094,405.01
Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I	150	71,752.98	10,762,947.68
Experimental 1MN Afterburner I	174	32,111.99	5,587,486.37
F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines	16	275,573.99	4,409,183.90
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I	47	357,181.51	16,787,530.91
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I	57	7,766.50	442,690.65
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I	52	570,457.62	29,663,795.98
Focused Afocal Pulse Maser I	3	399,997.02	1,199,991.06
Focused Anode Medium Particle Stream I	14	292,801.38	4,099,219.37
Focused Medium Pulse Laser I	13	192,782.97	2,506,178.62
Fuel Conservation	10	4,548.50	45,484.97
Gallente Cruiser	2	154,000.01	308,000.02
'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I	7	-10,411.92	-72,883.41
Heat Sink I	50	18,319.04	915,952.14
Heavy Modulated Energy Beam I	56	288,943.70	16,180,847.36
Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I	23	857,328.30	19,718,550.91
Heavy Pulse Laser I	2	82,990.43	165,980.87
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I	55	193,519.71	10,643,583.87
Hull Upgrades	5	34,646.00	173,230.00
Ion Blaster Cannon II	9	538,250.56	4,844,255.05
Kernite Mining Crystal II	7	190,701.46	1,334,910.21
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II	5	189,998.69	949,993.44
Kinetic Deflection Field II	20	62,477.04	1,249,540.90
Large Armor Repairer I	60	260,078.24	15,604,694.11
Large Automated Carapace Restoration	20	-1.01	-20.2
Large Energy Transfer Array II	9	963,890.86	8,675,017.74
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction	40	51,340.17	2,053,606.73
Large Remote Armor Repair System II	5	458,622.08	2,293,110.40
Large Shield Booster II	6	255,266.13	1,531,596.75
Light Electron Blaster I	100	10,919.84	1,091,983.89
Light Electron Blaster II	6	616,341.46	3,698,048.78
Light Neutron Blaster I	288	24,411.14	7,030,407.57
Low Frequency Sensor Suppressor I	37	230,864.74	8,541,995.52
Mark I Generator Refitting: Diagnostic System	100	13,322.19	1,332,219.34
Medium Anode Pulse Particle Stream I	10	76,479.45	764,794.50
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I	1	0.66	0.66
Medium Inefficient Armor Repair Unit	19	17,678.86	335,898.30
Medium Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I	28	558,063.91	15,625,789.49
Medium Nanobot Accelerator I	5	875,687.91	4,378,439.54
Medium Pulse Laser II	37	354,620.02	13,120,940.56
Medium Remote Armor Repair System II	5	547,998.41	2,739,992.07
Medium Semiconductor Memory Cell I	1	2,147,877.19	2,147,877.19
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I	49	847,621.94	41,533,475.14
Mega Modal Pulse Laser I	14	1,336,236.11	18,707,305.48
Mega Modulated Energy Beam I	81	226,634.41	18,357,387.17
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I	12	157,040.48	1,884,485.81
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I	10	88,996.35	889,963.50
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II	8	1,652,367.52	13,218,940.17
Mining Laser Upgrade II	18	737,279.38	13,271,028.88
Mobile Medium Warp Disruptor I	3	1,279,051.74	3,837,155.21
Modal Electron Particle Accelerator I	3	3,150,286.43	9,450,859.29
Modal Ion Particle Accelerator I	33	1,085,437.43	35,819,435.23
Modal Light Neutron Particle Accelerator I	31	475,366.28	14,736,354.76
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I	15	874,624.68	13,119,370.13
Modal Neutron Particle Accelerator I	51	1,132,616.64	57,763,448.63
Modulated Strip Miner II	23	1,672,616.19	38,470,172.29
Parallel Weapon Navigation Transmitter	20	188,998.97	3,779,979.40
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I	29	611,291.03	17,727,439.83
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron	44	794,320.24	34,950,090.70
Power Diagnostic System II	28	104,687.50	2,931,249.87
Prototype 'Arbalest' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I	36	460,588.90	16,581,200.41
Prototype 'Arbalest' Light Missile Launcher	24	314,951.56	7,558,837.36
Prototype Cloaking Device I	3	298,661.22	895,983.65
Prototype Sensor Booster	50	86,737.80	4,336,889.79
Regulated Mega Neutron Phase Cannon I	17	81,000.27	1,377,004.51
Retail	11	27,986.21	307,848.27
Scorch M	2	194,843.99	389,687.98
Scorch S	4	186,791.91	747,167.64
Shield Boost Amplifier I	10	169,872.73	1,698,727.27
Shield Boost Amplifier II	10	108,459.95	1,084,599.53
Shield Power Relay I	100	20,028.50	2,002,849.58
Shield Power Relay II	10	158,981.66	1,589,816.64
Shield Recharger II	36	63,734.36	2,294,437.07
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I	10	67,691.84	676,918.40
Small Cargohold Optimization I	2	349,998.97	699,997.94
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I	1	349,997.83	349,997.83
Small Energy Neutralizer II	13	636,544.07	8,275,072.93
Small Shield Booster II	4	175,395.40	701,581.58
Small Unstable Power Fluctuator I	12	564,236.33	6,770,835.99
'Stalwart' Particle Field Magnifier	3	25,217,129.79	75,651,389.37
Tachyon Beam Laser II	5	1,031,320.67	5,156,603.33
Tachyon Modulated Energy Beam I	45	260,934.48	11,742,051.62
Thermic Dissipation Field II	38	254,820.10	9,683,163.80
Trade	6	56,492.41	338,954.48
Upgraded 1MN Microwarpdrive I	5	41,323.18	206,615.92
Warp Core Stabilizer II	35	384,619.21	13,461,672.34
Warp Scrambler II	2	299,888.33	599,776.65
X-Large C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I	10	753,397.99	7,533,979.93
X-Large Shield Booster II	15	581,089.96	8,716,349.34

Day 29: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

I had my last final today, so not much happened.  Tomorrow is wide open though, so I am hoping for a strong finish!  Aside from my busy day, not much to report.  Mostly trading in weapons and various mid slot modules lately.  I did nothing special, just flipped a lot of orders while on campus.  The final write up / guide is also underway.  Expect that in the next few days.

Day 28: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

PLEX was purchased and redeemed today, so I am adding this cost in to the total to keep the numbers making sense.  A 485 mil loss would seem a bit substantial, no?  Aside from that, new record day with 172 mil in profits!  My return to Jita appears to have been a good idea.  This goes back to the point of turnover.

Margins in Jita are not as good as many other trade hubs but the goods move!  I only had about half of my usual order slots going as I ramped up in Jita again, and I still crushed it compared to Amarr or Dodixie.  Being able to choose from all the weapon types is a huge boon.

At this point I don't really care if my margins increase in actual dollar amounts.  If I can maintain roughly 100 mil margin a day I can easily PLEX two of my three accounts and still be building wealth.  If I can keep up the 150 m mark, then I will never even have to use profits from other account to pay for the game and fund ships.  I also just got a job!  So for the summer at least, I can keep chugging away on the market alt and in a few months buy that strategic cruiser I am training my industrialist into.  In another 40 days, I can probably afford the whole thing through the market alt, and still be PLEX my game time.

Escalating Your Inferno

Aside from the 30 Day Market Challenge I have not been as active in Eve this month because I am trying to find a job, and my spring semester is ending, hence finals...  Oh the life of a grad student.  But here are some off the hip thoughts on the Escalation.

Flashing Lights

I got to see the new status effects in the flesh today while running missions.  It is a very nice addition, and it makes easier to tell if that stupid frigate is webbing me (not that important) or scramming me (more concerning).  Also, as I tend to mission in Caldari boats seeing any sort of target painting or an inept npc tracking disruption is entertaining.  C'mon pirates, a Drake already has a sig the size of Ohio, and a Tengu gives no shits about your turret effects.

Looting the Corpses

Also in missions, I find the loot drop changes to be very nice when I salvage.  Instead of ignoring the drops until I get around to refining/selling/whatever, I get excited when I see a pile of named mods gloriously uncluttered by other junk.  I almost wonder if it would be worth CCP just taking out the metal scraps and ammo drops completely and just upping the bounties another tick.

You could even get rid of dropped meta items, replace them with BPCs from salvage, and combine Salvage BPC + Salvage Material + Tech 1 = Meta.  Or maybe that would be stupid.  I'm not sure.  It would give industrialists something to build while waiting for those damn BPOs to research, or to do while you get together access to a POS.

Econo-what now?

From a market perspective, I am in the process of becoming an all-PLEX player.  I was hoping the Jita camp and the Escalation changes would drive the mineral prices even higher than pre-patch, but it seems the speculation was mostly that.  I am sure there will be long term effects, and mining modules are making me some nice margins on station trading, but my hoard of minerals had to be sacrificed to feed CCP and keep the indy alt active, so less profit was realized than I hoped.  For the time being my Hulks and Orca will sit out Hulkageddon, as I hope to come back to mining later in the summer or in the fall and find myself making a bit more per hour once the study grind ramps back up.

A Game of Drones

Perhaps most notable in this Escalation are the things that are not here yet.  I am really looking forward to new missile effects, new Bomber skins, the new inventory improvements, and in a strange way I am really excited about that drone damage module that peeked out from behind the dev curtain.  I started as a Gallente pilot and my old Vexors and Myrms are itching to come out and play again.  Apparently some people already think the Extrinsic Damage Amplifier is crap.  Personally I would like to see it as a high slot module, and I think calls to buff it into the same range as normal weapon mods is appropriate, but we'll see what comes of it.

Day 27: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

So I moved again, woo.  Back to Jita.  I was in Dodixie for long enough to realize that it is hot mess at the moment.  Although you cannot prove bots exist, I'll be damned if they haven't infested that joint.  I sat for about fifteen minutes updating orders, and a slew of odd updates would come every single time after I updated.  Some would be for the exact same price, .01 isk above or below me depending.  If I have to deal with that, at least I can do it where more people are buying and selling stuff.  So, back to Jita.  It's rather frustrating moving tens of millions of isk back and forth and having very little to show for it.

The nice part is that my liquid isk is up to 855 mil.  Not bad, not too much locked into inventory.  I will need to buy PLEX (in game) in the next day or two.  I'll likely add that to the running total to indicate the monthly total, in the spirit of this challenge.

I will take this moment to say this:

I've proved the hypothesis of Beamer Grey and myself.  You can make enough isk station trading to plex an account in less than a month.  You can do it much more quickly than 30 days even.  At this point I could PLEX and still have enough to fit out a few battle cruisers or one battleship.  I've made money on my other accounts, almost totaling another PLEX, and I haven't really been playing those much lately.  Even if you are unemployed, with a little dedication to trading, you can afford Eve. Assuming you can afford a computer and internet connection, but that kind of goes without saying.

I'll be continuing through the last few days, and then I plan on writing up a sort of guide to what I've done.  This will have more detail than my daily posts.  I'll also post up ALL the items I traded in so you can see what I used.  I don't think this is trade secret.  After almost a month of this, there are no secrets that I found to foolproof.  Just some solid strategies and some time spent each day keeping on top of the orders you have.

You Can't Stop the Signal

Bit of a think piece here.

There have been many discussion about intel gathering and the function of Local in the various regions of space.  I always find it odd that our comms travel at FTL speeds.  Our ships do too, actually, but that is another issue for another post.  While thinking about the value of local, I've had some random ideas to inflict upon you.  These ideas are generally meant to affect communications between systems, not inside a particular system.

Comms in Empire

It seems odd to me, given sec status and jump gate control by factions, that everyone always gets to see the whole local list and chat.  Why would the Gallente let a known criminal use their gates and their comms?  I've always envisioned that the comms system in Eve uses the jump gates to get around the Cluster, with all of our messages making trips similar to our ships.  So perhaps chat could become a function of your standing with the various empires, with high standing payers getting higher priority and criminals or negative standing players cut out of the loop.  Effectively the jump gates would see your pod status and use that to determine your comms level.

The Wild West

Low sec would be a no-man's land, with the authorities not bothering to monitor local at all.  Here Local would be a better tool than in high sec for all players, as everyone gets to see it.  Perhaps a fee system would be set up to use comms in low sec, with players paying a small fee (hello isk sink) to get access to comms operated by unscrupulous yet profit minded npc comm cartels.

The Abyssal Plains

Comms in nul sec could be controlled by the powers that be, with small comm relay stations placed by sov holders, with access based on standings or fees.  Each bloc could regulate comms as they see fit.  Attackers could black out communications in order to disrupt defense.  Imagine a small cadre of stealth bombers swooping in and taking out comm stations as the main fleets prepare to enter.  Suddenly the local defenders are cut off from outside support!

Problems, Always Problems...

I can see two counters to all of these ideas.  The first is meta-game based, in that players with 3rd party voice comms will have an advantage.  Not much can be done about this.  The second would be rigs, modules, or (!) crew you could add to a ship that would get around the rules.  Fit a module that hacks into local comm relays, or bypasses Empire security systems.  Create a class of ship that would be a dedicated comms hub, maybe piggyback on command ships, electronic attack frigates or stealth/recon classes for this?

However you look at it, there could be a whole new dynamic added to the game based on changing comms/local, and I think it could add to the depth of Eve.

Day 26: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

Nothing like a good day to wipe clean the previous three.  86 mil to go to hit the revised goal.  Not a whole lot to say, except meta modules are still where it's at.  In an case of synchronicity, Ripard Teg was talking about my experience in the previous market challenge post here.  I thought it was a nice explanation that I failed to realize.

Day 23 to 25: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

Bit of a slow weekend for a few reasons.  First, I was not that motivated.  Second I was amazingly busy with wedding planning and an arm injury.  Third, Amarr got the best of me and I decided to move on to another hub.  This lead to selling off stock at lower than expected prices in order to not be hauling anything besides skillbooks when I left.

Interestingly, it seems that a few weeks after I get into an hub, other traders come join the party and margins go way down, .01 isk wars go way up, and I find it better to move to another spot.  I am wondering if others have noticed this in the day trading scene?  It makes sense that people follow the money, and I am starting to think a huge part of this is anticipating the changes and staying ahead of that curve.  I don't have the isk to do full blown manipulation, but I wonder how many people are out there that can and do crash margins for a few days to get rid of people like me.

Another thought:  Weekends suck for market trading.  All the weekend warriors come out, run missions, sell stock and undercut the bejesus out of things (or so I imagine).  In the worst case, someone with a lot of stock follows suit after  a few small orders undercut, and drops their price considerably. Then the profit on flipping 20-30 modules disappears into the CCP database forever.  Or maybe I just need more isk and better tracking tools to engage in longer term investments.  Investing versus day trading if you will.

Final thought.  I finished collecting all my remote buys before leaving Amarr space.  It made me a few million, but nothing even resembling the numbers I am going for, and certainly not enough to be worth the time it took to gather the items.  I trashed about half of them after looking at the margins.  Future remote buy orders will need to be tailored much more specifically at mini-hubs in the region so I am only going to a few systems to get my inventory and flipping it becomes less of a chore. I am starting to really dislike the region limit on modifying orders as well.  With instantaneous interstellar communication, I fail to see (outside of gameplay mechanics) why we can't at least phone in order modifications.

Day 22: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

Rollin' along.  Trading on the margins.  I need to move some inventory at this point, my balance is getting a bit heavy in non-liquid assets.  I have a breather from non-Eve obligations tomorrow, so I'll be working on that a bit.  Development of additional alts will also likely be on the docket, or at least seeding them.  My posts this week have been a  bit shorter due to:

• Finals.  I'm in school and those take a fair bit of work.
• P90X workouts.  Roc would be so proud.  I'm working on my meat-space capsule and damn if those don't kick you in the arse.
• Once you get the hang of buying high and selling low, most of the work becomes updating orders and browsing the market for trends and deals.  There is not much technique, just a lot of reading the charts and graphs.

Also, my goal is revised.  I want to clear 1 billion isk and have enough to keep rolling by cashing in for two PLEXes.  As Hulkageddon is going strong, I am not bringing as much income in on my miner account.

Day 21: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

Not much happening today, finals week is upon me.  I may update with more info, but for now I will just leave the results.

Day 20: 30 Day Market Challenge

Results:

Banner day!  New record for margin, at 108m.  That was nice.  One cool thing about have more liquid isk is the ability to go in a buy up orders that are trying to push down the overall margin.  You sacrifice some margin on a few items to keep your margin on the bulk of your goods.  This gets you more isk.  Win.

Based on my success so far, and my lack of desire to spend any more time updating the same orders, I have begun training additional trade alts.  The more observant readers of my blog may have noted that I currently run three accounts, roughly defined as Combat, Industrialist, and Trader/Corp/Blarg.  This means I have 9 slots, and three can be up and running at any given time.  The obvious next step to enhance profits is to have eyes, and orders, stationed in or near every trade hub so I can capitalize on arbitrage.

For those who are unfamiliar, trading has a few flavors.  Station trading is what I have been mainly involved in up till now.  This consists of setting high buy orders and selling to low sell orders in the same station.  But this approach is weak to those that have more power (read isk) than you, as they can manipulate markets and leave you with a pile of suddenly worthless inventory.  Arbitrage is another method of trading, where you scout price disparities between regions and buy in one place, haul the goods to another place, and sell for profit.

My tentative plan is to have eyes in Jita, Amarr, Rens and Dodixie, and perhaps train up a suitable hauler who can run between these, moving goods to the best location to sell in.  At my current pace, one account in one station can pay for itself and have excess isk at the end of the month.  I may be able to get two PLEXes if the pace keeps going.  Four characters will have less profit per account due to time, but I imagine it will still manage to pay for multiple accounts.

This plan will take some time to implement, however.  Skills must be trained, and the isk must flow!