2012 In EVE Online, The Year That Was

2012 in EVE Online will go down as a year in which I didn’t set any goals or had any real goals I was striving for! When the year started I didn’t set any goals. It can be really hard to play EVE Online without goals, without something to aim for, something to chase to measure your progress as life keeps evolving in EVE Online.

I really didn’t know how much I was going to really play EVE in 2012 when the year started. I was preparing for a semester at the university taking a few classes around my normal daily work schedule. I didn’t expect to really have a lot of time to play EVE for the first couple of months of the year. It was also likely that I would have taken a break from the game as well to focus on my classes. I really didn’t know how it would work out either. So already looking ahead, I didn’t set any goals for playing or accomplishing anything in EVE for the year. The first half of the year kinda went a bit slow with reduced EVE playing time overall as a result. Yet in the end it ended up I kept playing EVE Online and throughout the rest of the year, with a bit of break here and there.

The Year that was 2012 in New Eden

New Eden continue’s to be an interesting place and all its happenings and turmoil. Looking back, I can’t really remember all that was really that significant throughout the year. At least without having to re-read my blog. I’m still in the same Player Corp I was in the year before. That has been so now for the last 2 and half years almost and actually enjoy being in my Corp with a good bunch of folks. My trust and responsibilities have somewhat grown in the time being apart of my Corp as well.

Managing Divisional Assets

Earlier in the year my CEO asked if I could help based on my usual activities and gave me a side project to work at whenever I felt like. I took it as a challenge somewhat as well something else to do daily. So as a side responsibility I was in charge of managing and growing any asset that was apart of my newly created Corp Division (Market Trade/R&D) and Wallet Division in the Corp.

Starting with almost nothing, and continuously reinvestment of all that Wallet profits in Market & Trade items slowly growing that Wallet to over 4 Billion ISK. That was utilizing my own Trade Slots thus costing me the opportunity to not use those slots for personal and riskier trades. For a small side project I think that was a success in something to do to help my Corp in some other way. If I hadn’t made that ISK for the Corp that would have added to my own profits for the year.

The Rest of Things

There were no shiny ships bought. But the way it worked I usually build all my own ships to fly or use if I can help it. I’m just really not that into ships like most other players. I’m more into acquiring and growing assets, than more ships in general. My main character Ametius learned to fly a Caldari Freighter this year. That was more for the purpose of logistics if he needed to do so for Regional Trading. He never did acquire a Freighter though. Wasn’t really a need for one. After all his brother Alothos does most the Trading these days and most of the logistics when needed. Ametius did learn to fly some other new ships I’m sure, but they weren’t that important for me to even remember what they were this year. He did train up quite a few skills to lvl 4 for Spaceship Command in the latter part of 2012.

Alothos did learn to fly a Drake Battlecruiser working on R&D Agent Corp Standing in the beginning of the year.That was mostly missioning for the NPC Corp Lai Dai to up some Standing for Datacore Research for Invention. He did learn to fly an Orca, he even bought one which was purely for logistics purposes also. It barely ever get used. But that’s ok, it’s there for when it’s needed. So ships weren’t much of a priority in 2012.

Memorable Moment of the Year

I probably had the biggest Trading losses this year so far, probably the biggest ever. With more money to Invest in stuff, you also have more money to potentially loose as well if things go south. That occurred when high end Minerals and Morphite was way up in the spring of 2012. Jita Burning event occurred at the heights of the high end Minerals Bubble and Speculation. I was trading lots of Megacyte, Zydrine and Morphite at the time and making good profits. I also had the largest amount of Investments in high end Minerals ever to date at that time also. I lost somewhere in the ballpark of 3-5 Billion ISK with the long siege on Jita.

That market ripple ended up crashing the high end Mineral Market and my local regional market which turned out was being mass manipulated into a bubble by major Null Sec Alliances right up to Jita Burning. Those Null Sec Alliances made out big cashing out before the big market crash. And in the process I lost s few Billions of my own ISK and several Hundred Million ISK of Corp Wallet Fund I was managing as a small side project. So spent a few months making up for the losses. That was probably the biggest event of the year, chaotic in the market and was exciting times as well.

Regional Trading

I’m not a Jita Trader or any the other three big Market Hub Trader. The year began doing Regional Trading across 5 major regions of High Sec Space including Domain, Kador, Kor-Azor, Khanid, Tash-Murkon. It ended with Regional Trading across 6 major regions of High Sec Space picking up Trade in The Citadel Region (Caldari Space). And the truth is Regional Trading is a lot of work! Its more work to me than Station Trading where you sit in station all day mostly or login session and just trade like a Day Trader, never leaving the station. Kinda like  some Jita Traders. I just find it more fun to travel around the regions and see whats needed or in short supply wherever and intimately learn some of the trade dynamics and economics of a region.

I’m not fond of being stuck in a station trading. However covering 6 major regions doing Regional Trading you can imagine is a lot of Star Gate jumps involved and allot more jumps if you actually had to visit specific stations in those regions delivering something to that system station. That’s part of the fun for me. But in 2013 it might be good to be able to do less of it as it’s a lot of work and time spent warping all over the place through all those regions.

Skill Training in 2012

Ametius: 46951449 Skill Points.

Alothos: 42061719 Skill Points.

For Ametius the year started still training lots of Advance Science skills pertaining to R&D and Invention skills (T2), and are they a lot of them. Got all those skills to lvl 4 at minimum which allows being able to do Invention & Production across all 4 empire items on everything that can be T2 Invented. That finished up somewhere around spring time 2012. Spent some time training some Capital Construction skills for a while as well. Then for a few months trained even more R&D skills yet again for T3  Reverse Engineering & Production. So at this point can do all Reverse Engineering of Sleeper Technology Artifacts. I think still need some 25 days or so of training for something else before can do the final assembly to build any of the T3 Hulls.

It can be a juggling act with training needed skills! Spent rest of year patching up lots of potholes in various amount of skills that had been neglected for some time in the time it took to train so many Advance Science skills. Patched up lots of training in Gunnery skills to use T2 S/M/L Laser Turrets and T2 Laser Crystals. As well train up Missile Skills to be able to use various T2 Launchers and T2 Missiles. What remained of the rest of year was spent training Spaceship Command skills including Battlecruiser 5 and Destroyer 5 to take advantage of the planned changes by CCP coming soon to those skills. As well some other Spaceship Command skills trained to lvl 4 as well.

Alothos spent the early part of 2012 training and gaining Standing to use NPC R&D Agents for Datacore Research for T2 Invention use. That was way before Faction Warfare changed and had its impact on the Datacore Market in the Summer of 2012. Since then he’s been training up numerous amount of skills for Industry, Manufacturing, R&D and various amount of Spaceship Command skills. And though he now by far makes the majority of all the T2 items he’s not quite as capable of actually Inventing all those same items as his older brother Ametius. Nor can he quite make everything as well either as yet. But I guess the plan eventually is for him to eventually be able to handle all T2 R&D & Invention as the prime T2 producer.

Faction & Empire Standing

That’s the standing of my Trader Alothos with Empire since his brother Ametius has much higher Standing with Empire and various NPC Corps overall.

Only time Alothos had really done Missions was for raising Standing with NPC Corp Lai Dai to raise Standing to access NPC R&D Agents to lvl 4 to gain access to Datacore Research for use in T2 Invention. And that was more the purpose of it all. And since then haven’t ever done any more NPC Missions to affect Standing with Empire or NPC Corps.

Yet though most players don’t really think about it where NPC Standing again comes into play is with Taxes. Both characters have max skills at lvl 5 for Accounting which affect Sales Tax and Broker Relations which affect market related costs by NPC Broker. Taxes add up! Taxes add up even more when you’re doing hundreds of millions and more in market transactions.

Taxes, who like Taxes…

And the only way available to pay even lower Broker Taxes is to have reasonable high Standing with Faction/Corp which affect Broker Taxes across the board to all NPC Corps in Empire who’s station you may trade. Or you may have High Standing with more specific NPC Corps who’s standing you affect directly and thus they allow you lower Broker Taxes on Market Transaction Trades at their stations. Not something most players seem to worry about or take note of unless your a Trader. But the bigger and complex your web of Market Trades get, Taxes eat into your Profit Margin big time and it adds up to allot of Taxes paid.

So one the things I’d like to do is likely increase standing for Alothos who still pays reasonably high Broker Taxes. Lower those Broker Taxes a bit across the board to below 0.5% at the select NPC Stations most of his Trades occurs. Be great if can get it to 0.4% for Broker Taxes at the station he trades.

Right now at best he’s paying 0.51% Taxes in Broker Taxes and that’s at one of the NPC Station he has the highest Standing. So for 2013 its something to try to work at to lower Broker Relation Taxes.

Assets and ALL That Other Stuff

More Station Hangar Assets accumulated and more ISK was invested in 2012 in other Assets to facilitate Trade and Industrial activities across the board.

Lots was spent on Blueprints and Blueprint sets of all kinds and all that other stuff in 2012 that helped in some way to help to increase ISK and value of Assets overall. A huge amount of Blueprint (BPO) Research in 2012 resulted in the vast majority of those Blueprints completing ME/PE Research to acceptable levels to increase their production value. Compared to 2011, I’m not exactly sure what exactly I had in Assets but it was allot less than in 2012.

Many of those Blueprints were bought for the explicit purposes of Copying and making Blueprint Copies for use in Invention and producing T2 modules/ships. In the end most of them all completed ME/PE Research as well.

With the amount of R&D and resulting amount of T2 Invention activity that occurred through the year, the amount of  T2 BPC greatly increased. At the end of the year audit that resulted in about 791 T2 BPC’s that have yet to be produced. That represented many thousands of various Datacores that were obtained for both character from R&D Agents. And instead of being sold on the Market for profit, those Datacores were actually used in Invention Research for items intended for later production. Items likely will be produced 2013. But currently they represent locked up ISK value yet to be produced.

Research Agent Datacore Research

Some 190563 RP for Research Agent remains uncollected as of the end of 2012. That’s roughly 3811 Datacore’s. Since changes went into effect for Faction Warfare prior to Summer of 2012 Inferno Patch, no Datacores have been collected for T2 Invention use since. There was no point in doing so since there is currently still enough stock in hangar available to use. Yet there is also no great need for allot more T2 Invention either at this point. There is already more than enough T2 BPC that will need producing than I’m likely to produce. Datacores as well have greatly dropped in value since the Faction Warfare changes.

Overall Personal Assets end of 2012

Based on the Station Hangar price value that shows up when an item is in Hangar, I decided to do a rough Audit. And many and most items will be worth much more than that especially already researched Blueprints.

T1 BPC’s intended for Invention – 7828 Value Unknown

T2 Invented BPC’s – Value Unknown

Station Hangar Assets – About 14.5 Billion ISK

Market Sell Orders: 12 Billion ISK

Market Buy Orders: 0.0 ISK

Cash Asset: 38.7 Billion ISK

Total Assets: 65.2 Billion ISK (Rough Estimated Audit)

For now Ametius finishes out the year just trying out and get acquainted to living in WH Space for however long that is to last.

I’m not sure just how things will play out for 2013 in EVE Online, but overall in the big picture of things that’s how it played out in 2012.

Retribution by the Numbers

It’s been a busy time preparing for the Retribution Patch, but allot busy the game has been post launch with lots of activity doing stuff Industrially and Trade wise. It’s tough to recount how it all went down and what happened and all that because things lots been going non stop with all Manufacturing Slots filled all the time making T2 stuff and new ships that needed to be built and put on the market.

So by the Numbers only including New Destroyer BPO’s/Ships/Drones.

Blueprints Sold

Algos Blueprint: 922.9 M
Profit: 495.9 M

Corax Blueprint: 659.9 M
Profit: 340.2 M

Talwar Blueprint: 905.6 M
Profit: 568.3 M

Dragoon Blueprints: 114.1 M

Profit: 44.8 M

Venture Blueprints: 0.0

Total Ship BPO Sales: 2.6 Billion

Profit: 1.5 B

Sales of Ship Produced:
Venture Ship: 202.7 M
Profit: 190.5 M

Algos Ship: 16 M
Profit: 4.8 M

Corax Ship: 109 M
Profit: 82 M

Dragoon Ship: 116.3 M
Profit: 98.3 M

Talwar Ship: 28 M
Profit: 13 M

Total Ship Sale: 472 M
Total Ship Build Profit: 388.6 M

Salvage Drone

Drone Blueprint Sales: 612.8 M
Total Profit: 144.3 M

 
Total Sales & Profits
Sales: 3.68 Billion ISK
Profit: 2.03 Billion ISK

Selling the new Blueprints was clearly the winner by far compared to actually manufacturing the new Teir 2 Destroyers and Drones. Acquired new BPO Assets in each of the 4 new Destroyer BPO’s, Mining Frigate and Drone Blueprint. Retribution had an added effect in that I sold more of the stuff i also had on the market that wasn’t quite selling as much previous to the patch which upped profits even more. Also sold allot of T2 stuff that was likely being fitted to the new Destroyers as well. Was allot of activity and I can chalk that up as allot of fun just doing stuff staying busy. I’d say from an Industrial standpoint Retribution was a Success with new and exciting things to build or tinker with and more fun T2 stuff to build to keep capsuleer’s supplied with their fittings.

Retribution Preparation…Been Busy

Servers are currently down and when It comes back up soon it will be EVE Retribution expansion gone live. But preparing for expansion can be a lot of work for any Industrialist depending on how much you actually plan ahead to do or partake in speculation. So since the weekend my Trader Alt has been busy at work. He should have prepared a month ahead of time but somehow that didn’t quite work out activity wise.

One the monkey wrench that got thrown into things was the change in Skill Plan Training. Instead of training some Research Science skills on the Alt Trader instead had him training Battlecruiser from 4 to 5 to make use of the impending changes to the skill set with the coming changes to BC skills soon. So in less than 2 days my main will have trained BC 5 and in about 4 days my Trader Alt will have trained BC 5. A boring month for Skill Training, but still quite useful for multi skilled characters. But the consequence was that my Trader Alt who was intended to take over most day-to-day business operation from my main character, couldn’t quite fulfill some duties related to producing some T2 components as well producing the eventual T2 module. Main character was moving to WH Space so all assets some weeks prior was turned over to the Alt Trader including intentionally not listing any new Trade Orders on main character.

Acquiring minerals on Regional Buy Orders took some time as mineral prices daily kept going higher. I’ve learned over time that picking up mineral scattered all over a region is a waste of time and effort. Its allot easier to make a Station Order all in one place, covering an entire system or strategic station location covering a few good mining systems of at least 1 jump. That works for me. But its far better than buying huge blocks of minerals scattered across an entire region. A nightmare to eventually collect that often is. In the end I ended up paying miners wages in 3 systems and acquiring just over 2 Billion ISK worth of minerals for supply stock. It’s hard to build stuff as an Industrialist when you have no mineral stock to use to make anything. So I stocked up! And I was still short on getting enough Nocxium because I was refusing to up my Buy Order prices as Nocxium kept jumping higher in price also. My current Buy Orders were slow to fill with lots of competing Buy Orders, so earlier this morning while flying through Domain I spotted a fairly good deal of a buy on Nocxium and bought about 460K worth of Nocxium in Amarr as emergency reserve stock. At best I can use it if I run out. If not needed I can resell it for higher price.

With my Trader Alt not quite cutting the mustard on being able to make all the necessary T2 components and some T2 production I had to pull my main character out of WH Space exiting out in the Forge Region and make 18 jumps back to normal home base to kickstart some component and T2 production. Had the Alt over the weekend fire up the production lines that were idle for quite some weeks and make several dozen Amarr Cruisers on speculation that their mineral requirements were going to go up after the Retribution patch. Got that done and Ships now on market.

Speculated that all those shiny new Destroyers that were going to be made in masses will need new fittings. It can be allot to choose from as to what to make, but settled on making T2 Weapon Upgrades for Amarr, Caldari, Minmatar ships since I had T2 BPC’s already in stock. Invented some Weapon Upgrades for Gallente Ships since had none in stock. Made small T2 Turrets and Launchers for Amarr, Caldari, Minmatar ships since also had T2 BPC’s in stock reserve Invented some time ago. I had planned to make some T2 Laser Crystals and T2 Light Missiles, but knowing how long it takes to make a full batch of T2 Ammo Charges (2 Weeks) that was a no go. In the end I got mostly of everything I needed to make complete to some capacity. A few T2 Turrets didn’t get made due to length of time in Production. Didn’t want to tie up other lab space once the server goes live for Retribution or have carry over production in process on one character. But in the end that kept all 20 of my Manufacturing Lab slots running to full capacity all weekend long.

Then had to make a Jita run to pick up a batch of minerals that was sitting there that hopefully will be of some use making something. On the way there and back updated some trade orders across each region while in warp. As well bought up some secure container’s of various sizes since they will no longer be NPC sold post Retribution Patch. That cost me several hundred million ISK across several regions at key locations.

At this point all preparation for Retribution is now over and a bit of chaos to come making the new shiny Destroyers, modules and more.

Industrial R&D Update

So not really all that much have happened in EVE for a while and just haven’t spent all that much time doing anything that much. For what I’ve mostly done in the little time is just updating Trade orders and some minor amount of Industry.

Industrial R&D

Probably the most significant that have occurred over the last few months was finally being able to get my asset collection of 400 + Ships & Module Blueprint Originals all ME/PE researched to what I consider a competitive and decent level of research. That was a huge hurdle that’s been ongoing for a long time as Blueprints Originals get bought from time to time as well. Some were researched in High sec stations, many via contract research via a contract researcher and many others via POS.

As such I spent another 2 Billion ISK on sets of the various 4 racial empire Cruisers and Battlecruiser ship BPO’s to increase my assets of ship blueprints to research though mostly use for T2 Inventions. I was able to get all the purchased BPO’s ME/PE researched and now being copied for later use for T2 Inventions.

T2 Inventions

With numerous amount of BPC’s to burn, tried Inventing some Guardians.

Haven’t felt in the mood to really build and produce anything for a while so I haven’t built any as yet.

• I had a Providence sitting around in my Hangar for a very long time, I decided to do something with it and try to Invent a T2 Ark jump freighter. That invention attempt consumed a lot of Datacores, expensive Decryptor and also ultimately failed in the invention attempt. Yeah that cost a bit of ISK on a failed attempt. Sometimes Invention is like that.
• Bought a set of all three size Mobile Warp Disruptor BPO’s and got them researched.
• 
• What I never understood was why on all the invention attempt for Mobile Warp Disruptors on a full run BPC you get 5 runs on all the BPC’s Invented vs 10 which is normal on a full run module BPC? I never quite get that one.
• Had gotten all my Mining Barge BPO’s (Procurer, Retriever) all full set copied several times with lots of BPC’s for T2 Invention. Purchased a lot of Decryptor’s for Invention use for inventing the T2 Barges. Invented a few multi run Mackinaw BPC’s, however had not gotten around to producing  any or Inventing any more of the mining barges. Just haven’t been in much a building mood for a while.
• 
• Had a lot of my Cruiser, Industrial ships BPO’s from all 4 racial empires all copied for T2 Invention. As well haven’t gotten around to making useful use of all those BPC’s.
• As for PI, most my PI Planets have mostly sat idle for weeks on end. Just haven’t bothered to restart most of them for extraction processing. Currently stationed stocked with well over a Billion ISK in Planetary Material stock that was always intended for building Starbase Structures with my BPO’s. So recently at least I took some time to restart my P2-P4 PI Factory Planet to make it somewhat useful to start making some P4.

With all the BPC’s from my entire collection of BPO assets already copied for T2 Invention use, I’d say I probably have enough T2 work I can do for well over the next year and beyond and that’s without copying anything new going forward at all.

For several weeks now that’s just been the state of my Industrial R&D efforts. No real goals other than to complete the BPO copying efforts and no real goal to do anything big. For Winter the only preparation made so far was copying some BPO’s for possible Invention use that I think might be useful for coming Winter changes in EVE. Otherwise no real preparation so far for EVE coming Winter changes as yet.

I think overall I’m still in a bit of EVE rut in my mood about EVE and the community as well an Industrial R&D rut as well.

Making some T2 Mining Crystals

 

I didn’t really plan to make any Mining Crystals II. Except that when I though of all the Mining Barges and modules getting sold on the market and all the mining going on everywhere it seems well maybe allot more Mining Crystals II are being sold as well. I’m not really sure how profitably they would be to make at all either. I just know coping any the T1 Mining Crystals BPO’s takes forever and a lifetime to copy and just never seem worth it or bothered ever making any to invent to say the least. It turned out that I had headed to Jita to pick up something, rarely that usually is these days heading to Scum City. So while there in Jita picking up something, though about maybe picking up some Mining Crystals II from the market for the Retriever Mining Barge since well I can only now just use T2 Crystals in the Strip Miner.

Somehow I decided for some odd reasons to look up Mining Crystals II BPC’s on the contracts market as I know they get produced often by T2 BPO producers and often sold on contracts. Recognizing T2 BPO Mining Crystals BPC on contract is obvious they all have 100 runs. They were several multi-packs on contracts for various sets of BPC’s all at 100 runs and most by a sellers name I had recognize before. Some long time ago it seems I had bought from this seller a T2 BPO copy of T2 Mining Drones BPC at 100 runs which was the first T2 I had ever made some long time ago. Apparently this person must either possess and sell quite a few T2 BPO copies as BPC’s on contracts. After doing some rough mental analysis I decided that it could only be easier than having to copy all those same T1 BPO’s which takes forever to copy for some odd reasons and also invent that many.

So looking over the Mining Crystal II BPC packs I picked up a multi-pack on contracts, one which looked like a High sec BPC pack and two other BPC of Mining Crystals II of minerals I know you can find in High sec Gravimetric sites. That was an investment of about 88 Million ISK to try things out. A bit unusual for me as an Inventor buying someone else T2 BPC as well and the most ever spent on any T2 BPC as it was. While looking over the BPC and in Jita I figured I was going to need some T2 Moon Material to make the various Mining Crystals II. Only 1 material was needed, so I did a quick rough guess about how much was needed and bought that much material. Packaged everything for transport and headed out of Scum City.

Looks like a decent amount of production runs.

Back at the hangar I searched through my stash of BPO assets and found my original researched collection of which I have the entire set of all the Mining Crystals BPO’s. I guess I now need to make at least 100 each of all the ones I had just bought the T2 BPC for to use as components to eventually produce the T2 module.

Time to make some T1 Mining Crystals.

That was relatively simple I just needed lots of Nocxium. Had quite a bit of that mineral sitting in my hangar. Eventually had to source the market and buy up the rest that I needed. A minor bit of transport logistics.

After a few hours of making all the T1 Mining Crystals It was time to produce the T2 version.

Not all that much material compared to most other T2 to make.

 

Since I regularly make T2 modules of various sorts, already had lots of R.A.M components to use. So it was just easy to throw the T2 BPC print into an available factory slot and set each of all the 100 run Mining Crystal II BPC’s into production. Time to manufacture about 15hrs or so.

 

After calculating all my cost with each individual BPC, Materials, T1 Mining Crystal Component I figured up my base cost. Checked the regional market and based on my production cost I figured I cold make a little decent profit having invested in the T2 BPC Multi-pack. In every Invention or Production of things I normally learn something new and that knowledge to me is always invaluable. Knowledge gained in such process to me has some ISK value and become part of collective knowledge. Though I figured I could make an eventual profit on selling the Mining Crystals II, not all the Mining Crystals I calculated are all that profitable or to the same degree. Then again, they weren’t all that hard to make either. But some Crystals were clearly more profitable than others.

Yet overall the profits I could make having producing the batches of Mining Crystals II almost pale in comparison to what I can make on almost every other T2 Module I usually make due to market competition and location. But Profit is still profit, which is better than none at all and more stuff to sell and keep business at my system station. In the end I got a few extra Mining Crystals II for my Retriever Mining Barge and rest put on the market to get sold. Another whole category of T2 modules I can now say I’ve produced.