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 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.

Another edition of …What’s in my Hangar?

So Rixx Javix started this thing recently over on his blog posting about what’s in his super secret hangar.  It was a pretty cool post. That’s a lot of ships he got, but then he’s been at EVE for a while too. I thought I did one of these hangar things before, but can’t find where on my blog its hidden. Oh maybe that was when I played that other MMO. Then Jester upped it up another notch and posted even more ships. Geezzz that’s a lot of exotic minerals and metal’s in his hanger for ships. Those guys play ship tags allot. EVE Hermit even chimed in with a post of his own which was rather cool as well. I’m just not sure who else did.

I figure I needed to get around to making a post about this as well. I’m game . It’s always interesting to see what kind of ships we all as capsuleer’s collect and keep around in our hangars based on how we all each play EVE.  As well just what exactly is in that super secret hangar of yours. Fortunately for me this was a fairly easy task since I tend to keep an organized hangar try to keep my asset spread low.

Not really that all into Shiny Ships. Every single ship in my Hangar was built by Me, except the EVE Anniversary Echelon ship! All the Rookie Tutorial Ships I still have.

After 2 years of playing EVE that’s all the ships my main character Ametius’s own. Not really all that into ships or shiny ships! I just get/build what I need and that’s about it. I still have all the Rookie ships I originally got from the Tutorial Missions when I started EVE 2 years ago, getting a few T1 Frigate, Destroyers, Industrial hauler’s from doing those missions. Can you believe that? Yeap still got umm and occasionally use one of them rigged for something. All the rest of the ships in my hangar I built all myself except the Echelon which was a EVE anniversary gift some time ago. Well after all I’m an Industrialist so I tend to build and Invent my own ships to fly. OTEC Cartel & Monopoly on T2 Moon Materials aren’t gonna hurt my ship needs the slightest. Plus anything T2 built gets passed onto the capsuleer in higher prices.

Most the ships in my hangar are Industrial ships overall, pretty much aligns with my usual activity. Most the ships I fly daily happen to be a Frigate’s. My Buzzard see more fly time by far than any other ships I own probably a good 80% the time. Next up is the Crane I fly probably the other 15% the time. And less than 5% the time I would guess I fly any other ship in my hangar. For all those ships only 2 of them really see fly the hostile skies. That’s about all I ever usually need to run my business across 7 major regions of empire space. The Skiff’s there in hangar I recently Invented and produced and those 2 were sold earlier today.

Wait no Faction Ships? Nope! No Billion ISK T3 Ships, Nope. I live in Empire, I’m relatively poor. I can’t afford such luxury ships. Plus what the hell am I gonna do with such ships anyway, I don’t do Missions much and don’t do Incursions or non of that stuff. Your thinking of that other guy that like shiny ships.

Main Character Ametius Hanger: That’s a lot of stuff. Like my hanger organized for running business.

This is the rest of the station hangar and since I keep my asset spread low, that’s pretty much it. Every now and then my assets get spread out across the galaxy somehow, but eventually I have to rein it all in and tidy things up or get rid of stuff. I guess that’s my super secret hangar. Nothing special in it of course! There is a lot of stuff in all those containers though. I keep things organize to easily be able to find stuff and keep things sorted. I pretty much know where exactly everything is and what’s in every single labeled container. I’m a Trader/Industrialist/R&D Inventor so that’s the kind of station hangar I keep and probably why it looks the way it does. Works for me.

So what’s in all those super secret containers? Stuff! Its how I keep things organized for operations.

Well lets see….

3536 BPC’s for use for Invention (Yet to be used in Invention).

377 BPO’s (All Researched BPO’s of some sort).

2982 Various pieces of Module Crap of some sort.

224K m3 of various (PI) Planetary Material.

829 T2 Invented BPC’s. (From Invention)

63 various other Full Run BPC’s for making more stuff.

7 various duplicate BPO’s (I couldn’t remember I had it so bought it again)

48 BPO’s awaiting ME Research ( I can’t be bothered to Research them)

How much assets is in that hangar? I have no clue!  I just know its allot. But it all helped to build my regional business in one form or another.

Alt Trader Station Hangar

Trader Alt Fleet of Ships: Don’t really own that much ships, mostly Industrials.

He’s not really that into ships or shiny ships! Just the basic ship necessities. Built all of his ships except the Providence Freighter and the Primae we all got as a gift a couple of EVE expansions ago. I think he also got a Hulk in a station somewhere also for once in a rare blue moon mining. Again most ships are mostly Industrials. The Buzzard and the Crane both between then probably see 98% of sky time. Few Combat ships, mostly they just to run missions every now and then to raise standing with some NPC Corp so I can pay lower Taxes. You probably didn’t think that was a reason why some people run missions I’m sure.

Trader Alt Hanger: You figure maybe there be more stuff in here, guess not

Really for a Trader running business in 7 major regions of empire space they really aren’t allot in this hanger. Barely anything exciting there to look at.

Probably one the most boring hangar you ever seen. Not as interesting as Jester’s hangar or as stylist as Rixx’s but hey that’s my hangar like it the way it is. All in all I use most those ships in the hangar  at some point or the other, some much more used than others.

So what’s in your super secret hangar?

Another Milestone Achievement

Another milestone in my EVE career achieved as a Trade Industrialist finally breaking and surpassing the 20 Billion ISK barrier. Currently now well over 21.2 Billion ISK and growing. A milestone achievement I quietly had in my mind and was finally glad to achieve as a full-time Inter-Regional Trader and part-time Research Industrialist in Highsec space.

I started the beginning of the year at 19 Billion ISK and steadily my Trade Investments and Industrial production sales grew. There is now some 10 Billion ISK sitting on the market in Sell Orders across 7 regions and over 1.6 Billion ISK in various regional Buy Orders across 3 empire regions. Its taken some work and was not all as easy to reach as many like to say its easy to make ISK. Try and do it sometimes as a steady process growing ISK it’s not always as easy as people like to say it is. Most people in New Eden often just want the quick road to riches with the sale of one or two modules to make several hundred million or a billion ISK one or two times. Its harder to do day after day steadily.

In EVE Traders come in many different kind and in how they operate to provide commerce and liquidity across New Eden. The vast majority of Traders station trade in Jita or any of the 4 other major market hubs. Everyone’s different. Some Traders have been said to Trade in Jita for years and have never undocked in years and amassed large fortunes. Some Traders station and regional trade in the smaller regions away from the major trade market hubs. Some Traders make a living scamming in major market hubs. Other Traders operate in the various areas of empire space and make a living trading and selling things across and between the various regions moving goods back and forth to service the economy of New Eden and keep capsuleers supplied to do their dirty deeds. And I guess that’s me a Inter-Regional Trader somewhat.

So I’ve enjoyed the steady growth of things. Vast majority of sales were all made up of lots of small sales vast majority being below 10 M ISK of most items. Very few items actually sold for over 10 M+ yet never over 40 M ISK at most. So wasn’t like I sold several items for several hundred million ISK in a few sales and made a lot of fast ISK. Just steady growth of Trade Investments, Re-Investments and growth. Can almost seem boring at times how that all works. Some days its just finding a good deal.

Even though the month isn’t quite over as yet business is up just over 10%.

On the long road to this milestone achievement I didn’t steal, scam or rob anyone anywhere in New Eden. It’s a rough place living and trying to make a living in New Eden, as well as having a good reputation. Not that the vast majority in New Eden really cares about their reputation anyway. Many in New Eden just as quickly try to shoot you to earn a reputation for the kill.

Wondering what next on the road ahead, living and trying to get ahead in New Eden.

Starting another year off in New Eden

Where I've been in New Eden as of January 1st 2012

Took a screenshot to document as of the beginning of the year where my main character have been so far in New Eden. I seem to travel allot all over Highsec Space. Well I’m primarily a Trader doing Regional Trade mostly. Though I do a bit of Industrial & Research activity as well.

As of the beginning my main character was at 28.1 Million Skill Points and started the year training Large Energy Turret 5 with another 20 days to go to complete training for using T2 Turrets and Laser Crystals. For my alt Trader I have him training Metallurgy 5 and somewhere around 25 Million Skill Points.

Wallet balance as of January 1st, 2012.

Started the year with a nice balance of 19 Billion ISK and will see what I can do with it in the year or maybe go broke maybe. Back in 2011 I had started the year at right around 3 Billion ISK. There is a total of about 7.58 Billion of Sell Orders across 7 Regions on the market and 900 M in Buy Orders across 2 Regions. For the most part Trade sales remain steady in growth and in investment.

Shiny ships don’t really motivate me all that much and my favorite ship that I fly daily remain my tiny Covert Ops Buzzard of which I have several and use almost exclusively daily. As well my Crane to move a few bigger things around that I can’t cram in the tiny frigate.

The Wardec continues and haven’t seen the enemy since the start of the Wardec, will see what happens over the next few days.