WoT in space?

I must confess I've become addicted to World of Tanks lately and mostly logged in to Eve only to switch skills.

However, news that CCP developers have presented a new game at Fanfest sounds very interesting because it sounds exactly like WoT in space and could give Eve fans something which is hard to find in Eve - instant action in a more or less balanced setting.

I wonder if I will be able to use Oculus Rift with my strong myopia.

Market reaction to Tier 1 battleship changes

I bought small stacks of all four Tier 1 battleships in February (from sell orders because I'm lazy) in an attempt to make some money on the inevitable tiericide.

Here is how the prices have changed (figures show percentage change against my average purchase price) as of today, now that the draft rebalancing proposals are out.

Sieg Fail

Fon Revedhort, a Russian player infamous for his neo-Nazi views which he insists on promoting through his (otherwise very good) pvp videos, has been dropped from the CSM 8 race.

"While he is entitled to his personal opinions, CCP cannot allow someone with the views he has continued to express to represent the EVE player base, and CCP, as a member of the CSM," CCP Dolan said.

"The presence of a player with the views that Fon Revedhort has expressed having a seat on the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) would have the potential to create charged situations between Council members and developers they would work with both virtually and in-person at summits."

Fon and his backers are obviously throwing a tantrum on the Russian forums, blaming "spam from the Goons" for his removal and calling it unfair.

What they seem to ignore is that his views would have never become an issue had he not used the Eve-related media to promote them. His EVE-O forum signature used to be "14" at some point, which is a reference to a David Lane quote: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children." And his current signature on eve-ru.com forums is a quote from Nazi writer Houston Chamberlain.

Finally, his video from the previous CSM campaign contained a string of Nazi references and its soundtrack included a song titled "Sieg Heil".

Mein Fuhrer, our candidate has been barred from running for CSM...

The 5 billion kill I missed

Last night I saw a Scorpion Navy Issue fooling around in Kurniainen, mostly hanging out next to the station.

An eve-kill search showed that its pilot QOODROOQ, was a fan of blinged PVP fits. It also revealed that his buddy/alt was docked in the same station.

I plugged the SNI fit from his last loss into EFT to see he could tank over 4,000 DPS. There was no way I could break that, even triple-boxing, and he would probably only engage at a gate or station where he can deagress and retreat.

I pinged a channel frequented by Shadow Cartel pilots hoping that a potentially juicy kill would attract their interest. But they were busy preparing for another operation.

So I gave up the idea of killing that SNI. But he apparently kept looking for trouble and found it in the end.

Looks like he got caught away from gate/station (which means mistakes had been made) or was neuted to a point where he could not catch up with incoming damage.

FW: not as bad as some people say

A few well-respected pilots have complained about faction warfare being completely dominated by risk aversion which leads to few, if any, real fights.

My experience, however, has been quite positive.

I started FW with a low-skill character last fall to take advantage of the loyalty point fountain coupled with low prices. Doing it casually, I think I made a few billion ISK from plexing and a few billion more from FW-related speculation - buying popular cashout items and reselling them once the plug was pulled on LP store discounts.

I kept training the character and he can now fly minmatar frigates with reasonable PVP setups so recently I started flying him again, looking for fights rather than loyalty points.

And it works. Playing, once again, rather casually, I still got into a number of fights, won some, lost some and gained some experience flying and fighting the updated T1 frigs.

While some people do indeed warp out the moment they see you on close-range d-scan, others are willing to fight, often coming back for a rematch. I'd say more than a half of Amarr pilots I've met were willing to fight.

In total, I've been in at least 16 fights since restarting FW on March 24, which, measured against my activity, is quite good. It's definitely more than I got with Nursultan. Oh, and the LP gain from kills and plexes (you sit there anyway as you wait for fights) is a nice bonus that could keep one in well-fitted ships indefinitely.

Right now my default ship is the Slasher:

[Slasher, AB-TD]
Damage Control II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer I

1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I,Tracking Speed Disruption Script

150mm Light AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
150mm Light AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
150mm Light AutoCannon II,Republic Fleet Fusion S
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I

Small Anti-Explosive Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Nanobot Accelerator I

EMP, Phased Plasma, nanite paste and optimal disruption script in the cargohold.



Works reasonably well against turret-based ships, especially if you are inside a plex and dictate the starting range of the engagement. You either stay at range while disrupting their optimal (works best against blaster ships) or orbit close while disrupting their tracking (poor slicers).

Dies when successfully kited by MWD frigs. Takes forever to chew through a cap-boosted dualrep Incursus. I have yet to fight a buffer-tank missile ship, but I think it's going to be tough as you have no buffer at all and no way to mitigate missile damage (other than speed, so overheat your afterburner).

I usually turn off the auto-reload on the rep because at that stage I am usually in control of range and need minor repairs for rare volleys that get through or drone attacks.

I should probably get an MWD version as well to deal with those pesky kiters.

No T-Shirts

Apparently a bug with some new avatar t-shirts rendered them invisible on the forums.

Hottest babes ITT:

Low-Hanging Fruit - A Better Character Market

The Character Bazaar on the official Eve forums is a terribly inefficient marketplace. One has to read multiple threads and follow multiple Eveboard links to look at and compare characters.

It would be much more convenient to have a market where characters can be filtered by skills. And since they are easily accessible through the API, I think it is just a matter of applying some programming and interface-building skills.

Unfortunately, I do not possess such skills but maybe someone will come up with a solution? It could even be fee-based, to recoup time invested, I think.

Not very informative, is it?

Why Did CONCORD agent Christer Fuglesang Get Promoted?

Those who read the March 5 patchnotes might gave notices this line:

• The CONCORD agent Christer Fuglesang has been promoted from level 2 to level 3.

 

 There was even a thread on the official forums asking about the reasons for his promotion but CCP Fozzie's answer - "CONCORD rewards dedicated and loyal service to the cause of Justice" - was as vague as possible.

So what did Christer Fuglesang (who is a Swedish astronaut in real life) do to earn this promotion?

According to Russian Eve forums he was very generous, perhaps too generous, with rookie pilots.

A new character with minimal training (Afterburner I, Weapon Upgrades I, Social II, Diplomacy III, the Russian guide says) and a cheap combat frigate fir for maximum DPS could get  the standings to access Christer by attacking a station in hisec - thanks to the way Diplomacy works.

Then, they would turn down mission offers until Christer offered them a good +5% implant and blitz the mission by killing a single structure.

The cycle could be repeated indefinitely by biomassing characters and starting new ones. People could even do that on trial accounts, apparently, and some made billions off the agent.

Christer's promotion means pilots need higher Concord standings now and trial accounts cannot access him at all. If you have the necessary standings, pay him a visit in Autaris.

Interestingly, another Concord agent, Jeremy Tacs, got suspended indefinitely some time ago for doing the same thing and allowing people to farm Machariel blueprints and deadspace modules. Concord really need to make sure their human resources policies are applied consistently.

Looking for Fights in Low and Null

I spent almost a week in Liparer trying to get some kills and failed. Every time I logged on, local pirates were either smacktalking each other while playing station games or camping a gate with too many ships for me to deal with.

On one occasion, I crossed blasters-and-lasers with one of locals in an empty neighboring system but had to retreat after my Talos took too much damage from his Oracle before we even were in point range.

Finally, last Saturday, I decided to just bait them and try to kill a tackler or two. Making myself seen to their gatecamp, I warped off to a belt and aligned to another celestial. After a while, a stealth bomber warped in and cloaked, indicating they had established my location.

No quick tackle warped in though as I kept moving away from the belt.

Then, a Pilgrim recon - who had obviously warped in to the bomber at range- decloaked some 7.5 kilometres away from me. Instinctively, I activated the MWD to burn further away before he could use a scram but he managed to put one on me anyway. Fortunately, I was at about full speed by that time and inertia carried me out of scram range.

More ships started landing next to the Pilgrim as I was burning away and, because I had held my mouse over the overview targeting them one by one, I missed an approaching Taranis. He was about 40 km away when I noticed him, too close for me to lock and shoot without ending up warp scrambled.

I warped off to my align target, closely followed by the Taranis, then to a safe to catch my breath, and then to another belt where the interceptor soon spotted me again.

This time I was position better and locked him from far away, opening fire as he was about 40 km away. The first round stripped his shield and half armour... but then my guns stopped applying any damage. He switched to manual piloting and started spiraling towards me rather than burning in a straight line. I hate when people do that to me.

The good thing was, this had slowed him down and I was able to warp off again, to a celestial where his fleetmates were still waiting for me.

Fortunately, I landed at range, got out and eventually docked.

The engagement, although anticlimactic, had my heart pumping and reminded me why I love Eve.

I still wanted blood, however, and decided to try nullsec. After positioning my cloaky Loki booster in KBP7-G and observing its three stargates for a while, I saw a lonely Coercer on the Dital gate and quickly bought and fitted a standard dualprop Taranis.

I jumped in and burned towards the destroyer who immediately aggressed me. By the end of my MWD cycle I was already in deep structure. Let's deploy drones, NO, I DON'T WANT TO SHOW INFO, I WANT THEM OUT AND FIGHTING!!! Expecting to die to the next volley, I turned on my overheated afterburner, mitigating most - but not all - of the incoming damage.

The Coercer was clawing back shield, although not quickly enough to keep up with my damage. Then his reps stopped and armour melted quickly. But I was already in 40 percent hull. Thirty, twenty, BOOM. The Coercer exploded and I warped out to a random belt, exchanging "gf's" with the pilot.

Turned out he had a medium ASB and an oversized afterburner, quite a deadly combo on a high-DPS boat such as the Coercer. I'm pretty sure I would have lost without the Loki boosts which allowed me to catch up with him quicker and them get under his tracking. Of course, I could have also tried just warping out since he had no scram but I suspect he would have fried my ship as it tried to align.

I left that Taranis in a highsec station close to KBP and came back to Kurniainen in a Talos, a decision I almost regretted last night when I probed out a Zealot in a deadspace pocket in Kurn. I was browsing my ship hangar looking for something small and fast and all I saw were cruisers and larger ships. Eventually, though,  I found a Comet which I had never used before but which was fitted and stocked with ammo.

As I came out of warp inside the deadspace pocket, I saw the Zealot about 50 km away and decided to burn straight for him, hoping to get tackle before he sniped me. I got hit by two volleys but then it was just a matter of orbiting the HAC and chewing through his defenses. I'm pretty sure the pilot had been aware of my plans and decided to gamble and see if he could snipe me.

Nice to see (non-FW) mission runners in lowsec again, such as the Zealot and the deadspace-AB Cane I killed earlier.

Mission: Get a Fight

It's about 20.30 EVE time and I feel like fighting someone after months and months of mostly PVE. I want to get a kill, preferably not a gank.

Location: Kurniainen, The Bleak Lands, station whatever-it's-called-there's-only-one-anyway.
Ship: cookie-cutter blaster Talos

Local shows mostly faction warfare fighters in system. Undock, scan out beacons, there they are. I don't feel like going into plexes in a kiting battlecruiser so instead I hang out at range from the entry gate. Lots of people, many of them flashy, move in but nobody chases me. No luck baiting in a belt either. Time to move.

Oyonata, Sahtogas. Two FW Cynabals on gate immediately engage me. A tempting situation but d-scan shows plenty of other ships in space and I suspect this will end badly for me. Re-approach the gate, jump back. I linger on the other side, giving them a chance to de-aggress and follow but, just like I suspected, they are not going to take risks.

Kovorix or Kil2 would have probably soloed them and their support as well.

Let's go the other way: Sosan, Tararan, Asghed... WTF dude, wrong turn... Tararan, Arzad, Ezzara, Vard, Siseide - nothing really interesting. Time to visit Mother Amamake.

Lots of PL people in local, caps and supers on scan. Warp to cyno to see what's going on but it looks like simple midpointing. Warp around for a while, choose a FW beacon, warp in at range and wait.

Fortunately, this time I don't have to wait long. An Omen soon warped in about 20 kilometres away from me and started burning in my direction.

This was a very good position for me to start a fight as the Omen's potential reinforcements could not warp directly to him so I was glad to return fire when he started pointing and shooting me.

I was already aligned so I just turned on my MWD and overloaded it to make sure the cruiser does not get under my guns.

It only took a few overloaded Neutron Blaster Cannon II volleys to turn the glass cannon Omen into a wreck.

Scoop the loot, dock and repair. Mission accomplished.

High Sec Is Rough

What happens when you find s 4/10 in Caldari high sec space which is already being run by someone else?

A lot of insults and a bounty.


EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Alikara
Blue101 > dont be a fagot
Blue101 > leave
Blue101 > waht a huge fagot
manbelly big > 12 b&
Blue101 > fuck you
Blue101 > u fuckign peice of shit


Bounty placed on you
From: CONCORD
Sent: 2012.12.22 20:49

Blue101 placed 3 000 000 ISK in bounty on your head.

The loot was crap by the way.

Plex Wars

Running DED complexes in Cladari lowsec can be insanely profitable.

My associate's Tengu more than paid for itself with loot from just two 5/10 plexes: a B-Type Medium Shield Booster and a B-Type Invulnerability Field.

But with higher rewards comes higher risk and stronger competition. While in the Bleak Lands one can run dozens of plexes undisturbed, in Caldari space someone will probably finish a 4/10 before you are done probing it down.

Last night, my associate spotted a number of cosmic signatures on scan in Hakonen as well as two Tengus and a cloud of core scanner probes, a clear indication of exploration activity. As he scrambled to pinpoint the sites, I came into Hakonen myself in a covops frigate and decided to try scaring off competition with combat probes.

My associate resolved a 4/10 and started clearing it - a very easy task in a Tengu but we had to be on alert, switching back and forth between overview tabs to kill rats and check for probes or incoming ships. Unfortunately, the site only produced a shield trasnfer mod, not worth much.

I returned to probing and located a 6/10 in the same system, already being run by one of the Tengus I had seen earlier. The pilot welcomed me in local as my covops went in to check his progress, meaning he had a cloaked scout outside. I moved on and found him in the middle of clearing the second room out of four.

Well, if he refuses to be scared out of the plex, I will have to use force, I reckoned, moving two jumps into a system where I had a PVP Drake. The second gate, however, was camped so on my way back I had to take a different, longer route, making me a bit concerned about time.

The Tengu, however, was still not done and warped out leaving me with several NPCs in the third room and venting his frustration in local.

Competitor > I did leave you alone in the Scout Oupost
Competitor > To bad my other toon is to far away atm
Competitor > Good luck finishing the plex though

In most DED plexes, the last room does not really need to be cleared, you just grab the loot and warp off, so I brought my own Tengu pilot and proceeded to finish the complex. Unfortunately, I was rewarded with the same type of module as before, just of a better variety.

Oh well. I mailed my competitor, informing him of the poor haul. Turns out he had at least got something out of it.

Re:plex
From: Competitor
 Sent: 2012.12.18 00:15
To: Nursultan, 


I'm flying dangerous all the time.. hense the low sec :)

The plex did give a dread stasis thingy halfway though.

To bad you didn't get a nice drop.

Fly however you like and do shoot others :P

.-)

--------------------------------
plex
From: NursultanSent: 2012.12.17 22:07
To: Competitor,

the drop sucked
and i really hoped for a fight, shame your pvp char was away
gl, fly dangerous 0/

The Entitlement Complex

"NEW NPC AI completely changes complexes. It's almost impossible to run any of them, especially 10/10 or 8/10. Switching targets simply makes it impossible. I personally don't have 3b to get some high specialized marauder. I don't have time and patience to run missions in high sec making 20-30M/hour. I like to shoot and I don't like to do market stuff. My accounts cost 1.2b every month that i need to pay to keep my accounts alive. It was already on the border now, spending most of my free time in weekends running damn complexes so survive another month. But now it's over. I don't see any way how to make ISK anymore!

I will wait one month if CCP realizes they totally ****** it up. After that I don't see any other way than letting my accounts expire and wait what happens.

Very bad job CCP, you really need someone who understands this game from inside ! Thumbs down !"

 The quote above is very representative of what I often see on Eve forums: "Due to such and such change I can no longer PLEX all my accounts, hey CCP, you're losing a customer!"

Do these people realise that they are non-paying customers? CCP spend money on design, coding and infrastructure and get nothing in return from these guys, apart from their interactions with other players. Yes, these are also important in a MMORPG but they don't pay bills.

Looking at the PLEX/GTC price, which has doubled since I started playing in 2008, it seems that either many more people are buying them these days (more likely in my opinion) or fewer people are selling - both bad news for CCP finances.

CLARIFICATION: I know people paying with PLEX have their bill paid in RL money by someone else. What I believe is that the growing PLEX price (ignoring speculative spikes and drops) shows that for every PLEX generator, there are more and more PLEX users appearing. Which, in turn, means that average revenue per user goes down. Of course, only CCP know the breakdown between their variable and fixed costs and can tell whether gross or per-user revenue is more important to them. Again, only CCP know how elastic PLEX supply is with regards to ISK price.

When CCP tried to introduce alternative ways of boosting revenues, players revolted, so it is to be expected that they will at least try to reduce ISK generation.

No one has promised players they will be able to play for free AND spend very little time grinding the required ISK. Nuff said.

The low-level plex debate

As you might have heard, CCP plans to remove static 1/10 and 2/10 plexes with tomorrow'a patch and some players, such as Miura Bull and Kane Rizzel - guys I have a lot of respect for - are campaigning against that.

Now, I myself am torn on the issue. One the one hand, these plexes do indeed provide good arenas for frigate fights and I've had many myself. I've also made quite a lot of ISK (for me at the time, at least) from them.

On the other hand, a dedicated farmer/camper can either lock them down by sitting in the final room or kill everyone who comes in using a nearly invincible multiboxing setup (e.g. high DPS frig with web and point plus Sentinel, backed by skirmish links).

Still, I think they make sense in lowsec but not in highsec where there is no way to kill farmers.

Timmy, Johnny, and Spike in Eve

Time and again, the debate about seeking good fights vs playing to win comes up on the official forums, r/eve and individual blogs. Both sides accuse each other of playing the game the wrong way, taking it too seriously, being mad and butthurt, you name it.

I wanted to look at it from a different perspective.

Wizards of the Coast, the developers of awesome card game Magic: the Gathering, have identified three major types of players in their audience - Timmy, Johnny and Spike.

Let me just quote MaRo's blog and add my comments:

Johnny is the creative gamer to whom Magic is a form of self-expression. Johnny likes to win, but he wants to win with style. It’s very important to Johnny that he win on his own terms. As such, it’s important to Johnny that he’s using his own deck. Playing Magic is an opportunity for Johnny to show off his creativity. Johnny likes a challenge. Johnny enjoys winning with cards that no one else wants to use. He likes making decks that win in innovative ways. What sets Johnny apart from the other profiles is that Johnny enjoys deckbuilding as much as (or more than) he enjoys playing. Johnny loves the cool interactions of the cards. He loves combo decks. Johnny is happiest when he’s exploring uncharted territory. Like Timmy (mentioned below), Johnny cares more about the quality of his wins than the quantity. For example, let's say Johnny builds a new deck that has a neat but difficult way to win. He plays ten games and manages to get his deck to do its thing… once. Johnny walks away happy.

This one is very easy to translate into Eve. Garmon, Kil2, Matari Exodus guys, people who use creative setups, handicap themselves with "honour" rules such as not blobbing and not using ECM, are willing to spend hours looking for that one perfect fight.

Spike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players’ decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory. Spike cares more about the quantity of wins than the quality. For example, Spike plays ten games and wins nine of them. If Spike feels he should have won the tenth, he walks away unhappy.

This guy represents the opposite end of the spectrum. "IF YOUR IN A FAIR FIGHT YOUR DOING IT WRONG!!!1111LOL." We all know them, rolling with Falcons/cynos up their sleeve or at the very least a reinforcement fleet one jump out.

Timmy is what we in R&D call the "power gamer." Timmy likes to win big. He doesn’t want to eke out a last minute victory. Timmy wants to smash his opponents. He likes his cards to be impressive, and he enjoys playing big creatures and big spells. ...What sets Timmy apart from the other two profiles is that Timmy is motivated by fun. He plays Magic because it’s enjoyable. Timmy is very social. An important part of the game is sitting around with his friends. Timmy cares more about the quality of his win than the quantity of his wins. For example, Timmy sits down and plays ten games. He only wins three games out of ten but the three he wins, he dominates his opponent. Timmy had fun. Timmy walks away happy.

Now who is this guy in Eve? At first, I'm tempted to say this describes "elite PVP" groups like PL and R&K but these guys are not happy to win one out of ten fights. Does this describe people like Gevlon who want to do "stuff that matters", namely win and hold sovereignty? Or is it about people who fly pimped-out battleships or solo in supercaps? Unlike Magic though, Eve is unforgiving to such players.

In a later blog, MaRo breaks down the archetype further, explaining that Timmies can be:

• power gamers (looking for domination)
• social gamers (obvious one)
• diversity gamers (trying out new stuff all the time)
• adrenalin gamers (pretty obvious as well)

Check out the blog for breakdowns of other types.

MaRo also describes hybrid types such as Timmy/Spike or Spike/Timmy (which better matches my impression of PL/R&K and the like), Johhny/Spike or Spike/Johnny (the EFT warrior who insists that his build is better than all the rest), Timmy/Johnny or Johnny/Timmy (erm, DHB Wildcat?) and, finally, Timmy/Johnny/Spike, the guy who wants "to play big cards, have innovative decks, and yet still win as much as possible".

What do you, hardly-ever-commenting readers, think?

The Lazy Wormhole PI Guide

Due to having little time for space combat, I have recently concentrated on money-making opportunities, specifically those that do not involve spending a lot of time online. One of the obvious options is planetary interaction (PI).

Now, there are many PI guides out there but most of them are either introductory or focused on maximising output and profit. I had tried the maximum output approach in the past and burned out rather quickly because it involves splitting extraction and refining and this requires a lot of hauling.

This time, I decided to try a lazy approach, minimising my interaction with planets.

This means refining on the spot and limits you to P2 products. While this means that you lose some efficiency, it allows you to leave the planets unattended for a longer time. It also requires that you operate in 0.0 space, preferably wornholes as they get the best output regardless of class while the productivity of k-space nullsec plants varies depending on security status.

The required skills are:

• Command Center Upgrades V - to put all those facilities online
• Interplanetary Consolidation - as high as possible because why bother with PI at all otherwise, but you can add extra planets later
• Planetology IV - I've heard V is even better for finding hotspots but IV is a prerequisite for the next skill
• Advanced Planetology IV - to optimise your extractors' placement
• Racial Industrial IV - to use your race's largest hauler and minimise trips
• Hull Upgrades II - to use Expanded Cargoholds II; you can rig your hauler with another character

Remote Sensing is irrelevant in w-space where all your planets will be in a single system.
If you are committed to your corporation, you can train these skills on an alt (or multiple ones) on the same account or a separate one. Like, the one where your T3 booster sits.

First of all, you need a w-space base of operations. Join a wormhole corp or, if you have a few alts or friends, set up a tower in an empty system yourself. Ideally, it will be a C1/C2 system with a hisec static connection, making hauling very easy. A C1/C2 with a C1/C2 static will also work, and will probably have less traffic.

Next, survey your planets and figure out what to produce there.
Here are your options by planet type, with lowest Jita sell prices based on eve-central data:


Note that planets do not always have good supply of certain resources, limiting your options.

Now, put your command centers in your cargohold, preferably while staying under POS shields, and start deploying your colonies. Apart from a fully upgraded command center, you will need:

• a launchpad
• two extractors (one for each raw material)
• six basic industrial facilities (for 47-hour cycles, significantly longer cycles require less processing power)
• three advanced industrial facilities (one per two basic ones)

Put them down close to each other to save on link costs and make sure everything is connected to the launchpad. Now, install the necessary schematics at AIFs and BIFs and launch the extractors. Make sure to route everything through the launchpad which serves as a buffer. Arrange extractor heads so that you get roughly equal numbers of both of your raw mats, otehrwise you risk clogging your buffer with bulky P0.

Your setup should look like this.

Such a setup will produce about 250-350 units of P2 per cycle, depending on raw material abundance, yielding you 1.25-1.75 million ISK per day if you go with the most popular commodities. This means 225-315 million ISK before tax per month for a character running all six planets. Not much money but not much effort either since all you do is log on every other day and restart extractors. Plus, this is meant to be done with multiple PI alts.

Hauling frequency will depend on your output. Having an Orca makes life much easier but with a static hisec hole I think regular industrials should be fine.

 Have I missed something here? Please tell me if so.

HML Changes Revised

CCP developers have revised their plans to nerf heavy missile damage projection.

While the 25-percent range nerf this is still going to hurt large long-range HML Drake and Tengu fleets, it looks like both ships will remain viable for solo and small-gang PVP where fighting mostly occurs within overheated and gang-boosted point range.

The ships just might have to trade some tank rigs for damage or rate-of-fire ones.

Still, HAMs are becoming an option as well. Overall, looks like a healthy change.

NERFerno

CCP has followed up on the heavy missile nerf by announcing plans to tweak ancillary shield boosters and upgrade the NPC AI, causing even more tears from some players.

I guess it has been a while since the previous big nerfs such as that of nano ships and the playerbase has become used to ships and modules only getting better.

 Some players. however, have legitimate concerns which I think CCP simply cannot ignore.

Tattered Drake

So the long-expected nerfbat has come and hit the Drake really hard. Forums are full of heavy missile drake (and Tengu) users' tears.

"Holy piles of worthless drake hulls batman!"

"Regular players never see this shit coming, are hit hardest by it. Just like when Blizz decided to nerf IAS in D3. People that live on the forums knew about it, and made bank selling equip that was going to become worthless. Millions of normal people, that just play games, and don't spend all day reading about them, got fucked over and lost almost all worth to their gear.

Changes like this are terrible for a game. Punishing the new, and casual players is the best way to lower your userbase."

"Been in eve for ~5 months, maybe longer. 3-4 months ago, everyone, EVERYONE was telling me "train drake, train tengu".
Not cool CCP. Not cool."

I remember getting my first Drake after training Batlecruisers IV. I spun the ship in the hangar while listening to the Imperial March, so happy about being able to move on to level 3 missions.

The consensus at that time seemed to be that the Drake was a newbie PVE platform and sucked in PVP, being unable to fight its way out of a wet paper bag, as someone said on the forums. Of course everybody fitted their Drakes for max shield regen and not for damage.

Then someone came up with the HAM Drake setup which traded some tank for short-range damage and could take on many other battlecruisers in a duel.

Then Pod Liberation Authority (PODLA) came up with the nano Drake, which traded even more tank for speed, damage projection and dual webs.

At some point also, nullsec alliances found the cheap and easy-to-train for Drake useful and fleets of hundreds of Drakes became commonplace.

Funny thing is, the ship itself has not changed for years, only the environment did.

So, what now for Drake fans? With reduced damage, the PODLA Drake looks less appealing, although it could trade a web for a tracking computer and get better at hitting smaller targets from a long range. One nano could also be traded for a third BCS although it would still not compensate the 20 percent damage reduction.

Or maybe something like this?

[Drake, HAM nano]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Warp Disruptor II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Javelin Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Javelin Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Javelin Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Javelin Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Javelin Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Javelin Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Javelin Heavy Assault Missile
[empty high slot]

Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

With the removed Javelin penalty, it has PODLA Drake's speed, DPS and EHP and range of about 40 km. Cap is under more pressure though. One could also trade an invulnerability field for a tracking computer to further boost damage projection at the expense of tank.

Heavy Industry

As I've mentioned before, I had accumulated a sizeable library of T2 rig blueprints and decided to put them to use.

First, I just pulled salvage and rig prices from eve-central to calculate margins. A bit later, however, I figured out that I should also check market volume which prevented me from building rigs such as Large Remote Repair Augmentor II which have great margins but almost zero turnover.

In the end, I settled on the most popular armor, shield, energy and weapon rigs and bought about 4.5 billion ISK worth of T2 salvage (I had my own stock as well) in Jita.

I was afraid to undock even a T2 hauler with so much stuff inside so I moved it out of Jita in a battleship.

Then I ran production lines nonstop for about a week and shipped the rigs back to Jita.

Selling them turned out to be the most time-consuming part. Updating orders twice a day, it took me almost two weeks to move the whole stock.

The result, however, was quite satisfying: over 2 billion ISK in net profit.