Ecliptic Rift

About a year and a half ago, Casiella reverted to my “main” character and I sold off Kudon Astraisx. That partly resulted from an epiphany that I wanted more cyberpunk-themed gameplay and roleplay. So I built a character plan based largely off how I envisioned the character, trying to reflect that in game terms. This means I have Cybernetics V, Hacking IV, at least one level in all the Encryption Methods skills (Minmatar to IV, naturally), lots of covert ops skills, and electronic warfare.

Then I moved away, focusing on things that made sense for pure gameplay. I suspect that well over 99% of EVE players, and probably MMORPG players across all games, do it that way.

But the time has come for me to return to that philosophy, which has always served me well. It keeps me interested in the character and the game as I focus on the things I really like about it. So I put this skill plan together reflecting what I could do next. While it adds up to about 143days with my learning clone, inevitably it will take longer once CCP releases Tyrannis and I have the new skills to train to IV. This gets me into Arazus and Falcons both, by the way.

If you have any additional ideas for how to expand the character in this direction, I’d love for you to share them below!

Skill plan for Casiella Truza

Minmatar Encryption Methods V
Hacking V
Electronic Warfare V
Caldari Cruiser IV
Caldari Cruiser V
Signal Dispersion IV
Signal Dispersion V
Long Distance Jamming IV
Long Distance Jamming V
Frequency Modulation IV
Frequency Modulation V
Criminal Connections III
Criminal Connections IV
Transport Ships II
Transport Ships III
Transport Ships IV
Electronic Attack Ships II
Electronic Attack Ships III
Electronic Attack Ships IV
Amarr Encryption Methods II
Amarr Encryption Methods III
Amarr Encryption Methods IV
Caldari Encryption Methods II
Caldari Encryption Methods III
Caldari Encryption Methods IV
Gallente Encryption Methods II
Gallente Encryption Methods III
Gallente Encryption Methods IV
Sensor Linking II
Sensor Linking III
Sensor Linking IV
Recon Ships I
Recon Ships II
Recon Ships III
Recon Ships IV
Signal Suppression I
Signal Suppression II
Signal Suppression III

So I got a little frustrated today. Not with emoragequit at the game or the community, I should note. But I’ve had a bit of RL frustration and just wanted to clear my head without a bunch of conversation. EVE serves as my primary pastime, of course. If it doesn’t relax me, I’m doing it wrong. Feel free to psychoanalyze me all you want, but, like most citizens of the 21st century, I have a complicated life from which I want to escape once in a while.

I decided to roll an anonymous trial alt and run through the new tutorial missions. I did the exploration career agent first. While it leaves the scanning patterns a bit murky for those new pilots who might not otherwise know much about it, the wiki links should take care of that (more or less). The “implants” tutorial had a minor bug in that it didn’t actually grant the Cybernetics skillbook, but for less than 68k ISK, it doesn’t really matter. Early missions give more than that, as I didn’t even play ‘smart’ and already have over 700k.

So what will this character do? For now, exploration and salvaging. I don’t want to powergame my way through EVE, but rather enjoy it for what it offers: a fascinatingly dark and gritty SF universe. With spaceships. And duct tape.

CCP Ginger. Or at least how we see him.

Eifyr in particular has always fascinated me, largely due to their connection to cybernetic implants and booster manufacturing. The connection to the Krusual tribe caught me off-guard, though, as they only have stations in Eram, the Sebiestor tribal headquarters, and Elgoi, a neighboring system.

I understand some of the Caldari players have simultaneous reservations and excitement about some of the updates there, but I haven’t yet delved into everything there.

As I finally got some good time in-pod, I’ve put together a plan of action for the next few weeks. Mostly, it revolves around specific goals I want to achieve, some of which nest within each other. I have written this post as much to elucidate all this for myself as much as to generate conversation with pilots who have similar interests.

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This week just has so much EVE Online goodness, I have trouble figuring out where to begin.

Yesterday, we got a dev blog on “Operation Unholy Rage“, a recent anti-RMT initiative by CCP. They banned something like 6500 paying accounts, and this had a large effect on CPU utilization in the cluster. I wouldn’t have really considered that effect, as it appears that the macroers and spammers took up a disproportionately large share of CPU time.

Pilot population in my lovely Ingunn, though, has plummeted. It seems like this has reduced piracy in the area, though really that probably should count as a positive because it means the gatecamps hitting the macro haulers will move on and do actual, real, useful piracy that interacts with other players.

More importantly for me, this has really reduced the supply of cybernetic implants due to the number of L4 and storyline agents in Ingunn. That drove up the price, so even while I took my break from flying, my stock sold and I made quite a bit of ISK. Dealing in implants still provides a lot of my income. This just means that I don’t simply make the Rens-Emolgranlan-Ingunn circuit constantly, but instead get to see more of the regions in the general vicinity of Republic space. And this sort of change has led to lots of profits as well. I love PvPers that destroy pods, because that keeps demand high with limited supply.

We also received the 2009 Q2 Quarterly Economic Newsletter, always a highlight for me. Player population increases (more than 300k accounts now), though I found it interesting that only 170 trillion of the 300 trillion ISK in the game sits in wallets of active accounts. Additionally, it seems like players hit a massive curve in their assets when they reach the 50k login minute mark (about 830 hours, or 208 days of four hours a day).

The report also provides some brief analysis of the popularity of hisec versus lowsec versus nullsec, but I found the graph ill-conceived and the analysis superficial. Lowsec has far fewer pilots than the other two areas, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. I hope CCP takes steps to boost it, though.

Other highlights:

• Rifter popularity has increased; I give full and complete credit to Wensley. They seem to think that new players and the L1 epic arc have a bigger effect, for some reason.
• Tony’s favored Nighthawk dominates command ship popularity by a huge margin.
• Mineral price volatility continues with sustained deflation occurring right now. Great for us secondary producers, not so great for miners.
• Interceptors don’t provide much profit to T2 inventors, though HACs do. This reflects my own experience, incidentally.

They also briefly analyze quite a few modules, both from the perspective of T2 production (BPCs versus BPOs) as well as price history:

• Codebreaker I
• Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
• Warp Scrambler II
• 10MN Microwarpdrive II
• Control Towers
• Standard X-Instinct and Exile Boosters
• Falcon
• Rook
• ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
• Small Tractor Beam I
• Ballistic Control System II
• Purifier (the first Prorator graph, mislabeled)
• Prorator
• Ballistic Deflection Array
• Siege Missile Launcher II
• Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
• Thrasher
• Concussion Bomb
• Capacitor Control Circuit I
• PLEX

Anything you particularly noticed in the report?

The dark air smelled of tobacco, cheap alcohol, and lost dreams. Most of the drinkers in the bar looked like down-on-their-luck crewmen, available for any sort of berth they could find. The waitresses took drink orders but not much else, leading to muffled guffaws from the friends of a spacer getting shot down by the girl refilling their glasses. What little lighting they actually used in the bar flickered from time to time, as this level of the station didn’t get a lot of attention from the Engineering department.

Really, not much did. Casiella had docked up deep in the Great Wildlands, at the Thukker Mix Factory in M-MD3B. Nobody had any security out here besides friends, and as often as not that came out to no security at all.

She draped her jacket over the back of her chair and spun another one around to prop up her feet. A heavily tattooed waitress came by the table but didn’t give the boots in the seat so much as a second glance. “What’ll it be.” In most places, that would sound like a question. Not here, though.

“Beer. Whatever you got.” Casiella hadn’t spent any time out here in null-sec before, but this dive looked, felt, and tasted just like a hundred other joints she’d visited in low-sec, only more so. She watched for a moment as the girl walked away.

A rumbling voice spoke from behind her. “Nice, right?”

Casiella twisted slightly around to get a better glimpse of the spacer who’d decided he wanted to chat. “Can’t see anything else in this place, that’s all.”

He grunted. “Guess that much is true. Name’s Gannur.” He pulled up a chair and sat down without bothering to ask.

She didn’t bother to complain. No point in it, anyway. “Casi.”

He studied her closely. She’d intentionally dressed down, as it wouldn’t pay to look too prosperous in a place like this, where some of these folks wouldn’t see in their whole lives as much money as she’d make in one trade back in Heimatar. A gray work shirt, dark olive cargo pants, black leather boots and jacket. Hair short, like always. Still, she couldn’t conceal some things anymore, and he noticed. “Don’t see a lot of folks come through here with that much enhancement.”

Figuring she’d do better playing it off, she just said, “Rebuild after an accident, that’s all.”

His laugh sounded like a cranky afterburner firing up. “Most rebuilds don’t include Poteque Pharm hardware, sweetie.”

She raised one eyebrow, not expecting anyone in this place to actually recognize any of her hardware. “Been out to the Federation?”

Gannur shook his head. “You might just say I’m in the business.”

She tilted her head to the side and looked at the man more closely. He wore some sort of dingy-blue jumpsuit, wore his reddish hair a bit long, and had the face of a man who wanted you to trust him. That definitely meant that she didn’t. “Cybernetics?”

He smiled, a little off-center. “I deal in them.” A quick wink. “Don’t get any ideas, the owner’s a friend of mine. This place has security, even if it doesn’t look like it.”

Casi spread her hands wide. “I’d never think of it.” A lie, of course. “Wouldn’t pay to get in a fight with a potential business partner.” Another lie.

This drew a brief nod of acknowledgment. “But I only handle the local trading, here on the station. Few pilots have shown interest in the risks that the Great Wildlands present.”

She kept her right hand on the table and slowly reached back into her jacket, then withdrew a small data chip. “My private key and comm-code. I will launch for Heimatar soon, maybe I can bring back a shipment…”

Gannur accepted the chip and pocketed it away in his jumpsuit. “Indeed, I do believe we can find a way to work together if you do.”

Just then, the serving girl appeared with Casiella’s drink and set it down. She eyed Gannur suspiciously. “I’ll be right back with that tab of yours, Gann. I got yelled at last night for letting you extend it again.”

As soon as she turned her back, he smiled apologetically, stood, and disappeared into the haze and shadows.

Casi just smirked, shook her head, and took a swig.

Photo credit Lyot via Flickr

This weekend, I really just tried to find the fun again. As nearly anyone who likes the EVE production and trading system will tell you, that didn’t take long at all.

My activities

I built and sold quite a few ships, primarily Minmatar frigates but also a few T2 cruisers. Rig production ramped up again, though I think I need to research what’s coming up in Apocrypha 1.5 for small and medium rigs in preparation. I might even need to rejoin a research alliance, but that remains uncertain.

I also dabbled back into cybernetics dealing. Something tempts me to just delve completely into this and focus on it almost exclusively. Not only have I found substantial profits from it, the activity feels very cyberpunkish and works for me on a storytelling / character development level.

Also, several long-term research projects have come to fruition and I now own a couple of decently-researched Minmatar battlecruiser BPOs.

My skills

During my time away, I had taken the opportunity to train up some long skills including Broker Relations V and Marketing V, though the rest primarily focused on drones and gunnery. At this point, I’m finishing up some navigation skills then getting back to research and possibly trading. I passed 23m SP during this time, too.

My plans

I’ve found that T1 ship and module production doesn’t really appeal to me, primarily because I don’t like building directly from raw materials (i.e. minerals to ships). Building T2 ships from subcomponents or rigs from salvage bits feels much more interesting from a storytelling perspective. So my production activities will probably continue to develop in those directions, though I may sell off some of the less-profitable BPOs and focus only on a couple of ship classes, then spend more of my available resources on rigs and T2 modules.

If cybernetics continue to provide as much interest and profit as they have, though, I may take a break from all short-term production. I would only keep longer-term projects like invention and material research going, making all my ISK from pure trade. Cybernetics take very little physical volume, so my covert ops frigate would continue to make an excellent low-sec hauler in addition to my blockade runner in specific situations.

For the near future, I will probably not spend much time on exploration or combat. The only mission running I might do would focus on raising standings as quickly as possible with very large regional corporations so I can lower production and similar costs, but right now I don’t think that should present enough of a factor to substantially affect my cost structure as far as I can tell.

I also have started plotting out a return to EVE fiction writing in lieu of in-game roleplay.

Photo credit Sonya >> 搜你丫 via Flickr