8 Simple Rules for....

8 Simple Rules for shooting my friendly enemies.

1: No podding, ever.  If you happen to pod someone by accident, not only will it hold us up until that person returns to the battlefield, but you will owe them the cost of any new implants.

2: Fights will only take place at the designated locations (designated system which will change each week, and designated bookmark) in round format.  Each round will begin with each squad leader warping their entire squad to the fight bookmark at 0.  (The squad leaders will be in touch to synchronize warps).  Each round ends when there are no more ships alive for one of the two teams.  (no reshipping).  The winning side gets to loot/salvage the field.  Please abandon wrecks to make this easier on the other side.  After the looting/salvaging has taken place, each team will go back, drop off loot and reship for the next round.

3: No warping off.  If you warp off by accident, you die.  (no need to fit long points because of this)

4: There are ship and fitting restrictions that vary by each round.  Please refer to the restrictions of each round listed for each week (they will vary by week).  Cloaks are the only module which may NEVER be fit.  For more details on this week's limitations, see * below.  It is the job of the squad leader on each team to confirm his team is properly fit prior to the round beginning.

5: Fights will happen between even numbers of pilots for each team.  If either team has more pilots, they will sit pilots, or trade them to the team with less pilots to even up the numbers.  At most, there will be one squad''s worth (10 pilots) per team.

6: No off grid boosting.  Boosters are only allowed on grid, and only if the allowed fittings allow for a ship that can boost.  The boosting ship also counts to a team's pilot total.  (Example: 5 pilots + 1 booster = a team of 6 pilots).

7: Drugs and Implants are fine.

8: Each week's fight will consist of 5 rounds, and please no smack talk.  Keep it civil!

* Week of Apr 17th 2015:  Fitting restrictions:

Round 1: T1 (non-faction) cruisers.  You may fit your ship any way you wish with the following exceptions: No ECM, damps or tracking disruptors.  No prop mods.  No ECM drones.  No logi (remote rep) modules.  No logi drones.  No cloaks.  No ECM Bursts.

Round 2: Any destroyer hull.  (t1, t2, t3 all fine).  No ECM Bursts.  No Cloaks.  No other restrictions.

Round 3: Rookie ships.  You may fit your ship any way you wish with the following exceptions: No ECM, damps or tracking disruptors.  No ECM drones.  No logi (remote rep) modules.  No logi drones.  No cloaks.  No ECM Bursts.

Round 4: T1 Battlecruisers (non-faction).  You may fit your ship any way you wish with the following exceptions: No prop mods.  No remote rep (logi).  No logi drones.  No Cloaks.  Note, this is the only round where boosters may be used.  Once again, they must count toward your ship total, and be on grid (and therefore destroyable).  No ECM Bursts.

Round 5: T1 Haulers.  You may fit your ship any way you wish with the following exceptions: No ECM, damps, or tracking disruptors.  No ECM drones.  No logi (remote rep) or logi drones.  No cloaks.  No ECM Bursts.

Profit and Loss- Quest For 11 Figures Update- 2 Months In

When I first started this venture I was planning on pumping out a Naglfar every two weeks or so (it takes 11 days to build the thing, and some extra time to buy/build the capital components as well as sell the darn thing).  I had 2.9B liquid, a fair amount of BPOs for capital components (about half) and a Nag BPO.  Naglfars had BUY orders for around 2.9-3.0B with a build cost of around 2.3-2.4B (and that is using jita sell order prices).  That means that a conservative estimate was 500M per Nag, or about a bill a month assuming a Nag built every 2 weeks.

Two months in, I have just recently sold my first Naglfar.  How did I do?  Not well.

I sold my first nag at a price of 2.32 Billion (net of order and sales tax fees).  So what went wrong?
1: In the two months, prices have fallen for minerals, rather heavily.  Build Cost is now about 2.0B, roughly a 15-20% decline.
2: The war in fountain is now over, lowering that temporary demand for Naglfars, pushing prices down.
3: Two weeks in, I decided to research ME to 1 on my BPO.  This did indeed lower the BPO inefficiency from 10% to 5%, however, it took a month (33 days), during which period prices for minerals fell further than the 5% savings I was gaining by doing the research.  The smart thing would have been to sell all minerals I had attained at that time, and buy them up again once the BPO was close to done researching.

Where do things stand now?  The buy orders for Naglfars are very close to the build cost of roughly 2B.  However, there is a rather large spread between buy and sell orders.  The lowest sell order in The forge is currently 2.74B (some other regions are less, but all are 2.4B or higher)

So although I did lose ISK on building my first Nag, I will continue to build, as long as I believe I can sell them using sell orders for somewhat over build cost.

Where do I stand now?

2.54B ISK liquid

170M in inventory (Liquid Ozone cynos)
300M minerals toward next Naglfar.

Total worth: 3.01B ISK

Despite the fact that I took a (small) loss on my first Nag, and that I've run at least one POS continuously (Poses eat fuel, nom nom nom), I've managed to make 110M ISK in 2 months.

For those of you following along at home, that's a horrible return for two months, even considering that I don't play much.  Some people make that in one weekend ratting or LV 4 missioning.  Let's see if things change going forward, hmmm?


Oh, on a side note Parasoja recently noticed he hit Twelve figures liquid.  Congrats Parasoja!  How did he manage it?  Well, capital ship construction.  Lets hope, I can join that club some day.

A Quickie

I was reading up on Elon Musk's new plan/project: Hyperloop tubes.  While reading, I couldn't help but notice, his design for the hyperloop pods looks awfully familiar.  The only two questions I have are, will there be one or two midpoints, and does in come in gold?

The Quest for 11 Figures, Day 45 Update

It's been 10 days since my last post with regards to the quest for 11 figures, so I figured I would give an update.  I am starting to get giddy, as my Nag BPO is set to come out of the cooker (ie: lab, being researched to ME 1) in 6 days.

10 days ago I had:
A: 25M ISK liquid.
B: All capital components needed to build a Nag.
C: Nag BPO, in the oven.  If you look carefully, you can see it in the picture to the right.  (No, actually you can't because it's not there, but thanks for trying).

D: Roughly 100m in minerals left over.
E: 6 planets for PI, all in lowsec.
F: 3 stations stocked with LO/Cynos.

What's changed in the last 10 days?  Not much really.  Here's where I stand now.
A: 50M ISK Liquid.  I've actually been selling LO and cynos at a decent pace recently and have sold more than this, however, you'll see that reflected in D.  I've also bought about 25M more in pos fuels, but thats mostly been offset by sales of PI goods.
B: As before, all cap components to build Nag1 are owned.
C: Nag BPO, 6 days to go before exitting the lab, I'm getting excited.
D: I've bought roughly another 100M in minerals using buy orders, bringing my new total to roughly 200M worth of minerals for the next run.  Money was from revenue (both profit and the ISK I initially spent to buy the Lo/cynoes.) generated by sales of LO/Cynos.
E: I still have 6 planets running PI.  It's not a complete cycle and I may end up changing what they produce, but for now I'm just building up stockpiles (but I am selling mechanical parts).
F: I still have 3 stations stocked with LO/Cynos.  Looking over my market history I'd say about 70% of people who buy cynos, also by LO at the same station.  I would say that only about 30-40% of people who buy LO also buy cynos (which means that people might still have their ship from last time, and didn't lose the cyno, but need more fuel).  I've been having a competitor in one of my stations buy up my entire stock of LO and relist for an additional 50% markup.  Honestly, I'm making money, so I don't really care that he's gouging people.  The only downside is I have to keep going to that region to put up more sell orders constantly, but having money come in such a fashion, is quite nice.  What this might mean however, is that I could potentially raise my prices yet more, and still have buyers.  Maybe I'll try it next time to buys up the stock.

The Quest For 11 Figures, Day 35 Update

It's been 15 days since my last update on the quest for 11 Figures.  I'm not planning on doing a post every 15 days, it just kinda happened that way.

15 Days ago I had:
A: 100M ISK Liquid
B: All the capital components needed to build a Naglfar with ME 1.
C: A naglfar BPO in the cooker for ME 1, with a month to go.
D: About 100M ISK worth of raw materials still left over.
E: 2 PI Planets.

F: 2 stations stocked with LO/cynoes for sale.

Where do I stand now?

A: Down to 25M ISK Liquid.  I spent half of it on booze and strippers and I wasted the other half.  No wait, actually I spent most of it on pos fuel.  The posses were crying and wanted to be fed, so I fed them.

B: I still have all the capital components needed to build a Naglfar with ME 1.

C: My Naglfar BPO is still in the oven, about 2 weeks left to go.

D: I still have the estimated 100M ISK worth of raw materials left over.

E: I finally got off my ass for a bit (see below) and set up 6 planets for PI.  Im working on setting up another 4 on an alt to have a complete chain for nanite repair paste.  I used to do some heavy PI about a year and a half ago.  I don't think much of anything has changed since then.  For now I'm running 23 hour cycles, however, if I start to feel burned out (which happened 18 months ago), this may become 3-6 day cycles soon.  This has cost about 40-50M, but has been mostly offset by sales of mechanical parts, cynoes, and LO.  I will most likely close down the mech parts production once I have the nanite repair paste chain fully up and running.  

 

F: I also stocked a third station with LO/cynoes.  The income is still mediocre with 3 systems, but if i ever truly get off my ass completely, mediocre income at each of 20+ systems, should really start to add up.  

Proper Use of POS Labs

This is a primer for people who are new to using corp labs for research.  I use this method when researching my Capital blueprints, and you should too (when doing work on just about any blueprint of value).  We all know anytime you undock anything in space, it can, and often will, go pop.  The same is true when you are carrying blueprints, or when blueprints are placed in a POS lab for research.  Fortunately, there is a rather simple work around for this.

1: You will typically want to have tight security around blueprints, so having your own personal corp is the easiest (albeit not only) way for this.
2: Rent an office (look for cheap office space in the least used station in the system) in the same solar system as the POS (or desired future location of POS).  Office space varies greatly from station to station, so shop around.
3: Have the character that will be doing the research train up the skill "scientific networking" to at least level I.  You can train it higher, but even at levels II+, the bpo still MUST BE in the same solar system as the lab.
4: Put the BPO in the corporate owned hanger in the station (ie: stick it in the rented corporate office space).
5: Have your lab anchored and online at your corp's POS.
6: Install job.  Use the "corporation" filter (rather than the typical "public" filter) when searching where the work will be performed.  This will bring up your corp's lab at the POS as an option.  Keep in mind, any output will still be at the POS (ie: if you are researching (ME/PE) your BPO, it will still come out in station, however, if you are copying, any copies will be in the lab in the POS and need to be picked up).

Yep, it's that easy.  Now even if the POS is destroyed, your BPO is still safe in station.  This works both in highsec, lowsec, and nullsec, but typically has the most value in lowsec.  Be like Durrr, be safe. If you're going to research, research with protection.

The Quest for 11 Figures- Day 20 Update

15 Days ago I had:
1: A billion isk liquid
2: About half of the capital components I would need to build my first Naglfar
3: an unresearched Naglfar BPO
and 4: Most of the materials that I would need to build capital components from the 5 bpos I did have.

Where do I stand now?
1: I'm down to around 100M liquid.
2: If I haven't royally screwed up the maths, I should have all of the capital components I need to build Naglfar 1.

3: A Naglfar BPO being researched to ME 1. No, I did NOT do the smart thing and start researching the BPO right away, instead I waited 15 days.  And since they take a little over a month for 1 point of ME research, I shall be waiting.....

4: About 100M ISK worth of materials still left over.


So, Since capital construction is in a holding pattern for another 30 days, what about those other forms of isk making I mentioned I might be doing.

A: Station Trading: Hasn't happened yet.  Yep, lazy kitty.
B: AFK Ice mining: Since I got my retriever popped a couple of weeks ago I've been too lazy to replace it on that toon.  Yep, lazy kitty.
C: PI: I've set up 2 planets which bring me minimal dividends from time to time.  I hope to expand this in the future, and perhaps have a full chain going, but yep, lazy kitty.
D: POS Reactions: No progress, lazy kitty.
E: Plexing/FW missions: I haven't done any in a long time.  Yep, lazy kitty.
F: Station stocking: The initial goal was to stock 20 ish stations with LO and cyno generators.  I currently have stocked 2- yep, lazy kitty.  With only 2 stations stocked I can't expect much income but it has been trickling in with minimal effort, so I cant complain.
G: I did earn 10M ratting in low sec, looking for those special rats that drop sec status tags.  None found yet.

All in all, facepalm on capital ship construction, as it is delayed for a month, and lazy kitty on just about everything else.