Guide Consolidation

As were fast approaching the end of 2008, I thought i'd better try and consolidate some of the more important infromation on the blog, namely the guides, which I hope have been very useful for those out there in pod-land.

I've been taking some tips and some suggestions for other areas to improve the guides, and most of them are now in version 2 (many thanks to an Eve Uni forums resident, Sumerio Rayej for typing up his ideas and making them easy to fit in with my guides so its just a matter of including his mods, many of which I agreed with, some of those I had to a bit of editorial tweaking to satisfy my own thoughts)

Therefore to help considlidate all your information into one easy to access package, I've deleted a lot of the old version 1 files (subsequently, the earlier links wont work on the blog anymore, so apologies if anyone finds a dead link, I'm going to go and try and remove any old ones to link back to this page, so thats why youre seeing this if you werent expecting it) please find the newest versions of the guides for your viewing pleasure:

Part 1 - Weapons
Part 2 - Tanking (updated to v2)
Part 3 - Drones
Part 4 - Electronic Warfare
Part 5 - POS
Part 6 - Missions
Part 7 - Fleets and Boosting
Part 8 - R&D and Invention
Part 9 - Scanning
Part 10 - Capital Ship Construction (new)

Now... many people will say there are some quite important guides missing from that list, but I don't want to re-write old guides that have no need to be re-done as the resources out there are already considered to be excellent. 2 of the guides I will reference below are those I use myself from time to time, and should be considered one of the best examples I can find out there for the subjects:

Hadala's Mining Guide - Link to Eve Online Forums
Joerd's Exploration Guide - Link to Eve Online Forums

In addition to this, I am not able to provide a production guide as I am currently awaiting my guide being published in the next issue of EON along with a follow up in issue 15 (Issue 14 will deal with Tech 1, Issue 15 will deal with Tech 2 just in time for Tech 3 to be coming out in March) - and because of that, I have promised them that I won't list the guide here. However, if you really can't wait for the EON issues to be published, there are a few things I can do for you:

A verbal guide to Tech 1 manufacture that I gave to Eve Uni (57mb MP3 file)
A Tech 2 component guide (unfortunately I have no idea who produced this, but it is a little incorrect in places)

As well as the in depth guides, I have also compiled some quick reference lists that many may find to be very useful:

An Eve Ships Reference List
Eve Ships in Alphabetical Order (useful for fast threat-identification in the overview)
An Implants List (including pirate and other faction implants, which has been updated for Quantum Rise)

As always, if you want a specific guide produced for any activity, please let me know and I'll look into how practical it could be for me to make it. As well as that, if you have any comments on the guides or want to make any amendments, I'll be happy to listen to you if you want to contact me by email, the address is in my profile.

Have a good remainder of 2008, and good luck with whatever challenges 2009 may bring.

Merry Christmas

The clock has just ticked past midnight here in jolly old England, so let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

May your future endeavours be bountiful.

Confusing Market Activity

First off, let me say Merry Christmas for everyone out there (or if you dont support Christmas, then have a good time anyway) since I missed the blog banter entry, mainly because I was crazy busy with work stuff at this time of the year (working in the power industry means that it takes a bit longer to get everything prepared for the time off for christmas to make sure theres adequate backup/response in case things do go wrong, and even though I was supposedly on holiday, I had quite a few emails to respond to/phone calls to answer during the day)

Anyway, now thats over and done with, just a quick note to see if anyone else has noticed any really strange market activity lately ?

I'm not going to reveal the details (I'm hoping its going to be a nice way to make some money) but one of the key ingredients for a tech 2 blueprint I'm making is now priced on the open market at one trade hub at much lower costs than it takes to manufacture. Im used to this with mission drop modules of course, people constatly undercut each other to offload the module at the best price for them, even if it means selling it for less than it costs to make it, since they didnt have to actually make it - but this particular module doesnt drop anywhere, at least where I know anyway.

The module is now about 250k less than what it used to sell at, and about 20k less than it costs to make it.

Its good for me of course, I can just buy them for my tech 2 manufacturing and not have to worry about making any, which saves me time and headaches, and if im lucky, I can move them a few regions away and sell them back on with the 250k markup in a region where there hasnt been massive undercutting and then rake back in a bit of money.

The really confusing thing isnt that its just one or two modules, its numbers in the 500-1000 range, and buying them all up would basically commit my entire wallet to it, so im just testing the waters for now to see if they sell.

Could be a nice little christmas present to me if it goes well... if not... then my tech 2 manufacture has gotten a touch cheaper, though im sure it will be more than offset by the increase in price in ferrogel and the other high end reaction minerals once my existing stocks run out.

The 7 Facts Meme - continued

Seems that I have been tagged by Ombey so best get my bit in before work kicks in tomorrow.

Firstly, the small print:

• Link to the original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share 7 facts about myself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Some (probably less than interesting, but you never know) facts about me:

1) My birthday is the same day as my uncle, who isnt very famous as far as I can gather, but also Tina Turner, who is a bit more famous, or so I've been told.

2) I've never been out of the UK on a recreational visit, and the furthest I've been on business is to Italy, so im strictly European.

3) My work however, has me dealing a lot with customers in the Middle East - yet I've never been there to visit the sites I help build.

4) The town I live in has had quite a few celebrities live in it - classically, the ancestors of George Washington (the American President) and also Brian Ferry of Roxy Music fame. Also it seems that Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand was raised there when he was very young. Our most 'infamous' celebrity export seems to be Heather Mills though (Paul McCartney's ex wife)

5) As well as my work, I voluntarily run (Treasurer and Bar Licensee) a Community Centre, which keeps me usually more busy than I can imagine at times.

6) I put on a fair bit of weight at university (the before and after pictures are scary sometimes when I look at them) and I really cant shift it back off again since then... its strange though as my weight never really changes otherwise, it hardly goes up either since I left university.

7) The most uncharacteristic thing I've ever done is voluntarily pay £100 at very short notice to do a bungee jump for charity (a friend of mine was doing it, he managed to get sponsorship, which was the main intention of the day, but I had a bit of a daredevil moment and ponied up the cash on the day to take part) - It's uncharacteristic as i'm petrified of heights, and can't even climb a ladder unless it's secured and won't wobble.

Now comes the hard Part, finding 7 bloggers to link to... most of my regular reads have been linked to already, but for the sake of trying to find someone whos not been linked with (and I hope people havent linked them since I put this post up:)

• Miner With Fangs (Dee Carson)
• Morphisat's Blog
• Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah (Kirith)
• DeafPlasma's Eve Musings
• Dense Veldspar (Ahnog)
• Postings From The Edge (Zapatero)
• Diving into PsycheDivers Psyche
  

(OK, the last one is a bit of a naughty one, since he's already been linked, but its only fair I include him, hes been commenting on a lot of my posts recently, and the other blogs I follow that don't comment on my posts as much had already been mentioned)

(Unfortunately the commenting on their blogs to inform them will have to wait until tomorrow morning, as it's getting a bit late now, so if you notice your name on here, please link back to it)

Email address for you to get in touch

I've decided to end another bit of anonymity and get myself a publically accessible email address for people to get in touch with me if they want to.

I can now be reached via karoxlominax@googlemail.com if you ever wish to send a mail, and my email address is available now via my profile at the side.

Hopefully I wont get spammed too much.

Is the T2 market going to be rocky for a while ?

Seems that sometime over the past couple of days, there has been speculation that has rocked the very fabric of the T2 industry within Eve - and the problem is no one seems to know if its real or not, CCP won't confirm it, all they will say is that 'we have identified an exploit with POS mechanics'

It seems that since day 1 of the new POS mechanics (4 years ago now or thereabouts) there has been a problem with the reaction system on a POS - by doing certain actions it was possible to break the POS chain of input/reactor/output so that an output silo could be filled with only a minor load of moon minerals/simple reactions - basically the input materials weren't consumed, and the ouput kept on repeating every hour with 1 hour's worth of minerals in the input.

There has been suggestions that 3 major alliances stockpiled the high value R64 moon minerals (or more specifically, their simple and complex reaction counterparts that use those moon minerals) and have basically commanded the market value for those 4 years.

Suggestions were made that as much as 3,000 Billion Isk profit was made by 1 alliance from this 'making money from nothing' exploit which funded Titan projects, outposts and also gametime for those that were involved, basically meaning they got to play Eve for nothing, as they generated the isk to buy their gametime essentially from thin air (or more technically, vacuum)

Other calculations suggested that if this was fully exploited it would have the chance to generate around 406 Billion Isk over the 4 years per POS that was exploiting, but that was a very unrealistic estimate as no one would be expected to be able to sell that much material constantly - but it could explain why things like freighters were found full of moon reaction minerals in the middle of captured POSes during wars.

What will this mean for the man on the street - well, once this exploit hole has been cleared up, it's very likely that the amount of output minerals will drop (as theres apparently no way to get the same amount of input to maintain the same level of output using legitimate moon mining methods, due to the limited number of moons available) which will lead to price rises.

It already happened yesterday, there was mass market panic buying of the moon minerals involved, either for people to stockpile in case of massive price rises, or people who were buying and reselling at a mark up.

Whilst theres some indication of truth to the issue by CCP stating that they have identified and are in the process of fixing the exploit (and removing the POSes which exploited as well as the accounts) many of the more paranoid members who remember the T20 incident are simply stating that this is another 'internal corruption' issue where CCP were in on the deal, and their game-playing alts were involved in an attempt at massive market manipulation to raise the price of their stockpiled minerals to make a profit (for the record, the T20 incident, whilst I wasnt around at the time was to do with a CCP employee using his GM powers to create an unfair advantage for himself and possibly his corp)

The fallout from this should be interesting to watch over the next few days, but if you have your heart set on getting a nice new T2 toy (especially a ship, since they utilise every type of moon minerals somewhere in their components) it might be worth getting it sooner rather than later, at least if you believe the market hype.

Guide Part 9 - Scanning and Probing

This is the 'non exploration themed' guide to scanning and probing - i.e. using the ship scanner and recon probes to find PVP targets.

I hope it helps those who are interested in getting up close and personal with those you want to find out in the vastness of space.

Find the guide linked here

A Quick personal update on progress

Seems I've not done much in here this week, so best end the drought with a quick update on progress, whilst im working on the next guide.

I'm currently training Weapon Upgrades 5, which is due to finish early tomorrow, towards my goal of having command ships, now that I have finally begun to understand the leadership/gang boosting mechanics.

Ultimately I want to get a Nighthawk as a mission running ship, and as a consequence, I will also get the skills required to pilot Heavy Assault Ships whilst training, which I had planned but wasn't really working towards.

In addition to that, I am training leadership skills side by side to get at least level 4 in all of the base leadership skills, but ultimately, I want to get Mining Director, to pilot the Orca, and Siege Warfare Specialist so I can equip my Nighthawk with a Shield Harmoizing gang link to overcome the inevitable loss of a hardener I'll probably have when equipping a target painter in my mission ships.

Of course, for the gang link to have any benefit, it means that I will have to run my alt account at the same time to get the gang bonus effects active, so that character is training up the skills to use my Navy Raven effectively to provide the damage output for the big ships in missions, and the skills for salvaging and tractoring for if the mission is fairly easy, the alt can just sit there cloaked up and start salvaging when I'm flying Karox back to complete the mission.

Now I know this is a very specialised setup looking towards something that I don't get much enjoyment out of anyway (I'm sure many people will notice the underlying boredom involved with missions) but on the other hand, I don't particularly enjoy work either, it's just there to pay the bills, and Eve missions are treat in the same way - getting it over as quickly and painlessly as possible to get the cash to use to do whatever else I want to do.

My alt has Caldari transport ships trained up now, and is at the point where I now decide if I'm going to go train up for a Charon freighter, which would basically wipe out my entire cash reserves if I decided to buy the skills and the ship (Advanced Spaceship Command and Caldari Freighter) but its a very tempting prospect. I really want Karox's Orca as well though just to have the new toy to play with, even though thats a whole lot longer away.

Karox will have to train up mining barges to get the Orca in the process, so it's a natural process to move on to Exhumers soon after that, so I might finally get some use of the Hulk I made a few months back and didn't sell (sentimental value as my first self-made T2 ship) but of course, if I do fly an Orca, I wont have any use of the Exhumer skill either. Ultimately though, I think an Exhumer and my Alt's Transport Ships will be the primary 1-2 combination for solo mining if I decide to follow that path - again, not something i'm really interested in, but it could help to get the money rolling in.

Mission Guide (Part 6 Version 2)

After a bit of discussion on the Eve Uni boards, I have been given a few pointers for interesting things to include in the Missions guide, and had a few other ideas myself, so along with the help of Sumerio, I have re-written the mission guide.

Feel free to discard the earlier one, and use this one instead. It has some very handy links in the document that can be helpful for anyone making a career out of running missions, and also includes some of the more advanced tricks such as farming highly valuable missions for optimum cash.

The new file is linked here

I will offer the same deal to anyone out there I've offered to the Eve Uni boards, if you can find some corrections in the guides, please let me know and ideally take my text and modify the file to suit the corrections and I'll make sure you're credited with the amended work. Whilst I like to think I have a good grounding in all of the subjects I discuss on these guides, many people out there are specialists and know a lot more than me on specific subjects, so I'll always defer unless somoene tells me some blatantly false information.