Archive for February, 2012


On Trading

Filed under: Day to Day Blog — 4 Comments
February 29, 2012

I am an old fogey.  This means I was there when Elite was first released on tape and I was one of those kids who played forever to grind myself all the way to Elite status.  One of the beautiful things about Elite was that you could get involved in trading.  Although this was on a small scale and it was fairly predictable.  You just flew from one type of planet to another trading what you ‘knew’ they would need.

The materials needed to build a Maelstrom.

Fast forward to Eve around 30 years later and it is quite a different story.  Market trading in Eve is so much more dynamic.  Prices fluctuate with a fluidity and on a scale that no other game can compare to.  I have seen many MMO markets and the truth is nothing comes even close to the degree of sophistication and complexity of the market in Eve.  I have spend a few weeks looking at this and I am pretty sure I am only scratching the surface.  In fact I know I am.

Lets try a summary. First of all there are thirteen categories (Ammunition and Charges, Apparel, Blueprints, Drones, Implants and Boosters, Manufacture and Research, Planetary Infrastructure, Ship Equipment, Ship Modifications, Ships, Skills, Starbase & Sovereignty Structures and Trade good).  Each of these break down into further sub categories for example there are nine types of ship some of these are split into three and four sub types all with different race variants and in some instances other types such as ORE Industrial ships.  Then go to modules for ships and it gets more complicated – some ships have multiple slots that can be filled with different load outs.  If you do a search on Eve Central there are 5,823 items that can be bought or sold on the market.

Then it gets even more complex.  Minerals can be mined, they can also be re-processed from ship components.  These can then be combined to build ships.  It goes on.  To build ships players can build basic ships from things called blue prints. Tech II and Tech III ships are built from Blueprints that are invented, dropped or rewarded from Non Player Corporations.  Some Tech II ships are built from BPO’s but CCP stopped something that was once known as the lottery and has made the thing even more player led by enabling players to invent their own BPC’s.  I could go on.  Just take the Maelstrom it says that you will need the materials that are in the image above.

The Deimos blueprint.

Tech II ships need to have Tech II components some of which cannot be made anywhere but within Player Owned structures.  The second image to the right is a good summary of what you would need to build a Deimos.  To me the complexity of this way outstrips anything that I have ever seen before. So you have that level of complexity embedded within the game.  Most of the high tech components need material that is mined from specific moons which of course is what the big 0.0 alliances fight over.  There really is no other way to put it other than this is the engine of Eve.  Its the thing that keeps it going.

But it only keeps it going because the economy has the same structure as any other real economy.  Basically the engine driving the economy in Eve is that each of these items cascades down into the status of a consumer good.  Players engage in combat, they take risks with their ships and they loose them.  Because of this the economy of Eve just like our own world economy reproduces itself.  The term used in some circles is it is ‘autopoietic’ – but enough of that guff.  That is an achievement you have to respect.

Ok so now we have a very basic description of the achievement of the Eve economy.  There is a lot of money to be made in trading. Traders make most of their profits – by the looks of things in quite a few ways.  Players place buy orders using their skills – from region wide to 20 jumps wide.  They then collect those items or goods and trade them to market hubs.  Others are obviously buying items at really low levels and reprocessing them for minerals and then selling those.  Others are trading from low sec to high sec.

What did I do?

I jumped into a ship and started to work on a route from Jita to Dodixie.  I traded in anything that was going to be profitable from Carbon, Nocxium, Ferrogel, Viral agents to Mechanical parts.  In one afternoon I had made around 70million ISK just by being careful about my purchases.  But there were times when I got stung.  The margin was so close at times that the trade tax killed the profit and meant I actually lost out.  So buying and transporting goods in the way was not as secure as Elite.  There were no guarantees at all that it would work and often you could lose ISK.  One way to minimise the risk is to trade with two Alts, one at each location to make sure you are always more or less guaranteed a profit.  But that seems like cheating to me.  I made quite a bit of ISK by eliminating the risk but in the end by eliminating the risk it was less of a game and more like messing around with spreadsheets.  And yes I have read that a criticism of Eve is that it is like “Spreadsheets online”.

Conclusions

There are several criticisms you could make about trading in Eve.

  1. It seems a blatant contradiction in this super futuristic Universe where you can travel through worm holes that the basic communication technology to tell you what the prices are across regions doesn’t exist.  The very fact you really need out of game tools and the fact that you have to have Alts is a failure of game mechanics in my view.
  2. Once you remove the risk it is simply a non-event.  Surely there should be some degree of risk in the game?  I have seen a few people get ganked in high sec.  But the risk is very low.  By eliminating the risk of trading for me the game became less a game and more an ISK accumulation system.
  3. It just seems so boring.

Finally,  after doing all of this and even training a few skills I began to become really really bored with the game again. Things have to change.  So I have decided it is time to stop dicking about and have a look at PvP.

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Fletcher and Moriarity

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February 18, 2012

“Oh my God, we are all gonna die!” Screamed Fletcher at Cerbus as the ship lurched violently from another explosion, the whole chassis shook. Flames were erupting all along the fuselage. The ship had been turning for what seemed to be an age. There was a whistle and then another explosion somewhere towards the back of the ship’s armour. Fletcher was thrown across the service tunnel crashing heavily into the side.

The ship groaned and then seemed to pause momentarily before the warp drive kicked in. Cerbus watched as Fletcher slumped over. All around them the ship was shuddering and shaking as the FTL drive dragged them away from danger. “We are out! Its going to be OK we are out Fletcher.”

“Don’t bet on it, we have been in and out of that pocket six times now.” Fletcher moaned.

“This ship is not built for this kind of mission.”

“Tell that to our dearest Pod Pilot.” Fletcher rolled over onto his back breathing heavily.

“He won’t listen.”

“Maybe now he will?” Fletcher got up. “Anyway let’s get on with these repairs, we just need to stabilise the ship so he can get it to the repair shop.”  The ship remained stationary above the sun, hanging in space almost catching it’s breath.

“They are going to be laughing at us you know. It’s like they seen him coming.”

“Yeah by the time he finishes this mission most of the money from the bounties will have been spent.” Fletcher sighed as he moved forward.

They had been moving around the ship’s core patching up leaking conduits. Doing their best to keep it functional. This had been their first commission as free lance engineers and it wasn’t going very well.

“Remind me. Why did we choose “The Intrepid?” Fletcher looked at Cerbus.

“Well because you said it looked, well, ‘Intrepid’ and you liked the pod pilot. Kanenald seemed ‘pretty normal’ you said.”

“Ahh, right.”

“Well I guess being normal doesn’t necessarily make him a good pod pilot?”

“Too right.” Fletcher frowned.  “You know we are gonna have to talk to him about this?”

They continued to patch up internal leaks for a couple of hours while the ship remained stationary in space.  Then slowly but surely it changed direction.

“We are going to dock and repair the hull.” The Moriarity’s voice came over the intercoms.

“About time, we have already lost the bonus for this mission.” Moaned Fletcher  as he walked along the corridor in the direction of the bridge.  His overalls were covered in oil and grease from his work.

The ship groaned and shuddered as they entered warp and eventually slowed down.  Within second it began to shake, something was wrong. “Whats happening this time?” Yelled Fletcher as he sprinted off towards the bridge.

Outside the ship was being swarmed by the Mordus Legion.  The shields were being quickly stripped.  It would not be long until the ships armour would be left open to the mercy of the attacking ships.

“Errr…..  sorry!” Came Moriarity’s modulated voice.  I must have accidentally activated the wrong bookmark.  “Give me a second and we will be out of here.”

The ship rocked as another missile struck, shells were incoming fast and the shields were almost gone.  “I am going to kill him!” Screamed Fletcher, as he began to sprint.

The shields were gone and the ship’s armour was being pounded.  Finally, after what seemed like an age the ship finished its turn and paused. There was that eternity of a moment when everything seemed to slow to a halt, around the ship time seemed to alter its form and then the FTL drive kicked in.  The ship shook violently as it hurtled through space, eventually coming to a halt outside Eystur III Moon I Republic Fleet Assembly Plant.  Inside the small vessel a large wrench bounced off the pod that contained Moriarity’s prone form.

“Fletcher!  What are you doing!”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Fletcher screamed.  “Are you trying to kill us?”

“Clam down, it was a simple mistake.” Although the voice was modulated to make it sound throaty and masculine, there was a tightness about it that indicated the pod pilot was a bit scared.

“Get out of that pod so we can talk face to face!”

“No. I am not coming out until you calm down.”

“Get out here!” Fletcher was clearly apoplectic.

“No. I am not moving.”

“Moriarity if you don’t get your skinny ass out of that pod and speak to me like a man I am going to gut you when I see you.”  Fletcher was standing with his hands on his hips glaring at the pod.

“Look Fletcher we have to have some order around here.  Get back to your work, we have a mission to get completed.”  Moriarity was trying to be assertive.  It wasn’t working.

“I told you before.  This heap of crap is no good for these kinds of commissions.”  Fletcher was stock still staring at the pod.  There was a long pause and then the modulated voice buzzed through the speaker behind his head.

“I think you have a point.  Lets patch the ship up and finish this commission.  I promise we will sell this ship and buy whatever ship you think will do.  Can you get busy planning what we need please?”  There was a long pause before Fletcher turned a quickly stalked out of the bridge.

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Podded

Filed under: Day to Day Blog — 2 Comments
February 11, 2012

I got podded. Finally!

Can’t remember much about it really.  It was a night spent chasing wrecks around low sec again.  I had no joy whatsoever in terms of finding anything worthwhile.  Then I noticed that a place called Rancer looked a bit hot.  So I lined up my salvage frigate and headed down there to see what I could find.

Well you know how it is?  Quiet night, bottle of wine and a few Guinness Export Extra?

I landed on the Rancer gate in Crielere and wow!!  Wrecks.  Through the haze I could see, Caldari noob ship wreck, Battlecruiser wreck.  Before I could get excited there was a flash.  Then I noticed my ship had changed shape.  It took about 10 seconds to realise “err thats my pod.”  Then “pop!” back into a station 27 jumps from my home.  No-one told me to move my clone!  Feck.

2012.02.09 21:41:00

Victim: Moriarity Kanenald
Corp: Pro Synergy
Alliance: ACE WRECKING COMPANY
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Rifter
System: Crielere
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 1545

Involved parties:

Name: Archer Slate (laid the final blow)
Security: -10.00
Corp: the united
Alliance: Negative Ten.
Faction: None
Ship: Rokh
Weapon: Large YF-12a Smartbomb
Damage Done: 1545

Destroyed items:

Warp Core Stabilizer I, Qty: 2
Small Salvage Tackle I, Qty: 2
Salvager I

Dropped items:

Metal Scraps, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Small Shield Extender II
1MN Afterburner I
Salvager I

Well it wasn’t a huge loss, the implants – my Christmas prezzie from CCP were a bit of a loss.  But they were free so bleh.

But it make you think doesn’t it?

The most interesting about it was that getting podded violently switches your track, it kind of rends you from where you are to somewhere else. Your course in the game changes and it really disrupts your evening.  It  is not hard to see why it can cause so many tears in the game.  It is different to death in other games. You don’t respawn and get back into the action exactly as you had been.  Its not a cartoon style game where you can charge back into action – as though nothing has happened.  Here there is always a loss, but even more there is disorientation and disruption and thats what made the experience interesting.

So this is what the whole game is about, these moments when losses drive you back to the market.  Back to recover what you lost.  There is something I love about that!

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Bored

Filed under: Day to Day Blog — 4 Comments
February 9, 2012

CCP's Description of the salvager on the revamped website

I am not impressed.  The past couple of weeks have been spent working on salvaging in Osmon.  On the plus side Pro Synergy have managed to keep me pretty busy, there has been plenty of work when I need it and lots to do working for Mission runners.

The problems emerge when you try to do anything that involves salvaging and player versus player (PvP) combat.  As soon as I try to have a go at making ISK outside of the mission running systems and the whole game becomes quite routine and boring. In fact it is bloody boring me to tears right now.  The biggest event is when a long skill finally gets trained and I can use Salvager II’s.  Great.

Its not the fault of Pro Synergy – the truth is they have a great system and they are a great bunch.  The problem is that PvP seems to be pretty sparse and the wrecks in empire are in fact quite tricky to locate.  Not because they are guarded by frothing PvPers.  The truth is, it is almost an act of extreme luck to hit on anything and the two Tech II wrecks I have found in four to five nights roaming have been sheer luck.  So this has got me worried.  The best thing for me to do is describe what I have been doing – so perhaps you can see where I am going wrong.

Using the map

The eve map has a counter that tells you how many ships have been destroyed in the last hour.  This method can yield one or two wrecks. Lets say you have more than 7 ships killed in the last hour then it is worth chasing that system down. However, this approach is in fact been hit and miss.  The problem is of course that the timer is a bit long, by the time you get to the location the wrecks have more often than not been salvaged.  The other thing about this method of salvaging is simply not worth the effort.  Most Tech I wrecks from player ships yield low value salvage and it is really hard to find Tech II wrecks, almost impossible in fact.  It seems that there are not enough ships destroyed to make this a viable profession.  So scanning the space lanes for your fortune (which is in the description of the salvager) is not really an option.

Scanning Kill Boards

After roaming from Caldari space down the pipe to Rens someone posted a link to a kill from Battle Clinic.  I scanned the kill board and discovered that some kills were not far from where I was.  I went to the locations and found some of the wrecks.  The problem was that I could not locate any Tech II wrecks – most of those had gone.  Secondly the information was not frequent enough and the killboard itself was often updated too much later.

Low Sec Hot Spots

Low sec hot spots can have a lot of kills, the problem is getting in there to get the wrecks.  Most pirates know the value of what they are doing.  So decent wrecks are theirs and it would be nothing short of a suicide run to get hold of one.  I am going to give it a go just for the crack though.  I just haven’t managed to find anything as yet.  So whilst I have so far gained nothing from the hot spots it is possibly something I am going to have to become bolder about in the near future.

Following Red Versus Blue (RvB)

I have been scooting around the RVB systems, after all they produced more wrecks than almost anyone in the game in the last year according to the forums.  They certainly do produce quite a few wrecks and I have managed to get a few in their systems.  It is just more often than not the ships are Tech I and are small or medium wrecks.  So whilst these guys pop ships galore. They do not produce enough wrecks to be a viable source for the salvager seeking their fortune.

So what are the options for this profession?

It seems that the only way to get into this and make it viable would be to either develop contacts with a PvP corp and strike some sort of deal with them concerning salvage.  That or find a way to travel to 0.0 and scan those major hotspots.  The only way to do this might be to strap a few Salvager I’s onto an interceptor and go to 0.0 after setting up a Jump Clone. But I am not sure just how beneficial that would be. Seems like a high risk low return issue again.

So there we have it – why the cost of Tech II Salvage is so high.

There is no real surprise then that a small salvage Tackle II will cost you 59million ISK and only one or two of them being sold a month.  There is something slightly broken in this respect in the game and a salvager that lives off the space lanes does not strike me as being a viable profession.  Unless there are ways to get at tech II wrecks you are going to be very poor and very very bored.

Another thing that strikes me the most is that the stuff that produces Tech II salvage components is much too pricey to be affordable to lose.  At this early stage of my eve career it strikes me that most mortals PvP in Tech I ships.  But I can’t be too sure about this.  It is a little worrying and makes me think that PvP in Eve is going to be very hit and miss.  But that something that needs to be inspected in a more balanced manner.

Why I am not giving up.

Before moving onto other ‘professions’ in the game it is worth exploring this problem in more depth.  I will spend a few more weeks looking at the problem, mostly because I am too stupid to do anything else and I hate leaving something incomplete.  Any ideas you might have would be very welcome!!

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On Pro Synergy

Filed under: Day to Day Blog — 1 Comment
February 3, 2012

Yup what it says.  I finally found a place to hang out.  The thing about this blog is not necessarily the writing that is good its the feedback and the effect is has on the in game experience.  I could go through all of the comments and highlight all of the great feedback that has really enhanced what I am doing in game.  Its all sorts of stuff from a small eve mail to the direct posts that have helped.  Posting the nubbins guide to salvaging really helped me get in touch with some new people and as a result of that I finally found a corporation that seemed to suit me fine.

I first heard of Pro Synergy after replies to the post on salvaging and they invited me to pop along and talk to them in their public channel.  It was there that I started to chat to Melek D’Ivri and to tell the truth it was all made very easy.  The corporation has a basic concept that salvagers and mission runners can work together.  It has a pretty simple but extremely effective business strategy to make this happen.   The concept is very simple really – you salvage a mission and the split between mission runner and salvager is an even 45% with the corp holding back 10% for organising the whole thing.

That is it.  The elegance is in its simplicity, they don’t dick about working out who did what.  You simply loot the mission chuck everything into a massive pot.  A record is maintained of each mission by simply adding a point to a spreadsheet and at the end of the week it is all divided up according to the number of points each person contributes.  Very simple and I can tell you very effective.  There have been some nights when I have been flat out salvaging other nights I simply have been roaming trying to perfect my skills at hunting salvage from PvP.  More about that in another post.

Anyway this brings me to the point of this post.  There is something about being in a corporation, sure at some level you do lose some of that individuality but you seem to gain something from the common purpose that comes with joining others of the same mind. With a corporation there is that sense that you have the ability to achieve more in a group of like minded individuals?  But on the one hand I would still like to maintain that free spirit behind the character of Moriarity, on the other hand his interests are actually better served in the corporation.  It has allowed me space to breathe and a regular source of income as I sit back and think about the next stages of his development.

The test will come if I can maintain the same degree of interest and continue to grow within Pro Synergy.  For now they have been a very nice bunch of people and I can’t help but feel a bit lucky to be able to chill out with them and develop Moriarity.

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