EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi folks, wanted to try and get some input here while I am patching up 1.3. Just came back from a 3 month break and settling back into some routines.

When I started, it was the oooh and ahhh of "that ship looks awesome" and "oh look at that one!!", so naturally I trained up to ships that were WAY out of my league on core skills, and I quickly learned my harsh lessons lol. I dialed it back, worked on my core skills, weighed my pro's and cons of what I wanted to achieve, and settled into an Ishkur once I was ready. So the ship is covered, skills are solid and building each day, but....this wasn't all I wanted for my EVE career.

I dabbled (as I believe so many do) Exploration, Mining, Salvaging, and quickly rediscovered my love of manufacturing.

Found some Blueprints while exploring, mined and salvaged everything I needed, and began production. It was horridly inefficient, and just wasn't cutting it.

I love all you die hard Miners, and I tried my hardest to share in your love of rock smashing. I trained up to a Retty, all my tech 2's on it, and I still found myself with massive amounts of some sort of space dementia where I was conversing with a space squirrel playing a flute. I just don't have it in me to love mining, and I would never be able to keep up with my manufacturing lines material demands. Sometimes I will still fly out in a sneaky venture to get some choice minerals, but even now those days are fading away. I now watch the big mining fleets (being run by one player on 8 accounts) and just know that I will never go that far.

So I moved into the Retail and Market skills for my materials.

The same story can be said for my Salvaging ( in an Ishkur with drones when I go ratting), the supply doesn't meet the demand. It's nice to offset some costs while I am out having some fun in the Frig, but its definitely not going to pull in enough. So, I ventured into reprocessing, and began tearing down all those cheap items I was finding from running missions, this became a very nice influx of needed materials and I even began placing my buy orders for similar items once I knew what they all would yield vs. their cost. The list goes on.

It has never been my intention to dominate a market, or become insanely wealthy, just consistent. The isk flows in each day and I am perfectly content with that. My true satisfaction was in the thought of someone flying a ship I built, or decimating someone with my ammunition or weapons or drones.....it has always just been about fun and the belief that I was contributing to a larger system.

Now I find myself questioning that perhaps my goals are spread to thin to be effective, and am hoping for a little guidance.

1. I want my Ishkur (or any assault frigate really) to continue to be effective as I move through missions, or even into a PvP scenario, so I continue to boost my abilities there. I may move to a larger drone boat someday, but not today.

2. As always, I want to be able to Manufacture more and more, creating better weapons, rigs, components, ships....there is no limit.

3. I have a good amount of BPO's and find copies readily accessible when needed, but what if I could make those work for me as well? Should I go down this path? I hear people always saying that there are no lines open to make copies, or the wait is months long at a time. Should I invest time here and even further spread myself out in a very lengthy process?

4. I manufacture and reprocess at facilities I have the best standing at for obvious reasons, but these places are not always where the market is. I find the "contracts" of moving product from one system to another to be dismal, easily scammed, and just all in all ineffective. Sometimes I can "hitch a ride" on a larger freighter with some free space to get product around, but again...few and far between, and not always cost effective. So I have a desire to move up to my own freighter (obelisk).....another lengthy endeavor to ensure effectiveness.

5. Corp.....Now I have happily been a member of CAS since day 1, and they have helped me with so many questions and advice that I simply cannot thank them enough. I do find myself questioning my own path though. I don't feel like I am contributing really to an NPC corp. My manufacturing goes on to the market...sure I have handed a couple ships out here and there to folks in need, but....most of these people are still strangers and new ones appear each day. Would I aid further in a Player corp? Would my skills be used, would I have access to BP's I need, or THEY need? I guess I want to have a more immersed experience....without getting scammed and taxed to death preferably.

I feel like I have rambled. I know given time all of these things are achievable, and most likely even more, but I am starting to feel scattered. I don't sit in the station waiting for my jobs to complete, so having the frigate up to date is nice. Once the jobs are completed, being able to make some long trips delivering my cargo with any detours I need to take along the way is a freedom I hope to have. And as always, better manufacturing and better prints always add excitement to the day.

Where to focus and where to wait? These are my questions.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Couple comments on the manufacturing side...

Mining will never meet your mineral requirements. I just last night put up a buy order for a quantity of minerals which would probably take me a week of solid mining to acquire. From experience, that buy order should be filled by the end of today. I'll use the entire lot over the weekend (and that's not a busy weekend)

I mine occasionally as I want to not to supply my manufacturing requirements, and usually that's mining missions for LP, not for ore.

ME research lines are badly queued up in highsec. You have a few options:
* Go to lowsec for shorter queues
* Suck it up and wait
* Buy pre-researched BPOs or BPCs off contract
* Join (or found) a player corp and use (or put up) a research starbase. Putting up your own will be expensive, they're fuel-hungry

Buy a freighter? Why not use one of the courier corps (Red Frog/PushX)? It'll be a long, long time before that freighter (~1.2 billion) and the training for it (~a month) pay themselves off compared to private courier contracts. Another advantage of courier contracts, you're not risking your own ship in a potential suicide gank and if the collateral covers the value of the goods (which it should), you don't lose anything if the courier pilot does get suicide ganked (other than time)

I can't remember the last time I flew my finished items to market myself.

On the subject of blueprint copies, I would steer clear if you are focused on profit. NPC slots are clogged up and making copies in a POS is ok if you have the lines free and can't use them for anything else, but as a prospective business, I would say no. However, things are never straight forward in EVE and making copy packs of cap ships / capital components could work but it's a large investment of time and isk whereas you are thinking in much smaller terms.

If you are thinking of going into invention seriously then that would alter things and could make it more viable to produce your own copies in a POS.

The specialised Gallente ore hauler (Miasmos?) will do fine for hauling ore from the middle of nowhere.

I do have a freighter, it sits in my hanger most of the time doing nothing because it's so damned slow. I'd rather pay someone else to haul my stuff around while I'm asleep, at work or doing other stuff in EVE.

Yes this is understood.......trying to think of a better way to explain it.

Lets say I needed a Material like Megacyte, a standard buy order for this is around 1600 from what I have seen, and everyone is selling for 1800-1950. I need 10,000 units by X-date to start my next run but haven't fulfilled my buy order. So by "offsetting" my production costs I mean, go out and get it myself vs. breaking down and paying 1800-1950 per unit.

Still, even looking at this, I don't feel mining is going to be used very often for me personally and I don't want to go that deep into my skills on it. It's asking if others have done this for the same reason, for any material, and is it just something I should still be continually prepared to do.

I see, I didn't think of it that way, I viewed it valued at what 'I' would pay for it lol

Ty again for the input Very Helpful!

Minerals you mine aren't "free".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Also if you want to produce stuff that's fine. There sure are corps focused on that.

And I truly do understand this. My industrial side came about with just wanting to make my own ammo for hungry ships, then it evolved into making my own drones, and the early ships....I was hooked. It has never been "all about the isk", I don't shortchange myself and always turn a profit, but mainly it was about ensuring I could afford the ships and mods that I wanted, or building them myself and having a small personal fleet which was funded by making extra's. Mining has never really been fun, and up to this point was only utilized when I was working on a spreadsheet and could not pay attention to the game fully. The only time mining was fun was when I was sneaking around low-null to grab super secret ores lol, but that was fun in a panic sense!!

Thanks again for the posts

I read the initial post, then jumped here, so if I missed something.. sue me.

Anyhow, you have a lofty set of goals there.

My main is a jack of all trades, and a master of none. I have kind of reset lately though from lessons learned....

My main toon can do everything, pretty well actually, but things like manufacturing, research, and tradiing are actually a waste of time for him so I broke then out. across two accounts.

Toons:
1-1 My main - independent now, not in charge of anything but also capable of almost everything.
1-2 Market toon - Trained up for a couple months to handle all trades and sales
1-3 Corp leader/holder toon - Runs a corp with basic skills but does little else. handy though since he is a hangar queen.

2-1 Main research toon - runs his own research corp and handles all the blue prints. Check daily for wardecs but otherwise a set it and forget it toon. Secondary role is the frieghter pilot if needed.
2-2 miner. Works with 1-1 when in the mining mood
2-3 Mission toon. Works with 1-1 when isk is needed. Otherwise cross trained for logistics and exploration in a case other toons are at war.

Everybody is trained (or training) PI as well.

Even if you only run one account, consider spreading out your needs with your three toons you get.

I actually have a third account, but I just cannot justify the expense as a casual player to bring it back on line (perfect Orca pilot, explorer, and mission toon... all PI experts)

Just be sure to have that orca properly tanked. Orcas are a popular suicide gank target. My hauler alt has an orca that has more ehp then a freighter with max skills. Damage control II and as many Large shield extenders and Invulnerability fields as you can fit in the mid slots. I would recommend using shield rigs.

Its the reason I like the orca for hauling. I can actually hold more value in my orca vs the freighter due to the increased ehp. The ship maintance array is nice for moving fitted ships around as well. Anything more then what can fit in the orca goes out to red frog. Its worth it in the long run, and you lose nothing if they get suicide ganked.

Not to hijack, but does anyone know if the fleet hanger is still unscanable? I read somewhere that is was, but I have got the feeling that the information is outdated...