Hellpurge

(n) An operation in which all structures in an area are reinforced and killed as quickly as if there were no resistance.

(v) The act of conducting a hellpurge.

We're been running nearly-nonstop capital and subcapital ops for around five days. The Cry Havoc station has been taken by FCON, an ex-providence alliance, and all enemy structures in the target area destroyed -- about 60 towers, including those belonging to ROL, Ev0ke and CH pets, as well as 7 TCU. The enemy formed up a few times, apparently once with 8 supercarriers and 150 subcaps, but it never turned into a fight.

We've also been taking out a few Ev0ke towers in lowsec, and they actually showed up to try and defend a few times. We didn't catch their repping carriers and there wasn't a real fight, but I did volley an enemy battleship with my dreadnaught. It turned out to have no tank and a single shield EM resist rig....

Fortunately there are now reliable rumors we'll be going on a roadtrip soon, which should be interesting.

Gratuitous drone blob

An EVE wedding

Today in H-W I had the rare opportunity to attend a wedding (or wedding celebration), between Morsus Mihi members Mike Takumi and Tink Vader. The bride and groom were in a golem and a raven navy issue, and in attendance were four titans, four supercarriers and a number of others. The event was celebrated with an all-comers subcapital thunderdome. Several carriers tried to keep the bride and groom repped, but they were eventually taken down by the titans. I was in an interceptor and held on for some time, but attracted a doomsday that I had a bit of trouble tanking.

Celebrating EVE style

Strontium in the morning

Over the last few weeks we've been on low-intensity ops, slowly knocking out some towers in the Pure Blind area. A few days ago we turned up the heat and got back on the Cry Havoc eviction treadmill. We tried several times to kick them out before MAX 2 started and basically managed to lose some subcap fleets. This time we're bringing some numbers and capitals and have reinforced so many structures that the timer app is longer than my screen, so we're probably serious about it.

Cloud Ring and and southern Pure Blind (where CH lives) are basically part of NC territory, but are usually held by hostiles. We don't really need the space, it's hard to defend because of its' distance from tribute and anybody who moves in there would need to be really good in order to hold the stations against the local alliances.

Cry Havoc have skill and great fleet numbers for their size. They're an alliance I respect so it's sort of a shame we have to kill them, but they and Ev0ke allied with the SC during MAX 2 so they've got to go. Or at least suffer -- I doubt they'll leave the area even if we retake all the moons and stations.

Well, whatever. Hoping for some good fights over the next few days.

Reinforcement timers

Shooting the Cry Havoc station again.

Why I (should, should not) be on the eve blog pack

As you're all aware, Kinux is doing a revision to the blog pack, in which some of the inactive blogs will be dropped and replaced with active ones. As a blogger, obviously my self-worth is dependent on my hits per day so the idea of being in the pack has crossed my mind. Now it's time to decide whether or not to put my name forward.

Why I should be in the blog pack:

1. I post regularly about the internet spaceship game eve online.

You'd think that this would be the key metric, and indeed "Being part of the Pack comes with its responsibilities and obligations. The first and foremost is to blog regularly". I've got that covered, and even have some useful information and unique content.

If I was really pushing for inclusion I would have put that at the bottom of the post as a gotcha... but posting about internet spaceships isn't enough. The blog pack isn't just a list of blogs, it's a social media group: "for the Pack, I wanted to create this sense of belonging to an elite group of bloggers".

Why I should not be in the blog pack:

"Here's a list of To Dos that all members should strive to accomplish as part of their duties".

1. "Comment on Pack members blogs". I only comment when I have something to say, and usually something to contribute. This is very rare.
2. "When writing a post, try to link to each other posts, bringing the community even closer together". Sure, I'll do this... when somebody has recently written something which supplements my post. This has happened maybe one time in the last six months. Not that there aren't blogs I'd like to link; I've recently followed 12th's posts about his experience in the northern war with interest but no particular way to link them to what I was posting about at the time, see what I did there, and I'm definitely not going to make a post just linking somebody else's post.
3. I'm not very good at this. I use a facts-only style (my first titan kill warranting a whole four sentences) and the brevity and lack of adverbs surely makes me less engaging than somebody who can actually write, and if I have nothing to write about I just won't post.
4. I'm not a social media person. I don't participate in banter blogs (I would if there was one I wanted to respond to, but there haven't been), play stupid blog games or use any other form of social media. The blog pack and its guidelines are about community, whereas I only really care about the game.

Other issues:

1. Does the blog pack work? While the pack has succeeded in its' purpose of creating a close-knit group that gets lots of page views, for me the purpose of a blog pack is to aggragate posts. Out of approximately three blogs that I currently follow with real interest (see right, subtract two) none are in the blog pack. The exclusivity of the blog pack means that it misses content I actually care about.

Building a better blog pack - one which contains all the blogs, but does not have wow 'tards - would be simple. I've even figured out how to make it so subscribing works like the Kinux pack (single item) rather than the evebloggers bundle (hundreds of subscriptions inside a folder). It's an intriguing idea, though probably not worth the effort since the final product would just be the evebloggers bundle without the non-eve shit.

So, anyway. I decided not to link myself on kinux' post. Can't be a failure if you never try, right? \o/

Passive income part 2: Copying capital blueprints

EDIT 2012-8-20: This post has been replaced by this post series.

The second part of my two-part series about passive income.

EDIT 2010-9-22: Updated spreadsheet snapshot, added titans.
EDIT 2011-2-9: Updated spreadsheet snapshot
EDIT 2011-4-10: General update, new spreadsheet snapshot, new information about titans and supercarriers.

To start out, let's introduce the concept of blueprint copying: If you have an original blueprint (BPO) you can make blueprint copies (BPC) with a certain number of runs. BPC can be sold on contracts,and are bought by people who want to manufacture a ship without buying the BPO. Once they have a BPC they can manufacture a number of ships equal to the number of runs on the BPC.

What type of blueprints do we want to use? I'm looking for passive income, and capital blueprints are best for this: They have a long copy time and a maximum of 1 run per copy. This is much simpler than battleships, which have a maximum of 10 runs per copy and presumably can be copied multiple times per month, which would mean more time doing math, more time setting up contracts and more pain in the ass.

There are a total of 22 capital blueprints that can be copied: Four each of carriers, dreadnaughts, supercarriers, titans and freighters, plus 2 industrial ships. We need a way to decide which of these is the best to invest in, and I propose a metric as follows: The value of the BPC in millions, divided by the number of months it takes to copy, divided by the price of the BPO in billions. The resulting number is the monthly return, in millions, for each billion invested. This number will be referred to as MMPB (monthly millions per billion).

Before I pull out the spreadsheets though, we need to talk about capital industrial and supercarrier blueprints because they're a little more complicated than the rest.

Capital industrial blueprints are not sold by NPCs in highsec; I suspect they come from players working for the ORE corporation. Consequently, the BPO cost can be highly variable. Although 3.3 billion seems typical for a rorqual BPO, putting its MMPB at around 32, I once saw one on contracts for 1.75 billion (though I didn't have the presence of mind to buy it).

Supercarrier blueprints had a dramatic price spike after dominion, but so many people invested them that once demand fell off their prices fell to pre-dominion levels. Today (4/2011) a nyx BPC is worth 600 mil, compared to 3.3 billion in early 2010. This has lead to people getting out of the market, and you can sometimes find researched supercarrier BPO on contracts in jita for NPC price.

Without further ado:

Copy time is for science 5 with no implants
BPC prices updated 2011-4-10

What does this tell us? Mostly, that dreadnaughts are a terrible investment. So are supercarriers, except for the wyvern (I suspect everybody invested in nyx and aeon because they're the ones that don't suck, while many people are caldari specced). Among carriers the thanatos and archon seem to be the way to go, and watching them over the last year they have been consistently more valuable than the chimera and nidhoggur.

Titan blueprints are actually a pretty good investment right now. They are in very high demand, with the leviathan BPC above 3 billion for the first time since dominion and most of the rest selling at 10 bil as soon as somebody puts a contract up. I would tend to recommend the erebus, as they are highly desirable for their armor bonuses and tend to die a lot for the same reason. Do note, however, that it's possible overinvestment may eventually lead to titan BPC going the way of supercarriers.

One's tendency would be to buy a bunch of whatever has the highest MMPB, but there are a few factors which you may wish to take into account:

Utility. If you think you might have need of capital BPC or BPO at some point then maybe it would be better to get a variety of blueprints.

Market fluctuations. Investing everything in one type of blueprint will leave you vulnerable to price changes. If you get 10 archon blueprints and their price drops significantly, you'll lose out. Spreading your investment over multiple types of BPO will give you lower profits but more stability.

Copying slots. You get a maximum of 11 per character, and although it's easy to train another research alt this will make things more complicated. If you have enough isk to fill your research slots it might be better to buy fewer but more expensive blueprints, perhaps going with freighters or rorquals instead of carriers.


Now, before we can start copying we need to research material and/or production efficiency. Looking at contracts we can see that the typical freighter blueprint copy has 3 levels of material efficiency (ME) and 0 of production efficiency, while carriers have 2 of material efficiency and 1 of production efficiency. If you like to play with spreadsheets you will find that higher ME levels than these do not significantly change the component requirements to build these ships. Manufacturers know this, so there's no point researching them higher. As an example, an archon costs 516 million to build at ME0, 510 at ME1, 471 at ME2, and 464 at ME999.

For carriers and freighters each level of research takes 2 months, so once you have the blueprints you're looking at half a year before they start to produce. What's more, it actually takes longer than this because all NPC stations have ME and copy jobs in all their slots at all times; you will probably never see a research slot for those which doesn't have a wait time, except maybe in NPC or player sov 0.0. If you're okay with moving your BPO to lowsec (use a T3 or stealth recon, NOT a frigate hull) the wait times there are much lower, or you can avoid wait times by using a personal research pos or renting slots from an organization such as New Eden Research, though both of these will introduce overhead and increase the amount of work you have to do. Do not under any circumstances keep BPO in a conquorable station unless you have a plan to get them out if the station changes hands abruptly. I suggest a jump clone, nullified T3 and instawarp bookmark.

There are also some implants you can use to speed the process a little, reducing research times by a maximum of 5%. At 120 million isk the 5% implants don't look like a great investment except for the copy time one; for me, a bonus of 5% would be worth 18 million per month, taking 7 months to pay off -- not bad for a long term project like this, provided you never lose the research clone.

The implants are as follows:

zainou 'beancounter' I40, I50, I60 - production time research speed bonus
zainou 'beancounter' J40, J50, J60 - material efficiency research speed bonus
zainou 'beancounter' K40, K50, K60 - copying speed bonus


When I started looking into capital blueprints I was looking to spend about 10 billion isk and elected to go with an unfocused blueprint set, buying one of each type of carrier and freighter for a total of 11 billion, which will make me 360 million isk per month (31 months to pay off the investment, though BPO should be considered equity). If I were looking to maximize MMPB, at that point 8 chimera blueprints would have cost 6 billion and generate 296 million per month (20 months to pay off),and somebody wanting to maximize monthly profits on 8 BPO could have gone all fenrir (since you will not find 8 rorqual BPO) and made 472 million per month on a 13.3 billion investment (28 months to break even). A nyx is an 18 billion isk investment and would have taken 23 months to pay off. Today, this is closer to 104 months.

Spreadsheets (open document format):
MMPB
Capital build costs (stolen from someone in alliance chat)

My blueprints

Passive income, part 1: Datacores

~or~

In which I grind missions in highsec

~or~
In which I receive angry comments

With absolutely bugger all happening in eve, it's time to talk about carebearing! Starting out this post, I have to say that I have sort of a love-hate relationship with mission runners. On one hand, they're worthless scum who are too cowardly to play the real game. On the other hand, they provide an important service by providing cheap implants for real players, plus they give me billions to fit their missionmobiles with the faction and deadspace shit I find.

Of course I would never run missions as an income source - I have some integrity - but recently I've been thinking about passive income. Copying blueprints and using R&D agents for datacores are the most common methods, so I figured I'd give them a shot.

I grabbed my poorly-skilled highsec alt, checked a guide on TTH to find an amarr R&D corp, located an agent and started grinding standings for carthum conglomorate with the goal of getting my standings high enough to use the best research agent. This took a while, since I wasn't willing to waste training time on mission skills beyond social 3. The guy who did the datacore guide on TTH also has guides for grinding standings and how to speed up the process, but there's all this stuff about tags and storyline agents and things, which are far too complicated for a 0.0 person whose entire concept of 'standings' is killing anything that isn't blue.

When I had ground sufficient standings to use the best research agent I found that I still needed a bunch of skills: science 5, research 5, research project management 4, negotiation 4, connections 4 and then, horrors, science skills for each datacore type t (e.g. mechanical engineering for mechaninal engineering datacores). Worse, the tool to find how many datacores you get per day with given skills shows that the last level of the datacore-specific skill makes a huge difference in productivity; from my best agent it goes from 1.75 to 2.22 datacores per day between levels 4 and 5. What's more, maximizing profits means getting multiple types of datacore, and training the skills for them; for carthum conglomorate you would need mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, nanite engineering and hydromagnetic physics all to 5 in order to maximize your income. In terms of training time, though, it would be better to use agents that make the same type of datacore and reduce the number of skills you train - the top 5 agents for carthum give a total of 80 million per month and require training 4 skills, but using the top 3 mechanical engineering agents and the top 2 rocket science agents would give 75.6 million - not a huge difference in isk.

Each of your R&D agents will offer you a mission once per day, completion of which will give you one day worth of research points. This potentially doubles your monthly income, but it also completely defeats the purpose of passive income. The missions are really easy - get a couple thousand units of tritanium, carry a package 2 jumps - so they could easily by done on a second client while you're in a fleet or something, but it's probably not worth the effort for a few hundred thousand isk.

My current research agents, showing a massive 51 million isk in accrued research points. If I ever get around to collecting the datacores I'll do what I suggested above and switch Qerray to rocket science datacores and trade out Kudfa for Kilures, who does mechanical engineering.

Overall I'd have to say that for a strong earner, getting into datacores isn't worth the time. I did my standings grind while sitting in h-w waiting for something to happen on a second client, but really, 80 million? If you already have standings with an R&D corp go for it, but I wouldn't recommend grinding standings just for the datacores.

Tanking the 180,000 damage torpedo with subcaps

A 180,000 EM damage citadel torpedo from an NPC outpost will hit a ship with 95% EM resist and a signature radius of 130 for 750 damage when stationary, and 190 damage when traveling 50 m/s; and if somebody had bothered to post these numbers before now I would have gotten into these plexes much earlier.

I was doing dread guristas fleet staging post today and the final stage escalated to cobalt edge. While I would normally ninja a carrier into enemy territory, cobalt edge is way out of jump range. This made things... challenging. I've been working on some fits to run the maze, but until now it's all been theory and EFT warrior stuff. What's more, the outpost in DG fleet staging point is much worse because it spawns energy neutralizing sentries and repairs itself.

EDIT: The outpost in the maze is actually identical to the DG fleet staging outpost, including repairing itself, but the spawns are different.

The broadsword fit I ended up using had no armor plates and a single passive (because of the neuts) armor EM resist mod, but 3 passive kinetic armor resist mods. This worked out pretty well; although the outpost could hit for about 1/3 armor when the broadsword was stationary, my repping oneiros would take it back to full armor in one cycle. Meanwhile, a third character in a DPS raven did the actual damage; we had about 970 DPS total, which should have been enough, but the outpost has some sort of anti-missile defence which significantly reduced incoming DPS. Fortunately most of its self-repair is in armor, and the armor buffer is only about 10,000; if 3 consecutive volleys from the raven made it through, the outpost took significant structure damage.

The drops weren't great - only 447 million - but the lessons learned will make me hilarous amounts of isk in the future.

The broadsword fit I used. I would replace the trimarks with thermal resists rigs, but none were available nearby. The tracking computers increase falloff on the autocannons so that it does more damage at range.

EDIT: Removed an ishtar fitting I was thinking about using for the maze because it would have resulted in dying horribly as flameburst light missiles blotted out the sun.

EDIT: Fail title fixed, 180k is the volley damage. It fires once every 30 seconds, so 6000 DPS.