A Space Chase

I'm up early.  There's some time to waste.  Hey, I think I will drop into EVE in Aussie time.  They'll never expect it.

I log in, already in my Manticore.  Last night our system had two wormholes connecting to it; I scanned down the chains behind both of them.  This morning there are still two sigs.  I warp to one with the longer chain.  I warp to it at 10 km: I don't know its timing, and I may not jump if it is EOL.  In fact, it is not there at all.  Oh.  I open bookmarks and remove that scanned-down chain.

Over to the other.  I warp straight to it, since I instantiated it last night.  (This might not actually be true; I guess I was still sleepy.)  It is EOL, but I figure it must have just entered that state, and jump.  (See last parenthetical.  Lucky I did not get trapped out.)  Once in to C4b, I scan.  There's an Epithal on scan.

There was not an Epithal sitting out in this system last night.  Hunting time!  I did not bookmark the tower last night.  OK, I will dscan it out.  There it is, at a planet with one moon.  That is why I did not bookmark it.  I warp to the moon, landing on grid 180km from the tower.  So I warp to the tower to get eyes on the Epithal.  It is manned.  And better, it is not aligned with its tower.  That is, it has been sitting for no more than 15 minutes or so.  Will it attempt to planet-goo?

Epithal one.

I watch.  It does nothing for quite a while.  Boring.  I raise a browser on my second screen to read the web.  I half-watch some more.  One article read.  Then I half-watch some more.

It moves!  I focus on EVE.  I spin my view around behind the Epithal to see where it is headed.  Strangely, it's not headed anywhere, just out into black space.  No planet, not anything.  Is it trying to juke me by warping to a bookmark?  (Few take this basic precaution.)

It stops moving.  False alarm.  I look around and see that it is now aligned with its tower.  Ugh.  It was just auto-aligning.  So it has been idle here now for ... a while.  15 minutes?  Something like that.  Still, that's no reason to give up.  Back to my web surfing.

A while, later, there's a blip on EVE.  What is it?  Ah, new Epithal just warped in.  And my Epithal logs out.  Very likely it's one guy, doing his PI.  Well, there's still an Epithal to watch.  I'll watch this one.  It also does not do anything immediately, so I return to the web.

Epithal 2

After five minutes, it logs off.  But before I can be disappointed, a new Epithal warps in.  Groundhog day.  It does nothing, I return to the web.

Epithal 3

Then another.

Epithal 4

And another.

Epithal 5

And yet another.  This time, both Epithals stay logged in.  I hope this means something, but right now it does not.  I return to the web.

Epithal 6.

Movement.  I look over at EVE.  One of the Epithals is aligning, I think.  I look at it, and get behind it, and get its destination -- I think.  Not sure.  Now it warps off grid, and I am returned to viewing my cloaked Manticore.  I figure out which planet it went to again.  I think.  Then I warp to it at 10 km.

Why am I not cloaked?

I land on grid, but there is no Epithal here.  Rats!  Wrong planet!  But it is definitely out here, somewhere.  Dscan time.  I point dscan at planets, and I find him.  I warp to that CO still in map mode.  I land, and he's not there.  OK, one more try.  I find him, and warp.  This time I leave map mode, and am disappointed to see my Manticore.  See, as in: I am not cloaked.  Oops, must have not warped at 10km to that last CO?  Not sure.  Anyway, I land on grid with the Epithal just as I cloak.  He probably saw that.  I blew it.

I expect him to return to the tower, and he does.  I also return there.  Perhaps he's an idiot.  Or, just maybe, he was not paying attention and did not see me.

I am not at the tower more than a few moments, when a third Epithal logs on.  Man, this guy has a lot of alts.  I get all three in view.  Now they sit for a while.  Just as I am about to return to my web browser, one of them moves.

Epithal 7

It is aligning.  I do the standard thing, getting the CO he is aligning to, then warping behind at 10km.  I am a bit slow on that.  When I land on grid, he is already aligning out.  This guy is fast.  I am 10km off.  I move towards him, but before I get in scrambler range, he warps.

I watch the warp, and warp to the next CO at 10km again.  This time I am faster than last time.  I will have my shot at him.  I uncloak, and get my sebo on.  Then I lock him and get the other systems going, most particularly the warp scrambler.  He's locked; my torps scream out and smash into him.  I turn on my microwarp to try to bump him.

He warps.  I kind of expect it; with only one warp scrambler, not three, I should not usually be able to stop an Epithal.  (It is surprising how many are not fit properly.)  In any case, there is some hope.  I don't know how damaged he is, but I did hit him with a round of torps, and I can see where he warped.  He warped to another CO before he knew I was there, I guess.  I warp behind him, slowed in my turn by my microwarp.  The chase is on!  He knows I am here, so there is no point in cloaking.

In pursuit

While pursuing in warp, I think to photograph myself.  And I resolve this time to get a screenie in combat.

I land on grid.  My sebo is still on, so no need for fancy mousing.  Just lock on, then fire.  I hit, and he warps off again.

Take that, you warp-core stabbed monster!

Close

Incredibly, he does not warp home, but on to the next CO!  I warp, following him.  (You can see the damage on the screenie to the right; at the time I had no idea how much damage I had done.)

I land at the next CO.  I lock him, and get one more hit in.  He does not die.  He warps.  Again to a CO!  I warp to it.  But he has not gone to the CO.  He's not here.  Rather, this is the planet where their POS is.  I move away from the CO, so that I can cloak.  Then I warp out to the POS, and all three Epithals are there.

Well, I doubt I am going to get a kill here today.  I have tried, but they have decent Epithal fits.  I am guessing three stabs plus a damage control.  In any case, my mere one scrambler was inadequate, and my damage not quite enough even given three rounds.  Win some, lose some.  Good job, Oman Estemaire.

Pursuing a Mammoth

Tonight we are moving stuff in and out of wspace. Earlier, I scanned down our static C3. It has a lowsec static, but it also has two K162s which are C2 by appearance. I entered the first one; it's a highsec static. Five sigs, so I scanned it down quickly. The highsec exit is 13 jumps from Jita. So I got my Jita alt in his freighter, bought a few things on our "wormhole needs" list, and slowboated across highsec to the nearby station. We've transshipped everything into industrials, and are on the way back headed into deep wspace.

From highsec we enter C2. As normal, every time I transit a wormhole I dscan. This is a good idea in any ship. While transporting, you are looking for anything out of the normal. Any ship, probes, etc. If you don't like what you see, you might back out, or you might go for it. Anyway, nothing new on dscan. C2 is clear. We warp across to the C2->C3 link, and transit. Again I dscan. This time there is something unexpected. There's a Mammoth on scan. (Does anyone use Mammoths anymore?) Well, I can't hunt a Mammoth in an Epithal. We continue on through C3 to our wormhole, jump, and warp to our tower.

If that Mammoth's pilot is smart, it's either back at its tower or out of the system. But maybe he is not smart. It's also possible that he missed seeing me on dscan. (Still, he must know that his system is wide-open, with four incident wormholes.) I quickly dump the goods I carried in, out of my Epithal and into storage. Then I get in my Manticore and zoom back to the wormhole. I'll be polarized, but I don't care. I'm looking for a kill

Across the wormhole, immediately I dscan. The mammoth is not on scan. It is possible it was transiting the system, from the wormhole I have not explored to the highsec. But this seems less likely than it being local. I've already scanned the system, and I bookmarked the local tower which is at the outer planet. I cannot see the outer planet on dscan from here. So that's probably where it is. I warp to the tower at 70. While in warp, I dscan, and there's the Mammoth. Almost certainly local.

I land on grid at the tower and... no Mammoth. It's also no longer on dscan. So I guess it must be out planet-gooing. I arbitrarily pick the customs office for planet I in the inner system and warp to it. As I warp, I am dscanning, and the Mammoth reappears. It is almost certainly doing PI. But it is not at planet I. I arrive on grid and no Mammoth. As I exit warp I am narrow-beaming dscan at other planets, and there he is at planet II. I throw it back into warp to planet II.

I land on grid at planet II. The Mammoth is there; he's about 10k from me, and I head for him. But my scrambler cannot quite reach yet, and I can see he's already aligning. He's had a fair amount of time here while I was trying to find him. I could uncloak and go for him, but I don't think there is time. Instead, I look where he is aligning to. I can see that it's planet III. A direct line. He warps, and I am warping right behind him by no more than a few seconds.

Remains of a crappy fit

I land at planet III's customs office about 10 km from the target.  As soon as I am out of warp, I approach him.  I uncloak at about 6 km from him, and get my lock started and my sensor booster on, then my torps and target painter.  The lock completes and my torps commence.  It only takes maybe two cycles and he explodes.  I go for the pod... tweet tweet tweet and it's locked too, and scrambled and podded. 

I have zoomed past him in the excitement, so I come back to the wreck and grab the small stuff. But there is way too much for me to carry: there are PI goods that he did not manage to throw back in the POCO. I ask in corp chat for a mate to bring an industrial to haul off the PI goods. I remember the corpse, and grab it while Timmay is transiting and warping to me. He loots the wreck and warps off.

Now there's nothing to do except link the kill mail in corp chat. Looking at it, it's a bad fit. I wondered why I killed him so quickly: because he has almost no tank. And I see he is stabbed up. My scrambler was not holding him there; he simply did not have enough tank to take more than a few seconds of my fire. Next time guys put more tank on and for goodness sake if you're doing PI use an Epithal.

Highsec POCO Predictions for Rubicon

A dev blog is out on the plans CCP has for highsec POCOs in Rubicon (coming, Nov. 19!).  Here is the summary in bullet points:

• Highsec POCOs will be attackable only while at war (that is, via wardec).
• Highsec POCOs will not be transferable while at war, or with war pending, to cut off the obvious shell-game counter to wardec.
• Highsec POCOs will still have 10% taxes to NPCs.  However the rate can be halved by the player by training the new Customs Code Expertise skill, 1% per level.  Also the assumed base value of PI commodities will be dropped somewhat, resulting in further reductions in effective taxes.
• POCO owners can set their taxes freely, in addition to the NPC tax.

I have been thinking about how this will play out.  Consider the wardec requirement.  Presumably anyone can take out Interbus COs, so there will be an initial gold rush.  But once a POCO is in player hands, it will be permanently.  And to even have a shot at it, you'll have to pay Concord for a war.

What's the cost for wardecs?  From CCP's wiki, Wars:

It costs 50 million isk, plus an additional cost for each member in the target corporation/alliance above 51. It will now start to increase with the 51st member and reach the ceiling of 500 million ISK at 2000 members.

I have seen people say the wardec cost would have a big effect, and initially I agreed with them.  It seems plausible that a 10x cost difference for war would matter a lot.  But after thinking about it, I feel it will affect only small corporations.

Consider a medium sized corp with 25 pilots.   In a battleship, each pilot can do about 1000 DPS.  POCOs have 10m shields and reinforce at 25% shields.  Thus this corp can hammer one into reinforced in just five minutes.  Killing a POCO after reinforcement is easier.  They have 250k armor and 200k structure.  So it would be very fast.  In a week of war, and unopposed, a corp could reinforce or destroy 20 POCOs a day.  Since POCOs cost about 100m ISK, the cost of the wardec is a small percentage of the capital at stake.  The cost of the fleet is much more than the POCOs it destroys.

I still expect large alliances to dominate POCO ownership.  But that is not because of wardec costs, rather because of the blobbing advantage in fleet combat, and the advantage that will accrue to any entity which can field fleets in all time zones.

It's worth discussing the time zone issue more explicitly.  POCOs reinforcement timer works differently than those at POSes.  At a POS, the reinforcement exit time is determined by time when attackers push the shields below 25%, and the amount of "reinforced mode fuel" (strontium clathrates) in the tower.  So a tower's exit time will be fairly unpredictable, but an attacker can always hope for the exit to happen at a time which is advantageous.  With POCOs, the owner specifies an exit time-window, a zone of a two hours.   Reinforcement mode lasts for a day at least, then enough time to get into the zone.  The timing of the attack has nothing to do with the exit time beyond fixing the day of the year.  Thus, a POCO's owner can set his times so that his POCOs always come out of reinforced at his best time.

One can imagine a seesaw battle between two large entities, both of which can prevail militarily at separate times during the day.  During the Australian evening, an Aussie alliance bashes all the POCOs it can get at, and defends its own towers coming out of reinforcement.  A European alliance does the same thing in its own evening.  Only on weekends can progress be made, which would be easily undone the next week.  The endgame here is all POCOs are killed and not replaced.  "They make a desert, they call it peace."

The situation would appear to be very unstable militarily.  This is especially true given that many highsec wardeccers would love to be able to wardec people and force a fight.  They would not necessarily care about actually killing your POCO, just getting you out to fight for it.  If you show up and fight, even though you lose, maybe they don't kill your POCO.  But if you don't show, they certainly do.

One other very important aspect of the economics of POCO is their return on investment.  Mabrick has a post with some relevance here: he estimates based on one player's reported PI that at 10% taxation, a POCO that is being used will earn about 19m ISK per user per month.  Unfortunately there is no hard data on how much PI actually goes on in highsec.  I would guess that most P4s are made there, though, because of their prices and the relative advantage highsec has for making P4s.  Potentially there is a lot of ISK to be made.  But it may be happening only in a very few places; hundreds of pilots make P4s in Sobaseki, one jump from Jita.  A POCO there would be golden if managed well.

But what is well?  If many Interbus COs persist, with their effective 8.5% taxes (half of 17%), then to compete players will not be able to set their POCO taxes above about 4%.  As such, their earnings per user are less than half of Mabrick's estimate.

My guess is that most POCOs in most highsec systems will not be worth much, because of the low tax rate they can command, and because very few pilots do PI there.  As such, POCOs are marginal investments.  They are risky, because always subject to wardec and cannot be taken down to escape loss like POSes can.  And they don't really pay well.  Individual corps will put them up to exploit places they are living better.  Then they will be wardecced by a larger corp and lose them, and learn not to do that.

If any group is to own any large numbers of POCOs in highsec, it will have to fight for them a lot.  Guerrilla action will make it very hard to hold onto large numbers of POCOs.  The only way I can see a single or handful of groups dominating highsec is an alliance of the vast majority of the wardeccers in highsec.  And that seems unlikely, to put it mildly.  Outsiders like the Goons simply will not be able to do it, because they will have to occupy highsec nearly continually to secure their assets, and even with a fleet in being, they are vulnerable to wardecs from guerrillas.

I do have an idea for how to make money off of highsec POCOs, but it's rather speculative, and this has gone on long enough.

Rubicon Ruminations

Ruminations -- I am sure someone else has already thought of it for the alliteration.  But still, I have not seen what they wrote.  I have read, so far, only the leaked info on TMC, and then Ali Aras' article.  Go read that now.  Anyway, without further self-congratulatory ado: Von, what think you of EVE Rubicon?

First off: in general, I like it a lot.  It is nothing earthshaking, that is true.  But then I have only played for a year plus.  So I have never seen a really big change in any release, and I don't expect it.  (Y'all bittervets with your Apocrypha etc. are spoiled.)

To my mind, the biggest change in Rubicon is the easiest one for CCP to implement: the highsec POCO change.  That is going to have huge ramifications on highsec.  I am 100% for it.  Wherever CCP can create property, they should, because valuable property in the absence of law means armed conflict.  Armed conflict in EVE means ship explosions, and that is good.  Highsec is no exception.  Let the race commence to command the biggest and baddest highsec marauder gang!  My prediction: a few alliances will end up controlling all POCOs in highsec.  Perhaps even just one alliance.  As the already established sovereign of highsec, I am hoping it is James 315, though it might be the CFC or perhaps it will be some new alliance as-yet obscure.  (I'll have to think on this more and write an article.)

Now let's talk specific changes.

A lot of this stuff does not affect me much or at all.  The highsec POCOs for one; I live in wspace.  Also in the "does not affect me much" category: the POS-siphon deployable, the local cyno-jammer deployable, the warp acceleration change, and ship rebalancing.  Though I will probably consider training to marauders, that's a long time in my future.

Some of the changes might or might not affect me.  Lack of information applies: the interdictor changes are not known.

The "space yurt" might make exploring a bit easier.  My exploration Buzzard might use scanning parts to increase scanning speed.  Then refit only when needed with a codebreaker or relic analyzer, and cargo scanner.  It depends on how much time it takes to deploy and un-deploy the yurt, and also how much cargo space it takes up.

I just changed my mind on the POS-siphon.  Rereading what Aras wrote, it may be possible to steal not just mining as such but also from reactors: "it takes stuff out, whether that's reaction products or mined moongoo."  There is no moon-mining in wspace.  But I often see towers with reactors, although I have no idea if they are running or not because it has never been important.  It may be possible to steal from them.  If so, and depending on the rate of siphoning, I might want to use POS-siphons.  Open a system; look for towers.  If there is an active reactor going and nobody home, go back and grab one (or more?) siphons.  Fly back, anchor them.  Come back and pick them up 3 hours later.  Profit.

One final big question mark happens around the new Sisters of EVE faction ships.  Given that they can fit a stealth cloak, there will almost certainly be some use for them, either as a buzzard-replacement explorer or a stealthy hunter where you don't lose experience when things go wrong.  But lacking details, I cannot say for sure how big of a change they might be.  I would welcome an exploration ship with abilities in between a Tengu and Buzzard.  I would also welcome a cloaky hunter that can fire combat probes, but is not as costly to lose as a T3 or as pitiful in DPS as a Falcon.

Now here are the changes most likely to change my game.

First, the "auto-tractor" deployable.  Even with pretty short range, I'd use it to supplement a Noctis in wspace sleeper harvesting.  The auto-tractor gets deployed immediately and probably orbitted (I already use a jetcan as an anchor much of the time).  It sucks in at least all of the frigate wrecks.  Depending on its range, maybe many or most cruiser wrecks.  If its range is sufficient to grab most wrecks, then we might change from a Noctis to some other ship as our salvager.  Indeed it may be possible to salvage as we go.  I imagine a Drake with two salvager IIs and one salvaging rig.

Second, the rapid heavy missile launcher.  Currently my corp uses mostly cruise missiles for sleeper killing.  Cruise missiles are great against sleeper battleships, and (with "precision" T2 missiles) tolerable against sleeper cruisers.  Heavies are better against cruisers (I think), and needed against frigates.  So this will allow us to dispense with a Drake or Tengu that we keep there to kill off pesky frigates.  If the DPS is better for rapid heavies than cruise, we might end up going all heavies on our C3 fleet, since C3 sleepers tend to appear close to the warp-in.

Notes on PI

Local PI Base

My corp moved into our current system some four months ago.  I blogged at the time some of my calculations on how to run low-work PI.  After that we set up our actual PI, and have been running it.  Having learned a few things (and taken some pictures), it's time to share.

First, what does my setup look like?  Well, there are two setups I use.  One is for "local" characters -- those who live where they can easily get to the PI system, to move stuff up and down to the customs offices.  In the case of wspace, "local" means in the same system.  Out in kspace, it might be up to a few jumps.

The second setup is for "remote" characters -- those who cannot just fly to the system whenever they want.  My Jita market alt does PI in my wspace system, but only flies up once per week or so.  The setup for remote is very similar to that of local, but it has a second launchpad.  

In both cases, there is an extractor that I place right next to the control center so that it is easy to find.  The extractor outputs to a storage.  The storage is drawn upon by 6 BIFs, which then output P1s to a launchpad.  It is possible with very high concentrations to put a 7th BIF in the gap in the middle of the design.  The launchpad outputs to three AIFs which are making P2 goods.  (These are shown at the bottom of the local base, in the lower right on the remote base.)  The AIFs route back to their adjacent launchpad.

Remote PI Base

To run the thing, you bring 34000 P1s every 12 days.  Place 17000 on the planet for the AIFs to use.  Let it run for 6 days.  Then put down the other 17000 (you must be local to do this), and let it run some more.  Every 12 days you have to come by in an Epithal and drop off more goods, and take away the goods created.

My system has some planets with very high concentrations of the resources I am extracting.  Others, not as high.  Also, on large planets links cost enough that you cannot get quite as much stuff, and our particular gas giants have mediocre concentrations of resources.  So, this means there is substantial mismatch between the rate at which we make some goods as versus other complementary goods.  We have addressed this in several ways. 

One way to get a bit more of a resource that has a low concentration is to remove one of the BIFs, and instead add an extra extractor head.  Each BIF can process up to 144000 P0s per day.  So, when you are getting below  720000 per day, you won't keep more than five busy.  Of course, if you are already running all 10 extractor heads, you cannot gain anything here.

A second way to deal with resource extraction rate mismatches is to import stuff.  P1s are pretty cheap, and given that we are running a fair amount of goods outbound anyway, there are return trips that we might as well fill up. 

A third way to deal with lower concentrations is to just extract more, using extra characters that we were not planning to do PI with.  Our worst planets still get about 650000 R0s per day.  The highest keep 6 BIFs busy -- so more than 864000 per day.  It does not take a lot of extra extraction to make up the amount.

All of the discussion above relates to the vast majority of planets, those which are extracting P0s and turning them into P1s and then P2s.  In addition, we also run a handful of "factory" planets where we make P3s.  There don't need to be a lot of these planets, but the size reduction for making P3s is considerable and thus well worth doing.  A factory planet can do some basic extraction and processing to make some P1s.

Comes the Epithal

[UPDATE: Odyssey 1.1 is here, and some of the ship stats that I assume below were evidently tweaked.  The fit below is still OK, but one can do a bit better.  See my more recent post, Industrial Fits for Odyssey 1.1.]

Odyssey 1.1 is coming, on September 2nd.  There are a lot of changes, but the one that affects me the strongest is the change to industrials.  The sweeping changes can be found at this post by CCP Rise at the forums.  The names of industrials will also change; the name changes (as well as all the other changes) are listed in the main dev-blog about 1.1.

Currently I haul most stuff in an Iteron V.  This includes moving planet goo around between planets and to our POS, as well as hauling stuff in and out of wspace.  Stuff in and out is mostly PI goods, but also ammo, some gas, and the occasional other thing: ship parts, POS parts.  The Iteron V fills the primary function of the hauler the best: hauling large amounts of stuff.

The Itty V also can do well in the secondary function you want in a hauler: defense.  It has the most low slots of any hauler, so if necessary it can also swap out hauling volume for defense.  (Defense for haulers is mainly warp core stabilization.)  For wspace PI, the defense you want is +3 warp core stabilization, combined with enough shields, hull, and armor to take a few seconds pounding from a cloaky Loki.  (Outside of wspace, +2 warp core stabilization is probably OK, but I don't live out there.)  Fast align is also nice, since the Loki trying to gank you may bump you to de-align you.

In Odyssey 1.1, the Itty V will no longer be the king of haulers .  Instead of having one hauler that does a pretty good job on everything, but lacks the ability to have it all, CCP Rise in his infinite wisdom is giving us many different specific-good haulers that do a superb job hauling one thing.

For planet gooing, the hauler to be in is the "Epithal" (formerly, Iteron III).  I've already got three of these guys bought, and will get a few more.  We'll also be getting a few of the dedicated ammo haulers, and maybe one dedicated ore (gas) hauler.  Here's the Epithal fit:

[Epithal, PI hauler]
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
Damage Control II

Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

The whole design is designed to be disposable; total cost is about 2M ISK.  No slots are required to serve the main function: hauling planet goo.  The Epithal has a PI bay that holds 45000m^3 plus 10% per level of Gallente Industrial; thus it will be at least 49500 for anyone who can fly the ship, and up to 67500.  Because it does not need any slots to do its main function, it needs not skimp on defense.  It gets +3 warp core stabilization and it still has a slot left over for a damage control.  (This is too good.  I complained to Jester about it, to no evident effect.)  If you have Shield Upgrades V, you can fit a large shield extender on it, and more hardeners.

The rigs are optional.  You can leave them off entirely and the ship is repackageable.  (My freighter pilot will have one to carry stuff up to the hole with.)  Or, if you want to be spendy you can rig the thing with Low Friction Nozzle Joints, doubling the cost but shaving a few seconds off the align time.

An Unwelcome Discovery

It's a slow Friday evening.  Several of the characters in my corp are on vacation or otherwise not around.  So, it's just me on tonight.  My market alt ice-mines in The Forge, until the ice runs out.  I look at a few market orders.  Ho, hum.

Well, what about wspace?  Maybe I can go exploring.  But first, I think I should do some PI.  There are only two signatures in my wspace system, which means that unless something weird has happened (like: someone has connected to my system, instantiated my wormhole, then popped his connection), the wormhole is closed.  So, it's a good time to do the dangerous part of PI: trooping around to all those COs moving PI goods.  This is part where you sometimes get blown up if unlucky and/or unwary.  But you do not get blown up if you are sealed off from the outside universe.

I do my PI.  Then I bring in my PI alts and do theirs, too.  Finally I log Von Keigai back in.  I'll open the static and have a look.  Maybe some exploring to finish a rather dull night off.

I warp out to the static wormhole.  As I approach, I run a dscan as I habitually do.  (Dscanning ahead means you'll be a little less shocked if you drop out of warp and there are ships at the wormhole.)  In this case I only ran the scan out of habit, but what is this?  There's a ship on scan!  Wait!  There are a tower and forcefield on scan!

Am I even in my own system?  Did I jump already and I forgot it?  Minor stroke perhaps?  Confusion.

No, I am in my system.  I arrive at the wormhole: no ships.  I dscan again to be sure; no change to that.  I am not going exploring.  Someone has invaded my system!  There is only one planet in range, and it has only three moons.  So I quickly isolate the particular moon and warp over there.  Sure enough: there's a new POS here, a small Caldari tower.  It's got no defenses at all: no hardeners or other POS parts.  Just its force field.

Hmm.  Can I kill it?  A little research shows: not really.  A small tower has 12.5 million shield hitpoints.  This one is fresh, so it might not be fully charged, but by myself I cannot do much.  Certainly not tonight, and even with the few of us I can assemble tomorrow, I don't relish the idea of multiple-hour POS bashing.  I will have to wait for some corpies to get back to assemble a decent POS-bashing force.

Since I know I am not going to act in the next couple days, I write the CEO of the owning corp politely asking him what they are doing.  A veiled ultimatum is laid: we must be friends or enemies.  Then, my mood spoiled, I log off and go to bed.

While lying there, I realize I did all my PI with an open static.

To be continued...

The Far End of the Stick

The corp has been busy all night moving stuff in and out of our system.  There is a large network of connected systems, and we've seen scouts or probes in many of them.  So we are wary.  We have eyes on the entire wormhole chain from our wormhole to the highsec entry.  Our Orca makes one trip; we round out the goods with Iteron Vs.  Nothing bad happens.

Now we're done.  My corpies have bedtimes, so they disappear.  Me, I fly later into the night.  So I jump in Artemis to see what I might find.  Our system connects directly to three other wspace systems: a C3 via our static, a C2, and a C4 both via their statics.  These systems in turn connect to a few other systems each.  I look in each one for anything very interesting.  C4: nothing.  Then into the C2, with the highsec connection we've been using all night.  Nothing.  Two connected systems: nothing and nothing.  Such is the life of the wandering monster.

OK, back upstream and over to the C3.  Help me obi-wan C3, you're my only hope.  Nothing.  One connected system (highsec static don't count): nothing.  Crap.  Well, this is fate telling me it is getting late and I should go to bed.  I head home.  I'll do my PI and log off.

I jump across the C3->C4 wormhole, and oops.  Someone has found me: there are a Tengu and a Proteus sitting here uncloaked.  All my buds are logged off, so it is just a matter of evasion.  Fortunately my position is good, some 2500m from the wormhole.  On the other hand, one of them is just 3900m from me.  I wait a little.  He moves a bit further.  I order my move away from him, cloak and fire afterburners.  Or maybe the reverse.  Anyway, they don't even seem to try to uncloak me, so far as I can tell.  I warp off to a celestial.

I was planning to go to my POS to reship for PI.  But obviously not with people in my system.  I wonder if maybe they are scouting or something, so I go to the C4 wormhole hoping something interesting will come through.  But I see nothing.  The Proteus disappears.  Then after a while, so does the Tengu.  Well.  This is boring.

I fly to my POS and start in on PI.  Reupping all the extractors is fast as always.  But all of my planets need more inputs.  Hmm.  Should I carry or not?  Hard to say.  I decide to go for it.  I have some anti-ganking tricks I want to try out.  I jump in one of our smaller Iteron Vs, make my adjustments to the fitting, and set out with a load of Toxic Metal.

I don't fly direct.  I have read too much Penny for that.  Instead I do a tactic that I think might juke her.  We have a solo outer planet that, from our POS, is in a direction that nothing else is.  I fly to it at 100km.  There are several ideas here.  One is the most obvious, to deny cloaky eyes the ability to see which POCO I am heading to.  Another is to give cloaky eyes a very obvious place I am going, so that (hopefully) they uncloak while still on the way.  Then I get to see them on-grid, or at least on my dscan.  Then I would know for certain that I am being hunted.  One other idea is to get off their dscan for a while if they do not chase.  This should at least get them wondering if I have headed to a wormhole.

Anyway, I am off, and nothing happens.  I turn at the outer POCO and head to the one I was actually planning to go to.  I drop goods, grab goods, and move to another to do the same.  Then back to base.  And a second time: get a load, stunt Penny (as I lovingly think of my imagined monster), and go to another two POCOs for a pickup and dropfest.  Then back home for the last load.  One more stunt (though to the inner system this time, because I am pretty sure there's noone here but me), and I drop goods and start picking...

Uh oh.  Tengu.  Heartbeat rising.

Well.  I try to be calm because I think I have him beat.  He -- one GhostStarWolf -- is about 10000m off, but not coming fast.  I order the warp to my POS.  He is locking me.  I slowly turn, oh so slowly, and accelerate towards warp initiation.  His only chance now, I think, is to bump me (or have friends).  He's got his warp scrambler on me now.  Strangely, no missiles are hitting me.

I warp.  Sorry, fellow, but I had three warp core stabs.

I say Good Try in local.  GhostStarWolf breaks silence to tell me he had to try for it (which is true; what else do we play this game for?).  I tell him to stick around because there's more PI coming up.

I log out and log on to do PI with my PI characters.  Neither of them need to leave the POS, and so I don't.  Small victories.  

Selling a Player Owned Customs Office

Before my corporation moved into its current C4 wspace system, we were in a C1 with highsec static.  Our goal there was making money via PI, which we certainly did.  (One of these days maybe I will write up what we were doing.)  Over the roughly four months that we were there, 4 characters were making about 3 billion ISK per month.  However, it was a lot of work.  That was one of the reasons we moved up to a C4 system: killing sleepers is easier and more fun than moving around PI goods.

When we left our old system, we left behind two POCOs that we had put up after shooting down Interbus ones.  (The other three planets had POCOs owned by another corp; I asked nicely when we moved in, and they let us use them for free.)  My policy was to let anyone who want to use them to do so free; this is better than having them shot down.  Anyway, only one guy had asked me since we left, and I set him blue and forgot about it.

Yesterday I got eve-mail from him, asking about selling the POCOs.  He wanted to know how much I'd sell my POCOs for.  I told him "at cost", which I had to figure out.  Here's what I wrote him (prices as of July 2, 2013).

To build a POCO, you need to start with a Customs Office Gantry, which currently costs 53.5 million at Jita (buy price). (Sell price is 56.9m.) Then you have to bring some PI goods, as follows: Broadcast Node 8, Recursive Computing Module 8, Self-Harmonizing Power Core 8, Wetware Mainframe 8. You put those in the gantry, then do an "Upgrade" on it, and it turns into a POCO.

The costs of the PI goods (in millions) are as follows:

Broadcast Node: 1.27 - 1.34
Recursive Computing Module: .88 - .93
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 1.28 - 1.44
Wetware Mainframe: 1.32 - 1.39

So, the total cost of a POCO (minus labor costs) is 91.5m at the minimum, up to 97.7m. I offered them to him for 91m.  He convoed me and accepted the deal.

The issue of trust came up.  We discussed using a trusted third party but he was OK with just doing one at a time.  Boom, he gave me 91m.  So I starting trying to figure out how to effect the transfer.  There is a tab on the Corporation window that shows all corp assets, and there are a few right-click menu options for them, but you cannot transfer them there.  I found no way to do it.  After failing to discover a means in-game, I googled for information on it.  I could not find a clear answer, but my conclusion is that one cannot transfer a customs office except by being in the system with it.  In system, there is a menu option on the right menu to transfer ownership.  (I already knew about this, because it is option that I wish was not present where it is.  It is bad UI design to have a almost never-used menu item on a frequently used menu.)

So I told my buyer that I'd have to fly down to do it.  I gave back his 91m.  He told me the system that the static was currently in, which was 25 jumps from Jita.  I flew out my market alt in a frigate.  Eventually, got there, fleeted up, warped to him, and entered the system to effect the sale.  (He joked about killing me as soon as I got in.)  We did the transfers one by one to minimize his risk.  He accidently paid me for a non-existing third POCO.  (I was tempted to joke about stealing his money, but didn't.)  Gave his money back again.  The whole thing was about 1 minute.  Then I autopiloted back.

I generally dislike the idea of requiring physical attendance in-system to sell a corporate asset.  On the one hand, requiring presence does have an interesting effect on wspace, where you cannot get to an asset simply by knowing which system it is in.  On the other hand, it's painful to have to drive 50 jumps to sell something, and for what?  How does this add to game play?

Certainly in terms of "realism", it's absurd that I cannot sell something remotely.  Indeed, you can sell all normal assets remotely, via contract at any station.  The same should be true of extra-station assets.

Making POS Fuel is Not Worthwhile

I have recently moved into a wspace system where one can make POS fuel from the ground up, via PI.  Everything other than ice products can be made locally.  I've commented before on the profit of making POS fuel: pretty pitiful.  So that's one real strong reason not to make it in substantial quantities.  But still, it might be worth making for a different reason: size.

I run a large tower.  This requires 28800 blocks of fuel per month, which is 144000.00m³.  I live in moderately deep wspace: I cannot always find a highsec exit.  Also, the path out goes via random wspace systems, which may have hostiles present.  So the bandwidth of goods in and out is a problem worth worrying about.

Worse, I am planning to do significant PI to make money.  If each of 10 characters makes 5000m³ of PI goods per planet per 9 days, as I discussed in the previous post, then that is 833333m³ that have to be carried out per month.  This can certainly be done; at 35000m³ per Iteron V load, it's 24 loads.  But it would certainly be nice to reduce it.

One way to reduce it would be to create P3 goods.  In the step from P2 to P3, some shrinkage is attained: the factor is either 0.6 (for P3 goods requiring 2 P2 inputs), or 0.4 (for those requiring three P2 inputs).  So, one way to proceed is to produce P3s, particularly the ones which require three inputs.  We have one of those we can make, so that's one thing I will do.

Another thing we might do to decrease bandwidth is to make POS fuel.  (Certainly, that one should make one's own fuel is a popular idea among wspace dwellers.)  What is the size reduction of POS fuel of its inputs?  And what is the input volume of ice products?  I don't know, but I am about to figure it out.

... OK, I just punched numbers into my spreadsheet (a copy of the one that I discussed before).  The result is pretty clear.  Here are the facts:

• POS fuel blocks (5m³) are a little bit smaller than their inputs (5.75m³).
• The ice-derived inputs to POS fuel (4.5m³) are just slightly smaller than POS fuel itself.  
• The PI-derived inputs to POS fuel (1.25m³) are a small fraction of its volume. 

Given these findings, as well as the low profitability of POS fuel, and the fuss of having to set up PI to create its inputs, as well as the opportunity costs, I find no value in making POS fuel myself.

Low Work PI in Wspace

EIEIO.  I have a farm in wspace, in a C1 system with highsec static.  I was living there a while, part time.  I found is that C1 space is pretty boring.  You get a few anoms or sigs per week.  Once you do these, and you do your PI, there's nothing to do.   So I was doing exploration in highsec the other half of the time.

I recently I have moved up into higher wspace.  My PI setup remains at the farm, along with the that of my corporation members and several alts.  But I can no longer easily visit to move around planet goo.  Thus, I am thinking about how to get optimize the PI income I can get, subject to the constraint of visiting as little as possible.

Constraints

I have the skill to use five planets.  (I do not feel that spending 20 days to get a level V farming skill is worth it.  My main is less than a year old, and my alts are low skilled.  There are more important uses for my skillpoints.)  I have Command Center Upgrades IV.  So these are the constraints on my PI setups.

Currently, I make P1 goods on all planets.  I make P2 goods on two planets, using the P1s from two others. (The P1 outputs from my fifth planet are handed off to a corp mate to make P2s).  I run extractors for 24 hours and 45 minutes.  Having a schedule of about a day means that I need to reset them every night, which I do most nights (occasionally I forget or am busy).  The 45 extra minutes gives some leeway.  Also, 24h45m is the largest time increment for extraction that I can use before the PI programming uses 30 minute blocks.  I don't want 30 minute blocks because I have to cancel production fairly often to reset.

In terms of my time, it is almost trivial to reset each extractor on any logged in character.  This might take a minute per character (for 5 planets) if I do it fast.  If I linger and move around extractor heads, maybe 5 minutes total.  And there is often slack time playing EVE anyway, for example when travelling or mining, or sucking gas.  It is not trivial to log in PI alts to reset extractors.  Often the main account is busy.  Certainly you can never use slack time to do it.  And in any case a login takes a minute or two.  But still this is a pretty minor amount.

The substantial time taken doing PI is due to two things.  First, if you have to move goods up or down to orbit, you must access the POCO, and that requires being in the system.  Flying to a remote wormhole entrance can be very costly, and even a few jumps adds several minutes to a process which is short enough that the extra minutes are costly.  (Actually moving the goods up or down if you already in the system is almost trivial.)  So, my PI plans require no storage of goods in orbit.  If you are reading this and thinking about setting up a farm where you live, moving goods up/down is easy and this will not constrain you.  So you can use the POCO as additional storage for your PI installation.

The second substantial timesink in PI is unavoidable by everyone: you have to actually fly to the POCO and pick up goods.  (You can drop off goods too in this step.)  Obviously this requires presence in the system.  It is this step that I am seeking to reduce in frequency to a minimum.

Now that my new constraints are clear, we can analyze several designs for extracting PI goods.  Since all PI starts with extraction, let's look at that first.

R0 Extraction Planet

Imagine a planet that is optimized only for the production of R0s.  (R0s are the lowest-level resources, created by extractors.)  With an advanced command center, there is enough power to run the following PI setup:

2 extractors, 9 heads each
2 launchpad

Each extractor outputs directly to a launchpad.  Doing a pickup is easy, just move the R0s into orbit then go there with an industrial capable of holding 20000m^3.

Planets in wspace seem to average about 1m R0s extracted per 24 hours, using 9 extractor heads.  (This is what I see in my farm system.  I expect it is valid across wspace, but don't know.)   So, this setup will create about 2m R0s per day.

R0s are very bulky.  Each one is 0.01m^3; so we see that the production of a single day is 20000m^3.  That fills up your storage.  So, you'd have to tend a planet like this with a trip every single day.  Needless to say, nobody does this.  (Read on.)

Before we go on though, let's figure out how much this production is worth.  The R0 market is thin (exactly because hauling such massive volume to and fro is a loser), but the prices we see range from about 0.75 ISK to about 8, with perhaps 4 being average.  Assuming 4, we can see that our daily production is worth about 80m ISK, or about 2.4 billion per month.  Even going with the worst good (0.75 ISK), we find the value is 450m per month.  These values are much more than one can actually earn doing PI; what they reflect is the difficulty of moving bulky goods to market.  If you really carried 2m of any R0 good to the market per day, you'd crash the market for that good.  But it is interesting to see how the economics play out.  (Just making this computation makes me want to bring a bunch of R0s to market.)

P1 Production

Imagine a planet that is optimized to produce P1 goods.  The planet has 9 installations: extractor (10 heads), storage, 6 BIFs, launchpad.

Each BIF processes 6000 R0s per hour, producing 40 P1s.  Thus, 7 BIFs would be required to process the full output of an wspace extractor.  Generally I use 6, either because that planet has lower concentrations of resources, or I am not running the full 10 heads.  Also, since I plan to build in a storage facility per extractor to buffer, having a bit of extra production will often not be wasted.  In any case, let us assume that each planet is getting 240 P1s per hour.

Each P1 is 0.38m^3.  Thus, a day's production of P1s is 2189m^3.  Thus after four and a half days, a launchpad is filled up with roughly 26000 P1s.  Then I must fly there in a ship that can carry at least 10000m^3, and move them.

I can improve on this by building a second output launchpad.  Route three of the BIFs' outputs to this launchpad, and the other half to the original launchpad.  Then I can go about 9 days between visits.  It requires 20000m^3 to carry off the goods.

If I cannot arrive in a timely manner, I can still run for about a day.  This will fill the R0 storage.

P1s have a wide range of sale prices, from a low of about 100 ISK up to one that sells for 600 ISK.  Several better ones sell for around 400 ISK.  So assuming I produce the more valuable ones, my production on a pure P1 producing planet is around 69m ISK per month.  5 such planets produce 345m ISK -- more than half a PLEX.

P2 Production

Can I improve on the P1 production planet?  Yes.  The P1 production design has a small amount of spare power and a lot of spare CPU.  If I run only 9 input heads, I can add 3 AIFs, and still fit within the power limits of a level four command center.  Hopefully the 9 will still keep my 6 BIFs busy; I am assuming that they will.  And the AIFs will produce P2s.  Call it a P2 production planet.

On each P2 production planet, I bring 10000 P1s each time I visit, and put them down on the launchpad.  The three AIFs are used to manufacture P2s from this input along with the P1 that is being extracted locally.  The P2s produced are put back on the launchpad.  Per hour, each AIF inputs 40 each of both input P1 types, and produces 5 P2s.  5 P2s are smaller than 80 P1s, so they fit on the launchpad.  As time goes on, the volume stored on the launchpad slowly decreases.  Locally extracted P1s are being taken from the launchpad at exactly the rate they are being produced.  So there is neither a P1 buildup or shortage.

How long can a P2 production planet go without being attended?  Well, compared to the P1 production planet, I have not changed the production leading to the P1 launchpad: it has three BIFs feeding it.  So that launchpad will fill in the same 9 days as before.   These locally extracted P1s will be exported normally; they are the input P1s to some other P2 producing planet.

What about the P2 launchpad?  After 9 days, all 10000 of the imported P1s are exhausted. The launchpad has 3240 P2s on it.  These are the net outputs from the P2 production planet.

What happens if I do not remove goods in a timely manner?  I can still run for about 2 days.  This will place about 2000m^3 of P1s on the P2 launchpad.  The P1 launchpad is already full, so the system will back up and fill up the R0 storage.

P2s have a fairly wide range of output values, from a low of 2200 ISK to a high of 12000.  The better ones average about 8000; using this as our value, we compute a production of 86m ISK per planet per month.   For 5 planets, that is 430m ISK/month.

Can I improve on this?  Not without changing what installations I am running.  At least not in money terms -- money is only increased by running more installations. But I could push out the visitation time a bit, by bringing more inputs, and transferring some to the P1 storage, then drawing them from there.  (I leave this as an exercise to the reader.)  Although some gains could be made, I find the process fussy because it requires another expedited transfer, so I am not going to advocate it here.