2014 Goals and Things to Look Forward To

Its that time of year again when we think about what we want to accomplish over the next year. I was reading over my 2013 Goals and thought to myself I just put them together so I would have at least something of a direction to work towards. I not only accomplished all of those things but in short order, something like 4 months. So yeah things I want to try or train in 2014:

Finish training up for level 4 missions in a drone boat.
Train up to fly an Orca.
Train to fly the T2 freighters.
Be able to build T2 freighters.
Maybe set up a cyno alt for using a T2 Freighters out in low sec.
Eventually building capital ships out in low sec, maybe I don't know about this one will see where my attention span leads me and my wallet.
I want to try setting up a POS research farm and building the fuel as well.

We'll see what 2014 holds for Eve and for me and for the blog. Starting up a youtube channel has been in the back of my mind for the last six months too, time permitting of course.

2013 Q4 News and Meta Game effects on In-Game Markets

I was going to include this review of news items in my Q4 market report but there is enough information here that it warranted its own post. The review of some of these out of game happenings is important to the overall market analysis as I am coming to conclude that players actually logged into the game and activity in the game has the greatest effect on the market at large.

Over the past quarter there have been lots of scandals and all around bad press coming from several sources. The first of these is Terms of Service change dropped right at the start of the forth quarter. I don't think it helped that they dropped this right in a slump of what was August and September with their low player numbers. But could they help it? I did a short post about the TOS change and if for nothing else read this entertaining article on the scam that might have brought all these changes about.

After all of that news it couldn't have possibly gotten worse for CCP could it? Yep it did it got a lot worse. The Somer Blink Scorpion incident put another bad taste in everyone's mouth and then the Real Money Trade allegations started bubbling over on to the picture and just made things even worse. Its been said once but I will say it again internet spaceships are serious buizness. Now I can't prove that these news events slowed down the economy in-game but all of these things start to paint a narrative for potential players and old players in the form of potential re-subscribers.

The last bit of bad news for the quarter that has a more real market effect was the Amazon PLEX price mess up. It should be noted that the effects of dumping mass amounts of PLEX on to the market has the effect of curbing a natural supply and demand price increase especially considering this was the month before an expansion was due to drop. See PLEX Intervention.

To round off the Q4 a couple of great things happened. The Rubicon Expansion dropped on Nov. 19 and if there is one thing a trader loves more than anything else it is increased player and market activity with speculation surrounding an expansion.

The last thing to take place during the quarter was the Sister of Eve PLEX for Charity Event. This needs some carefully examination as wealthy players cash out isk for PLEX to donate to the charity this could very well have the same effects as a PLEX Intervention and would also help repair the Amazon PLEX dump that took place two months previous.

No one event during the quarter seems like it would have much effect on in game markets but tied together things begin to paint a picture of player sentiments and directions of large cash injections into and out of the market through PLEX. Or I could just be tin-foil-hatting this all way to far. As a trader keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your news feed because in Eve Online even the meta game can have an effect on your trade volume.

Wow that was way to much meta for the morning see you around.

PLEX For Good charity stream

Watch live video from CCP on www.twitch.tv


Check out the forum post Charity stream schedule and general discussion for the event schedule and other details on how to donate.

Moving Day

I have moved on to greener pastures. I operated in my small home near the Dodixie trade hub going on about a year now. Last week I uprooted everything and started the move. All my useful things are at my new home system. I am situated pretty central  now in comparison to the various trade hubs of Jita 6 jumps out, Amarr 8 jumps out and Dodixie is around 10 jumps out.

I am hoping this will provide me with lower cost supplies from Jita and still give me ready access to the other two trade hub markets which typically offer higher prices for manufactured goods. With the move I am also considering getting a POS set up with a small research farm. Currently I am grinding standings for kicks and grins. I mainly just want to try out the POS system for myself and try a little hands on action as far as those go.

The other thought I have been having is getting into a player corp. I usually don't have a lot of time to play in game so when ever I am on I don't spend to much time looking for people to play with. I am usually out researching my next trade or doing some other random thing that comes up.

As far as my in-game investments go right now I am almost exclusively trading in implants and may start up some production as I get my bearings with my new trade lanes and find stations I want to trade in. Towards the end of the month I hope to have a nice long write up of the Q4 market and other investment jibber jabber.

Eve Apps

iOS: Neocom
I have been using this app for the past several months on my iPad. What a huge resource for any player. With full functioning API it doubles as an evemon on your iPad or iPhone. With quick access to your players skill que, the Eve Central market laid out like the in game market and in-game mail access just to name a few. It is very handy for checking up on your industrial timers without having to boot up your PC. Once more I promise you will waste even more time at working reading Eve News24 and TMC with the quick news fed interface on this  app.

The API function is quick and painless. You connect to the app through your LAN and can easily copy paste in your API using your PC. Now I know CCP would hate this but I find myself as trader and industrial player checking up on my market orders and industrial jobs and not even logging into the game. Check it for yourself it is free at the App Store and does have a small ad bar in the left hand bottom corner. With a donation of 1 dollar you can get the ads removed. Check out their website at www.eveuniverseiphone.com. Wow that sounded more like an ad than a review I guess those marketing classes in college counts for something.

Android: Aura
Also I have to mention the android app Aura. I personally have never used it but it was recently featured in the eve community news that they cover each week head over there and check out their coverage and review if you have an android device I am sure the features are similar.

Building Stargates and New Regions

If you follow the news around Eve or check up on the few sites that cover Eve news this doesn't mean much to you but I wanted to throw it out there for all those that may not have caught it.

If you have been watching the streams and reading about potential expansion features you will find the idea of building stargates is hinted and teased at a lot this past year. It is now all but inevitable that within the next few expansions we will be seeing the construction of the first player owned stargates. Over at Jester Trek, he drops a few hints into the this potential expansion feature of player owned stargates. Over at TMC they ran a news article today about the confirmed release of new regions in future expansions.

Exciting times with the release of the new Rubicon expansion today and already hints of things to come in the over the next year just might prove enough to keep me logging on for a few more months. Which is a good thing. These past couple months have seen lower player numbers and scandals running a muck which has made me think twice about my future in Eve. But at the end of the day I am still having fun flying around New Eden. If they deliver on even half of these new toys I think this is one sand box I am willing to keep building in.

Rubicon Expansion Trailer Delivers

The Rubicon trailer is looking pretty good. After the announcement stream I didn't think Rubicon would be very exciting and while it has been slowly growing on me I will reserve judgement until after the release of the expansion. You can find the eye can below...

What You Do In The Moment

I have been wandering around New Eden trying out some new things. Last week I grabbed my old explorer and flew around trying to find an exploration site to check out. After a dozen or so systems and not finding anything but wormholes I came to the conclusion there was a reason I always trade. Flying around in empty space finding nothing but wormholes, system after system just gets boring after about a hour. Bad luck on my part I guess.

So yesterday I fitted out a procurer and went to try my hand at ice mining. After checking on several ice systems and finding that all the anomalies had been mined out, I docked up my little ice miner. Boredom setting in again I wondered back to my manufacturing goods and did some shipping.

A few hours later I jumped in my mining barge and hit up a few belts. Within five minutes I remembered why I can't stand mining. The slow pace and general lack of things to shoot at drags on and on. I could see jumping into a second account being fun but that just raises more questions as to what my goal for playing the game really is.

I realized having fun in New Eden isn't in finding a specialization so to speak its in the moment. Do whatever you do as long as you enjoy it.

Weighing in on Warp Speed Changes

It seems like a lot of people are overjoyed with the changes to warp speed increase. Its great right? Smaller ships are faster than ever. I was hopping they would at least leave freighters and capitals as bench marks and ships would move faster as they got smaller. Instead cruisers are the bench mark and save for a slight long distance speed increase to freighters(check graph) they have an increased time for warping(on the low end 1 AU to 50 AU). I do quite a bit of flying in my freighter, shipping things around, so what to do about it is the real question?

I think freighter services will go up in price because it is going to take a whole lot more time for these guys to fly around. So between flying even smarter shipping trips and using shipping services until the eventual price increase is the direction I will take to keep my time flying down.

As far as flying smarter your going to want to use all of the new rebalanced indy ships to your advantage now more than ever. It might be a fun experiment to see how much in terms of volume I could haul in comparision to the slower freighter. Even more things to plan and think about if your hauling.

And on the one hand maybe this will stop afk shipping because its going to take hours to fly across space if you afk a freighter.

Graphs:
Warp Speed Times Before The Expansion
Warp Speed Times After the Expansion

Eve Online compared to Star Citizen Video

I stumbled across this video comparing Eve to Star Citizen. It got me thinking. A lot of people are turning heads checking out the potential of what Star Citizen could be. Any Eve player would be dumb not to consider what Star Citizen might mean for Eve. Although that being said anyone who takes a few minutes to read up on Star Citizen will find you don't need to worry about Star Citizen killing Eve. Not even close. The video below gives a few quick comparisons check it out.
 

Two points I want to leave you with,

Star Citizen has a really long way to go still. The game is slated to be released in the first part of 2015. A lot will change about Eve in that time and the shell of what Star Citizen is today will most likely be very different come release day as well.

My second point I thought of was the fact that Eve Valkyrie could very well be a response to Star Citizen I don't know its just a theory.

Ender's Game

If you play Eve or enjoy sci fiction you need to take notice of Ender's Game releasing in theaters this weekend. I reread the book this past summer and the application to Eve is paramount despite the fact that it is just a good entertaining book. While I remain skeptical if the movie will live up to the book I will be in line this weekend to go see this movie.

Some of the interesting themes that apply well to Eve is the idea of zero g combat. Fighting in an environment where you can go up, down, side to side, and forward or backwards, will ring true to any Eve Online player.

Check out the trailer below.

Amazon's PLEX Dump

I have been reading about amazons little PLEX mishap they had. According to CCP only a thousand or so PLEXs were sold during the deal. The article on TMC says the market price did drop 10 to 20 million but has since leveled.

I would like to look at two things considering PLEX prices. First, I suspect this injection of PLEXs on the market will have similar affects as the CCP PLEX Intervention that happened last year. In that it will cause PLEX prices to level off in the short term. Now I wouldn't consider it out of the question for CCP to start buying up small quantities of PLEX or to with hold any future buy back interventions they could have been planning. Just remember PLEX is a moderated item and CCP can and will intervene.

The second thing is to watch the affect this will have on PLEX prices on the eve of the Rubicon expansion. Did you see what I did there? Anyway break it down to simple supply and demand. This episode, incident whatever you want to call it, will it curb the potential price peak of PLEX for this expansion?

Time will tell.

Beginner's Guide

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Eve Online is a space based sandbox style MMO produced by CCP. Before you blast off to the stars you need to understand a couple of things. Playing Eve at first can be hard and is unlike any MMO you have played before. You play as an immortal space pilot who flies massive spaceships through the cold darkness of space. You train skills in real time and interact in a space scape that is controlled by other players. From the ships you buy to the space stations you live on someone has built them, shipped them, and manages them.

You need to first decide what race you will play as. The good news here is your decision will not impact your choice of ships later on (Note: Free to Play Alpha clones are only able to fly ships of their race. If you subscribe you can play any ship). You can train later on to fly any races ships regardless of your starting race. If your not already in game check out this quick walk through of the character creation process.

Once in game get comfortable navigating the interface. Your first thing you want to do is get your character training up skills. As mentioned previous skills train in real time and you need to keep skills queued up. They will continue to train even when you aren't logged in.  Later on in the game you will be training skills that take days or even weeks to train. Click on your character portrait on your neocom bar. Then click on skills and get to the skill que window. You start out with only a few skills you can train. You can buy more from the market where npc sellers will provide them at a constant price in various station locations around the game.

With your character window still open lets check out your characters attributes. These attributes could better be referred to as skill attributes as they affect how fast your skills train. Each skill has two attributes that affect its training time. The more points in an attribute the faster a skill will train.
Each attribute has an unchangeable base value of 17. When you first start you can remap or move the points around twice after that you can only change them once a year because of this it is strongly cautioned that you wait to remap until you have a good grasp of the game and what skills you want to train towards. You have 14 re-mappable points. You can only add up to 10 additional points to any one attribute.

The best way to map out your skill training and best possible attribute configuration is to use the program EveMon. EveMon is a free third party program that uses a API key from Eve that you can use to plan your skills out and attributes. Some corporations even use this program to verify what and how many skills you have trained.

Now lets check out another feature that will affect your characters attributes called implants. Implants are items that can be bought on the market and increase your attributes. Attribute Implants range from plus 1 to plus 7 attribute points. They require the skill cybernetics to use and cannot be used again or resold after being plugged in. As a new player it shouldn't be to hard for you to get your hands on some plus 2 implants for each attribute.

What is a clone? A clone is you. All your skill training is kept in your clone. You need to upgrade your clone level as you gain skill points. Because if you are killed meaning your pod is destroyed without an upgraded clone you lose those trained skills. The space station your clone is saved at is where your going to start if your pod is destroyed. Keep that in mind when venturing far off into space. Your clone also has all of your implants in it. So if your pod is destroyed  whatever implants you had plunged in are destroyed as well. You update and save your clone at the medical bay in the station menu. Note some stations don't have medical facilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Also Check out Eve Online's Official FAQ

What is Eve Online?
Eve Online is a Sci-fi spaced based MMO. Based on one continuous server, everyone plays in the same game server. The game is a sandbox style, you can do what you want. Check out the Eve Online Wikipedia article or the official Eve Wiki About Eve Online article for more information.

When did Eve Online come out?
Eve Online launched in 2003. The game has changed a lot through its many expansions.

How are the graphics? Have they been updated?
Yes, the graphics have been updated several times over the years and still look sweet. Ship models are constantly being updated. Here is a link to the latest System Requirements.

Is Eve Online Fun?
The game is incredibly fun noting that I am biased. Maybe fun isn't the right word more like addicting.

Is Eve Online Hard?
The game mechanics can be complicated. It is hard to just jump in but like all games the only way to learn is to just jump in and play.

How much does the game cost?
Eve Online costs $19.95 that lets you buy the game and gives you your first month of time to play. Sometimes you can get the game through steam for as little as $5 dollars during one of their weekend deals. Also if you have an old account they sometimes have special offers for resubscribing.

What is the monthly subscription fee?
The monthly subscription fee is $14.95 dollars a month.

Are the expansions free?
Yes, to date all the expansions have been free.

Is it worth the subscription fee to play?
For me I started playing the 14 day trial and loved it. I wasn't doing anything exciting or fancy I was just playing with simple ships and mining asteroids I subscribed after a week of playing.

What is a PLEX?
Pilot Licenses Extensions or PLEX is an actual in game item you can redeem for 1 month of Eve Online game time or trade on the in-game market.
 
Can you buy in-game money with real money?
In a way you can buy whats called a PLEX through your account management for 19.95 for 1. A PLEX is an actual in game item. You can a) redeem this item for 1 month of game time or b) trade it in-game for in-game money(ISK). Current In-game PLEX prices can be found at Eve Central.

Can you make enough in-game money in your first month to buy a PLEX?
With no help, no in-game friends, no corporations, I tried mining I played about an hour a day average. All I did was mine and trade some. I made 240 million ISK. A PLEX at the time(July 2012) ran about 500 million ISK. You will have loads more fun in game if you don't worry about the money and just pay for the subscription but everyone has to learn for themselves. If you work hard after 3 to 6 months in, you could be paying for your game with PLEX.

How many characters can you have on an account?
You can create up to three characters on a single account, only one character at a time can train skills though.

Can you have more than one account?
You can have more than one account. Lots of players use more than one account and I have heard of some big corporate hot shots having as many as 22 accounts. 
 
What is Dust 514?
Eve: Dust 514 is a free to play FPSMMO for Sony's PS3. The game is played out on planets within the Eve Online Universe. Check out the Dust 514 Wikipedia article for more information.

Is Dust 514 free to play?
Yes.

What is Eve: Valkyrie?
Eve: Valkyrie is a quick action fighter plane type shooter themed after the Eve Online Universe. Most notably it will launch using the Oculus Rift.

Getting In Game

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Take a quick look at the Eve Simplified:Character Creation Walk-Through if you want to get an idea of some of the choices you will need to make as soon as you create a new character.

If your already in-game or would like to take look at the starting tutorial you can find a quick walk-through here of the first couple tutorial missions. Also you can find lots of screen shots of what the game acutally looks like in this walk through guide.

If your just dying to get started you can get a free 14 day trial here, or you can support Eve Simplified by signing on with the 21 day extended trial. Also a list of subscriptions costs and other whys you can buy the game are listed in the Subscriptions and Specials Post.

Other Helpful Links
Eve Online New Player Video Guide
Eve Online New Pilot FAQ  - A great 38 page pdf introduction into the game.
Eve University: Uni Wiki
Official Wiki: Evelopida Beginners Guide
Eve Simplified Guides

Eve Rubicon: Investing and Speculating

Let's check out what interesting investments opportunities can be made for Eve Rubicon (Yes all I can think of is that darn Jeep model)

POCOs
POCO changes are going to be a big drive for conflict and will make pi production costs possibly shift down, I think as people shop for better tax rated POCOs, corps that raise their taxes will soon find their planets empty there is just to many choices. They will be hard to defend large amounts of planets expect smaller alliances to dominate pockets of regions. A smaller type of sov warfare for high sec and a way to generate some income a great change to the game. Expect fluctuations in PI products to level out several months after release.

A quick side note. Everyone is bemoaning the fact that the goons are just going to ROFL stomp all of the high sec POCOs and own all of them. My question to you is why would they want to?  Goons are a large null sec alliance they will be busy protecting their moon shiz out in null. If POCOs were the end all take all they would own all the low sec ones which they don't. Now will there be PI Interdictions you bet, probable be an annual event, but I doubt a full 2000 system POCO Goon Empire will emerge from this.

Now as far as investing in the Customs Office Gantry and building them, besides a slight up tick in prices at release I think they will stay stable. Remember in low and zero you can already blow these things up but no large market really exists for CO.
DevBlog: EVE Rubicon: Player Owned Customs Offices in Hi-Sec Make sure and read the fine print they are shifting PI tax rates and changing all sorts of stuff here.

Personal Deployable Structure
PDSs not a lot of information exists to give us a clear direction. Expect this to be a great build and a way to make lots of isk if you have the means to invest in such a large project. I am definitely going to keep my eye on it but I am into building stuff. Expect to need a freighter to move any large amount of these around. Effects on the market: moon prices will vary slightly around the fact that now pirates will be dumping plunder on to the market if the mechanic works right for the siphon unit.

Warp Speed
Hopefully with the work around the mechanic pushes freighters to be a little bit faster for those of us that do our own hauling. Exciting news and an all around great fix.

New SOE Ships
New ships are always nice though they will no doubt be bought using lp. Meaning mass production is out of the question. If you have a few billion isk this might be a fun place for speculating once patch goes live. It will probable be worth it for a couple months until the ships are common place.

Other Ship Changes
As far as investments goes interceptors were sold out within minutes of the announcement so unless you where on top of this one you could catch the tail end of the speculation here.

UI Changes
Other changes deal more with  UI aspects nothing here to really invest in. Although some of the skills are getting switched around a bit if you deal in the skill book market.
DevBlog: License to kill: Certificates Overhaul

My Investments
As for my own investments I think I am going to stick with what I have been doing. Working the implant market and building industrial ships. The Expansion really only means one thing increased player activity and that is all I want/need to move my market orders. Glad for the early release date Nov. 19, 2013.

Links and Updates in no particular order:

How to: A Trade Guide

I have gone through, step by step, my thinking process for trading products on the market in Eve Online. This is the basic break down of what goes through my mind when I trade or manufacturer something in Eve Online.

1. Research Phase
1. First I pick a product, Choose a buy station/(mauf. cost) and choose a sell station.
2. Go to the market window and check:
Buy station's product's:

• Cost overtime - Does the product general stay cheap to buy or make?
• Current orders -  Is there enough supply for you to buy from at that low cost?
• Volume overtime -  Are people resupplying?

Sell station's product

• Cost overtime -  Is it stable at a high price?
• Current orders - Is there low supply?
• Volume overtime - Does it sell?

3. Scrap it/ Watch it/ Go for it.

• Scrap it - If your asking yourself these questions and every time you say no just remove the item from your watch list.
• Watch it - Indicators aren't great but margins have been good in the past? Keep it on your watch list and wait for another day.
• Go for it - All indicators good overtime, it is time for a test phase.

2. Test Phase One - Low volume one week test phase.
1. Buy product/mauf. at supply station. I usually start my first order at one to five units worth of stock.
2. Set up test order with 5 units.
3. One week later check speed it sold. Quick sells are good, constant high 30% - 50% margins with no competition are best. Usually though you will see sold returns at about 10% margins. Time to move to the next test phase.

3. Test Phase Two - Higher volume one week test phase.
1. Buy product in larger amounts, 10 to 20 units as capital allows.
2. Set up test order with 20 units.
3. Check day to day over a week.

• Do you get undercut a lot? Yes or No
• Does it sell quickly(Relatively small amount of time between sells)? Yes or No

4. If indicators are still looking good and you want to move the item into your portfolio its time to go all out.

4. Portfolio Phase
Start buying and setting up your orders now, you should have run the numbers and should be good to go all out. As time goes on you will get an even better idea of how much competition there is for an product, how much volume you can push, and how much isk your really making.

• Run the numbers check for the margins and the expected monthly totals. You want to get a general idea of what your going to make on the item this will help you later on as your portfolio expands to compare good trades to better trades.
• Don't forget to keep an eye on other regional markets through Eve Central, contracts and general chatter.
• Use tools like EveMon and EveMentat also Eve Neocom App for mobile devices to check: Product Orders is your volume low do you need to restock? You can tell when you have been undercut or its a low player day when order volume isn't dropping.

Optional Expansions
Regional Expansion: Run test phase at other locations in region. Then see how much of a regions volume you can capture.

Hostile Take Over: Identify constant undercut persons or stations. Bring in goods at lower price to remove them. Careful not to drop price to much.  Be creative here remove their supply, drop the price, hire some hit men.

Portfolio Review: After you have a long list of trade items, review your monthly numbers. Replace poor performers with test products or take strong performers into new regional markets.

Overnight/Weekend Investments: Keep a list of expensive low margin items for days when you need your money moving but are on vacation or have a busy weekend.

Operation: Cynosural Field Generator I

It was March. I had about 75 million to my name. When I happened upon Cynosural Field Generator I in the market window. The price at the time was around 2.7 to 2.5 million. I quickly did the calculations and at the time my build price was around 1.8 million. Adding it up in my head I was going to make millions. Now for a player that only had about 100 mil to his name the prospect of making 500k margins was insane. I bought a blueprint and got right into production. After my first weeks worth of units rolled off the line I took my profits and bought a second blueprint. They cost about 30 million a piece, a pretty hefty investment when my total net worth came to about 100 mil. I kept running the calculations I was going to be rich. I would be making millions a month and soon be on top of the world.

Several weeks later the price dropped as the market caught up and the margins came down to about 100 to 200k a unit. Not bad but nothing like I was expecting long term. It taught me that the markets shift constantly if something is a good build or trade today it soon won’t be so you have to act fast and stay on top of the changes and when you get really good you will start to predict these changes. The other thing it taught me was diversifying. If I had bought several different blueprints I could have spread out my small investment and kept my margins higher.

After another month I bought several more cyno blueprints and started researching them and used the money I had made to buy still other blueprints and invest in a wide range of manufacturing goodness. Even though today I run a wide assortment of manufacturing I still attribute all the money I have made back to that first start up with the Cynosural Field Generator I.

The TOS Storm Rumbles On

We have all been hearing about the change to the Terms of Service agreement. I didn't really care that much until I read this story over at TMC about this huge scam and the claim that this was the reason the TOS was changed.

The short version some people got scammed pretty good I might add, to the sum of 400 billion isk. Someone got banned and this party is claiming the reason the TOS was changed was in due part to this scam. (The article is well worth the read and a brilliant scam the methods only slightly shader than the average scammer.)

The GM team who under a lot of fire posted this clarification the day after the news was posted about the TOS change. The short version here is that basically you can still scam and all this was always in our EULA now it is just more visible.

The article about the scam in question pretty much stated the same thing as the clarification post by the GMs. Concluding that GM's can give judgement on a case by case basis. They can decide how to handle a situation. Now up until this point I haven't heard of a really good reason for the TOS change.  Now whether or not this scam has anything to do with the change still remains in question. But until we hear an official word on things I think peoples questions are going to keep piling up and answers will be in short supply.

CCP is taking discussion on the topic in the forums here.

Guns, Germs, and ISK

Your just starting out you have in mind that your goal in Eve is to gain vast amounts of isk. How do you beat the odds when they seem so stacked against you, in that other players have better skills, more isk and play longer than you?  The first fact you need to understand is someone else is always going to have better skills, more isk and play more than you. Work with what you got not with what you want.

Skills
No matter how long you have been playing someone else is going to have higher skills point totals than you. This doesn't mean they are better it just means there are some activities or ships that they can experience that you can't. So get out there fly with what you got. You have to fly smarter because your cargo ship can't carry as much. You have to plan better, waiting to shoot through a pack of npcs rather than just attack the whole mission room at once. And one reason there will always be very high skilled character is because you can actually trade characters for in-game money.

Time
No matter how much you play, no matter how much you multi box, or run multiple accounts someone else is always going to have more time to play than you. So right about now I might tell you some of my sentiments for playing the game in the first place; like not making it a job that's your call not mine but do try and have a little fun after all it is just a game.

Isk
There are a lot of rich players out there. What you need to understand is there are even more powerful groups of players out there with vast amounts of resources. So what can you do alone to try and find a piece of the pie? Aside from a few get rich quick schemes getting rich in Eve is similar to the real world it takes a lot of hard work and being quick on your feet. There is no easy mode to getting rich quick. You just keep at it, and true it goes a little faster in Eve Online in terms of real time but it will happen. Now that is if your just working alone, if you work together with others you will find there is still plenty of pie to go around.

How to: A PI Guide

Before we start make sure you have the necessary skills to get started with Planetary Interaction.

1. Decide on what you want to make
Before I go any further I take a look at this handy PI commodities chart. I pick a few potential items and then cross check the market in game or over at Eve Central.

2.  Plan the Production
Understand what other commodities you need to buy or build planet side and what raw resources you will need to produce the PI commodity you choose.

Map feature showing my ability to remotely scan planets from a distance.

3. Picking Planets and Scanning for Resources

• Needs to have the raw resources required for the product you want to produce.
• Close to your area of operation or your home system.
• Have a low radius. Lower radius planets use less CPU to connect structures meaning more extractors.
• Have similar planets close by in system or one jump out so all your PI operations are close for ease of up keep.

Eveeye.com has an excellent database of system's planets and there sizes(radius).

4. Scan to find a spot for your Command Center
Find and choose a good location for your command center. If your extracting more than one resource try and place your command center between the two.

5. Get your equipment planet side
Time to get into space. Get your indy hauler out and buy the specific command center for the planet you want to colonize. If you have already chosen a location on the planet all you need to do is be in system with your hauler with the command center in the cargo hold. In planet mode, place the command center on the surface and hit submit.

6. Build your factories/route your products

 
7. Start your extractors(or drop off resources for a larger operations)
I run a 3 day cycle for my specific operations and using Google Calendar to keep track of when the cycle needs to be reset. I also have google calendar send me a reminder email.

8. Once a week pick up/ship to market
I pick one day out of the week for pick up and shipping.

Don't be afraid to dump a planet if the production just isn't there. Resources can change over time or maybe your skills just weren't that great when you first scanned down the planet. Also don't be afraid to retool to a different product if its going for higher on the market. Unless you have some sort of emotional attachment to what your building its ok to build something else for more isk.

PI Investment Guides:

Basic Planetary Interaction: covers the basic skills, ships and material costs for a simple 3 planet PI production. Total Investment Cost: 5,631,000 isk.

Intermediate Planetary Interaction: a more advanced version of the basic guide, this will show you what you need to maximize your PI production. Total Investment Cost: 6,431,000 isk. 

Reaction to Odyssey 1.1 Changes

Industrial Ship Changes - They have put the fun into a 14 day old pilots hands. Given you can't fly industrials during a trial account. I was an industrial player from the get go. I would make trip after trip hauling ore this way and that for a little profit.
These new specilized bays give power to new players and utility to old ones. You now have more options and more choices. Lets take a look at these ships and what they mean for you in terms of real utility.

Miasmos - Ore, Ice and Gas bay allows younger players and miners to get ore back to market hubs or refineries easier expect a lot more ore in trade hubs.

Epithal - PI bay the ship I am looking forward to the most. If you even run a causal amount of PI without deep skills into an industrial ship you know how frustrating it can be to move commodities back and forth when your managing 5 or 10 different planets across several characters.

Kyros- Mineral Bay same as ore bay increase movement in minerals around New Eden escpessialy for younger players.

Hoarder - Ammo Bay aside from the PI bay I think this has limited uses, its one more option and we have established choice is a good thing.

Iteron, Wreathe, Badger, Sigil - Faster AU ships I do a lot of my own hauling I except these to replace my Iteron V for quick trips here and there. I just don't have that much time to fly around space. The only thing better than having more options is saving time in game and these ships are a win win.

In other areas renaming and consolidating the layout of skills is a natural simplification that of course the blog Eve Simplified loves.

Lowering the timer for jump clones - Again a great option that makes an already powerful feature in the game even more powerful. Along with the option to create even more jump clones.

A great set of new features to what might seem like a simple patch. These are all the changes that caught my eye. Check out all the changes at the Features and Ideas Discussion Thread on the forums. Patch notes can be found here.

Eve Online Market Watch: 2013 Quarter 3 Report

Talk about summer doldrums. I took most of the summer off but lets take a quick look at a couple of things that are going on.

In other areas, PLEX prices standing at or around 540 million isk a unit. If you take a quick look down at volume you will notice a drop. Is this duel training consumption or just people not playing as much? The last time volume slowed we got the PLEX Intervention.

My Quarter 3 Investment Report:
When Odyssey was released I was just getting Operation: Iteron V under way. It held for the month of June and as markets adjusted and things slowed down from the expansion, I decided to take a break for the summer. I have just recently started getting my manufacturing operations back online. Things just seem slow online right now. Not a lot of pilots logging in and markets seem sluggish at best. Keep in mind I tend to shy away from large market hubs, trading in lower traffic areas.

Hopefully things pick back up here as school starts again and fall hits. Odyssey 1.1 should be interesting and I will have a few quick write ups about the patch in the coming weeks.

Operation: Iteron V

I didn't have trillions of dollars to invest in R64s. I didn't have billions to invest in ice. I did have a few million to invest in some of the Odyssey ships changes though. Namely the Iteron Mark V back in February when the ship skill changes were released I took notice of the changes in Industrial ship skill change requiring only level one not the hilarious level five required before. I bought a Iteron Mark V BPO put it in the ME research que and forgot about it.

Fast Forward three months, I have been busy investing and saving up isk. I built a freighter to haul those massive Iteron V. It was time to cash in. Not only did I make almost 1 million in profit per ship the first week of trading saw these things flying off the shelves literally. I could barely keep stock piles of sell orders on the market before they were gone. I was happy with the invested time glad to see I could make a little money in retrospect of the bigger markets out there.

Total Ships produced in June: 467 Iteron Mark V

The dust has settled for now and markets are slowly adjusting back to normal levels. Can't wait for the next expansion to make a little money.

Weekend Interest Rates

A bit of real world investment advice applied to the game world. A large company operates with a certain amount of cash on hand each day. The funds are used for daily operations at the company. When everyone goes home at 5 suddenly you have a large sum of money that is just sitting in the bank. What financial people will do is take those funds and transfer them, for a low interest rate, to another company on the other side of the world that is just starting its operations for the day. The next morning the funds are shifted back to the first company to begin its days operations. In short a sort of micro loan that last 12 hours. It doesn't sound like much but count it up times 365 and you might have a positive number on your hands.

How can I use this system and apply it to Eve. This is what I came up with. My quick turn over investment for the weekend. I usually don't have much time to play over the weekend so I don't really need any isk in my wallet during that time(Note I don't have any active buy orders). Lots of players are playing during the weekend so plenty of money to be made. The only requirement is that I want my isk liquid and back in the bank come Tuesday or whenever I am going to be back online. So I pick out a few items, they are typically more expensive items but offer a decent return if you want to sit on them for a couple of days. I buy a very small amount and place several of them in stations a little off the beaten path but still have decent traffic. If I push one or two of them over the weekend I have been keeping my money working for me all weekend.

The second option is to find an item that moves very fast buy just enough to cover a weekends worth of sells. Place it in a station where you won't have to babysit the sell order but know it has a solid population or traffic. Come Monday morning you find your sell order is almost sold out and you have a few more iskies in your pocket.

30 Day Trial Account Offer (Limited Time Only)

(Update: Aug. 26 2013) This offer is no longer available.
(Update: Aug. 6 2013)Special Alliance Tournament 11 Offer 30 Day Trial: Free
Game Time: 30 Days, subscription and game purchase required afterwards. This offer is going on during the recent Alliance Tournament 11. I don't know how long this will be going on I expect about a month. This is quite a good offer it covers 30 days of free game time that is equal to 15 dollars or a PLEX which costs 19.95. Check out more subscription offers at Eve Online Subscriptions and Specials.

This is a really cool offer and one you should take advantage of if your thinking about getting in game this is a great opportunity to try it out. Again wow one whole month of game time this is almost makes me want to start an alt account.

Again here is the link https://secure.eveonline.com/ATXITrial/.

Saw the link up on the video below an ad for Alliance Tournament 11.

6VDT, Battle Report Links. You heard about Eve from who, the news?

Good Morning, good morning people settle down. Alright first ups quick links below about the battle what happened, who was there, why it happened. Videos below that and if your a new bro your probably looking for this Eve Online Subscriptions and Specials.

Eveonline.com - Battle for 6VDT-H - Summary and Numbers
EveNews24 - 6VDT-H – The Biggest Battle in EVE History Ends the War in Fountain
Mittani.com - 6VDT: The CFC Battle Report

Video Links: First video is the best, the others are pretty much raw footage.

EVE Online - Largest battle ever in 6VDT - 4000+ players

6VDT-H Titan kill

Deployment Successful Day 011: 6VDT-H HELL CAMP; RAW and LIVE RECORDED FOOTAGE SHORTER | Eve Online

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer vacations. I know I am. I will probably be back in a couple weeks I have been working with video capture software and hope to get a youtube channel rolling here before to long. Anyway stay out of trouble and fly safe out there.

Investment Guide: Basic Manufacturing

Update June 2015: You can find an updated Tech 1 Manufacturing Guide here. Parts of this guide have become outdated and my not reflect actual gameplay.

The Goal:
As a new player you only have one available manufacturing slot. This guide much like the Planetary Interaction Guide will give you a strategy for beginning production in a modest manufacturing career.

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The Skills:
Industry 3 (Speeds up your manufacturing.)
Production Efficiency 3 (Lowers your needed minerals by a total of 15%)
Mass Production I (Adds one additional manufacturing slot.)

Total time: 18 hours, 3 minutes, 20 seconds
Cost: 420,000 isk

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The Equipment:
Industrial ship to haul your minerals or goods.
Blueprint of the Item you want to build.
Minerals (See cost layout below to find out how much you need.)
Station with open manufacturing slots. Note: Even if slots aren't open you may choose to "Get in Line" if for some reason you can't move your minerals to a new station.

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The Cost:
I use my own spreadsheet to calculate the costs but you can find a lot of online calculators I will post  a short list below.

I use simple excel functions to create these spread sheets. After I enter in the mineral amount from the BP in cell B4 for Isogen, I type =(B4*D1) in D4 cell. This function allows me to change my batch number and buy exact amounts of minerals. You can use =sum() to add up the amounts to get a quick grasp of how much things are going to cost. Like I mentioned before you can use some of the various online tools. When I started out I wanted a little bit more control than some of these web applications give you.
www.fuzzwork.co.uk/blueprints/
eve-platoon.de/index.php/me?filter_string=&search=Search

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Time Required:
Five minutes to buy the materials five minutes to ship the minerals to your station. 10 seconds to start the manufacturing and five minutes to finish and haul back to market. So in total 15 minutes every time your manufacturing job finishes. Again watch the videos below to better understand how to really invest in manufacturing.

Note: As you build more items per batch you will have to wait for those items to manufacturer. For example I currently run 10 slots, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I renew my BPO cycles one day a week and I am building enough units per batch for a 7 day cycle time. This practice is similar to Planetary Interaction cycle times.

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Other Resources:
Eve Online Market & Industry Tutorial - Part 1/5 - $$, Minerals, What to Make?, Skills

Eve Online Industry Tutorial - What is Profitable to Make (starting out)?

10 Things I wish I had known when I started playing Eve Online

In no particular order,

1. Watch out for scams in local chat or any chat for that matter. If it seems to good to be true it is. Seriously though every single contract or trade in local chat is a scam either by design or by a stupid person not knowing what they are doing.

2. Never underestimate the value of reading and researching. You can save yourself hours of round abouts and headaches if you take a few minutes to read up on something your trying to do.

3. Think long term, What will you be doing in a week, what will you be flying in a month? What is your goals for the next three months, six months or a year?

4. There is no endgame, you play how you want to play when you want to play, you are in control. No one is going to hold your hand and walk you through to some starting point. After the tutorials you can do whatever you want.

5. Don't wait until you have the perfect ship fit to try something out. Just get out there get your hands dirty its a sandbox getting dirty is required to build something great.

6. Don't give up if you don't like something or if its hard. You might need to try one of the tips above read more about it or rethink your plans.

7. PLEXing your account is not a goal its a wish. Lots of people wish they could PLEX their account. If your PLEXing your account you are the entertainment that everyone else is paying for.

8. Find people that like doing the same thing as you and go have fun with them.

9. Skills take REAL time to train your not going to be able to do everything you want right out of the gate its just plain fact.

10. Have fun, the minute it feels like a job you need to stop playing and rethink why your playing this game.

Quick Start

Starting out for the first time Eve Online is overwhelming. This guide gives you a heads up on character creation consequences, character attributes, implants, skill training and clones. What are you waiting for lets get a quick start. First lets watch a quick video it gives a brief overview of what you will be doing in game.

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Character Creation

What are the consequences of Character Creation?
Race affects...
Your starting area in-game. The general region in space you start at, for example, if you choose Amarr You will start in Amarr space etc. Two token skills, racial frigates, and a small weapon skill. You can train to fly any ship in the game of any race regardless of starting race. Each race has one of three ethnic bloodlines you may choose from.

Bloodline affects...
What you generally look like before you start editing your physical character.

Ancestry affects...
What your little bio says in-game.

Education affects...
What starting system you will be directed towards in the in-game tutorial. You can do the tutorial at any starting system of any race in the game or not at all if you choose. Below is a list of starting areas for each of the four races. (Note: You are only asked to report to these training tutorials you don't have to. Although I highly advise you should go through them all.)

Amarr Empire

• Conoban System - Hedion University
• Deepari System - Imperial Academy
• Pasha Sytem - Royal Amarr Institute

Caldari State

•  Akiainavas System - School of Applied Knowledge
• Jouvulen System - Science and Trade Institute
• Uitra System - State War Academy

Gallente Federation

• Clellinon System - Center For Advanced Studies
• Couster System - Federal navy Academy
• Trossere System - University of Caille

Minmatar Republic

• Embod System - Pator Tech School
• Hadaugago System - Republic Military School
• Malukker System - Republic University

Pick a good name that you want to be known by.

(Note: After completing the character creation process you can only change the appearance of your hair, scars and tattoos. You can change the character profile picture at any station for no cost.)

(Note: You can train to fly any ship in the game of any race regardless of starting race. Also Race doesn't affect Character Attributes which are explained below.)

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Character Attributes
Character Attributes are actually Skill Attributes. They don't directly affect how your ship flies. These attributes affect the time it takes to train your skills. How attributes affect skill training? Each skill has two attributes that affect its skill training time. For example Mining's two attributes are Primary: Intelligence and Secondary: Memory by having a character with more points allocated to theses two attributes the Mining skill will train faster.


Attribute names are:

• Intelligence
•  Perception
• Charisma
• Willpower
• Memory.

Each attribute has a base number of 17. When you first start you can remap them twice after that you can only change them once a year. You have 14 re-mappable points. You can only add up to 10 additional points to any one attribute.

The best way to map out your training and best possible attribute configuration is to use the program EveMon. EveMon is a free API that you can use to plan your skills out and attributes. Some corporations even use it to verify how many skills you have trained.

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Implants
Implants can be used to increase your attributes even further thus increasing your effect skill training time.

Implants come in +1 to +7 per attribute. As a new player it shouldn't be hard to get your hands on some +2s. You will need Cybernetics skill trained before you can implant them.

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Skill Training(These will affect how your ship flies)
Skills train 24 hours a day in real world time. Starting out your going to want to specialize in certain skills. Download EveMon, as I mentioned above, it will help you plan out your skills and the best attribute combinations to train them. Also it will tell you what skills you need to use various items and ships.

To get more skills you buy the skill books, which are NPC seeded at the starting stations. Some skills cost a lot more than a week old pilot can afford. With time you can buy what you want and need.

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Clones

What is a clone? A clone is you. All your skill training is kept in your clone. You need to upgrade your clone level as you gain skill points. Because if your pod is destroyed without an upgraded clone you lose those trained skills. The space station your clone is saved at is where your going to start if your pod is destroyed. Keep that in mind when venturing far off into space. Your clone also has all of your implants in it. So if your pod is destroyed  whatever implants you had plunged into it are destroyed as well.

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Jump Clones
What is a Jump Clone?  It is a copy of your characters clone. Jump Clones give you the ability to both have multiple sets of implants and also a way to jump to a new location of a saved jump clone. They can only be used once every 24 hours. You have to have at least an 8.0 standing with the station owning corporation in order to instal a jump clone. You also need Infomorph Psychology skill to use. (Note: It will take several months before your playing around with these bad boys but don't worry once your standings are high enough you will be in good shape to use jump clones.)

These are very watered down definitions but should give you a clearer understanding of some of the most important aspects of the game. You have a lot of studying to do beyond this so get out there keep flying and keep reading.

Next Guide Character Creation Walk-through>>>

Already in Game? Starting Tutorial Missions Guide>>>

Other Guides can be found here.

Eve Online Market Watch: 2013 Q2 Report

A quick look at key indicators shows general market sentiments over the past three months during quarter 2. First and most notable PLEX markets continue there up and down trends. While falling for most of the first half of the quarter due to CCP's original PLEX Intervention back at the end of 2012 as the Odyssey patch neared PLEX prices began to rise. Nearly one month after the expansion PLEX prices have begun to level off and are trending towards the 500 million mark. Several factors that should be taken into consideration on the PLEX market at current is the change to allow duel character training on one account using PLEX and also the fact that the PLEX market is in fact regulated by CCP.

Mineral prices have continued to drop despit the recent patch. I don't know if everyone was busy buying up ice or not but mineral prices across the board have seen a downward trend. Any indicators of ISK inflation seem contary to the lower prices of minerals. In my opinion, watching some ship prices stay the same or even rise as the mineral costs lower shows that traders and manufacturers are the ones profiting while buyers are complaining that their isk is under valued and supposedly inflated.

The economy is shifting rapidly currently and I feel this is a good change. Moon changes are having huge economical and manufacturing impacts. With less Ice mining to be had the general stentment on the forums seems to be more players mining asteroids. Which may account for the current drop in mineral prices.

I have also noticed a subtle drop in manufacturing or at least trade in the markets I actively trade in, namely T1 ships, T1 modules and implants. Are people busy building and trading other things? Out exploring with the new changes in Odyssey? My thought was a lot of trade and manufacturing alts have gone silent as players are busy fighting the conflict in Fountain.

My Quarter 2 Investment Report:
On to my own investments, at the start of the quarter I shifted all my assets out of manufacturing and into implants. I kept them there for about a month earning around a 10% return on investment. At the start of May I had reached my goal of 2 billion isk and began Operation: Obelisk. With nearly all my assets going toward the project my play time slowed down and not much happened in the way of trade. Things picked up again as I finished my Obelisk right as the Odyssey patch was released. In anticipation of having a dedicated hauler I had been researching and preparing BPOs for the past four months mostly in T1 ships. With my production lines all coming up to full out put and having my own freighter to move the minerals and finished goods I have been able to make almost 60% return on investment for several ship lines and 20% on all others.

I started out about five months ago looking for a way to start building ships. I spent hours running numbers and I just couldn't figure out how people were building ships and making any profit. Well after some careful planning, including months of skill training, over 10 billion in items traded. and very selective ship choices I can say I am building T1 ships and taking home a profit.

In other investments, I have built up a pretty strong PI production system. I have 10 planets on two characters running twenty four seven. With my initial set up using my same intermediate PI guide as a template. I have been making around 30 to 40 million a planet per month. I am in the initial testing stages of setting up a new PI system that will double the isk output from the old one. Using the same skills and with a bit more initial investment required hopefully I will have a full write up of that when I am done.

While I am planning to take a break over July from Eve, I am planning on taking profits from my manufacturing lines to invest in both new BPO research for bigger projects in the coming months and then also invest in the implant market which sees continued strong trading.

<< Read 2013 Q1 Report

6 Months of Eve Simplified

I am really excited as I have been posting here at Eve Simplified for over six months now. I started out this blog with the hope of organizing my own Eve Online play time. To find a way to research and play with in-game ideas and then post them here for everyone else to read. I hope that some of you may have benefited from the guides and other posts I have put together.

I am planning on keeping up Eve Simplified well into the future. I have slowed down with the posting in the past several months but I am currently aiming for one post a week and going from there. Below is a list of some of the ideas I would like write and post about sometime in the near future.

Dropbox Links
I have been gathering a large amount of spreadsheets and creating a few of my own. I should be able to start hosting those to you through Dropbox Links.

More New Player Guides
The Starting Tutorial Mission Guide was just a beta run on what I hope to put together with all the career agent tutorial missions. Along with other explanations on the different UI and Menu systems in Eve that can be quite hard to navigate if your unfamiliar with them.

Continued Market and Manufacturing Updates
In-game I have a manufacturing and trading character. So continued market and manufacturing updates with Eve as whole and with projects and jobs that I am working on.

Losses

My second ship down. I have been subscribed in game for about 8 months now. I lost my second ship yesterday. I was out making my rounds picking up my PI goods from customs offices in this little pepsi can of ship, the Badger . Most of my PI operations are out in low sec. I was warping to the customs office in orbit around the planet when someone knocked on my back door.  I took off to go see who it was and came back a couple minutes later.

Some guy in a frigate was just closing in and locking me up as I sat down. I attempted to warp to a gate but he flipped on a scram. I didn't feel like waiting around for his little lasers to pop my big floating brick of a cargo ship so I ejected and headed for the gate in capsule.

Not a big deal really, kind of fun actually. Its been forever out in low sec that anyone has taken their time to track me down and shoot at me. Both the ships I have lost to other players have been in that same system. The first time I lost a ship I had just trained up my retriever skills last year. I wanted to see what low sec ores I could bring in. I was fighting rats on the belt and mining when I went pop.

Odyssey: In Review

At first look tons of sweet changes, lots of new things to play with and try out. First things first, there are a ton of bugs specifically skills that are not showing up right. I think if you just be patient and send a ticket in so they know you have a problem everyone's skills will get sorted out if not today in a couple of days. We all know we trained like crazy to take advantage of the changes whats a couple more days wait.

The most important thing to know: To disable the camera auto tracking thing press "C" It will stop the constant swinging motion I about feel off my chair after I logged in.

Right now I am really into the fact that all the blueprints have color. I do a lot of building and it is much more interesting looking at my huge stack of blueprints with color than the old hazy blue style. Thumbs up on that unexpected but classy change.

All changes aside the one thing you can not ignore is the jump gate affect. I would say it is the most visible and strong reminder that this is an ever changing universe. With that said a lot of the other features I really don't interact with. I haven't done exploration since I started playing. I have never gone ice mining and don't own a POS. Some of the ship changes are interesting. As I stated in my Eve Odyssey Prepare and Speculate post the only thing that really affected my game play was the ship skill changes and the clone cost reduction.

Maybe its time I go try out the hacking mini game? Or just stick to playing the market "mini" game all the stops and starts on there are reacted to and changed by real people not the computer and I make a lot of isk doing it.

Note: I should note this is the first major "patch" I have played through.

For known issues check out the EVE Online: Odyssey Issues.

Oh and if you didn't see they released the Odyssey Trailer:

Also the In development: Dev Video for Odyssey: