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.