A Rock In A Cold Place

Not much new in the last few days. The wars are still going on, but we’re still in ‘engagement denial’ mode. Eventually the agressors should get tired of spending ISK to CONCORD just to float outside of our station.

On the mining front, things are going extremely well. I can’t say too much, both for war security and to protect my claim, but right now I’m mining ore that has almost no sellers in the area and buyers paying 15-20% above market value. Needless to say, the ISK is flowing well. Much of it, however, has gone to rigging for Davios’ hauler, but that has been a plan of ours for a while.

I’m probably going to stay where I am now for a while, depending on how things go with the war.  If it ends this week, I’ll stay out here for an extra week just until the wallet gets a little fatter. If the war goes on, however, I should have plenty of time to save up some funds. We’ll have to see how the market goes as well. There’s enough buyers to support me for a while, but if others get wise the market could be saturated with ore overnight and I’ll have no reason to stay after the war is over.

On a side note, I spent some of the funds to help an upstart trader get his career going. He’s a pretty slick Achira named Li Draconis. He seems to know what he’s doing and has already increased his net worth, although it’s not liquid yet. He’s slipper, though, so I’m not sure just how far I trust him.

Well, the last couple of days have been pretty exciting.  Davios finally got certified to command a Retriever and we had our first trip out to the belt with two barges yesterday.  Focusing on plagioclase, we managed to haul about five million ISK worth of ore in an hour.  Not too shabby, if I say so myself.  I’ve gotten my refining skills to an intermediate level, and can use mining crystals for any common ore, so I’m in pretty good shape.  Next step, the Hulk.

Unfortunately, that’s going to have to wait for the moment.  There’s been another war declaration that is taking effect today.  Markos is ready to help fight for the corp, but unfortunately his training was still in it’s beginning stages when he deferred to Davios’s agenda.  Well, now it’s time to start getting seriouse about defense so he’s taking over on that front and I’m deferring to Hargatay so that he can advance his scanning skills and do a little bit of reconaissance, since he’s not actually a member of the corp.

The corporation that decced us is The Protei, and eleven man corp operating out of Ichoriya.  They all seem to be fairly experienced, and among their ranks is Humuhumun…. .  Hum, as I will refer to him from here on out, was a bit of a thorn in our sides about a month ago, and reared his ugly head recently in a can flipping incident that ended in him loosing his Mauller.  Seems he found a corp that was more in-line with his philosophies, and seems it’s time that they’re all taught a lesson.  We’ve got friends coming to the party this time, too, so things should get very interesting very soon.

Mining will have to take a back seat for now, though.  Time to do a little damage.

Well, the last few days saw us getting on with life without many complications.  Davios and I kept working on mining that belt that we set up with containers and really hauling in the ore!  We’re averaging about 2 million an hour, give or take a little depending on what we haul in.  We also got those other two containers anchored, so it’s an even twelve now.  Davios got such a taste for mining that he’s put his Iteron training on hold and it working towards getting certified for a Retriever of his own!  He should be set in about three days, then we can really do some damage.

Speaking of doing damage, Markos took his Caracal, the Wildcat, out for a little jaunt.  He ended up finding himself some work for a Caldari Navy agent over in Funtaninen who was looking to have a religious fanatic / terrorist compound taken down. 

Well, Markos got me on comms while he was in the middle of a fight with the terrorists, laughing all the time about how many wrecks were floating around and that he didn’t feel like salvaging them all.  I swear I could hear explosions, and I think he was a little drunk.  I went out anyway, and took in a pretty good haul of salvage and some loot.  Marko took what ammo and weapons we managed to recover and let me keep the rest.  Not a bad bit of work.  Hargatay has agreed to come along next time and is studying up on tractor beams, salvager arrays, and getting certified to pilot a Catalyst destroyer.  I personally never liked them, but leave it to a Gallente.

Barr Heavy Industries had a few new members recruited last night, some fresh pilots and some already are veterans, so it’s a good influx of raw and refined talent.  There was also one the night before, so including him we met Nonamanadus, Cirocke, Pariah Khan, Star Anole, and Xindora.

Cirocke is a crazy sonufagun who had an Ibis all tricked out and was challenging any comers to a duel.  I took my rifter, the Screamer, out and for a little spin.  He did pretty good, and took me to 50% sheilds before his own sheilds dropped.  I realized that the Screamer wasn’t doing great, so I ran out and did some updating.  When I got back I took on Cirocke again, this time with him using a Condor.  Well, I couldn’t catch up with him and he had me pinned from 40km out, so that was a one sided fight.  Pretty soon, I’m going to have to train on micro-warpdrives.

Well, things are starting to come together quite nicely.  Scoped out a nice even belt in Rauss last night and Davios and I laid two strings of secure containers.  Thismorning I managed to fill the whole set with ore.  We need to pick up two more…maybe tonight.

Heard from Marko Greggos again.  This is the loose cannon I mentioned before.  He let me know that he was going to set up shop in Raussinen and then just showed up!  On top of that he handed me a conveyance contract to pick up a bunch of his stuff from Kakakela.  The nerve!  Well, we got him all moved in after I finished working the belt thismorning.  His hanger is an absolute mess, but I’ll let him sort that out on his own. 

He did, however, unload a LOT of salvage my way.  That combined with a little stockpile I had going really added up.  Between that and the ore from the last couple days I’m looking at getting about 15,000,000 ISK!  Even after getting Hargatay set up with the two frigates that he trained for we shouldn’t have to worry about money for a while.  Meanwhile, I’m back to working on finishing my Refining course and working that belt as much as I can. 

Marko did mention some interest in joining Barr Heavy Industries’ security team, and I think that his gung ho attitude and borderline psychosis would fit in very well with that crowd.  I don’t know how Commander Lyon ended up in Excavations.

I was focusing on getting Abaddor into a Hulk.  In my noobishness once i got into a Retriever my train of thought was “better harvesting requires better ship.”  Reviewing the 39 day training plan to get Astrogeology and Mining Barge to V, I was starting to feel impatient.  Remembering the mention of T2 Modulated Strip Miners in Halada’s mining guide, I decided to see if I qualified.  Lo and behold, I do!  So I went out and bought a pair and some Veldspar crystals and went to work!  Well, definitely quite the improvement, and that’s with T1 crystals!  So, given that there are T2 crystals out there that I cannot use yet, but could soon, I rethought my plan.  Of course, getting qualified for these means working on refining skills, including Refining V, which will open up Refinery Efficiency (I got that skill in a tutorial and have been storing it for seven weeks now!). 

So…these new training goals, which will get me into some T2 crystals in a week, should ramp up the cash flow during that long trek to Hulk pilot.  And the Refinery efficiency, trained to a modest 3, should make it profitable to refine instead of selling ore!

This leads us to the first Sticky Note Of The Week!

Okay, so here’s one of the alter egos that I mentioned before.  Meet Davios Steiner.  Just started with him yesterday and am focusing on hauling skills at the moment, with a heavy learning skills program interspersed to speed things along.  Trying to get him into an Iteron V as soon as possible to aid in the moving of ore.  Will also work on some mining skills after these first goals are met.  Basically will be a second industrial character, but while Abaddor’s goals will aim more towards maximum harvesting and refining and piloting along the Hulk/Orca path, Davios will be training more for transport efficiency, Production, and piloting along the T2 transport/freighter path.  I will naturally also get him into at least a Retriever so that he can be useful in mining.  I’m hoping that their skills will be a good foil for each other and that the specialization will enable me to do more with the two of them in a shorter period of time than I would be able to do with just Abaddor.

So, here’s the audacious goal:  Get these two harvesting/refining/producing/selling, in some combination thereof, to really maximize their profits.  Get that ISK saved up to buy a small bundle of plex cards (at least three to start) or have a steady enough cash flow to be able to predict being able to buy one Plex per month without it draining the coffers.  Will this cover Davios’ account costs?  Nope!  This will cover the cost of adding a third partner!  This, of course, will lead to more cash flow after the first month or so of training, and then?  Enough ISK to fund a fourth character?

I’m sure this is possible, as people are making enough isk to buy Plex cards…I’m just looking at it in the sense of spending money to make money and then rinse and repeat.  The long term goal is to have 10 characters, but only be paying for two.  If I don’t have to pay for any, that’s nice too.  We’ll see what happens.  I might be off my rocker, and if anybody is actually reading this please feel free to let me know in no uncertain terms that I’m nuts.  I only ask that you consider the feasability of this first and support your comments with some reasoning so that I might consider the options. 

But, there you have it folks.  What started a few hours ago as another aimless pod blog now has a goal.  So I’ll be posting regular updates as to training progress, cash flow, etc.  I hope that somebody out there will be interested to see how things go.  Who knows, it just might be crazy enough to work!