Transactions

This was a strange weekend for me. Sure, I joined a few fleets and had the chance to get a few nice kills with our fleet as Test decided to shoot one of our citadels. You may have heard, but White Legion headed over to FDZ to have a little fun. The Tartoken/Saranen area was getting a little crowded.

Then, there was the adjustment to zkill, where I learned I'm 75% dangerous and 15% solo. At first, I was a little offended. Then I started seeing the stats from some of my corpmates, and realized that 15% is actually pretty good, considering I've been part of either low-sec small gang alliances or null-sec fleet alliances for the past five years. I'm actually pretty good with that, all things considered.

But really, the past week has been all about capitals. The buying, selling, fitting, and studying of them.

You see, prior to the latest capital rebalance, I owned a boot Archon and two Naglfars, both fitted identically with flexible short- and long-range setups (along with the prerequisite travel fits for each, of course). When the latest patch was announced, I sold one of the Nags for a 2.1. As I heard tell, prices would likely be normalizing around 1.7 bil for dreads, so I figured I'd sell with an eye to buying back later.

The rebalance aligned nicely with my move to Origin, and I found myself needing a couple new carriers to load up and move all my ships out of low-sec. I found a Chimera and Archon for sale for about a bil each. Apparently, I wasn't the only one looking to offload capitals before the patch hit.

But, even though carriers were losing half of their abilities, I had heard enough talk that they were becoming wicked damage platforms. Those Who Know These Things reported that this fact, combined with some changes in mineral costs, meant their price should be increasing a bit after the patch. So, I gobbled those two up.

And this week, I started the process of divesting myself. We completed our move, I don't think I'll need to relocate again anytime soon, so off they went.  The Archon was easy; it went for my asking price within a couple hours of me posting it. And while the Chimera took a little more effort, it fortunately came with three capital rigs.

Fitted capital rigs are a bit of a tricky prospect when trying to price your carrier. On the one hand, they tend to add about 100 mil or so to the price, but if they aren't the right rigs someone's looking for, they aren't worth anything. Most folks tend to value them very low when setting a price. Their thinking is that discounting the rigs will make it more appealing to more people. If you add only 40 mil to the price instead of 100, you can attract buyers who just want the hull, as well as buyers who would want at least one of the rigs. The other two are useless and shouldn't factor in, right?

I don't really hold to that. In the first case, I don't need my ship to be appealing to more people, just perfect for one. My Chimera had three shield rigs, a common enough setup, so I bumped my asking price up to reflect all three. Sure, it made it less appealing to some people, but I just needed to hook one buyer.  The location - it was the only Chimera within 20 jumps at that price - offset that a bit.  And it sold in a day and a half.

Let that be a lesson... generally, when selling anything, we tend to undervalue it from the desire to be attractive to potential buyers. We don't try to find that niche. It's often a mistake.

With my proceeds, I'm buying back a Naglfar now. The sale of those two carriers should fully cover the cost of my fully fitted Nag. And, as an added bonus, it'll also include delivery to my new home station. I enjoy flying dreads more than carriers, and now that they also have an SMA, I suspect I won't be flying carriers that much anymore. Not in a "let's strip that carrier and fighter sp" way, mind you, but a, "how do fighter squadrons work" way.

Valeria has fared far worse on her capital errands. I've actually grown fat and lazy when it comes to lighting cynos for myself, it seems. But now, with Talvorian in White Legion, I don't have two characters in the same corp anymore, so I can't safely use one to light cynos for the other anymore. I'm dependent on begging for help, which has slowed me down quite a bit. To add insult to injury, on Valeria, I only need to move my dread one jump, and I've been trying to do it for about six days now.

One jump, but it's through camped space. I'm growing bolder, but haven't quite reached the point where I'm willing to risk gating it with reds in system. I suspect I never will, not since that carrier loss last year (keep your liquid ozone in your fleet hanger, sports fans...).

Capitals sure can be a pain, particularly when you just want to haul around all your crap. Is that the price of having stuff? Or, is it time to bring around a self-cynoing capital (kind of like one of those car transports) with no offensive or defensive capabilities? A ruck sack in space, if you will? Would being able to simplify logistics in that way really make the game any worse?

After weekends like this, I wonder.