Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The Spice Must Flow!

What do you do when your source for isk suddenly dries up?  How long do you go before adapting?

With Repercussus’ move to Goonswarm, we had the inevitable adjustment period while we all move our ships to exactly the right place, find new homes for everything we do on a regular basis, and generally find ourselves a nice groove.  This happens at both the corp and individual levels.

It hasn't been hard to find PvP content.  RP is stepping up even further to keep the content flowing for the corp, and GSF is great at providing a range of options even during a relatively dull time (wars winding down, holidays, etc.).  Logistics take a little longer as our logi pilots learn the new routes and danger spots, but it’s still flowing pretty well.

But, for me, my isk has generally come from cosmic signature ratting.  Lots of scanning practice (which has a clear PvP application) and high-yield time actually spent ratting.  But we’ve gone from an alliance of 3,000 to an alliance of 12,000, and the time zone focus has shifted to our TZ from the EUTZ, meaning there are a lot of competitors for those sigs.  So many, in fact, that it’s not viable any more.

I’m sitting on a good pile of isk, but dropping 5 billion on three months’ game time for two accounts throws into sharp relief the fact that I’m going to need to create some new revenue streams within the next year or face a significant cut in my net worth.

This requires effort.  This requires education.  This requires time.

This is sort of like starting over, learning new ways of making isk, but I still have all of the same monster consumption issues I’ve had over the past year.  Add to that the fact that I simply can’t deploy my primary PvP character everywhere I want to at the same time… jump clone timers and jump fatigue limit me to a handful of regions on the same day… and I realize I need to redeploy my former PvE character to a PvP capacity.  So there’s that issue as well.

Fortunately, I’m already about four months into a training regimen for a new ratting character to replace her.  But that’s still a hedged bet on the assumption I can find a steady diet of cosmic signatures for him.  So that’s not really a solution at this point.

Changing courses in Eve can be a traumatic experience.  We face them with such an eagerness for what they could provide based on optimal conditions.  But things are rarely optimal.  I read about exploration and the profits that one can make, but my own half-hearted attempts haven’t been very successful.  I read about the profits in stocking mission and PvP hubs, but question how effectively I can do it while still making profits and balancing it with my desired Eve activities.  And I dabble with moon mining, but the profits are subject to wild price fluctuations.

But now, I’m forced to double-down on at least one of them.  The way I work, I tend to prefer diversification.  So I’m using my free 20-day skill training to work up an exploration alt with heavier hacking and archaeology skills than any of my current characters to make the harder sites more successful.  I’m going to restart my moon mining for the moons whose outputs have adjusted in price.  And I’m going to get serious about market-stocking (which will involve research for about 95% of the effort-phase).  It’s going to be a lot of thinking, studying, and analyzing, and not a lot of playing.

But it has to be done.  And I suspect it’ll help me learn more about other parts of the game.

As a happy side-effect, learning more about the mindsets of players of these activities will improve my ability to kill them.

So, win/win.

But who knew sustainable living could be so hard?

5 comments:

  1. I do not envy you Tal... I envy me. =]

    I have NONE of the issues of which you speak... I live simply, inna hole with my corpmates. We have excellent revenue just sitting in the sky waiting for us everyday... and if not our sky, a little time spent scanning and we have multiple NEW skies in which to seek our fortune in both ISK and fights...

    Imagine if you will waking up everyday and you house has moved, overnight, without so much as a bump in the night to disturb your slumber... to a different street in a different city in a different state in a different country...

    Logistics can be weird, from a 1 hop to hi and 4 to Amarr hole one day to a 6 lows to null, 5 nulls to low then 3 more lows to hi hole... so yea, no store run today but... just try running outta sites... so far, I have seen very very damn few days when we didn't have a tonne of ISK waiting for us within 1 to 3 hops... =]

    Happy New Year man.... =]

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    1. The problem I've found with whs is the need to generate isk as a team. I tend to fill down time with isk-making, which generally happens during odd hours.

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    2. In C5 and up I agree... and in C4 depending on site etc.
      But in C3 and down solo is perfectly workable if a bit wayyy risky. And, we do have our Marauders fit to solo C5s... which means we 'can' solo all classes up to C5...

      And solo even a C3 produces over 200m per 4 sites in general... and that does not even take into account gas mining, which can be more easily done solo in all classes if one is properly fitted and on the bounce...

      But, yes, fleet is always best from a safety in numbers perspective, just not an absolute if one is experienced in the Tao of Anoikis...

      And for us, ISK making is part and parcel of our whole game... we don't have a 'down time', PvP/PvE all can happen at the same time in holes... we run basically PvP fit ships for Sleepers so we are always ready to go pew pew...

      Nice not having to worry about fleets and timers and CTA's and all the huge time wasters (as we see ti) that you poor schlobs have to put up with in null... =]

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  2. Talvorian,

    If I may quibble . . . “It’s going to be a lot of thinking, studying, and analyzing, and not a lot of playing.”

    By any reasonable characterization “thinking, studying, and analyzing” is a major component of Eve and thusly should be defined as “playing”.

    I make a fuss not because I misunderstood the distinction you were making between actually being logged in doing what you greatly enjoy rather than logged out trying to discern how to efficiently support your desired enjoyments, but rather to highlight that one of the wonderful aggravations of Eve is discovering that not all aspects of the game are immediately enjoyable. Sometimes we have to settle for ‘satisfying’ which, in the long term, can be much more enduring.

    You, of course, are fully aware that ‘satisfying’ is a major part of Eve as your meditation isn’t mere complaint but rather thoughtful exploration into how deep Eve can go. That said, being bewitched by our own language can lead to unfortunate consequences like getting bummed out that one isn’t ‘playing’ Eve enough even though a whole lot of time is spent in and around the Eve universe.

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