Never Been Podded

I just finished Eve: The Empyrean Age by Tony Gonzales and was shocked at how awesome it was. And not just because the Amarr look mostly like pigs. It was good space opera, which is really hard to pull off. Before this, I had not quite gotten the hang of the whole fanboy, read the fiction thing.

Now, I grew up in a household where my Dad read Star Trek novels, had the Enterprise Blueprints, etc. I had the Star Wars (original series, please) toys and trading cards/stickers and the first set of comics, but didn't read the books that built on the story. I loved reading Alan Dean Foster, but wouldn't read Splinter of the Mind's Eye. The whole Expanded Universe thing just didn't do anything for me.

The closest I came to extending my fandom beyond the original source material was for The Matrix. I got the extended box set DVD, watched all the documentary material, Animatrix, and have all the games on several platforms. Even beta-tested MXO. I started to draw the line at the graphic novels and wouldn't touch the fan fiction.

Upon finishing the Eve book, though, I felt differently about what I was willing to read. What really got to me was not just at the views and motivations of the different factions, but the reminders of the behind the scenes stuff that takes place. The fact that there are non-immortal people crewing our ships and living in the stations is something that I have been glossing over while playing Eve. Hell, the description of the reborn capsuleers fresh from the vat with smooth skin and regrowing hair made me wonder if people RP that experience. Do they take a day off and play on an alt when they get podded? I have actually never been podded, so I wonder what I will do. Ok, I will cry a lot and probably lose a ship or two trying to get revenge. But I will also think about the mechanics of the process. After reading the book, it just seems another level deeper than other MMO's where I get to do a corpse run and everything is just as it was.

What I think makes the Eve fiction community different from some of the other fanfic is that if the story is based on something that happened in game, then it is essentially canon. I have been reading some of your stories and retelling of battles since I started playing again, but now I am seeing this "unofficial" material from a different view.

Just Another Mining Monday

Now that I have been back in EVE for nearly three months, I have started to see the need to establish schedules or something similar for doing certain ingame tasks. There are so many things to do that the opportunities to get distracted by shiny things (new alt! Scanning! Missions!) is always there. Likewise, there are things that I need to do often as a Trader (check bids! obsess over wallet! is that on the spreadsheet?) that are done haphazardly, if at all. And there are other things that I just like to do every now and then. I have a Retriever, but rarely mine. I have ok production skills, but leave BPO's languishing, unresearched.

To top it all off, I am seeing that I have been only logging in to either change skills, check some orders or do a quick mission or six. I am seeing a risk of getting bored just doing those things and start drifting away.

I am thinking that something too rigid like MINING MONDAY!!!!! is a little much, but maybe I should give it a shot before I dismiss the idea.

Mining on Monday
Play the Alt on Tuesday and Wednesday
Pick up that weeks' buy orders Thursday
Work the Spreadsheets and place orders Friday
Do fun stuff on the weekends - Play with some BP's, Find Wormholes, Mission/Salvage

Anyone else following some sort of schedule in order to enjoy all the parts of EVE that you want?

More about reprocessing

I just was the beneficiary of a reprocessor doing a massive buyout of one of my sell orders. I always love this.

Since my combat guy in Rens is not a full-on, full-time trader, I don't care about .01 isk wars or keeping the market stable. I want my money and I want it now. I don't want to spend an hour one upping your price. For the item today, the market looked like this:

Sell: 7,000-8,000
Buy: 1,000-1,300
My Reprocess value: 2,400-3,000
"Good" Reprocessing value: 4300-4800

I put up a buy order at 1,500 and am buying hundreds per day. I put up a sell order at for a few hundred at 4,500. This caused others to put up sell orders undercutting mine by .01 isk at a time.

There is no real downside here for me. As long as I buy for under the reprocess value (less fees) I am good. And if someone buys from the sell order, I make even more. The best part about seriously undercutting the market is that someone with good reprocessing skills can come and buy you out and still make money on the spread. I certainly don't mind being a middleman.

It brings in some income and takes almost no time. I get loot, I have to do something with it. I sell most of it, except I take the time to learn whether I can make more by taking care of the item myself. This "reprocess buy" didn't make me a ton of money, but free money is free money. And it freed up another order. I just put up another stack. Let's see if he buys it again.

And he probably will.

This reprocessor found an opportunity to make some easy money buying things at below mineral value, but they didn't take the next step and put up a corresponding buy order. If he/she is willing to accept a small margin buying from a sell order, why not trump my buy order at 2,000 or even more?

If this works, it shows that you don't have to spend a lot of time training skills to reprocess things - just put up sell orders at a little less than perfect reprocessing and wait for the experts to buy your stuff.

(Originally written on 9/27/09)

Update: The same person bought three more stacks on separate days before figuring out that maybe their own buy order would be a better idea. And then they .01'ed me. Silly reprocessor. I upped the price by a hundred. They did it again and I increased by 200. I still own the best buy order and, being Saturday night, business is good.