Pimp my Iteron

In the early october I dropped my Medium Cargo Optimization blueprint into some distant low sec research slot (while learning about null sec and warp bubbles). Last week it got completed and yesterday I retrieved it back into empire space. I had a lot of the material at hand but I still needed 58 units of the (quite expensive) Alloyed Tritanium Bars. There was just enough ISK in the wallet to set up an according buy order. I didn’t expect it, but today the order was completely fullfilled and all units were distributed in a relative compact area. Two hours later I was the new owner of three freshly manufactured(*) cargo rigs, took my Itty over and enhanced it to 38.000m3 raw space (about 49.000m3 with Giant Secure Containers). And I saved around 1 mil ISK per rig.

(*) Why the hell is it called manufacturing (latin for “made by hand”) if it is done by automated robot factories?

Everything new

Some weeks ago I decided to change into another tarif of my internet provider. In detail: before phone and internet where on different suppliers, now its all in the hands of the internet provider. After a lot of emails and paper sent back and forth the line switch took place yesterday. For real man do always change more than one critical part of their IT-systems at a time, two days before I bought a copy of Windows 7.

The thumbs-up part:

• Windows 7 installs really fast and painless.
• Most application settings could be restored.
• Contrary to my expectations the line switch did work well, the line is now cheaper and faster.

The scary part:

• Making a backup of your old system drive is kind of tricky: the Linux-based HD-tools have some issues with NTFS system partitions and demand a checkfs run whom they never accept. So I copied everything in explorer and checked the data consitency with some diff tool. This took the about 5 hours.
• Installing all your software freshly will take several days. After two days, mail, browser, banking, Eve Online, theHunter, Logitech drivers, some graphics apps & some tools are running. Some more are to be done in the next days, mostly just on demand.
• One time Windows 7 didnt recognize the DSL router. The usual windows magic finally solved it: switch off, switch on, if still not working, repeat.
• Some app settings are spread and/or hidden to well to restore.

No more free jumpclones

These days I found out about a Corp named “Estel Arador Corp Services” offering free jumpclone service (thus, providing you temporarily with the corp standing needed to create jumpclones). Alas, just when I had learned the jumpclone skills and was prepared to enter EACS, I learned that the service is currently down due to hardware problems of the founder. Now I have to grind standing for myself. And I learned more: the NPC corp I have the best standing with (Roden Shipyard) is the one with the least cloning facilities (null, nada, niente, zero). Fortunately, my second best NPC corp does have cloning facilities. So I’ll switch over and do missions for them.

Do it yourself – done and sold

In the last post I mentioned my self made Navitas. It was meant to do mission mining, but I quickly learned that level 3 mining missions require rather more cargo space than a Navitas provides. I didn’t want relocating my Covetor a dozen jumps just for missioning. So I ceased the idea of easy level 3 courier and mining missions. The now useless Navitas got stripped and sold. The T2 modules went away without much financial loss.

Do it your self

When I today began to set up a Navitas for courier and mining missions, I remembered that I still had some old Navitas blue print from a tutorial mission a long time ago. With the blue print having material efficiency at 5 and myself having production efficiency at 4 I ended up with a total of 21.900 ISK (including slot costs). The cheapest sell order was at 22.300 ISK. So I saved the hellish sum of 400 ISK. Nevertheless, I had the fun of do-it-yourself (more powerrrrrr).

Size does matter. Or not?

I like to have some shuttles at hand for doing quick runs: Most courier missions ask you to carry some small cargo or I have to collect some small trade item I bought in a far away system where the Itty would be overkill in cargo space and a pain in speed. The shuttles are agile enough to even run reasonably fast with autopilot.

Today it happens that my shuttles ended up together in the same hangar – which reminded me to the silly names I gave them

Poor mans Occator – lost

When I had set up the Punisher shuttle described in the last post, I immediately scouted into 0.0 sec space. Great, there I found some research installation ready in only four days. Not so great, on the way back into empire space, I learned

• what warp bubbles do
• that warp stabilizers don’t help against those nasty bubbles
• that one hit from some heavy turrets strips down the shields of the punisher
• that my current implants were worth 20mil ISK

At least it was only the scouting trip and the blue print was sound and safe in a nearby lowsec station.

Poor mans Occator

The vacations are over, Ahb has got his “Gallente Industrial V” skill and now flies around in his Itty V. Well, 32000m3 (with extenders and GSCs) are nice but there can be more. With T1-rigs you can reach 49000m3.

So the plan goes: Ahb already bought some rig blue print. He has the necessary skills. Maybe he should research a bit on the blue print before using it for production. Some clicks later I knew: all laboratory installments in Verge Vendor are busy.

Plan B: Let’s have a look in low sec. But low sec is said to be dangerous. Oh oh… This then led to the following chain of thoughts:

• I would need something, that can safely escape an attack.
• A transport ships like the Occator would be fine (for its good defenses and included warp strength bonus). But at the moment it is far to expensive for me – I could not affourd to loose it.
• Thus I need something cheap and fast that can fit as much warp stabilizers as possible.
• Cheap: this points to frigates.
• Fast: this again points to frigates.
• Warp stabilisers occupy low slots, so we look for a frigate with a lot of low slots.

After some time browsing through the different faction frigates, I found the Punisher (Ammar frigate): lots of HP for a frigate and 4 low slots. The required skill is reached in roughly 8 hours. EveFittingTool says that, with my Electronics skill at level V, it has just enough CPU to fit 4 Halcyon warp stabilizers and two Shield Extender II. The warp stabilizers heavily reduce the targeting range and there is no CPU left for any offensive options. Despite its name, this Punisher fitting is nothing more than a tough shuttle.

Relaxing towards an Itty 5

These minutes I am starting into my vacation. The “Gall. Industrial V” skill is in training and after the holidays I can start fitting an Iteron V. I’m off then

Reasons why I don’t try Darkfall

These days I had the strange idea of having a look at Darkfall and if it really is as bad as said some month ago.

Here we go:

1. Open their homepage and find the client download link. WTF? Only a torrent…
2. Ok, lets click the link. D—d, something is wrong with the Bittorrent-client. It does not start up.
3. So lets reinstall some current Bittorrent-client. D—d, it will install some nasty browser tool bar. Install cancelled.
4. Now try the torrent client linked on the Darkfall page. Looks good. Wait, it wants to install the same browser toolbar. Install cancelled.
5. Lets have a look at Wikipedia for alternatives. Whoa what a lot. Short story: they all are either old, or contain adware or toolbars, or involve some linux-based mystical install process. I finally took one that was some fat multi media file sharing thing and I had to click off a lot of features.
6. Now, let’s start the download. Time to read the FAQ.
7. Whooot? The client costs 49.98€? A download at the price of a boxed version?
8. Ok, surely they mean, after the trial. D—d, where is the trial. Oh here it is: “We may offer a limited trial in the future.”

Dear folks at Aventurine, after all the suboptimal press you got some weeks ago you expect me to buy the pig in the poke? Compare to Eve: their client is 5€, not 50€. It offers a 14 days free trial. Its a open PvP sandbox game too. Look at WoW: the box price includes 30 days game time, they have free trials. Look at all the free2play games on the market. And they all have http-downloads for us non-torrenters. Unless you make the entry more easy, I’ll stay away.