... And That's When the Bubble Kicked In

I haven’t been in this system in a while, it’s very active with about 30 pilots either docked or tooling around in space. I live in the next system over, but being fairly new to null and also just getting piloting skills near where they should be for mere survival purposes I tend not to wander too far. Of course that is temporary, we always get comfortable, it’s in the corporate chant:

“Dig In. Spread Out. Get Comfortable!”

I always thought “Because We’re Here to Stay” should be added to the end, but in truth, we’re only here to stay until we get bored or run out of resources.

I’m using dscan trying to get a good idea of everyone’s general location and weight as I decide which route I want to take to low sec, gotta pick up some goodies for the corp including a ship or two, ammo and PI materials of course. This reconnaissance is for future running, I’m just looking today for a possible trip tomorrow or later. Once I’ve pulled a small squad together, we’ll at least already have our routes bookmarked for easy survival. You won’t catch it, I change the route every trip. I paid for that lesson too. They ain’t free.

Oh, what’s this, private chat? No. Someone in system just added me to their corp chat! And then in their own corp comms they post:

[13:36:03] REDACTED (cappies name) >REDACTED (my name linked): freunde von Euch??

Hmm, I think he’s asking me if I’m friendly but I drop it into the translator to make sure and no that’s not what he’s asking me. As a matter of fact he’s not even talking to me, even though he is. It translates out to “Friends of you??”

Just to screw with him, I answered, “Yes, I’m a friend of mine.”

I’m thinking that was meant for his corp in corp window with a link to my name, but somehow accidentally added me to the channel, which as you can imagine took them a minute to figure out.

I had figured it out completely when an English speaking pilot came on to comms and CAP yelled “YOU IDIOT - YOU’RE DRUNK!” I was swiftly kicked out of the channel at that point. Bless their heart.

When you sit out in the vast nothingness of space day in and day out it takes a toll, if it weren’t for meditation and a good diet, I’d lose it eventually. We’re not only doing this job day in and day out and looking forward to retiring and leaving for the great beyond. No, we live forever. Sometimes over time you forget that you can do something else.

A good way to remember how to stay fresh in this game is to know that soft and flexible is life, hard and stiff is death. Stay flexible and you will stay alive but become stiff and unwavering and face the biomasser. Eventually you will throw yourself in there if you can’t be a little softer in your approach.

Alright, all this waxing and waning are taking a toll on my stomach, I’m not in hi-sec so there’s no eclectic moon diner to hit on the way home, I’ll have to head all the way home to my system and dock up for that. Having logged off safely in my ship last night so I could wake up and reconnoiter the area has left me clueless as to what’s on my home gate. I've been focusing on everything else in system up until now, but it’s time to leave. I believe there are no threats here and as a matter of fact, I can probably pass the local guards some spirits and be on my way if the need ever rises. (By spirits I mean iskies.)

In addition I’ve set saved spots all over the system for any type of situation, I believe if I get caught with my pants down and need a system to hem a few players into this would be the one, right next door and full of dead end.

Once I've decided to crank up the engines and start aligning towards home, I take a little peek at the mapping system, Dotlan, just to see how my homeward gate has been holding up this morning with all the traffic, more than I normally see in my system.

Where I live there isn't much in and out traffic like you would expect with a normal system in between two or more others. We are a dead end in the trail, not a dead end system as we have two ways in and out, but cut off from the main drag where everyone crosses to get here or there. You don’t come this way, and I like that a lot.

I do notice that just in the past hour -  6 ships have been destroyed and a few pods as well. There’s a camp somewhere. I have a mark set at the opposite gate so I head there to see if that’s where they are camping and of course it’s not. That would be WAY too easy seeing as I have bookmarks here and not at my home gate yet.

I sigh, realizing the inevitable and warp back to my ‘safe’ from which I start on impulse power only, slow boating towards a better angle of descent for my home star gate.

I will have to do this for a minute or 15, and let me tell you something, I am not a patient person and never have been, it cost me at least 2 Viators to change my ways, but today I’m happy and healthy for learning a little patience. It’s paid off in spades.

My goal at the moment is to evaluate using my eyes on the U.I. versus my alignment as it shows in the map panels to align myself to the gate outside of where the normal placement of bubbles will not affect me. Basically these bubbles are all aligned to major traffic routes in system, the idea is to get off the beaten path and approach the gate from a random ‘not aligned to other entities’ trajectory facing the gate, get it?

Well, like I said, I’m impatient, and as always I’ll probably pay for it with my ship, but I've slow boated all I can stand, which is a fairly good amount by the way. I appear to be out of the pathway of anything remotely important or traffic generating. I’m going to go for it.

Pause! Here is where I should have reset my 'safe' but didn't.

I set my warp in to show up 100 km’s off the gate, you know, the way we all do, from there I should be able to impulse out and get a close spy-worthy warp in to the gate for next time. I hit warp and finally arrive… ...And that’s when the bubble kicks in.

There’s bubbles everywhere, three of them right above me and the closest one, i kid you not, licking at the back fender of my Viator.

What? I only twitched briefly, I've been caught before and I quickly learned that the more of a whiny putz you appear to be in moments of stress caused by bullies that insta-lock you at a gate the more likely you will become dead and get a free trip back to wherever the hell it was the last time you were podded for essentially twitching again.

I watch patiently, very patiently. I am approximately 1 km from the warp bubble and I have exactly 12 ships orbiting above me, slowly circling the bubbles. Vulture space. I've warped in from off kilter, coming in from a weird angle I realize my guess was correct, however, exactly correct -  I wish I would have warped in about 50 km further away from the action.

I have to admit though I am thoroughly excited that I didn't get seen by these guys the second I dropped out of warp. I’m literally sitting less than 5 km from the nearest of them as they navigate about in a haphazard fashion; hoping maybe to nick a corner of my cloak and expose me to the sharks. Well, I mean, if they did it would be inadvertently, they really have no idea I’m watching them.

Now that I've seen where everyone is, I slowly spin around and pick a direction to putter away in. They have three bubbles setup to catch the cappies unaware from three different routes and that’s about all you need in this small system.

If you enter the system through this gate, you’re stuck. If you warp to this gate from any of the other two gates in the system, you’re stuck. If you warp from any of the three gates to the most popular station in system, you’re stuck. If you warp from one of the two stations to the other, you’re stuck.

These gate camps cover the majority, and you may think there is no way out, but a moment of silence is always a good tool to help determine what your next move should be only of course if you are not in immediate danger or instantly under attack. I got lucky and hit nothing as I warped in, I had skillfully picked a direction that only scraped their trap. With a little bit more patience when slow boating earlier, I would have completely avoided it and laughed as I swooshed by them to jump through.

Now, here’s an intelligence moment, as we are here, right next to the trap that is set daily by an alliance that lives next door in a system that sees way more traffic than we are used to. These guys see literally hundreds of ships cross through their trap on a daily basis. They have to be a little blind because of it, even if it’s only 5% due to boredom (or drunkenness, lol).

I bookmark EXACTLY where I warped in, this is not a bookmark I ever plan on using as it is approximately less than a km to the edge of the bubble. However, this bookmark gives me a really good idea of how they typically set up their daily operations. This is great Intel to have, inherently people are lazy and I imagine that there isn't much difference from one day to the next on how these guys set up their trap, they have three main targets and anything above and beyond requires too much effort to corral together.

From this BM I warp back out to my safe (which with foresight, I realize should have been reset earlier when slow boating) and then back in again at 100 km of the original at the gate and from here I pick the angle I want to approach from. This eventually, if done right, will reset your safe (if you haven't already done it) as well because you will need to realign that safe with this position in order to cleanly pass by these guys on a regular basis. By the way, gate campers hate that and will eventually, because of the boredom, sit there and figure out your secrets. It doesn't’ take long because all they have to do is see which way you go one time too many and you are toast my friend.

I have done the absolute minimum today with this bookmark, I've made it safe for me to come through without getting caught in the jumble of destruction, which is why of course it hasn't graduated from my personal bookmarks to the corporate bookmark list. That would be very irresponsible, especially because you want your corp to use the corp bookmarks with no fear. Taint that and you screw up a valid place to store locations that you depend on.

So I warp home, but you know that tomorrow or later today when I get free time and it’s nagging at me from the back of my mind, I’ll head back to next door and expand on those safes and bookmarks. I like 3 of each if it’s somewhere I pass through daily. Mix it up and stop getting caught. Take a different route everywhere you go if you normally travel in a predictable manner. Predictability honestly is the best way to get your ass podded back to the stone age every time.

Stay flexible! It’s in your best interests.

Who do I have to... Cockroach.

Ever since I first captured these shots, I've wanted this ship. I don't even think it exists and I can't remember where I got this fit from.

I think it's called a Cockroach. Fascinating. Part of the exploration part of Eve for me is exploring ships and their histories, if anyone out there has any information on this ship, even if it's just lore, I'm interested! Contact me.

Enjoy the pics.

Business as Usual

I've managed to pull in about 300 million isk worth of materials from the 3 planets I'm currently harvesting. The setup for the manufacturing machine I've been building over and over again in my mind is getting closer to reality.

I have an alt and 3 other players in corp that were willing to undergo the skill training needed to make this happen. They are all on schedule and 2 are completely finished with it and ready to go.

They finished a little sooner than I thought, not that that is a bad thing, there's plenty to do. I believe tonight I will start assigning light duties to the ones that have completed their training. It also gives them their first opportunity to do their thing in a completely hostile environment that would love to catch them un-aware and pop them at the first chance.

I look forward to the first few killings. They will harden up and adjust their tactics or they won't. Either way, I now have a list of 2 others that would like to try the P.I. gig part time and that's plenty of extra man power for what we are doing, which is fairly simple to be honest.

So far the funniest thing I noticed (and we're not even in real null) is the star-struckness of my newer players when they run across familiar Alliance names. I have to keep busting their bubbles by reminding them that those alliances have THOUSANDS of members. They're not all fun and it's not likely you will be seeing DBRB or anything like that anytime soon, besides I hear he's quitting anyway.

That last statement keeps them occupied for a few minutes. I am as solo as I can get for a guy in a corp with a few members. I'm not in an alliance and probably will be one day, although it will be of my own making.

I recruit locally only, meaning so far, I know everyone very well in my corp. When I say local I mean, I'll be seeing them at the pub after work.

Eventually I will open a corp for New Eden players, of course that will be separate from the first one and will probably fall under that one in the alliance hierarchy when and if that ever happens. I've never been interested in holding on to sov. That road will be crossed eventually, but it's at least 5 years out before I finish my things I want to do in Eve list.

Overall, I am really enjoying my time in Eve. I'm not changing anything up to quickly, not until I'm bored again anyway.

2003 - The Year of 'The Four'

Where did we come from?

I'm so curious about Eve! The mechanics, the JOVE, the sheer immensity of it all. How in the world do you manage something this big?

My brain has been forcing me to read old dev blog posts for the past week and it's starting to paint a rather together picture of how Eve has evolved from when those first few pilots took the leap into immortality and started shaping what we see as the modern universe.

Many growing pains, complaints, improvements and tears are documented here. I'm starting with 2003, the first ones I could find and will slowly be weaving my way closer and closer to the current day.

I am fairly new to Eve, maybe slightly over one year subbed. Reading back through the past has helped me tremendously when reading current dev blogs and with understanding the way things are done when responsible for developing a place that a lot of us depend on to be there when we need it.

It's also starting to make my previous complaints or petitions to CCP seem a bit mundane compared to the massive things happening at any given second.

But, as your reading, think back and remember all the little changes that come through and all of the hard work put in to these changes to make Eve even more fun than it already is. Thank a dev if you get a chance, especially if they help you out.

I may be a little pickier when complaining in the future.

For each one of these I'm going to pick my favorite one and this time it is the rise of the CCP dev as God. CCP employees took to Concord Special Ops ships and on Concord's behalf, did a brief taming of high sec, which of course today when this happens it's an event. Then it was a stab at helping out the local hi sec pubbies due to the fact that there weren't a lot of Concord mechanics set up yet. The tears did flow but it was the pirates this time. (From what I understand though, people were warned, for what that's worth).

Hence the mention of 'The Four'. (btw, if you were around at this time, it'd be a neat story to hear.) Hook us up.

Here's a write up of Eve circa 2003 by IGN: EVE Online The wait is over! Check out our full review.

Pics or it didn't happen!

Primer: The Beginning

(this is available on wikipedia)

CCP was founded in June 1997 by Reynir Harðarson, Þórólfur Beck and Ívar Kristjánsson for the purpose of making MMORPGs.

In order to finance the initial development of Eve Online, CCP developed and published a board game in Iceland called Hættuspil ("Danger Game") which is available in the new collectors edition Eve release.

In April 2000 the company, with Sigurður Arnljótsson as CEO, raised $2.6 million, through a closed offering organized by Kaupthing Bank (now Arion banki), from private investors in Iceland, including the Icelandic telephone company Síminn.

Approximately half of the initial 21 staff were drawn from the Icelandic dot-com company OZ Interactive, the makers of OZ Virtual.

2003 Dev Blog (Nutshelled)

Character Creation - Debate concerning limiting the amount of characters that you can create or delete per week per user to help fight muling and semi-exploits. Other side of argument states that this could possibly be better handled through in-game mechanics.

In-Game Forums - Discussion of moving the in-game forums from the news system to the in-game browser allowing the forums to be used in-flight. In addition, scrapping the in-station news facility.

Local Chat - Discussion on making the local chat channel solar system wide. This new system would include the players in the stations as well as players in space, in addition it would not cut off your chat channel when you dock or undock. (comment about how the local channel doesn't really get that much use, CCP expects private channels to bridge the communication gap in-game)

Pod Kills in High Sec - (lol) It is reported in this dev post that some players could be using some laxities in Concord's procedures to help them pod kill players in high sec. Warp Scrambling will be added to Concord's arsenal of tools to help prevent this practice in the future. Who knew that this would one day evolve into a science, but that's another story for another time...

Character Creation - Comments on the successful acceptance of proposal to add a 36 hour character deletion delay  when deleting characters.

This will affect:

1. Prevent accidental character deletion
2. Make exploiter tracking simpler

Unwelcome off-lining of nodes - A python bug was discovered and corrected that made the nodes die after ~6000 players had been playing continuously for an extended time. Node deaths would always occur during peak hour because of a build up in the alloc counters, patch issued.

Fixed a bug with censoring in the communication system that would use the escape characters provided to screw up the channel names. Replaced escape characters with spaces.

Stasis Web - The real reason for the stasis web was human error - related to porting from one server to the other during testing. Affects the previous alloc patch which will be delayed one more day to insure it is working properly.

Security Certificate - Finally had secure certificate installed on the web servers

Sliding Doors on the test server - A new backup from TQ has been installed to the test server. Think of it as a "save game" you can play to test out something you haven't got the guts for in real life (on TQ). They call it Chaos

Continuous reseeding - Added various reseeding of NPC stuff. It's mentioned that some players are already 'playing' the reseeds. Once this is out, one less reason for scheduled downtime each and every day (If only we could see the future)

Concord deploys special ops - Just a word of warning to the ones that want to make a name for themselves in the world of EVE. Empire controlled space, means that the space is controlled by the empires. If the police are not cutting it against players riding an obviously imbalanced module combination, reinforcements will be called, be it special NPCs or GM controlled NPCs (special-ops).

This is obviously in relation to some player related incident where some players were Concordokkened by Devs in Concord Special Ops ships. Here's a great little video I found on the subject: CONCORDOKKEN'd.

Dev blog made special reference to "The Four"

Gate Guns added to the test server - Gate guns have been added to the test server that act similar to station guns that are currently running in-game. They don't preemptively strike but are only triggered by combat in the vicinity. The guns at the stations and at the gates will work together to strike if a player's standings are out of line and if that player gets in range of the guns. They were also considering making gate jumps go strictly from gate to gate.

Delicate Delegation - Security roles in corporate station offices. Changes were made to the corp offices you can rent at stations. Each office is in effect 7 containers, 5 based on security clearance and 2 special, one for market activity by the corp and one for factory activity. 5 roles have been added, Security Clearance 1-5.

As the clearance "levels" are basically roles, then having clearance 5 doesn't imply that you have clearance 1, each lower clearance has to be assigned. It was just a lot simpler for us to implement this will(sp) the existing role system as all UI and tracking options could be used.

The role of pilot has been removed as it is determined that it is useless in game as everyone is a pilot. This is available on test server.

Suggestions Request - for the the new boards. (They had just gained the ability to sticky posts, so some discussion on that ensues in forums - am now feeling old.)

Patch delayed one day - I was going to skip this entry but saw at the last minute that here is when the CSPA fee was added to communicating with a stranger. So communicating now with someone you don't know will cost you iskies.

Quick fix was applied to server and downtime delayed due to a CTD problem, normally I would have skipped this but there was a great example of game mechanics explained here and I would like to include it. Essentially at the end of it all, a slingshot effect was happening to players warping into specific NPC situations that cause the game to glitch and slingshot you back the way you were going before you changed directions.

~Excerpt:

EVE is a deterministic distributed simulation; the server maintains a master state, which it evolved periodically. When a client enters a solar system the server calculates the set of data needed for that client to be able to run its subset of the simulation. This is the union of the spheres of influence of the objects that "touch" the client. This can be referred to as the causality bubble of the client.

Given how sparse space is this has proven to be a good way to partition up the data needed for the client to make a true simulated evolution of the state.

Once the client has received the initial state, it evolves to create a believable illusion of space flight. The server only sends the client the state patches needed to represent external actions of the world.

Flying in an asteroid field while avoiding the asteroids and being orbited by an Angel Hijacker is no client-server interaction but as soon as a player in the same belt changes direction the client gets a small time stamped packet notifying it of it and the client re-evaluates the state. If a state update involving ones own ship arrives late, because of lag for example, the determinism is wrong and then you notice the "bungee effect" as some call it, in most cases the re-eval is not noticeable). This is what makes EVE use comparably little bandwidth and relatively immune to "Radar hacks" (where a hacker creates an interface, showing information, that is know to the client but not displayed in the game's normal user interface).

This makes EVE a bit voulnerable(sp) to something which could be called a "Jovian precognition unit" and if someone creates such a unit before the Jove do, we’ll salute you

'Allo 'allo: Eve gets some wine and cheese action - Completed press tour in France. Game will be released in France by the end of the month. Got excellent feedback and hopefully an enthusiastic French audience.

Safer bids - market related changes suggested.

~Excerpt:

Many of the market scams we have seen rely on the fact that someone that is making a bid doesn't need to have the funds to back it up. We used to have a large penalty for anyone caught doing that, but players complained about this. Now what I would like to see is to have the money actually put in a special frozen account while the bid is active. This would be symmetrical to the asks, where the stuff offered is also taken away from the seller's custody while the order is active. I realize that this limits the possibilities for risk taking that some traders might do (basically trading on margin), but overall I think most people do have the funds necessary when putting out orders.

NEXT: 2004 Dev Blogs

Mind on my Iskies and my Iskies on my mind.

An Early Morning in My New Home

As soon as I leave the station I notice that in my usually abandoned area of space there are 3 ships tooling around on scan. I immediately use my warp out as you never know who's cloaked above or below you and I jump out to my secret spot from there, carefully aligning myself as to not cross any major traffic points in the system.

I use my directional scanner and slowly rotate 360 degrees quickly making notes of anything interesting and getting a pretty good idea of where these pilots are loitering. Sitting there with them are a few warp bubbles and some ship carcasses that had the unfortunate luck of running right into this make shift gate camp. They are right out in the open which is how I like them. Visible.

I hate gate camps with a passion. I don't hate the fact that you can have a gate camp, during war this is a necessary tool. But to consign yourself to relentlessly smash on other pilots with your super quick locking time and linked up one shot ability must be more boring than ratting out the belts.

I prefer honorable duels, or fair fights to be honest, but this is the real world and that's not how it usually happens so you've got to be able to do what they do as well but better.

Over the course of the past two weeks I have integrated my corp. into this system somewhat under the nose of the locals and so far I haven't gotten any problem from anyone. I believe the fact that they already have a rather large alliance who has recently taken to dropping in the system and killing anything that moves has a big impact on their patrolling duties as of late.

Normally, I do avoid everyone around here so that I don't ruffle feathers or step on the wrong toes as I need to be here for a bit. We play our cat and mouse games daily, however when hot drop time comes, we all scatter. I like to hole up and spy as much of the activity as possible, hopefully to learn a tactic or two and also to help protect myself if I am ever in the middle of that hot mess.

All in all though, I'd have to say my new home system in null is about the perfect fit for me currently. Right at my level of experience and that is rare. There are so many places to blend into in Eve that it's hard a lot of the time to get the right feel for a place.

Before I took the plunge into the cold, dark immortal abyss I used to move around a lot for a mortal and I continue that even after knowing I will live forever.

I have successfully setup extraction units on all of the massively overburdened planets in the system. You would not believe how neglected the harvesting is here. No one seems interested at all, which I can understand, but there's usually at least one alliance or corp. member in a group that will do it. It's too much Isk just to leave lying around. Makes me shudder to think that it was all just sitting here waiting for me and my machines

The locals should really not have any problems with this over time as I always bring merchandise that's been created with these resources to sell locally first, intergalactic second.

My prices are reasonable and only reflect the price of the materials plus a modest set base markup that I use across the board barring a few exceptional items.

I am sitting here at my perch over-looking the camp at the gate. I make note of the pilots involved and also any pilot ship hulls I see floating wrecked around the gate in case I need to recruit help in the future on the fly. They pop the locals I take a note, they pop a stranger I write it down only if they are somewhat formidable and just got caught with their pants down at a gate which does happen to the best of us. The rest I just ignore as they shouldn't have been in this area of lawless apathy in the first place. Not unless they were just looking to die, which is fairly common around here.

Who's got the biggest blaster? We all do, it's just a matter of timing.

Don't Worry About my Ship, It Don't Hurt Much...

Mistake number one, thinking I had already set my points necessary to keep me "mostly" free of bubbles and moving along my merry way.

That's right, turns out there were no links to anything once I got into the null systems (about 10 low sec jumps in).

Now if we rewind just a bit, I spent almost the entire day Saturday setting up my "safe" spots and my out of warp vortex bookmarks.

I did a great job, took my time and actually placed them like I had the whole year to do it.

In doing so, I also spent the amount of time I like to slow boating around, getting the correct random distance and watching local for conversations and just generally learning as much as I could about the area I was travelling around in.

Well, somehow - using the old GPS - I managed to go the wrong way. That has never happened to me before I assure you ;), but somehow I ended up on the very route I was trying to avoid. By the time I had realized it it was way too late. In addition I committed a big no no by not taking a scout with me (as I had preciously scouted it out myself.)

However, I got to meet some new people, lost a ship and eventually ended up spending the rest of the first day setting spots on the really dangerous route. I won't be going that way too often, but at least I can if I have to now. I would have left and headed back to high sec to reconnect to my original route but unfortunately once you're in deep enough it's just makes more sense to work your way through to the end point.

In other news, I've got all my equipment in place for my first three planets and at this point they are just in collect mode as is the entire operation. I like to build up a small supply of my ingredients before I head off and start manufacturing, that way there will never be a lag in the chain.

Over the 6 characters I have mapped out where they will extract and what they will extract, who's in charge of production and who manages the factories. We are all ready to go as soon as some of the others finish up their training, also fits in with us just collecting at the moment.

I'll be honest, just by getting up all the extractors and selling what comes off of that, it's starting to look really close to my final number at the end of the production cycle and that makes me a little frustrated as I want to complete the chain but I definitely won't if it's not worth the amount of profit that I pull out of it later.

Too early to make a decision on that as I really need to see everything in action and spitting out final products, sell a bit and keep on or change it up.

No rush, it's a learning experience and I plan on sucking everything I can out of it.

Change is a Part of Life

Operations have shifted to a more lucrative area of space. It's a new experience for everyone and therefore everyone has thin nerves, a lack of sleep and high alert and all of those other things that mean nervous. It sure does shape the environment for an entertaining Friday night though, but the next day everyone's just a little closer to snapping.

Once I shake the last drop of resources out of the line from extractor to spaceport I take down the extractors and pack them away for new adventure. It makes for an interesting morning and for some reason, no fault of my own, I have an increased bounty amount on my head. My factories are still running until the last drop is used up, then those too will be packed away for use at another time.

I have a knack at setting down stakes in other peoples back yards and spending a month blending into the background, setting up ops and the like, making points to keep myself moving and it also helps when you're learning a new systems active hours. I never rape their resources except for planetary. If I'm not caught killing all their rats and running all their sites I usually do alright. Maybe one every once in a while when everybody is out of system.

However, I was done here, therefore I made a lot of noise and showed up on a lot of scans where I wouldn't normally. In addition it was a holiday weekend and most Capsuleers were milling about where there wouldn't be any. That's fine though, I like it when there's a lot of people around.

Time to disappear as I have been avoiding the two Loki's that seem to show up at all the Customs Offices on a regular cycle the whole time I've been breaking down ops. I roll right past them all and head out the high security exit. They have tried to cover all the exits but there is only two of them and I slip away fairly easily with no chase.

I'll miss these guys, the first week I was here I brought 5 Thorax with me and had some shoot out time with the locals for fun and then gave away two of them as I was passing through surveying. It made it easier as they weren't questioning my presence later in my stay as long as I sent someone out every once in a while to have a good fight and kept regular transactions going through their surprisingly cheap Customs Office.

The crew has added irritation as I have been assigning cross training to all of their skill cues over the past month. I have devised a much more productive and profitable manufacturing system and in order to implement it I need the help of up to 6 members of the company and to be honest, only 2 of them have PI experience and that would be me and the other founder.

Education

In this Universe, knowing is the catalyst in almost every situation. Good intelligence, great training and a little luck. Here is the list of required training I just dropped on the boys and they aren't too happy as none of it has to do with guns, ammo, speed or piloting and defense.

However, they've seen the spreadsheets and they know its' worth it, so not too much moaning and groaning to report.

Here's the new training regimen:

Character Training

• Cybernetics I: If they don't already have it, yes there are several new players so we are starting from scratch on some.

Pilot Training

• Industrial I: They hated this one the most - once they complete the regular training I will push them all through on flying blockade runners. I encourage them to take it to III once they have some free time then eventually the whole way. I believe once they start tooling around in the system on their manufacturing tasks they will be begging for a Viator. I also expect several fatalities.

Engineering

• Hull Upgrades II

• Jury Rigging III

• Astronautics Rigging I

Planetary Interaction

• Remote Sensing III
• Interplanetary Consolidation IV
• Planetology IV
• Command Center Upgrades IV
• Advanced Planetology IV

This is the extent of it, if they can finish this up then they will be able to manage the number of extractors and factories that are required for the role that they will individually fill in the manufacturing machine. The cogs that keep things moving.

Herding Kittens

You may be wondering why my new care bears would want to leave their high security home and venture into null to work as a manufacturer in a machine that ultimately will cause some tears but overall and long term it will produce freedom. I love freedom.

One of the first things I did was judge how much time would be involved for each member to get up to speed and compared that with how much time I believe they would need to wander the area and get acclimated; including the occasional roam with our resident FC.

This of course is to teach a few hard lessons quickly and also to help see who will stick around after their world is turned upside down.

I ultimately settled on a 3 day pattern for each member including myself because let's be honest, this is not something you'd classify as a fun activity. It's rather mundane and feels a little like boredom. So 2 days off then 30 minutes of work on the 3rd day then two days off. Easy as pi.

I made very clear the risks, but also the rewards, the ones they actually care about.

• You'll get killed a lot at first, but then you will improve - it's a good place to learn and there's no telling what you will be flying within the year.
• You will meet a lot of experienced players that have been around for a bit and you will also get to experience what it is like living in someone else's sovereign territory and how to act accordingly as a subject of a new kingdom and of course keep your freedom loving ideals alive inside.
• You will walk away with a career you can setup on your own if you are alone and you will be able to generate income without a lot of effort (the 3 day cycle) I also provided projections for the next 12 months - honestly this was all I needed.

Loss of Isk

The biggest thing that our management was concerned about was of course the loss of Isk while we transitioned from one area to the next.

In order to setup certain parts of the system I have to tear down the old parts that are still generating.

What I did in this case was to step the setup process to correlate with the newer players training so that we are constantly and consistently putting up extractors and factories over the course of 1 month. During that one month I will  be deactivating everything else that's dated from the old system.

The new manufacturing configuration involves 6 people and the old one only needed 1 person. Because of that alone, the income generated in the first week with minimal setup already surpasses old income estimates for the 1 person configuration by a factor of almost 3.

That was enough to calm down some of our more nervous members and get them attuned to the idea of moving. Of course everyone isn't moving but definitely the majority and the key manufacturers of course. We have offices in every major area of space, it's not like you have to go we can assign you anywhere really. But this is the bread and butter.

It's an expedition and should be approached as such and with that an embrace of the risk and the tears and the sweat that will be involved in clearing an area and staking a claim. This is high adventure people and I believe that they know that.

Engage

"How long before we get there Captain?"

"Soon ensign, soon. Before you know it you'll be prying at the edge of the known universe…"

Plans are underway and as of today with the removal of the first set of extractors from the old system, it's on. Later this afternoon and again at an undisclosed hour of the wee A.M we will setup up our first extractors in our new system, local support or not and we will begin.

These extractors will run, reprocess and store, then repeat until such time that we are ready to move the resources to the first stage of manufacturing. I can't wait :) Collect all the things!

Next…

My next entry will be dedicated to the sometimes comedic yet always scary culture shock involved with moving a few newbies into a hostile environment and training them on learning how to survive. Always entertaining.

Mission Complete

6:27 a.m. and we’re pulling up for our final docking on our way too early trade run. I had planned out an hour to pick up everything that our market analyst had purchased previously, and had to make some small adjustments to grab some merchandise that’s easier to find in low security space than anywhere else, worth it as it makes the margins magical.

 We got a little flak from locals in one of the trade hubs and took a few shots across the bow, but nothing this little beast can’t handle. Thank Spaghetti for such wonderful toys like the blockade runner. This doesn’t make you immune to dead, just makes it easier to avoid if you can pilot it correctly.

 I’m continuing my run on T3 subs for now, we are making bank off of these bad boys and in addition I have accumulated enough in my personal stock to build two different racial T3’s and only need about 5 days of training to get in both of them and be able to run all the goodies efficiently.

 That’s the one thing I didn’t grasp very well when I was first born, you may be able to fly a certain ship, but should you?

 It will be a somewhat uneventful day today, barring any mischievous endeavors tonight as it is Friday :) who knows where we will end up tonight? I'll be playing the 21st centry Earth game all day, I honestly don't know why I still subscribe when the real world and it's space ships and crazy mix of people are so much more interesting. Eh, once a gamer always a gamer...