So I started moving. Fortunately I realized you can pack a ship into an Iteron. At third skill level in an Iteron Mark III, I think only two frigates fit even with three cargo hold expanders. Maybe three? Can't quite remember. It took a few hours to move all the things to the chosen station. At least they were uneventful. Although I guess if I got ganked at that point I would grow less attached to ships.
Once everything was safely on board the station, I started to try things. Somewhat intermixed, but I will just describe each of them and the results as a whole.
One of the first things I tried was creating some Planetary Interaction bases. Only trained planetary management skills to three. Which limits options. Especially in highsec, where base resource concentrations are really low. And it turned out that noble metal prices were high because the levels of that were particularly low. Same with silicon. Which, by the way, even has in description that it is one of the more common substances in the universe, so why is it so rare?
Focused mostly on mining and processing materials to P1, because with fourth level command center an extractor with maximum number of heads, a launchpad and a few basic factories will use most of the power grid available. And a dedicated factory world would get eaten by taxes. Unless you skipped at least one, or even better, two fabrication levels, but then the amount of hauling necessary grows rapidly. Not really worth it. Although the taxes also mean that the low concentration mining is actually worth more than one would thing, because the margin partially compensates for a lower volume.
Lately I switched two planets to producing Transcranial Microcontrollers, mostly because I can, and for the lower volume. This is all hardly optimal, but for now I don't want to take time to rebuild it. One planet gets switched between fairly common Base Metals and Microorganisms every day, which fortunately doesn't require that much clicking, as long as the P0 resource is routed though a storage. They are processed through P1 to nanites, which I then transfer every week or so to a second barren planet, which combines Noble Metals mined there with imported Biofuels to create Biocells, and combine them with Nanites from the other planet. I am not entirely sure if that doesn't actually generate losses compared to selling the P1, but at least it looks cool. And other ISK sources overtook PI profits anyway.
And most ISK is really generated by the third planet in a neighbouring system, producing aforementioned Silicon. Planetary Felsic plasma levels are low, but fairly solid hotspots happen. Fourth planet is actually in a lowsec pocket and produces Semiconductors, again by rotating the extractor between Aqueous Liquids and Suspended Plasma.
Generally PI is fairly neat, even if it doesn't make a lot of ISK unless you also control the Customs Office. I though about writing a program to compute a fabrication chain with maximum profit possible including taxes, but have yet to find the time. Some basic numbercrunching gives me around 70k ISK per factory-hour, which isn't really all that much, especially considering the amount of hauling necessary for a pure factory world. Planet mining is nice in that it happens passively, so even if I don't have time to play EVE planetary goods accumulated as long as I have the time to reset extractors. And in highsec a launchpad can store the P1 output for around a week.
Trading. I tried it a little, but without being able to comfortably go into lowsec it is hard to find any good price differentials. I actually ran a route through lowsec, and it happened to be mostly empty. Something tells me the instant death in lowsec which the wikis talk about is somewhat overstated. The other problem was that hauling is somewhat boring, in some ways more that mining, since the autopilot is so much slower than clicking the jump destination that you need to touch the game every few minutes, and can't just read a book or something. Which is a good thing in some ways, because what is the point of playing the game without playing it? And trading by playing the market requires locking down a lot of ISK in stock and buy orders, which I didn't have early on and don't really have now.
Industry, thought about it, bough some blueprints to fabricate some ammo for myself, since it is a bit more convenient than searching for a market sell order nearby. Or maybe it is just the Minerals I Mine Are Free fallacy talking? Anyway, I checked the profit calculators and checked some of the numbers myself, and there is no point even starting without maximum production efficiency and a source of researched blueprints other than contract system, which is hardly reliable. And I have neither. Plenty of ISK for large mineral buy orders to capture the immediate miner market would help, too.
That did not stop me from building my own cruiser and battlecruiser. And Retriever. Not even sure why, I didn't mine most of those minerals, because that became rapidly boring. Not even sure why I trained Mining Barges. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Because well, mining. Mined a bit in a Venture. It is strange that a most boring and mostly risk free action actually makes most ISK. Well, market in action. Apparently industry in EVE is constrained by raw material supply right now. Maybe someday they will nerf highsec station industrial slots, and then… there will be massive inflation? Not sure where I am going with this. More recently I trained Mining Barges, build myself a Retriever, mined a single cargo hold worth of ore, and then… stopped. Maybe someday I will feel particularly meditative.
What made me the most ISK in these first six weeks was exploration. Or maybe it just feels like it, because the profit comes in big chunks? Anyway, it even feels somewhat sciency! And hopefully the upcoming expansion will improve it, right now the balance alone is not, well, balanced. And other issues that might make a post on their own. But, with being able to find a radar site reasonably often I made quite a lot of ISK to fuel other things. I even tried a bunch of times to explore a lowsec pocket nearby. One time a Drake warped in into a radar site I was clearing and targeted me, so I warped out. That was my closest encounter with spontaneous PVP EVE is famous for so far.
And of course, missions. I kept at doing mission for Federal Administration. Mission balance and rewards and stuff is a topic for another post as well. I got to level three missions after a few weeks. At a certain point I realized that shooting Navy ships will result in serious standing loss with owning faction, and decided I don't want that, so stopped doing those. And did two or so so called "storyline" missions for Caldari Business Tribunal. If Gallente and Caldari are at war, why are there stations for both in the same system? And not just some random civilian corporations, but government entities of both sides. Whatever the reason, they are there, which at least makes doing missions for them easier. I think I even have L3 access for both sides now.
Despite their problems the missions do involve spaceships shooting at each other, and I like spaceships. Also railguns. Speaking of spaceships, next time lets write about what I have been flying.
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