Pod And Planet

Short post.  I am incredibly excited to find that my piece "Taking His Medicine" won Second Place in the Pod and Planet writing contest for 2013. Amazing.  The prize will be converted to ISK and shortly after that will be converted into destroyed ships.  Given my skill as demonstrated by my recent killboard, that might go pretty quickly really.

On an unrelated note, a shout out to Fintarue whose Twitch Stream I've enjoyed as well as his advice on the High Drag podcast.  I gave him a bounty to celebrate him getting plied with alcohol by Mrs. Fintarue on a recent 'cast and have been rewarded with notifications from 28 of his last explosions.  Last time I gave him a donation and a bounty.  To celebrate winning the Pod and Planet I think I'll have to do that again.  Go explode, Fintarue!

Poking my nose in - a quick trick for industry/traders

A short one on the industry/trading side.  There are all the little things that you discover on your own in New Eden.  This one is probably obvious for the vets.

So if you've done any industry/trading then you're probably already familiar with the trick of just jumping one system into a region so you can access the market to update your buy/sell orders.  As my T2 manufacturing has scaled up I've starting making runs to Jita rather than Dodixie for a mass buy that I then send back home using Push Industries.  Jita being what it is though you may prefer to not actually set foot in that particular den of villainy.   What I only realized for the first time last night is that I can fly my indy alt to the first system into The Forge, purchase everything I need, wait for the Assets window to update with the purchases, and then create a contract from the Assets window.   Several jumps and the Jita undock are thus avoided.

This also means that if/when I relocate my manufacturing base I'll definitely be looking at where I can touch the most number of regions with the fewest number of jumps.  Right now I technically have orders in three regions, but 90% of my revenue is from Sinq.

Oh and I can hear the voices saying "you buy mats from sell orders, you noob?"  Yes, I'm still capital constrained enough that I'm doing more of a JIT manufacturing process.  I will say that it is tempting for me to go to my main, sell that Vindi I won on SOMER, and ship 1B ISK over to the indy alt to make things go faster.  However, I do like the feeling that the icnreasing asset balance on the alt is an affirmation that I'm actually doing it right.  And besides, I'm not sure that I'm ready to acknowledge that I'm not going to want to fly that Vindi.

If you're starting up like me, do put some columns in your spreadsheet to compare your local market for materials to Jita.  For my situation I'm buying less than 20 different mats, and 4-5 of those will be cheaper locally than Jita.  Others will be as much as 20%+ cheaper in Jita.  A complete theoretical run I might make right now is 17% cheaper in Jita as a whole, which very quickly will cover the shipping charges.

Many vets or guides you may find will tell you to stick an alt in Jita to do this for you.  That's all fine if you have multiple accounts, but I have all three of my slots in my single account full and busy.  I'm starting to feel more confident that I can tell other newish people that they can make a go of T2 manufacturing with only one account and while keeping their main free for PVP.  I'm not down to the 30min a night or less yet with the profits of a Croda, but I'm getting there.

Killboards, Kiting, and umm... k-space industry.

Apparently this post is going to be about things that begin with K.  This may not be a surprise for some of my recent opponents who have reason to think my fitting and piloting skills are appropriate for Sesame Street (for non-US readers).

Killboards

Some pilots and corps may have an unhealthy focus on keeping their killboard green.  I'd like to think I'm avoiding that, since my recent killboard is more all-red than all green.  This has been a combination of trying to learn new things and trying to do those things in FW space that seems to have become much rougher lately.  I can't say that I've psychologically gotten away from any impact of doing nothing but losing ships lately though.

I do feel like the lowsec I've been playing in has changed, about from when TEST piled in to Caldari Faction War.  The Caldari/Gallente FW area seems to have picked up in the number of small gangs running around, and even the Amarr/Minmatar seems to be busier - perhaps because some were displaced from Cal/Gal?  Or is it just me.

There certainly have been times when it has been quiet.  I pulled in 120M or so of tags while looking about for fights, so that covers a couple fully-fit T1 cruiser losses.  Between that and some exploration in w-space that ended up with me trying to some nullsec ratting I have a positive security status again.  Maybe that will label me carebear enough that perhaps more people will engage so I can try more new things before they kill me.

Kiting

Speaking of new things. I've certainly heard plenty of people say "kiting is hard."  It's also the key behind the great videos you often see where people manage to take on superior numbers.  As someone who has grown up in Eve as a brawler it is a big transition.  I'm becoming familiar with all of the mistakes on the kiting side that I had been glad to take advantage of as a brawler.  I've swung myself too far away from target and lost long point, allowing them to escape in low armor.  I've landed too near a target and thus been unable to get up sufficient speed to get transversal and range up before they grab and melt me.

So other than getting more time to play and getting out there with more ships, I'll be looking about for more kiting resources.  If you're wondering about this to I'll recommend the Kiting Guide at Accidentally the Whole Frigate.  If anyone has other recommendations for kiting I'd be very interested.
Edit: This Stabber kiting guide was recently posted to G+ too.

Of course I wasn't trying out kiting in the frigate as he suggests, but in a cruiser because that's kinda my default hull right now.  A cruiser is also big enough that I can tag-rat if I can't find people.  Maybe I need to focus.  After my last loss 

Small Eve Side Note: The fellow who killed my Omen was HippoWhisperer, who also gave me my very first RVB 1v1 when I was a brand new Eve player.  Just like back then he was a great guy about it and gave me some advice on the way out.  But I noticed that it certainly didn't stop him from trying to lock my pod. So a big shout out to HippoWhisperer.

Side Side Note: I'm hoping that old killmail is wrong.  I remember that I didn't put rigs on back then (expensive!) but I would have at least filled in the midslots, right?

K-space Industry 

On the industrial side I feel like I'm finally getting some momentum.  That said, given the excellent new industrial blog "Manufacturing Confusion" I don't think I'll try to give any more general advice on industry here in this blog for a while.   There has been a rough path to getting up to a reasonable amount of operating capital.  I still have EveMon warning me that my alt has insufficient balance to cover all outstanding buy orders.   To some degree I'd be thrilled if my wallet bottomed out because suddenly all my buy orders were fulfilled - it would mean I have a lot of raw materials at a bargain price waiting for me.  I probably won't try moving ISK from the alt to my main until I have a substantial buffer than I don't zero out each time I get a pile of raw mats to set up the next set of runs.