PCU Upswing - B-R5RB butterfly effect

I'll keep this short.  No, I'm not going to confuse PCU with subscriber count like some blogs seems to have.  But when I logged in Sunday afternoon I was surprised to see that over 55,000 users were logged in.  That seemed high to me, but then I don't usually log in on Sunday afternoon as much.  That's more of a family time normally.  But it wasn't just me, as Eve-Offline shows.  And it wasn't just a mash of Americans logging in to set their skill queues and industrial jobs before they head to Superbowl parties.

It does make me wonder if I'm reading Eve-Offline right.  If you open up the charts I've linked above, you can see that the "Past Month" chart breaks 45,000 basically every weekend.  But if you look at the "Past three months" chart, it doesn't break 45,000 until February 2nd.  I'm guessing that this is an artifact of the chart rendering - Chribba is sampling the underlying data and the peaks are a short enough span that the sampling is passing them over.  The "All Time" chart explicitly notes that it is a weekly average, so I'd guess there isn't averaging going on in the earlier ones.

I don't remember seeing the "Newborn player graphs" before, but it is pretty cool to see that spike that pretty much matches the news of B-R5BR hitting the mainstream press.


Does anyone know if Chribba has those available as downloadable data?

Speaking of which, last night's Superbowl score for a while looked like it might mirror the balance of Titan losses in B-R5RB.  Do Goons control the NFL? Coincidence or Conspiracy!

Update: I'm clearly behind here, since I didn't follow the CCP Twitch stream recently.  Check out this good blogosphere reaction: Hug a New Bro (Sand Cider and Spaceships).  I'm still curious about the oddness in the Eve-offline charts though.

Which CovOps is the best scanboat?

I'm wrapping up all of the faction frigate 5 skills, which meant that when I thought to myself "I should bring a scanning boat into the home system" then it meant I had options for the first time.  I have two Helios since I originally trained Gallente, and one Buzzard I won in a contest, but what would be the best covops for this job?

The Limitations: I do not have perfect skills in this area, so I'm looking for what ships are best for me.  However, I think these results will be equally good for over pilots too since nothing here hinges on the fact that all my Astro* skills are not at 5.

The Goal: I'm looking for the best ship to scan down sites, WHs, and ships in a lowsec system.  I want to do this while cloaked, not surprisingly.  I don't have cyno skills, so we're not looking at trying to mount that - but I'll get back to that.  Other than scanning bonuses, align time has a mild benefit.

Cheetah

The Cheetah is the worst of the CovOps ships for this purpose.  The Cheetah has the same slot layout as the Anathema, but the lower CPU capability means I need to put in a Co-Processor in to fit that extra Scan Pinpointing Array.  Without the third Nano, it is actually slower to align than the Anathema at 3.7s.

[Cheetah, Scanner]
Co-Processor II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Scan Acquisition Array II
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I

Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Anathema

I feel the Anathema would be the second worst for this mission.  With four mid slots I can get one of each of the scan upgrades, plus an additional Scan Pinpointing Array.  The nano-filled lowslots means that the align time has dropped to a snappy 3.5s.

[Anathema, Scanner]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Scan Acquisition Array II
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
[empty high slot]

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Buzzard

The Buzzard is a strong runner, but not the best.  Thanks to the Buzzard's a 3/5/2 slot layout, I can put an extra Scan Pinpointing and Scan Rangefinding Array.  That does mean I need a Co-Processor though, so only one Nano - and thus an align of 4.3s.

[Buzzard, Scanner]
Co-Processor II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Acquisition Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Helios

Barely edging out the Buzzard is the Helios.  The Helios as a 2/5/3 + drone layout.  This means I can get the extra Pinpointing and Rangefinding arrays, plus two Nanos after the Co-Processor.  Plus I have a last-ditch OMGWTF Hornet ECM drone - though I doubt I can get it on someone who has pointed me faster than they can pop me.  And the align time is down to 3.6 seconds.  Alternatively I could swap the Nanos for Warp Stabs and require someone to bring 3 points to stop me before I can align in 4.9 seconds.

As a sidenote: I'm rather happy to say that I couldn't figure out where the warp core stabs were in the EFT interface and had to search for them.  There's really no point to the T2 Warp Stab, is there?

[Helios, scanner]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Co-Processor II

Scan Acquisition Array II
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Hornet EC-300 x1

Bottom Line

So I guess I was lucky as a Gallente pilot - the Helios is the best CovOps for system scanning.  For other purposes - the Buzzard and Helios could forgo the extra scan arrays and put in a Data and Relic Analyzer if you're interested in such things.  If you are thinking of things Cyno, then the Anathema and Cheetah do have the advantage of having the third high slot to put a Covert Cynosural Field Generator in.

Oh and I just realized all this fittings list a Core Scanner Probe.  For this job of course I'd be using Sister's probes.

Skill Planning for 2014

Generally I've been pretty happy with how I've approached skills.  I remapped Int/Mem pretty early on for the character and burned through the core skills, while still having enough time to get into the ships and guns needed to learn my way around.  With 2014 coming, a new corp,  and the character older it's time to look at the plan.

Evolution of Skill Training

Previously I pushed my way up the skill tree in one faction (Gallente), primarily moving to Battleships for their L4 mission potential as an ISK generator.  Since my tolerance for red crosses is pretty low I don't expect to return there, though when my ISK runs low I may have to reconsider given how lucrative Incursions report to be.  Along the way I also focused on core skills to give myself a strong base, and in particular with a nod to the advice I'd been given that if I was going to fly an expensive large ship I should be able to fly it well.  Since my POV was Gallente I didn't develop any missile core skills, though I drove most turret support skills to 5.

As I moved away from missions I decided instead to branch out into the sub-Battlecruiser world, though still motivated from a Gallente point of view.  Assault Frigates, Recon, HACs, and T3 cruisers (primarily for wormhole use) allowed me to use my base skills in new ships.  As I developed these skills I started eyeing the other races.  It seemed a shame to have Recon and HACs and only fly the Gallente ships.  The best match seemed to be Amarr, since it had the armor tanking, turret, and drone skills in common, so I trained Amarr Cruiser to 5 to unlock those T2 cruisers.

The price point of the Recon, HAC, and T3 ships has kept me from flying them recklessly into danger as a solo pilot.  As I trained lasers I realized that the real skill needed wasn't character skill but pilot skill.  I knew how to brawl with blasters, but I hadn't learned how to kite.  I did have some fun with a kite Omen and 10MN Coercer, but realized I probably should learn with the frigates first.  I also kept hearing how Sugar Kyle loves her Jaguar and saw how that not having Minmatar Frigate 5 was keeping me from that ship.

So my training has evolved from a focused deep train into Gallente to a plan similarly focused, but along a different axis - focusing on flying all the (turret) frigate (and then cruiser) hulls at high levels of character skill to help me develop the pilot skill.  Branching across races also then opens up the pirate ships - probably just in time for them to get a balance pass.

I think this will also make me a more valuable member of my new corp - I will be able to jump into any frigate/cruiser and contribute, with the caveat of my own learning.  Since part of my core skills was making sure I could run T2 remote armor/shield repair and T2 ewar then I can get into that support role for any race.  Not T2 logi, since that's a separate long train, but if I find I like it and the corp has a use for it I can start the true Logistics path given that I'll have the basis of the cruiser 5 skills.

What would then be new for me in 2014

Focusing on the smaller hulls also means their T2 variants.  Assault Frigates I particularly look forward to flying more.  Interceptors are currently a big meta now and I can pick them up quickly.  The Ewar Frigates require Long Range Targeting 5 which isn't terrible efficient in my current Per/Will remap, but isn't that bad either (11 days).  Effective use of logi may mean I need to get my logi drone skills trained as well.

Opportunity Cost - so what did I give up by this choice of path

- I am not driving towards the T2 heavy drone and T2 sentries and their long trains, though I know this means I won't be able to use the very fashionable Ishtar to current meta.

- I am not going to be Incursion capable anytime soon, with only Gallente Battleship 4 and no other racial Battleship skills, and thus no Marauders.

- I am not going to be Wormhole ready for many corps who want to see shield battleships, Tengu/Loki perfect skills.  I do see some WH groups who say they want applicants to be in a capital or on path to one.  As we've seen recently, this applies to some nullsec entities too.

- Large weapons may or may not be off the path, depending on their use in Attack Battlecruisers.  Right now the meta seems to be swinging against the ABCs so I'm not considering that a huge loss.

The decision point will be when my next remap comes up.  I'm in Per/Will now - do I stick with that for a while and pick up all the missile skills, switch to Int/Mem to get some of those level 5 shield skills I skipped, or am I now far enough along that I'll need a compromise Int/Per remap to do both.  I figure I'm still a year away plus from wanting the Leadership and Links type skills.

Looking back on 2013, Flying into 2014

About a year ago I started this blog with the title "Eve Checklist" and the feeling that there was so much to do in eve that I needed a list.  Some of the things I listed as wanting to do back in the Introductions post in December 2012:

• More PvP (by which I think I intended to mean Faction Warfare) (DONE)
• More Industry (DONE)
• Wormholes (Partially Done)
• Pirating (by which I meant other PVP I guess) (DONE)
• See the sites (Eve Gate, etc) (I suppose I also meant sights) (Partially DONE)
• Have a POS (Not Done)
• Learn to FC (Partially Done)

I'm pretty happy with all that, and I think it's giving me a good outlook for 2014.  I'll take these somewhat backwards.

More Industry / POS - I've recently gotten my industrial alt to a point where it looks feasible to make some ISK, but she's still very capital constrained.  Hopefully by the time I exhausted have my GTC/Blink/Pod&Planet money I have this figured out.  But making a POS doesn't seem to be in the plans for right now.

Wormholes - I trained up for a Proteus and have flown it around in Wormholes.  I'll probably have a separate post on that at some point.  There was a sekrit mission I had there that failed.  The Proteus still hasn't seen combat, though I've had some failed cloaky ambushes.  In general I found wormholes to be remarkably empty feeling.

More PVP / Pirating - Now for many of you my "more PvP" is a pretty pitiful thing.  There are people who get more kills in a month than I did in all of 2013.  You can also see the nature of killboards pretty clearly in my month-by-months - when I was flying in fleets like the brief RvB/BNI War or in events like FrigFest I have a huge number of "kills" - by of course we all know that means I put at least a offensive module on someone who died.  In an hour of some of those fleet ops I might have dozens of "kills."  By contrast I can spend an entire evening (call it 2 hours) roaming and getting one fight that results in either a kill or loss.  But I have definitely found that the solo / small-gang experience is a lot more thrilling.  And sometimes the chases and traps that don't even result in a kill are a thrill too.  But I've written about that before.

Learn to FC - I've FC'd for a small group of friends running about, mostly in FW space.  This has mostly led to our ships being turned into wrecks, though at least sometimes there were other people exploding too.  Definitely something I'll be looking for in the future.

So I'd say that my expectation for 2014 is definitely more PVP focused than my 2013 was.  But I've also found that solo is very difficult, and I haven't been able to learn as much on my own and in casual conversations with people to learn as much as I'd like.  I also have really liked small gang work and haven't been able to do that much.  I like the idea of flying in a fleet just big enough to have some call for specialized ships such as ewar and logi.  I've even trained up for T1 logi and all ewar types, but haven't really had any chance to use that.  I want to change that.

To that end I've looked for a new corp and I'm glad to say I'm now a member of Rifterlings.  I'm hoping that will set the stage for my 2014.  In a separate post I'll talk about some goals for 2014.

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.