Phoebe: Hitting this out one of the park

The dev blog on the full changes coming in Phoebe was just released, and I got to say, it hits it out of the freaking park. It's not just the quality of changes, but the quantity as well--approaching or even surpassing, I would say, some of the full "expansions" EVE has had. Dev blogs on many of the changes haven't even been released yet, including multi-sell ability, rebalancing of exploration rewards and the addition of null sec data/relic sites to class 1-3 wormholes, and some much needed removal on restricts with trial accounts...like trail account players being allowed into faction war, a change I've been suggesting for a while now. In addition, the invention changes are coming, which I am hugely excited about, having recently gotten into industry and invention.

I was planning on doing a sort of review of the new "release cycle" after Phoebe, particularly looking at whether the release cycle would bring more changes to the game than expansions, or less. I am a big fan of Hyperion and Oceanus, but I was getting worried about the long-term sustainability of such releases. Phoebe, however, puts those concerns to rest: If you look at all the changes in the past three releases with Phoebe included, there should be no doubt that Hyperion+Oceanus+Phoebe significantly surpasses the amount of content we would have seen in the usual winter expansion (which would be released roughly around the time Phoebe is coming). Plus, much of the content has already been iterated on and looks to keep getting iterated on--something that, with an expansion cycle, we wouldn't have seen until the following point release a few months after the winter expansion, and maybe not even then given that CCP has a history of releasing content and simply moving on.

What we haven't seen a lot of, though, is ship rebalancing, but this is partly explained by the new module rebalance work (which I am also a huge fan of thus far) and the big null sec project. However, with the current "research" event going on, and the comment at the start of the dev blog that "And this is not even everything, we have a few more things that are likely to make it in," there's hope that we might still see either a T3 rebalance, or the introduction of new T3 ships or modules (and the latter would still suggest that a T3 rebalance was approaching). The nerf to bombers on the test server also suggests that a broader bomber rebalance is coming.

Phoebe Madness

As reported on here, here, and here, a huge amount of changes are coming in Phoebe. The ability to now see bookmarks in space, including on grid, is mind blowing. It changes scouting, it changes solo and small gang PVP, it changes FCing, and it makes having good bookmarks such as tactical bookmarks all the more important. What's maybe even better, you can now open the save location tab with a hotkey...and as someone who has made a few thousand bookmarks in EVE, at least, this is a change I've wanted for years. Oh, and a multi-sell ability? Insane. Annnd, the skill queue is now unlimited. Phoebe is easily the best of the releases in the new release cycle.

Some players complain about the past two years of EVE's "quality of life" changes...These "mere" quality of life changes are some of the best things to happen to EVE since I've started playing, though, and I'll gladly take dozens more releases which only contained such improvements.

I am a huge fan of the jump distance changes, especially after the most recent tweaks. The latest update to the jump distance change should help logistics crews, as JFs will have a 10ly range instead of a mere 5. Still, while the actual impact of these changes are hard to predict, they certainly make the universe a lot bigger (except, maybe, for wormhole residents...who will now become some of the most mobile groups in EVE). The distant edges of null sec are about to get more remote than anywhere else in game, perhaps including many wormhole systems. Even FW war zones get a lot bigger. Interestingly, some areas of low sec will become incredibly isolated from capitals. As an example, take Saminer, for instance. Though only 8 jumps from Amarr, with a 5ly jump distance, only 3 (!) other low sec systems can reach Saminer:

Getting a JF here will be no major issue: Travel from Amarr two jumps away to Tash-Murkon and with max skills you are at this low sec pocket in one jump. However, getting other capitals here becomes much more of a hassle. The only jump route into the pocket will be via Gyerzen, which opens up to many more nearby jump options. Black ops ships are getting a max jump range of 8ly, which might be enough to preserve their niche. A large "dickstar" POS in a LS system like this starts to become a hugely unattractive target.

The point is, the jump distance and fatigue changes do not just make space bigger for null sec, they make it bigger for low sec as well. While industry in low sec is still mostly a joke, the changes make it significantly safer for low sec groups to "occupy" remote parts of LS, such as systems like Saminer. Many LS groups and individuals--myself included--have gotten used to doing most logistics via wormholes, often using either low sec to high sec wormholes or low sec to low-sec-bordering-high-sec wormholes. Becoming even more cut-off from capitals, though, means that geography significantly starts to matter. Hopefully these changes will mean more people in space, more people taking gates, and more people taking risks they wouldn't have taken when capitals from the other side of the universe could pop on top of you at any point, short of an empty system besides yourself.

4 Months of Casual Exploration - Some Statistics

Way back at the start of 2013, I got really interested in exploration. As I posted about here, and here, I moved to an isolated area of low sec on a second character and lived as a hermit there, avoiding PVP—a strange experience since I otherwise play EVE largely for the PVP. I posted about my isk earnings over the period before Odyssey, as well as the period after until I finally moved out of low sec to take up trading full time.

Since leaving my home in low sec, however, I have not stopped doing exploration. Instead, since roughly the release of Kronos, I've been doing mostly “casual” exploration in high and low sec, or exploration as a side activity as part of something else.

Typically, what happens is that I foresee I won't have much time to play over the next few days, so I jump Sven into a +5 clone. I do get the random 15-30 minutes to play EVE here and there, so I take this time to explore new systems as part of my completionist goal of visiting every system in the game (currently, I am exploring in blood raider space, around Kador etc., hence the high number of BR sites below). While visiting, I scan the sites and run some of the better combat ones. I've continued to track my earnings, and, looking back, what I am surprised about is just how much isk you can make doing completely casual high sec exploration in spurts of 15-45 minutes of play time, scanning only 1-3 systems per play session.

Here, then, is my general earnings after 4 months (June, July, August, and September) of casual, mostly high sec exploration (prices are taken from the value of the loot when found based on buy order prices from Jita, so the prices are lower than they would be if all the items were sold on sell orders):

Sansha Lookout 2 escalations – 1m, 50m

Sansha 3/10 1 – 105m

Sansha 4/10 1 - 95m
Guristas 3/10 1 -10m
Guristas 4/10 2 - 90m, 90m

Serpentis 1/10 3 – 17m, 1m,

Serpentis 2/10 4 – 1m, 2m, 2m, 3m,

Serpentis 3/10 2 – 125m,

Serpentis 4/10 2 – 65m, 17m,

Serpentis 5/10 1 – 250m

Blood Vigil 1 - 15m
Blood Raider 1/10 2 – 25m, 45m (1,009)
Blood Raider 3/10 20 - 2m, 30m, 4m, 17m, 2m, 25m, 2m, 50m, 90m, 50m, 2m, 3m,

60m, 140m, 3m, 35m, 1m, 1m, 95m, 5m (617m total / 30 av)
Blood Raider 4/10 16 – 1m, 13m, 4m, 150m, 3m, 150m, 3m, 160m, 25m, 150m, 8m, 15m, 12m, 90m, 19m, 1m (804m total / 50m av) 

High Sec Ghost 1 - 40m,

Mordu Rats: 2 (cruisers) - 700m, 500m
Clone Soldiers 25+ - 200m
Besieged Covert Facilities 17 - 1b / (58m av)
Data 5 – 16m, 0, 0, 10m, 8m

Totals: 4b 900m from June 4- Oct 4

A few things are noteworthy about these numbers:

1) Over half of the isk came from low sec exploration—specifically, the two occasions I stumbled across a Mordu (cruiser) rat, 17 besieged covert sites I ran totaling 1b and averaging around 58-60m per site, as well as the clone soldiers and single 5/10 I ran. These sites were run primarily in June and July.

2) Most of the other sites—including almost all of the 3/10 and 4/10 DED sites--were found in high sec as noted above, and found during play sessions of 15-45 minutes. The most common site I find and run are the 3/10 and 4/10 DED sites, which have averaged around 30m and 50m per site respectively. However, the 4/10 can be run in under 10 minutes, while the 3/10 takes substantially longer due to the huge amount of frigates—this site can be run virtually on autopilot, though, and by newer players in almost any ship, including t1 frigates like tristans. These sites were run primarily in August and September, meaning that casual high sec exploration consistently brings in over1-1.5b a month for me. 

3) So far as my experience of doing exploration for the past 2 years goes, I think that right now is the best time for exploration in EVE since at least over 2 years ago. Why? A few reasons: First, when less people are playing EVE, it is simply easier to find sites. Second, exploration has been revamped but is also "old news" in a way--it is not in the spotlight as much, since the recent expansions/releases have been focusing elsewhere. As a result, I am at least personally experiences far less competition for sites than I ever have, in high as well as low sec. Third and partly as a result of less people doing exploration, demand for deadspace modules has gone up, first because of the revamp to pirate class ships (where deadspace mods are often the norm), and second because of the introduction of burner missions, where deadspace mods (particularly small size mods like small armor reps) again make a lot of sense. For example, since burner missions were released, almost all of the small deadspace armor repair modules doubled in price and have nearly maintained those prices since then. An increase of supply with a decrease of demand means that prices likely go up, and that's what we've seen happen. As a result, a drop in a blood raider 3/10 with a small armor rep used to net around 25m isk, but now nets around 40-50m, and the case is the same for many other sites/drops. 

 So, the take home message here is that right now is probably the best time in 2 years to do high and low sec exploration in EVE. Less competition, better prices, lots of capable ships, all combine to make casual exploration in EVE better than I can ever remember it being. 

Suck It, Cap Pilots

For all the times I've had capitals dropped on me while trying to ~solo~, suck it

For all the times a local low-sec brawl was ruined by a null sec coalition (read, PL), suck it

For the mere existence of renters, suck it

For the mere existence of coalitions, suck it

It's a great time to play EVE as a solo PVPer. In fact, the last three years have been pretty good to be a non-cap-owning solo PVPer.

Ten Things You Can Do With a One Month Alt

Way back in the 2013 release of Odyssey CCP introduced the ability to train two (and later three) characters on one account using PLEX. At the time, I thought it was a nice addition but the sheer significance of this change went over my head.

Then it short of clicked—this is an amazing change. Game-changing, in some ways (e.g., in the amount of alt accounts that have likely closed as a result of this change). Now you can train a month's worth of skills on a second or third character slot and then have that character as long as you have that account, with no added subscription fees--a pretty daring move by CCP if you think about it. What, though, can you do with a “one month alt,” in other words a second or third character on an account that has just one month of skill training? (Besides a mining alt, which I don't even bother featuring here.) It turns out, you can do a huge amount with these types of characters, not the least of which is make a bunch of isk as well as PVP in a variety of ways. So, here's my list of ten things you can do with a one month alt (and, obviously, since a one month alt is useful, a fortiori an alt with more than a month of training is even more useful—some of my alts started as one month alts and eventually branched into other uses featured here, for instance):

I) The Market Trader Alt

Use: A market trader alt is easily one of the best possible uses of a single month of skill training on another character. With a range of 125-225 orders (and an initial investment of isk for the market) you can very easily make well over 800m isk per month, paying for the character's PLEX in no time. This sort of character can set up a market like the one I describe in my tutorial for trading—in fact, my first use for the one month character training was to have a trader for my most distant hub, allowing up to update orders there simply by logging in. Of course, this character can also station trade in a system like Jita etc.

Skills: A character devoted to market trading needs only a small set of skills to function effectively. In a little over two weeks, you can have a character that has 125 market slots by training up to wholesale IV, and that includes accounting and broker relations to IV. For the rest of the month's training, you can just about squeeze in wholesale V and then tycoon to III to increase your orders up by roughly 100.

II) The PI Alt

Use: Very straightforwardly, one uses a PI alt simply to run a colony. One account nets three possible characters that can be running PI, which, in low sec or below, can easily make over 500m a month altogether (in null or wormholes, far more). A single character doing PI is still worthwhile as a source of stable extra income for many players.

Skills: Prior to the ability to train skills on a second or third character at the same time as the main character, players had to pause training on their main for one month or more. This prohibited many players from setting up things like an army of PI alts. A one month character can reach 6 colonies plus enough other PI skills to set up colonies as effectively as is needed. There should be a week or two extra left, so this character can also add other skills, such as for T1 industrial ships or market skills.

III) The Hauler Alt: Transport Ship Version

Use: Having an alt that can fly cloaky blockade runners is incredibly helpful. Before my second character could fly one, I had loot scattered around low sec in dozens of systems from PVP and exploration, but no safe way of retrieving it. With a blockade runner, I was able to collect it all, as well as transport small goods safely to wherever I was stationed in low (in a pinch, you can also use the blockade runner as a scout for another character). With the updates to deep space transports, this skill also gives you the ability to haul relatively large amounts with a decent tank, in the range of 6 packaged cruisers or 24 packaged frigates or one packaged battleship—perfect for a PVP supply etc.

Skills: The skill plans become a little tighter with the following characters, but the useful far increases. With a well-chosen remap and skill implants you can just about fit a race of transport ships into a one month training, but it is hard to fit in many other needed skills as well like cloaking, evasive maneuvering, and so on. This character is probably best suited as a “two month alt” but the usefulness is huge.

IV) The Hauler Alt: Orca Version

Use: An orca is a cost-effective and versatile solution to hauling needs. The decently sized fleet and cargo bays allow for a bunch of packaged ships and many more modules, and the decently sized ship maintenance bay is incredibly useful for transporting fitted ships. One of the first things I did with a second character was get into an orca so I could haul around Sven's stock of fitted frigates. Of course, an orca is also good for mining boosts, but it is an under-appreciated hauler.

Skills: It only takes around two weeks to get into an orca, leaving plenty of time for improving skills which help it fit more, align faster, and so on.

V) The Hauler Alt: Freighter Version

Use: Obviously, freighters are useful, though for almost all of my hauling I would rather use an orca, DST, or blockade runner. However, having an alt that is used simply as a freighter opens up many more possibilities in addition to being pretty convenient.

Skills: You can just barely get into a freighter with a month of training, but without much time for other skills many of which would be nice to have. Ideally, a second month of training is most effective, especially since the upfront investment of the freighter is so much isk anyway, but one month is still doable.

VI) The Exploration/Scanner Alt

Use: Exploration need not be skill intensive to be effective or enjoyable. In one month you can theoretically fly a covert ops frigate, but not effectively. Instead, specialize in a tech 1 exploration frigate with high skills for data and relic sites and you can do null sec relic and data sites with decent success. This null sec data and relic site runner needs only a month of skills to be efficient and make a ton of isk for newer players. If you've seen JonnyPew's recent videos, doing just these sites in null can net a decent amount of isk. This alt can also aid in scanning, which has lots of potential uses even on a player that has only a single account, scanning down signatures or potential targets and then logging back into the main character.

Skills: I would specialize in a tech 1 exploration frigate, getting the relevant skills for data and relic sites as well as basic scanning as high as possible. Adding in a few skills for agility, one month is just enough for a good exploration alt.

VII) The PVP Alt

Use: PVP alt in one month, you say? Absolutely, and chances are you can make an effective alt that can provide a huge amount of fun whenever you log in. My main tip would be to get an alt for Red Versus Blue, where it is easy to acquire ships since it is high sec near Jita, and where low skills are no barrier to having a lot of fun (e.g., open fleets are almost always up). The skills are almost irrelevant, since you can fly in tech 1 frigates with tech 1 or civilian modules in RVB if you so wanted. An added benefit is that in RVB if your fleet wins the field you can freely loot, and if you are flying tech 1 fitted ships you can easily make a profit or at least replace your losses, particularly useful for a newer player.

Skills: Skills are entirely up to you. Haven't ever flown laser ships? Make a one month Amarr frigate and destroyer alt. You can even get up to cruisers with tech 2 weapons, though without room for much else. Extremely tanky ships like maller are popular in RVB, and easily obtainable in a month.

VIII) The Gank Alt

Use: A character that can fly ships like an arty thrasher, high DPS catalyst, or arty can function as a devoted alt for ganking even with minimal skills. Arty thrashers are often used to suicide on pods, shuttles, or T1 frigates in high sec. Catalysts are obviously the ship of choice for ganking miners, and arty tornados are among the popular ships for ganking T1 haulers.

Skills: One month is more than enough time for any of the three most popular ganking ships (and enough for a combination of them depending on how many support and fitting skills you also want). In a month of training it is quite possible to be able to fly a catalyst with tech 2 blasters and an arty thrasher capable of popping pops, along with power grid skills to help with fittings. What ends up being more of a barrier to the one month gank alt is not the skill training, but security status. Recycling alts for the purpose of ganking is against the rules, so one your sec status drops “into the red” you will either have to use security tags to get it back up, or—what's common in groups like CODE.--plan ganks around the limited time you have to avoid high sec police (not CONCORD, who comes when you initiate a gank, but the regular police ships that eventually shoot those with low sec status and enemies of the respective faction). The latter involves warping from gate to gate looking for pods or other easy targets, or using an alt to plan the gank so the DPS character only needs a few seconds in space.

IX) The POS Bashing Alt

Use: Many players at some point have reason to engage in a POS (or customs office) bash, and sometimes in high sec or without the use of dreads. Either to avoid having to use a main character or as an alt on an alt account alongside one's main character, POS bashing characters only really need a month of training to add substantial DPS. A single 900 DPS ship will take roughly 5-6 hours to destroy a small tower in high sec (as I recently learned...) while having a second, hands-free character can effectively cut this time in half.

Skills: The most common route for the POS bashing character is to specialize solely in the Oracle with meta 4 mega pulse lasers, tech 2 heat sinks, DPS rigs, and enough cap rechargers to make it cap stable, bringing it to the range of 700-800 DPS and for a price of less than 100m—easily obtainable in one month of skill training. The only question is just how much DPS you can maximize out of one month out training alone, but anything above 600 will provide more (sustained) DPS than a bomber and knock substantial time off a POS bash.

X) Miscellaneous Storage, Scout and Slot Alt

Use: This alt does not have a single role but does a bunch of things I find well worth the single PLEX for some skills. I've started using an all purpose alt for scouting, storage, and industry slots lately. This alt will have a corporation, a small POS, and has science skills up high enough to do long-term research on blueprints. I also trained jump clone skills up as high as I could in one month, giving this character something like 7 jump clones. I spread them throughout areas in low/null where I sometimes need a scout (e.g., high sec to low sec jumps that are often camped).

Skills: Entirely based on needs—for me, I needed jump clone skills for scouting and science skills for blueprint research.

The list goes on, and I've probably missed a bunch of great one month alts, but those are the ten alts I have found the most useful and profitable. What's next for CCP? It might not be on their radar, but being able to buy extra character slots would help both their finances as well as the usefulness of PLEX for skill training. Maybe someday players will be able to buy a 4^th or 5^th character slot, with the ability to train skills on those 4^th or 5^th characters with PLEX. This likely wouldn't result in more alt accounts being closed, but would likely result in some added slots (say, for a few PLEX) and PLEX for skill training.

Burner missions – Economic Impact?

Amidst Hyperion's fairly rocky release (including, for some players, the loss of all their UI presets), many players are attempting their first burner mission. I tested a bunch before release, but have not yet had to time to run them “for real.” I am currently more interested in what, if any, economic impact burner missions will have. The first thing I did was jot down the tech 2/pirate/navy losses in two NPC corporations over the first 24 hours after these missions were released, just to get an idea of how frequently they were being run and what ships people were losing...

Perkone

Hawk

Hawk (140m)

Cruor

Vengeance (75m)

Daredevil

Manticore

Daredevil

Daredevil (180m)

Caldari Provisions

Cruor

Hawk

Comet

Enyo

Hawk

Manticore

Astero

Hawk

Hawk

Hawk

Hookbill

Wolf

Hawk

Kitsune

Hawk

Manticore

Hawk

Jaguar

Hawk

Manticore

One notable and somewhat funny loss from another NPC corp was a condor worth 56m. The bulk of its price was a single Dread Guristas Light Missile Launcher in its high slot (one other other high slot was filled with a salvager). The missile launcher dropped, so the pilot returned to the mission complex in a rookie ship in an attempt to loot the item. The pilot looted the missile launcher, but was then killed by the burner, at which point the launcher was lost. Burners, it would seem, are a fantastic troll.

But then CCP Fozzie graced the datajunkies by noting on twitter how many player ships were lost toburners on release day: On day one, 207 Burner NPCs died, but they killed 1563 capsuleer ships.” 6.2 kills per burner, improving the text day to 7.55 says another tweet.

Has the market been affected by these losses? The relevant tech 2 market has stayed fairly stable, in spite of ships like the Hawk being popular for burner missions. The daredevil is the only ship that is noticeably up, sitting around the high-90m isk in Jita as of 8/29. The Worm is high but has been since the summer buff.

However, the relevant deadspace module markets have spiked—either because of manipulation or demand but likely both. Small armor repairers in particular have skyrocketed, with most items doubling in sell price in Jita and remaining fairly stable. Buy orders are slowly acquiescing to the higher prices so if the spike is manipulation the parties are apparently dedicated.

If the price of daredevils and various deadspace modules like SARs stays high, this in turns benefits explorers doing 1/10-3/10 DED sites, which are often new players. It's a good time to run some lower-end DED sites in serpentis and guristas space particularly. I ran a blood raider 1/10 for kicks the other night, and got a C-type SAR. That armor rep is usually 20m, but currently up 15m in buy orders and, if I managed to sell it, currently running at around 100m in Jita sell orders with very limited stock.

It is no secret that EVE has a lack of isk sinks for many play styles, leading some mission runners, for instance, to amass enough wealth to fly mission ships worth tens of billions of isk. Risk/reward does not scale well at many levels of EVE gameplay. What's distinctive about burner missions is that they create a sort of risk of loss that otherwise didn't exist in the game—an isk sink that targets mission runners specifically, does not involve PVP, and can fairly reliably result in the loss of ships. It also introduces a new sink for pirate and tech 2 frigates as well as the respective deadspace modules, one that again did not previously exist.

Dotlan reports that in July of 2014, for instance, around 313,00 player ships were lost in high sec. It's likely that the number of players running burner missions will drop significantly over the next few weeks as novelty wears off, and it's likely that those who do continue to run them will do so because they have found fairly reliable ways of winning the mission (enough to at least break even on isk). So, in terms of the long-term economic impact, burner missions are not likely to be a massive market force. However, any new content that has a large amount of risk of loss is welcome in EVE in my opinion and I count this as a step in the right direction for CCP, even if the missions leave a bit to be desired. 

Testing Burner Missions

Burner missions are coming with Hyperion and they are on Sisi with only a few days for testing—time for tweaks and fixing the bugs but likely close to the final form. That doesn't leave much time for even bug testing, so if you have any interest in these missions it would be worth logging onto the test server,  trying them out, and leaving feedback. A feedback thread started here, where I posted some first impressions. After running more of these missions and reading more feedback my impression has stayed pretty much the same: 

First, they can be easy with the right fit, and second, no, they are not at all like frigate PVP and players aren't going to learn much about PVP fitting from them. It already appears that efficient fittings for these missions are going to be what I would call “cheese” fittings, quirky fits that counter each specific burner but mostly useless in any other context. The types of frigates that will be able to run these sites is fairly limited, insofar as you need far more DPS than almost any frigate can match (in fact, thus far it seems the worm in various fits is by far the best frigate for running all 5--a nice potential investment at the moment, perhaps). Giving up on the idea that they are going to help players learn to fit for PVP or somehow simulate frigate PVP, they look to nonetheless be quite fun.