My apologies, away far longer than intended but now typing on a new laptop in any event. So much faster than my previous one, even though it’s only mid range – I’ve even got it on a home powerline network now, although Eve does seem to suffer socket losses more than it did. One thing I will say for Windows 8, the instant on thing is much better than waiting for the full start up sequence every time.

So, where was I. Having last written about the Flip, I’ve ironically now taken a different approach to evening out PI supply. I was doing this for supertensile plastics, but as I’ve increased my planet capacity by one I decided to go the full hog and make a couple more specialist planets that only produce P1. It means that the harder to mine resources can get a dedicated planet, while the more abundant get the task of P2 production whilst mining a more plentiful P1 and bringing in less of the other P1.

It’s working quite nicely, although it does involve a touch more hauling, but it does mean I’m not messing around with what the Extractor Control Units are doing on a regular basis. I’ve actually nearly got a fluid 1 billion ISK available, which would give me a nice chunk of resource to play with. I don’t own a freighter at the moment, but I could think about trading at some point.

I’ve also been working up my secondary alt for armour tanking. One of the reasons I created him, and a corp, was so that I wouldn’t be subject to large corp/alliance wardecs, but also because not being on comms I can’t really comply with large corp nullsec requirements. So once in a while, when I have a jump clone ready, I’m going to take this guy into null and see what happens.

My weapon of choice is going to be an Arbitrator. I’ve never armour tanked before, I have to admit, but whilst I will primarily do PVE when I have the chance I’m intending to use tracking disruptors and remote sensor dampeners to give myself chance to control combat encounters such that I could buy myself time to run if I chose to. I seriously doubt I’ll ever get chance time wise, but since the Arbi is just a cruiser it wouldn’t be a massive loss and I might be able to rat with a degree of security if nothing else.

I know industry has changed a lot since I was last on in earnest, and I haven’t really investigated the changes, but I’ll read up on them at some point and try and contribute some views. I was pleased to hear the slot system was going for research, I often had to wait a couple of months just to do basic manufacturing efficiency jobs.

While I think about it, a reminder to check your main character sheet and skills every now and again – I tripped across some spare unallocated skill points, God knows how long they’d been sat there as I tend to jump straight to the queue. Also, if you have research agents, do visit them from time to time. I hadn’t done the rounds for a while and netted myself 50 million plus for the sake of a few trips.

Now, in my last blog I mentioned a little something I’d noticed. Mathematical quirk. I set my PI cycles to 8 days 8 hours, because at that point they switch to a 4 hour cycle. It means resources get chewed through reasonably well in between cycles. Now, 8*24 + 8 = 200 hours of activity. If you consider that each basic processor takes 6000 units every hour, that means a total of 1,200,000 units can get processed in 8 days and 8 hours. For me, that’s pretty much spot on what a single Extractor Control Unit will bring in for that period for reasonably plentiful resources. So the P0 storage will be more or less cleaned out by the time I come to reset the cycles. Nice and tidy, and it prevents resources being lost through storage becoming exceeded. PI isn’t kind like that.

I’ll try not to be so long in between posts next time. I might even have ventured forth into null next time, although I’ll have to grind standing for jump clones with the relevant character. Sigh. Fly safe.

So.  Good news.  I completed the new PI setup to my satisfaction, and I can now turn out twice the number of Recursive Computing Modules and a P3 on one production planet, so everything’s centralised.  Using mainly P2s as the inputs, a Mammoth can happily dump the vast majority of P2s needed into the production planet in one visit, and away it goes.  Shiny.  This is a hi-sec production point, which has turned out to be a very fortunate thing, because…

Bad news.  Some of my main’s planets were in a lo-sec system.  Historically, apart from a few annoying individuals, this wasn’t a problem and my faithful Prowler aka Roadrunner had carried out many, many uneventful collection and delivery runs into the system.  Unfortunately, my main’s corp has had its POCOs in the system wiped out and replaced by ones under new ownership, which I knew was a possibility from recent events.

As it turned out, the new owners aren’t so keen on outsiders using their POCOs (odd, given they would make more money from them, but I don’t think they’re really an industrial Alliance).  So whilst I thought I’d spotted a ship as I came up to one of the new POCOs, I sort of shrugged as I was under cloak.  My mistake.  I took a second too long getting my cargo aboard – proximity to the structure meant I had inevitably decloaked.  Two stealth bombers decloaked and locked me up pretty rapidly, and they had a Dominix and Oracle on fire support.  Scratch one Prowler.  Good news was, I got my pod out in one piece – so no new medical clone required, and no new implants required.  Could have been worse, and I could have sworn my MWD had gotten me far enough out of range to go to warp.  But anyway.  Could have been lag, my rather old laptop struggling, whatever.

Long story short, having looked at the system’s kills for the past few days it’s immediately apparent that these guys are not letting anyone come to play in “their” system.  They’ve locked it down.  So that’s put paid to my lo-sec PI planets.  However, it’s also an opportunity for me to consolidate my PI in hi-sec, which is far less exciting, but far safer, of course.  Fine.  It means I will gather a little less, certainly, but it won’t be too difficult to replicate my original plan, touch wood.

Lessons learned?  Just because you thought a lo-sec system seemed quiet last time you were in it, don’t assume it will be next time, no matter how many visits you’ve made in the past.  Stay cloaked if you can, assess local, think about your best course of action.  Habit probably killed my ship yesterday as much as anything else.  Still, not to worry.  Life goes on.  Some payback would be nice, but I’m not a PvPer and these guys are clearly very good at what they do, so…  Fly safe.  Safer than me, at least!