Saturday, 14 December 2024

Issues in Ikuchi

 So today I've learned of the perils of doing industry out of public upwell structures. Pretty much since the beginning of my industry journey I've been operating out of a Raitaru in Ikuchi, one jump from Jita. This has the advantages of Raitaru bonuses, so 1% ME on everything essentially, as well as taking advantage of the lower cost index of the system (~6%) and a generous 0% tax from the owner.

This afternoon I logged in and all was well. I set off a few jobs, did a quick run to and from Jita, then logged off.

This evening though when I logged in and checked the industry window it looked like this:


Thinking this was a weird graphical glitch or something I logged out and in, but presented with the same thing. Odd. I noticed my EVE Mail blinking and found I had one telling me my corp jobs were paused. I thought maybe the structure is being reinforced, so I tried to undock and check, and was presented with this:


I promptly cancelled out of this as I don't want to be separated from my assets. I thought it was pretty unlikely that the owner of a public structure has taken against me personally, so I checked the corp for the CEO to ping him a message, maybe he was taking the structures down? being extorted out of business?

After a bit of digging I noticed that the founder of the owning corp left 44 days ago, and transferred ownership to another character (interestingly, a former Horde member). I sent him an EVE Mail asking about the status of the structure though I'm not expecting a response. I wonder if this is a malicious takedown? not entirely sure but it looks suspicious.

I also logged in my Jita trade alt and *gasp* undocked! to go see what was up. I had to D-scan the structure to warp to it as it's stopped showing up on overview, but when I did warp to it I was presented with this:



Now it could just be that the new owned has forgotten to refuel it, but I doubt it. I suspect my days operating out of this structure are over. This presents 2 major questions. The first being what happens to all my stuff? From my research it seems I can stop my jobs, in which case I lose my materials and ISK but keep the BP (ouch) though I only have 4 production runs going currently so this could be worse. If the structure gets taken down everything ends up in asset safety and I have to pay money to get it back.

The second is where do I go next? I could operate out of Jita itself. I'd have to deal with the monstrous ~20% system cost index. 
I could move to the other public raitaru in Ikuchi, but I run the risk of this happening again. 
I could move to a different NPC station - Ikuchi has one with manufacturing but no research or copying. Veisto has one with everything, and a system cost index of ~6% for production and ~7% for research. Could be a real winner that one.
Or I could put up my own private structure. I don't really have the funds for that at the moment but it's an option.

TBH I don't know yet. Being as it's quite late at night I'll probably defer this decision as it has fairly far reaching consequences. Either way I've lost ISK but my blueprints should be safe. This is a very annoying setback.


Thursday, 12 December 2024

Throughput struggles with Tech 2

 On my Null character I'm pretty well invested into tech 2 production. What I've been doing is taking the list of seeded rigs/modules from the alliance and bought blueprints for them, some of them anyway. Then I've got a bit of a production line going where I invent/produce Tech 2 items from them. 

These have the advantage of moving selling faster than tech 1 stuff, as people burn through them doing normal PVP/PVE activities, but I've run into a throughput problem.

Small/medium rigs and drones have a production time of a couple of hours at most:


The issue with this is that I can't log on every 2 hours to start up new jobs. For the medium rigs like this I can add a decryptor that tanks the success chance but ups each to 10 runs which helps keep my slots busy, but it's something I'm trying to work a balance out for it. I think I'll probably settle on a system where I do short runs when I know I'll be around again in a few hours and larger items/longer runs at other times.

I also think I need more slots in null, but my existing character is doing a lot of training to do with selling/flying better hauling ships etc. so I think I'll probably start up another account this month to get myself additional slots.

Also I subscribed to EVEGuru, costing me 200mil. This means I can utilise all my characters in there and get more accurate estimates for my null character, as his skills are different to my highsec guy who can't yet do tech2. I'm hoping they come through with the roadmap item to get sell prices from player owned structures, as that will make it infinitely more useful for planning out my null operations.