LIfe in NullSec

While scouting around after failing another Level 4 mission, the Blood Raider's Vengeance, I looked at DotLan and noticed the entrance into NullSec's Providence region right off the Kari system, which happened to be 0.6.  Now I remember seeing this before and even remember that there was some alliance there CVA that was kicked out the same time I was during my last attempt to live in Null. 

So grabbing my alt's covops Buzzard, I headed into the unknown looking for planets that I could run in and PI on, then run back out into hi-sec.  Warping into the sun and cloaking up, I thought I'd hit the bonanza, there were three Lava and one Storm planet and five others to work with all with Player Owned Custom Offices (POCO) set at 5% tax...half of what I pay in hi-sec.  I loaded up the command centers on the Iterion III of the alt and headed out.  Jumping in and then warping around I attempted to drop a command center when I was hit with a dreaded warning.

*You must be part of the alliance to build command centers*

Crap.  Then I looked at who owned the station and warping to a couple of other systems noticed the same owners, which DotLan confirmed.  So throwing caution to the wind, I joined their public chat and introduced myself.  My stunning personality must have stupefied them as after a couple of days they left me join....of course, they had just been wardec'd so moving my stuff through Domain and into Providence was going to prove difficult.  So right as the war started I jump cloned into The Citadel and picked up my trusty PvP fit (poorly) Vexor and took it all the way to Tash and the Bavisi system.  There I transferred my stuff to my second account, the one with the maxed out Itty V.  I plotted the course, missing the Amarr trade hub, and at around midnight my time proceeded to move out. 

First, war targets have a red box with a star and people with terrible (-10) standing have a red box with a minus sign.  I say that as I about had a heart attack with four jumps in there were four "reds".  Fortunately, they were not war targets so they couldn't shoot me.  Leading with the Vexor, I scouted for the Itty and made it into my new home without incident.  It was now like 1am my time, but knew I needed to strike while the iron was hot and turned right around and headed back the 10+ jumps to Bavisi to grab the mining barges and remaining modules.  It was 2:20am or so before I got all my stuff back into my new home and finished for the night.  I never did see a war target on then.

Got on the next day and drove around seeing where the corporation bookmarks would take me.  First off, I'd like to thank CCP and my alliance for the wonderful jump network..does that make moving around MUCH easier.  I found our industrial system and moved the miners there, got into fleet to camp the gate and worked on getting Teamspeak to work.  Finally, around 12:30am or so, I decided to go get the Domi.  I had to fly it down as I had rigs on it and I'm too cheap to throw them away.  I took the trip back with one account in a covops and the other in a shuttle.  I picked up the Domi and reversed the process, once again, I didn't see a war target the entire time. 

So now, I'm in null with both accounts and both accounts have haulers in neutral corporation to help my get stuff from highsec to null.  Additionally, I learned that CVA is back and running Providence again and they have the unusual NRDS (Not Red Don't Shoot) policy instead of NBSI (Not Blue Shoot It) policy adopted by every other Null Sec alliance.

Can't wait to see what the future brings here.

Back in the saddle again!

Well, two years later and the pull of EVE has brought me back...much to the chagrin of my wife.  I've spent the last two years playing other single player, (Egosoft's X-games and free games, World of Tanks), but I've been keeping an eye on the EVE sandbox.  Finally, I couldn't resist anymore and resubbed both accounts.

Frankly, I was a little relived to see that I had left myself in a fairly decent, for me, position.  Ready to run level 4 mission in a Domi, the capability to run both Tech 2 Sentries and Heavy, Med, and Light Drones.  Most support skills at four or five and a whopping 70 million isk to my name.

So far, I've been focusing on Planetary Interactions to gather enough isk to give myself a cushion to develop further plans.  Right now, I've got three characters working on extraction and gathering all the P1 material to one and making Sterile Conduits.  I'm doing this P4 for a couple of reasons, and the biggest is it only needs two P3 items and at Command Center 4 I can put enough processors to run if 24 hours a day and still have room for the two launchpads I need to store the material.  That makes 24 sterile conduits and they are buying at 831,000 isk per item.  Now the hard core industrialist I've seen shows that if I buy P1 at sell prices (3840 per P1 item times eight P1 items needed) and when add the additional costs to import the P1 and export the P4, I'm still making an approx 3-4 million isk a day.  Which isn't the most spectacular return on investment, but it does many people in EVE (including the "hard core traders") often overlook one critical fact...cash flow and cash velocity. 

From a pure efficiency perspective, I should be buying 19,200 units of each P1 asset and running them through five factory planets.  That would net me $20 million isk per day, for virtually the same amount of time.  A great plan if you have the necessary cash flow to pull it off, you would need an approximate 80 million isk per day to do that, and you would have a sufficient supply of P1 on the market to buy...and producing 120 P4 per day would quickly saturate the market.  Assuming the market continues to bear this influx of P4 materials (or assuming I shift P4 production between the various products) the "manufacturing planets" are a good use of time...I made 20 million isk per game day (total increase in cash reserves for my time played).

That said, if I take all my P1 extraction and if you pay the tax for 24 items (135,00 per conduit + 50 per P1 to export and 25 per P1 to import = total P1 tax of 5.5 million isk).  That leaves a total cash flow of 14.5 million isk per day, with only a 5.5 million initial isk outlay, much more manageable for an industrialist with a limited cash reserve.  Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of other ways to go about this, I could just sell my P1 for someone else, I could try and bull my way into the Enriched Uranium or Rocket fuel or POS fuel component market and I will definitely take a look at doing that, however, if your a starting character (who didn't buy PLEX) with a limited budget, do not get fooled by all the major producer's blogs.  Product efficiency is a goal to have, but at the early stages of the game, cash reserves and cash flow, particularly cash OUTFLOW, is just as critical.  I'm not being the most efficient right now, but I am building a cash reserve that will allow me to do so in the future.  If you take a look at real life businesses, most fail because they have a poor cash flow position and soon can't cover the cash outlay needed to buy their basic materials, they then open a credit line which exasperates the problem...you can't do that in EVE, but you can put yourself in a position where your assets are not liquid and your production grinds to a halt because you don't have the cash to place an order or buy anything.