One of the dangers in lawless space though is the place is filled with people with bigger guns than us, and they’re much better at using them. Hence, I lost the HMAS Bungendore (a Myrmidon) last night. 

Unfortunately, my clone was back at Ardene, so I ended up back there. But I used the chance of being back in Sinq Laison to buy a Viator with my insurance payout. Named it ‘Octavius’, after a British ghost ship from the 17th century, since Viators are meant to go everywhere cloaked and hidden. Let’s see how we go with that.

My pod’s software was upgraded on December 19, and the result was a glitch to the text-rendition which meant I couldn’t read any incoming messages, either on the EVE-mail, or the live-chat systems. I tried to fly like this, but after a while, it became too difficult, so I docked up for a few months.

Recently though, about a week ago, I started emailing Robertt about reviving The Brotherhood of Mars, and we both agreed to get back to it. In my case, it meant a whole rebuild to allow everything to work, especially with the new EVE. But after several days, I was flying again.

Robertt took very little persuasion, but his personal situation means if he cannot make BOM profitable, he’s not going to remain in space. So, to increase profitability up to the level needs to maintain our PLEX licences, we’ve taken a different tack.

Mining in Ardene as I was doing was netting me 5-10 million on a good day. If we have to pay for PLEX licences, we’d need 11 million EACH per day, day in, day out. Staying in Sinq Laison wasn’t going to cut it.

A year and a half ago, when I flew with Phoenix Wing, we relocated out to Solitude region. Out there, it’s still Gallente space, but the proximity of non-empire space opened up a lot of opportunities for making money. Rob’s always been yearning to go back there, so we decided this month to head for our old stomping ground, and BOM’s HQ has been shifted out there to Pertnineere.

Well, hasn’t everything changed in the last few days?
Having reached my November goal for my wallet, I jumped over to Eglennaert to do some missions. I am at the threshold between level 2 and level 3 missions. So I looked at my wallet (121M) and bought a Myrmidon battlecruiser. Being the anniverasary of the loss of the HMAS Sydney, I named her in honour of her predecessor.
So that took my wallet down to around 80M. Nevermind, I thought, I have a chunk of November left to get back to my 110M goal.

Then I came up with my next daft idea.
I have a deal with someone to supply large amounts of tritanium and pyerite at healthy prices. So I put some buy orders out across Sinq Laison for these minerals, at a price that makes it worth buying, collecting, and then selling to my buyer.
But if I’m going to do that, I should do it good, so I put in orders for 10 million of each. Result: a wallet of around 11 million. A mere hundred million less than my November goal. With only a week and a half left in the month.
Good planning! *clap* *clap* *clap*

I am currently trialling something else too. I’ve been speaking to some other miners, newer pilots. I’m getting some of them to mine veldspar and scordite, then sell the tritanium and pyerite to me. I made the mistake though with a couple of agreeing to collect the ore if they accepted reduced prices. They could get better prices elsewhere, on the open market. But I’m their agreed buyer and I’ll collect. So they’re on a good wicket.

I set myself a 10M isk/week target for November. I made the new wallet target of 110M on November 15, only halfway through the month. So I’m spending the remainder of the month trialling some things and missioning (to get my standings up with Fed Intel etc).
The other night though, I ran missions for the evening. Roughly 2M profit for the night. Then last night, scordite and plagioclase mining for an evening. Return was 7M profit.
Will, my CEO, suggested that skewed result was because my skills had tilted toward mining. So I’d make more profit going the way my skills dictated. But if I wanted to get out of that path, I should work more on skills related to other paths.
So missioning and cooperative work with the corporation will be my focus for the remainder of the month. And I’m going to increase my isk goal for December. Not sure if it should be 15 or 20M a week in December, or even if I’ll have as much pod-time then. We’ll see.

At the start of November, I had slightly over 70M isk. The budget I set for myself – of making a profit each week of at least 10M – would see me having 110M by the end of the month.
At present, I have 93M. Meaning I have made my goal for the current week, and am a third of the way to next week’s target.
10M/week seems a reasonable target, with very little struggle involved in achieving it. So I think December’s will be 15M/week. As long as nothing disasterous happens in the remaining fortnight of November.

While waiting for the Quantum Rise upgrade, I downloaded and watched “Clear Skies”, a 40-minute fan-film about a bunch of pilots in a barely-spaceworthy battleship.
It’s a hefty file, weighing in at around 450Mb (so I downloaded it at work) but it’s by far the best fan-film I’ve seen in this (or just about any other) genre. The link’s here, so go have a look. The music’s almost as kick-arse as the film itself.

I also, once the patch was up and I was able to return to mining, trialled listening to podcasts and mining at the same time. Specifically, I trialled the latest episode of Titan Weekly, which went very well.

Quantum Rise is released today. So there’s no mining or anything else for a whole 24 hours. What else is there to do?
It seems a lot of pod pilots have found the solution is to browse through the web looking for EVE-blogs. Because I’ve had more readers in the last 48 hours than at any point since I started writing.
I haven’t formed an opinion yet about Quantum Rise. Like all patches, there’s the usual ranting on the forums of how EVE’s been ruined. But realistically, I don’t think it’ll make a lot of difference. The biggest problem I think the CCP gods have with EVE is the isk-farming. And QR doesn’t seem to address that. Would I leave though? Hardly likely. Especially since I fly my pod primarily for social reasons.
Speaking of social reasons, I posted something to the forums this morning suggesting the time and venue forthe next meeting of the local chapter of the Pod Pilots Association. Haven’t had one of these meets since February, so it’ll be nice to meet up with, and chat to, some of the pilots I’ve met in-EVE since then.

Ambulation
Reading several blogs tonight, as I am doing along with many other pod pilots, I see there’s still a lot of babbling about Ambulation going on. When I first read of it, I thought “That’s just for the people who want to be more like World of Warcraft” and I didn’t like it. Someone later explained to me though that with all those pilots online, but faffing around in their stations, the lag monster will be much less of a problem.
So for that reason, I’m all in favour of it. It’ll let half the pilots waste their time in ways that wont hinder my pilotting, and that’s got to be a good thing.

Many pod pilots think mining is boring. I use the low-intensity provided by a few hours mining to catch up on the social aspects of pod-life. And the social aspects are one of the strongest attractions of spending my time suspended in a pod full of goo, maintained by countless computers and life support systems.
One of my long-held goals is to get to know some other pilots active in Ardene, or at least in the local constellation (Spaen). Yesterday, while mining, I made contact with one when I asked if anyone in the system was willing to haul for me, from the jetcan to the station.
I got chatting, and he not only offered to haul for me, but he was prepared to refine (he’s was better at it) and buy the resulting minerals.
As a result, I got to stay out mining in the Blood Diamond, and for two and a bit hours, I got almost 5M isk. That’s half my weekly goal in one stint.

I’ve been examining the best ways I can make money and boost my cashflow. Lately, I’ve been concentrating on mining. I started off with 3 Miner IIs on an Exqueror. Then 4 on a Thorax. Then 5 on a Myrmidon. About when I lost the Myrmidon, I bought a Retriever, a mid-sized mining barge, equipped with strip miners.

Using the Retriever (named Blood Diamond) and mining a mix of ore in Ardene – everything from Veldspar to Omber – the result was around 2M isk in an hour. That means I’d need to do around 5 hours a week to achieve my November goal of 10M/week. Did I mention the 10M budget goal? No? Well, I did just now.

By comparison, I can do missions for several hours and make a million if I am lucky.

Sure, I get loyalty points and implants when I do storyline missions, but for now, it seems mining is far more profitable *.

* Edit: I’ve heard the Quantum Rise patch will alter the price of minerals in the next week or so and the market prices will be unstable for a few weeks as it settles down again. We’ll see.

For posterity, I thought I’d note where my standings currently are with some corporations. Like many, I am striving for jump clones, and that means having 8.0 with someone or other. I’m a way from that, as you can see.

Federal Intelligence Office 3.51; Material Acquisition 2.77; Centre for Advanced Studies 2.59; CONCORD 2.33; CreoDRON 1.95

I’ve been working Fed Intel from time to time, so it’s no surprise they’re my highest. And CAS has an office in Ardene, so no surprise there. But what baffles me is Material Acquisition. I don’t recall doing much work for them at all. So I’m not sure why they’re second highest.

My Loyalty Point table is even more starkly unbalanced:

Federal Intelligence Office 3924; Federal Customs 568; Federal Navy Academy 485; Quafe 447

Sure, it shows I’ve been doing lots of work for Fed Intel. But it also highlights that I have done a lot of work for Quafe – they’re evil corporates, but I can’t help it, I like the drink