Low Sec Orca Fitting

UPDATE: In the fittings, I changed T2 Covert Ops Cloak to T2 Improved Cloak. My mistake.

Ok I have been researching fits for the Orca, and I have dramatically improved flying safely in an Orca for Low sec. I feel as comfortable flying my Orca through low sec as I am now with my Occator. You too can fly an Orca safely through low sec. That is if you have a few billion ISK to spend.

Implants in your head: Full Set of 6 Nomad implants, Alpha through Omega

Faction implants have secondary effects in addition to the attribute boosting effects most people are accustomed to. The Nomad faction implants give you +2 to each attribute, but in addition to that primary effect, they also grant a boost to your agility. With a full set of 5 implants, you get a raw 15% agility bonus, plus 10% bonus for the set of 5 implants granting a total of 16.5% agility boost. If you have the sixth Omega implant, you get a further 25% boost to the bonus giving up to a little more than a 20% bonus to agility. Better agility lets your ships turn and accelerate faster. These cost approx 2 billion isk at time of writing, though haggling can get them for less though. I got mine for 1.5 billion ISK by haggling with people who had contracts up for 2.1 billion ISK. That’s a 600 million ISK savings. Of course if you have 400,000 loyalty points or so with the right corporations, you can buy them from the NPC corporations that sell them. Phoetec Pharm makes them; I don’t know who else sells them for loyalty points.

Ok so you are asking, “Why would you spend 1.5 to 2.1 billion ISK for 20% boost to agility? You can get that with a T2 I-Stab”. Well mate, yes you are right, but consider this. My low slots are ALREADY filled with T2 I-Stabs and I still need the extra agility. “So why don’t you just use Low Friction Nozzle Rigs?”. Answer, I did that, but it still wasn’t quite enough. Plus I _discovered_ Engine Thermal Shielding, which boosts my MWD duration by 20%. Two of those and my MWD cycle is 14.4 seconds rather than 10 seconds. That’s 144% duration to my MWD cycle, the length of the MWD cycle means I have more time to align to warp WHILE CLOAKED. Which means I stand a MUCH better chance of being in warp before my cloak has dropped. So…..implants, these give me that extra sliver of agility that guarantees that I am in warp before my cloak drops instead of _almost_ in warp. Being _almost_ in warp, means you are going to eventually be _not almost, but actually and really_ dead.

That 1.5 billion ISK has let me fly my Orca in low sec with exactly the same confidence I have flying my Occator through low sec. What does that mean? That means, with my skills, I am able to fly a transport style ship through low sec that can carry 34,500m3 in the main cargo hold, 40,000m3 in the Corp Hanger, 50,000m3 in the Ore Cargo Bay (if I carry ore, which makes sense to carry some ore instead of minerals for this purpose). Plus several assembled (depending on size) ships in the Maintenance Hangar. My Occator could carry a little more than 38,000m3 which is pretty big, but this is MUCH bigger. No it’s not a freighter, and it’s a bit smaller than a jump freighter too, but I don’t need a Cyno team member, nor an alt…e-gad…and I fly normally carrying a lot more than the largest regular industrial ships you see flying around.

What are the drawback? The cost obviously…I have a lot of ISK in my head right now, so that really means I have to stop auto piloting around…even in high sec…unless I am flying a ship that can take a beating while waiting for CONCORD to come and clear the area for me. Last night, on my way to picking up the implants, my Helios was destroyed and I was sitting in Jita in my POD. On the way back I Auto piloted again (dumb mistake), and when I got back, my ship’s armor was gone and half the hull was gone, but my shield had fully recharged. CONCORD successfully intervened just moments before my ship was destroyed. I shouldn’t have been auto piloting a little light ship like that anyway, but it was REALLY stupid of me to do it with so much ISK on the line now. Never again. If you are going to autopilot through hisec, make sure you are flying a ship with enough raw hit points and resistances to take a good beating until CONCORD shows up.

Ok so the fitting:

Implants:

Nomad, full set of 6

Rigs:

2x Engine Thermal Shielding, for a 44% increase of MWD cycle time.

1x Ancillary Circuit Router (gives extra Grid so you can fit an MWD)

High Slots:

1x T2 Improved Cloak

2x of whatever else you want(I fit tractor beam and salvager)

Medium Slots:

1x Meta 4 MWD (You can’t fit a T2)

1x T2 ECM Burst, so you get another roll of the dice to get away if you do get caught.

1x Large Regolith Shield Extender for extra hit points to your shield so you last longer while trying to break target locks with WCM Burst and ECM Drones. Invulnerability Shield Hardener for Resistance Boosting (Giving you even more effective hit point on the shield)

Low Slots:

2x T2 I-Stabs, for more agility…i.e. faster align and acceleration times

Drone Bay: 5x Medium ECM Vespas (to gain more dice rolls to let you escape if you get caught…If you are doing mining support in low sec, launch these drone ahead of time so they automatically lock an aggressor, also keep your distance from the belt and stay cloaked until you need to tractor a can in, your tractor beam can pull from MUCH farther away with ship role bonuses.)




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, so deal with any mispelling, grammatical errors or strangly out of place words caused by mis-autocorrection.

A sort of page two...YOU WANNA DO WHAT???

As I mentioned earlier, it was a little premature to post the mission and goals of Interstellar Tritanium (Ticker: ITTRI), but I honestly needed to post it having not posted anything on the blog for a while, and the fact that I have been sitting there doing not much except performing some of those said roles instead of recruiting and getting people on-board with it. Let me try to explain a little more about the purpose of Interstellar Tritanium....This is another lame attempt at writing well, I also wrote this in a rush, but here goes with round two of the initial recruitment docs and orientation about who we are and what we do.

First and MOST importantly, the mission of Interstellar Tritanium is to get more people into Low Sec. Yes that means by increasing ITTRI membership, but that's a small sliver of the mission. It is ITTRI's mission to get OTHER poeple out to Low Sec. Why would we want to do that? Well most people once they've either taken heed of others or experienced the perils of Low Sec on their own and paid for it and DON'T want to go to Low Sec unless they have aspirations of Piracy and Faction Warefare. Currently low sec is like a DMZ, on one side you have High Sec which is controlled by CONCORD and the Empire Factions, on the other side you have Null Sec which is sporadically controlled by alliances. Pretty much, if you stay in your own space, either in High Sec or you own alliance owned Null Sec regions, you are fairly (though not completely) safe. In the middle you have this DMZ or no man's land, where there are really no consequences to being out there other than being vulnerable...honestly though you are only vulnerable due to your own weaknesses, but I digress.

Wait a minute, rewind a little here. Why would I want to do this?

There are more valuable things to do in Low Sec than in High Sec, but no one except the very confident, daring or stupid go to low sec. Why? Because of the added Risk vs. Reward factor. Currently since nearly the only folks that inhabits Low Sec as a home are Pirates and Faction Warriors, and of course yours truly, the risk to spend time in Low Sec to get that better percentage of value is too high, but that real value is there. There is more valuable ore not to mention more of it since no one is mining it, the missions and complexes are usually much better. There are more Ice Belts, there are OMGWTFTONS of empty queues for Manufacturing and Researching. There are OMGWTFTONS of EVERY resource left untapped and wasted.

Ok so why don't you go out and grab it?

Well I am, that is what I am doing right now on my own and doing it successfully from a profit margin standpoint, but I have also realized this space would become a LOT more valuable if more people came out here.

Why would more people make it more valuable?

One word. Volume, but .... Well because right now using myself as an example, for it to be effective I have travel all around 5 regions in a Deep Space Transport (much much safer than a freighter) gathering all kinds of different stuff at fuck cheap prices from minerals to ammo to modules to ships, to bring it all to central staging points in High Sec, so I can pick it up from those staging points, carry it in a freighter to drop it off in another staging point in High Sec to near a Low Sec Market turn around and bring it back out to Low Sec in way far too many DST trips to sell it at Market. It takes days and weeks to make a single complete cycle. I operate profitably and I have a constant flow of merchanise because there is real demand for stuff in low sec, but by keeping my prices really low, I make sure that people buy from me rather than hop into freighters with their alts, go to Jita to buy expensive stuff (which puts money in OTHER people's pockets). That's a little backwards IMO, and I think it would make more sense if there was a more viable economy right there in low sec where I am working.

Huh? Who cares?

Ok, so lets say I am mining in Low Sec and I now have all these wonderful minerals that could be used in manufacturing. If I want to make a profit from these, I have one of two choices, I can haul it all back to Oursulaert or Jita or Hek or whereever else, and turn quite a tidy profit, but I have to haul it all there...in order to do that safely, I need to use either blockade runner or deep space transport (I prefer the DST for low sec hauling BTW), but those ships are so so tiny compared to a freighter, but I really can't safely fly the freighter in low sec because of the danger involved. OR I can dump it on the market, and sell it to the highest regional bidder (currently yours truly). The first way, ensures I make more profits for what I mined, but the second way means I can stay put and mine some more. However, hauling it out has it's risks, you have to get through the gate camps to and from your mining spot and high sec. And if you get your ship blowed up, it was full of sparkly highly valuable minerals that you just lost. Plus you loose valuable time hauling it. The second option is safer because I am not running gate camps full of minerals (which are likely more valuable than my mining ship), I am risking only the loss of my ship and with a modicum of sense and piloting skill I can get to safety with relative ease. Not only that, do I REALLY want to carry Tritanium and Pyrites over multijump routes to get them to a market? It is really worth it?

Wait a minute though, there are all these unused research and manufacturing facilities out here. What if I could just drop my minerals off here where I already am. I wouldn't have to haul them away, and because I am not wasting my time I can sell them for a little bit less that I would have to if I were hauling them all the way to market and I can make more money because I can mine more minerals. Not only that, but the people using these facilities wouldn't have to bring their own minerals either, meaning using these facilities would be a LOT more attractive for all parties...AND AND (yes that's right two) because everything is a little cheaper and less work, THEY can afford to pay someone to haul the products out so "I" don't have to do it (well what I mean is, "I" want or someone else wants to haul YOUR shit for you), or EVEN BETTER sell that shit right where they are, or only a couple jumps to the closest market hub, which incidently the closest market hub will likely be in Low Sec, instead of in Oursulaert which is probably 9 or 10 jumps away. Gosh can you imagine how much easier all that is? It's like High Sec, but not as congested. Being able to mine, manufacture and sell stuff all in the same station or system, or Holy Shit even just in the same constellation would be nice for a change.

Have you ever tried getting a manufacting or research job in Oursulaert? Really, have you tried it? How long are the waiting lists? Did you look in the rest of the region? I am willing to bet that in Oursulaert the waiting list approaches 2 months before your job even starts. In the rest of Essense High Sec, it probably trickles downward the farther out you go to a average of 1 month, and if you are lucky MAYBE you can find a single slot with a job that can start in 5 or 6 days because no one grabbed it yet, but it's 12 jumps away and you gotta haul all the materials out there before you can queue up the slot, better hope someone else doesn't jump on it before you can pick it up. Lets not even talk about queue camping. Ok, back up again....There are a CRAP TON of empty research and manufacturing queues in low sec....Did you catch that?

So this is how more people getting into low sec makes it more valuable for EVERYONE, and that includes for ME too because now I don't have to haul this shit to and from kingdom come to make this work alone.

Ok this actually makes some sense, but how are we going to do this? I mean there are still pirates out there looking for exactly this opportunity finding a fleet of hulks in an asteroid belt and drooling over the t2 components that are gonna drop when I get killed...

That's a great question really. And this really applies to all scenarios in Low Sec. Pirates are looking for targets regardless of what that target is, miners, haulers, mission runners, etc etc. I have developed a friendship and trust, and I am working with the various prominent Low Sec organizations to foster an unofficial alliance or blue chip corp/alliance wide standings to help make our job a little easier (by not shooting down our members). By us reciprocating Blue Chips with each other will help in two important ways; 1) Since we're blue to them, they won't shoot us, 2) since they are blue to us, we know we have are in the presence of friends.

Why would pirates want to give up targets? Why would they let us pass and do our business freely?

Because of the mutual benefit. Yeah on face value it looks like they are giving up targets, but honestly without the arangement YOU wouldn't be there anyway right? So they havne't given anything up. Further, if you consider everything I mentioned above, we are going to be DRAWING customers out to Low Sec, all those customers are fair game, it's only our corp and alliance that enjoy the negotiated peace. Plus once all those people do start coming out, there is some safety in numbers. If a pilot is flying around solo in low sec, you can almost guarantee that if a pirate is hunting, they are hunting that solo pilot, but if there are 50 other random pilots flying around, the buffer of additional pilots dramatically increases the chances of that one pilot flying away safely. The more people there are in low sec, the better the place will be for everyone, carebears, faction warriors and pirates alike. Safer for the carebears and more fun for the pirates.

But why would I want to help a bunch of asshole pirates?

Well most people who are carebears don't really understand very well how this game works. And I don't mean from a spreadsheet understanding the math and mechanics of the game. I am talking about those two or three buzzwords, "the sandbox" and "the butterfly effect". Carebears tend to think this game shouldn't be a PvP game, or think that since I am a carebear you should leave me alone mr baddy pirate. And groups of carebears tend to hold hands and perform the "carebear stare". Well it doesn't work, but that's besides the point. Before you get your panties in a ruffle, understand...I am a carebear...we actually, I am an industrial/trader pilot who doesn't consider himself a carebear. Why? Because I face PvP on a minute by minute basis flying around 5 regions of low sec to perform my "carebear" stuff. PvP isn't just head to head or blob to blob combat, and this is where people seem to not understand this game at all, especially the carebears. Here I explain why and what's missing from their understanding.

A trader is constantly PvPing with other traders for money. We are constantly trying to get the best deal before everyone else, we are taking their money and putting it in our wallets. But at least I am not shooting anyone. Aren't you? When you are trying to make a buck trying to sell your stuff or buy your stuff and that guy ALWAYS seems to get his order for one penny better than you before you can move your stuff? You can't seem to sell it for a profit because someone is always making the deal sweeter and putting you out of business a little, or forcing you to mark down your items below profit margins. That's not PvP? Well ok, but what about me? I am just a miner and all I do is practice Player vs Rock, I don't PvP at all. That's what you think, how much fun is it when a corporation operation comes in and wipes out all your asteroid belts in your favorite systems and leaves you nothing but scraps. How about when you spend hours just looking for a belt to mine and can't find one? Or how about this? What do you think those rocks they were mining is going to be used for? How about your rocks, what do you think they are going to get used for. Sure you are just selling your rocks on the market or dumping it on some cheap buy order, but you aren't PvPing are you? I am afraid you are...there is only ONE reason you are mining, you are gathering the materials required to blow up someone else. What the fuck are you talking about? That's right...your rocks are getting other people killed. You think your rocks are going to get used for some peaceful activity? Sure in some stages of the game, maybe. They'll get used in science and manufacturing, sure sure, that's true...but why is that person doing that? To make shit to blow someone's ass up. Funny thing is, it's very possible that you even got your self blowed up because you mined the particular minerals that we used to make the ship that blew your ass up. That's what this game is about, blowing shit up...end of story really.

Yeah but pirates are still assholes and they suck.

Really? Why do you think you have a job in Eve? ..... Anyone? Because someone blew up someone else's ship up. Just as much as I tell the pirates to shut the fuck up because they owe carebears a debt of gratitude for doing the stuff you don't want to so you CAN do what you want, you carebears also need to shut the fuck up because you owe the pirates a debt of gratitude for making it possible for you to do what makes YOU happy. You wouldn't be mining anything at all if it weren't for pirates because they blow shit up so YOU can sell your stuff. Pirates are a VITAL part of the economy in Empire, both High Sec AND Low Sec and also have an effect on Null Sec too because that's where lots of the T2 building materials come from.

Well you are wrong, most ships are blown up in alliance wars and elsewhere in null sec.

Well that's true for the most part, but what you seem to misunderstand is that most of those big giant deep space alliances support their own independent economies. They have their own groups of miners, scientists, researchers and manufacturers. Most stuff they produce on their own and get blown up all on their own without having the slightest effect on life in high sec. Yes it's true some of it does trickle up to high sec, but very little in fact except the T2 building materials I mentioned previously compared with the amount of ships blown up by pirates and NPCs. Besides, what's the difference? Someone got blowed up that didn't want to get blowed up, maybe most of those battles can be considered "consensual PvP", but the whole game is PvP, miners, traders and everyone are PvPing on one level or another. And anyway, do you REALLY think that when an alliance totally destroys another alliance that it's not the same or worse than you loosing your mining ship to pirates? Holy shit, that hurts a whole crap ton more than the pain you feel when you get blowed up, or when a salvage ninja comes to get your wrecks....Honestly. People loose trillions of isk, and have to abandon several freighterfuls of stuff in stations they'll likely never visit again, but their asset window will unendingly remind them of their massive massive defeat. Of course they could just "trash" the stuff so they don't have to look at it anymore. How would you feel to "trash" a few carriers, mauraders, and billions of units of isogen?

Ok ok I get it. So now back to your corp, what's the catch? What do I gotta do?

No catch. You gotta be able to support yourself. You have to commit to align with the corp mission and actively work towards that goal. You need to be comfortable losing your stuff, cause it's gonna happen and you need to be ok with it. We'll provide training and coaching on how to pilot safely in low sec, but after that it's up to you to practice and keep your senses and reflexes keen. The only thing I ask you to do is practice your career in low sec, in a coordinated fashion with the rest of the corp to maximize our footprint and prevent intra-corp and intra-alliance competition. I.e. one person takes gallente ships modules and ammo, another specializes in Minmatar kits, another does mining vessels, another does minerals trade, implants, rigs, etc etc. Keep the market divided by product so we can all work together on the same systems with the same goals without getting in each other's way. Once we have a good economy growing in one region to the point where we have drawn competition into low sec with us (remember that's good), we can continue growing our numbers take advantage of MORE of those untapped resources and finally spread to other surrounding low sec regions and make us all some more money.

Low sec was designed to be a bridge between High Sec and Null sec, instead it became the pirate's private little hell where life is hard. Lets turn Low Sec around and build it into the bridge where null sec alliances and high sec citizen comingle together and do business with each other as was intented. Pirates get a kick back from this, all teh extra targets that otherwize would have said at home.

Missions Collide Podcast ep4

So casiella and I were guest speakers to talk about trade in eve. Was great fun, you can download it on iTunes. I'll place a link to the podcast itself after it gets moved.


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Returning to Eve and the Low Sec Market Project

Ok guys, I am back. I took a break for a while, I really needed it. I have been trading in the real life markets and doing ok. Not great, but I haven't lost anythign either really so it's an overall positive experience that I plan on continuing. However strategies change, and I am working slower in the markets than I was when I started this in the spring.

Anyway, I am back, and have been for about a week or two slowly getting back up to speed and trying to get poised, and I am going to return to hevrice with some goods sometime in the near future. I however am not going to set myself up for constant catching up to keep the market going. As soon as I am ready and have lots of applicable stuff to dump on the market, I will be doing so, as always I am goign to try to keep it the cheapest goods sold in Empire, but that always depends on how cheaply I can get it myself. I have to turn a profit ya know.

Anyway, I am back and I hope to see you all soon. Anyone want to help drop me a line, because it will be easier to do with with lots of help than to do it myself.

Real Life Trader

Once again I am apologizing for not posting, however this is a little different.

I haven't been spending much time on Eve last few weeks, and I have a good reason. I made a ton of cash in eve as a trader. I don't know exactly how much I am worth in eve, but I have had as much as 3 billion isk in cash, plus a few extra billion in assets, e.g. Obelisk, 2x billion isk iterons (rigged), 6 rigged occators, 2x battleships, many t2 frigates, etc etc all rigged, not to mention a few billionion in minerals out in wayward corners of my trade routes.

So anyway, this game has very much become a job. Not a fulltime job mind you, but at least a heavily involved part time job. I decided to do something about that. I am now taking the skills I honed in Eve online, and applying them to the real world. I have been trading on the stock markets for last few weeks. I started out with $770 in cash which I was saving for the sole purpose of burning on the stock market. Last Monday I made about $300 on a good and lucky trade, and on Friday I lost $50. So for the week I am up $250 and that puts me around $1000 in my trading account. Last week I cajoled my wife into letting to put another $1000 into trading, and that will clear today or later this week, and then I can upgrade to a margin account which doubles your buying power. Margin is very similar to but not quite eve online margin for buying stuff). When I finally close a day with $25,000 that will allow me to upgrade my account to a Pattern Day Trader account, which grants me 4:1 buying power (so long as I close my trades by the end of the day), and will let me make MANY trades in a single day rather than having to wait for trades to "settle" before being able to perform another trade with my money. Settlement is like waiting for a check to clear. You have to wait 3 days before you can use your money again just to make sure the round trip(round trip means you made a buy trade, then sold it again) trade went through properly. So with a cash only account, you are stuck with one trade every 3 or 4 days. With a Margin Account, you can make as many trades as you want, because you have margin, but there are other rules that limit the number of trades you can perform. Pattern Day Trader rules limit your trading ability until you qualify to be a pattern day trader. A pattern day trader by law must have $25,000 in their trading accounts to be eligible to perform more than 3 intraday trades in a single week (5 business days). If you make 4 or more intraday round trip trades in any week, your account gets frozen into cash only again for 90 days. Yuck.

If I continue to have forward momentum and grow the account naturally through trade, I will try and get my wife to give me some more money which will be coming to us hopefully soon. It all depends on how well I perform before then. If I can perform I am already certain she'll give me every penny if she thinks we are going to make money with it. Again it all depends on me.

I don't know how interested anyone will be, but I will keep everyone up to date here on a weekly basis. It might be fun to learn how well someone can take their eve skills and apply them to real life.

Hevrice Market Report #1

So it’s been an interesting week. First, I'd like to thank the people who provided their valuable input and guidance regarding which items to be avilable would be most valuable to them most likely to sell quickly at first. I think otherwise, that I have received mixed feelings from the regular denizens of low sec regarding the establishment of a low sec hub. Many individuals have disbelief that a trade hub in low sec will be possible or have any effect on their lives. Some are happy to take advantage of having supplies readily available. Then there are those in the middle who seem disinterested, but have stated something along these lines, “if you put it up for sale, maybe we’ll buy it”.

The first thing I did was a mistake which was to make a run to Jita and picked up some quick items to throw up for sale. The costs of doing business that way ended up being too much, I mean this is how organizations were getting their goods anyway, so what positive affect would that have? None really, it just made sure I made a very skinny profit. I did need some things right away to make good on my promises though, and so I went through with it. Most items I was able to put up for sale at a fair profit, a few items I took a loss on (as a loss leader), and other items I simply couldn’t offer as cheaply as I would have liked. I do however hope that those items will still move simply due to the convenience of them being there and present along with the rest of the product I placed on the market. On Friday I put up a few billion worth of Railguns, Blasters and Autocannons, plus some Warp Scramblers/Disruptors as well as some Armor plating. I however will not be making runs to Jita for this project again. I will gather the items from around the all the regions as I have in the past with minerals finding the best deals and picking them up as I make my regular rounds. Now that I have the first part of the market in place, the rest will slowly come. I have been gathering Rifters and Incursus as well as the most used ammo for the guns I put up for sale already and almost had time to get them to Hevrice before it finally got so late that I had to abandon the delivery until the next day. When I get into my pilot seat tonight, I will make that my first priority.

Next comes the cruisers, I placed orders for Stabbers, Vexors and Thoraxes last night, and so I hope I will have something to collect within the next day or few, as well as some other items that were requested such as various propulsion modules and other miscellaneous combat oriented items. I will probably add T2 ships to the market once things really start rolling and I can count on the Hevrice market to move everything I have placed for sale. T2 ships tend to not move as quickly as the simpler frigates mentioned above, plus they are a greater investment for any trader.

I am sure there are going to be traders who are going to look for ways to get between me and Hevrice and knock me out of the market loop when it starts moving. It may surprise you or not that I invite all traders to Hevrice. I however would encourage each and every one of you that might be considering bringing competition to Hevrice to reconsider just a little, and instead of bring in completion, bring in new goods that aren’t already available. You’ll be doing a service to yourself by not competing for profits, which are already slim by being the cheapest goods in empire already, but by finding the best deals and bringing them into Hevrice and being able to provide the best prices in empire yet still turn a profit. You’ll be bringing other pilots out here looking for those deal and you’ll make this market the hub it could be. The very first and very real lowsec market hub. I invite all of you to come and be part of bridging the gap between high sec and low sec.

I have also made some good friends, which in many ways is more rewarding than the ISK. Some I might not yet trust to be in the same system with but people I enjoy being social with and talking with none the less. I really believe I have found my calling and circle, or at least am making a significant move in that direction and I enjoy spending time with the folks in low sec. These are good people, pirates and faction warriors yes…They are callused warriors and scurvy rats, but they are good and honorable people within those tough exteriors. I am happy to be there and I am happy to know them.

Finally, I encourage ALL Lowsec individuals, corporations, alliances and other organizations to participate and take the stuff that you collect and PLACE IT FOR SALE on the Hevrice market as well. As a single trader, I can only keep so many open market orders, and 2/3 of them are used in procurement of goods to sell at Hevrice. The more cheap stuff we as a group can provide the denizens of empire out here in Hevrice, the more these people will be forced to pay attention to us, no one will be able ignore Hevrice. Bring them all out here, FOR GLORY…FOR GOLD!!!!!

Shopping List

Ok, I have started shopping for things I think need to be sold in low sec, however I am sure many of you have better ideas than I. So I request that you place your wishlist in the comments below. Please be complete, even if you see something in another comment, please go ahead and list it on your wishlist too, this will let me know how much demand there might be for an item.
Keep in mind I can only provide so many different things, so I will need to prioritize what I supply initially, and hopefully drawing other traders out here to bring more of other stuff too.

Thanks

Don't try this at home!!!

You know, i am a pretty good guy and I try to share a market with people. There is usually plenty of buyers and sellers to go around. I try to take my turn when it comes to buying and selling stuff, and let the other guys get their buys and sales in too.

Well there is always one apple that spoils the barrel for everyone. I had a region-wide buy order for megacyte at a reasonable price and for not so much in quantity that I was being abusive to other traders. Another trader came in an upped me a penny, ok that's fine I'll wait my turn. When my turn came, he placed a new 100,000 unit buy order for 1,000 ISK per unit higher than everyone else. I guess he decided he needed the minerals more than the rest of us. Or perhaps he was trying to discourage the rest of us.

It ended up being ok, because I happened to have 100,000 units of megacyte which I happily supplied for him. I hope he appreciates how quickly he was accommodated.

All is well that ends well.

People of Lowsec, lend me your ear!!!…and give me your opinions, your love, and your money too

Ok guys serious, hopefully you read the last two posts, and perhaps even the earlier posts before I dropped off of the blogosphere, and you know I don’t really believe that Mule Characters and Multiple Accounts used for muling are truly a good thing for eve. Yes the income for CCP is important, and I do think multiple accounts are good for CCP and even good for Eve when they are used to experience different facets of Eve, but mule accounts I don’t like them. One of the things that I believe is that ALL of you are missing out on a rich facet of the Eve experience of YOU having to interact with traders and high sec residents as YOURSELF. Look, let me us myself as an example, I started out as a Miner and I did really well, but I got bored of it and moved on to trade, and I do really well there too. I also run missions out in low sec, and I now I also trade in low sec and hopefully will bridge the divide between these two aspects of Eve. I don’t run multiple accounts to “get away” with having a lowsec life as well as a high sec life. I live that life together. I want people to remember me, as a badass. I don’t mean someone who can just Yarr, I mean I want to be remembered wildly as a success in all aspects of my life.

I want people to say, “Ooo Escoce, he’s a good guy…and he’s all over the place…he controls vast swaths of the market in high sec, he goes anywhere he wants, he opened low sec up to everyone bringing good ands people out there, he’s not afraid to fight and can fight really good, and he’s got lots of friends and lots of money and so you don’t want to screw with him either...get on his bad side and he and his friends will damn well make sure you and your mates spent most of your life in the recovery room of the medical facilities. I am glad he’s my friend, and I am glad to know him. Eve is a richer place because he cares about Eve.

So do you see what I mean? I am not threatening anyone here, honestly. I am just sharing the “image” of not using mules and shadow accts. I am talking about the fact that, I am not using multiple accounts to “get away” with being a shadow. Escoce is my identity and everything I do is as me, whether that is to organize a mining operation that wipes out twenty belts of asteroids in an hour, or bend the market to my will, blitz thirty-five low sec missions in a frigate in an afternoon or bring freighters filled with goods back and forth between highsec and low sec and create new markets and defend those markets with zeal. Or guarding miners with my Nyx to make sure they at least have time to fly to safety when molested. It [is/will be] all me and the other great real people I do or will work with…no mule and no hiding behind a shadow pretending to not be me to “get away with” doing something entirely out of character to avoid the consequences of who I am or the path I have chosen.

Dread pirates can too, instead of having shadow accounts that let them fly to high sec like a good ole pretend newbie good guy and sneak those good back to home, they can live the life of a pirate and still have people of their corporations perform things such as public relations, get traders out to low sec and bring competitively priced goods out to places where you can buy and trade and mingle and sell your loot. Perhaps instead of expecting ultra high prices, you work with the traders to get them out to you and then back home safely, this service you provide might convince traders to come out there with normal competitive pricing who would otherwise be afraid of the risks, or otherwise brave the risks but hike their prices to offset the risks. Me I am not afraid, I am already out there with you, but I can’t create a market by myself, I can only try and help get one started. If you want more targets and you want more people to brave the colds of low sec, the only catch is you gotta give them reason to come out. In other words, you gotta have the most reasonable prices, not the most expensive. So if I can do this, and you can work with me and we encourage more and more people especially traders to get out here, what say you?

Anyway, I solicit your sincere thoughts and opinions…please…I am no wanker, and some of you already know me in game and out. This is a sincere attempt to enrichen the experience and life in lowsec.

What say you?

6 Months later, highsec trader to lowsec regular

So what has been going on in Escoce’s life? I have been thru and done a lot in the last 6-ish months. I gave up on securing my old mining constellation operation. In this now defunct operation, I was developing the market of a small constellation in Gallente Federation space. By providing consistent and fair pricing to miners for their minerals, and also by ensuring there was a ready and cheap supply of mining ships, equipment and consumables ready and for sale, I was able to develop a high volume/high profit market. I communicated with miners about the presence of the mining constellation and the market and slowly built a multi-billion ISK per month operation that included my picking up low end minerals from four contiguous systems and carrying those minerals to trade hubs first in my Iterons and then finally my freighter when I could afford one. Of course I also borrowed some money to make the final purchase, but let us just say, I was able to pay off that loan ( 1 billion ISK principle + 50 million ISK interest paid weekly) in 1 month. Before I got my freighter, I was making too many several trips between my mining hub and the market hubs and never quite catching up with the volume ever. When I finally got my freighter, I was moving 300-600 or so million units of minerals EVERY DAY, except maybe on Sundays and Thursdays when many miners take some time off for other activities. So it was a good operation. Now due to circumstance entirely out of my control (OOC – I moved and my internet connection was down for three weeks), it flew the coop. Other traders caught on, and moved in and the lack of consistent service and pricing to the miners caused them to move on to greener pastures.

I didn’t feel like starting over, so I moved on to something new. I do that occasionally, such as when I got bored with mining, I moved on to trade, when trade couldn’t keep me occupied, I added combat and missions. I still keep tabs on that constellation from time to time, and it has never come close to even a fraction of the productivity I helped develop.

Moving on I started placing buy orders for minerals across the region, doing pretty well and eventually building my capital enough to spread out to cover 4 regions of select systems and constellations, never quite having the ease of point to point trade I enjoyed before, but still producing honorable profits. I shrank out of one region simply due to the logistics of managing 4 regions of market space, and now focus on 3 regions and doing quite well.

After having honed my trade skills to what I call near perfect, they aren’t perfect. I have level 4 or 5 competency in all the trade skills, but it is enough for me to be a very effective trader, and I began to focus on combat skills. I had already trained most of what I call the core skills to level 5 already (skills such as navigation, electronics, engineering, etc. etc.). All the skills the unlock the various modules needed and learning how to use them so effectively that the equipment becomes more efficient. I started running missions, and practiced enough at that so that I was comfortable running all level 3 and most but not all level 4 missions in a T1 or T2 frigate of whatever sort suited me and the mission at the time. Many of the best agents are in low sec, and I was becoming comfortable with flying out in low sec, confident in knowing how to fit a ship to get through the fray when the fray comes to me.

I should say here that I don’t think of myself as a PvPer, I just feel comfortable operating in low sec normally, not that I am looking for a fight by doing so. I still avoid the fights if I can. But becoming comfortable with Low Sec, and having had to retrieve errant goods from misplaced buy orders on several occasions I decided to try low sec trading on purpose. I recently decided to carry my operations out to low security space in a test region, and I placed some region wide test buy orders to see how well I might be able to do this. The test was quite successful, and it became worth it to fly out into areas where others weren’t willing to go to pick up my wares. I have estimated that if I get killed once a day, I will still be turning a profit (albeit a small one) from low sec. I haven’t been killed yet, but just for mathematic’s sake and for safe financial planning I use 1 death per day in cost analysis for operating in low sec.

This isn’t to say that Low Sec is safe, it isn’t. It is dangerous, in low sec, people want to kill you. Many Pirates will be cordial and kind after the fact, and honor their word when they give it, but have no doubt. Their goal is to take your money, get you out of your ship and sometimes even get you out of your clone. On the first day out collecting my goods, I was attacked I am guessing 6 times in the period of 45 minutes. I was even attacked by a pilot flying an Archon, which I didn’t expect, but there you have it. I didn’t die, in fact my ship was barely scratched. I however, didn’t stick around to get killed either. I simply have learned how to properly fit a ship to escape and learned how to fly those ships properly. This doesn’t mean I can’t fight either, in a ship fitted properly to fight I do very very well, it simply isn’t my goal right now. My goal is trade, and some lowsec public relations and hoping to develop genuine realistic and fair market places in low sec for low sec residents, and thus in turn hopefully pulling more people from highsec into lowsec.

And with this, I move on to my next post which will hopefully tie the loose ends …

Trade Wars

Well lots has gone on since I last posted.

I found myself taking an unexpected vacation for three weeks. Something happened to my communications modules, and I was unable to get information or interact with the market or any other spacer activities. Ce la Vie. Before this, everything was running pretty much business as usual. I expanded my markets to include some of the higher end minerals and was hauling several loads of minerals a day.

When I lost communications, I was stuck waiting for everything to be repaired and come back online while I was stuck drifting aimlessly. When I came back online, I found my trade routes highjacked and in control of my competition.

So begins the trade wars. You lucky miners. The price for minerals has gone up tremendously since I started the trade wars. At some points in time the price for minerals at mining outposts has exceeded the price offered for minerals at the trade hubs. Not the best situation for a trader of any level, however I didn't let that stop me. Eventually things started to settle out and the prices offered at trade hubs were increasing since the supply was dwindling. No one is going to sell minerals for less than they pay for them, and I am no different. I may take a small hit in percentage and allowing myself to just break even to continue the trade war and regain control over my regions, but I won't sell my self short.

Instead I got sneaky. In the old world market place, this would be considered illegal, it would be considered market manipulation. Here is how it works. Because I am trying to regain the market place, I increase my buy orders. However, instead of my competitors letting me do so, they are also raising their prices. As I mentioned earlier, eventually the average price for minerals at the mineral outposts was exceeding the highest prices offered at the trade hubs. I can find orders FAR out, but as you know running REALLY long trade runs is a major loss in productivity. I give up trying to beat them out, and I sit wondering for a few days how I can work this out. Then it dawns on me. Each time my competitor raises their prices, they are now offering to buy minerals for MORE than I paid for them. Hmmm. I can sell them my minerals without moving them anywhere. The profit isn't as high, and I still have to pay taxes and brokers fees for the transactions, but I am not loosing any money. I also realize I can buy minerals cheaper at the trade hubs than I can at the outposts. Couple that with a couple of good buy orders in adject low sec systems, and I find myself in a profitable situation again. I am now running minerlas TO the mining outposts at a profit.

So lets run this again. Since my competitors will NOT let me regain my systems, I keep THEIR prices high by competiting with them for buy orders. While their prices continuous are raised higher than mine, I sell them the minerals I would otherwise have brought to the trade hubs. So they are paying MORE for MY minerals, because THEY keep wanting to raise the prices. Hey they may be making a profit, or maybe not. I don't know I don't care, but they are by the very nature of the beast, by their very competition have given me an opportunity to exploit them and profit myself. As it turns out with quite a bit less work also.

I have also started buying minerals in lowsec. Not far into lowsec, just one jump in on those border systems where low sec status pilots try to sell their goods because they can't come directly into high sec. I can get minerals a lot cheaper there for sure, and when things get hard like I have described here, it can help boost those lost profits.

Its risky running into low sec, but I don't do it stupidly. I make sure the system is safe to enter before I enter, and I get out as fast as I can. And I run when someone shows up in the local channel. No need to court disaster. I have even considered purchasing a second freighter, so that if I must temporarily abondon a freighter docked in low sec, I still have a freighter in high sec for continued normal use. It's still risky, remember I never said there wasn't a risk. You however just need to not be stupid about it.

So I have learned something here, I have learned how to conduct a trade war successfully. I don't even think my competitors have a clue what's going on either. Though they may, and they may not care. And I may quite possibly be letting the cat out of the bag here, but that's a whole nother thing entirely.

Finding your first good trades

It can be difficult learning what is good to trade and when to know when you are looking at a really good buy or a really good sales opportunity. This comes with experience, but there is a tool available to help you learn and decide what those good deals are. Its called the Market Window, when you are looking at products, learn to use the detail view of the item. This will show you how much things are going to cost you and how much you can sell them for in the whole region. If an item is being sought or sold, it will show up on the detail. The way to read the detail is to look at the order details, look for the cheapest sell order for the product and make sure the item is NOT in lowsec if you are not comfortable. Now find the most expnsive buy order, also making sure it is not in lowsec. Very often the prices will be very close, but usually there will be enough of a gap to make a profit.

You have to decide whether that gap is big enough to justify making the trip or not. If you can make a deal, travel only 1 jump and profit 5 million dollars, that is probably an amazingly good deal, especially for new traders. If you have to travel through 15 jumps and you only profit 20,000 isk, although yes its a profit, it may not be worth your time. You also want to make sure that your taxes and broker's fees don't turn that 20,000 ISK gross profit into zero net profit. The fastest way to build capital (money), is to find the best deals that create the least amount of work. For instance, in my case, sometimes Jita will have a buy order which FAR exceeds the value of a local buy order for my product, and although I might make 20 millioin ISK more for a single deal, I probably will be forced to travel between 15 and 20 jumps to get to Jita. My frieghter takes nearly 1.5 hours to get to Jita from my area of operation. Then I have to return FROM jita, and that's another 1.5 hours. In that time, I can literally make 4 or 5 trips in my normal routes, and gross profit 40 million ISK each full route.

Was it worth chasing that extra 20 Million ISK? Most definately not, I probably lose between 150-250 million ISK worth of gross profit if I did that. Needless to say I have only made that longer trip two times with my freighter, and its not worth it. I lost money, and I was so bored that I fell asleep at the COMM several times that evening before docking somewhere and getting some shut-eye.

Important Skills for Trade

Trade
without this skill you are useless as a trader. You need to train this up to level 4 I think to get access to the more advanced trade skills. Each level grants you 4 more outstanding orders. Level 4 I think is the highest level I recommend until you decide otherwise in your advanced career.

Marketting
If you have an item in a station other than the one you are currently in, you need Marketting to sell it. Otherwise you have to get into your spaceship, fly to that station so that you may sell that item. Marketting allows you to do that without being forced to fly there.

Procurement
does the same thing as marketting except it is for buy orders rather than sales. It lets you place a buy order in a distant station. Note: Anyone can by something for sale anywhere in their region without Procurement. Procurement only affects placing a "BUY ORDER" it does not affect buying something that is already for sale.

Day Trading
Like Procurement and Marketing, this skill lets you "adjust" the price of orders without having to be docked at the same station as the order.

Margin Trading
lets you place a buy order even if you don't have the full amount handy. This is useful if say you want to buy 10,000 units of tritanium, but you only have the money for 7,500 units. You can still place the buy order, and while it is slowly being filled you have time to make some more money to cover the purchase. Note: you still need to have the money at the time the buy is executed, otherwise the transaction simply fails, the buy order is cancelled, and you loose your broker's fees for the full transaction. As a larger buyer, I often place many buy orders across several systems and regions knowing that I will not be able to cover all the purchases. I however have guaranteed that I will get my orders filled to whatever I "can" afford regardless of whether business is slower in one area rather than another. The broker's fees are a small fraction of my profits, and I can afford to pay those extra broker's fees as a crude form of insurance that my buys get filled somewhere.

Retail
Once you have trade to lvl4, you need to train in Retail, this increases the number of outstanding orders you can manage at once. Increases your number of outstanding orders by 8 for each level.

Visibility
When you are placing an order at the same station as the order, you can by default choose how far away you want people to be able to fill your order. For instance, if you place an order for 10,000 tritanium and set the range to Region, you will soon discover that you have a few units of tritanium scattered all over the region and you have to go pick them up. Seems like a pain in the neck and it is, but setting range is also quite useful when you only have space for one more order, and you want people in several nearby stations to be able to fill this order. Visibility provides the ability to set this range in exactly the same way but while you are setting up an order from a remote location, just procurement allows you to create remote buy orders, visibility allows you to set the range of remote orders.

Accounting
Not a "necessary" skill except that it allows you to train for Margin Trading. Accounting has no real short term value, but over time it will save your lots of ISK that would otherwise be eaten as taxes.

Broker Relations
Also not very important, it does not enable an advanced skills, but also over time can save you lots of money. Until you get into really big trades, this skill is too expensive to be worth it. ROI on this skills can be measured in month and even years unless you trade hundreds of millions of ISK per trade.

How to get started in trade

Ok well, some people that I know in game have asked how to get started in trade. Many of these people are veteran pilots who just didn't know how to have successful career in trade. There is no other career in New Eden that has the profitablility that trade offers. No single other career path can approach the profit potential of Trade. Within a few weeks, even an entry level trader can make as much as a veteran miner, pirate or mission runner if they are smart about it.

So how do you get started?

It doesn't matter if you are a new pilot or a veteran player, the basic principles of successful trade are the same. As a new player, your first task is to make some money. Without money, you cannot operate. You can make some starting money by running missions. Your first training missions are a good place to start. You can also mine, or you can even run some trade routes if you have a few ISK to work with. The key is that you develop enough ISK, to own as big a ship as possible. For trade, especially early trade, the biggest ships available will come from the Gallante Federation, however whichever race's spaceship command skills you have chosen to train will do just fine. Although the size of your cargo hold makes a big difference in your profit potential, the way you operate is profoundly more important than the size of your cargo hold. A bigger cargo hold not only allows you to make more money, it also allows you to make bigger mistakes. So other than training your Industrial Spaceship skills, you want to learn how to operate smartly on the market above everything else. Start small, buying things you can afford and selling them for a little bit more than you paid for them. You can even make money on the market without even owning a space ship, however it is much harder early on without having the money to make the market malleable.

Where's the ISK?

After some toying around and paying attention to the mineral markets, I have determined that the cause of my new competition is literally caused by the removal of government subsidized ship markets (aka NPC shuttles). Because of all the speculation and movement in price of minerals, more people are speculating that the value of minerals will increase, and continue to increase.

I on the otherhand am operating normally, buying and selling. I am not sitting on stockpiles any longer than is required to get out to my systems which have minerals waiting for me. My immediate margins may not be astronomical at the moment, but the fact that I continue to operate normally and have many times more trades within a given period of time, I am certain I make making a lot more money than the speculators of similar net worth. Obviously if on has trillions of isk tied up in tritanium, a single sale can net a lot of money which I cannot compete with. At the same time, however, it isn't easy to sell that much tritanium at once unless you have buyers ready. Those people who are sitting on one or a few hundred million units of tritanium are definately behind the ball compared to my income which is rather significant and regular and perhaps most importantly, I can depend on it.

I similarly to Ka Jolo, a low-sec pirate who blogs at http://eve-pirate.blogspot.com/, am a young trader still learning the ropes but doing pretty well in the process. I estimate on my average days that I am still making about forty million ISK an hour of actual work. I do not mean that I make this money while I am offline, though my operation does continue while I am offline because people are selling to me ever few minutes of every day. However, it takes me approximately 1 hour to work a full load of minerals, and I can run at least one load a day, usually 3 or 4 loads. Over the weekends when I can spend more time babysitting the market and running my freighter to and fro between many end points, I can get in 5 or 6 full runs.

This Sunday however was abysmal. I was lucky to get two partial loads all day. Now I don't like to run partial loads, but I had buy orders ready to fail if I don't have the ISK to back them up. I needed to make those runs to make sure my wallet can cover the big trades so I don't loose money to my less deserving competetors. I don't actually loose money, but I do loose the profit.

Three days ago, I set up a public chat channel called "Interstellar Tritanium". It is my corp's public channel, however it is an open channel which I will use to keep in touch with friends I wouldn't otherwise be able to keep, and also as a place for local (meaning within the regions of my reach), miners and mineral traders to chat together in a place where we all have common interests and activities. I have connected with around 10 old friends so far, and made a few more.

Market getting tighter

Because I started mineral trading on the large scale only about 2 weeks ago, I am not really certain about the source of this effect in my area; however, the markets in my regions of operation have been getting a little tougher.



First, although I have been trading around two of these regions for a couple of months, I have not been much of a moving force. I have farmed more miners in the some of these areas by providing local places to sell their minerals for a fair price, but nothing compares to the power of a freighter when it comes to the ability to more minerals to mineral trade hubs.



I believe though I have literally created furtile ground for my own competition. You see traders review the activity of their regions when they place buys and sells. You can tell which systems have active trading even if you don't "log" that activity. You can tell because of pricing and volume. In places where minerals move a lot, and where there is competition, the buy price and the sell price of your product will be very close to one another and the majority of buy orders will tend to be larger.



Let me try to explain how I might have affected this.



In an Industrial Ship, you have the means to place buys and move minerals to the order of 5 to 10 million units in productive mining systems without locking your assets up. Larger orders will get you stuck with tons of minerals that need hauling and no money, anything less and you are running around a aweful lot just to fill the cargo hold of your Industrial Ship. This size of buy orders doesn't draw very much attention in the active systems, because they generally get filled in a couple of hours or less. There is some safety in this. Being a small time buyer means that the big boys aren't worried about you nor your short term competition. Their larger orders will still get filled once your small order is done getting filled. Since most pilots can't baby-sit the market for much more than a couple hours each day, the hit they take is tiny. In productive systems, your order lasts 2 to 4 hours maybe, which literally means you are not interfering with the big boys' trading for at least 20 hours of that day. Ultimately, the big boys don't even register your existence.



In a freighter, you have the means to move greater than 80 million units of minerals in one load. Generally speaking, unless you have gobs of money. You don't want to let eiter your money or your mineral assets go stale. Stale assets do not make you any money, they just sit there going stale and moldy. So you want to size your buy orders just right, in each highly productive system I work in, I place buy orders hovering around this 80 million unit mark. Instead of placing giant buy orders in one system and waiting for it to get filled over a period of days, I place my buy orders so that I will hopefully have at least one or two full freighter fulls of minerals to carry to the mineral trade hubs. Keep in mind that a freighter is an awesome tool because of the size of its hold, but these ships moves very very slowly. It moves a lot slower than even the largest Industrial Ships. Flying around gathering minerals from all across the region and making stops at stations along my routes is a lengthy process. I try to streamline this process so I am going point-to-point without making several stops, and this helps increase my productivity. There is a tradeoff however.



Larger buy orders take much longer to get filled. In a perfect world with zero competition, my buy orders get filled in 4 or 6 or more hours in those same productive systems. Sounds great until you realize that other traders become more aware of my activities. I have more and more often discovered that my buy orders have only been filled incrementally, and when I take a peek at the market, their orders beat mine for price. Of course my miners have no loyalty, especially since they don't even know they are working for me. They sell their mineral to whomever offers the best price. I wouldn't ask them to do otherwise, but now because my buy orders are larger and last longer, I am running into competition with the other big boys, boys who are much much bigger than me.



Now scenario number two. Maybe more traders are excited about stockpiling minerals since the governments are no longer subsidizing fixed price ship sales (most notably shuttles) which essentially has placed a soft cap on the price of the low end minerals. Since traders can no longer buy thousands of these ships and melt them down into their mineral components, there is no longer anything which artificially holds the price of minerals to a limited range. These traders are banking on the value of minerals to skyrocket, even if only in the short term.



Then again, maybe the problem is both. Big traders trying to get their hands on lots of minerals, and my providing a roadblock to overcome in my regions and they having to continually beat my buys to get a hold of as much product as they can and bank it for later. I don't work that way, I continue to operate normally and I don't invest in long term commodities. I buy and I sell and I move and I provide. This is how I operate, but the extra competition is making the margin a little skinnier than it was just a week ago.

A long winded Introduction

I am borne of Noble Gallente stock. Today, I am a successful Mineral Trader, but I wasn't always. Let me give you a not so short introduction of who I am and how I got here.
I graduated from the Center of Advanced Studies about 4 months ago having learned how to mine asteroid belts and how to process that ore into the raw materials used to build nearly every item available to the citizens of New Eden. Being young and innocent, I ended up going to school a second time, to better round out my early education. It seems that many pilots have second and even third helpings of school early on, so I was not discouraged. Thankfully, the tuition is free.

Finally moving on, I began mining in Cistuvaert flying my gifted Velator. Although the school provides the minimum required equipment to begin one's career, I quickly learned that the equipment is shoddy at best and is worth about as much as a snow cone to a polar bear. I earned enough money to upgrade my equipment and finally ship to an Imicus, which although does not enjoy the bonus to mining, it does sport a much larger cargo hold compared to other inexpensive frigates available. I fly back and forth between the belts and the space station hundreds of times, until I could afford an industrial ship. I would jetison a can fill it up just enough to to load the Iteron Mark I, and I would fly back and return with that ship. I found I made a lot more money doing this by reducing the number of trips I had to take to the space station with my load. I however often getting frustrated by how choked the asteroid belt can be with competition, and how quickly the belts can be depleted and how long it remains depleted before another stretch of the asteroid belt moves into range. I moved on into Aidert, which has no space station to call home. However; it has little to no competition, and sports higher quality asteroid belts. I quickly learned though that Rats are rampant. Almost as soon I started collecting a good haul of ore to bring home, I was prevented from continuing my labors as soon as a roving band of rats decided to show up. They never leave on their own and stick around, so once the rats have shown up, an ill equipped new miner has no chance of profiting from this system. I returned to Custuvaert to ply whatever scraps I could find available. I however also quickly learned that your ore can be easily stolen. I also learned the hard way that you don't want to do anything about it.

One day while I was mining in my Imicus, a person initiated a private conversation with me, and offered some advice on how to improve my profits and so forth. He also donated 15 million ISK to help me get along. At this time, 15 Million ISK seemed like a lifetime's worth of income, and I initially declined it but he insisted I keep it. I ended up giving the money to another needy spacefarer whom I don't even remember now.

Let me rewind here a little. When I decided to live the life of a space pilot, I had initially decided that I would go at it alone and to prove my individual mettle against the harsh life of space alone. I wanted to show the universe that you do not need to rely on people who ultimately have the same ability to take as much as give. I had my mind set on succeeding or failing under my own power.

Fastforward - After having developed my friendship with that early benefactor name Valushon, decided to give teamwork a try. He convinced me that there are huge resources and experiences that can only be tapped through teamwork, so I decided that perhaps since he is a good person, that the rest of his crew might also be. I joined Ex Caminus with excitement, and also with the feeling of entering that unknown of living a life that requires you depend on you chosen group of comrades. I was given some instruction on how to improve my learning curve but studying the liberals arts which essentially teaches a person how to study and be an "educated" fellow. Very quickly I doubled my speed of learning most things. This is much better than having to go through school twice just to a better grasp of the simplest things. Ex Caminus provided me access to sources of information to swiftly improve my profitability as a miner, most notably showing me where to find the finest work on mining available, "Halada's Guide to Mining". Let me digress and tell you this is the single most essential guide to succeeding in a mining career. There are some things that force me to disagree with Hilada, but overall there is no better source of information for a miner publically available. If you wish to become a truly successful miner, this is must read manual.

After being in Ex Caminus for a few weeks, and having recruited a majority portion of new membership and bringing them up to speed as young miners. The corporation's CEO decided that although I was also young, I had the drive necessary to successfully lead a team of industrialists. He therefore gave me a huge promotion and made me the Director of Mining for the corporation. I literally was leading the mining division of our corporation flying no more than a cruiser. I quickly trained into a Retreiver, and was a productive force for the corporation. Although the Retreiver isn't the productive monster that a Hulk is, if one is persistent and one develops the right support skills, one can mine as much or more in a retreiver as a hulk pilot can with zero support skills. I therefore trained those support skills before training for a Hulk, because I was increasing my profits and benefiting from them sooner that i would had I simply make that beeline in my education to piloting the massive Hulk.

Pretty quickly after my promotion into D-level management, things started to go sour in the corp for me. I found myself becoming more and more at odds with the rest of management because we didn't agree on some very minor but apparently touchy issues. In the end, I gathered up my things and left the corp, and once again had planned on going it either alone, or running my own show as CEO of my own corporation.

My old division mates and I started a new corp Valence Interstellar Operations under the leadership of Veriasse Valence. Our old corp, Ex Caminus, went to war with us over our sudden departure and liberating our assets. There wasn't much of a fight, and we settled our differences, and moved on.

In the meantime I had been studying to pilot a hulk now, and I had all the support skills necessary to reap maximum profit from its operation once I could fly it. One of my corp mates helped me purchase my hulk loaning me the remainder of the money I would need to buy one. I bought one and man, you can mine a LOT of ore in a hulk when you are trained and equipped properly. However as soon as I earned enough money to pay back this loan, I was so sick of mining, and I only mined at times when I didn't really need to pay attention. A Hulk fitted with cargo expanders has a cargo bay just a few m3 short of a similarly fitted Interon Mark IV, so jetcan mining became a thing of the past. The time it takes to run home and switch ships, and haul ore now exceeds the time it takes to just haul the ore home in your mining vessel and returning to mine some more. Couple that with the fact that it takes approximately 15 minutes to fill a Hulks cargo hold, and mining becomes a passive activity rather than one requiring constant attention. I very quickly became bored of mining, and once I paid off my debts, I looked for other ways to profit.

I looked into trading as a profit source, our CEO wasn't so keen on the idea of sinking our assets into trade, having been convinced that the market place is just as harsh a PvP environment as low-sec pirating, so I decided to try it alone with my own assets. I quickly learned there was an amazing market for minerals when they were hauled to the right place. As a miner, I often hauled my own higher-end minerals to far off stations to maximize my profits, but when it came to Tritanium and Pyrite, it was more profitable to just dump them on a local buyer and continue mining than it was to spend the time hauling many many loads to get a few extra percent profit. I had however been training to pilot an Iteron Mark V, and when I fitted that ship out with Cargo Expanders, I found that I profited about as much or more hauling and trading minerals as I was mining in my hulk. After a few days of hauling, I found that I could afford to rig my ship with Astronautics Rigs (the much more expensive rig equivelent of cargo expanders), and this increased my profitability quite a bit. My Iteron Mark V, fully rigged and outfitted can carry a few m3 shy of 49233.1 m3. A full load carried a good profit, and I was making a pretty good hunk of cash for just a little hauling back and forth between mining outposts and mineral trade centers. I reported my successes back to my corporation who was becoming a bit antsy at my lack of participation in the corporations primary function which is mining. I even sold my hulk so I had more working capital to work with. However we worked out that since I was so successful in trade as an early trader perhaps I should be handing trade and commerce for the corporation, and so this is what I began to do.

I however quickly ran into a problem. There was now a conflict of interest, I was trading for the corp and I was trading for myself. That in an of itself is no issue until you consider that the product was exactly the same, Minerals. This wouldn't be such an issue if there was trust involved, trust that allowed me to ameliorate my trading with the corporation's, however the CEO of the corporation wanted to see the trades occuring directly to and from the corporation's wallet. I was not permitted to take the minerals for trade and transfer the profits in from my own wallet. Here is the problem with that. When setting up sale orders or even dumping minerals on existing buy orders, whose minerals do I sell first? Mine or the corps? If I set up sale's orders for myself, and separate sales orders for the corp, then how do I control which gets filled first? In the end it would have been more useful to pool the minerals together, thereby increasing the volume of our buy and sales orders, however it didn't work out. This coupled with the fact that the CEO of our corporation stopped showing up led me to decide I need to move on to my own as I initially intended all along so many months ago. I donated all my mining equipment to the corp, my crystals and mining modules and such, and I relinquished my roles and when the timer ran out, I left the corp. Three days later the CEO finally noticed my disappearance with an apology for not being around and the teaser that he was planning on leaving the corp to me as CEO because he was no longer interested in being a pilot and planned to return planetside permanantly. As far as I know that corp still exists, and I know that Veriasse is still alive, because send him the occasional message saying hello with an update on my life, but I haven't heard from him since.

A few days after leaving ValOps and having made some friends in The Scope, I had a discussion with veteran pilot about whether there was any consequences to firing upon cannisters. Jetison cannister do not incur the wrath of CONCORD and I believed at the time that this would also be true for secure containers as well. She wanted to bet on it, and I jokingly said I would bet 3 billion ISK on it. I thought that would be an apparent joke, but she seriously considered the bet and she asked if I would pay up if I lost the bet. Of course I told her that I was only joking and don't have a tiny fraction of that, however apparently she DID have that kind of money if she was serious. Anyway, although I had at this time several hundred million isk, i wasn't willing to risk it, I told her so and that I really was only willing to bet 1 million because I was saving up for a freighter and it takes quite a bit of time to build that sort of cash. Anyway, we tested shooting a cannister and I lost. I paid up. However, because I was hoping for and looking for people to loan me the money to get into a freighter and/or loan me theirs while I work on getting my own (including my ex CEO from Ex Caminus whom I have become friendly with again), I decided to give her a try. I told her how I have the skills necessary to pilot one, that I was impatient and didn't want to wait the 2 months it was going to take to afford a freighter and still have enough working capital to use it effectively. Anyway, all said and done a perfect stranger pretty much gave me with no strings attached (meaning she just transfered the cash, no contract) gave me 1 billion ISK. Terms are 50 million a week interest paid until the principle can be returned in one lump sum. So if I have the billion in a month, I have paid 200 million in interest up to then, if it takes 2 months, then 400 million. Anyway the weekly payment is strictly interest.

I realized a little too late that I missed one skill in the requirements, and I still had about 5 more days of training before I could fly the ship, and my interest was already kicked in and I would have to start paying in a week. Instead of continuing to run trade routes with my Iteron, I sunk all my assets into buy orders and bought up as much mineral as I could so that when I finally could get into amy freighter I had something to haul and trade right away. That day came soon enough, I made so much money on that first and second day buying and selling, that I made my first payment and retained a lot of profit in the bargin. As it turns out, when you have the vehicle to carry your goods, you can make a major profit just moving stuff around.

In the less than two weeks that I have been flying my freighter, I have profitted nearly 1 billion ISK. Payment Day is today, and it won't hurt a bit. Once I have 2 billion in my wallet, I will pay back the principle of one billion. Why wait that long? Because you need working capital.
I incorporated my own corp this time. It's called "Interstellar Tritanium Solutions Team", and two of my old corp mates joined me. They are doing other things and it is more of a social arrangement with benefits, they mine and hunt pirates, and I buy their ore from them at fair market value. This means I pay them a good price and they make more money than if they dumped their ore on any generic mineral trader, and more than if they hauled it themselves. In fact, all of my miners and by that I mean any and all miners that operates in my four region of operations, I ensure get a fair deal for their minerals. I do't undercut them knowing they have no choice, I want them to want to sell to me because they get a good deal. I make my money by bringing it to the people who need it.

A miner is who I am, and trade is what I do.