The Occator

Ok it's time I talk about a hauler ship and fittings for use in Low Sec. As the title implies, I am talking about the occator. A lot of people continuously recommend I fly a Viator instead, however I believe the Viator really is a weak choice for Low Sec hauling. Let me explain why.

Firstly, my first fitting for an Occator was totally invulnerable to attack. I fit it thusly:

Highs:
Small T2 Smart Bomb (for keeping interceptors and frigates out of blaster range)

Mids:
2x F59 Shield Extenders (double shield HP, and therefore double shield recharging)

Lows:
A mix of Cargo Expanders and Warp Core Stabalizers (depending on cargo needs and danger level of the system)

Rigs:
2x T1 Cargo Optimization Rigs

This ship resulted in a hauler that could literally just sit there and take a pounding while waiting to go to warp. Never had any group of PvPers or Pirates broken past 50% of my shield. Until one day, I learned about HICs in Low Sec being able to destabalize your warp core no matter what level of warp strength your ship is fitted for. I began that encounter not worried in the least bit, until I realize that I wasn't warping. It took 12 minutes for that ship to take me out, but between being distrupted and being webbed to something like 12 meters per second, there was nothing I could do to escape. I lost a VERY expensive ship, and my cargo, and therefore a month's worth of income. Ouch.

So a Viator DOES seem like the best option. Well no, I still don't think so. First off, it's cargo hold is WAY too small to have any positive advantage to going out to low sec. One tiny shipload at a time, over and over and over isn't a lot of fun. The risk of low sec is still there, and the more back and forth between two systems in low sec, is just asking for more trouble. The ONLY advantage the viator has is it's covops cloak. That's a big advantage for sure, but honestly, I can mimick most of that advantage with an MWD and an Improved Cloak. You might ask how? Well, all cloaks stop working if you are too close to your station, so you can't cloak until you get outside the 2000 meter circle, so you are vulnerable while trying to get to 2000 meters, and if you get target locked before you cloak, you won't be able to cloak at all. Therefore those of us who fly slower ships should use Instant Warp Undock Bookmarks. Even a Freighter can warp instantly out of a station if you have a good bookmark setup. So make your bookmarks. Use a fast ship like a the faster frigates, interceptors or covops ships to find the spot WAY out in space that you can warp to instantly, and book mark it. Test it, because if it's a little off, your Occator is going to take a moment to align first, and you are going to get Warp Disrupted by a HIC. If the bookmark is "perfect", you will warp within 3 seconds of seeing your ship in space and while still inside the ring of protection of your station. Then you have a few moments to get your bearings, and warp off where you need to go without worrying about that red blinky blinky that was on your screen at the station.

If you work on your timing, you can do something similar to using an instant undock bookmark at the gate. This involves coordinating your use of the MWD, cloak and warp drive. The sequence of events goes like this. After you jump and while gate cloaked, hit "align to" where ever you are going (gate or station), then hit your MWD, and then hit your cloak. You will align quickly, and be accelerating towards your warp point. As your MWD is about 75% complete in it's cycle, turn off your cloak, and hit warp.

You may ask, so what does that do? Ok well, the MWD does two things. It helps you align really quickly, and it builds your speed up, and you'll be at about half speed with your MWD one when you hit the warp controls. However, when your MWD turns off at the end of the cycle, because your MWD isn't on anymore, your speed is now somewhere between 75% and 200% of top speed. Thus....Insta Warp.

If you mess up your timing, either forgetting to shutdown your MWD or missing your high speed window of opportunity, you'll just have to wait to go to warp, hopefully you don't get scrammed before then by a HIC. (slight chance only, but still very real)

So how do we fit this occator?

High:
Improved Cloak (for higher speed and agility)

Mid:
f59 Shield Extender (trust me you want some tank)
T2 MWD

Lows:
6x Cargo Expanders (the 2+ native warp stabalizers should be enough for the extremely short moments you are vulnerable)

Rigs:
2x Cargo Optimization Rigs

You really need the Shield Extender. I have been caught and shot at before, even with the warp schemes, and this saved my life. An occator "CAN" be brought down in a single Volley by a heavily enough armed ship. One pirate even took the time to ask me how I survived that one shot before going to warp. The answer my friends is that Shield Extender...in one volley, that pirate brough my shields down to almost 0%. If I hadn't been trained in my Shield Skills, and been Shield Extended, my ship would have popped in one shot like an Iteron.

So let me restate this. You REALLY need to train all your shielding skills.

The occator is a great ship to fly in low sec, so long as you keep your guard up and don't get lazy and keep up on your keyboard and mousing skills, you'll have a wonderful time moving through low sec carrying your merchandise with ease to and from your Low Sec Market hubs, and watching your various pirate nemeses get frustrated with you constant slippery nature.

Remember this is a Low Sec fitting, not a 0.0 fitting, the rules are different, and you'll get caught with your pants down in 0.0 if you try to use this setup out there (think bubbles).

Happy Flying

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.

Texas Philosophies for Eve

Eve Online is a lot like Texas, everything is bigger and tougher in Texas.Here's some texas philosophies applied to New Eden

1. Texas: Never slap a man who's chewin' tobacco.

2. Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.

3. Lettin' the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier'n puttin' it back in.

4. If yer ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back to make sure it's still there.

5. Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

6. There's two theories to arguin' with a woman. Neither one works.

7. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'

8. Always drink upstream from the herd.

9. Never miss a good chance to shut up.

10. Don't squat with your spurs on.

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.

Getting things done before Attribute Swapout

Well, I am finally completing my Trade skills shortly. With the new Nueral Realignment program that lets you redistribute your base attribute points around, I have decided to focus on combat based attributes. I have been training combat related skills for many months now, and have developed some very good skills. However, since you can only do this once a year, and since my attributes now are better suited to training Trade than anything else, I have elected to finish training Trade skills before I redistribute my attributes.

Are they perfect for training trade? No, but I need to complete Tycoon training because I am now very quickly and too often running out of market slots, and maybe even Broker Relations and Accounting to level 5 as well. It is not worth focusing my attributes to train those since we are talking at most a couple months of training, so instead I have halted my combat training, and will complete my trade skills, and then redistribute my skills to be a more balanced but slightly combat heavy training arrangement and return to combat training.

No matter what, once trade is done, my training will be MUCH MUCH faster in combat and other areas than it ever was. How many of us made poor decisions when selecting attributes as a new player? I was one, and I stuck with my character who is now 1 ½ years old and exceeds 22 million skill points.

Once done with trade, I’ll be returning to combat training…most specifically training for the Ishtar….mmmm I have been in love with my Ishkur for many months now and it is the little ship that made me train for it's bigger brother too.

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