A Six Month Check

I wrote six months ago on the one year anniversary of my playing Eve Online how New Eden is a lot more fun when a player has goals.  I set some goals to accomplish by the end of my second year in the game, and now is a good time to see how I'm doing.

Cool ships - On Saturday I accomplished the first part of my ship goal: buying an Orca.  The only capital ship that can use the jump gate system in high-sec, to me the Orca is the ship that represents the carebear in Eve the best.  And I have one.  Now I just have to wait until after Hulkageddon to see exactly how I can use it in my hauling operations.

The second part of the goal was to acquire every sub-capital Minmatar ship.  I left myself an out if I found out I could not train for every ship.  That sadly will be the case.  But I am going to try to get as many ships that I can fly well as possible.  At this point I'm shooting to get all tech 1 ships, except freighters, and the tech 2 frigates and cruisers.  I'm hoping to squeeze in some more, but I'll be happy if I can fly all of them with all tech 2 fittings by August.

Making money - To accomplish my goals of buying all the ships and the skills to fly them requires money.  Lots and lots of isk.  I also have a rule: no buying isk with real life money.  What follows are my ideas from six months ago on how to make money.

• Develop perfect refining - Mission accomplished.  Wandering Rose now has perfect refining at the more advanced stations for both Core Complexion and Eifyr and Co.  No more wasted minerals for me.
  
• Establish a datacore mining operation - Six months ago I only had one research agent from who I could get datacores.  I currently have six and have plans to recruit four more.  Of course, six months ago I was looking at selling the datacores.  No longer.  I am looking at using those for invention purposes now.
  
• Begin doing courier contracts - I made 30 million isk in January carrying out public courier contracts.  Doing the contracts is still hit and miss depending on the time real life allows me to do these.  I'll probably pick up the pace again during Hulkageddon as I see if I can dodge all the gankers that promise to roam high-sec from February 19-28.
  
• Planetary Interaction - Six months ago I hadn't touched PI and was wondering if making colonies was worth the time.  Last month, I made 350 million isk in profit from my 10 colonies.  PI is allowing me to use datacores for more fun things than just selling on the market to fund my activities.

Wormhole Operations - I still have not ventured into a wormhole since August.  In fact, I've done very little exploration at all.  The little that I did do resulted in the single worst day I've had in losses while playing Eve.  But venturing into a wormhole is still on my list of things to do before August.

Ramping Up Production - I am still at the point where I only manufacture tech 1 ammo and drones, but that is about to change.  I have successfully created 3 blueprint copies of Warrior II drones and have made copies of the Probe and Wreathe blueprints to try to make Cheetah and Prowler BPCs.  I'm also currently making copies of Mammoth blueprints in order to make Mastodon BPCs.  I think getting into tech 2 construction could definitely be considered ramping up my production activities.  The fact that planetary interaction pays the bills is really helping my efforts with this goal.



Looking back over the past six months I think I'm making progress toward accomplishing my goals.  Which is good because when I started this exercise I didn't really know how I was doing.  Sometimes I get too caught up in the detail to recall exactly where I am headed.  Of course, Eve Online is just a game so as long as I'm having fun who really cares what happens.  But it is nice when it looks like a plan is coming together.