One Goal Down, What's Next?

Over the weekend I accomplished my top goal for my fourth year in EVE Online.  That's right, I got my Minmatar faction standings up to 9.9 and am now the proud owner of a 2-run blueprint copy of the Tempest Fleet Issue battleship.  So what's next?

Looking down my list of goals I think that the Rubicon expansion is going to play hell with my plans.  Then again, maybe not.  Take for instance, my ship goals.  The goals were to purchase both Minmatar command ships and to fly something else besides Minmatar and ORE ships.  I'm well on my way there, as the proud owner of a Claymore.  But I think I have to change my plans to fly all of the Caldari sub-capital ships (minus the T2 battleships).  Despite all the complaining on the forums (I read the first twenty-three pages of this thread) I still want to get the new SOE ships.  If anything, the intention for the SOE cruiser, the Stratios, to have the ability to run 6/10 DED complexes probably means I'd fulfill my goal of running a level 4 security mission in low sec.  That's a win.  But as the SOE ships are Amarr/Gallente hybrids, I need to start training those skills.  Fortunately due to the Destroyer and Battlecruiser skill changes I've already trained both racial frigate skills to IV and racial cruiser skills to III.   I also have my armor tanking skills up to the elite level on the old certificate system.  But lasers?  Ugh!  All the cool kids play with autocannons and missiles.

One more thing about the SOE ships.  They will only have the exploration bonuses of the T1 racial exploration frigates.  I've already maxed out my hacking skills, but all of my scanning skills are at IV.  On Rosewalker, my main exploration pilot, those were next on the list.  I may have to change the skill plan to learn the Amarr and Gallente skills first.

For industry, I wanted to expand my sales line from faction ammunition to modules.  The easiest course of action is if I could make a living out of selling items I manufacture from the blueprints I find exploring.  I did learn one thing from Odyssey.  I need to move out of the faction warfare area I currently live in.  Not because of the fierce FW warriors.  No, because all those FW complexes crowd out the exploration sites I make a living on.  If all the sites didn't auto-magically appear in the on-board scanner as I traveled about I never would have known.

If I move to a more explorer friendly area of low sec and if my skills can compensate for the lower exploration bonuses of the SOE ships, I may not have to go to the backup option of tech 2 manufacturing.  Then again, the SOE ships, especially the Stratios, will make low sec mining even more dangerous than it is today.  But after my false panic over the Odyssey changes killing off my mining activity I'm inclined to wait and see.

I should add in one thing about planetary interaction.  When I first heard about the introduction of POCOs to high sec, I thought that might mean lower taxes for high sec industrialists.  After reading the dev blog where CCP SoniClover announced that high sec industrialists would pay both an NPC and a player tax, I realized I was wrong, although in the future those training the proper skills may wind up seeing a slight reduction.  But that is definitely another reason to re-open and expand my PI operations in low sec.  Time to buy blockade runners for my alts!

So for my goals, I am still on track to make this my most productive and successful year in EVE Online yet.  Of course, Rubicon is still six weeks away and a lot can happen in that time.  But after two months, things are going pretty much according to plan, although some of the details are changing.  Does anyone have a lucky charm I can borrow?  This is New Eden.  Something that can't continue forever, won't.