One EVE Online Resolution Accomplished

I wrote about how I play Elder Scrolls Online and thinking of switching for that game to Final Fantasy XIV last week. But my main game still is EVE Online. The difference between EVE and all the rest is that EVE is a hobby while the others are games. While I leveled my templar to within 50,000 XP of level 47, I did some interesting activities related to EVE over the weekend.

On Saturday, I took a break from housework and ESO to talk with someone about a project he is working on. Given my expertise, I think I can say the subject touches on real money trading and the black market. I'm kind of anxious to see the finished product. But I won't ruin the surprise.

Sunday I appeared on Talking in Stations. Be on the lookout for the episode because the episode featured CCP Fozzie talking about moon mining. Well, that was the main feature, and Matterall brought a lot of smart people with experience on the subject, like Goonswarm's Tuzy, Brave's Dunk Dinkle, Pandemic Legion's Elise Randolph, and Skill U's Elite Anon. With talk of the news of the day, we wound up discussing all the things. Afterwards, CCP Fozzie answered questions on the TiS Discorse server for 45 minutes or so and Matterall may publish the Q&A as well.

Tuzy is a director in GSOL, Goonswarm's logistics arm and responsible for maintaining The Imperium's vast infrastructure in space. I got the chance to ask Tuzy about the price of moon minerals before the show. He thinks the market for T2 components will become very volatile within the next 2-3 months. Volatile meaning big price increases. During the stream, Tuzy and Dunk had a disagreement, with Dunk maintaining that the existence of large stockpiles of moon goo were a myth and that the prices on the market should remain fairly stable.

I get the feeling Dunk is a lot more concerned with his local prices than with the price of products in far away Jita, although I think he still needs to source some of his construction material from New Eden's premier trade hub. Still, with experts telling me that the price of T2 materials will either stay the same or increase, I figured the time had come to fulfill one of my New Year's resolutions.

The materials finally gathered

After the stream and the Q&A session, I decided to make a trip to Jita to buy what I needed, with side trips to Dodixie and Rens to pick up a couple of items listed for cheaper in those places. I took my Mastodon, the Minmatar Deep Space Transport with a 62,500 m3 fleet hangar, a 5000+ m3 cargohold, built-in warp core stabilizers and a formidable tank.Did I mention I souped it up to have a warp speed of ??? AU/second with my character's implants and a sub-11 second align time? And of course, I fit a cloak for those times the MWD/cloak trick is absolutely needed while traversing space. People make fun of me for using the ship to haul tritanium around. I guess a billion ISK worth of T2 components is a more worthy cargo.

With as many jumps as I took, I'm a bit surprised I didn't see any Macharials out and about sitting on a gate. The only issue I really had was with space. I filled the fleet hangar with giant secure containers and it turns out the capital jump drives take up 10,000 m3 of space each. Fortunately, packaging up 10 of the containers only takes up 3000 m3, so I placed them in the cargohold and was able to fit everything in with a few thousand m3 of space to spare.

Finally have all the components

Of course, I did something stupid. After reaching the low sec station I wanted to build in, I dumped the T2 components into the station container I used to store all my Marshal items, opened up the industry interface, and discovered I was short 250 units of Tungsten Carbide Armor Plate. I checked my list and sure enough, I had only purchased 18,500 units even though I had entered 18,750 in my spreadsheet. I then went to Fuzzy Steve's website and found someone selling the parts for only 500 ISK over Jita price. At that point, I was more than willing to pay an extra 125,000 ISK in order to avoid over 30 extra jumps, so I switched to my Prowler and zipped off to Nein to grab the missing materials.

Normally, I would end the post with a screenshot of the ship in space. I have to make an exception in this case, as I only have one pilot capable of even sitting in the ship, and he was doing something somewhere else. Plus, I still need to fit the ship, and undocking a defenseless Marshal doesn't seem a wise move. So instead, I'll post the bonuses:

Black Ops bonuses (per skill level):

• 125% bonus to ship max velocity when using Cloaking Devices
• 10% bonus to Warp Scrambler and Warp Disruptor optimal range
• 20% to Stasis Webifier optimal range
• 10% bonus to warp speed and acceleration

Gallente Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret damage
• 7.5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret tracking speed

Minmatar Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire
• 10% bonus to Large Projectile Turret falloff

Caldari Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile and Torpedo Launcher rate of fire
• 10% bonus to Cruise Missile and Torpedo flight time

Amarr Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Large Energy Turret damage
• 10% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range

Role Bonus:

• Can fit Covert Cynosural Field Generator and Covert Jump Portal Generator
• No targeting delay after Cloaking Device deactivation
• Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds
• 75% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue
• 10% bonus to security status gains from destruction of non-capsuleer pirates while flying this ship
• Armor Repairer and Shield Booster effectiveness increased by a percentage equal to 10x pilot security status, with a floor of 0% and ceiling of 50%

The one pilot I have capable of flying the Marshal, however, has all racial battleships trained to 5 and
Black Ops trained to 4. Plus, security standings of 5.0, so I also get the max benefits from active tanking.

The Marshal hull alone sells for slightly over 4 billion ISK, making the ship the most expensive thing I own in EVE. Given that I prefer flying frigate and cruiser hulls, I may never take the ship out of a station after I fit and move the ship from its current location. But I will have completed at least one of my New Year's resolutions for 2019 and a goal I set for myself in late 2017.