Brain Dead Order Entry System Strikes Again

Eves's brain dead order entry system burned me again today.

I really wish CCP would get off their butts and fix this retarded, unrealistic, ass backwards system.

CCP likes to talk about how they take such a hard line stance against bots and other forms of cheating. Yet they continue to bury their heads in the sand and ignore a poorly thought out unrealistic mechanic that only benefits bots (bots don't make typos so it never hurts them) and hurts honest players who don't cheat.

It'd be so easy to fix too.

Assuming marginally competent programmers it should be a simple matter of changing a couple simple conditional logic statements to do the opposite of what they do now. It shouldn't take anything much more complicated than changing a conditional operator or moving some variables around in a couple places (one for buy orders, another for sell orders). If it takes much more than that then not only is the code a mess but the programmers who wrote it in the first place had to be incompetent.

Public Courier Contracts

In the last week I've expanded to 6 new regions which means I'm buying a lot more stuff and it's spread out over a much larger area. Since I want to spend less time flying around picking stuff up, not more, I had to try something different to cut the time down.

In the past I rarely used public courier contracts but for the last week I've been using them a lot more, especially in the larger regions and in or near low sec PvP areas.

I'll fly around gathering up buys in a small area and dropping them off in 500 mil+ lots somewhere convenient. Then I courier the whole lot to my main base of operations in the region and continue doing pickups without having to fly back to base all the time.

I make long trips to and from base far less frequently and I can do all the long trips on autopilot without fretting since I'm always flying them empty now.

Any station that has stuff on it worth about 500 mil or more I just courier to my base in the first place without even leaving base.

Anything way out in the middle of nowhere 15 or 20 jumps away from base and far from any other pickups I'll just courier to the closest station I get a lot of stuff at. Assuming doing so is profitable, otherwise I'll just post it for sale right where it is.

For items acquired in low sec I've started using public courier contracts even if it's only a jump or two away. That's been working great too, especially in PvP areas and near gate-camps.

Public courier contracts have been working out a lot better than I expected so far, in all ways. I really didn't think there'd be many takers on public contracts paying a few million (300-500 k per jump) with 500+ mil collateral but it's been working great for me so far. I didn't think there'd be many takers on public contracts in close proximity to a major gate-camp either but it looks like I was wrong on both counts.

I set realistic collateral values 10-20% higher than I expect to sell the items for (usually that's quite a lot more than I paid for it). Even if someone does steal a load (hasn't happened yet) all he'll really be doing is providing me with a quick turnover at a better than expected profit.

So far all my public courier contracts have been delivered within 24 hours. AFAIC that's fantastic, it's as good as or better than RFF service between hubs.

Ganked Again

I got ganked again the other day. A fairly significant loss this time, just over 2 billion, by far my biggest ever. It'll take a couple days to recoup the loss.

Lately I've been moving a bunch of secondary trade alts off the main hubs to new locations and took a chance doing something I don't normally do. I got away with it on 4 out of 6 alts and then got caught by an undock camper on the 5th.

Normally I don't fly stock out of main hubs myself and especially not in T1 frigates. I do however routinely use T1 and Covert Ops frigates to fly loads worth up to about 500 million into the hubs with no problems.

Normally I just ship stock out in billion ISK lots via Red Frog Freight. It takes longer but it's extremely safe and reliable. Between all my alts I ship a lot via RFF, they've never lost a shipment of mine yet and just in case they ever do, that's what collateral is for.

With a couple exceptions (a heavily tanked T3 cruiser and a blockade runner) I never fly with more than a billion in cargo and very rarely with more than about 500 million. That's flying regional buys into the hubs, not out of the hubs. In the past I always, without exception, sent cargo out of the hub via RFF a billion worth at a time.

The naming convention I used for many of my trade alts probably didn't help. Their very names make it obvious they're traders who might be carrying valuable cargo. When I made those particular alts I wasn't planning on ever using them to move cargo at all. They were supposed to stay on the hubs mostly station trading and never undocking but the plan changed.

It probably didn't help that it happened during peak time either with more players on than when I'm usually on. I rarely make valuable cargo runs during peak times, not only is that the least safe time but I'm usually busy with work then too.

Having never been ganked at a main hub before I'd gotten rather complacent about flying in and out of them. Since I'm always flying stuff into the main hubs rather than out of them I never had any trouble with undock campers at the main hubs and forgot to consider them.

With the alt moves I'd just been cancelling their orders, loading up the stock (mostly skill books and deadspace/faction mods), heading off to the new locations and relisting everything there. Anything bulky I'd courier out but the light stuff would all go with me. Anywhere from 1 to 2 billion worth of stock went with each alt.

I knew I was taking a chance but didn't think it was all that dangerous. Besides, it was only going to be 6 trips, all in different areas, and then it'd be back to business as usual using RFF for shipments between hubs.

The 5th time I loaded up just over 2 billion in cargo, undocked, hit warp and my ship died instantly. No chance at all it happened just like that.

Instalock Thrasher. He must've shit himself when he saw what my poor little Vigil was carrying.

I might have to move away from using Vigils too. I've talked about them often enough some gankers may be on the lookout for Vigils now. Especially at the main hubs.

Anyhow, lesson learned. It won't ever happen again, I won't fly a load like that out of a major hub myself again. I'll courier it out just like I'd always done before.

Torpedo Launchers For Dummies

Caldari Navy Torpedo Launchers are for dummies!

Don't believe it? It's true, here's why:

Recent Jita prices:

Dread Guristas: 27 million
Caldari Navy: 88 million

Jita prices a few months ago:

Dread Guristas: 35 million
Caldari Navy: 115 million

Triple the price

Caldari Navy Torpedo Launchers are usually nearly always about 3 times the price of Dread Guristas Torpedo Launchers. There's always plenty of both in stock on all the major hubs and many of the secondary hubs too.

Other than the name they are identical

Dread Guristas Torpedo Launchers have the exact same attributes, fitting requirements and prerequisites as Caldari Navy Torpedo Launchers. In other words, besides the name they are identical. The Caldari version is usually priced in the 75-100 million ISK range, the Guristas version is usually well under 40 million.

I'm amazed prices stay so high for either since there really isn't very much demand for faction torpedo launchers in the first place. They're way too expensive for most players to consider using on ~20 million ISK glass cannons (Stealth Bombers) and that has to be where the vast majority of Torpedo Launchers get used.

To clarify, I meant torpedo launchers in general (not faction torps in particular) are mostly used on bombers. The point being with Stealth Bombers not using faction torps, I believe there isn't much demand for faction torps, they're over supplied and over priced.

Mind you the funny part is when they do sell they often sell in threes which implies buying for a bomber. There must be more dummies than I think, either that or more of those oversized 10MN AB faction fit bombers running around than I thought.

Something to think about

I have a hunch most sales of faction torpedo launchers are traders flipping them back and forth amongst themselves. The old "It's purple, it's gotta be worth more!" thinking.

I've bought them cheaply many times and though it usually took a while, eventually resold them for hefty profits. Sometimes the buyer sells them back to me for much less a few weeks or months later. That's happened at least a few times though I don't think it's ever been the same guy twice.

Someone must be getting burned on them and it isn't me.

TLDR:

Don't be a dummy, if you must have faction torpedo launchers on your stealth bomber just buy Dread Guristas Torpedo Launchers and save yourself an easy 150-200 mil ISK.

Training Another Trade Alt

I sent my "spare" Jita trader off to reopen shop in Clellinon with a different trading strategy a while back. That's working out extremely well especially during the recent Fountain war. Just imagine my surprise when several fairly pricey stacks of faction mods (with 10-20 mods/stack) all sold within hours of posting. =)

Then I decided I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I missed my "spare" trader on Jita and wanted him back so I started training yet another new character to add to my growing army of trade alts.

I made a new character on the main's account and sent him 600 million, enough to buy a PLEX, a bunch of skill-books, a clone, a couple implants, and still have some left over.

I used the PLEX to activate dual training and started training.



First I trained Cybernetics I so I could install implants and train everything else faster.

While waiting for Cybernetics to train, I bought +3 Charisma and Memory implants plus the basic skillbooks I needed for the first week or so. Social (pre-req for Contracting), Trade, Retail, Contracting, Broker Relations, Marketing and Accounting.

I also bought a Clone Grade Theta (7,750,000 SP) and the books for a bunch of spaceship command, engineering, navigation and mechanic skills I find extremely useful for brand new traders (non combat pilots that is).

Once Cybernetics finished training I installed the implants, remapped to Charisma 30, Memory 24, queued up Social I and Trade I-IV.

Nearly 5 days later here's what his training queue looks like:

Besides trade skills I learned key skills that reduce flight time by improving flight performance or allow me to fit modules that do the same. Early on that mostly means improving capacitor performance so I can make most trips between stations and gates in a single warp.

The 2 most important skills for warp/cap performance are Warp Drive Operation (10% less cap per level to initiate warp) and Astronautics Rigging which allows me to fit Warp Core Optimizer and Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer rigs. Warp Core Optimizers reduce cap to initiate warp by 40% (like having Warp Drive Operation IV) and Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers increase warp speed by 20%.

A single Warp Core Optimizer is absolutely terrific for very low skills alts but later when the alt has 3s and 4s in all the applicable cap performance enhancing Navigation and Engineering skills you don't really need it anymore. At that point I usually go with 3x Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers which brings the Vigils all my new traders fly up to 10.4 AU warp speed (nearly 70% faster warp speed).

The plan from here on is to get (in order) Accounting IV, Margin Trading V, Retail V, Wholesale IV, Accounting V,  Marketing IV, Wholesale V, Tycoon IV, Daytrading IV, Tycoon V, Trade V, Daytrading V and Marketing V.

Right now he's just training and not actually doing any buying or selling yet. When he does start buying (probably not until he has at least Margin Trading V and Wholesale IV) he'll train his navigation and support skills up a little higher and get the rest of the basic navigation skills (everything except jump skills) too. I'll install intelligence, perception and willpower implants then too.

At some point I'll get Procurement I-IV and Visibility I-IV too. Though I don't really use them now I'll eventually train both to IV just in case I decide to use a remote buying strategy later and need them.

Mindlink Price Crash Coming Soon

In Odyssey 1.1 there are many changes being made to mindlinks.

The most important change from a market player's perspective is they will be available at Concord LP Stores for 20,000 Concord LP and 20m isk with an expected final product sale price of 60-80 million.

With mindlinks currently selling for more than that, we can expect the markets to be flooded with cheap mindlinks on patch day and for several weeks afterward. Prices for all mindlinks will crash from current levels.

Mining Foreman Mindlinks in particular are currently priced over 1 billion ISK each. Expect them to be flooded even more than other mindlinks and crash harder.

So for those of you with big stocks of mindlinks, expecially Mining Foreman links, start dumping them now and get what you can for them before 1.1 lands.

As the word spreads there will probably be a bit of panic among investors with stockpiles of mindlinks. Expect a mini crash before the patch as investors stop buying and start fighting to dump their stock before prices crash hard. Mining Foreman Mindlinks being so high priced will almost certainly crash harder and sooner than the others.

Lucky for me I only have 1 Mining Foreman mindlink so I should be able to dump it within a day or two without taking a loss.

There are also new Navy Mindlinks coming in 1.1 which are expected to go for around 200 mil ISK.

A big thank you to adwisdog for pointing this out to me in comments on another post here. I did know mindlinks were being changed but I'd somehow missed the fact that they were being added to loyalty point stores too!

Update: I already sold my one Mining Foreman Mindlink for 1,399,999,000.00 ISK. It only took 15 minutes of camping and 3 price cuts.

More on Input Lag

Pursuant to my Input Lag post a few days ago, I entered a reimbursement ticket regarding market order input lag.

My Ticket

I'm getting tired of getting ripped off due to input lag when entering buy orders.

It happened again today, I entered the numbers for a buy order... I double checked the numbers and realized a zero was missing so I fixed it, checked the numbers again and hit enter.

Then the game sort of freezes for a few seconds, the missing digit appears, the order goes through and I wind up overpaying by about 3 billion total for 10 sisters core probe launchers.

Fixing the order system would make order entry errors due to input lag like this a non-issue.

Make it so when you enter a buy price higher than highest sell order it gets filled from sell orders at the sell order price. And just the opposite when entering sell orders, low priced sell orders should be filled at the price of higher priced buy orders.

The way it works now isn't just stupid, unrealistic and annoying, it also rewards cheating bots who reap most of the benefits of such errors since they usually have the lowest sell / highest buy orders and never have to worry about similar input errors themselves, while punishing honest players for not cheating.

That's the 3rd time now this has happened to me for significant losses (the latest 2 were in the billions).

Please fix this crap!

CCP's Answer

After an initial answer which basically said to post in the suggestions forum without addressing reimbursment. I asked about that and got this response (names removed to protect the innocent).

Hello again **** ****,

Our reimbursement policies are very strict and we can only reimburse if we are able to verify that a bug or server error caused the loss. Any losses attributable to errors in the EVE client may not be eligible for reimbursement nor any losses attributable to problems with a player's system (i.e. computer, internet connection, etc.) or any system owned by a third party. You can find a copy of our policy here.

http://community.eveonline.com/support/policies/eve-reimbursement-policy/

We hope that you understand our position and that you will recover swiftly from the loss.

Best regards,
GM ******
CCP Customer Support | EVE Online | DUST 514 

My Response

Thank you for taking the time to consider this issue so thoroughly.

You support mechanics that favor bots over real players. Mechanics that punish honest players for playing by the rules and reward cheaters for breaking them.

Should we take that as a hint on how the game is meant to be played?

http://merchantmonarchy.blogspot.ca/2013/07/more-on-input-lag.html

Notes

1. I will never post on the official forums for any game again. I learned my lesson on that long ago and stay out of the troll infested flaming cesspools known as "official" forums.

2.  I actually composed my sarcastic response before receiving CCP's answer because I had a pretty good idea what their answer would be.

Input Lag

Another boneheaded typo... Another 3 billion down the drain... Except it wasn't a boneheaded typo.

It was input lag.

Ever notice how sometimes it takes forever to update the market? Well when the game is getting laggy like that sometimes the market price entry input box suffers from lag too. You enter a price check the numbers and realize it's missing a digit or 3, so you add the missing digits, double check the numbers and hit enter.

Then it sort of freezes for several seconds, the missing digits appear, the order goes in and you wind up overpaying bigtime.

That's the third time now this has happened to me for amounts in the billions. The first time I wasn't positive about exactly what happened but I thought it was lag so I've been keeping an eye out for it since. The next 2 times I'm absolutely certain about it. I checked the numbers, they were short, I fixed them, double checked the numbers, hit enter, then watched it freeze momentarily and then overpay.

I really wish they'd fix this stupid crap. The best and simplest fix would be making it so when you enter a buy price higher than highest sell order it gets filled from sell orders at the sell order price. And just the opposite for entering low priced sell orders they should be filled at the price of higher priced buy orders.

Then it wouldn't matter if there are a few seconds of input lag.

The way it works now isn't just stupid, unrealistic and annoying, it also rewards cheating bots who reap most of the benefits of such errors since they usually have the lowest sell / highest buy orders and never have to worry about similar input errors themselves, while punishing honest players for not cheating.

No doubt there'll be a bunch of replies insisting I must have imagined it, I'm crazy, I'm just making it up or it's my computer but it's not any of that.

What I'd like to know is if anyone else has noticed the same thing?

Moving Stock Away From Major Hubs For Good Prices

Sometimes getting a good price requires trying new items and finding new places to sell them at. Lately I've been selling a fair number of ship hulls (among other things). I buy them on Jita and ship them off to carefully chosen stations to sell at (stations besides the 5 main hubs that is).

Here's an example.

Some buyers even bought more than one at a time!

I shipped another 20 manticores out to the same station today and priced them a little higher since there were no others listed.

Manticores normally go for around 20 million in sell orders on Jita so that's around 33% profit. I've bought stacks of 10 or 20 at jita market sell prices, shipped them off via courier contract and resold them for as much as 40 million (100% profit). Some were only shipped 1 jump away though most were 10-20 jumps.

Manticores, Drakes, Crows, Tengus are just a few of the ships I've been selling.

Ships are slowly but surely becoming a bigger part of my business. Away from the main hubs I find the competition on ships isn't as bad as on most things. When prices are too close to Jita prices I'll often post over market, wait a day or three until the competition sells out and then mine sell at a much better price. I figure the competition isn't as bad because shipping hulls takes a lot of cargo space, many players don't have a ship big enough to move hulls in or can't move very many at once and aren't willing to pay for / wait for courier service.

Don't just sell the same stuff everyone else is selling, a lot of things sell well everywhere. Try some of your best sellers in other places, especially high volume items, they'll probably sell just about anywhere. I've had a lot of success getting excellent prices for things nobody else was selling in the area. In some cases nobody (according to market history anyhow) had ever sold one in the entire region!

Knowing who's in the area and what they do can help you figure out what they're likely to buy and what they might pay a nice premium for but don't be afraid to take a chance on something unusual. Sometimes you'll be amazed at what sells and just how much you can get for it.

Industrial Rebalance

There's been a lot of talk lately about the upcoming industrial rebalance. CCP Rise says they intend to make a fast, tanky hauler and a max cargo capacity hauler.

I think that's a bad idea. The fast, tanky hauler will be popular (very) but the max cargo hauler won't get used much. If one hauler has the best tank, the highest speed and the fastest alignment time there's almost no reason to use the other unless it's a lot cheaper and will be operating exclusively in "safe" areas.

What I'd like to see instead is 3 different types of industrials.

1. A fast hauler with good speed, good alignment time, 9 Au warp speed, low sig radius and a smallish cargo hold. Similar to blockade runners except they wouldn't be able to use covert ops cloaks and can be cargo scanned. Suitable for quick trips to or through dangerous systems.

If you can catch it, you can kill it.

2. A tanky hauler that's slow, has a longer alignment time, lots of mid / low slots and 2 high slots. Similar to existing T1 Industrials but with much heavier tank. Suitable for extended operations in dangerous areas and could even be used as combat haulers.

You can catch it easily, but can you kill it quickly enough and even then is it worth the trouble?

3. Max cargo hauler, inexpensive, slow, long align time, poor tank, very large cargo hold. More economical to purchase than the other 2 but really only suitable for hauling large loads of bulky cargo in less dangerous  areas.

You can catch and kill it easily enough but the cargo probably isn't worth it (bulky and low value).


The fast haulers would get a speed and/or agility bonus, the tanky haulers a shield or armor bonus and the max cargo haulers a cargo capacity bonus. Racial variations could include things like tractor or salvage bonuses.

Deep space transports should also be buffed though that's beyond the scope of this article.

And please, no ships with specialized cargo holds.

Milestone - 200 Billion

I hit another milestone today with over 200 Billion net worth. It took a little less than 4 months to go from 100 billion to over 200 billion.

We're only a third of the way through June and my net worth has already increased by 16 billion. I doubt that rate will be sustainable but if it is, I'm on track for a 50 billion month.

A lot of the sudden increase is due to greatly increased demand (and prices) for Sisters probe launchers (both types) and even more to someone suddenly dumping piles of the 4 high priced Technology books (Sleeper, Talocan, Tahkmal, Yan Jung).

Sisters launchers have been moving like crazy, selling quickly for 60, 70, 75 million ISK and sometimes even more. I sold several (on Jita yet!) for 90 million ISK each.

I bought at least 10 billion in technology books alone, maybe more depending on exactly what they sell for in the end. Sure it'll take a while to sell them all, but I've already moved a few and the rest were cheap enough to make it worth sitting on them for a while. Buy prices were very low for a couple days but are already ramping back up to normal levels. I expect to make big profits re-selling them for 100-150 million each.

The Ichoriya Project

My main has been working on a special project for several months now, developing business in Ichoriya. Ichoriya is a small regional hub in Black Rise region. Ichoriya is a bit of a crossroads between several regions, it's one of the few hisec stations in the area and not far from major gatecamps at EC-P8R and Aunenen. Though there isn't a huge amount of traffic there is a steady stream of players passing through with a wide variety of needs.

Originally I just put up a bunch of low-ball regional buy orders on both Ichoriya and EC-P8R (Pure Blind region) and let them sit. That part was a complete failure, not one single item was purchased in the 3+ months I had those low-ball orders up.

However, while I was at it, I'd occasionally dumped a few loads of excess stock on the Ichoriya market to see how it would sell. It did sell... Slowly but surely and at pretty good prices. There was some competition but not a whole lot and not on everything. For the most part I could just post stuff and let it sit with a reasonable expectation it would sell eventually. On several items I was the only seller.

Then I removed all the low-ball orders and started bringing in more items about once a week. Still mostly just overstocked items that weren't very profitable on Jita at the time, but my stock of items for sale on Ichoriya slowly got bigger and bigger.

I noticed a certain few items tended to sell out quickly, even when priced 50% over Jita prices. So I started bringing in more of those items. I'm talking here about items that go for 50 - 100 million or more each and often sell in bunches.

Generally if there's no competition at all I start the price a little high, say 50% over the Jita price and slowly adjust prices down until I find the sweet spot. The last thing I want is to sell too reasonably at first, have a competitor buy them all out and re-post for more. With that in mind I'd rather start out a little high than too low.

If there is competition, I generally start out around 20-30% over the Jita price even if the competition is priced significantly higher than that.

I always try not to price things too high but sometimes I get a little greedy, price something a bit too high and have to cut the price after a few weeks because it isn't selling.

Sales volume wasn't great but it was ok and profit margins were more than good enough to keep me experimenting with bringing in different items, adjusting prices and slowly building up the business there.

Eventually I decided to experiment with some lower end items I don't normally deal in at all. So I brought in a bunch of +3 implants, 20 or 30 of the most commonly used T2 fittings, a few stacks of ammo, tank rigs of all sizes and some other odds and ends. I posted most of these items for around 20-30% over the Jita price. There was competition on most of these items but in many cases 20-30% over the Jita price was a huge undercut on existing Ichoriya prices.

I noticed the presence of a decent amount of stock at reasonable prices on basic items like +3 implants, certain ship hulls, common T2 fittings, nanite repair paste and ammo seems to attract more business to Ichoriya. They come to Ichoriya to buy the basics at decent prices and once there they might purchase other more expensive items too. IOW, my business in expensive items like faction mods and +5 implants seems to have increased due to reasonably priced lower end items attracting more players to Ichoriya.

There are a few items I stock at very little profit just because of this. Manticores, ammo, nanite repair paste, several T2 mods, etc... When I don't stock them, prices quickly go sky high and my overall business goes down. When I do stock them prices are down to Jita levels in no time (due to competitors trying to dominate sales, which I let them do once prices are low enough) but my overall business goes up. So, while I don't make much on those items, stocking them seems to have a positive impact on sales in other more profitable areas. It's well worth stocking them for that reason alone.

While sales on Ichoriya isn't a huge part of my business (YET!) it's more than enough to keep at it and the growth potential looks promising. I started a new trader to take over in Ichoriya permanently and expand upon the business there. He'll have 125 orders (the same as my main) tomorrow and 305 orders in 2-3 months. He's ready to start taking over right now, but I probably won't get around to it for several days since I have 5 more new traders all going active now too.

Related reading anyone considering starting up a new secondary trade hub or expanding existing hubs might find useful.

Cpt Bunny's Trading Guide
Sugar's Non-Technical Guide to Her Low Sec Market

Cpt Bunny has some good info on trading in general (from a haul trader's perspective) and an excellent list of items to stock trade hubs with.

Sugar has good general information on building a new trade hub from scratch and terrific insight into pricing strategy.

Buy low, Sell reasonable!

Eve Offline - Broken Launcher

A new launcher was released today. Unfortunately it doesn't work.

The new launcher takes forever to load and hangs often. When it does load it just loads up with the following message displayed:

OFFLINE MODE

You are seeing this because no connection could be made to the content server or something went wrong while loading the online content


Supposedly this is due to a server side timeout error when attempting to connect to the web servers.

In addition many of those who can log in have been experiencing a mass local settings reset problem caused by incorrect paths in the new launcher.

More info on the problem here

And this forum post contains instructions from the devs for a workaround to load the game client without going through the launcher.

1) Locate the folder where you installed EVE. If you are not sure where that folder is, see http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/EVE_default_directories
2) From the EVE installation folder, open the folder called “bin” and there you will find the ExeFile.exe
3) Run this ExeFile.exe to start the EVE Online client

Note: I did the above, the game launched and notified me of an update which I then installed. The install failed during initialization so I ran repair.exe (in the main Eve folder) next. Repair.exe ran for several minutes but in the end it also reported failure with the error "WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied: 'C:\\Program Files\\CCP\\EVE\\launcher\\launcher.exe'".

However since the error was at the end of the repair process and involved Launcher I tried running ExeFile.exe again and it worked fine. I logged in, didn't lose any settings and haven't noticed any other problems either.

Populating the Quickbar Quickly

There's a quick and easy way to populate your quickbar for some items. It doesn't work for everything but it works great for some things.

Basically it works great for mass adding entire segments of the market to your quickbar. Items that are all in the same market category like for example, skill books. It doesn't work very well for doing things like adding all Caldari Navy modules because they're scattered all over the place in many different market categories.

For example I recently redid the skill book section of my quickbar to look like this:

In the past I'd always added items to my quickbar one at a time and then moved them into folders. This time I decided to do it differently. I simply opened browse, right clicked the "skills" category and added the entire "skills" category to my quickbar.

Then I opened the quickbar and went through all the skill folders, removing all the low priced books I don't deal in. Basically everything priced under 1 mil at school stations.

Note: for a new trader who doesn't have much ISK yet, I'd recommend moving the cheapest books into a "< 1 mil" folder and concentrating mainly on those at first, particularly the ones worth 90k - 1 mil. Delete them later when you have enough ISK it isn't worth your time working the cheap books anymore.

Next, I made 2 new folders, < 5 mil and 90 mil +, for the cheapest and most expensive books. There are 184 skill books I trade. I moved  43 books into the < 5 mil folder and 27 into the 90 mil + folder leaving 114 others in their original market category folders. I left the 20 subsystems books (5 mil books) in their original folder because it makes sense to me to keep them together yet separate from other 5 mil books.

The 90 mil + folder makes it quick and easy to check the most expensive books on any character. The under 5 mil folder makes it simple to ignore the cheapest books on characters that deal with more than just skill books and don't have enough orders to cover all 184 books..

The 2 new folders are incredibly useful, far more so than I expected. They really help streamline my routine and make checking the skill book market on different characters in different locations a whole lot easier. In fact it's working so well I'll probably make another folder for skills worth 5-10 million ISK soon and I might start putting some mods and implants into low and high value folders too instead of grouping them all by faction (mods) or type (implants).

Also see copying market quickbar settings to copy your settings to other accounts.

Sheep and Lemmings

Sheep and lemmings are herd animals and herd animals follow the leader. Sheep do have self preservation instincts but lemmings will blindly follow the leader right off a cliff!

Many traders / auctioneers in MMOs behave like sheep and lemmings. I've written on this topic before on my old blog for that other game I played before Eve. This is a re-write of that old post.

Sheep

Sheep like to play it safe. They don't come up with any ideas of their own. They just follow someone else's lead, whether it's the lead of a rich trader, some blog author or just following to the letter some old guide full of outdated ideas and information.

Some sheep follow the  lead of other players, others just dive right into whatever the latest post on their favorite blog says will make them "lots of ISK"... Without knowing a thing about the market, doing any research or testing first.

They can't understand why it never seems as profitable as for them as the player / blog author says.

It doesn't work as well because whenever a popular blog posts about something a whole lot of new people dive into it headfirst. Also keep in mind anyone offering unsolicited friendly advice out of the blue probably has ulterior motives and may not have your best interests in mind.

Lemmings

It might take a while but sheep usually do notice if they're losing ISK and will eventually leave unprofitable or low profit markets.

Lemmings on the other hand don't even seem to realize when they're losing ISK hand over fist. They'll just keep on going right over the cliff. You can take advantage of lemmings simply by using large undercuts and squeezing sell prices down further and further. Lemmings just keep on undercutting (by 0.01 ISK of course) until you drive prices low enough to buy them out and reset the price.

Other Points

Sheep and Lemmings mostly bleat the camper's "buy low, sell high" mantra, mindlessly droning on about how "0.01 ISK undercuts keep prices high so we all make more" while ridiculing better, more advanced, less time intensive strategies.

There's a reason that rich trader friend keeps telling you (and everyone else) to undercut by 0.01 ISK... Most likely it's because he's a no-lifer, botter, or both and everyone blindly following that advice makes him richer, not you or anyone else who doesn't camp the market perpetually like he does.

Market leaders are trend setters, not followers. They increase profits by thinking for themselves, identifying trends early and jumping on them before the herd notices and blindly follows. Leaders research, speculate, make plans and take calculated risks. They even <gasp> lose ISK at times but the speculation and risk taking pays off for them more often than not. They aren't afraid to experiment with new/different strategies or cut their losses and bail out when a particular investment isn't working out either.

The way I see it is if I don't get stuck with the occasional loss from time to time then I'm not taking enough risk and not making as much as I could be.

If after playing the market for a while you still can't spot the sheep and lemmings then you probably are one. Stop following the herd, lead instead of following and start making more ISK!

Bomber's Bar Video - Becoming an FC

I love flying stealth bombers and I'm a big fan of Bombers Bar. BB makes bomber fleets fun and drama free running regular pickup fleets with NPSI (Not Purple Shoot It) rules. Templeman just released a new instructional video for aspiring fleet commanders that's worth a plug.

http://vimeo.com/64643902

That's all, enjoy!

I Got Ganked!

I got ganked yesterday. It's only the second time I've ever been ganked in hisec (on all my characters) and it was the biggest gank loss I've ever had (including losses in low/null). Before anyone asks no it wasn't in Jita.

 I was flying on autopilot with a small load of Caldari Navy Heavy Assault Missile Launchers onboard. Nothing unusual, I fly on auto with more valuable cargoes than that all the time frequently.

My route was taking me through Litiura an 0.5 sec system I'd noted was often solo camped by a destroyer. He'd taken shots at me a few times before but his efforts were quite laughable. He'd never come close to killing me, not even when I was afk. So I wasn't too worried about it but I was planning on going manual for the jump through Litiura just to be safe.

Then the phone rang... Since it was work related I had to answer. By the time I got back I was in Litiura, the camper was shooting at me and had me a sliver into hull already. If I'd gotten back just a few seconds later I would have easily escaped but I was too late and he got me.

According to the combat report I lost 315 million ISK, however that's assuming the missile launchers are worth over 300 million when in fact I only paid 175 million for them.

With the cost of the ship + rigs (I got the rest of the fittings back) I actually only lost about 176 million though I did also lose the opportunity to make 130 - 140 million profit on the cargo. Barely worth taking the time to pick them up, I almost left them for the next day.

Whether you count it as 176 million or 315 million, it's still just a small loss for me and won't cause me to change my routine. Considering I've only been ganked in hisec twice (in total on all my characters) in over a year and didn't lose very much either time (the first was for about 75 million) I'm not at all worried about it. I make more in a single day than I've lost to hisec ganks the whole time I've been playing Eve (over a year now). That's an acceptable risk I'm more than willing to take.

Burn Jita is Great for Business

Burn Jita is upon us again. Those flying big, slow hauling ships have reason for concern but for those flying small, fast ships Burn Jita is terrific for business.

Many (probably most) of those big, slow haulers are avoiding Jita. Consequently there are less items being shipped in and out of system. Prices are dropping on export items as supply goes up and prices are rising on import items as supply runs low. That's a big opportunity for those who can get valuable cargos in and out of Jita without much risk... Couriers with small, fast ships and traders specializing in valuable items that don't take up much cargo space.

Small fast ships can run on autopilot into major hisec hubs without a problem most of the time even when carrying billions in cargo. If you're flying manually it's almost completely safe.

note: nothing in Eve is ever absolutely completely safe unless you're docked

For the most part, gankers are neither expecting nor looking for valuable cargoes in small ships. In addition, even if they do look at it, they generally aren't quick enough to kill a manually piloted ship that aligns fast.

Gankers look for big, slow ships, easy targets like industrials, freighters and mining ships. Most of them won't even bother targeting or scanning small ships, far less, locking, pointing and shooting at them. The ones that do target and scan small ships usually aren't fast enough to target, lock, point and kill you before you've warped out or docked.

Last year Burn Jita was very good for my business even though I didn't do anything different. This year I was expecting it and much better prepared. So far it's exceeding all expectations. Since yesterday I've bought and sold billions of ISK worth of items on Jita. I've moved billions more in and out of Jita without trouble too. I expect to do at least double my usual business on Jita for the duration.

So get in your small, fast ships (T1/T2 frigates, Covert Ops ships, etc) and take advantage of the enormous opportunities Burn Jita presents!

Stirring Up the Bots

Sometimes I post something just to piss off the no-lifers / bots and mess things up for them. Here's an example on Jita with a very heavily camped item.

Not only did I post a big stack on Jita just 10k over the current bulk buy orders on station, I posted a bunch of cheap ones in various places around the region.

I'll probably cut it again tomorrow after a bunch of bots and no-lifers cut me and continue pushing prices down for several days.

It's hard to say for sure what will happen in the end but things like this can drive them into a frenzy of vicious undercutting. Big, high priced buy orders start disappearing, huge stacks get dumped in sell orders, momentum builds up and prices plummet.

Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few days.

Edit: Someone bought the Jita stack out a few hours later. Oh well I kinda half expected that, next time I won't post about it.

Copying Market Quickbar Settings

Market quickbar settings are saved at the account level, all 3 characters on the same account have the same quickbar. To copy quickbar settings to other accounts all you need to do is copy this file. However this file also contains many other settings like window positions, overview, etc. so don't copy the file to accounts you don't want to lose other settings on. If you're unsure, backup the original to be safe.

The exact location of the file you need to copy depends on your OS. For me, running Windows XP, it's in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\Local Settings\Application Data\CCP\EVE\c_program_files_ccp_eve_tranquility\settings

<USER> is the windows user name.

The file containing the quickbar is core_user_*.dat

for example core_user_9999999.dat

* is a number (it's a 7 digit number on all of my accounts). I don't know how CCP comes up with the number but it's some kind of account ID. For my 6 accounts the smallest ID number is the first account created. The larger the number the later the account was created. You can figure out which file is for which account as long as you know the order the accounts were created in.

Find the file with the settings you want and copy it to the files for the accounts you want the same settings on.

Don't forget doing this will change a lot of other settings too, not just the quickbar.