Posts by Lord Azlan

There is supposed to be a file that allows some mouse to joystick conversion that allows you to play Freelancer with a joystick.

If I find it - I will post it - I need to go through about 100 mags (some of which will be porn - so will take some time)

Az

Well it was definately implemented at one point.

I remember chasing a tax evader one time in NB - there were two of us chasing this guy - we had him on our screen visible - and he just disapeared right infront of us.

Hope not to flame here - but this is a good discussion.

We know the stats for ships do change - we can remember the bugged and banned Kossac, the impregnated Karak and the on/off is it/ is it not banned Predator.

The VHF in Freelancer are the Titan, Eagle and Sabre (those that can take level 4x10 guns)

Even then - Eagle became a favourite for pvp in online mods as many people know, maneuverability is more important than armour.

Or - the calculation that offsets increases in armour against increased turning rate - was an issue even in Vanilla Freelancer - for pvp.

One of my ambitions remaining in CF is to go around and take a pic of all the different ships - which should be easier to do nowadays as the excellent Kerm has negotiated some good relations with other clans.

However, my dream of having a diverse and rich use of ships on the server is still a way off.....

Looking forward to changes in 1.8

One idea may be to ditch paralyse missiles and paralyse mines.

Oh cripes - this info is out of date!

To the top we go!!

The Apocrypha update made changes to the new character creation process.

As someone who has recently gone through the new process when I started my second account - I definitely prefer the previous system.

When I created my first character more than a year ago - after you made simple decisions about what sort of career you wanted to specialise in - very quickly - ie your first day online - you could engage in that activity.

If you were a miner, a manufacturer a fighter - you could do this straight away.

However, CCP thought this was confusing for new players and they took everything out of the creation process apart from choosing your name, race and appearance.

To try and balance this CCP now allows new players - upto a skill point limit of 1.6mill - to train twice and fast!!

Nah - I prefer the old version.

See first post for info.

What would be nice would be if the roleplay license ie Cop, Pirate, Merc and Smuggler - was linked to the sort of ship you could fly.

And then the descriptions of the new ships could somehow link to the roleplay faction.

And if - let's say - somehow one of the ships somehow came better than the others - it would not matter so much as at least three other roleplay factions could not fly it -

Linking equipment to rp factions would even be better!

I ban you for refusing to pay tax that time we met online and then getting killed before i could get your autograph

I myself was on te original Elite on the BBC B

My brother used to play it a lot and at first I found all the controls very confusing.

But those ships were quite amazing - and seeing them recreated was something else on the later versions - including te bugged from hell version i bought for PC.

Which is why when I got freelacner and learned about "Mods" afterwards - one of the first i picked up was the Elite Ships mod.

The music in those later verions was pretty damn good.

I ban you for getting drunk on your birthday.

Quote

Originally posted by burro

I agree 100% with Kermit/Daywalker. Huor has always worked to be fair and deserves our thanks.

@Bond/Mellon you should be ashamed for writing such things. What makes it worse is that you are not 14 years old and should know better. All the words you made about culture and being raised properly If calling someone a "disgrace to the human race" is "cultured", then I am happy to be coarse.

I would add as well - in all my time here - online and on forums - Huor has been one of the most calmest, friendly and fair person around -

So I would say Bond -

consider you made a mistake or just a simple disagreement -

could be also a statement of the pressure SPs are under these days

Back on the other topic -

Rules have to be realistic, fair and forceable and consistent.

Some time ago an IOC guy was undocked from X and watching some cops and robbers pvp fights going on. He was not involved - but just by the docking gate - he got too close and got killed.

An SP from many systems away fined the guy - and I thought that was unfair.

Once I was being chased by many pirates and I tried my best to avoid them and we had a merry dance around the systems - I was 5v1 in one situation but still avoided them - in the end one of the guys had to self kill to respawn and get to me quicker - it was an SP that did it.

The self killing trick - Ladies and Gentlemen - has been let out of the bag from day one on the server - you cant put it back in - thats just a fact.

I admire the SPs decision to try and fix that to help rp - but it wont work - only becasue it cant fairly and consistently be applied - it just cant.

Best way to do it is so fix it using game mechanics so suicides are penalised by losing cash or equipment.

That will fix the problem - ease presseure on SPs from making some sort of value judgement on cases without evidence - and will also help the rp on the server = (Maybe :-))

If the game mechanics can distinguish between suicide in pvp and suicide involving npcs it may help.

If not - maybe people will start using guns!!

This next guide is from the EVE Tribune

If you are interested in trying EVE you could visit their site - a player led Newspaper that really produces fascinating insights in the game we all love - EVE

See that here:

http://www.eve-tribune.com/

Second - there is a decent guide below from a guy called hisgoatness - brief summary on the different ways to make ISK - with links to some decent info which provide even further detail.

Article below

***********************************

Making ISK for fun and, well, profit
The purpose of this guide will be to list and explain different ways to make ISK to support the PVP of your main.

1. Mission Running on an Alt.

It doesnt take long to train up an alt to fly a Raven with some decent tanking skills. Keep it in a nub corp or an alt corp in empire and find yourself some lvl 4 agents with the highest quality you can to work up to. Train up some of your social skills to maximize your LP and rewards from the agents.

One such example is running missions for the Sisters of Eve. They have Sisters Scan probe launchers in their LP store for 14k LP. These sell for close to 40m ISK in Jita. Train up your social skills and find a high quality level 4 agent who will pay out close to 10k LP per mission with good skills. Ignoring loot and salvage (which if you have the time is also some good ISK), it can take you about 30-45mins to do the bigger missions. Reward and bounties will net you between 10-30m ISK per mission. So in less than 2 hours of missioning you could earn about 60m in reward/bounty, and 2 sisters scan probe launchers to sell for 80m. So a total of about 140m ISK made in 2 hours.

Some helpful mission running resources:
http://eveinfo.com/missions/
lots of helpful information on mission types and agent locations.

http://eve-agents.com/
useful for finding different agents in different regions

http://bytewyse.co.uk/commandments.html
Advice to mission runners.

http://eve-survival.org/missions/
Walkthroughs of kill missions.

http://joonicks.eu/eve/lpstore.php
LP store database

http://www.evegeek.com/npc_damage.php
A chart with damage types of different NPCs

Also, live in-game help for level 4 missions is available in the chat channel: LVL 4.

2. COSMOS Mission Running

Running COSMOS missions can be a profitable venture and is done a lot differently than regular mission running. Most COSMOS mission agents require you to retrieve some item and bring it back to them. Nearly all of the items they want you to retrieve can be bought on the market ahead of time and before the mission even starts. COSMOS missions are not friendly. You will find large numbers of webbing/scramming frigs everywhere you go. There will be large spawns in unusual places that might catch you off guard, like in an asteroid belt or outside a station. Always be on your guard when running COSMOS missions. COSMOS does NOT require hacking or archaeology skills to complete. There are several agents that give repeatable missions for turning in items found in the complexes using hacking or archaeology, but there is no real benefit to running these agents. They give lousy rewards and offer agent/corp standing gain only. You will develop an odd collection of BPC's as COSMOS mission rewards that require the hacking and archaeology items found in these complexes to build too, but in most cases they aren't worth the effort required to construct them. COSMOS missions are NOT repeatable - with the exception of the aforementioned agents. It is important that you know what you are doing and do it right the first time when running COSMOS, as that agent will not give you a second chance if you screw it up.

The rewards for mastering COSMOS missions can be very profitable indeed. You can get rare implants, BPCs to rare items, random faction and cosmos modules that drop, and access to faction ship BPCs. If you get really high faction standing after running these missions for a while, some of the agents in space will actually give you free faction ships.

Links:

http://evevault.ign.com/View.php?view=GameInfo.Detail&id=2
Introduction to COSMOS and agent listings.

http://eve.grismar.net/wikka.php?wakka=CosmosConstellations
More useful information.

http://eveinfo.com/
useful section on COSMOS agents.

http://www.eve-files.com/media/corp/ovc/okkelen.html
another helpful write-up.

http://warpedcore.org/cosmos/index.php
useful site for caldari cosmos.

http://www.hb3.info/cosmos/
Very useful site on all faction cosmos stuff, its in german so you will need to babelfish it or have google translate it for you.

3. Running Hidden Complexes:

A couple patches ago CCP added a ton of hidden complexes that can be found by probing. These plexes come in a variety of difficulties and rewards. To run these successfully you need a good covops ship and skills to find them quickly, and then the ability to run them quickly and collect the rewards.

Some skills of note.

Covert ops V
Astrometrics V
Astrometric Pinpointing IV
Astrometric Triangulation IV
Signal Acquisition IV
Production Effiency V
One of the racial Encryption methods IV/V
One of the racial Starship Engineering IV/V
Mechanical engineering IV/V

Modules/Rigs
Gravity Capacitor Rigs x2
Sisters Scan Probe Launcher
Probe BPC pack 1000run copies of each probe type
Sisters Core Scanner Probes

The above allow you to get your complex scanning Covert ops pimped out, ready to find plexes.

Focus on Radar and Magnetometric and Unknowns when youre bored. Radar plexes net you datacores, decryptors and Interface BPC's along with the components to build the racial interfaces. Minmatar in angel space, Amarr in Blood/True Sansha space etc etc.. The Magnetometric plexes net rig components including t2, t2 rig bpcs, and the Racial Encryption method skillbooks...

Unknown plexes can net content worth bringing a friend along for! MUCH more fun than ratting thats for damn sure. [Unknowns are combat plexes Ed]

Helpful Links:

http://www.d-nightmare.de/exploration/OGDB/database.php
A variety of walkthru information on different types of hidden complexes

http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…ic&threadID=431586&page=1
Guide on scan probing

http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=445716
Guide on finding hidden complexes

http://blogs.chimpswithkeyboar…hive/2008/05/01/1915.aspx
another guide to complexes

4. Invention with an alt corp in Empire

With some decent skilling and a little market research, a good amount of ISK can be made with only a little time invested doing T2 invention. Basically you set up an alt with the needed science and production skills. You get your faction standing up a bit so you can put a POS up in empire, or dont worry about standings and do it in low sec. Set up a POS with labs for inventions. Acquire datacores, interfaces, BPCs, and the needed materials for building things. Take the items needed and invent t2 ships or modules. Build these items using the invented T2 BPCs, sell them on the market, collect profit. That of course is a very basic summary of how it works, but there are some good write-ups on exactly what you need to get to do invention. So with a proper skilled alt, you would only have to log him on to start and finish jobs, whether it be inventing a T2 BPC or building things from those invented BPCs. Getting your own R&D agents rolling will save you ISK on datacores as you wouldnt have to buy them all on market, thus increasing your profits.

Helpful Links:

http://www.eve-production.org/invention/intro.html
Guide explains how invention work and the skills and components you need to do it.

http://more4you.ws/articles/la…Short-Invention-Guide.htm
another guide

http://igbtools.com/index.php?m=invention&typeID=956
Useful invention calculator

http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=743617
invention profit calculator

http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=495139
invention Q+A

5. Trading

Trading can be one of the most profitable forms of ISK making if you get good at it. There are two basic methods of trading. Sitting in a market hub like Jita and playing the buy order market on items with a good buffer between buy and sell orders. Buy stuff low, turn around and sell it high. This takes some market privacy as you need to be able to watch your orders and change your price when another trader plays the .01 ISK game with you (lowering the price by .01 from yours in order to get on the top of the buy order list). It takes minimal skills, and with good skills you can do this remotely without even being in the system. It takes money to make money though, which means you need to have some starting funds in order to buy things you are gonna sell. Its a lot like playing the stock market.

The second basic method of trading is playing the different market hubs together. What this means is buying things in one market Hub that is in high abundance, then hauling it to another market hub where they are selling for higher. If you do your homework this can be very profitable. You can buy cheap things in Rens or Amarr, and haul them to Jita for profit, or vice versa. Also, you can set up buy orders on mission loot drops in missioning hubs for very cheap as mission runners want to unload their loot, then haul it to a market hub where it sells for higher.

Whichever of these methods you chose to use, be sure to train up decent trading skills, as well as some navigation and hauling skills if you use to play the markets.

Some testimonials:

"Station an alt in Jita and put up buy/sell orders limited to the 4-4 station on anything with a decent margin between the lowest sell order and the highest buy order which trades in decent volumes. Refresh orders on 0.01 ISK basis as often as you stand to. I use an alt with <1mil SP to do this. This method paid for my mom and brings in up to about 3bil per month (depending on how much effort I put into it)."

"I move high volume items from Jita to another trade hubs. I just use a noob hauler alt and I have a noob trader that I use.

Usually I can double my ISK by moving stuff from Jita to Amarr or Rens. Takes awhile to sell sometimes so if you need ISK fast moving stuff wont work like that. But it is good steady income and you only need to put in a few hours at the most."

"Stick up wide range, low cost buy orders for high volume stuff like minerals, advanced materials, T1 drops, salvage etc. For example, a 10 jump radius buy order for cheap trit to capture a bunch of lvl 4 mission hubs. Forget about it for a couple of weeks. Come back and you'll find a small stash of stuff in your hangar which you can sell in the nearest market hub or repro for cheap mins.

I used to buy all minerals for building bs's using this method. Build cost was around 50mill and I sold them for 95mill. Output was only 1 or 2 bs a month but it was easy money and took very little effort."

Helpful Links:

http://eve.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=840
Basic guide on trading.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=487360
excellent player written trading guide.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=200967
Good guide on playing the buy/sell orders.

http://blog.goddchen.de/2008/0…in-station-trading-guide/
Another guide.

6. R&D Agents

A very passive form of ISK generation is the use of R&D agents. While it probably doesnt generate enough for you to live off of, its completely free income once you have it setup. ISK is generated in the form of Research Points. Each day your research agent gives you RPs in a particular research field. You then take these RPs and cash them in for datacores. Datacores are used in invention so you can sell them on the market for inventors to buy. As an added bonus if you run 1 mission a day with that agent, they double your RPs for that day. Your faction standing and standing with the agents corp determines what level and quality agent you can use. Your faction standing can quickly be raised using Factional Warfare of buying and cashing in COSMOS faction tags.

Basically you want to get your alt and get his faction standing up, and then run missions with the corp of the R&D agent you want to use in order to get your corp standing up so you can talk to the agent. The goal being to get level 4 agents in the highest quality possible as they will give out the most RPs per day. Different types of datacores are worth more than others so its important to check the market and see which ones are the most valuable and use agents that give out RP in those areas. So there is some legwork in the beginning getting your standing up, but once you have done that, you get RPs everyday, total passive income generation.

For an example of max profits you could earn, look at this:

You have an alt who gets his standing up for lvl4 electronic engineering agents. You train up Research Project Management to 5, allowing you to use 6 R&D agents. Going with the highest quality agents gets you about 110 RP/day per agent. You run 1 mission with each agent a day. That means you get 220 RP/day with each agent for a total of 1320 RP per day. After a month thats 39,600 RP. Each Electronic Engineering datacore cost 50 RP. So thats 792 datacores for the month. Right now they sell for about 400k each on the market. So thats 316.8 million ISK profit for the month.

Helpful Links:

http://www.eve-guides.com/other/r&dagents.php
guide on getting agents

http://eve-agents.com/
Agent finder

7. Buying/Selling Characters

I have made most of my ISK through buying and selling characters. Its a lot like playing the real estate market in real life. Be warned though that you have to some a bit of capital to start with, and more than 1 account for training. Basically you hunt across the character sales forum, find a character that is missing some key skills and the guy is desperate to get rid of it. Low ball him or give him a moderate buyout offer. You would be surprised what some people will settle for when they need the cash and are desperate to unload a character. Next train up the character for a few months getting all the important skills done. Its important to have a direction with the character whether that be uber hac/recon pilot, capital pilot, command ship, or industrial character. Once you have a decently specialized character trained, put him up on the market. Your advantage is you shouldnt be desperate to sell yourself, so wait it out. In my experience there is always someone who gets trigger happy and will pay too much for something they want if you are patient enough.

Spend a year doing this and you will be raking in the billions. For some examples, I bought a pirate char for 4 bil, 3 months later I sold him for 6.5bil. One industrial character I bought for 1 bil 6 months later sold for 6bil. If you are a high roller in RL and can afford to run multiple accounts, you can do several characters at once and really rake in the profit.

-hisgoatness

Interesting discussion - and I will give my opinion as a non-playing member of CF at the moment - but still a member of this community.

I would like to see that clans use the ships in their own systems as far as possible -

I think it would be neat if, for example, clan members from system X proudly flew ships from that system and so forth - recognising that would not always be possible.

I vaguely remember hearing about a programme that calculates all the ships variables to ensure advantages in one place is taken account of somewhere else.

OP also said once people have forgotten to fly the other ships which is why the lagg is so popular now -

Why oh why oh why in a mod with so many beautiful ships so many people use one?

It's a shame!!

Sign here for my campaign to save the ship construction factories and engineer jobs in all the systems!!

Jobs for all - not just those that live in Sovetksys!!

First read all these posts here

http://www.eveonline.com/ingam…?a=topic&threadID=1005330

Don't be a slacker - we dont want to spoon feed you - baby want his bottle?

Nah - do some research and ask some intelligent questions!!

Ok done?

A more simpler guide below:

A lot of the EVE markets are generated by players themselves - with no input from CCP -

Players mine or recyle loot found from killing rats into raw minerals and use that to make stuff, modules and ships, which they then sell on the market.

They make stuff using Blueprints which can be bought also on the market.

Ok mates

A few people have expressed an interest in trading - and I have had a few private chats with people to get them started, throwing in some ideas and even some of the common trading items.

For anyone else interested - a few key things.

Read the numerous guides posted on the market section of the EVE forums, the market discussions section should be your best friend - spend some time reading the various info there - read up and wise up!!

Secondly trading is not difficult - and for those guys that want to fund pvp activities - then read up and get started!!

Finally trading is a skill like other skills in EVE and you get better as you learn and get experience.

There is no right way to do it - do it your way, the way you can enjoy it.

General tips.

Q1. How to find good items to sell?

A1. Do some research you lazy slacker!!

You can first look at the items you know about and use - look for gaps between buyers and sellers - if there is a GAP - you can try and move in to share some of that profit.

Use BUY ORDERS to acquire stock

Use SELL ORDERS to sell them on.

Example1

75MN Afterburner is selling for 5mill in Downsville and people are buying for 4mill in Downsville - that is a 1mill gap!!

In theory - every item you buy and sell in Downsville - you can make 1mill per item!!

Q2. No Mahdss you cretin, I followed your advice and bought 100 of those 75MNs over X weeks - but they are not selling.

A2. Retard, the gap is not the only thing - look also at VOLUME - use the table option to see daily volumes traded. So you bought 100 of those ABs but only one is being sold per day - WRONG ITEM!!

Sometimes you can haul - yep haul.

You can buy those ABs in Downsville and haul em to MarketHub in a different region and there they are being sold for 7mill - and the volume is 30 per day - let's take a piece of that.

So you find an item with a decent gap and a decent volume - but they are still not selling.

Q3. You dirty liar - you said if I did A and B they would sell - now what?

A3. Did you look at the AVERAGE ? Why not?

Basically you want an average in the middle or near the middle of the buy price and sell price range.

Example 2

75 AB is selling for 7mill in MarketHub and buyers are buying for 4mill - thats a 3mill gap - excellent.

200 of these are being moved per day - excellent.

The average price is 4.1mill

What does that mean?

Basically people are not buying many of the 75 Afterburners at market hub - it is just a huge dumping ground.

You could try undercutting everyone else and start selling for 5mill - and even then - sometimes, even if you are in a hub - you wont sell any because there is no demand.

Now if the average was about 5.5mill - then that would show 200 being traded each day with both buyers and sellers being satisfied.

If you find items like these - you can buy and sell at the same station with no need to haul.

In summary - look for GAP, VOLUME and AVERAGE.

Disclamier - this info is provided by CCP in the market tables and graphs and I cant guarantee these numbers are accurate!!

Q4. Ok ok - good advice - one more question - can you tell me some items?

A4. F off you lazy slacker - do some research or get a nappy and bib so I can spoon feed you.

Hang on - I may as well give you 500mill now since you want to cut into all my profits.

When is the last time someone gave me 500mill or even 1mill? Not often as I would like actually.

Firstly start with the items you know about, add them to the market quickbar so you can get to them quickly and check em out - remove ones that fail the Gap, Volume and Average test.

Look at things you want to buy or have bought in the past. Repeat.

Look at pvp modules and pve modules. Repeat.

Type "II" into the market search option and go through every T2 item - why not - I did you slacker. Repeat.

Train some trader skills to reduce your tax liabilities to increase your profits and other trader skills so you can even trade when you are out and about doing mining, pvp or even running missions.

Sometimes, you can spot items being sold well under their normal value and whilst you are mining that sexy Veld you can buy, re-list at buy price +2mill and wait.

Q5. Thanks Mahdss - you are the best - final last question? Can you email a list of your trade items.

A5. F off you slacker.

VARIETY - the guy HEXX talks a lot about this - Variety baby!!

Don't put all your eggs in one basket - cos when that market goes under (and it will) your f up for good.

Trade in a variety of items with a varied profit margin.

Ships, implants, modules, ore, blah blah blah.

You dont even need to know what they do.

A variety of items with a variety of profit margins, all pulling together to get you the ISK you deserve.

Cos your worth it.

Remember - if you trade in ships - usually you have to sell em where you bought em as they are too big to move to a different station.

A lot of people look down on hauling stuff around - but doing that yourself you can get a better understanding about the region that you are in.

Oh - I am 7 jumps from MarketHub and I want to buy the 75 AB - but the closest one is 5 jumps away? F me - could that be an opportunity?

Or maybe - there is a good reason for that.

Setting wider buy orders (for example within 5 jumps) can sometimes lead to stock in low sec areas.

One of the best ways to make ISK is to spot gaps in the market.

For example if the buy orders for 75 Afterburner is this

100 4.000mill from MarketHub Station
150 3.991mill from MarketHub System
200 3.990mill from MarketHub Station
500 1.000mill from MarketHub Region

I would perhaps put in a buy order like this

100 1.1mill from MarketHub 5 jumps - there is a gap 1-5 jumps from marketHub

Anymore questions?

Read the forums, do some research - then when you make lots of ISK send me 50mill as I helped you so much!!

Try some things, follow the crowd and stand out trial and error.

Usually - if you make a mistake - you still have the stock and can sell em close to what you bought them for and you would have only lost some time but got some knowledge!!

Anymore private chats cost 25mill per hour.

Ok - nearly done.

Who am I then?

Firstly I find most traders dont talk much about their activities - its all hush hush as we dont want to endanger our profit - and everytime we share - that could happen.

I started playing EVE about Nov 2007 with a miner character and I quickly got bored.

I made a pvp char and with him I did missions and also some mining.

After our 10th wardec in Empire - (everyone hated Griff in those days) I decided to put all the things I had read about trading into a trial - since Griff made us all stay docked - best thing he ever done for me.

I started small - Miner 1s - to trade in and gradually moved up.

No Mahdds Inc - as I like to call it - does not trade in Jita or play the 0.01 ISK game.

Very very rarely I will buy some stuff in Jita and sell elsewhere - that is a good tactic as I good friend of mine made Zillions of ISK this day - but I think I have only been to Jita a handful of times this year.

Last 10 days or so my operations have turned over about 4.7Bill ISK and I assume a 10% profit on all that - so at minimum I have made profit of about 470mill - my goal is to make a Bill per month.

Some of you guys are real smart and tenacious and I would imagine if you put the sort of energy you put into mining/pvp/ manufacturing you could easily out do this and make Zillions and Trillions - an alt based in Jita could pay for all your accounts and other activities!!

Good luck!!

"Crap - it's too late to hide the Whisky - those damn BGs have arrived - everyone scarper"

We are slightly off topic madame

The SOS route I think was a product of the introduction of the dynamic universe, before that I think those BMGs could have been sold in Custodian or even Wheel of Sirius.

Even the route to Sol (much further and more risk) allowed a lot of great rp - re BGs magnificant embargo of that route which led to probably the best rp on the server I ever seen.

I disagree with you then - there should be risk involved in moving BMGs such short distances for profit - and the NY systems gives help to the smugglers.

We even sometimes still see the suicide train trick in SOS - something which has thankfully more or less gone these days due to action by the SPs.

On topic - I would say I agree with Guns!!!

IF it was the SOS route, one way to stop people abusing rp would be to move the buyers station to a place like Manchester or Leeds etc

Lots of kisses!!

Complete Miners Guide

You can download the Complete Miners Guide here:

Complete Miners Guide by Halada

http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Haladas_Mining_Guide

Beginners Guide to making ISK

Generating money to buy ships and equipment is very important - and ingame money can be used to purchase your subscription.

Here is a guide written by Akita T, a well known EVE player.

Look at this thread for a discussion on the topic

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp...threadID=774785

- but the basic guide is here:

There are several good ways to make ISK, and there are a lot of bad ways to make ISK. Not "bad" in the sense that you don't make any, but that you could easily do something else to get more.

Don't get me wrong, IF YOU WANT (and you find it enjoyable), DO ANYTHING. But in my experience, logic dictates you do "work" to achieve a purpose, and that purpose is to get ISK. What you do with that ISK afterwards, that's the most fun part, usually. If you find your particular way of making ISK more enjoyable than anything else you can do with the ISK you get, then go right ahead, keep doing it even if it's not the best way to make ISK.

For instance, you could mine in a cruiser/battleship, but you would be making more ISK in a barge or an exhumer. You could be mining various ore to reprocess and manufacture something and sell it for (at least) slightly more than the minerals, but you'd make more if you mined only the most valuable ore of the moment, sold all excess minerals and bought the rest from the market. If you go into manufacturing, you might as well just buy all minerals from the market, never actually mine a single piece of ore in your entire EVE life. You could be running courier missions in a battleship too, but an industrial is usually better, and the battleship is more suitable for kill missions. And so on and so forth.
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MAIN WAYS TO MAKE ISK

1. MINING

This is a very straightforward way. You go out in an asteroid belt, you start your mining lasers, you launch your mining drones (if you have any), and you haul the ore you mine in a station to be used later.It's a boring activity. VERY boring. But then again, this appeals to some, since it leaves you with time to do something else at the same time, like, chat. Or run several accounts at the same time. Or god knows what else.

The OPTIMAL progression is your racial mining frigate first (because it's easy to train for), then head straight to the SECOND of the mining barges (Retreiver), then to a Hulk directly.
DO NOT bother with destroyers, the mining frigate is better and faster, A mining cruiser is almost on par with the second barge, but going for the cruiser means a dead end, unless you go for a battleship, but then again you could reach the Covetor before you reach a decent level of mining in a battleship, and a Covetor is far superior... However, the Hulk is a tiny step away, skill-wise from the Covetor, and mines even better still, so you should probably just train for it as soon as you can use a Covetor, and skip the Covetor entirely.

Whenever you mine, LOOK at what ore is available in the region, and LOOK at existing mineral buy orders, then at existing mineral sell orders. Training the specific ore reprocessing skills should be one of the first things to do even if you don't plan on using T2 strip miners, since you can usually sell the minerals better than you could sell the ore. Whenever you decide WHAT to mine... always pick the thing that gives you MOST ISK PER CUBIC METER OF ORE MINED, if you refine and sell the minerals. The only reasonable exception would be if there's a high buy order for a specific type of ore : this can happen in systems where storyline agents offer the "Materials for War preparations" storyline mission (L3 version asks for basic Omber, L4 version asks for basic Kernite). Bottom line... see what you can get for your ore, both refined and unrefined, and pick the MOST VALUABLE one. Ignore the others.

There's not much more to be said about mining as a concept, everything else is details.The details are most clearly explained in here if you care to know them.
Final word of warning : ideal starting character is either a Prospector (any race, for the repro skills) or a Minmatar Engineer (Industry 5, Science 4).

2. SALVAGING (addition by TV)

Many people treat salvaging as part of mission running; run a mission, then loot and salvage your wrecks. However salvaging is very much a profession in itself. You can run around salvaging wrecks in belts and so on wherever you may find them with no penalty for doing so, other than occasionally the indignation of the person who created the wreck. One piece of salvage can be worth up to half a million ISK in itself, so when you are first starting out this can be very lucrative indeed, making you many times the usual reward from the mission.

If you combine salvaging with a few exploration skills you can also pop up in someone else's mission and start cleaning up their wrecks too, when you don't have the ability to kill those rats yourself. Mission runners often get very hurt by this so ask first if you are concerned about keeping friends. Also if they are bothered by it they might leave the mission for a while leaving you to face the NPC on your own. Alternatively you can find some friends who don't salvage (level 4 mission runners often can't be bothered with 'minor' missions) and clean missions with their consent. A word of warning either way; salvaging is fine but the second you open a wreck and remove loot you become criminally flagged and can be shot by the owner. Don't do it!

3. MISSION RUNNING

Right now, there are four main types of missions you can be offered : courier, trade, kill and mining. Mining missions are a relatively recent addition (or return, some might argue).
Agents give you various types of missions, depending on their division (it's in their showinfo).Most agents' divisions are pretty obvious... for instance, Command and Security agents give you mostly kill missions, Storage agents give you mostly courier missions, and so on and so forth. While there are plenty of listings of "types of missions for agent division" floating around, none of them are quite accurate, as they also depend on several other factors AND also a lot of randomness (for instance, while unusual, a Command agent might offer you 10 courier missions in a row). So, in most cases, just go with your gut... worst thing that could happen is you reject a mission.

If you accept a mission however, the wisest course of action is to complete it succesfully, there are penalties (in standings) for failing a mission. So, ALWAYS check the mission info BEFORE you accept it. Check the mission type, and check the route you have to take to complete it.You might want to reject kill missions if you only have an industrial ship, and you might want to reject a courier that has you going into or through a lowsec system... or, you might want to reject a mining mission if you have lousy mining skills.

Of course, you can always risk it and take all missions, but in the early stages, while you learn the ropes, it's best to avoid missions you're not suited for. The "time bonus" on each mission is optional. Mission expiration date is the important thing (one week from the moment you took the mission, or the first mission in the chain, in case of chained missions). FAILING to complete a mission in one week or telling the agent you are unable to finish it will bring a standings penalty.

There are some special missions we like to call (or at least I like to call) "chained missions". You will recognize them by their name. For instance : "Enemies Abound : 1 of 5" (or "Enemies Abound 1/5").They are usually a set of missions of several types, and to get to the last one (usually the best paying one) you have to complete each of the previous ones first. Failing or rejecting one of them means you're not offered the rest.

There are drawbacks to REJECTING a mission too. If you reject a mission, a 4 hour timer for that agent starts (hidden to you, so you might want to write down the moment you clicked the reject option for the agent). IF you reject ANOTHER mission before the timer expired, you will take a standings hit with the agent, his corp AND HIS FACTION. While the standings hit is not huge, it's a good idea to avoid it nevertheless. That's why areas with multiple agents for the same corp or faction are prefered by mission-runners, since you can just ask another agent for a mission while the timer expires on another mission you were offered and you want to reject.

3.1. MINING MISSIONS

The missions are pretty straightforward. You have to go to some location and mine out some "special" ore (one that can't be reprocessed, AFAIK) from some asteroids, and bring the ore back to your agent. It's a good idea to have decent mining skills for this type of mission, obviously.
Whilst the mission description usually tells you to bring the agent a certain quantity of ore, you might find that you need to mine the ENTIRE mission area completely before the mission can be completed.While annoying, it's a good thing too, since ore lost "accidentally" by not having enough cargo (auto-jetissoned in space without a can) is LOST. It's better to have the mission take a while longer instead of watching helplessly while you have no other choice except failing it.

3.2. COURIER MISSIONS

These are the easiest missions you could possibly ask for : pick up stuff in station A, deliver it in station B. They are also a bit boring, but unlike mining, they make you move around a lot, yet you do not have to constantly check the market to see what's best to mine at the moment.
You can usually complete them in any ship with a large enough cargo.Most of them don't even have to be completed in a single trip, since they're made out of several identical packages... the mission description tells you how many packages they are and the total volume (so you can easily calculate how large one single package is - that's the minimum cargohold space you NEED to finish the mission).If you have a small ship and a large cargo, you might have to forefit the bonus reward as you are forced to take several trips... but you still get the regular reward, and all the standing increases, so it's not tragic.

Things to watch out for? Destination or routes going through lowsec (try to avoid them, check route before accepting mission) or packages to large to fit in your cargo (the warning comes for the TOTAL cargo, not one package, so you have to check manually, like I said).

3.3. TRADE MISSIONS

This mission is basically "half a courier mission".You don't have to pick some package up and deliver it somewhere else... you just have to deliver something to the destination.HOW you get the goods is not any of your agent's concern. You will usually buy them from the market, either where you find it cheapest or closest to the destination.

Things to watch out for : even if in most cases the agent will offer you a lot more ISK or an object much more valuable as a reward, in some rare cases, the cargo he asks for is valuable yet the reward nearly worthless. So you have to check how expensive the desired mechandise is, and how much the reward is worth.

3.4. KILL MISSIONS

Well, what's there to be said ?Go in, kill stuff, optionally you might be asked to collect some item from one of the killed ships or structures and return it to the agent.Sounds simple, but it's also the most dangerous mission type around.At the same time, it's also the most lucrative type too, offering the greatest rewards both directly (ISK and Loyalty Points), but also indirectly, in form of bounties, loot, salvage, ocasionally tags or alloys instead of bounties... all from the wrecks of the destroyed enemies.

While the direct rewards (ISK and LP) might vary according to agent division, skills, standings and system security rating, all of the indirect rewards are almost identical (except for the normal randomness) for a certain mission. Also, the secondary/indirect rewards are usually much higher than the direct rewards, and because of that, highsec "kill mission" running is the favourite ISK-making activity of a lot of pod pilots. Another reason is that it only requires skills you could also use in PVP combat, so it's even more of an incentive.

Even if pilots were able to complete some L4 missions solo in ships as small as assault frigates, they were experts, and it still took a long time. You usually want to fly a frigate only in L1s, a cruiser in L2s, a battlecruiser in L3s and battleships in L4s. It's not a strict rule, but more of a general guideline, and feel free to either experiment or ask around about alternatives.
It's also a good idea to try and run missions together with other people you trust.

3.5. STORYLINE MISSIONS

These are special types of missions you are offered after completing 16 missions of a certain level for agents of a faction. The agents do not matter, only their faction and the agent level. The storyline agent "triggered" will belong to the same faction and offer you a storyline of that particular level.

Storyline missions are THE ONLY REPEATABLE WAY TO GAIN FACTION STANDINGS.The only other ways are non-repeatable (rookie missions and COSMOS missions - once you complete them you never get them offered again on the same pilot).
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4. SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY

To put it bluntly, if you are a beginner to EVE, it is best if you stay away from this area.The only notable exception to this rule is manufacturing.

Yes, I may sound very harsh, but science and industry is best attempted with large ISK starting funds, and small-scale efforts are bound to either never really get off the ground or fail miserably, while you caould have made a lot more progress soing something else instead. Once you get more cash in your wallet and you gain experience in the game, feel free to revisit the idea of science and industry... but then again, you won't be a beginner, so this guide does not apply to you.

4.1. MANUFACTURING

Like I said, the only exception is manufacture. And by that, I mean T1 manufacture, and preferably in either ammo, modules, rigs or small ships (because of the relatively affordable blueprint costs).Do not even bother with manufacture before you have Production Efficiency trained up to level 4, and try to get it to level 5 as soon as possible.

For more details on what to manufacture, how and where, visit the Science and Industry subforum, and check the science and industry guides here. A good idea would be, for instance, to manufacture ammo in mission hubs, or frigates, cruisers and assorted modules (for the frigates/cruisers you also manufacture) somewhere near a lowsec (or even 0.0) system on a major transit "pipe" across EVE.

Things to watch out for : OPPORTUNITY COST.That means, if you are selling something, you'd better damn well sell it for more ISK than you could have made by simply selling the things you used to manufacture it with... or else there's no point in manufacturing at all in the first place.
That's the most critical mistake a rookie manufacturer makes : selling below cost. And the reason he does not go bankrupt is that he usually mines the ore himself, then reprocesses it, and uses those minerals to manufacture. SURE, if you CANNOT sell the minerals at an acceptable price in the location they are in, then manufacturing something that actually sells at that location would make sense (but only if the effort is less than the effort you'd have to make to haul the minerals somewhere they can sell). But if you CAN sell the minerals decently, manufacturing and selling something below that "opportunity cost" is STUPID.
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5. HAULING

There's two main types here : the hauler/trader, and the pure hauler. The differences between them are minor enough not to justify treating them separately.

Basically, "hauling" is almost the same as NPC courier and/or trade missions. Courier contracts are almost the same as NPC courier missions, but the difference is, you have to move it all in one go.Hauling stuff is basically the same as a trade mission, but you set your own destination and cargo type : you just scour the market for cheap things in one station that sell high in another one, and move them around.

6. TRADING

Some people like to include "non-courier contract hauling" in this category. I personally like to simply call it hauling (or, at the extreme, "hauling/trading") instead of trading.It doesn't really matter what we call it anyway Truth is, a "true" trader doesn't even have to leave the station he's located in... he can, of course, but he doesn't need to, as he can set up courier contracts so others haul for him (for a price, or course).

Trading can be explained in many different ways, you can go into details of what to sell and what to buy, when to do it, how to manipulate a market to see a spike in price and so on and so forth, and you can read a lot of such stories over in the Market Discussions subforum.

The thing is, eventually, it all comes down to a single thing : buy low, sell high. Whether you buy low in place A and sell high in place B, or you sell and buy in the same station at a small price difference, or even if you buy and buy a lot witing for price to grow then sell it all at the higher prices... it's all just details.

Things to watch out for : prices you sell/buy at, and all broker fees or sales taxes. It's a BAD idea to disable the market-related warnings : people have accidentally put up an order with an extra zero (or two, or three), and not only did the taxes amount to more than they would have wanted to buy/sell the items for originally, but they also lost the ISK or the goods in question more often than not. A SINGLE mistake in trading might very well cost you a FORTUNE, so, well... Don't make any mistakes.
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7. COSMOS COMPLEXES

This is a lot like mission-running, after a fashion.The big difference however is that you can only do it in the "COSMOS" constellations, and NPCs respawn continually in there. A list of empire-based COSMOS areas can be found by a simple site google search, but here's one of the possible results : Eveinfo - Caldari COSMOS page.

EVEinfo is also a decent resource for regular missions too, in case you want to have an idea of what to expect in them.
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8. RATTING

This is a lot like mission-running too, but it's done in asteroid belts.The problem is that the "good NPC rats" only appear in lower-security systems, and the very good ones only in deep 0.0 space.
The advantage of ratting (especially for the beginner) is that highsec belt rats are VERY EASY to kill, and you find usually a lot less of them compared to what you could find in a mission. The drawback (compared to a mission) is that you don't get any agent/corp/faction standings for doing this (but you still might lose a bit of standing with the pirate NPC factions - you would lose them if you ran missions too, anyway).

The other (minor) advantage of ratting is that there's always a (very small) chance of encountering a "faction spawn", even in empire highsec.While they usually only drop some tags, faction ammo and such, you might also find occasionally some valuable faction modules, or even more valuable implants. Still, it's a small chance, and the drops are very random, so it's not a good source of steady income.
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9. EXPLORATION

A mix between missions and ratting, you will either use the shipboard scanner or scanner probes to seek out cosmic signatures signalling an encounter or an exploration site. The shipboard scanner is only able to find "encounters", and they are almost the same as a mission... but you have a slightly higher chance (compared to belt-ratting) to encounter faction or even commander NPC spawns dropping valuable loot.Using probes you can find various other things, but these are best left for others to explain.
Highly random, it might not be a good idea for a beginner either... but maybe fun for a while ?

10. MERCENARY WORK / WARS

While not the best avenue for a solo beginner pilot, it could be a nice endeavour for a group of younger pilots, especially if they can find a tutor of sorts in the "art of war"... but, like they say, experience is the best teacher. Basically, you find somebody in need of protection... or in need of a good shakedown... and you start a corporation war against your chosen targets. It could be good, it could be bad, but as long as your goal is to have fun, every bit of ISK you get from it is an added bonus... if you pick your targets carefully, you might actually make some decent money, even if your group is not that good. Of course, the opposite could happen, and you end up all losing everything you have.

Definetely not the best thing for a beginner to do, but it's still something you can do.

11. VARIOUS "DUBIOUS MORALITY" ACTS

Among them, included but not strictly limited to them, things like baiting, can-flipping, ganking, suicide ganking, pirating, ransoming, scamming, ninja-salvaging and so on and so forth. Scamming in itself could fill whole threads, for instance... from contract scams, to chat spams, the "lofty scam" and so on and so forth, the possibilities are almost only limited by your imagination (and your victim's stupidity, greed, lack of knowledge or a combination thereof).
While not the most lucrative things you can do on a regular basis, SOME of them can offer the enterprising (and unscrupulous) beginner untold riches compared to any other endeavour he could embark on, at his "young age".

To get an idea of the thinks I've mentioned, you can head over to the "Crime and Punishment" subforum and read about other people's stories regarding this "illicit" lifestyle.
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Final words ?

While I'm sure I have missed a lot of things that a beginner COULD do, and I might have mentioned a few that a beginner normally shouldn't even try to do, overall, I hope you (the reader, assumed to be a beginner) got a pretty decent idea of how to make (and for that matter, not lose) ISK in this game to the best of your abilities.

Quote

Originally posted by lucy in the sky
what other requests?

Check the outstanding requests from OP list that he circulates every now and again.

The problem for me is that OP would like some original material rather than links and stuff -

That is a proper and decent request that takes time - and even though I have tried to do some original tips stuff for EVE - it takes a lot of time - and I am afraid I just cant spare that these days.

The last few months or so I have spent more time online in CF than in EVE - and that my friends - is just bigger than zero spare time.

If it is an open request I will try and contribute - but I cant at the moment.

Develop a time machine for 1.8

I can test it if you like.