The Noble Exchange/Red Light District

That watch costs more than you car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here - close! You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit? You don't like it, leave.

Blake - Glengarry Glen Ross

A while back I showed you a picture of the currency exchange that demonstrated money spent, and then consumed by the CCP monster. It turns out that I was a little off. I've had a chance to take a look at the new noble exchange store, and I've changed my mind considerably. So here's a new image that helps demonstrate the currency cycle in EVE just a little bit more effectively.

So who's ready to start buying clothes for their avatar ingame that have similar costs to the same clothes in real life?

Lets compare a men's dress shirt in eve to the same dress shirt elsewhere. Quoting from Riverini's post on EN24:

- Men’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Shirt – 3.6k AUR -> 0.97 PLEX -> $16.97 -> 388 Mil ISK

17 bucks for a dress shirt for your Avatar. Neat. How much would a dress shirt actually cost me down the street?  11 bucks at Walmart. I would link it but that seems like free advertising for them, and I'm not cool with that.

When ingame items of similar use for your goddamned Avatar cost you more than the actual item in real life... something's fucking wrong there.

Who wants to go out and buy a 62 dollar monacle? If this accurately reflects the costs of developing this stuff, everyone who said CCP was wasting our time with it is absolutely correct.

So why in the world would CCP premier their items with such high costs? I can only assume the idea is to start with impossibly expensive items, get a few suckers at that price, and then lower the prices later(but not down to a reasonable price, just reasonable in comparison). It makes good economic sense for them to do that, but this is blatently screwing the playerbase.

I've read and re-read the original dev Blog by CCP Zulu, and you know what? I want to know who was lying to these people. I've yet to meet anyone who wanted this. A random "hey it might be cool if one day," here and there sure. But not "OH MAN I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL I CAN DRESS UP MY CHARACTER IN SPECIAL CLOTHING".

Since they've announced, there are plenty of folks that say "It's not so bad," and "It might be cool" but not anyone who thought "GOD DAMN IT I WANT A CUSTOM SKIRT ON MY FEMALE AVATAR,". If they think the average eve player wants more clothing on their characters, they do not know their player base as well as they think they do.

I'm often one of the ones who'll come out and say that things are not as bad as the doomsayers and bitter vets say it is. CCP, you make my job harder when you come out with a 62 dollar monocle. This is like that last slice of pizza: you might not want it, but it's there, so you kinda want to try it. I thought to myself, "Fine, I'll convert one plex and buy an outfit, I like the game enough, and RP enough, and want to try this new content out enough to do that,".

I'd ask CCP what the point of this was? Is it money? Fuck you. I already pay for this game, and I was more than willing to drop just a little bit more on your "Princess Barbie Playhouse" bullshit. Emphasis on "a little bit". Not a quarter of my goddamned paycheck you giant assholes.

Since I can't really throw the finger up to this giant pile of horse shit, I'll do the next best thing. Turn it off. I'll also show you how. Uncheck the box that says "load station environment".

Congratulations.

You're now playing a game about internet spaceships again. Yaaay.

Voices From The Void: Episode 9

Voices From The Void is a podcast. As much fun as it was doing ENN, I found that there was often much more to talk about than I could fit in a video that was less than 10 minutes long.

After I met the always awesome Arydanika, we decided to start a podcast of our own. We've been going strong a while now, and if you'd like to get updated on current events(and perhaps get a laugh every once in a while), download the podcast... or visit the youtube channel. It's always less than an hour, by design(and not, say anywhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours like other podcasts). Enjoy the show and remember to listen to the voices.

Listen on iTunes.

Listen on our site.

Listen on youtube:



Check out the Show Notes(Coming Soon)!

Guide: Reaction POSs

You don't stand a chance
against my prayers
You don't stand a chance
against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
but we shall live again,
we shall live again
Robbie Robertson - Ghost Dance

I intend to make this a basic guide to taking moons, and turning it into profit using complex reactions. I intend to take you from start to finish in making Sylramic Fibers. Lets get started.

First of all, I've done the hardest part for you. I've picked out something for you to produce. If you didn't know yet, you'd want to do the research yourself into moon products. I use this tool to tell me what I can make with the resources available to me: Reaction Materials Info Page. One of the most important factors to your profitability is what you can get for free. That means asking yourself "which moon resources, no matter how cheap, can I get a hold of?" Once you know that, you'll be further on the way to deciding what to produce.

If we look at that page, we can see that Sylramic Fibers are made from Ceramic Powder and Hexite. If you click to look at the full bill of Materials, you can see that Ceramic Powder is made from Silicates and Evaporate deposits, while Hexite is made from Platinum and Chromium.

The thing about POS's, is that you want to keep the raw number of POS's to a minimum. A large POS is the standard for fuel counts. Mediums take half the fuel of a large, and smalls take a quarter of a large's fuel.

So why does it matter if I use 4 smalls or one large? Lets look at the numbers for a Caldari Large, Medium, and Small Tower. These numbers will assume your alliance has sovereignty on the system in question(Which reduces the fuel costs).

Caldari Large Tower(1 Hour of Fuel):
Coolant: 6
Mechanical Parts: 4
Oxygen: 19
Robotics: 1
Enr. Uranium: 3
Nit. Isotopes: 338

Caldari Medium Tower(1 Hour of Fuel):
Coolant: 3
Mechanical Parts: 3
Oxygen: 10
Robotics: 1
Enr. Uranium: 2
Nit. Isotopes: 169

Caldari Small Tower(1 hour of Fuel:
Coolant: 2
Mechanical Parts: 2
Oxygen: 6
Robotics: 1
Enr. Uranium: 1
Nit. Isotopes: 85

Pay special attention to the Robotics, Enriched Uranium, and Coolant numbers. Oh, and use this tool to plan out your POS setups.

You'll notice that the numbers don't scale down the way you'd expect. That's because EVE is pretty unforgiving in rounding. That and the fact that you can't use less than 1 robotics an hour. 4 Smalls actually cost a significant bit more than 1 large(Since, besides Isotopes, Robotics is the single largest cost associated with fueling), while the capacity of the POS's in CPU and Powergrid aren't increased at all. You can do as much on 1 large as you can do on 4 smalls, but pay less to do it.

There are a number of applications for smaller towers in EVE, but for complex reactions, it's almost all Large Caldari POS's.

So now you've decided on the POS to use. You'll generally want to run POS pairs for less complicated complex reactions. Sylramic Fibers is one of those, so we'll talk about why a POS Pair is a better choice than just one POS.

You produce 2X the profit. If you want to just do a complex reaction from entirely bought simple reactants, a single POS is fine. You'll make more money, and find it much easier to use available resources though, if you do the simple reactions as well. I'm going to provide you with an image, that should help somewhat in explaining this.


It's pretty complicated, but the information is all there. So each POS needs at minimum 3 Silos, 1 Complex Reactor, 1 Simple Reactor, and a choice between 1-2 Moon Harvesting Arrays and 1-2 Silos. If you're really very lucky, you'll get two moons in the same system with all of the resources you need. Otherwise you'll be stuck with the setup as displayed in the image. This is usually still profitable(check your numbers) but not always. So be careful.

So I'll explain the setup in words alongside the picture.

POS 1:
Mine or Transport in Evaporate Deposits and Silicates
Using a Simple Reactor, turn Evaporate Deposits and Silicates into Ceramic Powder. This will produce 200 units per hour, and consume 100 of each of the reactants.

POS 2:
Mine or Transport in Platinum and Chromium
Using a Simple Reactor, turn Platinum and Chromium into Hexite. This will produce 200 units per hour, and consume 100 of each of the reactants.

POS 1 and 2:
Transport 17k Ceramic Powder from the First POS to the Second POS, which is producing Hexite instead.
Put the Ceramic Powder into a Silo.

POS 2 and 1:
Transport 17k Hexite from the second POS to the first POS, which is producing Ceramic Powder instead.
Put the Hexite into a Silo.

Both POS:
Using Complex Reactor, turn Hexite and Ceramic Powder into Sylramic Fibers.

After a week, come back, pull out all the Sylramic Fibers and transport the stuff across POS's again.

After a month, what you have should pay for the POS fuel for the next month, with some profit besides. Here's a link to the POS setup(Note, you will need two of these). And yes, you've got 500 CPU free. Enjoy putting up a lab on one, and a few production facilities on the other if you'd like.

Here's a link to a spreadsheet with current prices(As of this post).

There are many other methods and ways to do this. There is no one way to handle it. You'll have to figure out what works best for you. This should get you started though, so enjoy.

CCP, You So Crazy!

Great news, everyone! You'll be delivering a package to Chapek 9, a world where humans are killed on sight.
Professor Farnsworth - Futurama

So uh. Yeah. Lets quote CCP's latest thingymahbob.

CCP Atlas has some great news for 3rd party developers in his latest dev blog. Read all about the new business license and monetizing 3rd party apps here.

I do not like where this is going.

So if you follow the link, you'll find a dev blog update. This dev blog update is uh... not great news. It's not great news for me, not for you, and not for anyone else except a few application developers. So I have a fansite agreement with CCP for my blog. As it stands right now, I can post anything I damn well please. If people donate isk to me, that's great. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. On top of that, I run my own podcast. My Co-Host actually put quite a lot of work, time, and some money into getting that running as well.

Now I've taken care that through all of my interactions with advertisers, I've not taken a single cent of actual money. If people want to support it through isk, I provide advertising for them to do so.

None of that matters. Despite some backpedaling today that seems to say "Oh well this is a rough draft and nothing is set in stone yet", the draft we've been presented indicates that my podcast site will need to pay 99 dollars a year to keep running.

Essentially, I have to pay CCP to do free work for CCP. Now, I'm not as worried about myself. What I do worry about, and what you should worry about, is everyone else.

Here's a quick list of stuff I can think of, off the top of my head, that will need to pay CCP 100 bucks a year to keep operating.

EveNews24
Dotlan
Eve Fitting Tool
EveMon
EveHQ
Battleclinic

That's a short list. I have a whole bookmarks folder devoted to Eve websites. Oh, and CCP's definition is so vague that it's possible that transactions that take place entirely inside eve will also fall under this type of license. Yes, mercenary corps will have to pay CCP 99 dollars to provide their services to others ingame. I'm sure that's not what CCP had in mind, but it's what they said.

CCP won an award a while back for best community. Part of the reason for this is the easy availability of material, and the low barrier of entry. Got a website and and idea? You can contribute to the community.

In the guise of finally allowing third party apps to make a profit, CCP is trying to monetize the greatest resource they have, and one of the only reasons to keep playing their game: the community. They're not even going to make that much money off it either.

They're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, and no matter how much they go digging... honestly it's not pretty in there.

Voices From The Void: Interview of CCP Sunset and Soundwave

CCP Sunset & CCP Soundwave pause from the glorious afterglow of the first week of televised Alliance Tournament IX group rounds for an interview. Along with some engaging conversation about ATIX we also delve into The Mystery of CCP Sunset, Incarna, DUST514 and this winter's upcoming expansion.

The Podcast Page.

The Youtube Channel.

Voices From The Void: Episode 8

BAM!

Check it out!

Introducing The Outlaws.

So it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut

So, I've been holding off on posting this week until I got some stuff out of the way, but it's all done now and I can safely say that The Outlaws. is open for recruitment.

Please visit the forums and put in your application!

Voices From The Void: Episode 7

Bam!

Check it out!

Latin For Gold

"Well, do you mind if I look round the car a little bit?"
Well my glove compartment is locked so is the trunk and the back
And I know my rights so you gon' need a warrant for that
"Aren't you sharp as a tack, you some type of lawyer or something'?"
"Or somebody important or somethin'?"
Jay-Z - 99 Problems

If you buy a Plex ingame, CCP doesn't make much money off you. Essentially you're paying 2.50 extra for your subscription. It's something, but nothing impressive. A while back someone told me that we should all just buy plex ingame one month to protest CCP. I had to explain to them that would actually make CCP MORE money since it costs slightly more for 30 days of plex than 30 days of subscription. Even if you're not paying CCP anything, someone is providing the Plex.

Let's take a step back a year or so. Plex used to be tied to the station it was generated in, you couldn't move it. For a long time this was the status quo, then some guy(we'll call him Jeff) came into the room while people were talking about plexes.

They talked about some random shit for a while, then Jeff asked what the obvious question: "Wait, they can't be moved? Why?"

And the apparently obvious answer was "Oh, so they can't be destroyed,"

Then Jeff crinkled his forehead and said something that made everyone else in the room feel pretty stupid, "Why not? They've already paid us for them,"

So a patch later, they were mobile. And some idiot loses thousands of dollars of them in a Kestrel. What does this have to do with today? Lets take a look at Aurum.

This is a new way to destroy plexes, and to actually get something from them. So it goes without saying that this is probably a positive for people that don't like Incarna to start with. It mean the subscription costs won't be going towards these projects. This is a way for CCP to make money to go towards Incarna related development, plain and simple.

So if it's plain and simple, why am I rambling on about it? The issue I have with this is the way they're presenting it to me. Lets just say that Jeff may've had some input on these things.

Lets take a look at this and this.

Now there is some serious nerd rage going on about the flimsy ingame reasoning. I'm not going to address that, because those people are missing the point. The reason CCP has to shoehorn in a flimsy ingame reason for it is because this will make them more money.

Aurum will be essentially plex, and it has a real money cost. If you lose it ingame, you are putting more money into CCP's pocket.

I guess I shouldn't expect CCP to admit "We're doing it because we want more money," but we all know it.