Go Forth And Conquer!

Today marks the start of the Eve planets coming to life and being used and abused as resource rich celestial objects begging to be exploited for isk gain. I'm talking about Planetary Interaction, a key part of the Tyrannis expansion, which is being launched today.

Planetary Interaction allows players to harvest the many planets of Eve and create vast industrial networks to produce some of the key items used by players ingame. It is a further step along the way to create a fully autonomous, player generated market.

Personally I really like Planetary Interaction as an addition to Eve and I'm really excited to see how it will be developed further. One small thing I should mention though.

I will not be taking part.

You won't find me rushing out to buy command centers or scanning planets to find a fantastic vein of precious minerals. That might sound a strange thing to say, given my support for Planetary Interaction, but it mirrors my viewpoint on a lot of the more industrial features of Eve as a whole.

Here's my take on it. I love the industrial side of the Eve universe. I love the fact that it has an almost entirely player-driven market. I love it that market hubs like Jita, Amarr and Rens are creations of the players rather than the choices of the developers. I love the concept of ships I fly having been created by someone, somewhere and having a history that I know nothing about. I love seeing Freighters moving vast quantities of goods around the universe. I love the sight of market orders continually under-cutting each other. I love the idea of huge spreadsheets tracking profit and squeezing every last isk possible out of consumers like me. And that's the key thing! Maybe you missed it, so I'll say it again in bold:

I am a consumer.

I'm the person that uses. I fly the ships that you took days to make. I shoot that ammo that you transported all across the galaxy. I accept your market-order that undercut your competition. I give you the isk that justifies the effort that you industrialists put in. Because of this, I'm afraid I will never be one of you.

I just prefer to fly space-ships. So while I am very proud of Eve market, while I love the concept, the idea, the vision behind it, I won't be the one doing it. It is the same for Planetary Interaction. I applaud the idea of tapping into those celestial isk-mines, but I won't be doing the dirty work myself. I suspect I'm not alone in my attitude to all things industrial in Eve.

So, industrialists of Eve, go forth and conquer! Spreadsheet like you've never spreadsheeted before! I don't wish that the development time had been spent elsewhere, neither do I envy you for your new feature that I will never use. Just be warned, that if I do happen to have a Planetary Command Center in my cargohold, it will most likely be the one I just looted from your wreck.

Buying Success

A member of our corporation was selling some of his Eve characters this week, which got me thinking about the whole topic of buying and selling characters for isk.

The sandbox nature of Eve means that there isn't really any end-game content or goal. There isn't a steady progression through different occupations. Characters don't start out as miners, then move into missions, go through lowsec and finally end up in nullsec wars. Instead, there is a freedom to flit from one type of activity to another as we see fit.

But there is a type of barrier to this behaviour. The barrier is how you have spent your skillpoints. Jumping from mining straight into PvP is not normally possible without a certain amount of training. This barrier also exists within professions, for example it's not always possible to jump straight from providing logistics support to flying an ECM ship. Of course training is equal to time, so this barrier becomes an amount of time.

For some activities this time barrier might be short. It might take a new character a number of weeks until they can do level four missions. But if you want to fly a carrier and get involved in nullsec wars then you can be faced with training time measured in years!

I imagine you know where my thoughts are heading; why not cut a large amount of training time by buying a character instead?

If it's an approach you have never considered before then I would highly recommend doing it. Although payng billions of isk for a character sounds a lot, remember that, unlike a ship or module, a character cannot be destroyed. Your investment will retain its value. If the skill-set of your new character isn't all you had hoped for then you alwys have the option of re-selling.

Another good reason to buy a character is to get yourself an isk machine. The Mittani recently wrote an excellent article suggesting that we should measure profit in Eve by 'isk per effort required' rather than 'isk per hour'. He also came up with some excellent suggestions for occupations that maximise profit and minimise effort. Buying a character that could ice mine or breeze through level four missions with drones, would easily pay for itself in the long run.

So whether you have a long-term dream that could be made a reality quicker, or whether you need a passive isk-machine to fund your account - consider buying a character!

For all the technical information you need on selling or buying characters visit the Character Bazaar.

Maybe you'll end up in the same bizarre position that I am in; my PvP 'alt' character has more skillpoints than my 'main' character that I started playing Eve with!