As listeners of the podcast will know, I'm currently spending a lot of my time in EVE Online paying the price for my somewhat cack-handed botching of a set of mineral purchase orders, which through a slight misunderstanding on my part, went spectacularly wrong. This all left me with about 670 million ISK tied up in what Financial Experts might call 'non-liquid capital assets', and what the rest of us call '150 little piles of shiny minerals, distributed evenly across the whole of Tash-Murkon'.
It's not a total disaster, I suppose - minerals are always worth money in that game, and most likely, by the time I've rounded them all up, they'll be worth more than I paid for them, by sheer inflation! The money is still there - it's just sort of...invested, creating for myself a sudden and huge amount of 'content' which previously wasn't there, in the form of about forty 'Courier' missions, of a sort.
If I ever want to see that money again, however, the best bet is to see the original plan through, which is to round up enough minerals to build the ten Raven battleships on the blueprint copy that began this farce in the first place. Not the best of plans, and I could almost certainly earn more in any number of other, quicker, ways, but its the principle of the thing for me now, damnit! So, nothing for it but to hop in the Badger MkII and get truckin.
It's not a bad life really, and right from the word go, all those years ago, I've had an enduring fondness for the lumpy old Caldari Industrial. My Cohost is is currently canvassing opinion on 'Favourite EVE Ship', and and the sexier Tech 2 Frigates seem to be going down well, but thinking back to through all my magpie-like phases of ship ownership in EVE, it's probably the Badger MkII's I've put the most flight time in, and an Industrial is a way of life, not just a ship. (If any CCP folks are reading, I'd love to see a 'Hours Flown In' type of list on the character sheet!)
EVE is a place of ferocity, adrenaline, tension and drama, but it can also be a place of great tranquility and serenity as well, and there's definitely something very calming and soothing to simply flying about a region, doing pickups and dropoffs in an industrial. It leaves the mind free to think, or chat, or similar, and I begin to understand why so many players are content with just mining much of the time. Not the most exciting way to play an MMO, but then sometimes, that's not what I'm looking for. It also gives me time to blog - many of my recent posts have been banged out with my feet on the dashboard of the Badger. EVE Online Liveblogging!
Costing a mere 700,000ISK, and taking only a day and a half to train for the new character, its a ship so potent, in its own way, that it has one of the few skill-books that a Trial Account is not allowed to learn. With a bit of market knowhow, and some startup capital, it's easily possible to pay for the cost of the ship with only one single trade run; if you're really lucky, in the same system! From there, its onward and upward to the Transport Ships and Freighters for the dedicated Space Trucker, but few other ships provide so much to the new player, so quickly and at such little cost.
Other Industrials are available, of course, but the Badger, being a Caldari ship, has a surprising capacity for Shielding in an Industrial ship, and for one memorable mad month, I was actually doing Agent 1 combat missions in one.
The Art of the Battlebadger has aficionados all over EVE. You get one gun, a smartbomb if you're feeling saucy, six midslots and three lows. No launchers or drones at all. In an agent mission, the traditional Trucker's low rack of 'As Many Cargo Expanders As Will Fit' is less of an issue, which is just as well, because it turns....eventually, and target locks....next Thursday, so those lows come in handy for Inertial Stabilisers and Tracking Enhancers! Mind you, few Agent 1 missions produce 10,000m3 of loot, so the base cargo of 6,000 or so should do just fine. The mid slots allow the Badger to carry a ridiculous amount of Shield HP though - the one I'm flying about in right now has about 3,500 HP with just junk I had lying around, which is twice that of the Moa, (the most beefy Caldari Cruiser), and 2/3rds that of the Ferox Battlecruiser, which is just silly, and tends to make most missions a matter of parking up and waiting for your single gun to whittle the enemy frigates away, while they sometimes scratch your paintwork with a 'wrecking shot'.
Definitely a hobby for the patient, that, and I'm not sure I'd want to try an Agent 2 in it. At the moment though, I'm gradually assembling my missing minerals at the factory and turning them into shiny new Ravens, and taking on board trade goods where the routes come up. 4/10 built so far, and three sold.
It's not all work though, and to break it up a bit, I'm also working up the local faction doing Agent 2 missions, a bit more seriously, in a Rupture that I bought and fitted with the proceeds of the trade good outbound trips. It's nice to keep my hand in, and I think when this whole mess has been cleaned up, I might treat myself to a new Battleship and get back on the Agent 4 circuit again. (Probably not a Raven though...sick of those now.) I expect by then, I'll be more than ready for yet another EVE career change. It's funny really, but thinking back, I bought my very first Battleship much the same way. It's probably The Circle of Life, or something.
I can't believe it's taken me this long to get around to training Caldari Industrial V, but no matter who or what you are in EVE, everyone needs to move stuff about at some point or another, so I think its definitely worth putting in the days for. If everything else ends in flames and destruction, an Industrial ship and a 100k in your pocket is all you need to drag yourself back up to glory!
Ah, got to go...coming in to dock!
(Top Truckin Tip: Secure Containers are bigger on the inside than on the outside. A 'Giant Secure Container', assembled and placed in the hold will take up 3,000m3, but itself, will hold 3,900m3 of Stuff. Use the various sizes of these to fill the hold, then put the minerals inside those, giving you roughly 30% extra capacity. Does not work for Trade Goods, but just the job for largescale Mineral haulage!)