February is over, time to re-cap the month that was.
On the MTU front, I have been active with the best kill in February being a Packrat. Current count is just shy of 360 since the crusade against space garbage began. Interesting figures over at TAGN in regards to MTU’s. Seems that they were the second most exploded Hull group in January. Just doing my bit for the monthly stats.
zKillboard is having an issue with prices API and all the MTU kills seem to be half the value they used to be, but I believe everyone that relied on API generated information is suffering too. CCP have changed the way that works and I wonder if it has anything to do with the collaborative move with Excel. Is CCP trying to kill off third party developers? I hope not because they are a huge part of the community.
MTU hunting took me to Arshat. I went down to Amarr Empire space looking for targets and came up empty handed. Not sure why, but the fertile hunting grounds are not there.
Selling things on contract has taken a backseat for the time being. To make it work requires a bit of effort and I don’t really have the time or inclination at the moment. I also made a mistake that was swiftly jumped on by one of my competitors. Forgot a zero in the contract price. A 100 million contract was snapped up for 100 thousand. Annoying but entirely my fault.
Spent some time culling old files and discovered an Eve folder from 2009. It consisted of guides and spreadsheets. Twenty six separate spreadsheets covering a diverse range of topics including Ship construction, Invention and POS fueling. The ship construction sheet is interesting in that it provides a snapshot of prices back then. It was created in 2005 by Jon Hawkes and last modified by me in 2009. There is a good chance I was building Hulks back then as Skiff’s and Mackinaws were specifically aligned to Mercoxit and Ice mining.
Hulk build cost comes in around 58 million which is about 182 million cheaper than Jita today. If only it were that simple, which it never is. There is no way to accurately compare the prices due to the complications surrounding incessant Hull changes, new materials and other CCP skullduggery surrounding invention and the monopoly of T2 BPO’s. I remember back in 2006 when I joined my first corporation that two players had Hulks and it was rumored back then that they cost around 500 million each. I also remember ceasing the manufacture of Hulks around the Kronos expansion in 2014 due to the inability to make what I considered to be a decent profit.
Another find in the old Eve file was a couple of in game video’s of the PC9-AY era with a few of us logging in after DT and catching several pilots trying to rush out of the pocket. I vaguely remember that we were being targeted buy several groups at the time and we managed to box some of them in. It still surprises me to this day that they fed us one ship at a time rather than co-ordinate a mass log to rush the gate. When I get time I will load them onto YouTube.
Photon UI is upon us. I didn’t really notice the change as I had decided a while ago to implement it. Why? simple really, CCP do not do a ton of internal work and then give up just because the player base are vocal. I knew it was coming so I became an early adopter and embraced it. There are things about it I really don’t like and I am waiting for my overviews to break, but it is here and there isn’t much I can do about it.
And that is about it for February, more nostalgia than actual game play. Anyone that remembers POS refueling will know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Eve is a much better place these days.
Fly Safe,
Yadot
Yadot 