Margin Trading Scam

   Many of you reading this will be familiar with the subject I'm looking at today either because you fell for it, because you run it or because you've heard about it from someone/somewhere else. It's a topic that comes up with alarming regularity still and the threads on the forum usually end up turning into a "ZOMG!? CCP should totally scrap this skill because it's so broken!" fest.

   This should probably have a sub-header labelled "A how-to" since what I go through below will teach you how to run them. At this point I am sure that there will be a number of people that stop reading because they aren't interested in learning how to scam without pausing to realise that learning how to scam in a particular way gives you the best insight into how to spot and avoid that particular scam.

   Sure, some scams are really obvious and rely on people not paying attention or misreading what is written. Things like the regular contract ones where either the price or contents are misrepresented, usually in the description or in the link to it broadcast via local. Others require a much greater understanding of the mechanics of the game and what can be done with them. This particular one falls somewhere in the middle.

So what is it?

   The margin trading scam is simply a method used to create a "fake" buy order on the market with the intent of selling overpriced items to a player looking to make a quick buck.

   It is that simple. The methodology behind it and the way it works is not obvious and certainly something that wouldn't seem "right" to someone that is not familiar with the markets. Which is part of the reason I'm doing this here, the fallout occurs in the Market Discussion part of the official forums and few people go looking for stuff until it bites them in the ass.

So what happens?

   Usually the series of events runs like this:

• Player A notices buy order for a large amount at way above sell prices on a particular item.
• $$ signs spring up in front of Player As eyes.
• Player A buys up enough of the item to fill the order, usually paying for some well above normal price.
• Player A attempts to sell to the order.
• Broker tells Player A that the "order could not be found".
• Player A ends up with large pile of crap that cost way too much. 

    At this point Player A will attempt to find out what happened and be told that they just got scammed.

How does it work?

   Behind all of this lies the skill "Margin Trading". It allows you to reduce the amount of Isk that you have deducted from your wallet and placed in "Escrow" when you place a buy order. If you haven't trained the skill then when you place a buy order for something the amount needed to pay for it all is deducted immediately from your wallet ready to be given to the person that sells to you.

   If you have trained the skill then only a percentage of the Isk required will be removed with the rest being taken when the buy order is filled by someone actually selling something to you.

   Now this can be important to traders since it means that they can place more buy orders than they can afford to honour should they all be filled at once. Traders know that this won't happen and that some buy orders can take a long time to be filled so by training this skill they can carry on trading with some of the Isk the item/s will cost. With the usual ebb and flow of buy and sell orders it never causes a problem.

   If you are ever caught without enough isk in your wallet to cover the bill when someone attempts to sell something to you then the game automagically cancels that order to prevent you going into a negative balance (which could be abused to hell and back).

Enter the cunning.

   There is another aspect to placing buy orders that can be incredibly useful and that is the ability to set a minimum quantity on the item you are buying. Let's face it, if you want 100M units of Tritanium and don't mind flying a few jumps to pick it up then you probably don't want to be having to scour every station within 5 jumps picking up the odd couple of hundred units here and there. You want it to be worthwhile so you set the minimum qty to 1M units.

   Any player that attempts to sell less than 1M units would find that your order is ignored in favour of a lower offer.

Enter some more cunning.

   If you combine these two elements you can create a buy order that can only be tripped if people have lots of a given item and that will automagically fail when tripped.

Just add greed.

   So what happens is that you buy up all of a given item on the market and relist them in dribs and drabs at ascending prices well above the average you paid for them. You then create a buy order, with a character that has the margin trading skill trained, for the same item requiring as a minimum quantity the volume you just bought and relisted and you do this at a price significantly higher than you are offering to sell at.

   This bit's important. You need to create the sell orders with a different wallet to that which you create the buy order with. You can either use a different division within the corp wallet or use a different character. Once the buy order is created you then remove all the Isk left in that wallet and store it somewhere else.

   You can then kick back and wait for some munchkin to come along and try to make some easy Isk.

Easy ways to spot them.

   Whenever you see some way to make "easy Isk" on the market, assume first and foremost that it's a scam. This one is usually fairly obvious. The top buy order will be significantly higher than the others, it will also have a minimum quantity that usually equals the total volume. So, buying 1000 with a min qty of 1000.

   If you still think that it may be legit then switch to the market history tab and look to see if the blue columns at the bottom have just spiked along with the price. You do this second as sometimes you'll have the same history behaviour for other reasons.

   If you still think that it may be legit...... Well, it's your Isk. Good luck.

---

   There are, of course, variations on a theme with the most common being that the items required are part of a contract. This also only covers enough of the basics to enable you to spot one and avoid it. For those that are more interested in running one, well, there is enough detail above for you to get started but you probably want to have a think about it carefully before those "easy Isk" $$ signs start lighting up in front of your eyes.

   Keep your eyes open for part 2. It'll be more aimed at those looking to learn to scam using this technique but there will also be some stuff in there that will enable you to make isk from those people that only got as far as part 1.

The Incursion Situation

   So it's been about two weeks since the Incursion interdiction led by Krissada began. Since then the high-sec incursions have been completed not long after the final site has spawned. This has caused a large amount of angst from those that regularly farm incursion sites. With the release by CCP Diagoras of some figures from the last week I thought that I would take a gander at the situation.

   The rhetoric from both sides can be a little predictable if more than a little banal. Those closing the incursions are being labelled as "griefers" and those who farm them labelled in turn as "exploiters". But what of the issues at hand?

   The primary issue that those who are completing incursions as soon as possible have is the amount of Isk that is being farmed and the impact that this has on the overall economy. It follows the usual pattern of the risk vs reward being skewed too far in the favour of reward. I'll state here and now that I believe that even L4s offer too much reward so I'm firmly in the "nerf incursions" camp on this issue.

   In the last week a total of 1,442.6B Isk has been generated from NPC bounties and Incursion payouts. As can be seen from the chart to the right NPC bounties account for 72% of that Isk, a big majority. So with NPC bounties running at a little over 3.6 times Incursion payouts you may well be wondering what the issue is.

   Remember that this information is from the last week, that means that the Isk generated from Incursions is down, probably a lot, from its usual level because of the early endings that have been happening. No figures are currently available for pre-interdiction payouts but I don't think that it is too unreasonable to assume that it would have been at least double. This assumption is based on the fact that a new Incursion takes approximately 8 hours to spawn after the previous one has ended and that currently Incursions survive for 8 hours before being ended. There would also need to be an allowance made for relocation for those that are still running Incursions.

   An argument can also be easily made that the figure for Bounties is artificially high compared with the pre-interdiction period since it is not unreasonable to assume that when no Incursions are available those who would normally farm them switch instead to L4 missions. The practical upshot of this would be that the payouts for Incursions and Bounties were approximately equal. I would guess made 55% Bounties and 45% Incursions.

   The above is pure conjecture, again I don't think that it's too wide of the mark, but let us ignore that for the moment and just work with the figures that we do have. If we take a look at Isk per hour then NPC bounties provide a total of 6.87B Isk per hour when you allow for downtime. Incursion Isk per hour ran at 2.79B during the time that an Incursion was available. This is a ratio of approximately 5:2 in favour of NPC bounties.

   The next thing to look at is how the NPC bounties are calculated. This is a total figure and it encompasses every bounty payment made regardless of how or why the NPC was generated. NPCs with bounties are generated in the following ways, although this is not an exhaustive list:

• Mission rats: L1-L5
• Belt rats: High-sec, low-sec and null-sec
• Tutorial missions
• Exploration sites of all types.
• Null-sec anomolies.

   That's an awful lot of different ways that they can be generated although some can be pretty much ignored. The tutorial missions, for example, do not generate much in the way of NPC bounties compared with your average L4 mission so it would take a great many people running those to produce the same effect as a single L4 mission.

   But then again a single Vanguard produces 10M per character which is at the higher end of a single L4 mission and whilst I like the fact that Incursions introduce a forced element of co-operation that is sorely lacking from L4s and believe that co-operative play should be rewarded this surely is too high.

   You can argue that L4s are limitless and available upon demand but pre-interdiction the same was effectively true of Incursion sites since the downtime between Incursions was managed. If it was truly a competitive environment as it is now becoming then maybe the rewards would be more be more appropriate since players would then be actively competing for a limited resource.

   Now ask yourself how many people are participating in Incursions compared to those engaging in the top three NPC bounty generating activities of L4 missions, Null-sec Belt ratting and Null-sec anomalies. Do you really think that for every two Incursion farmers there are five players doing those bounty activities? Honestly? It is probably closer to twenty than two.

   However the whole point is that it is demonstrably true that unless Incursions are changed they provide far too much reward for far too little risk.

And we're back.

What lies beyond?

Day 5

Location: KFR-ZE Syndicate

   First up sorry for the delay. I had intended to post daily updates on my progress, alas RL kind of took over with the company I work for going into administration. Obviously this dragged me away for a couple of days since none of us knew if we were even going to be paid at the end of the month, let alone whether we would still have jobs. Anyway that has all settled down so normal service is resumed.

   Last time I had just been popped after a spell of concentration fail on my part. So it was time to update the clone again and dive up to Jita for a replacement ship. This time rather than just using the general purpose exploration set-up I opted for something a little more travel orientated. So cloak, expanded probe launcher (just tech 1 this time) with some sisters probes, salvager, MWD, a pair of i-stabs and a pair of hyperspace velocity optimisers. This gave me a nice tight ship for quick aligning, a good turn of speed in warp (19.4AU/s) and the MWD will assist me in escaping any more bubble camps. Well, that's the theory.

   I was keen to pick up where I had left off, the main question was whether I should retrace my steps or not. I had traversed Cloud Ring and nearly made it through the Outer Ring and into Syndicate. My planned route afforded me a complete circuit of syndicate since I wanted to visit both of the systems I lived out of and a quick duck through Solitude would also let me visit some old hunting grounds there as well. With the original planning calling for an entrance into Syndicate via 3KNK-A and exiting through the same system I felt I could get away with coming in from Placid via TXW-EI and the only system I would miss out on was 5-FGQI.

The Cloud Ring as seen from Syndicate.

   Now TXW used to be reasonable quiet after the introduction of the different types of gates since the region gates were now so massive that it was almost impossible to catch people even with a max skilled HIC pilot: your bubbles just weren't big enough. This still didn't stop me feeling a little apprehensive when I entered Vestouve, I think the transition from Empire to Null will always make me a little nervous. But as with my initial transition into Null things went smoothly and my journey from there around to KFR-ZE was entirely uneventful.

   It's now time to set the way-back-when machine for a couple of years ago. This is back before the different gate types were introduced and before the Epic Arc storyline missions were implemented. I was a part of a "PVP alliance", mostly we did high-sec war-dec's against people we thought would give us a good fight. We had been mostly active in the Tash-Murkon region with regular excursions against CVA in Providence and had started to explore the low-sec areas in Genesis.

   After a campaign in Genesis where we allied with the weaker of two warring corporations to force a settlement and allow both to come together and grow into what they would eventually become thoughts turned to establishing ourselves in Null-sec, we had tried before down in Curse but that story will wait for later.

   Syndicate was selected and we mobilised to move en-masse, this was complicated by a desire to have a freighter available but a plan was hatched and one Saturday we set out from Amarr and escorted the freighter loaded down with as much as it could carry. It was a very tense affair as not only did it contrain most everything that we owned that could be packed down (spare ships and all sorts) but we opted to make the journey in the most powerful fleet we could assemble.

   Quite honestly I'm surprised we made it at all, let alone without a single loss. It did take quite a few hours and there were definitely some tense moments as the Freighter docked after scouting reports indicated potential hostiles. We would either drop everything on them if they were an isolated group or bait them away from the route with a small gang. Now either I'm far too easily led or I suffered a rush of blood to the head because I volunteered to not only fly my armour tanked Scorp. (I kid you not) but also volunteered to be the primary cyno pilot. This meant that I was always in the vanguard regardless of what was deemed appropriate and, as anyone with experience of this will tell you, flying ewar in low-sec is the quickest way to wreck your sec-status. It also meant that I would generally be the first to take sentry fire as I locked and jammed as soon as we landed. Not good when ewar is going to be primary anyway and doubly not good when the fleet is relying on you to drop a cyno if things go pear-shaped. Nevertheless it was a role I would repeat many times and quickly developed a reputation as a suicidal maniac.

   We enjoyed a good few months of activity in KFR but it was not without internal stresses. Many pilots were better at losing ships than replacing them and there was a distinct care-bearish attitude present. It was not uncommon to find that nearly half of our active crew had disappeared back to high-sec to mission up some Isk. Whilst this was done with jump-clones it wasn't done in any sort of order and always there were the whines about it being okay for everyone else because either "you've got mission alts" or "you can just sell GTCs". We didn't, we just worked at it. To prove a point I took up ratting, chaining BS spawns in my sexy, sexy Hurricane. I was able to demonstrate that it was perfectly possible to live out of null-sec with just the weekly jump freighter trips to keep me supplied. Needless to say it didn't have any effect.

   Now, when I said I got a reputation for being a suicidal maniac I should mention that I wasn't actually the only one. An event early on proved that it was a highly contagious disease. We had managed to bait some people into a fight on the Vestouve gate in TXW. As usual I had warped in about 70km off of the fleet in my Scorp. and was having great fun annoying the hell out of them all with my ECM. Then an interceptor appeared bang on top of me and we realised that we had a second wave about to land on us. Moreover they were going to land on me. The FC (our CEO) called for tacklers to disengage and prepare to warp to me and that the rest of the gang should continue the engagement on the gate. Then came the call I hadn't been expecting....

   "Drop Cyno!" cried the FC, to which my only reply (having seen what was about to land on me) was "Are you fucking nuts?". "I'm not losing your Scorpion. Drop that fucking cyno right fucking now. I'll jump my alt in, all other caps are to stay the hell out."

   As soon as I dropped my cyno one of the cruisers in the second wave dropped one as well. Just as I was calling out the counter-drop my CEOs carrier appeared next to me, launched fighters and assigned them to me until he could get targets of his own. Before my warning had even been completed another 5 carriers jumped in. When asked what they thought they were doing the response was a simple, "we're bored". So what had started out as a fun small gang fight had suddenly turned into a fight on two fronts with the FC not only attempting to run both engagements but also trying to run a ship in each one. Didn't lose the Scorp. in that one either.

   After "proving" ourselves to an alliance based out of PVH8-O on a POS bash we were assisted in moving down to Y9G-KS in order to help them deal with a problem that they had there. The "proving" was itself a rather fun encounter and I'll be making a stop off at the system were it happened. As for our adventures in Y9G-KS, well, that will have to wait for a couple of days. I'm off now to move into Solitude and visit the triangle that we occupied after leaving Syndicate. If you can't be good, be dangerous. o7

Oopsadoops

What lies beyond?

Day 2

Location: Elonaya - Lonetrek

   So Cloud Ring had been rather quiet, not that I was after lots of attention from those with offensive capabilities you understand. It's just that this is supposed to be null-sec where things get dangerous. Today I was in the Outer Ring region and I had higher hopes since this is the only place you can get certain blueprints which makes it a source for high-value cargo departures.

   With that hope I set off towards 4C-B7X which contains an Outer Ring Excavations (ORE) station, actually there are two of them there. As I made the first jump of the day into NP6-38 a cluster of wrecks was presented to me, on the lookout for anything different I spotted that one of them belonged to a member of the Serpentis command. A Shadow Serpentis. Not only that but there was stuff in it! As it was a little way off of the gate I bookmarked the location and bounced off of the closest planet. Whilst it would be too much to hope that there was still anything particularly valuable in the way of loot remaining it is always worth a look.

   Landing next to the wreck I quickly opened it and scanned the contents list. If anything good had been in there whoever destroyed them had already taken it so I grabbed the 1,000 rounds of faction Iridium charges and started to orbit at about 4km. The theory being that if anyone warped in I would be far enough away from the wreck to instantly cloak up and be on my way. I activated the salvager and crossed my fingers for some T2 salvage. The cycles passed and failed three, four then five times. Surely it shouldn't be taking this long? I know I've only got salvaging at level 4 but still. In the end the salvager succeeded but found nothing. I hoped this wasn't an indicator of the way things were going to go today.

   The cloud ring nebula was definitely more defined from here although still looming large across the majority of my vision. As you can see from the image to the right the reason for the name is obvious: It forms an almost complete ring. I say "almost" because the two legs that have been cropped by the camera don't actually connect. Instead they kind of peter out in a misty blob. It is possible, of course, that the reason I cannot see it as a complete ring is that I am simply still too close to that part of the nebula. This sight-seeing lark is turning out all right and simply looking at the images afterwards and thinking about what is in them is proving to be quite fun. In a weird sort of way, perhaps I've just finally caught the tourist bug?

   Being a tourist isn't just about the things you see and do it's also about the mementoes and other knick-knacks you pick up that remind you of your trip. I already had some images from the previous day and I knew that I would add more to this collection but I was after something a little more tangible. As I progressed through the systems on my route I started to think about what I could pick up since there are no gift shops in stations. Seriously, if establishments ever happen and we can do something like t-shirt printing I think I'm going to set some up in places like this. Even if I can't think of anything better to put on them than "I went to the Outer Ring and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" or "I survived the gate-camp in EC-P8R".

   Where was I? Oh, what to pick up from the ORE station. Well the obvious thing would be something that isn't seeded anywhere outside of the region. This would mean either a skillbook such as the Mining Director one or one of the mining barge blueprints. There were two problems that I saw with this. The first is that although they aren't seeded anywhere else you can certainly buy them on the open market so their value as a "I was there and got..." items is pretty low. The second reason was that since this was only region 2 of 41 on this tour it meant that I would be carrying them with me through not only a large number of null-sec regions I would be passing through some of the heaviest fighting currently going on. It wasn't the possible loss of isk, a Procurer blueprint is only a couple hundred million, but that I wouldn't have anything when I got back home.

   Then I had a brainwave! There's got to be agents for ORE covering all levels and since they are after all a mining corporation they're bound to have a level 1 mining agent. I could get some loyalty points. They'll stay with me regardless of what happens (so long as I don't spend them), they cannot be transferred between characters so the only way you can have them is to go there and run a mission. Perfect! A record that clearly states "I was there".

   I quickly loaded up a second client and popped open the agent finder and ran a quick search. Yes. There was a level 1 mining agent, although only one. I made a note of which station they were in and closed the client. Now for some more preparation, I'll need something to mine with. My Buzzard is lovely, kitted out for analysing, code-breaking, salvaging and probing but it does not have a mining laser and I didn't think to bring one with me. Ah well, to the markets! This didn't go quite so well. The only mining lasers available anywhere in the Outer Ring were a stack of 10 XCEL drilling beams at a little under 2M a pop. I only had about 400k on me having left all my isk in my other trousers (character). I could log another character in and transfer the funds across but blow that. There had to be another way open to the inventive capsuleer.

   As I closed in on 4C-B7X I realised with a sinking stomach what that other way was. If you dock at a station in your pod and you do not have any ships available there you get a courtesy rookie ship from Pend Insurance. That rookie ship has a civilian mining laser on it and unlike the civilian salvager/codebreaker/analyser it works on anything a normal mining laser works on. Just much less efficiently. Ah well, I could live with a little inefficiency it was getting the rookie ship in the first place I was less happy with.

   I said above that I expected to encounter a heavier presence in the ORE station systems because of the lure of the blueprints on sale. Whilst I have some experience of flying pods around in null-sec it has never been something that I've done voluntarily. It was going to depend on how busy the system was since there are only three station systems in the whole of the Outer Ring.

   Jumping into 4C I was surprised to see only a few others in local. Things were looking up especially as there were 5 stations present and there were only two people in the same alliance present. I followed the normal plan and scanned the station for bubbles, HICs and DICs, the results came back negative so I warped in and docked at the ORE station with the level 1 mining agent.

The ORE mining station in 4C-B7X

   Typically, though, everyone was docked in the same station. Ah well, there was nothing for it but to get the pod out and see if anyone undocked with me. Thankfully all was quiet and I quickly warped off and docked at another station to get my rookie ship. As I returned an Imicus undocked but I didn't pay it too much attention as it was someone that had recently entered system. Back inside I stripped the salvager off and off-lined the probe launcher so I could fit the civilian mining laser.

   The agent had decided that for my first assignment I would be tasked with obtaining just over 1,000m³ of ore. Right. I get 30m³ per cycle which lasts a minute. That sounds like fun. I quickly declined that mission and asked for another. The agent obviously had a pressing need for this ore as the next mission was the same one. Gargh! There's a reason I just declined that one you know? In a carebear state of mind and not wanting to lose standing I accepted the mission and started to mentally prepare myself for about 45 minutes of mining. In a cov ops. In null.

   Undocking presented me with not just the Imicus but a Thanatos that was sensor-boosted to buggery. An Imicus being used as a cyno-frig? Who'd 'ave thunk it? I waited off the session change timer, selected the station I had just emerged from and then initiated warp to the mission site on the assumption that if I was locked and pointed I could instantly redock. The Thanatos ignored me and I was on my way.

   Now the thing with mining missions is that they don't tend to follow the same rules as combat missions when it comes to spawns. Something I had forgotten. I had set off thinking that even if there were some rats about they'd only be a couple of frigs at best and they'd be hitting my highest resists anyway. Nuh-uh. After a single cycle I got a spawn. 5 NPCs split between cruisers and battlecruisers. For those unaware most mining missions just spawn a group of normal belt rats relative to the security status of the system that you are in.

   Returning to station with somewhat fewer shields than I had set out with I was being grumpy about the apparent end to my quest to get some ORE loyalty points. Spending 45 minutes warping backwards and forwards to deposit a full cargo is one thing. Spending I know not how long warping in and out, getting off maybe half a cycle before the NPCs lock me and start shooting is something altogether different.

   Then I remembered the agent change. No matter how low your standing to the faction or corp involved you will always have access to level 1 agents. Whilst this was always the case for level 1 quality -20 agents the removal of agent quality meant that I didn't have to worry about anything. That agent would always talk to me. No prizes for guessing what I did when I got docked up. "Yeah, I've changed my mind about that. Wanna give me something else to do?" This time the agent played ball and required only 100m³ of ore, even if it was from a different system. This worked out much better and there were no NPCs at all. Mission accomplished I admired my proof in the journal.

   So I had not only pictures this time but a little something else to remember my trip by. With no other points of interest on the list it was time to head on out towards Syndicate. I stopped off at the other ORE station in system since it is a little more photogenic and headed on down the pipe to E9G-MT.

   Jumping into E9G-MT gave me my first gate encounter. As I entered a Sabre decloacked 61km off and a Manticore appeared about 20km off my position. I picked a planet at random and warped activating my cloak as soon as the capacitor was drained in preparation for the warp. At this point RL intervened and I had to pop to the kitchen to put the veg on for dinner. Not to worry I'm cloaked and heading in a random direction from the planet I had warped to.

   Returning a few minutes later I found myself alone in the system. Figuring that they had obviously moved on I continued on my way. Now, if you read yesterdays blog you may recall that at the bottom I said "Things have been surprisingly easy thus far and I cannot allow myself to become complacent." that is some advice that I should have heeded. If you look on the map at the system I was in you will notice that although there are three gates one of them leads to a closed pocket within Syndicate which effectively makes it a pipe. Thinking would reveal that those I encountered would most likely have gone to UO9-YG and at best they had split up with the Sabre taking UO9 and the Manticore heading to VSIG-K. Why? Well, since VSIG-K is the start of a dead-end pocket there isn't really any need for a point since I'd have to come back past them. Not only that but what was it I said at the beginning of this about the lure of the ORE blueprints? Right, the shortest route back to high-sec takes you through 3KNK-A and out into Orvolle via PF-346 which always used to be heavily camped. I should know that. We used to pop up there regularly from KFR-ZE just to mess with them.

   Anyway, I discovered the consequences of my actions when I jumped into UO9-YG to find the Sabre sitting on gate with a bubble out, launched as soon as I appeared in local no doubt, not only that but a Stilleto as well. Damn. Two fast ships. I checked my position and found I wasn't actually too far from the edge of the bubble. At this point I made my second and final mistake.

   What I normally do when appearing in a bubble is to drop gate cloak and head towards the nearest edge and pop my cloak on. It's what you would expect and it will be the direction people will go to try and decloak you. At this point you turn 90 degrees and head for the next nearest edge hoping to through your pursuers off. This has worked in the past to the point where I had managed to evade a 20 strong gate camp with HICs and anchored warp bubbles in a Probe with a prototype cloak. I think my max velocity was something like 70m/s.

   Unfortunately the second closest edge happened to be in the direction of almost all the celestials in system. What I should have done was head away from those. I didn't. I did what I laid out above and the Sabre, rather than the Stilleto as I was expecting, overloaded his MWD and burned straight across me dropping a second bubble. It may have been luck that he decloaked me and the primary aim was to simply enlarge the bubbled area to give them longer to find me. It may simply have been some damned good piloting. There is a trick for this, or at least there used to be.

   I haven't checked this since Crucible launched but if you had your tactical overview displayed then when you selected something you would get a line connecting you to that object with. The trick was that should the object leave and you didn't select anything else the line would remain. So, if you could select the ship before the cloak came up you got an exact positioning of them. You then quickly rotate the camera so that the line is almost a dot and you double click that dot. This sends you hurtling towards the last known location and if you are quick enough you will decloak them.

   Needless to say my pod was destroyed as well. Unfortunately for my attackers the RNG was somewhat unkind and nothing of any value dropped. It would have been nice to have left them the Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher for teaching me a lesson for my carelessness. Anyway, as I sit here back in Elonaya writing this I'll give them the GF they deserve. Naurill and bertturk I salute you o7.

Killboard link.

The new EVE really does look pretty.

The journey begins

What lies beyond?

Day 1

Location: IZ-AOB Outer Ring

   Setting off from Piak in Lonetrek I have to admit to being a little apprehensive. It is quite some time since I did any travelling through null-sec and things change. Back then BOB still existed, CVA were in charge of Providence and TRI was.... well I forget which incarnation they were on, it was a little difficult to keep track to be honest. My primary concern was the transition from Empire space to null-sec, with so little knowledge of who is where and what the current political situation is between any given neighbouring entities I had picked a point I remembered as being pretty quiet.

   Looking at the universe map on my copy of Ombeys most excellent pdf (available here) I chose Cloud Ring as my starting point. From there I am hoping to head anti-clockwise passing through each null-sec region and doubling back or visiting twice as little as often. Cloud Ring is one of the smaller regions and it should be a short trip through as I hadn't spotted anything of particular interest to a galactic tourist. It would also serve, hopefully, as a way to ease myself back into the correct mind-set after bearing it up in Empire for too long.

   Passing out of Lonetrek and into Black Rise I set course for W-4NUU and passed uneventfully through the quiet north-western part of the Caldari FW area. Low-sec, despite received wisdom, is not exactly that hostile a place for the most part and your attitude to it is key.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for I am the baddest mother fucker in the God damn valley"

   Now okay I'm not, really not. But it's all about the confidence you have and confidence is something I don't have an issue with. I am hoping that this same attitude will help rather than hinder when I cross the border.

   Jumping into Okagaiken all was quiet which was fantastic news. With no-one else in local I knew that it was incredibly unlikely that there would be a camp in W-4. The worst I expected to have to deal with was unguarded bubbles anchored at the gate. With that I jumped.

The gate was clear. Not just of people, there was only one other person in local, but of bubbles as well. Result!    First job was to get off the gate, I didn't want to get caught gawping with my pants down. I decided that I should start as I meant to go on and do things properly. With that in mind I found the next gate on my route and as luck would have it, it had been created in close proximity

I recognise that swirly thing in space.

to a planet. Since we now have PI and the accompanying orbital customs offices there is more choice in what to warp to when doing this. Before it was either pick the planet or pick a moon on the planet and hope you didn't drop on a POS. Even that no longer applies since there is now a fixed POS anchoring location at each moon. So entered warp, cloaked and went on my merry way. When I landed I manually started the ship flying off in a direction that was not in line with any other celestial so that should I be distracted and someone jumped in and happened to warp to the same object and at the same distance as I did they wouldn't de-cloak me. That would be what is known in the trade as a bad thing™.

   Great! I was in null-sec after an uneventful short run and there was shiny new starscapes to admire. These are all supposed to show nearby nebulae and you should be able to track your progress by watching which recede, which become more prominent and which you end up inside of. I am keen to see this in action as I travel.

   Panning the camera around to take in the heady atmosphere I was immediately presented with a site I was used to seeing from my recent residence in the Kador region. That swirling darkish brown mass attempting to constrain a light green light (visible in the lower left of the above image). The Kor Azor region seems to lay right on the edge of this and I currently believe that it is the Genesis region which would be nicely poetic given its appearance.

   The main feature of this region is the green/pink steam-like expanse that encircles your view. Somewhat "ring" like in fact. I've seen images of a nebula of similar colour and texture to this but from a much greater distance and it was very pretty. Hopefully over the next few days I'll be able to find the best region to view the Cloud Ring from. All part of the fun.

   The next region on my list was obviously going to be the Outer Ring and it is only eight jumps away. Looking at the map I expected that if I was to encounter anything trap like it would be in either FD53-H or DY-F70 since these form a short pipe. There is also the issue of a gate not being within scanner range of any planet which I know is going to raise its head at some point. I have a plan for dealing with that but I don't know how well it will work or what tweaking I will need to do to get it working well.

   Either fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it the pipe was empty and although there were instances of gates being out of scanner range it was pointless attempting to enact my plan since I already knew the result. FD53-H did present me with my first picture opportunity though. The O-ZXUV gate is sited adjacent to a planet and I happened to appear on the far side of the gate from it. I grabbed my trusty screenshot button snapped away.

A moment of tranquillity with the light just starting to glint off the stargates rear housing.

   The last couple of jumps through Cloud Ring were, again, quiet although I did see a small gang appear behind me in B-DBYQ and head off towards Fountain. So, I sit here now in the Outer Ring and ponder my next move. Things have been surprisingly easy thus far and I cannot allow myself to become complacent. Since I am in the home region of ORE I think I may have to visit one of their stations and see what I can pick up in the gift shop. I assume that they have one....

It's time for a holiday

What lies beyond?

   Okay, it's something that happens to everyone in EVE at some point or other. You get bored with the same old same old, everything seems repetitive and you start to wonder what you log in for. Now mostly what I log in for is to shoot the breeze in various chat channels. Yeah, being in your own alt corp/alliance is kind of self inflicted isolation, but there are plenty of public channels around that can replace corp/alliance chat with the added benefit of not being tied to any particular group activity or having any responsibilities towards them. Generally it works out quite well.

   Today it's a little different. There are things that I know I should be doing, goals that I've been working towards for the last couple of weeks that are still a while off. Mostly it's the lack of urgency in the goals that I've set. Currently Lauren is skilling towards piloting a Machariel and since I've already got one sitting around ready to go it is just waiting for the SP to catch up. I need something to do.

   Flicking through some EVE related wallpapers I'd created I found one that spoke to me. It was one that I created after random chance had dropped me in the perfect position after a gate jump in Lonetrek, I forget which system now. The sun had just appeared from behind a planet which was therefore in silhouette with it's rings visible behind the gate.

   It was a beautiful sight and spoke of both the beauty and opportunities present within the game. A stargate takes you to another system and there is no way of knowing what is on the other side. There could be nothing or there could be a massive battle taking place, a camp waiting for an unwary traveller, a field of wrecks hinting at recent hostilities. You literally will not know until you take the plunge and jump. The title I gave that wallpaper was "What Lies Beyond" and it is reproduced in part at the top of this blog.

   Seeing that gave me the idea for what is about to happen. With the release of the new regional starscapes in Crucible I decided that it was time to break out and see space again. Not for any reason but just to see it anew.

   It is time for the next adventure, that great voyage of discovery, the safari of space, the grand tour. And so I've loaded up a Buzzard with general exploration stuff; salvager, codebreaker, analyzer. The clone is up to date. A route is planned albeit roughly. I'm ready to go. A voyage through all of null-sec.

   As I travel through each region I hope to stop off at any sites of interest. If you know of anywhere worth a visit let me know and I'll try and check it out.I have one appointment in Deklein already and God alone knows what we'll be doing when I get there. Just like any other tourist I'll be taking pictures of my travels and subjecting you all to a kind of diary. Right. Now where did I put those scan probes?