EVEpiracy

Back in the early days of my New Eden experience, I didn’t have a good concept of how LONG it can take to complete the training required to handle some of the more deadly hardware available to a capsuleer.. I admit, I was a little unfocused (and still am) and went for a breadth before depth model of training, so everything was training in a matter of hours.  Little did I know that most of the more useful skills would take days, weeks, even MONTHS of training to master…

Ah well, live and learn.

That’s a very long lead-in to my point.  I purchased a rigged Wolf on contract many weeks ago, long before I could master the controls of such a beast. I’d been enamored with the Wolf since my first days in New Eden, and now I can finally fly the ship I’d purchased so long ago away from the station I purchased it at.

My first encounter with pirates in New Eden was when I was ratting in a Rifter in a low-sec sector and I was beset upon by what I can only describe at this point as the most inept Wolf pilot in the history of capsuleering.. I wish I remembered more of the details like the name of the pilot or system, but I don’t.  The gist is that I was in a Rifter, with a terrible fit (mixed guns, standard missiles, shield tank…) and I’d just popped an Angel cartel rat when this Wolf warped in at about 25km.  Had I known then what I know now, I would have just warped immediately, but I was new, and I didn’t understand the vast difference between a Wolf and a Rifter  (they look the same, right?) and I looked up the pilot’s information.  She was a member of the Republic Fleet War Academy for the past 9 days.  I thought - “well, I’m more skilled than this pilot, I’ll just stay to clean up my wrecks.” (I told you, I didn’t know what I was doing…)

She closed to about 15km and started shooting at me.  I locked an asteroid, fired up my afterburner, and set myself to orbit it at 2000m.  It was a stupid maneuver, and yet, it had the most interesting consequences.

The Wolf was trying to orbit me, I’m sure, but due to my position near the asteroid, and it’s own very high speed, was having a very difficult time hitting me with her guns, and I don’t believe that she had missiles fitted.  In the meantime, I was firing missiles of my own, and even scoring a hit every now and again with my artillery, though my autocannons were useless.  I’d lucked out and found some Domination Carbonized Lead ammo on a freak Domi spawn in a 0.7 system a few days earlier.  I was firing it, and the increased falloff was helping me.

Miracle of miracles (though I didn’t know it at the time) I’d chewed through the shields of the Wolf, and was still hovering about 60% shields myself.  This had taken about 15 minutes so far.  I began to work my way into the armor of the Wolf, and started to switch ammo (don’t ask…) when she must have become bored and warped away.

That’s right.  The Wolf ran from my Rifter.  My piss-poor fit, low skill, huge target of a Rifter.  But I still wanted a Wolf, and I wanted it bad.

Now I have one, and I can fly it, and I can fit it, and I’m dangerous in it.  But.. it’s still a Wolf, which means that it’s best in a pack, and I am alone.  A Lone Wolf.  I like the appellation, I like the concept, but I think it’s unlikely to work.  I can point, but I can’t web, unless I forgo the MWD, which seems like suicide.

Time to buy a Jaguar…

Currently, I’m successfully manipulating the local market in meta 4 shield extenders. This means that if you have purchased a meta level 4 shield extender in the (classified) area that I’m currently exploiting, you paid far, far more than you should have. And yet, you did it, didn’t you?

I find this fascinating. What’s more, it turns out to be far easier than I would have expected. There are many systems which are trade hubs, from local trade hubs, to the grand daddy mac of them all, Jita. In each of these systems, there is ALWAYS more than one station to conduct business at, and yet, the market seems to gravitate to just one, in each of these cases.

So - I’m selling shield extenders in two of these stations within one of these systems. Any time someone tries to undercut my price, I buy their stuff and put it back on the market at my price. It takes capital, but that’s what I have as a trader, and this is how I wage war. If you want stuff at a better price, you have to travel 10 hops to get it. I figured that was enough insulation. I was right, but it seems that that’s overkill.

Like I said, I’m selling at two of these stations. At the major hub station, I’m selling at a markup of 1000%. At the secondary station WITHIN THE SAME SYSTEM I’m selling at a 30% discount, just one unit, but I replace it if it sells. So far, I’ve sold 30x as much at the higher price because people don’t want to undock, warp, and redock to buy the cheaper one.

I know what you’re going to say - people want to fit their ships where they are, or they want to buy more than one and fit a the same time… but the data don’t lie, and they tell me that most people buy just one unit at a time.

Now, I know people are lazy, I’ve been selling Scordite at a 500% markup in the same station that I know there to be a plotline quest that requires it for a long time. It’s a good gig, but the total ISK we’re talking about here is about 50k per transaction. I can understand that kind of lazy. This new thing, with the shield extenders… the difference here is about 1M ISK per transaction. Maybe I’m cheap, but it’s worth a million ISK to spend an extra 30 seconds to me.

I haven’t had a chance to go hunting for a few days.  I’ve been busy trying to collect and haul all of the stuff I’ve been buying in region-wide orders for Metropolis, Heimatar, and Molden Heath.  Even when travelling in high-sec, there is a certain amount of trepidation to be felt when carrying nearly a billion ISK worth of cargo around with you on 40 jump trips.

I hope to be outfitting a new Fleet Issue Stabber that I just recently acquired and see how it fares in some missions before trying to take down some unsuspecting Vexors in it very soon.

I’ll keep you updated as to how that goes.