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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Abandoning High Sec Planetary Interaction

My intention to move to Eve Online's low security space became more serious last night as I decided to shut down my 15 planetary interaction colonies scattered throughout Minmatar and Ammatar high sec space.  That means spending a lot of time this weekend picking up the final products and dismantling the colonies I've worked for over a year now.  But I won't miss them.

When I began my involvement with the planetary interaction mini-game, the feature was new and a great way to pick up a nice chunk of ISK for relatively little risk and effort.  I still recommend PI as a way for a player addicted to losing frigates and cruisers in PvP to get the cash to buy replacement ships.  Or, as I did, to afford the materials to buy the materials to build myself tech 2 ships as well as the more expensive skill books and tech 2 modules off the market.

Planetary interaction is basically a puzzle game.  Even with the help of Eve University's planetary interaction guide the feature can provide hours and hours of entertainment first in trying to understand how it works and then figuring out what to build.  I was pretty happy for months just coming home from work and spending 15 minutes a night maintaining my colonies and taking my products to Rens once a week.  Good times.

But a few months ago I lost that desire to just go out, make ISK and collect ships.  I blame Fanfest.  While I'm still in my own personal corporation I realized on my pilgrimage to Reykjavik that Eve is more about what a player does with what he collects more than about the collecting itself.  While exploring low sec previously a goal for something I should do, after Fanfest spending time in low sec was something I wanted to do.

After Fanfest, planetary interaction was an anchor keeping me in high sec.  The money was too good to pass up as I built up a nest egg to cushion myself against the inevitable losses I will sustain by living in low sec.  But then a funny thing happened.  Riverini picked up The Nosy Gamer for syndication by Eve News 24 and a rather large infusion of ISK from writing came into my wallet.  I've spent a lot of money on mining barges, but I can afford to lose a few Procurers and even a combat ship or two now.

Last night the final piece fell into place for me.  Instead of doing my PI maintenance, I hopped into a Hound and a Procurer and started mining at a belt.  One feature of the Procurer I didn't realize before is that I can fill up the ore hold in less than 12 minutes.  So I can mine a low sec ore, fill up the cargo hold and feel like I accomplished something, like not losing my ship doing something foolhardy, in about the same time I took to take care of my PI colonies.  Then I hopped in a Cheetah, scanned down a magnetometric site and picked up about 10 million ISK in salvage materials.  The mining and running the site probably took about 30 minutes.  More importantly, I had a lot more fun than just clicking on and moving extractor heads.

So this weekend I probably won't spend that much time in low sec.  Instead I'll close up one more chapter in my Eve life so I can move on to the next.

3 comments:

  1. If you have that many planet slots available you might want to consider setting up the production chain for nanite repair paste. I've recently set up the planets and got the blueprint to make it, both to supply pilots in my alliance and to sell on the market.

    You need a few planets to get it running and it's more involved than just making robotics but if you train thermodynamics it can be handy having your own supply of nanite paste when you need it.

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  2. If you like highsec PI, you will love lowsec PI; especially if you can find (or build) a low tax customs office.

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    1. Definitely, the planets tend to have better resources. PI in highsec is pretty terrible really.

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