Hunting for Wab.. err.. SKINS

So, here’s what I got thus far:

  • Kryos SKIN
  • Thorax SKIN
  • Incursus SKIN
  • Celestis SKIN
  • Miasmos SKIN
  • Astarte SKIN
  • Taranis SKIN
  • Nyx SKIN

And no drugs.  Hmmm, seems like my dealer skipped town.  While I was initially excited for the Nyx, I think it will be the Astarte SKIN that will be worth more, as someone else in my alliance already snagged one that day.

For those that haven’t tried it yet, it does appear to be based by constellation, i.e. each constellation has “X” number of Gala events, which depending on the size of the constellation appears to be about 1 or 2 active at any given time.  I have not seen more than one per system and they do show up in wormholes.

The scenario is pretty much exactly the same as the Blood Raider Event which has three waves.  First wave is five Angel Frigates, second wave is five Angel Cruisers, and the third wave is one battlecruiser, which drops the loot.

I ran one with my Astero, and even though it is combat fit it didn’t hold up to well against the frigs.  I then tried an Active Shield fit Vagabond which seemed to do pretty well.  I also tried an active armor tank Confessor, which did a pretty good job but I should have replaced the Small Ancillary Armor Repairer with a regular Small Armor Repairer.  A well fit T1 combat cruiser or decently fit combat Battlecruiser should be good enough to plow through them.

As far as the skins go, they do look pretty nice.  There is one interesting inconsistency in that on some of the skins, the Metallic Orange/Red (think the color of a Dr. Pepper can) starts at the front of the ship, then it tapers back to the grey/green-white “camo” pattern, while on others it starts at the rear of the ship and fades forward before it goes into the grey/green-white camo.  For the most part it works well.  The only ship that the pattern doesn’t seem to work well on is the Kryos.  It just seemed to blend too much into the detail already there.

SKINS of the father…

Alright, so far we’ve had two Amarrian SKIN events and one Gallente SKIN event.  The Amarrians got three Skins out of the deal, and so far the Gallente’s have gotten one.  We’ve also had the Yule event which gave us a pretty decent skin as well.  In general, I am pretty happy with how the SKINs are working out.

But I think they have two issues they are going to have to deal with, well, three to be precise.

The first is that they need to go through a redo a number of color palettes that are already in place.  Especially those of the Minmatar.  When we got the initial V3 examples, it seemed like the coloration was a 90/10 ratio with the bolder color being predominate.

However, in actual game application, the coloring scheme really hasn’t shown up well, in particular the Blue Tiger for all ships is just too dark, and the golden yellow often isn’t present enough to show up.  For the Minmatar, most of their skins are simply too dark to see, such as the Justice skin which almost looks exactly like the default skin.  The Caldari and Gallente have similar issues, but the Minmatar ships, since they are already that rust color that covers much of the red/brown color scheme tends to be a very difficult color to contrast against.

The second problem is more related to specific ship models, but is also a problem with Minmatar ships in particular.   The details on certain ships tend to not play well with various SKIN color designs.  For example, the Kryos loses a lot of the “camo” effect because there are so many hull attachments, with lots of shadowed areas.  Now, this problem may not be a “problem” per se, it just may be a choice at the moment that allows CCP more options for later creativity.

The third problem may again be a moot point, but it seems that they might have an issue with popular SKINs no longer being available.  For example, last years “Yule” skin was a really nice Blue/white skin that looked really good on a number of ships.  Now, here’s what I think CCP might do.  I think they might make those SKINs available only through the Aurum store.  And for me, that is an acceptable solution.

Profiting from Wardec’ing Corporations

So, I came to a very interesting realization today as I was reviewing sales of various components in High-sec.  My sales improve indirectly because of Wardec’ing corporations.  Of course, to those of you who read my blog, what I am about to say is probably not only old hat, but sadly elementary to your distinguished minds.

But for me it was a bit of an epiphany.

You see, the Wardec’ing corporations wardec multiple alliances and corporations, in particular those that they KNOW have members who haul large amounts of goods to and from trade hubs, usually specifically Jita.  Now the obvious benefit to me is initially two fold.  The first is that most will wait out a war-dec, delaying goods getting to Jita, which slows downs price decreases.  The second benefit is that those who aren’t paying attention lose their goods to destruction, which also slows down price increases.

But, in addition to that, you also have those smaller operators who will not risk going to Jita, and instead opt to go to a more local trade hub.  This both pushes the prices lower at that particular trade hub and improves the trade hub’s viability by offering more goods.  In addition to that, since those particular goods are not being sold at Jita, the other major trade hubs aren’t feeling as much pressure to reduce prices.

Now I am further benefitted by the NON-industrial members of war-dec corporations, who still need to operate and get ships, ammo, etc.  They tend to be a little more skiddish about trying to outsmart a war-dec, so they tend to go to trade hubs closer to them that are less likely to be camped.  So this allows for those trade hubs to keep their viability by maintaining a steady stream of customers.  For me this works great since much of my industry operation is based off of selling rigs and salvage and invention materials, which aren’t immediate need items but get used for continued production.

So, here’s one for those annoying, self-gratifying, lazy, no-good, leeches of society.  You are making my profits easier and better.  Cheers!