Until a few days ago my main sources of income in EVE have been ratting in my carrier, cleaning sites up with a Noctis, running Incursions with the Goon group, a bit of PI, and a little importing from Jita. A good mix of active and passive income, and enough to put me on the short path to a Super Carrier once my main pilot’s skills round out.
Then I noticed that, from my previous EVE days of running the Inq FiS corp, the old POCO’s we put up in our wormhole were being used, and so were collecting taxes. The tax rate was set to 5%, and I guess the current residence don’t mind paying it. It’s not huge money (about 200m a month), but considering it literally comes in without me doing anything, I’ll take it. I did have to remove everyone’s rights from the Corp, as someone I didn’t recognize was in the corp (I left a few people as directors, and it seems they then either made alts or invited other people) and that person also had access to the corp wallet and was taking some funds out. The free money is all mine damnit!
Another leftover bonus from those days were a bunch of researched blueprint originals, so I had those shipped out to Delve and started mapping out what best to do with them. As they were all T1, production wasn’t a terrible choice, but also not the only one. I asked in our ISK-focused Jabber channel, a place populated with some of the richest and smartest players in the game (people who toss around the idea of throwing hundreds of billions of ISK as ‘pet projects’ like it was nothing), and got some very good advice from them.
I’m going to dig into invention, as my industry pilot has most of the skills associated with that (filling in the holes now), and T2 items move far better and with higher margins in Delve. I’ve also started reprocessing the site junk I’ve collected rather than selling it off, as this will provide a lot of the materials I need for production. The rest I can grab off the market, or even do some mining when I’m able to do some mostly-afk gaming.
What’s really interesting about the market in our capital is that it’s basically a mini-Jita. Huge population, so huge volume, and while much of the market is covered, there are still plenty of gaps, and plenty of high margins to grab. It will take a little bit of time to build all of this up, and to learn the ins and outs in terms of what really moves and what sits, but that’s all part of the fun. I also like the fact that between my two pilots, I’m basically completing the ‘circle of life’ in EVE. Blow stuff up, get drops, turn drops into minerals, convert minerals into stuff, sell stuff so others can blow stuff up. Pretty cool.
PS: TAGN covered the recent Op to blow up a PL Keepstar as it was coming online. I was part of that effort, and while PL didn’t show up, seeing Goons fill up almost four full fleets was nice to see from a ‘dead’ and ‘weak’ alliance, to say nothing of the 3-4 other major powers who also showed up hoping to take some shots at PL as well.
Hardcore Casual 
There is something about EVE and how things never go away that is great. I recall on a Reavers op in 2015 we were down in Omist and ran into an Atlas Alliance ihub just sitting there in space, offline and useless. The alliance, an early null sec power, was long been gone, but nobody had bothered to clean up all the remains.
I suddenly remembered the other day that I still have research agents working on data cores back in empire space. I am going to have to go and collect those and see how the data core market is going.
It’s not just that things don’t go away, its that they mostly stay relevant too. Those data cores are still useful, while in another MMO items from a few years back would likely be nothing but novelty junk.
Those were my alts downloading the isk (Mal, can validate over inq forums). Funny story about the PI rates. About two, two and half years ago another corp was living in our old c3 home. I noticed the isk rolling in and people periodically taking pot shots at the pocos. I convo’d their directors to negotiate light blue status and lower PI rates that would convince them to leave the pocos up, figuring they would only last a few months and maybe someone else would move in and we could jack the rates up or I’d get a scan alt in and we could go jihad. Long term plans ahoy hoy.
So those people got negotiated down to either 1% or free PI, can’t remember. They periodically tried to bash out pocos but all the attempts got aborted, some because other gankers and iirc once because I used the old watchlist/locator agent to get a scan alt in and scare them off. Finally they decided cheap PI is better than losing ships while bashing pocos.
Of course a few months later they move out, but I had already taken another break from Eve. Before I left I tried to set all the neutral/no-standings rates to 5% or 0%. The interface for setting rates is terrible, hence “try”.
So last Dec/Jan I come back to Eve and move into low sec and start doing the DED ratting, small gang pvp and other low sec shenanigans. I notice the corp has a few hundred million isk. Well isk in the hand is worth a plex in the bush so yoink. Next month I think to check again and there’s more isk. Yoink. But now I have time to figure out where it’s coming from and I remember to check the pocos. Sure enough the current residents are using the pocos, some of which I had apparently royally fucked the settings and were set to 50% instead of 5%, iirc it was one of the base planets needed for wetware production. I start convo’s and Eve mails with everyone doing PI or in a leadership roll in the corp thinking to negotiate terms as before.
No response. I keep this up for a few days, old watchlist functionality letting me msg them as soon as they log on, and finally one of them responds with some nonsensical statement like “Too busy to talk, have to collect PI”.
…
I keep messaging for a few more days before deciding they either don’t care, are stupid, think it’s a scam offer or don’t understand that a corp is setting their tax rates. I double check all the rates, fix the ones that were silly and call it a day. 12 monthsish later they are still doing PI, never having tried to bash them (at least that I noticed) or having responded to negotiate lower rates.
I no longer (sadly) have any scan alts in the c3, but my guess is they are running PI without a tower and that they have piles of alts in abandoned c3’s doing this, for at least some time I know another group had towers in the c3 while this was running PI. Eve is Eve I guess.
Malcolm Rennolds, aka Jayine Cobb, aka Hoban ‘Wash’Washburne :)
Ah so that was your alt, ok. I didn’t recognize the last two names. That’s a fun story about the corps, especially the current ones who do a lot of PI.
Also: No hard feelings about the rolls, I knew it was coming :)