Having the super carrier to rat in has changed my perspective on a lot of things related to ISK, because when you have a tool that can fairly easily generate you 300m+ ISK an hour, most other ISK-making activities just can’t keep up. This then raises the question of whether I do something to make the most ISK/hr, or whether I do something because its both fun and generates ISK.

At the end of the day EVE is a game, and it’s something I occupy my fairly limited free time with. I don’t depend on EVE for real money (somehow The Mittani has yet to involve me in the very real, definitely happening RMT carter that is all of null-sec), and even if I did, nothing I could do in EVE would even come remotely close to my job in the real world in terms of money/hr. So while I like the idea of having more ISK, and earning it in efficient ways, there is a limit to how far I’m going to push that, and if an activity isn’t fun (like say, super carrier ratting for hours on end, each day, for months), I’m not going to do it.

I bring this up because right now, on my combat pilot, I have two primary ways of getting ISK. The first is with the super, and the second is running 10/10 escalations in a Rattlesnake. The 10/10s aren’t bad ISK by any means, but they aren’t as high as ratting in the super. I do them however because its a change of pace, and while ratting is reliable, there is still a small rush of excitement related to the 10/10 when the loot finally arrives and you see whether the site was worth 134m (the worst result) ISK or 500m+ (there are some very rare, very pricey drops).

Somewhat of a similar situation on my industry pilot. Right now I’m producing a lot of fairly common fittings, both tech 1 and tech 2, to sell in our local market. The ISK is good, and mostly passive, but I still have to update orders about once a day. I was recently chatting with some marketing folks, and they suggested moving out of fittings and into ship production, especially larger stuff like capitals. I know that’s the direction I will eventually go in, but right now that pilot needs to finish training to fly a FAX, plus my science slots aren’t open to research ship BPOs, which take a long time to get into decent shape.

As a stepping stone, I have purchased a few smaller ship BPOs, mostly to see how that market plays out and what the trends are. I’m also fairly certain the margins are decent, so that will become another steady income source when its ready.

Related to that, with my production output going up, I need more and more minerals, to the point that hauling them was becoming a burden. To fix this, I’m recently purchased a freighter, which is another nice little milestone in EVE. At about 1.1b in cost, its not a huge expense, but its something, and I now have access to the largest cargo ship class in EVE, which makes buying millions of trit or other miners much easier, even a few jumps out. It also makes hauling produces ships to market possible as well, which is pretty important.