Last night, the first phase of the Ishtar Project ended – I flew my Ishtar out of Amarr, where I’d bought a contract on one for 130m ISK last week. I could have MADE one, but the Ishtar blueprints just SELL TOO FAST and for too much for me to waste one by turning it into a ship. They are selling so fast that I think it would probably not break the market if I started buying the datacores I need to invent them instead of waiting the week it takes for my research agents to come up with enough.
(I really need to work some more on my R&D agent standings; I’m earning three Gallentean Starship cores a day, but just one Mechanical Engineering).
Most of the Ishtar builds on BattleClinic are focused on their roles in PvP. Others fit them out for mission running. The Ishtar is going to be great for these things, but I don’t have the training yet to fit Tech II weapons or the large amounts of ISK required for all the faction fittings they seem to love. At some point, the Ishtar would just be too valuable to actually fly, I’m thinking. I just can’t see putting 300m ISK of fittings on a ship and sending it into PvP to get blown up. That kind of loss would entirely wipe me out; I’d be back to flying frigates after that.
That’s likely why I haven’t moved into 0.0; there’s absolutely no way I could afford to have all my ships blown up. Sitting in highsec, doing invention, killing rats and clearing plexes and not blowing up – these things are fun for me.
This is how I’m fitting my Ishtar. I’m fitting it as a solo plex finder and clearer. Right now, I have my Amarr Magnate fitted out for probing, but if I discover a plex that needs clearing, I have to run back and get my Exequror or Myrmidon, depending on the ship restrictions, to clear it. This ties me to within five jumps or so of my base in Aunia. An Ishtar that can both FIND the plexes and then clear them gives me near unlimited range – I could even (carefully) dip into lowsec occasionally.
The Ishtar blueprint trade is profitable, and I’ll keep making them, but it’s time to move on to the next phase of my invention op. I started with Hammerhead II drones, moved on to Helios and then Ishtar, but now I am going to be moving on to the Gallente stealth bomber in what I call The Nemesis Initiative.
Stealth bombers are designed to help break gate camps. They jump in to a contested system, cloak, and move a fair distance from the gate camp – from forty to over a hundred kilometers away. They decloak and start hurling torpedoes and bombs which do AE damage to everything at the gate. They’ll likely kill any drones, frigates and interdictors outright. Thus softened, the rest of the fleet jumps in and clears up the larger ships who have lost their support.
Flying a stealth bomber is a risky endeavor. I’m imagining there’s a huge need for replacements, and so I’m going to try making some Nemesis blueprints and see how they sell. There’s not as much profit margin on them – so little that I can’t spare a decryptor to make them – but they take far fewer datacores as well. If I can purchase the datacores for Ishtar blueprints, I can use the ones I get from R&D for Nemesis and Helios blueprints, maybe start making some of the money back I’ve spent on the invention trade.