My Moon Saga: Reflections

This is the second part of a two sided summary of my first moon saga.  The first part can be found here:  My Moon Saga: The Events.

Let me set the tone to these words with Boys II Men: It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.  It is the only way I can see to convey the heights of emotion I have been brought to and the depths of loss I am recovering from.

Just a summary of thoughts.

I fucked up a lot during this.  Most of it was simply a result of inexperience.  I wound up very frustrated and very dejected at the same time.  Slamming into barriers when already stressed just creates more stress.  I’ll do better the next time and I have done better each time but the stacks of mistakes, errors, miscalculations, and in general Events is staggering.  Knowing and doing and making it all work are all different steps. I fell and got bruised a lot.

I duel boxed haulers at crazy levels. I snarled at someone to shut up when they were complaining about how boring logistics are.  Moving stuff in Eve is an underappreciated task.  A cloaky hauler, fully expanded into a paper thin hauler holds around 10k m3.  POS modules are around 4k m3.  Two modules per hauler.  Argh.  I spent days in my haulers.

The Moons themselves.  Moon Goo is a hot topic.  The materials are used in various production but mostly in T2 production.  The moon goo, for anyone who has never mined or interacted with it, is a mineral, represented by a symbol that looks as if it comes from the periodic table.  To mine the moon you install a Moon Harvesting Array and a Silo.  The array pulls 100 units of good from the moon per hour.  It places it inside the silo  The silo must be emptied and with that you have a base mineral that you can sell as is or react with another mineral into something else.  These elses refine together some more and eventually make the pieces of a T2 ship or component.

This is where production is still a bit over my head.  Still, to have the harvesters run they need to be maintained in a POS.  For the POS to run the harvesters it must be fed fuel blocks.  It also needs to not be reinforced every fifteen minutes.  Small towers do not have a lot of grid and CPU.  Trying to defend one in high sec is stupid.  Simply put, it will come down because it is not very sturdy or very defensible   It relies upon "God POS shooting?" defense more than anything else.  With a persistent group I was losing the battle.

The moons were my project.  Me as in Sugar not me as in a member of THC2.  Because of that, when the end started to approach I had to make decisions and figure out where my ego and my sense meet so that I could speak with both of them.  That was miserable.  On one side I want to give up and on the other my 'oh hell no' button has been pressed.  I can afford to leak some ISK for a while and I was very close to doing so until Ender said that he really wasn't into it.  It kind of snapped me back to reality and I had to remind myself that it wasn't just about me doing something on my own.  I needed other people to help support the endeavor and if people did not want to support it I was out of luck.

There is also the possibility of burn out.  If these POS defenses were providing PvP people would be more than happy to come.  However, it was a constant situation of no one showing up and then them just reinforcing in their own good time later since the moons are in a system they had recently decided to inhabit.  And that was hard.  That was damn hard.  I didn't want to give it up. I also didn't want to lose my stuff.  However, I didn't want to become some type of drain on my corporation and the people in it.

So, I made the call to give up the moon.  I was very happy that I was allowed to take it down. I had written off the expensive of it and that isn't fun but it has to happen.  Of course one may say, "Corporations help each other."  Yes, they do.  Mine helped me out through an entire week of reinforcements.  At some point I have to decide when I have asked enough. I can't just take and take and take and feel that I am somehow owed by people.

I learned that Eve Gate is a fantastic step and somewhat useful but painfully lacking in things I needed. Notifications are under the mail icon.  It is a separate section but it seems that it should actually mail you the notification.  Then you would receive it through Eve gate.  It does not work that way.  I didn't know my POS had been taken down the second time until I got an eve mail from someone about it with my timer information.  That was frustrating.

All told the total amount of moon goo I harvested was 200 hunts for an estimated value of 500k.

My output was 16 ECM modules and the tower.  I had a spare harvester and silo already.  Originally I expected to lose around 250 mil.  In the end I spent around 40 in the ECM modules and I gave those to 7-2 for their uses.  That was easier then unanchoring them and hauling them out.

In general I failed the hold the moon.  I am very much reminded of how intensely limited I am as an individual. However, I am also very aware at how awesome my corporation and blues are for all the help and support that I received during this entire operation.  I am incredibly appreciative of the time and energy people put into me during this time. I can't put it into words.

I learned a bit more about organizing people and trying to get things done.  That has been an ongoing evolution for me in this game.  Herding cats, informing about fleets and stepping forward to say "Hey let's do this" instead of just following along and hoping someone agrees.  At the same time, I want to balance being a commanding bitch and expecting everyone to jump just because I want something done.

I'd totally try this again.  It was a good experience even if it did not end as I would have liked it to.