How do we decide what to do?

Recently, we had some people asking why we only reimburse frigates, destroyers, and cruisers in the Uni, and not battlecruisers or battleships.

In reality, there are quite a few reasons we don't, which I'd like to briefly explain:

1. Cost:  During the first two weeks of no-wsop month, we lost 74 BC and 32 BS.  If we assume a average hull price of 40m for BC (almost all are tier 2, rounding to make math easier) than the BCs alone would cost a bit under 3b isk.  If we assume a 100m pricetag for BS (mostly tier 2 and 3, rounded to make math easier), it comes in at another 3b isk.  That is 6b isk for just 2 weeks of operations.  Simply put, this would be larger than any other expenditure in the University (rent, skillbooks, etc..).  This isn't doable with our current revenue stream, and would require substantial changes to bring in that amount of additional revenue.

2. Moral Hazard: Simply put, we would be insulating players from the risk of flying these ships, and their behavior would change.  We would have people flying them that lack the skills, confidence, or experience, and it could result in substantially higher losses than what we currently have. When you factor in insurance costs, poorly fit BS losses could actually be free, or make the person isk.  This would lead to much riskier flying, which doesn't benefit the Uni as a whole.

3. Preparation: People need to be able to support their PVP habit.  Everyone pays for their PVP ships somehow.  Some use alts, different corp structures, etc.., but there is no such thing as a free ship. People need to learn self-sufficiency at some level.  This is a good way to encourage it. By the time people can really fly a battlecruiser or battleship well, they will probably be thinking of moving on anyway.

4. Resource Allocation:  I believe that 1 BS reimbursement serves a lot less educational value than 400 rifters.  I would rather allocate the Uni's limited resources towards the widest number of people possible. The existing system does this.

Speculators and Eve

As everyone has already read, CCP will be introducing a new currency into eve, Aurum.  Aurum will be acquired by using a plex and converting it into Aurum.  The Aurum, in turn, are then used to buy specialty items (vanity only at this point), which can be used on your character or sold for isk. 

Anyone looking at the Plex market lately will be able to see the effect of speculators purchasing plex now in expectation of a future demand spike with the introduction of Aurum at the end of the month.  This speculation, in turn, increases current demand (by the speculators), which starts a rapid increase in price. 

When Aurum are officially introduced, it will be interesting to see the effect on the plex price, to see if the upward trend continues, or if the speculators are overestimating the new price point and creating a plex bubble.  I originally bought into the plex market weeks ago, expecting a patch increase in plex demand from people re-subbing to see new things.  The aurum announcement has significantly strengthened my position.  However, as someone sitting on over 30b in plex, I am incredibly concerned about the prices I'm seeing now and the trend, as too much of a rise in plex prices could lead to CCP starting to manipulate the market.  Luckily, Plex is a fairly responsive market, with people increasing supply to make some isk once the price rises high enough. Hopefully, this will exert sufficient downward pressure on the price and keep CCP from getting involved.

One of the great things about eve is the player driven market, and its always an education to track what is happening. Time can only tell what the final price point will be after the market settles, but it'll be fun to watch.

A great Community

The longer I am in EVE University, the more I appreciate the community we have. Yes, there are moments that I get frustrated, or annoyed by people complaining all the time, but for the most part, our community is great.

We have 1500 pilots, most of whom are dedicated to the idea of helping people learn how to play EVE.  I regularly see people handing out items to new players, helping players get skillbooks, donating items for our hangars, answering questions in corp chat, or contributing on our forums. The managers and officers in my department regularly devote hours each week to helping out, usually with no recognition. They do it because they think its right.

To everyone in EVE University who helps out, thank you.

I'm back

Once the holiday season started to hit, I found I just didn't have the time I needed to make frequent blog posts.  Unfortunately, once you get out of the habit, its hard to get back into doing it.  Well, I'm back into blogging now, and I'm going to try and make at least one post a week.  I'll probably do more, but thats a decent goal for now.

Next Steps

I find myself within 1 day of having to respend a lot of SP across various accounts.  I've decided what to do on several accounts, but I'm not sure about the others.  I only need so many commandship/t3 command pilots.

My thoughts on some of my accounts:
One character will definately get some decent t3 command skills, and another will finish off some trading/corp management skills. Some of my other accounts will finish off jump skills, or maybe train titan to a decent level just to say I have it.  How is everyone else planning on spending their SP?

Mea Culpa

I have to admit, I made a rather stupid mistake when formulating a University policy.  We decided to start having a period of 0% tax for 2 days after each war, so people could pack in some mission running and rebuild their personal wallets.

However, when doing this I completely missed the fact that by setting it to 0, I would have no data on how many people took advantage of this. As a result, I lost all ability to compare that mission running spurt with previous data, cannot comment on how changes in tax rate influence number of mission runners, and lost a valuable data point in predicting future revenue at various tax rates.

In the future, the tax rate will be set at .1%, instead of 0, allowing me to gather data while also giving people some nice mission running opportunities.

Noctis was a Success

Last week the noctis was introduced, and we at Eve University had to find a way to get it into our player's hands as quickly and easily as possible.  It helped that a BPO was donated to the Univeristy, so that all we had to do was start building.

We did a simple auction, where our students just placed a bid (anything over mineral price), and we starting building noctis as quick as possible using 2 prints.  The highest bids were filled first, and we proceeded down the list.  By the end of the week, we had put over 60 noctis into the hands of our students.

The majority of the bids were close to mineral price, but several was significantly higher.  As a result, we made some isk off of this deal.  As soon as we had firm numbers on the isk, we started looking into ways to use the isk to help Uni players.  Since the mission runners of the Uni had been the Noctis' primary consumer, and they supply us significant isk in taxes, we decided to do something to help them. 

After the wars ended, we lowered the tax rate to 0%, and will keep it there for 2 days for people to enjoy the new ship and rebuild their wallets.  After 2 days, it'll reset to the normal rate. We will continue this tradition of 2 days of 0% tax after wars until we've gone through all  of the Noctis isk.

Enjoy your ships and fly safe.