All Done but the Waiting

It's about time to bust out the bubbly... the Nomad went in the oven today.  After 6 long weeks of planning, work, and moving more ISK than I care to admit, everything's done but the final delivery.

There is a whole pile of scraps that I was inspired to write.

Some Notes On Procedure

There are a few pro-tips I'd like to share.  A bunch of very little things that I did to try an make the process as painless as possible.  My main concern is that there is a lot of risk on the line that can be all for naught if things go horribly wrong.  Consider the following to avoid massive fail-cascades with huge piles of ISK.

The Canceled Job

Though it did not happen, it could have.  With 6B ISK in materials + 70d of combined manufacturing time on the line, interrupting any of the jobs leading up to the Nomad would be disasterous.  Any canceled job would have destroyed the material that went into it, leaving me holding a sizable bill to start again.

This is where I advocate "do it yourself" with NPC industrial space.  Though you end up paying 25% in time, and maybe some headache with freighting materials, the returns you get in security are absolute.  Short of actually hacking your account, there is no way to interrupt the job.  This does also mean you've trusted 6B in material to one guy... so make triple sure they won't steal or go mysteriously inactive.

I think CCP has really dropped the ball in this regard.  There are only 3 corp rights that can be handed out: Install Research Job, Install Factory Job, Factory Manager.  The problem is that Factory Manager is the only right to allow jobs to be delivered... but also gives absolute rights to cancel jobs too.  If you want to give someone a functional industry role in your corp, you have to give them the rights to cancel everything in one command.  This hasn't been an issue for me (the most you could cancel in one go is 25%, and margin covers that loss), but when you're talking about capitals, there isn't the buffer to fall on.

Notes On Equipment

If you are going to use a POS and don't have to worry about operation security, then there are still a few pitfalls to avoid.  First and foremost: GET A LARGE CALDARI TOWER.  Period.  Stop arguing.  Trust me.

But why?  Because the builds are long and you don't want to cancel your jobs if you can help it.  A large tower gives the option to dickstar-up in case of trouble and try your damnedest to avoid a costly abort.  Though you should be using Caldari anyway, it also offers the best shield HP.  Turtling up your tower, even with a Large Ship Assembly Array will make that tower an unappetizing one.

Extra levels of subterfuge as you see fit... But the key point is: Get a Large Caldari Tower and have a dickstar fit in reserve just in case.

The Value of Parallelism: ...When you can have 2 for twice the price

The real cornerstone of the risk in building a JF is the T2 components.  Thankfully, it's reasonably cheap (13.5M/BPO) to add extra BPOs to your collection to help split the work into smaller chunks.  By limiting work to 1-2d, you have less time to play the waiting game if things go horribly wrong.  

This is significantly more trouble for building regular freighters (~1B/BPO), but equally advised.  You are going to spend all those hours building regardless, why risk it by taking too big a bite?  My personal collection has pairs of the highest volume capital BPOs (Cargo Bays and Drone Bays) that choke production.  Just consider it another cost of doing business.

Thanks Where It Belongs

First off, TheAhmosis deserves a lot of praise.  He's been my go-to guy to help when I run into issues.  When I underestimated the research load for the T2 component BPOs, he was there to help.  Also, thanks to his help and expertise, I was finally able to reign in finances to achieve this goal.  Lastly, having a rival is a great motivator!  TheAhmosis is one of the best industrialists in the game, and if you're looking for a home to do bigger industry work, you should call him in Aideron Technologies.  I can't wait to join forces once again!

Also, I'd like to nod at the QCATS who have put up with my terrible carebearing instead of killing people.  Honorable mention go to Dread Operative, XOr Brasil, and Andre Vauban for contributing meaningfully to doing other industry projects.

Check back soon when I have pretty spaceship cheesecake.