Heavy Metal Queen

With Nomad production so close it makes me itchy to think about, I am facing a battle against nostalgia.  Now with (several) pilots able to fly a Fenrir, my focus on nomad construction, and best-in-class agility, I'm severely tempted to add a Fenrir to my personal fleet.  Unfortunately, I already own 2 freighters (Charon and Obelisk) and an Orca... and I can't think of a reason to own 3 freighters.

It's time to say good bye to the Heavy Metal Queen

I would usually hock a hull like this without remorse, but the Heavy Metal Queen has very special connotation.  This obelisk has been in my possession for over 5 years.  It has weathered low-sec, wars, heavy industry, and been passed between all my characters more times than I care to count.  It also ducked my derp of a freighter loss back in April.

The Story

Way way back, I flew in a locals-only corp, Lionsgate Ionic Dispersion.  We all lived in the Denver-metro area, and were a reasonably standard highsec do-all-the-things corp.  This eventually grew into a do-all-the-things alliance (Darkmatter Initiative).  This freighter was a corp investment where we all pooled together to make our footprint on EVE just a little larger.

Such a huge leap forward required a title!  Pool nerds together to try and pay homage to their favorite works of fiction, and the argument may take a while.  Though I can't at all remember the other suggestions, the name that ended up sticking was "Heavy Metal Queen".  The story goes: since it's a space truck, and we were all Cowboy Bebop fans, we needed to name it in that universe.  Unfortunately, no one could agree on how to spell "Tepscure", and HMQ just stuck.

Though all but one member, +Grant Matheny, have long since left EVE, this freighter has remained in my possession.  It has weathered wars, the rise and fall of several alliances, forays into capital production, and moves all over the EVE galaxy.  Unfortunately, I don't want to hang onto another hangar ornament... so it is time to send the Heavy Metal Queen into the ether.

If you're a sentimental sod and want to inherit the legacy, drop me a line.  Though I am looking to sell the beast, I'd like to know it went to a good home and could continue acquiring stories.

Everything You Never Wanted To Know: Industry POS

Came across a reddit thread on r/eve about high sec player owned stations (POS), and thought it might be a good chance to do another tutorial.  This is only a HS Industry POS tutorial.  Many of the subjects carry over to POS in general, but the focus here is to help budding industrialists get into their first tower.

Why Get A POS

A POS allows for completely private industry resources.  Never again will you be stuck waiting in a queue for material or time efficiency research, copying, inventing, or manufacturing space.  In addition to that, most POS arrays give a time bonus to the work done.  Not only are you skipping the wait for starting work, your work completes faster than normal.

The system is designed to be a corporate tool, so the more the merrier.  POS really shine when shared for high-parallelism.  They can be easily configured to secure assets, and many industrial contributors can be brought in to share the work and resources.

But know that getting a POS is an investment.  There really needs to be a goal to achieve, or you will be stuck with a liability and an isk sink.  Effectively tasking your POS is hard work, but incredibly rewarding if done right.

Getting started

Specifics will be covered a little later, but the general step-by-step in getting a high sec tower set up is as follows:

1. Figure out how you will get standings
1. use a standings service (recommended)
2. grind up member standing to a raw average high enough
2. Pick your tower(s) size
1. small = 1-2 characters
2. medium = 2-4 characters
3. large = 3-8 characters
3. Pick up the required industrial modules
4. Find moons to anchor at
5. Acquire fuel (suggested 28d worth) and appropriate charters
6. Stock "dickstar" fit

This general checklist will get your tower set up and deployed with the least pain.  Specifics will be broken down by step

1) Standings

As for the mechanic specifics, there are plenty of articles out there with the specific :math:[warning, dated].  The gist is:

• Corp needs raw-average faction standing to be above a certain threshold
• 5.0 to deploy in 0.5
• 6.0 to deploy in 0.6
• 7.0 to deploy in 0.7
• system security as displayed on the map, not "true-sec"
• Zero-standings do not count toward the average
• Any new member won't count toward corp averages for 7 days
• Standings are recalculated at downtime

Getting a corp of carebears to all have high unified standing is a royal pain.  You will need to kick members and have them re-apply to get their poor standings out of your average.  A possible (but expensive) activity is to use Data Center agents, directly raising faction standings without to 16:1 grind of normal PVE missions.

The process of grinding up average standing is awful.  Instead, I usually opt to pay someone for the service (I'm a fan of Corporations4u).  This process usually requires a 1-man alt corp to start.  Then you leech off the standings.

1. Start one-man corp (with zero faction standings)
2. Pay for standings service
3. Hire designated alt
4. Wait 7d for the new character standings to apply to corp
5. Anchor towers

It's really that simple.  Pay some isk (100-500M) and wait one week.  It's usually best to wait until all your affairs are in order before using a service.  

2) Picking a POS Tower

Each race has a tower with something it's specifically good at.  If you're really interested in the specifics, read more.  Simply put, CPU is the limiting factor for industry, therefore Caldari is the racial class of choice.  With the most CPU (and most shield HP) of any POS, Caldari Control Towers are the tool of choice.  Also, Caldari have the best statistics for "dickstars", but that will be covered a little later.

Now that the 12 choices have been whittled down to 3, the next choice is size.  The choices break down by how many characters will be working with the tower.

• 1-2 characters = Small
• 2-4 characters = Medium
• 4-8 characters = Large

Since standings limit when you can anchor new towers, it's usually prudent to over-spec space.  Though it can be expensive to maintain several half-utilized large towers, it might be worth it to have a mix of medium/small towers anchored near-by so expansion is not limited by hardware.  For my own corp, I mix large/medium.  I use the mediums as half-steps if I can't fill a large.

Faction Towers

Faction towers do nothing to the overall industry picture other than reduce fuel costs.  At the time of posting, these towers are incredibly expensive (2-5B for dread guristas large), and the fuel savings pay off can take years.  Personally, I have found them to be more of a bulls-eye than asset, but your mileage may vary.

3) Industrial Modules

Usually when POS come into the conversation, it's for ME/PE research.  But that's a very small segment of what a POS can be used for.  A POS can be used to do just about every industry job you could want to do.

Research

Mobile laboratories are needed for any type of research.  Also, these are the most CPU intensive modules at a POS, severely limiting the maximum quantity of any specific type of research.  Personally, being invention oriented, copy space is my major limiting factor, but your goals may be different.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is done at manufacturing arrays, and is a bit more convoluted.  For manufacturing, each type of module is limited in the type of product it can produce.  So you will need several different types of assembly arrays for different build jobs.  Thankfully, the CPU required for these modules is very low, so anchoring extra modules is not as big an issue.  The types break down as such:

• Ammunition
• Component (R.A.M, T2 components, rigs)
• Drone
• Equipment (modules)
• Ships
• Small (frigs)
• Medium (cruisers)
• Large (battleships, capitals)
• X-Large (battleships, capitals, lowsec only)
• Capital (capital, super capital, sov null-sec only)
• Subsystem (T3)

T2 (exept ships) can be built in the appropriate arrays.  T3 requires the subsystem assembly module.  T2 ships can be built in Advanced Ship Assembly arrays, but have an added waste factor and no time bonus.

Special mods

There are a few special mods you won't see very often.  They either require some special use case, or have a waste factor that makes them unusable:

• Rapid/Advanced assembly arrays
• Have a 20% additional waste factor.  This usually wipes out any added benefit
• X-Large Ship Assembly Array
• <0.4 only.  Can build freighters/orcas in large ship assembly arrays
• Capital Ship Assembly Array
• Sov null-sec only.  Can build super capitals
• Hyasyoda Mobile Laboratory
• Not on public market, caldari epic-arc reward
• IMO: very limited uses.  Weird slot layout and expensive

4) Finding a Moon

This is more like "finding a system".  Since the choices are 0.7-0.4 systems, the work becomes finding a home you like with spare moon space.  Personally, I start at dotlan and look for a system with a high number of moons and NPC build/research space.  This gives the widest array of options on how to deploy your tower and what resources you actually want to pay for.

Now, that isn't to say that your hunt will be easy.  The obvious places to deploy will be difficult.  Don't even try finding a free moon in Forge or Sinq.  There are free moons out there (though rare), but the hunt will be significant.  I don't have a witty way beyond warping to each possible moon.  Go get a high-warp speed interceptor.  Bookmark both ideal candidates and backups.  It may take up to 2 weeks to get standings and you never know who else is out there.

I have never bought an occupied moon.  There is also the option to hire mercenaries if there is a dead corp you'd like to clear out.  Personally, using force will only show your hand after you anchor your tower.  Just know what hornet's nest you are kicking.

Again, this is why I like anchoring extra towers.  When you have the opportunity, take all you can.  You may have to restart the whole search if you want to expand later, and it's just so much easier to plant unused flags in moons than try and go back and fix it later.  Become part of the problem!

5) Stock up on Fuel

This bullet should be easy enough to explain.  Most towers fit 28d of fuel pretty easily, fuel blocks are easy to manage, and POS refuling goes on your calendar.  There are a few pro-tips I'd like to share though:

• Mining your own fuel
• Just know that a large tower takes a little over 1,000 blocks of ice to fuel
• Burn your time at your own risk.  Ice is cheap today
• Build it or Buy it?
• The margins are very thin between buying and building.  I'm lazy, I buy.  <5% margin usually isn't worth putting the couple day's effort into
• Strontium
• Fill the strontium bay.  Just do it at setup and forget about it
• Starbase Charters
• Has to do with the faction the tower is anchored in, not the race of the tower
• Cheap to get from LP rewards

Stockpile to taste.  Currently, the monthly costs of a tower in fuel are approximately:

• Large: 350M
• Medium: 175M
• Small: 85M

Just note if you're going to use a POS, you need to have a revenue stream that justifies the fuel cost.  Running several towers will get expensive, and you don't want to be losing ISK on the business of running the factory.  

6) Defending Your Investment

As Sophia Vagabond learned the hard way, someone will eventually want to kick down your sand castle.  It's not a matter of "if" it's a matter of "when".  The best thing is to be prepared for the worst and fight smart. POS warfare done wrong is a horrendously painful affair.

The temptation will be to use a POS as a battlestation, or "deathstar".  Though this is technically possible, it is nearly useless without an army of people with Anchoring 5 and Starbase Defense Management to man the guns.  Also, being a passive structure, your enemy will be able to play timezone games with you.  Add onto that the POS AI is incredibly dumb, randomly cycling each module without any preference or focused fire.  If you try to use an attack oriented scheme, you're gonna have a bad time.

Instead, it's usually best to use a more defensive method, the "dickstar".  This is famous from most operating bases in low/null sec.  Make the target so difficult to siege that no one will want to take the man-hours to take it down.  This involves ECM modules and Shield Hardening Arrays.  But this being high-sec, I skip the ECM modules since they can cause weird aggression mechanics and end up making your tower an easier target.  Instead, raise the omni-resist of your POS shield as high as possible and make each tower take as much time as possible to kill.  

Again, this is where extra POS become very useful.  By having several dickstar towers online and ready to assault, you will wear down the patience of your enemy.  This does cost extra fuel stocks and some setup time, but the rewards are very high.  As long as the labs are stripped down before a war goes active, the loser in this equation is the aggressor, not the defender.  Let them tire of kicking your castle and move on to the next.  Also, needing to be engaged in very long structure shoots will cause fatigue, giving you ample opportunity to stage counter attacks on your schedule, not theirs.

Using Your Tower

Once towers and modules are anchored, you'll want to actually do work at the tower.  The mechanics for use can be a little convoluted, but should be simple enough to explain here.

Blueprints can be installed remotely.  This allows you to have BPO/BPCs stored in an NPC station, protected by all the normal corp tools that surround those assets.  Personally, I like keeping BPCs at the POS, since I wrestle with thousands of them.  

If a process consumes materials, those consumables must be in the lab where the job is installed.  Datacores for invention, minerals for building; if there is a material need for the process, those materials must be in the module where the job is to be installed.  Also, it's a benefit to train Scientific Networking and Supply Chain Management to 2, to be able to install/deliver jobs anywhere in the system.  Otherwise there will be some conflicts if you're in NPC station or not.

Next, you'll want to configure access to those arrays.  Tower Control Pannel -> Access and every module will have a "view" and "take" access, some having a "use" right.  This can be set to 4 levels: 2 are corp internal, corp general, or alliance general.  This is an additional lock on top of corp rights.  That is to say, if someone has full access to take from hangar 1, but the module has the added restriction of "fuel technician" that the character lacks, the character will not be able to use that hangar.  

For a 3rd layer of security, a password can be set.  Though you need an initial password to put up the tower shields, you can toggle access restriction on that password.  That can be useful if you want to give access to one tower but not a second.  Use the POS passwords as a second layer of security.  

The art of role management is a topic for another post.  I will cover these topics in much greater detail in a later tutorial.

Pro-Tips and Pitfalls

POS are a strange and fickle beast.  I've only covered the basics without really getting into specific mechanics.  And it's more likely than not you will run against some sort of weird mechanic pitfall that will make your life difficult.  Here are some of the more obscure gems that should save the largest headaches:

• Anchoring Limits: entities can only anchor so many towers per system per day
• Corp: 1 tower per system per day
• Alliance: 5 towers per system per day
• No limits for anchoring modules, only towers
• Don't worry about exact PG/CPU tracking
• PG/CPU do not have their own fuel source any more.
• Just put in fuel blocks and online what you need
• Share Lab Space
• The temptation: do all the things whenever.  Lots of unused lab space
• A better solution: actively schedule tasks so there is minimal waiting.  More efficient lab usage
• Anchor modules with care
• Remember, you need to move materials in and out of the POS.  Make it freighter friendly
• Assets in a tower are only viewable by going to the individual modules
• Corp asset tracking cannot see what is actually in space beyond there is a tower in a system
• EVE API can view inside modules, but I have not seen a good tool for accurately tracking exactly where each item is
• Offline modules are okay
• It's okay to overload your tower with extra mods and online tools as they are needed
• Anchor shield hardeners and activate them when a war comes in
• "Only Use What You Are Willing to Lose"
• Write off the costs of POS setup at the beginning
• Know that towers can be attacked and be prepared for the worst
• The tower is in space 24/7.  Fight times will be dictated by aggressors

The road to the 10B kit

I'm an engineer, not an accountant.  So my strength is in processing the numbers and running the system, as I said before in Lessons in Accounting.  But now with a solid plan, a healthy revenue stream, and a transparent view on other expenditures, I've been able to get the next benchmark in my sights: jump freighter production.

To explain my personal organizational structure, I use "work weeks" to keep control of my manufacturing lines.  It gives a simple factory cycle that can be repeated week over week.

1. Buy materials
2. Build intermediates (components, T1)
3. Build Products
4. Sell Products

By establishing a regular clock, it's easy to account for inputs and outputs.  Keeping all workers synchronized also simplifies the logistical load immensely.

So, starting with the first cycle after Christmas, I started a planning spreadsheet.  Not the prettiest, or extremely accurate, but enough to keep tabs on the important metrics until something more eloquent can be devised.

Why kit-costs are important

As I said before, it's my personal habit to always build bigger and better things, reinvesting ALL profits into the next thing.  The core metric I've been focusing on hasn't been profits, but kit costs instead.  By keeping week-over-week investments flat, I am able to bank the profits.  

Also, by monitoring kit costs, I am able to more intelligently pick products.  Instead of betting big on higher risks, I can reign in outputs into safer mainstays.  This also prevents the other unintended consequence of big kit costs, long payouts.  Since the short term goals require a lot of liquid isk available quickly, it makes more sense to take lower risks to avoid getting stuck with product.

Why 10B?

I have a friendly rivalry going back and forth with my friend in Aideron Technologies, TheAhmosis.  One metric I've been living in the shadow of since leaving Aideron Robotics is 50B net sales/month.  We managed to achieve this peak for two months before industry was spun out and Aideron Robotics joined FW.  After leaving, I focused on really maximizing the profit per contributor; shifting from a broad-base focus to an agile profit-chasing focus.

I've been steadily growing my production base from an initial 2B buy-in all the way to 10B in less than 6 months.  As the buy-in grows, the options for higher margin products grow.  It will be easier to pounce on ships and heavier investments.

Where to Next?

I see sustained kit costs topping out near 15B without investing in capitals.  My character and personal time resources really get strained at that point.  There is the ability to grow near 20B without capitals, but the time required to keep up with the invention steps would become prohibitive   I would like to move my PVP-main character to capitals, since that would be easier to manage with his lowsec lifestyle, but that would add another 6B to the kit costs, and really mark the maximum my characters can do with the current skill set.

The hope is by the time I reach this maximum, ISK can be poured into expanding to a real corp venture, and leaving the "solo"-industrialist lifestyle behind.  There is an absolute ceiling in view from here and continued growth will require new friends and partnerships.  As it stands, I have not come anywhere close to maximizing ISK extraction from the market.  I will hit an effort ceiling long before hitting a market volume ceiling.

Also, I would like to migrate to a non-synchronous work style.  This would open up more flexibility in producing products, without getting locked into production cycles that are longer than market cycles.  Currently I am hovering around a 10d cycle, because of my ammo production, and this ties in nicely with EVE's build time cycles.  By going asynchronous, modules and ships could be done in smaller batches.  Smaller batches means less ticks between market bubbles, which in turn means less slouching on the way out of products.  This will require new code and accounting structure though.  So I will stick to the synchronous work-week scheme I'm using now.

Confessions of an Industrialist: I don't want to sell to you

Allow me a brief confession.  I don't want to sell you discounted product at any volume.  In nearly every product I produce, the current Jita market volume cashes me out plenty fast at the profits I've projected.  I don't care if we are friends, or if we are participating in different markets, the simple truth is I have no reason to take the hit and allow you to profit more.

Now, if you're looking for direct sales at Jita prices in volumes Jita just cannot support (Mobile Large Warp Disruptors I/II, T2 frigs in volumes of 20x or 50x), then we can talk.  You have a desire to pay at (or slightly above) Jita prices, and I have a means to process a lot of product.  Otherwise, there is zero incentive for me to lose while you win.

Personally, I've picked my products to be quickly liquidated and high margin, so I've done everything in my power to avoid direct sales.  Other industrialists might have different priorities, so let me outline how to find a good deal.

Where Are the Chokepoints?

If you want to nail down a direct deal, and make it worth doing business, you need to eliminate a chokepoint for me.  There are several places that direct sales make sense, but it has to be a win for both parties to be considered a prudent deal.  Instead of focusing directly on price, think about where Jita fails.

Volume Mismatch

There are products that are worth having in high volume, but there is some restriction getting in the way.  Capitals, bubbles, T2 frigates, T2 ammo, these all have a need that greatly outstrips what any one independent producer can provide.  As such, the volumes on the market tend to be anemic, and it can be very difficult to get very large volumes at a decent price.  Though us producers sure thank you when you reset the price trying.

0.01 ISK Game

Many producers may not want to play the 0.01 ISK game.  There are plenty of products that may take more time to monetize on than a producer cares to deal with.  Again, this ties back to volume.  A good example here is interdiction modules (webs, scrams, disruptors).  Sales volume is obviously high, and production volume is suitably capped, but there are a lot of people participating in that market.  It may be a lot of trouble to move larger volumes.  

Long Term Supply

Agreeing to a contract week over week for a product at a decent price significantly simplifies an industrialist's work load.  Though the price might not be agreeable to selling in Jita, getting a guarenteed supply to ship to secondary hubs is a win-win for both parties.  The buyer doesn't have to wrestle with buy contracts, the seller doesn't have to deal with sell contracts (or fees).  

High Fee Items

When orders get expensive, more ISK goes into fees like taxes and broker fees.  This is very commonly a killer in capital production.  There may be room to bargain on items that cost billions because the cost of business is just unacceptable.  By giving a quick cash out, and eliminating broker fees by direct bargaining, there can be considerable deals to be made.

Striking a Deal

There was an excellent post on this subject on themittani.com, Crash Course: Effective Negotiation.  I would suggest reading that before pursuing my advice.

The best deals are ones where everyone gets what they want.  As soon as someone in the deal feels screwed, the relationship is doomed.  And the market is a venue for partnerships and enemies as much as any battlefield.  The best bargains will take elements from all the above and find a happy medium where everyone profits.  

Some quick hints that will help make bargaining easier:

• Don't expect to beat Jita
• If you really want the best price, work at buy orders.  Jita is the gold standard and though some isk can be made getting a margin priced supply, don't expect to get items cheaper than Jita-buy
• Don't screw your suppliers
• It's pretty awful to expect to sell a supplier's product against the same supplier.  Work with your partners to avoid overlap
• Volume is king
• Manufacturers can often outstrip demand (often by accident).  If you know where to sink that volume, or have the patience to see an investment through, this can be where deals can be made
• Push Button Receive Bacon
• Many industrialists just want their ISK and they want it now.  Providing an outlet for their products that quickly turns around their efforts week over week can be a beneficial partnership

Of course, I'm supply-side oriented, so take my advice with a grain of salt.  Personally, there are very few products I would consider for direct sales only because it's an extra step to make less money.  I am also a total pain to negotiate with because I, like many Americans, completely  lack the skills or tolerance to barter.  

Though, if you have a need for 50 Mobile Large Warp Disruptors at any regular interval, drop me a line.  

AWOXing Poetic

I had a hilarious encounter last night: an AWOXer applied to my private industrial corp.  Usually, this is a simple procedure handled by swiftly denying the application (or ignoring it entirely), and moving on.  What made this application funny was that very shortly after denying his app, I was convoed about it.

I know the proper response is supposed to be a polite email about "not fitting our needs" or at least helping random public applications understand more about you and your corp.  But at this time, I have no need for new members, I have not published a single piece of recruitment literature, so ANY application is malicious.  I just found it hilarious that it wasn't enough to have a mark not fall for the scam, but to put in a second try on top of that.

This inspired me.  I've been reading and talking a lot about corp-level tools for the last week, so I thought I'd share a little wisdom for those who might want it.

AWOXing?

Named for a player, Awox, AWOXing refers to a particular scam.  For the entire backstory, get the TL;DR at Jester's Trek, Agua, or even Urban Dictionary.

The scam preys on a combat mechanic: corpmates can shoot eachother without CONCORD intervention.  ANY corpmate can shoot ANY corpmate.  The game makes no attempt to gauge malicious intent vs messing with friends.

The scam goes as such:

1. Spread applications to as many generalist corps as possible.  Missioning and mining corps are the best targets.
2. Get into the corp and attend an op.  Preferably with a director or lead of some sort.
3. Bring a PVP ship to the fleet, and kill the juiciest thing in range.
4. Log out in space to prevent being kicked from the corp.
5. Repeat

Nothing is stopping anyone from having more patience and AWOXing the biggest, blingiest, pimpest thing they can find.  This scam is related to similar bait style scams where the scammer lures a corpmate into a trap specifically to destroy something of high value like capitals.  This scam also preys on the (terrible terrible) corp management rules.  Specifically that you must be in a station to change corps (even to NPC).

Security Done Wrong

Having run an alliance of missioning bears for longer than I care to admit, I'd like to first cover the misconceptions that these AWOXers prey on.  Also, because I adored Sophia Jackson's POS Guide, that worked backwards, we're going to start at the end and work our way back.

  

We require API verification

The only API 90% of corps check is skills.  They load the key into EVEHQ or EVEMON and see what the recruit can fly.  The "paranoid" read mails and check standings.  These steps are less than worthless when it comes to security screening applicants.  Mails, once deleted, are removed from the mail API, standings are player set... and skills tell you nothing about the pilot behind the avatar.

The APIs that are valuable, can't easily be checked with a desktop tool.  That's wallet and kill log.  Wallet provides a way to "follow the money" to alts.  Kill log gives a report of the latest kills.  Neither of these APIs can be easily defrauded by stuffing or deleting data.  Processing both gives a much better picture of who is applying to your corp.

Interviews

Seriously, "EVE online is a sandbox of sociopaths".  It is incredibly easy to put on a facade and tell your recruiters what they want to hear.  Similar to real-life resume-bot-beating by repeating the job requirements you tell them what they want to hear. If you got your parents to believe you were at a friend's house when you were actually causing trouble... then you can probably beat any normal interview.

If you're insistent on interviews being part of the process, put hurtles and time in the process.  The longer the lie has to stand and the more places the story goes, the easier it will be to pick out the flaws.  Much like police interrogate and push on answers to see if the story changes, use multiple interviews with different members and compare notes.  Also, by making the hurtles take more time than one sitting, the patience of the scammer will most likely be exhausted.  Spreading out the application process to a few days will weed out random scammers, but will do little about the targeted ones.

References

External references?  Are you kidding?  I will roll a character on another slot and write glowing reviews about myself.  I could even be in my own corp and spoof the numbers with trials.  Calling up unknown CEOs for their feedback is usually a fruitless endeavor too.

I would even be wary of internal references that don't have personal connections to applicants.  There's nothing wrong with flying with friends, but social engineering preys on our social niceties.  Just because you weren't sold doesn't mean a lower level grunt can't be.

Minimum SP requirements

This does stop the lowest level AWOXers, but it doesn't protect against bought characters.  I'll admit this is a smaller risk than the above behaviors, but it isn't actually a security procedure.  It puts up a wall that filters out the lowest SP alts, but spies and scammers are creative and can generate characters at almost any level required to do the job.  

Mandatory Titles.  24hr Revenge Period

Though this may have been a good idea pre apocrypha, it's generally not a great idea now.  It used to be you could restart the 24hr stasis timer indefinitely (and get banned for it).  That loophole has long since been closed.  Once rights are revoked, they cannot be reassigned until the member allows it again.  I don't know who would reasonably expect a scammer to log inside that escape timer and allow himself to be killed.

Real Security Measures

Avoiding AWOXers is actually quite easy.  It's the same sort of things that should be "well duh" but are overlooked because of stupid-human "gut feelings" or an over reliance on technology.

USE THE CORP HISTORY

It's public, it's impossible to fake.  If your applicant has only ever been in corps for hours at a time, repeatedly, it's a glaring red warning klaxon.  Yes, the greenest noobs won't have corp history, and some people are flaky and may have short corp histories, or people might be weird and like NPC corps.  There's no reason to take EVE too seriously and put in hard and fast previous corp rules, but if the applicant has more than one corp on their history where they were members for less than 48hrs, you might want to ask harder questions.  If you don't at least LOOK at the corp history of an applicant, you deserve to be AWOX'd.

Google is your friend

Check the forums for the applicant, check eve-kill, zkillboard, and battle-clinic.  10 minutes of searching can yield a wealth of warning signs.  Odds are that 90% of your applicants will turn up mostly blank here, but again it's a simple and fast first line of defense.

You Don't Have to Be The Nice Guy

It's your corp, your members are trusting their security to you.  Bringing a wolf into the flock will do more harm to your organization as a whole than to any individual sheep.  If someone trips your gut, tell them "no".  Personally, I've always favored a panel approach where any one director could veto an application.  This would result in a more stringent search and 9 times out of 10, and protected the corp from a bad applicant.  This also helps cultivate a better internal atmosphere, since you have the right people for the org rather than a ship of random pubbies.

Social engineering relies on the assumed social norms and taboos we all subconsciously submit to.  Trusting authority figures, not wanting to look like the odd one out, the pain of disappointing people with "no".  But if you are going to be the captain of the ship, you have to make the tough choices for the good of the whole vessel.  

Don't Let Paranoia Win

"A system is 100% secure until users are introduced"

It's easy to let paranoia win in EVE.  There are so many stories about corp thefts, inside jobs, hacking and spies.  And paranoia will quickly lead to a stagnant organization, since no business can be done without trust.  There is a need to put a little risk forward to be able to socialize and build communities.

Just remember EVE's cardinal rule: "Don't fly what you aren't willing to lose".  The same concept can be applied to corp management.  The tools are there to protect valuables while opening up access to members at the same time.  Learn about the corp tools, understand the mechanics, be aware... and you have already gone 99% of the way to being safe and having fun.