As part of an interview series on challenging career paths, blogger Hugh Caswakk interviewed Fubo Libs, a noted capital ship manufacturer. Fubo reminisced about how his career developed, and offered pointers that budding industrialists may find useful.
Caswakk is a relatively new voice. To hear him tell it, he and a group of friends have bounced from game to game under the Krypted label, and settled on EVE a few months back. Their in-game Krypted Gaming corporation wound up in the Solyaris Chtonium alliance, which Fubo Libs calls home. No points for guessing how they ran into each other.
Over a three-year span, starting in late 2014, Fubo has gone from miner and station trader to dedicated capital ship manufacturer. He learned from veteran industrialist Tritanium Amaranth, and passed along some of Amaranth’s early pointers, as well as his own insights.
Trit mentioned that he was doing capital production and “hinted” I should look into it, since it’s all T1 related. So, he gave a few pointers as to “use a pos” “refine in the pos so you don’t have to move” “get thukker bonus” … and while capital building in POS sounds risky, people mostly leave it alone. So I started fairly small, with 1-2 characters with capital building slots about 10 each.
Some other tips stood out. Fubo made his cash trying his hand at a variety of careers; once he’d accumulated a nest egg, he purchased a character with the right skills. Success in one career, in other words, can open doors to pretty much any other career – assuming you find the right mentorship and cultivate the right relationships. As any solid capsuleer will tell you, skill points and skill are two dramatically different things.
Take a pointer, too, from how both Fubo and Caswakk approached knowledge acquisition. Odds are, someone in your corp or alliance knows exactly how to do what you want to do. Maybe they don’t make it public; again, relationships are key.
Fubo made it clear that success in his career stream boils down to extreme attention to detail. The tired old spreadsheet stereotype is intensely true here:
Each time I build a cap I create a new spreadsheet … that lists out the exact minerals I need for a particular build (i.e. low sec pos, low sec citadel later on, now nullsec). I know the minerals that I need for the BPO researched level, and then from there extract the compressed ores.
Fubo also noted that, though his career can seem intimidating, barriers to entry really aren’t all that high.
I started to create more chars to train for capital production, which surprisingly isn’t hard to train. Basically, about the same time, you would train for a mining barge toon. So original 20 lines became 30, then 40.
It’s fairly rare to see a successful high-level player explain the nuts and bolts of their specialty in public. If an aspiring capsuleer wants to stand on the shoulders of people with specialized and valuable careers, good information is hard to find. On the one hand, why go to the effort of explaining how you do your thing if you’re just going to create competition? On the other hand, why not create community, raise your profile, reexamine your methods in a new light, and – let’s face it – brag a little?
That balance between discretion and disclosure pops up all over the world. EVE expertise runs the gamut from total secrecy to half-billion-isk tutoring fees to open epistemic communities like Haulers Channel. On that continuum, this interview is somewhere in the middle. A dedicated student could gain useful perspective, even if there are no real trade secrets on display.
Caswakk intends this to be the first of a series of interviews with players who follow ambitious or unusual career paths. Projected topics include incursion FCing and alliance-level diplomacy. I fully intend to stay tuned.
Jenne Exupery is a low-wattage independent who dabbles in shipping, salvage, trade, exploration, and nearly victimless heists. He can usually be found bumming around Derelik and Domain under one name or another. Preferred contact method: in-game mail to Jenne Exupery of Manticore-Horizon Shipping [MANHO].
