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The
possibilities were tremendous. I could think of so many
potential ways to make an unethical profit that it made my
head hurt, and for once, I welcomed the pulsing pain. Horatio
Alger’s spirit was alive that day, and I reveled in it. Since
trading, our only source of income, was now so dangerous that
it would be fruitless over a long term period of time, neither
Trazir nor I had any moral qualms about screwing somebody else
out of their money. After all, it was a dog eat dog universe,
and the only ones who made it to the top were the ones who did
so by any means possible.
“Listen,” I said, “I think the best way for us to make money
is to do one of these blueprint schemes. For battleships, the
blueprints cost hundreds of millions of credits man. Hundreds
of millions! With a couple hundred million each, we could live
like kings.”
“Well, maybe,” Trazir responded, “but come on. Do you think
people are gonna just give us their money? I mean, just like
that, with nothing more than a promise in return?”
“That’s exactly what I think. I did it once already, remember?
In this case, we’ll just be doing it with more than one
person. And in my opinion, the key to pulling this off will be
to build credibility.”
“I dunno man, but if you’re right, then I think we’d better
start a corporation. Nobody’s gonna give their credits to a
couple of space bums.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to go learn more about how these
blueprints work. I’ll call you back some time tonight.”
The premise of blueprint investing was to be able to buy what
would normally be a super-expensive blueprint for a much
cheaper price. A group of people would give their money to one
trustworthy person, and that person would then purchase the
blueprint and make copies of it. These copies would be given
out to each of the investors, who could then build a ship
using their newly acquired blueprint.
I delved into help menus, game tutorials, and informational
websites, learning as much as I possibly could about
blueprints and the related skills I would need in order to
persuade people to invest in me. I finally decided that our
blueprint would be the Apocalypse battleship. I had seen it in
combat once before, and it lived up to its namesake, blasting
away 4 heavily armed cruisers in less than 30 seconds.
However, it was also the most expensive blueprint of all, with
an original copy weighing in at 1.125 billion credits to
purchase off the market.
It would be an unrealistic stretch to tell potential investors
that I had the maximum amount of skill level in each of the
skills needed to upgrade a blueprint and copy that blueprint.
So I figured that I would lie, and tell them that some of
these skills were fully trained by my associates, and the rest
of them were fully trained on my other account (which didn’t
exist).
Trazir was right, though. The only way to successfully
persuade somebody to invest in us was to make ourselves look
as legitimate as humanly possible. To this end, we started our
corporation, and I took an unnecessary risk by naming it “ZZZZ
Best” (google the name). He didn’t catch the joke, and
luckily, neither did any of the future investors. There was
just one problem: the corporation only had two members. If a
prospective investor looked us up, a corporation with two
members would appear to be highly suspicious. With this in
mind, we did what any company with dreams of wealth and
splendor would do.
We went on a recruiting drive.
Trazir would fly around the Minmatar newbie sectors, offering
10,000 credits to anybody who would join our corporation. All
they had to do was click on “accept” when Trazir made the
offer, and they became a part of our corporate family. Since
many of the people he encountered were only days, hours, or
even minutes new to Eve, a great deal clicked “accept” and
were subsequently given 10,000 credits. I did the same in the
Caldari newbie regions, and within a couple days, ZZZZ Best
was burgeoning at the seams with 18 clueless members. We had
to act quickly and peddle our deal, as well as maintain member
numbers, because there would no doubt be a good deal of
turnover as people realized that they belonged to a
corporation which did nothing for them and which they did
nothing for.
We wrote up posts on virtually every Eve forum imaginable,
presenting ourselves as a professional trading organization
which wanted to broker a battleship deal for the good of the
galaxy. We were tired of being pushed around by space pirates,
losing unimaginable amounts of credits for no reason at all
other than greed and misanthropy. To the greater community, we
appeared to be the most benevolent, respectable capitalists
around, and I was fully confident that investment offers would
pile up within days.
I messaged HardHead that night about what we were doing; I had
kept in sporadic contact with him, and I felt that he had a
good deal of admiration for me.
Me: Hey man, here’s the deal. Trazir and I have made a
shitload of money from trading; hell, we even started our own
trading corporation, and we’re tired of making money. We want
some fucking action. We’re both gonna put up 250 million for
an Apocalypse battleship blueprint. Are you interested?
HardHead: I already have a Maller. Why would I want a
battleship?
Me: Heh. Here’s a screenshot series in case you’ve never seen
one in action.
I sent him a zip file of 10 jpegs that some pirate posted on
the eve-i.com forums. It showcased his Scorpion going up
against 3 cruisers. By the end of the series, his shields are
only at 40%, and all the enemy cruisers have been destroyed.
Me: Listen bro, I’m telling you about this and giving you
first dibs because I consider you a friend, and because you
loaned me money when I was starting out. If you don’t wanna
invest, I would understand completely. Why don’t you think
about it? Anyways, I’m gonna go catch some sleep, talk to you
tomorrow.
I logged off and walked over to my bed. The groundwork had
been laid, and stage one was complete.
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