Welcome to the sister-blog of Journeys of a Baroque Pilot! Here lies the cold, hard truths about my piracy career, done through meticulous statistical analysis of my performance within New Eden; not a single engagement that produces an outcome is abridged or kept out. You won't find tales of my exploits here, those will remain as journeys and rightly so. This will be updated on a monthly basis, which will detail and discuss my performance across the month. There will also be a 'quarterly report' which ties those otherwise singular statistics into something more correlative and tangible for you.
The aim for this blog is to firstly prove that life as a low-security pirate is not impossible to achieve, something that most seem to disagree with. I make all my isk through piracy only and you can witness the rise and fall of that life right here. Secondly, I hope to reveal truths to myself about how I tick; what ships I succeed in, where I should pull on the brakes. This could be used against me by some nefarious evil-doers but ultimately I feel this will be more beneficial to the Eve community than it will harmful to myself. Low-sec piracy is possible and I feel more should live this life, here's hoping that the information here might give some players the confidence to have at it.
Beneath is a detailed explanation of how to engage with the data provided in the journals and reports; if it's common knowledge than you are good to go, otherwise I'd recommend having a quick look through this to familiarize yourself with it all. Enjoy!
Battle Timeline:
This chart details the amount of isk won or lost in each battle individually. Negative values are attributed as the value of the ship lost. Ammo expense is not taken into account. Positive values are a function of loot splits and ransoms. Isk made via salvaging is not taken into account here. Because playing time varied by month, charting each battle individually is a more robust statistic than charting by date.
Map:
The map is a basic outline of systems and is color coded by frequency of kills found in each system.
Ship Efficiency:
- Statistics:
- Mean and Mean Squared Error: This graph demonstrates the net profit to cost ratio of each ship. Total isk made by each individual ship was tallied, and then when the ship was lost, the cost of the ship was subtracted from that total, resulting in a net profit. The means of each ship category (e.g. frigate, assault frigate, faction frigate, interceptor, battlecruiser, electronic attack ship)were then calculated. Mean squared error was subsequently calculated to demonstrate variability within each category (see explanation below).
- t-Test - this is a statistical test used to determine if there is a significant difference the groups divided by an independent variable (e.g. ship type) and a dependent variable (e.g. net isk yield). Currently, the type of ship flown is not a significant factor in isk yield (p > .05), and hence is not noted on the graphs page. However, this may change as the months provide more data.
- Error Bars: Because the bar graphs show only the mean net profit of each ship, error bars provide a way to express the variability in that mean (calculated as mean squared error). For example, if you look at the bar dictating the faction frigates, you will see a very low mean with a very large negative error bar. Looking at the following graph where the faction frigates are broken down, you can see that all the frigates except the dramiel actually have a very positive cost to profit ratio. The dramiel's profit to cost ratio is extremely negative which pulls the mean down of the entire group, skewing the data. The large error bar provides a way to note this variability, and hence spotlights the need to further break the data down. However, small error bars provide an equally important measure. Small error bars, such as in the battlecruiser bar, demonstrate consistency in the ship type. This means that flying battlecruisers is less of a gamble, providing a more consistent net positive income.
Faction Frigate Breakdown:
This graph demonstrates the mean profit to cost for each faction frigate flown. Because each faction frigate was only flown once (n = 1), there are no error bars on this graph at this time.
