Market Discussions

The market has slumped, those ships are probly not much above mineral cost for a well skilled and researched builder

Thanks for the advice. I intend to mostly produce for personal use but figured I would try to make some profit along the way. Ah well.

Unless you:

1) Are in a Corp/Alliance with a research POS
2) Can buy cheap ME slots off another player that you trust
3) Don't mind waiting 30 days per 20 levels of ME research
4) Have perfect refining skills (5's across the board and over 6.0 standing)

Then manufacturing is really not worth it.

Honestly, it's amazing that anyone even bothers to build anything on Eve.

Quick Fact: Some people make buttloads of ISK by purchasing items and reprocessing them. That should tell you something.

when you manufacture you need to find an item that is in high demand such as hurricanes. look at the table stats and you will see quantities and price averages. take into account how fast you want your product sold and how much profit you want to make off of it. look at the average price for the price you want to sell and the quantity. you will see at least once a month the price will hit 26mill but you will see quantity sold of that period of price on average is about 300 units. take a look at the market and subtract the amount of units already on sale near the price you want from the 300 units. so say you see 50 canes being sold for 25.8mill. you manufacture 250 units. in a perfect world all of your hurricanes should be sold in a month at a very reasonable price.

when you do this, you will have more isk to invest in other products rather then waiting a few months for your single giant batch of canes to sell out then you get frustrated and sell at rock bottom prices. when you eventually have enough isk you will be able to base your manufacturing over 3 month periods generating you more profit. remember to invest in a variety of products.

In general most T1 gear and ships is worth more in minerals than the gear itself. Even more strange often the low end named gear is often cheaper than the t1 players make. For real amusement price building a Carrier vs buying it. I commonly place buy orders for mission loot just to reprocess it. I then sell the minerals., r make ammo and drones (if no is sell it at reasonable rates). Where you can make money with t1 stuff is in rigs, and ammo in mission running hubs. You just have to be careful that someone else isn't actively supplying the area.

Other wise the money is all in the t2, and t3 gear/ships these days. Making t2/t3 gear is fairly involved....

This should explain your problem fairly clearly.

There's another thing to consider, supply of old ships. The majority of ships that are built and purchased, looking Eve wide, are not destroyed. They either collect dust in a hangar someplace or they are sold off.

Also, and this is subjective, in the real world, most people are accustomed to the idea that a vehicle, or anything with lots of moving parts, purchased will end up being resold at a lower price, except perhaps collector's items. So, to sell off an old ship for less than it was purchased, is not a "bad thing" for a lot of people. To them it is simple depreciation, even though the functional value of a repackaged ship is zero depreciation in the land of Eve. You are making ships and selling them, but do not ignore those who have buy orders, who is selling them their ships? And notice some of those buy orders are under your estimated mineral value.

Also, you are perhaps estimating the value of your minerals at what price you think you can sell them today. Perhaps a better way is what cost you would incur long term. A wise ship builder is going to have long term buy orders on the market and be buying minerals on the dips. Doing that alone will bring a competitor's costs down below yours if you are estimating the value of your minerals at current prices. Perhaps you should estimate your mineral values at the long term price peaks. I think you will find that the difference between the highs and the lows consumes your 100K estimated profits.

I have to agree with Adunh's points. There is relatively high surplus of ships that shreds into margins. Just because the map says "12 ships Destroyed in the last hour" doesn't necessarily mean that they were anything but t1 frigates. It's a matter of views unless we can see some data.



Couldn't be closer to the truth. There is a "Fat Wallet" syndrome that exists in most players. If they have to take a 2 or 3, or even 10 to 15m hit just so they can change up ships w/o creating a hole in their bankroll - they will. That moves onto the next point, contracts w/ rigged ships. Rarely, if ever, do players offer enough incentive to purchase a rigged ship. They are either not rigged in preference to the demand, or overpriced. What happens? See the beginning of this paragraph.

Beat me to it.
+3 Eve-peens for you.

When you are starting out -- Buy Bpc's - you dont have a large initial outlay like with bpo's and you can always switch items on the fly.

Try larger ships, and look at the graph. At first when you can only build a few at a time you will want to build ships that have the highest profit margin, then later when you are building dozens or hundreds at a time you will want to be building the ships with the lowest margins---those are the ones no one else will be building so you will have a nice stack when the price inevitably rises.

Also be sure you are realistic regarding how many of the item you can sell in your area. The graph will tell you alot........