Ships & Modules

I always have enough to replace all the ships in my hangar twice over.

It sounds like your income (50-100M/day) is vaguely similar to your outflow (5-8 frigs + 1-3 cruisers). That sounds like a reasonable status quo. If you are having fun with your fights and enjoy them, then losing more ships but the same amount of ISK sounds like a perfectly valid system.

Personally, I tend to be in a similar situation with regards to the ISK I'm willing to lose with relation to my wallet. I have less ISK and fly more expensive ships, but I fly PvP rarely enough that I wouldn't lose a significant portion of ISK with any one loss and I will just stop if I feel like I've lost too much already.

In my eyes, as long as you have fun and don't go broke, anything is fine. If you have fun using T1 hulls, use 'em. If you have more fun using T2/faction hulls and can afford them, then use those. As long as you're having fun, it's all good.

I think he's given some good advice though, As long as you lose less isk (or equal) in pvp then you make, you're golden

I look at it as a matter of income and expenses. With normal game play I make round about 50-60 mil isk per day. That translates into round about 1.5bil per month, give or take. If I have to isk grind to fatten up the wallet for something then I can drive that income up to about 200mil a day but then I don't have time for the fun stuff. So that's my income. Normally 1.5 and up to 6 bil per month (that number is theoretical because I don't have the patience for a lot of isk grinding).

In the time I've been playing I've seen that in normal months i'll lose about 500mil in ships which is a lot less than my average income. Ergo, my "buying power" has grown to the point where I fly whatever I feel like flying for normal PVP and my losses are almost always less than my income in normal game play so I just do what I feel like doing.

in terms of how that compares to net-worth, I don't know. I usually keep a small collection of fitted ships around and I tend to work with the same ships for a period of time so I can either manufacture them myself or buy them in large(ish) quantities. For example, I wouldn't buy just 1 hurricane. I would buy/make 20 of them using buy orders over a period of time and then sell back what I still have on hand at some point down the road using sell orders when I get bored of flying hurricanes. I do the same thing with everything.... modules, minerals, you name it. It's because inflation makes having isk in your wallet counter productive on some level so I tend to think long-term and convert my money to "stuff" and sell back the "stuff" when I need money. In most cases I come out ahead. The cash I have on hand is therefore never really excessive. Maybe 3-4 billion or so. The rest is locked up in market escrow or in piles making money from inflation.

As for being risk averse... no. I would become more risk averse if my losses outstripped my income for a few months but so far that hasn't happened to the point where it was a worry. My alt that lives in null-sec has an isk-efficiency of a little over 95% over a couple of thousand kills but a lot of that is in fleets so your chances of survival are pretty good all things considered. I have another character that I use for PVP-ing out of a wormhole in wherever we get an exit and with that one I do mostly solo work. His isk efficiency is usually around 50%. I won't go balls-deep on stupid stuff but if I think I have a 50/50 chance then I'll go for it and my isk efficiency seems to confirm that my feeling for 50/50 is pretty much spot on. This month has been good, though. That alt is up to about 90% and about to go up a bit more when the guy I'm waiting for while I write this decides taht I'm really gone and goes back to mining his mercoxit.

tbh I don't really know how much money I make, never really sat down for a solid grind session and figured it out. probably something close to 250m/h if I gave it my full focus

But I only started making that sort of cash in the last couple of years, regardless of how much cash I have my general use ship is gonna be a hurricane. I have a few fitted in reserve if something happens, and when I get a spare 15min I pump out a lvl 5 or two to replace the losses

This is purely because the hurricane is imo the best ship in game on a performance per ISK scale for small gang/solo. I'd be flying it even if my wallet balance was nil tb

For BS engagements I don't see it as too much of a stretch to bring a tier 1 faction, generally I won't use BS without at least some reps on fiel

And there's the customary pimped faction frig for null roams, and the pimped faction BS for lowsec epeening

Bulk of my cash goes to backup ships tb

But yeh, I guess it's all cost:performance for me instead of being just cost based. Means I'll be flying that ship whatever my wallet status because it's better to be in a ship you can win a fight in even if it costs a bit, than in a cheap ship that has a real good chance of esploding first baddie it sees.

I think I'm in the same boat as the op. I trade and my income vastly outweighs my expenses. I could fly more "expensive" stuff, but would still hate losing it. Besides I need to learn to not die first.

The only thing to do with isk is pvp anyway. Spend all you have on it. It doesn't matter how poor you become there are useful pvp ships at all isk levels.

Unless if you wanna play for plex in which case wallet amount - plex price = spend all this in pvp.

There is no other reason to play the game... rly.

I spend everything on pvp and hookers.
/edit: OP, it's more important that you feel ok with your spending on ships. Because if you don't you fly more hesitant and might tend to make wrong decisions.

I fly ships I can't afford to lose all the time with implants I can't afford... and you know what? I love flying them! I don't really tend to die very often (once a month at most)

Enough money, but not always the motivation for PvP.