Science & Industry

Hi All

Quick query around the reprocessing of ore...

Currently my reprocessing is at V and reprocessing efficiency at IV. I also have Veldspar at IV. Now I would have thought those skills are rather high ( I do have efficiency on its way to V ) however it seems that even so its more profitable to sell the Veldspar ore than it is to reprocess it to trit. Currently I am at 63.5% efficiency, If Im not mistaken the level V efficiency will give me an additional 2%? Perhaps then it will tip the scales but I just don't see it. My standings are at about 2.2 and I know at around 6.7 u get 0 tax, to me the tax doesn't seem to be a huge factor in the profit, most of the mats are being lost to wastage. Am I missing something? Is it a case that I will need efficiency at V and Veld spar at V before it becomes worthwhile?

Thanks in advance
Gregg

Are you refining in station or at a POS

If POS is it anchored in Hi Sec or Low Sec

Refining in station. Yea, I have read that you get 52% and 54% on POS structures depending on Hi-Sec or Low-Sec!?

All you need is the skill Anchoring I and an empty moon; there are no additional skills required for scompression. Most people that do compression buy a small POS and compression array and leave it offline unless being used. To run a small POS 24/7 would run about 120-150mill ISK a month; 2-3hours a week will only be a few mill.

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/POS_Setup

Gregg,

I am very new to this game but I note that it is a very large "Venn Diagram" when it comes to career specialization.

At the outset I had the thought of being an "industrialist". I've since discovered that "Industry" is a very broad category and that refining and/or compression could easily be a stand-alone specialization....particularly in one's early months and years.

I've buried myself in spreadsheets and still do not have clear ideas on how/when I can turn refining into a profitable venture. I suspect that it, like every other specialization, is built gradually. I do not expect to have the knowledge or skills to be producing 10s of milions of profitable isk per week, let alone per day.

Observations of a noob.

Ken

Here's how the math works out. If you have perfect station refine:
- 50% refinery
- L5 Reprocessing skill
- L5 Reprocessing efficiency skill
- L5 Veldspar Processing skill
- Zainou 'Beancounter' Reprocessing RX-804 implant (4% improved reprocessing)
- 6.67 or higher standings required to have a 0% reprocessing tax.
Then your yield will be 72.36%

With this, 100 units of Veldspar will reprocess into 300 units of Tritanium. Depending on the exact count, you may get slightly more due to rounding, ex: 1,000 veld = 3,002 trit, but you get the idea.

Current max buy price of Veld on Jita market: 19.27
Current max buy price of Trit on Jita market: 5.83

19.27 * 100 = 1,927
5.83 * 300 = 1,749

So, at this very moment, even with a perfect refine at a station, the Veldspar can be sold for more than the refined Tritanium. This is true even if you did the reprocessing in a more efficient POS array, though I won't redo the math.

---

Why would someone spend more on the Veld than the Trit?

Veldspar is only ever used to produce trit (barring minor uses in a few missions). Trit is only ever used to manufacture something else. So the ultimate buyer of either of these is a manufacturer. Manufacturing isn't really done in Jita that much because the manufacturing costs are too high. The manufacturer wants to buy their minerals in Jita and then ship them elsewhere to do their manufacturing. Shipping is expensive and dependent on volume.

100 veld = 1 compressed veld = 300 trit

100 veld = 10m3
1 compressed veld = 0.15m3
300 trit = 3m3

The compressed veld is the cheapest / easiest form to ship due to the volume.

I can't convert trit to compressed veld, but I can convert veld to compressed veld. So, if I want to get some trit to where I want to manufacture, my best bet is to ship it in the form of compressed veld. Since I can't convert Jita trit to compressed veld, it's less valuable to me because of the higher shipping cost.

Of course, once the veld gets to my manufacturing location, I need to reprocess it, but I can do that myself. It just takes some skills and some standings. It takes no time or hassle at all, just a few clicks.

So, considering all of this, reprocessing is a skill that enhances the returns of the manufacturer, not the miner! Crius flipped this on it's head with compression. Miners should almost never reprocess ore. They should sell raw ore or they should sell compressed ore. Compression has become the smart miner skill while reprocessing has become the smart manufacturer skill.

Jita prices:
100 veld = 1,927
1 compressed veld = 2,058

Senakawa,

I am currently toying with the idea of using one character to mine and one to manufacture.

Two questions

1. Does that idea change your recommendation on "manufacturer = reprocessor" and "miner = compressor".

2. How should one think about the fact that each ore has its own reprocessing skill, which enhances yield on a strip miner?


Ken

Thanks for your reply.

Much appreciated.

Ken

Here is basically how things have ended up, at least around the major market hubs from what I can see:

- If you are a miner with imperfect refining skills, station standings, and without a pos compression array, it is nearly always more profitable to sell ore as-is to the market.
- If you are a miner with imperfect refining skills and with a pos compression array, it is nearly always more profitable to sell compressed ore to the market.
- If you are a miner with perfect refining skills with a pos refining array, you can make slightly more by refining and selling minerals to the market than by compressing.
- If you are a miner with perfect refining skills that has safe access to a lowsec or nullsec refinery, you will make modestly more by refining your ore at a pos or outpost in lowsec/nullsec and then selling the minerals back to the market.

- If you are a manufacturer with perfect refining skills, you can save a little isk by buying and hauling compressed ore and then refining it at the outpost/pos. This is especially helpful if you are in null/lowsec/wormhole space because of the lowsec/nullsec refining bonuses and due to reduced transport space requirements.
- If you are a highsec only manufacturer with a freighter, you can probably do perfectly fine by avoiding compressed ore and just buying minerals at a discount via contracts with mining corps/etc or regional buy orders/etc.

No matter what your skillset in terms of reprocessing and no matter whether you are mining to sell directly for ISK or mining for production you should initially be compressing the ore if you are mining it. If you are selling the compressed ore for ISK you will selling based on the max skilled high sec POS reprocessing rate multiplied by the highest buy order price at Jita. Jita prices are currently haywire so there may be alternate multipliers but generally that is the minimum price formula.

If you are mining for production purposes then you will still first compress your ore. This is obviously done so that you can transport the ore to a location with reduced taxes to increase your profit margin on production.

My guess is that most of the minerals on sale in trade hubs are acquired from reprocessing of mission loot even though you can only get a 55% return on reprocessing loot now. The alternative is there are a lot of stupid people still reprocessing ore for sale.