Market Discussions

Some would say that the latter is the former too ;-).

I don't really keep up with anything outside of Jita or reddit, but there was a citadel called Oasis in a WH system, however that's gone now. The New Eden Trading Company. Keepstars in Caldari low sec (Aunenen and Maila, I think a third is going up somewhere else) have been used for a fair few supercap sales.

Indeed, hence the "thank you and God bless" :)

Two purposes; you also can read Local sat in one without reading Jita Local. :-)

"Oasis" didn't last long. At all. In fact, "they" was only one person. His name's Alex. Seemed nice. I even liked him.
So when he asked for help, I didn't hesitate to offer the help of my alliance and friends.

You know what the problem was? It was him. He didn't care about the fate of Oasis at all. Not only was he negligent of Oasis, he even told me that he had succeeded his goal of having a citadel and that the 30bil he had loaned from various people weren't his loss anyways.

The root of the problem is that he had no viable defense plan. His plan was to hire locals who would be willing to go up against a better equipped, much larger invading fleet.

He had no experience in wormholes, and he didn't even have an alt at all. When he got one, it was blown up and I had to search for 2 days to find an entrance.

When I told him that we wold help him if he came up with a good defense plan, he said he was good sticking with his old plan.

The point is, I really love the idea of Oasis. It just cannot be what Alex envisioned - a free port without any influences. You still need corp to help you defend. Or at least create your own corp to defend your very own citadel that you should damn well love and cherish. I want another Oasis. Just not another Alex

Most of the hub action I've encountered is regional import/export centers on fringe hisec or losec. To make it work you can't just plop down a station. You have to be willing to invest effort in your stock and engaging your customers.

It's not difficult to set this up. Get to know the local groups, try talking to their leadership and ask them what sort of stuff they buy. (hint: faction ships, t2 ships, and structure fuel mats can make you everybody's best friends real quick if you can keep the stuff local groups actually use in stock)

It is however important to talk with the locals BEFORE you drop your hub. If you just show up and drop a structure without communicating your intentions people probably just want to shoot it for the KM becuase it looks like an obstacle or competition for the space.

Then you set up your trade hub in a "neutral" area at a nexus of as many local groups as you can find, and do the work of bargain shopping to fill their needs. Your over/under is a bit more managable becuase despite paying taxes on your buy orders in major hubs, you can sell order out at your station at a decent profit that is still attractively priced for locals. Most people don't mind paying an extra 2% to 5% on items if it saves them having to make 30+ jumps to go pick it up. Owning the station means you can absorb what would commonly be tax adjustments as income.

Keep talking to your customers, try and work out nominal buy order ratios. Most people will happily buy order slightly higher at your station rather than a main hub if you can reasonably guarantee them it'll get filled.

Put a low (but not zero) trade tax on the station and go out of your way to buy up anything on sell orders there you can flip when you go to major hubs for a pickup.

Try your best to communicate to all local groups that your intent is as a neutral entity, you're here to serve them, and you have no intent to interfere in their conflicts. Most EVE players are quite tolerant and even appreciative of local war profiteers if they can get the reships and ammo they need at a good price so they can spend more time shooting each other.

Congratulations, you're operating a trade hub with a greater than 50% chance of success! The more work you put in to it the more it starts to sustain itself. Once people get used to using your station, they start being more likely to buy/sell from each other there as well. The more people grow to depend on your station, the more they're likely to help you defend it if an outside actor decides to blow it up.

Keep in mind you aren't going to replace Jita or Rens or Amarr or whatever, but with the proper attention paid there are lots of stationless fringe losec and null systems with customer bases that happily support these types of endeavors if they can cut down on their personal logistics and hauling as it provides some local content hotspots, reduced hauling times, and in a lot of cases improved logistics chains.

There are just as many places where nobody wants you around and will tell you to **** off. Don't try to force your way in to a market that doesn't want you.

This is not magic, and it won't work everywhere, but you'd be suprised how far a littel dimplomacy gets you in EVE if you can offer people a win/win proposition.

Now I want to cry...

Then I would be on New Eden welfare program.