Science & Industry

I've trained the BPO skillz now, and am working on getting Production Efficiency from 4 to 5 so that I can actually start producing.
I'll get the skill in 10.5 days, but still need to do ML research on some actual BPOs (long queues).

I have 2 questions now:

1. What makes the most sense? Basing my (self-made) indistry spreadsheet mineral values on Jita Sell Orders, or on Jita Buy Orders? I'm inclined to go with Buy Orders, but am not sure.

2. How skewed are the "you" values in BPOs, based on me not yet having Production Efficiency 5? I've now started work on my spreadsheet (thanks to Tau Calabander for suggesting Raven as the mineral index basis!), but I'm usure of what mineral amounts to input, because I don't know whether the amounts shown on BPOs takes my PE4 into account or not.

To take a simple example, can someone tell me what a Shuttle BPO says it requires with PL0 ML0 for someone with PE skill 5? For me it says "2875 (you) / 2750 (perfect)". That suggests 4.5% waste, which is neither consistent with ME0 and a waste factor of 10%, nor with 5% extra waste per missing level of Production Efficiency skill.

So what gives? What will a vanilla un-researched Shuttle BPO look like, once I have Production Efficiency 5?

That will depend on how you plan on buying the minerals. If you plan on just buying from the Sell orders, then use that price. If you plan to put up your own Buy orders to try and get the minerals cheaper then use that price (don't forget to include your sales taxes and such into the math). Generally speaking putting up a Buy order is a better idea, it will take longer to get the minerals but you save a lot of ISK.



The mineral waste is a result of 2 factors: Production Efficiency and the Material Level of the BPO. That's why you are not seeing the right numbers. The "Perfect" values you see on the BP are based on your Production Efficiency skill, but that is not accounting for the reduced material requirements based on the ME of the BPO. You won't see the right mineral requirements until you select Manufacturing on the blueprint and assign it to a factory, that's where you get the real production requirements.

Base it on Sellorders, if its not worth producing with Minerals from Sellorders dont produce it. That way you can buy from Sellorders, make a decent profit and save a lot of time maintaining buyorders. Nobody stops you however to use Buyorders and get extra profit.

If its only worth producing with buyorders then why not sell the minerals without the trouble of logistics, finding buildslots etc. ?

not sure about the exact calculation, but the values at perfect mentioned above are accurate. it has nothing to do with the ME value of the bp, rather your Prod Eff skill alone. i dunno, maybe its a rounding issues?

I let others do the mining, and buy the ore from them.

I would use whichever price is least favorable to your profits (Sell orders for minerals you are buying, buy orders for items you are selling). This way you've priced in the worst extremes of cost vs. resale value. Then if/when you get a better deal (you buy minerals for less than the estimated cost or you sell your finished product for more), you are doing better than anticipated.

As for when to use Buy orders vs. buying from Sell orders, I would say that depends on your production queue. If you have queued up as many jobs as your skill allows, use Buy orders to get the best price as you have time until you can queue up another order anyway. If you can start jobs but lack the materials then you probably want to buy goods already up for sale, unless the price difference is rather high. Available production queues that are sitting idle are not earning you a profit! Whenever possible try to plan in advance for what you want to produce next and place buy orders to have the materials ready when the time comes to schedule those jobs.

Really depends. Are you going to buy minerals from sell orders? If so use that price. Will you be buying from buy orders? If so use the price you'll be using for the buy orders. Do you mine your own minerals and sell to buy orders? Use the price for buy orders. Or do mine and setup sell orders? Use the price you would be able to sell the minerals at.

Base your price based on how you will be using minerals.




No idea, but honestly, don't worry about it too much. You wont make a profit without PE 5, so its not important lol. just get'er trained.




Again, like I said above don't worry about it. You wont ever deal with it again once you get PE 5 (unless you setup alts, which wont batter because you'll be training PE 5 anyways ;).)

Instead focus on ginding some standings (to decrease research slot costs), research what BPO's you want to start manufacturing and start loooking into useful online tools/programs. Isk per hour is pretty nice.