Market Discussions

Have you seen how huge capital components are? They are larger than the minerals that are used to build them, make sure you take this into account.

Capital Producers generally build hulls in LS (duh). The cost of transporting the minerals from Jita to the compression site/jump off point is negligible, and the cost of JF runs is large.

Your business plan is proposing vastly increasing the JF cost in exchange for a cut of the profits.

.... perfect business to advertise in Jita local then. Plenty of special fish in the sea there.

There is no way that this will save JF fuel, due to the huge increase in volume involved. Instead it will massively increase JF costs. This will make the builder non-competitive or loss making.

This is why I asked here, so I appreciate the insights. So in all seriousness, is mineral compression universally used at this point? I am able to sell components in trade hubs still, so some people do seem to find the cost of shipping acceptable. Of course, it may be that these people are making A Big Mistake and should be using compression to ship out the goods from hisec. Thus far I have had acceptable profit margins doing this, but I want to increase volume. A major concern of mine in moving production to lowsec right now is that I don't want to move the BPOs because I have a hisec POS I am using to research them as I acquire them...this is much better than paying for the ME/PE levels on contract, especially when several are researching at once.

At this early point, should I just go ahead and shift to low sec, since I will end up there anyway? Without my own jump freighter (I have the skills, just not the ship) I won't be able to get the resources I need to lowsec safely anyway.

No. It is not universally used.

I use it for all of my capital and super capital production tasks and strongly advise it to the people who I consult for.

Popular alternatives include:

1. Moving the minerals from trade hub to build site in uncompressed form either in freighters or jump freighters. This is far superior to moving the built components in almost all cases.

2. Placing competitive mineral buy orders at the build location and letting other people deal with how the minerals get there. The success of this method will depend on the location, but it can work very well.

3. Building where large stocks of minerals are already readily available. This is particularly relevant to faux-capital ships (Orcas, Freighters, Jump Freighters) that can be built in hi-sec.

Other methods that have worked at times, but may or may not be viable now:

4. Buying cheap capital ships, moving them to the build location, reprocessing them and then re-using the materials.

5. Using compressed ores from a Rorqual.


There is no guarantee that components you sell in trade hubs are getting shipped anywhere. They may be being used on site.

Also, capital builders can sometimes find themselves short of a component or two due to miss-calculations and in such as situation it may be better to buy a few assembled components from a nearby hub than to delay production by getting the minerals, compressing them, transporting them and building the components.

There is also the "personal use" capital builder who is generally building their capital with no regard for the economics of so doing. Such a person will often pay far more than the price of a completed capital in order to produce one for themselves.

Finally, there is also the peculiar case of the wormhole capital builder. By necessity a wormhole capital builder often has to behave in ways that would make no sense in normal space. They haven't the option of compression as they have no suitable refinery. Their transportation issues are entirely different from a normal space builder and if building in a low-class wormhole they may have to resort to moving minerals or components using small haulers through multiple wormhole entrances. Such a person is more often that not only interested in building a single capital, have no concern for profit and will use whatever methods they understand best.


The more you look for volume, the less you can rely on unusual behaviour and niche capital builders.


Do you have a low-sec location in mind? I ask because there certainly are low-sec capital building hotspots where multiple operations are running out of the same system or cluster of systems. You would need to choose one of these if you want to be successful with this venture.

Or you can scam the whole MD community into giving you the cash to buy a handful of titan BPOs.

Consequently, BB, I am still a fan.

I think that the volume I have been able to maintain thus far is mostly due to capital builders who approach some sort of constraint, either due to miscalculations or simple mismanagement. As a result some of these components do sell, but it's streaky and seems largely dependent on these mistakes being made. Of course, people always make mistakes. Since my goal is to slowly bridge up into capital production, I am not interested in taking out a loan or renting: the interest rates alone would make this more of a job because of the need to make the venture produce. As of right now I can take time away from EVE as needed while letting the queues grind away, and if I miss a login or 2 to kick off new jobs it isn't going to get my knees capped. Plus, truth be told I doubt I have the collateral yet to secure the 30-50-70B loan needed to really make this happen. I am getting there, but it's taking time.

As always, fantastic help on these forums. I can see that this idea won't fly, so I will keep plugging away at invention and T2 while doing this on the side and acquiring/researching the BPOs I need for my eventual move to lowsec. The margins have been acceptable so far, and I love the long build times. Less logging in on indy characters means more pewpew. :)

To put mineral compression into perspective, it takes about 500 / 1000 425mms per carrier / dread respectively. Using this method it is possible to fit about 10 capitals in a single JF run. The cost to compress the minerals is typically less than 1m per ship. Compare this cost to JF fuel prices and cyno costs and it really is negligible.

In the past people have run 425mm / 800mm mineral compression services but I doubt they are so popular now when it is very easy for people to aquire the blueprints, however that could be something you want to look into.


I know as this method cuts down my monthly hauling from about 20 JF jumps to about 2 so I am very biased, however I don't see why mineral compression particularly needs nerfing. The standing and skill requirements are not insignificant, it actually introduces a bit more geography into the game, for instance as only 1 of my characters has the required skills to reprocess and only a few high standings, this coupled with the need for a high-sec neighbouring low-sec, with manufacturing from the correct corp means I only have about 4 stations where I could build caps.

Mineral compression is an artifact of the tech 1 production chain. More expensive modules require more minerals to justify their expense, but if they were as large as their component minerals they would be cumbersome to haul. CCP has already "fixed" mineral compression once, and I doubt they will do it again, but I guess they have a few tricks up their sleeve that they could still use:
1. More highend minerals for expensive modules.
2. Nerfing the reprocessing of modules like they did for ships.
3. Big ass battleship modules.

I don't think any of these are worth doing just to make the lives of capital ship producers miserable, but you never know.