Market Discussions

First, a brief background. This noob comes from playing X-Universe heavily, and in that game commodities and consumables had a relevant in-game function that drove supply and demand. This is due to the dynamics of space-based factories;
a weapons factory may require meat-steak cahoonas, energy cells, and metal ore to produce useable weapons for example - and a meat-steak cahoona factory may require delaxian wheat, argnu beef, and energy cells (which are produced somewhere else) - etc you get the idea.

So far I am not really seeing that dynamic in eve online (other than ores, metals, minerals).

Is the supply and demand of trade goods just an arbitrary factor driven by the NPC stations and AI?

Are you talking about industry in general or actual Trade Goods (the NPC trading stuff like Garbage, Antibiotics, etc).

If you are talking about NPC Trade Goods, there isn't really much to do with them aside from hauling them from one station to another.

Industry (the actual manufacturing of stuff) is a whole different game. You need to find all the necessary resources, find a blueprint, and find an available manufacturing slot. Factor in the skills that reduce waste and time, and finding the right place to sell it so you walk away with a profit makes it quite complex. You can't just create 10,000 shuttles (for example) and expect to sell them at a profit, without the right skills you'll lose a lot of money trying to sell them.

Then there's stuff like T2 and Invention which adds another layer of complexity onto it.

let's build something fun, e.g. an upgrade to give a station better industrial capabilities:

http://i.imgur.com/eSEQB.jpg

e.g.:
1,012 units of Robotics
are created from 3,374 units of Mechanical Parts and 3,374 units of Consumer Electronics
are created from 26,992 units of Reactive Metals and 26,992 units of Precious Metals and 26,992 units of Toxic Metals and 26,992 units of Chiral Structures
are created from 4,048,800 units of Base Metals and 4,048,800 units of Noble Metals and 4,048,800 units of Heavy Metals and 4,048,800 units of Non-CS Crystals


If you look at T1 items the production chains may look pretty simple Ore->Minerals->Item.

Look at T2 items, capital ships, structures, ... and things become much more complex.

Wow I can certainly see it then!

Now - if/when i do an alt ( <--- this one is too gung-ho for industry and would rather stick his nose where it shouldn't be)
I will just have to figure out whether I should concentrate on industry skills or trade, or both!

I can see turning a profit for player-use materials rather quickly - especially if ways can be worked out to go between high and null or low sec - question is whether I should build most of the items myself (it takes time and research to gather materials) or simply trade what others have already built.

Thank u.

The vast majority of stations in nullsec are player owned and have docking rights only for friendly corps, so you won't be able to get access to those markets to take advantage of the arbitrage between Jita and most nullsec markets. (our own market specialists, of course, make enormous amounts of bank doing that)

Some stations in nullsec are NPC stations, but are still within the sphere of influence of a 0.0 power that is going to kill you for trespass. It would be possible to fly out there and make a profit off arbitrage but you'd need to learn how to fly safely through gatecamps and generally PVP just to pull it off, and probably train into a blockade runner to have a chance at doing it reliably enough for any profit.

There's room for small margin arbitrage and production in Empire, but you're going to be at a marked disadvantage to everyone who has their skills and standings trained to maximum already. Because of the trade taxes if you want to make any money at all you'll have to grind standings and train up the market skills to reduce taxes to the minimum, because the gap between that and the base tax is where arbitrage profits come from with Empire trading.

This might seem counter intuitive but if you honestly want to make money moving things around or with production on a low-skilled character your best bet is actually to join a nullsec alliance and take advantage of the market access and improved resources that provides. Making your fortune in the Empire market is a lot harder.

Indeed. There is still a small window to tackle you after you jump to a system and warp to next gate - between the time you hit "warp" and the time you hit "cloak". However, unless they know you are coming and have instalocking tacklers, it is highly unlikely you get caught (plus there is the fact that in low sec gate guns tend to pop anything small and fast enough to tackle you).

in 0.0 there is another little problem; warp disruption bubbles. You may be cloaked almost immediately after jump but if you are cloaked inside a bubble, you have to fly out of it before you can warp and do so before some other ship gets too close and uncloaks you (and you get WTFPWNED).

Blockade runners are extremely useful for low sec small time operations but in 0.0, all logistics pretty much go by Jump Freighters... and that is big time stuff; ship alone is 6-7 bil ISK and it takes quite a while to train to one.