Science & Industry

Hi to everyone!

I run lvl2 Missions and I get alot of Scrap (Weapons and Modules) that I cannot do anything with them.

I have trained some skills for refining and got the Refinery Foreman certificate.

Wondering what is more profitable, to sell the items at the market or Refine them for Ores and then sell them?
I don't manufacture anything, just Mission Running and PI for now so I don't think that the ores will be useful for me.

Thanks for your time!

Generally, all Meta 0 up through Meta 2 is worth more as minerals then the effort required to sell it on the market. There are a few exceptions to that rule though.

Meta 3 & 4 - almost always worth selling at the market.

Scrapmetal Processing skill is optional, as long as you get your other refining skills up to the point where you get 99.5% efficiency in a 50% refinery station. So Refining V and Refine Efficiency V would get you 99.5%. Only having Refine Efficiency at IV cuts your yield to 97.9%.

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Refining

(Scrapmetal Processing skill has Metallurgy V as a pre-req, which is a very long skill train for anyone who doesn't do BPO research or T2 invention stuff.)

There's also a set of implants used to boost refine efficiency ... that could probably help that RE4's 97.9% a fair bit.

IIRC, RE5 should put you to 100% refine in NPC stations... or thereabouts (maybe half a percent off?) for a long time, I remember having Refining 5, RE 3, and ore processing 2 or 3 and having solid 100% yield (less tax).

With Refine V and Refine Eff V, you get 99.5% on reprocessing in 50% refinery stations. The Scrapmetal Processing skill only takes you from 99.5% to 100.0%.

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Refining

The easy way to remember it for 50% stations is that you need 11 "points" in the three associated skills (Refine, Refine Eff and the ore-specific skill) in order to get 100% yields.

When you get out into areas which don't have 50% refine stations, then you really need to crank up the skills and use implants.

In general I'd haul stuff back to a market hub. Then hit sell on every thing. If a good buy order wasn't available in terms of price and regional average I'd melt it down. Other wise I sell it then and there. The except is if the item was worth a fair bit then I'd put a longer term sell order on it to maximize profit on the item. A 10% difference in a handful of 3k items isn't important, but 10% with one 1M item is.


ps- I used to make a decent isk by putting buy orders in the more remote mission hubs for common drops that had an average price below what I could refine it for. The market for cargo scanners for example is 99% people breaking them down as they are worth more broken down than selling. Most mission runners tend to just sell for what ever the buy order it.

Be sure to haul the junk you intend to melt down to the location you want to sell it at before melting it down. With a few exceptions, (cap booster charges especially), modules are generally far more dense than minerals. Just be sure your destination has a 50% refinery and is a corp you have some standings with. Ideally 6.67 or higher.

To save time, do this infrequently. Built up a large amount of junk before trying to liquidate it so that you spend less time sorting, hauling and setting up market orders.

Trade hubs are good for selling minerals, but often so are many other factory stations scattered around the region. Check the factory line activity to find the most popular/busy factory stations convenient to your location and you may even get a better price if you are patient with sell orders.

Patience and smart use of sell orders has its rewards, both for minerals and for the meta items you don't melt down. Check out the market activity for an item and if its average price is close to its sell price, then you may want to use a sell order. If the average is closer to its buy price, then you'll probably just want to sell it immediately.