Science & Industry

Aye, I have heard the "Dude, you're playing solo in a multiplayer game??" time and again. Very seriously, I knew what I was getting into before I even launched the game for the first time in 2006. I spent about a week reading up on the game before deciding to try it out. I think it is a testament to EVE's versatility that I have been successfully playing the game solo for 9 years so far.

Then again, I had a lot of fun playing with others over the years as well - it is just not my main playstyle.

And to come back on topic:



Casual for me is not having to spend hours researching every detail. That's why I have developed a small custom-made industry tool that knows all my blueprints, and that I can use to give me a list of required materials and costs for a batch of different items - with or without invention. Then I just thave to buy all I need (agreed, blockade runners ftw), and start the jobs.

The problem lately was merely that the market prices were lower than I could build my items. That is why I wanted to know if it is still possible to compete at all - now that I do, I realize I will have to do a little research to find other items to build that are profitable. The upside is that I will have to add new items to my blueprints collection, and thus become more flexible.



I'm not so sure they are all working for free - if you have the infrastructure to build either in lowsec at a POS or in null and bring your items to market, you have quite an advantage. Granted, on smaller items like modules the difference should not be that substantial, but at the margins for most T2 items it can play a role.

Then again, it is quite possible many industrialists out there just do not take all costs into account. If you do not have to buy all materials you tend to forget they come with a cost nontheless.

you are not playing solo if you are buying from and selling to other players.

about the whole trading vs industry thing:

it doesn't matter where your profit actually comes from, as long as you KNOW where it comes from.

it's not exactly hard to find people willing to sell ore and other ressources at 10-20% below jita. but that's usually at the arse of the universe.

jita ressources to jita end product should be your benchmark. that's actual industry profit.

everything else (cheaper ressources, markup on end product) is a trading and/or hauling profit.

if a major part of your profit comes from things that are not industry, you should seriously consider switching over to that activity.

When I started in industry, I wanted to be vertically integrated - involved in every aspect of the production process. It worked for a while but the time investment required to harvest my own materials grew at the same rate as my business - it wasn't sustainable. I am still self sufficient for P2 and make my advanced components but the other stuff is purchased.

I use the in game industry tool to check profitability. My costs are below "average" so I'll be paying a bit less than the cost shown by the tool and I use the selling price it provides as my floor price. Other than that, I don't pay much attention to the numbers - I'm playing a game, not running a business. At the end of the month, I usually have enough surplus cash to PLEX multiple character training for a couple of accounts and that tells me I'm doing something right!

My industrial operation is concentrated in my own 1 player corporation but my main is in a different player corp and I have a couple of characters in NPC corps so I can continue operations uninterrupted during a war. Solo and social are not mutually exclusive.

You need to distinguish between market and industry profit to make sure the industry part is earning isk instead of loosing part of the trading profit. This is the number 1 reason many items are sold at lower prices than you can make it. Instead of earning 2b/month from trading you "earn" 1b from manufacturing and at the same time screw others trying to get into manufacturing

I've tried selling in Amarr, Dodixie and Hek. I buy stuff in Jita but you can usually get better margins in any of the other regional hubs. I also learned the hard way that a cloaked Blockade Runner can be blown up approaching the Jita dock - the smaller hubs seem to be a lot safer! I dropped Amarr some time ago because it was farthest from my base and I didn't want to invest the time and effort to manage 3 markets. Right now Hek is my best market but that too is cyclical - if you asked me a few months ago I would have said Dodixie.

I'm still on the steep edge of the learning curve and realize that "location" is one of the few ways a merchant can add value in a pure commodity market like Eve. Right now I have several projects on the go to diversify my gameplay but that is definitely something I am interested in investigating once I have some time.

I make a profit selling T2 and some T1 stuff, I sell in Jita, I don’t really ponce about sourcing from different places, I get together a bulk amount of what I want, order it, public courier to where I build, build it, public courier it back. The amounts are not fantastic, I am not maximising isk per hour but I am making some isk.

Do I want more. Yes, could I plex my account, probably not. But I am looking at industry to pay for pvp loses, which it does because I don’t fly expensive stuff. Now if I wanted to fly expensive stuff I would maybe need to be more focused on the details, but as long as I research enough to know if I buy this at A and ship it to B and then build it and ship it back to A it give me a profit, then I am happy.

In my experience the big difference between POS and station is time. POS labs and arrays get a huge bonus for time efficiency. For making T2 modules this doesn't matter much - you're only saving an hour or two per run but it really makes a difference for research, copying and invention. Those tasks will take days longer in a station. You also must use a POS if you want to invent or manufacture T3 ships and subsystems.

I took my POS down during a war and decided not to put it back up. I've since skilled a couple more characters for invention and don't miss the POS. Station is actually easier to work in because you don't need to physically move stuff between labs & arrays to get things done.

There's no such thing as an item that is sold below cost unless in the very rare case of a liquidation attempt for one reason or another.

I think you're forgetting how to actually calculate cost. Just because tritanium sells for 5.12 isk for example (random number I pulled out of my ass don't take it literally) doesn't mean the cost of an item that inputs ten tritanium costs 51.2 isk each. Tritanium is in all actuality a FREE item if you can mine it yourself - or reprocess other items you loot into it.

If you think an item is being sold "below cost" you're probably either seeing liquidation (if it's just a momentary sell listing) or if it's consistent, they're probably getting the input elsewhere for cheaper than you are.

For the low price of ten billion isk you can be the proud owner of one combat ready atron :)

The trouble is that there's no way to "short," mineral prices other than building things with your own under par. It is possible that the MIMAF producer is simply witless and doesn't realize the forgone profit (in which case, they're effectively dumping materials on the market to a kind of buy order - the demand for their module or ship priced under the market-sourced-cost), but it's also the case that, even if he knows what he is doing, that he realizes an intangible "profit," from the act of producing and selling things from the ground up. At which point he is perfectly willing to operate "at a loss," and subsidize his business with trade or missions, etc. What these players are engaged in is a kind of subsidy to their customers, but one they enjoy giving.

Incidentally, you can usually tell around patch-time that a surplus of production alts have been put to use speculating because thereafter we see predictable spikes in production at costs far exeeded by par. That is, they spend a lot more than would usually be necessary to produce things they believe will appreciate due to patch changes and new demand. So the curiosity of producing things and selling them at a great distance from material market value is one of the few ways to access a speculative short or long position on the market itself or at least market prices of produced modules relative to mineral production.

tl;dr: Minerals they mine aren't "free," but the miner can act as though their productive activity and consequential value is zero or even negative and they would do this because they value the activity itself and are willing to compete to subsidize the players who buy their wares below the mineral value floor. Now, off to check the hubs for stuff to reprocess.