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Skill Discussions

 
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Convert an old alt or train a new one?
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Babi Face
#1 - 2012-01-14 05:31:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Babi Face
I have an old raven alt who's been my go-to highsec income source since I moved out to null (and before anyone asks, yeah the truesec is awful and I actually do need the empire alt). To make a long story short, i've gotten real tired of running missions and incursions on him. I want to try something more hands-off that I don't need to sit down and run all the time so I plan to get into trading.

The problem is I can't decide whether to convert my old carebear to a trader or to sell him and train a trader in his place. On one hand, the immediate income of selling the alt would bring me a shortfall profit and probably help my trader get going. On the other hand, my carebear alt has great standings with a lot of places I could potentially trade and as I understand it, that would make me a lot more competitive in the long run.

I know it's probably a question of taste, trade style, and marginal benefits, but I would like to get some opinions on this before I make a hasty and possibly ill-informed decision. TL;DR: New trading character with zero standings with some billions isk in hand or Old mission character adapted to trading with good standings an only a few hundred mil in hand.
CausticS0da
Shrubbery Acquisitions
Blohm and Voss Shipyards Alliance
#2 - 2012-01-14 07:46:50 UTC
Don't sell your character. If you're good at trading you'll make the money quickly anyway and it won't take long to max out trade skills. If something goes wrong you can fall back on pve.
Babi Face
#3 - 2012-01-14 18:04:25 UTC
That was my gut feeling too.
Kagan Storm
Doomheim
#4 - 2012-01-14 18:20:20 UTC
After everithing he has done for you you wana sell him. Shame on you..... Sad

My ego is the the size of my carriers jump range.
Babi Face
#5 - 2012-01-14 18:22:00 UTC
Kagan Storm wrote:
After everithing he has done for you you wana sell him. Shame on you..... Sad


OopsOopsOopsOopsOopsOopsOopsCryCryCryCryCryCryEvilEvilEvil
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#6 - 2012-01-14 20:16:52 UTC
I'd train trading on an existing character. It doesn't hurt them, since ultimately every character needs to buy and sell something sometime.

I recommend Accounting 5, Broker Relations 5, and Margin Trading 4 for every character.
Emma Royd
Maddled Gommerils
#7 - 2012-01-14 22:02:46 UTC
Remap. Implants and you'll soon have the trade skills up to a reasonable level. Some are more important than others, Accounting, Broker Relations both cut down the cost of selling, so are the main ones to get first, then up the number of sell orders you can handle with Trade, Retail, Retail 5 gives you about 60 available orders.

The distance ones are optional to start, they're more of a luxury to start with, but that's my opinion, others will have different ones, depending on how you want to play the market.

Other useful skills would be able to fly T2 Industrials, and Freighters for shifting stuff around if that's your thing.

You should be able to get quite good at trade skills fairly quickly, then spend time to tweak the others to suit what you want to do.

The standings will help so definitely keep your current char and re-train rather than roll a new one. Even if you can't/don't want to remap.

Even with my non-charisma alt (17,24,18,24,16) to get Trade, Retail, Accounting, Broker Relations to 5 is 43 days, slap in a +4 charisma and it's down to 39, add +4 mem and willpower and it's 35d16h so on the grand scale of things it's not too bad.
Lupic Centarian
#8 - 2012-01-14 22:10:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Lupic Centarian
I docked a new trade alt in Jita 4-4 about a year ago and haven't undocked since. It hasn't been a cash cow, but makes me some isk for close to nothing in the effort department. Definitely sell the carebear alt and train yourself a trader. If it ends up docked in Jita 24/7 you aren't getting any use out of his sp and the standings are of marginal benefit. Worst comes to worst you can hire a standing grind player/corp to get you some Cal Navy standing then go to the datacenter tag missions for caldari faciton.

The best part about trading is, unlike the rest of things you do in EVE, skillpoints mean about nothing and isk along with your ability to spot good deals/trends means everything. It is a totally diffirent game, one that actually rewards dedication in the short run instead of making you wait for some month-long skill to finish. You can totally max out relavent trading skills in less than a month and have 90% of what you need to station trade in less than a week. Think about that for a second. Let it sink in.