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Everything in Eve has its price

Published on 02. Jul, 2008 ... written by ShardowRhino, Tags: Articles

From the t2 ship armed to the teeth with t2 gear and faction ammo. Be it the wardec against your eternal enemies or newest contracted hit. From the Titan striking fear in the hearts of those fleets unlucky enough to face it to the poses used to carve out an empire. Also the hardwires and boosters designed to give a pod pilot the slightest advantage that can mean victory or humiliating defeat a fate far worse then temporary death. Even the bantam and named mining lasers, or the rifter and projectile weapons purchased by the newest pod pilots to take to the stars in search for fame and riches. “Everything in Eve has its price” is something worthy of being repeated in the cold uncaring void that is Eve.

From the fleets roaming 0.0 fighting for glory, territory and a home to the newest participants to enter FW and everything in-between there is one thing in common. That is the use of the market to acquire the ships and mods needed to further your in game career or leaving your opponent’s a smoldering wreck. With that common bond there is a common issue for those of us that fill the hubs of Eve with the tools of destruction.

This common problem, this issue has been a major annoyance in Eve for me and I know a large number of other Industrialists as well. It has made me want to crack some skulls of the jokers that cause it and break their mother’s favorite tea set.

The problem stems from the level of pure ignorance by some that have the gull to even enter the market place. While I am openly, clearly hostile towards these players if you happen to be one I would like to invite you to read this article in hopes that you will consider what I have to say. It won’t only help other Indies but it will also fatten your wallets as well. Even the non-Industrial players will benefit as goods that are needed will always be in stock and available in a greater number of places with far more stable prices.

The problem is the number of players who short change themselves by selling goods on the market at extremely low prices. Easily solved by buying them out, right? Wrong. while it is possible it tends to require a significant investment. This significant investment is a risky due to the fact that the player you bought out isn’t the only one that can’t be arsed to use a calculator and some common sense. These others as well as the one you bought out will continue to produce goods and sell them thus making the investment a volatile one a best, due to the deluge of cheap goods and eroding profit margins.

Anyone worth a damn on the market will know that having a large stockpile of a particular item, where the prices are on a downward spiral, is bad for business. You want the goods coming in at an equal rate as they are moving out the door. Spending 10mil to buy out a player one day, only to see the value of the goods drop to 8mil hurts and continue to plummet is a nightmare. This is made worse once the new prices have taken hold where several others are selling in bulk make it impossible to reverse the situation by buying them out. Everyone has a breaking point where they have to decide to take a loss or shelve the stock and walk away.

These roving Wal-Marts in space tend to have 1 thing to say in response to the question of “why the FRAK do you do this?!?”. They recite the answer with “because I mined it myself and I have the bpo. Since all I lost was my time I feel I can decide how much my time is worth!” with robotic accuracy. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps we aren’t dealing with a swarm of like minded players but perhaps one poorly designed AI controlling a slew of computers that some how has taken an interest in Eve.

I would like to apologize to such players for what I am about to do and that is burst their warm fluffy little bubble. There is no way to truly say, “I can decide how much my time is worth.”, In the sense that they suggest. You can choose to do nothing in Eve but stare at your ship but that is a choice to pass on making X amount of isk where X is the average amount you could make per hour of activity.

Everyone in Eve has the ability to figure out how much their time in Eve is worth. Its easy since everyone in Eve needs isk, wants it, and dreams it. Take a look at your skills, your ships, your standings with various NPC corps and the security level of space you can operate in without being attacked. All of these things determine how much isk your time in eve is worth, per hour.

Are your skills geared towards combat or Industry? If you said combat then your biggest money makers will be ratting or grinding missions, maybe pirating or even mercenary work. If your skills are industrial in nature your likely to be piloting a barge, refining and producing.

For the combat orientated players your isk per hour average is going to be based on the level of missions you have access to or the sec of space you have connections in. Pirating and Mercs will have a hard time calculating isk per hour based on their chosen paths. However they will have the skills to do missions and ratting and can figure out what they could average if they chose to do so.

First rat or grind missions for an hour for a few days. Simply look over your journal and find the average of isk that you can make ratting or grinding missions per hour over the course of a few days. Ignore loot and salvage as it can vary greatly. For L4s using a single BS you will average at least 10mil an hour. The minimum and maximum will become clear once you have enough missions under your belt as well as experience in using the LP store.

The industrial players, those that mine and produce goods, take a look at your ship and its mining lasers. You will find that the lasers bring in X amount of M3 of ore per cycle. For barge pilots using t1 strip miners you’re likely to bring in around 1,000 M3 per laser per 3 minute cycle. If we are talking about a Coveter with 3x t1 strip miners that is going to average 1k M3 of ore per minute. This gives you 60k M3 per hour. Skills, gang bonuses, implants and drones will modify the numbers obviously.

Once you have figured the amount of ore you pull in per hour you can stop there and find the average going rate for that ore on the market. This is your minimum isk per hour, sort of like minimum wage in RL, you can generate while mining. But this article is about reversing the trend of short changing yourself, take note of the minimum but keep reading.

Before you start producing anything stop and find your maximum amount of isk per hour. Knowing this value will change how you see things when you produce items. You have the ore, now its time to refine, either on your own or through a friend with zero loss. Make a list of the minerals as well as the total number of units. Now open up the market window and find the minerals you have mined and check their prices one at a time.

Finding the “average” going rate of each mineral is easy. Simply look for the highest paying buy order that will take the bulk of your stock. If you check the buy orders paying slightly less you can eyeball the average buy order value of your mineral. This is the lowest you can net for your minerals.

Before you do anything else take a look at 5 of the cheapest sell orders and find the average. Multiply that value by the number of units of the specific mineral to find the maximum value of your stock. While you can sell for a higher price you’re going to be waiting for the other guys to finish selling before you see a cent. Not a good thing unless the other guys are making very little over the highest buy orders, if so they will sell out quickly and make way for those interested in profits.

If you do this for all of the minerals you mined within an hour of mining then you have found the maximum, minimum and average isk per hour of mining. If you’re looking to produce anything at all to sell on the market you need to exceed the max isk/hour value of mining. If you have looked through all of your bpos and can not then stop before making anything. Simply sell your minerals to the highest buy order or shoot for a bit more by putting up a sell order at the price of the highest buy order +10% or more.

The only reason anyone should sell anything on the market is to make isk. The only reason to produce goods and sell them is to what? Make a profit! Again if you can’t sell your goods for more then you could sell the minerals for your losing money so stop. You’re not doing anyone a favor by selling for less then production costs, at least not in the long run and in no great numbers.

You have the minerals and likely a bpo as well. It’s almost pointless to produce off of a raw bpo, which is a bpo straight off the market without any ME research done to it. If you research it be sure to tack on the cost of the public research lab you used onto the value of the bpo. If you used a mobile lab, at minimum look at how long it took to research and find the cost of pos fuel used to power the pos during that time, divide by the number of ME slots available and add it to the cost of the bpo. Its not going to be 100% accurate but it helps get a clearer idea of how much the bpo costs.

At one point I calculated that I would need to sell 40 Caracals in order to finally see a single 0.01isk of true profit. The reason for that is I first had to pay off the total cost of the bpo out of the “profit” per ship sold. The “profit” was the amount of isk that I received that was above the mineral costs + production cost. Yes the npcs do charge you to use their facilities and if your pos has the right mods you need to factor in the slots available and amount of fuel used as well. On the 41st Caracal I would actually make a profit as the bpo+ research costs would be paid off. I doubt a lot of these problematic producers ever factor this into the costs of the goods they sell.

Once you have gotten into production, properly, you can now find the average isk per hour of mining + production. The minimum will be : average of all minerals + factory slot rental costs + 1+% of true bpo costs + 10% . Now the 10% is simply the average profit margin Eve players aim for. You should always look to make more then 10% however if its lower then 10% you should stop production immediately and look for other goods to make.

Shooting for 50% or even 100% profit margins is nothing illegal or morally wrong, especially those of us from capitalist nations! Your “max” isk per hour should be production costs(mineral value + all other costs) + 50%. 50% profit margins can be hard to find but if you start thinking like other players it becomes easier to find areas where such profits can be had

Okay so now you know that its not as simple as mining and buying a bpo and blindly producing an item in order to turn a profit. You know how to find the minimum, maximum and average value of your time in Eve. Now there is absolutely no reason to suggest that you can magically calculate the value of the load of minerals or Iteron full of mods based on how much you “think” your time in Eve is worth.

Every object in the real world has a value that can be calculated and the same is true within Eve. Even if you wanted to simply log in and stare at the screen you can calculate how much you’re paying to do that. You had to pay one way or another to access the game in the first place then divide that by 690 to find the hourly cost to sit and stare. You can even find the absolute isk value of sitting and staring by getting the average of a 30 day GTC and doing the math. 30daysx23hours = 690hours a month. 690/300,000,000.00 isk= 434,782.60 isk per hour to sit and stare at your ship.

I truly hope that those players that have caused those of us in the know so much trouble for so many years have learned something. If you know one of these players I would appreciate it if you pointed them to this article. There is no reason why everyone cannot profit regardless of how they procure, produce or harvest what it is they are selling. All while keeping a sane and stable market value that benefits both sellers and buyers. If there is demand they will buy, if the prices are truly unfair it will be adjusted by another seller.

It is when people, through complete ignorance of all of the factors involved in putting a price tag on a mod or ship, which can destroy the market. That ruins the market aspect of the game. While the market is “pvp” You don’t win on the market by slashing prices, to the point where you are actually taking losses. This is something that needs to be changed and is the reason why I chose it as my first of many topics.