Tried using isk per hour to estimate profit using the TTT manufacturing structure in Perimeter. According to IPH, even with perfect prints, nothing that can be manufactured from a BPO is profitable. The same holds true for invention. I’m just getting back into the game, is this an error with IPH, an artifact of perimeter being such a high production system, or have profits been competed down to zero by low/null/WH that get better efficiency?
Perimeter has a ridiculously high index for virtually everything, which eat into your profits. Have you tried to use other sites like EVE-industry.org or fuzzwork or adam4eve to compare the results? I doubt that low and null have that much influence for the overall profit margins. The increase in material cost and cheaper stockpiles from before the material cost were artificially increased by CCP’s actions play a bigger role.
According to E-I.o, some AF, T2 modules and other things are profitable even if produced in Osmon.
2 Likes
You asking a question or making a statement with that title?
How to Industry
- Use buy orders to buy production materials
- set up buy orders in locations that are convenient for sellers (you can typically pay them less in exchange for the convenience)
- Research your BPO’s ASAP
- Build in stacks of 10
- Use Decryptors for invention when appropriate
- Build out Upwell structures that provide relevant bonuses
- Generally try to avoid building in systems with high industry indexes
- Use sell order to sell finished goods
- Set up sell orders in locations that are convenient for buyers (you can typically charge more in exchange for convenience)
- Sell out Upwell structures to minimize fees and taxes (unless it’s a major market hub, then you might want to stick with the NPC station, as most people will just go to that)
- Train skills to reduce NPC fees if trading out of an NPC station
- Further reduce NPC fees by increasing standing (either do it yourself, or pay @Archer_en_Tilavine’s standing improvement agency to do it for you).
- Not an issue if selling out of a major trade hub, but people like to do one stop shopping (i.e. don’t just stock core probe launchers and expect people to make a special trip just to save 5k isk. Stock exploration frigs, probe launchers, scanner probes, scanning rigs, and so on).
- Use safe hauling practices.
- Identify and alleviate bottlenecks (research slots, industry slots, market slots) by training skills or training up alts.
- I liked to keep one stack of goods in reserve at market. As soon as one stack sold out, I’d put up the next one, and then start building another. That way, I always had those market slots working for me.
- Keep 10% or so of your market slots in reserve. When someone starts trying to undercut you, use those extra market slots to put up additional small orders. When you update them, it will cost you much less to update your order than updating his will cost him. For example, say you have a 10 million unit buy order for veldspar and some starts trying to “overcut” you. Don’t update that 10 million unit order a bunch of times. Instead, create a new 500k order, and update that one until it gets filled. Then create another one. He might start creating small orders as well, but you’d be surprised how many people just give up.
- Be relentless with your competition. Make them feel like they can better spend their time elsewhere, rather than spend it competing with you.
- This strategy is good for smaller trade hubs, where people tend to update their orders right after logging in and/or right before logging off. The bigger trade hubs have a lot more competition, and people tend to update orders more frequently. So this strat isn’t as useful there. Anyway, try to identify competitors and their orders (they’ll generally update all of their orders at the same time, and in alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order). Then put all of those items in the same market quickbar folder. Then, whenever you notice that a competitor is updating orders, you can go right behind him updating all of yours. (The buddy list used to be called the watch list (not to be confused with the fleet watchlist), and would give you alert when people logged on or off -didn’t matter if they had also buddied you or not. It was amazing, as it would basically give you an alert that it was time to update your orders. As it stands now, you have to periodically check in on your orders to still make sure you’re good.)
- Some people can be baited into selling for below production costs. I think this is due to a combination of frustration and using online industry calculators. I, however, made my own spreadsheet, and could easily see production costs for everything I sold. Thus, I could quickly identify if someone went too low in an attempt to stop me from undercutting them, and would just buy all of their ■■■■ and relist it at a higher price.
I’m sure I’ll think of more stuff later. But that’s enough for now.
And no, HS industry is not dead.
21 Likes
With Morphite in the 80K/unit range, T2 industry (except rigs) is problematic - a lot of the products I’ve been building profitably for years are selling below current build cost.
This is temporary - either morphite goes back down or selling prices will adjust to reflect the higher build cost but this is not a particularly good time to be manufacturing T2 - except rigs which are still quite profitable.
I did only T1 high-sec for 5 years in Dodixie and Amarr…made a ton of isk.
Do the time and the profit follows.
2 Likes
I stopped industrial production some time now, not worth doing.
I need 20 more alts to be able to do the invention and manufacturing, just in Jita.
Wait … maybe that’s why it’s dead ¿?
(seriously this may be a temporary decrease in products)
A brilliant reply and really stuff helpful. Well done @Shipwreck_Jones.
A couple of questions, if you don’t mind.
Can you explain this please? I think what you’re saying here is that you should build in 10’s and sell in similar small chunks like this, right? Would you apply this to everything? or just items above a certain value? I s the rationale that this way the price that you set at the point where you send it to market tracks the going rate more closely?
The market has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I’m dyscalculic so go figure. When I’m selling stuff (normally in a trade hub) I’m selecting it in my hanger, right clicking and selecting “Sell This Item” (this is the right way to sell stuff, right?).
Are you basically saying here that you’d eschew trade hubs in favour of more localised selling to save people the hassle of schlepping over to Jita for example? Letting you charge a mark-up for the convenience? How do you decided how much to mark up by?
Could you give an example of what you mean please?
So I know it’s cheeky, and probably against some unwritten rule of EVE etiquette but I figure if you never ask, then you’ll never get … can I have a copy please?
My thoughts exactly.
2 Likes
Maybe there are are better isk/hour activities in EVE, but it is not dead, only more competitive.
1 Like
Maybe try building in a system other than Perimeter.
2 Likes
So building in stacks of 10 has to do with material efficiency. So, if an item normally takes 5 units of trit to build, and you research the BPO to 10 ME, it would technically only require 4.5 units of trit to build. However, industry always requires whole units of production materials. So, if you only built that item one at a time, it will still take 5 units of trit to build. However, if you built them 10 at a time, it would only takes 45 units total, or 4.5 units per item. Now, you could get the same result in building in a stack of 2 in this hypothetical example, but most items require varying amounts of other stuff as well. So, building in stacks of tens always gets rid of the decimal point, and always ensures minimum production costs. Just be aware that the game will never go below 1 unit required. So, at 10 ME, a 2 tritanium material requirement would be reduced to 1.8 units, but a 1 unit material requirement would always be 1, no matter what.
Yeah, a lot of people will gladly pay more to avoid having to make a bunch of jumps to get their stuff.
Setting prices is kind of complicated, but you should consider things like the cost to you, competitor prices, the wealth of your clientele, and your strategy in order to set your initial prices, and then adjust according to what your customers do.
Make sure that you are selling at a price that is worth your time. And if you can’t sell things at a margin that you’re happy with, stop selling it. Don’t tie up your industry and market slots with stuff with a crappy margin. The only exception is if you’re trying to get people to come to your market (i.e. offer one stop shopping). In which case you might not mind a crappy margin on some stuff if you’re making it up on the other things that your customers buy.
Use other people’s prices as an anchor point. Now, do not concern yourself too much with people selling odds and ends out of random stations. Instead, set prices that are competitive with your direct competition. So, if you are selling out of upwell structure by a trade hub, you’d want to have prices that are competitive with that trade hub. If you are selling ammo/drugs/drones 10 jumps away at an incursion focus, set prices that are competitive with the other people selling stuff at that focus. And if no one else is selling there, you can almost name your price. Just be aware that if you set prices too high, players might make the 20 jump round trip rather than pay your inflated prices.
Do your customers have really good isk efficiencies? Well, their time is worth more to them, and they’ll pay higher prices. They may curse you under their breath when they see your premium pricing, but still pay it anyway because the opportunity cost of going to the trade hub is even more. For example, if I make 100million isk an hour, and it takes me 15 minutes to fly to amarr and back, then my opportunity cost of going to Amarr is 25 million isk. So it makes no sense for me to fly to amarr just to save 5 or 10 mil. I’m better off paying your stupid inflated prices, ya bastard, and getting back out there to earn.
Not everyone is looking to turn industry into a full time job. Some people like turning it into as passive an income as possible. Thus, they tend to set higher prices. They might not move as many units, but they’ll make up some of that with their increased margins, and create less work for themselves in the process. For example, lets say I had a product that cost me 1mil isk / unit to make, and I found that I could sell 100 units / day if I sold them at 1.5mil isk. This means I would make 50mil a day off of that item. But, I’d also have to keep that market slot fed with at least 100 units a day. Now lets assume that i could sell 15 units a day with a price of 2.5 mil per unit. Now, I would only be making 37.5 mill per day off of that item in this case, but I’d also only have to replenish my stock about once a week.
Figuring out the maximum amount of money you can make off an item can take some experimentation. So play with prices until (number of units sold) x (profit per unit) = biggest possible number.
And of course, don’t forget about your production bottlenecks (including the amount of time you want to spend doing this). If you can’t keep your market slots filled because your production capabilities can’t keep up, then you are losing out on money. Up your prices until sale volumes reach a point where you can keep up.
Oh, and all of this is moot point if someone is selling the same item out of the same station. In which case, the correct price is probably just below what the other guy is charging. If he’s charging a ridiculous amount, you might want to go even lower, but the nature of Eve’s market mechanics mean that you either always want to be lower than the other guy, or you don’t want to be selling that item because there’s no money in it.
This post contains information about how to haul safely.
Meh. I don’t know about the spreadsheet. If I still did industry, the answer would most certainly be no. I believe that it gives me an advantage over competitors, and giving it to anyone would be kind of like a girl expecting her man not to upload naked pictures of her. Some guys would never do that, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s an awful lot of amateur porn out there -and I doubt that all of it was uploaded with the female’s consent. Anyway, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get back into industry. I probably won’t, but you never know. So, I’m reluctant to give away my advantage, even if I’m not currently using it.
However, I will answer questions about industry spreadsheets to the best of my ability.
5 Likes
Wow. Thanks for another brilliantly informative reply. Deeply appreciated @Shipwreck_Jones, you’re awesome.
That’s probably the most polite way to tell me bugger off I’ve ever encountered, and y’know what I’m all good with that. You can’t blame me for asking, but equally I think refusing is absolutely fine too, and thanks for being so polite about it.
I genuinely appreciate your kind offer. Sadly I’m not even sure that I know where to start with this kind of stuff so I might have to get back to you at some point in the future, or maybe not. < laughs >
Stop producing in parameter. You’ll notice your costs drop significantly.
Yes it is. After ten years, I’ve given up and closed up shop. The Devs are in a race to the bottom at this point, and with the instability in ore, fuel, and new additions to manufacturing requirements, shits circling the drain at this point.
4 Likes
Over the past year and a half, we’ve had a never ending stream of players complaining about various career changes (i.e. mining, brokers fees, ratting, and now industry), claiming that it is screwing over players, ruining the game, and/or leading to a complete economic collapse. And they have been consistently wrong on all the three fronts. Of course, individual players have “been screwed over” because they were slow to adapt and/or made bad decisions, but that’s not the same as screwing over a play style.
Now, I am not completely unsympathetic to those that are resistant to change. Players who are just now finding their footing can feel like the rug has been yanked out from under them, casuals aren’t big into pursuing new strats and opportunities, and some players straight up do not like change. For example, I once watched a GDC about Darkest Dungeon where the lecturer mentioned that their player base is extremely divided on change. Some players expect frequent updates, while others prefer the game to be more static. Needless to say, neither camp is “wrong,” as that is something that comes down to personal preference.
So, I can somewhat sympathize with those that are resistant to change. Unfortunately for those players, however, Eve cannot stand still and survive. Of course, some players will happily play the same exact game for decades on end, but most will eventually get bored and leave if the devs don’t constantly iterate on the game. Waters that stand still will stagnate. And the day CCP stops actively developing Eve will be the day that it truly dies.
Of course, that still leaves the question, how does CCP make both groups happy? Well, there are various things they can do that can help, but ultimately they have opposing desires. So there is no way to make both groups completely happy at the same time. Thus, CCP needs to prioritize the needs of one over the other. For a while, it seemed like they prioritized the needs of those resistant to change (small “c” conservatives), as they feared losing those players. But more recently, however, they’ve seem to have grown some balls, and seem to be prepared to anger and lose them in their pursuit of new player acquisition and the retention of pro-change players. Personally, I think that’s the right move. And I hope CCP does not second guess themselves when they see conservatives complaining. Large and frequent changes are indeed more risky, but it is the only strategy capable of growth. Keeping the game more static might prevent large dips in player population, but it can only result in a slow and steady bleed of vets.
I know you don’t like these particular changes, but I firmly assert that change provides great opportunities for those that can figure out how to take advantage of it. Thus, I suggest that you at least make an attempt to try the early-adopter/speculator/change-is-opportunity mentality, and try take advantage of changes when they come down the pipe. Not only will it help you grow as player, but you might even have more fun as well.
Sorry for the wall of text. Here’s a space potato.
3 Likes
its not about being resistant to change. We are all resistant, even the idiots who scream “adapt or die” and they go on whining when CCP updates the EHPs of freighters.
Every change requires habits modification, and that is what hurts : people invested energy and their time into having habits that suit their gamestyle, and a change that requires to change the habits may render a complete gamestyle impossible. Or make it totally not worth. Or even partially, and it’s the sum of the changes that end up making a gamestyle irrelevant. And it’s even worse in that case, since players needed to adapt every time, for worse gameplay, until they realized they had been fooled into wasting their energy in something that was doomed.
Say, for example, T3C in HS. That’s how DMC became a bitter vet IMO.
But in that case, it’s nothing alike. Industry is perfectly visible from the ESI/SDE (okay not some parts of invention, not the structures state), so this updates actually changes nothing. You ALREADY could not live in autarky in a system before, that’s what the mineral repartition made. Actually now you can live in autarky in HS, building small ships.
2 Likes
For me, this is the key to successful industry in hi-sec.
Don’t forget people who are ganking tend to sell dropped loot to buy orders for quick isk. In regards to build calculations, while iph and online calculation tools are all well and nice, spreadsheets are definitely the way to go. Those tools have pretty much made some people lazy in the way they do things, which leads them to make some losses due to not factoring the actual materials cost and job cost into the calculation of the build cost but rather end up with an estimated one. I’d also comment on returning players as they may have a rather large stock of materials from when they previously stopped playing which decreases their build cost if they follow the older value instead of updating to the new one.
Also, regarding the comment about adding people to the buddy list to keep an eye on them. it was impossible to do so with some people back then as they were always logged in.
dont rly remember january situation,
but for now
- people gona buy “old built ships”, for may be one more month… (until market is depleted)
- ships will be destroyed
- no one want to build new ships… (because process is insane)
- game DIES for real
2 Likes
unfortunately, they moved heavy production to large groups and null entities mostly, small time manufactures just got put out of work for building BS, Caps, and faction hulls.
But eve, eve never dies.
4 Likes