Loyalty Points and Isk/Hour

Barnabas_Fresante · February 22, 2019, 6:25pm

So lots of people talk about their isk/hour in various activities: mission-running, mining, incursions, what-have-you. And we all know that it can be very tempting to ignore certain aspects of the time element of that equation, i.e. saying that you pull 120mill/hour in combat explorations because you got a good drop in a phi outpost, but you fail to record the fact that it took you an hour and a half to come across that particular combat site in the first place.

So my question is how people generally report their isk/hour when it comes to activities involving loyalty points. Having recently gone into level 4 missions and trying to figure out the intricacies of effectively turning loyalty points into isk, I’ve consistently read that 1k isk/loyalty point is essentially the baseline for acceptable conversion. But the actual process of turning that loyalty point into isk is not as simple as merely clicking “sell all.” In fact, using sell orders is almost certainly going to take considerable time, especially because at that point you’re competing against many others doing the same thing you are. This being the case, do people generally just use the 1k isk/loyalty conversion rate (or whatever they’re confident they can pull, even if they haven’t actually done it yet) as a given when they report their regular earnings from whatever activity it is that rewards loyalty points?

I ask this because in my efforts to cash in on my first batch of loyalty points, I found an ammo type that had high turnover at a good conversion rate with only a few sell orders already in place. So I put my own sell order up and managed to sell a bit and then all of a sudden four more sell orders went up and then someone else put up an order with a huge quantity to sell, undercutting all the rest of the orders by a good 20%. Now at that point, if I .01 under him, I might be at the head of the queue again, but the price has just tanked… then again, since he put such a high quantity of items up, if I maintain my original price, it might take a long time for his stuff to sell out and the price to come back up…

So when I look at that LP/Isk conversion when I first get the LP, I say that I’ve earned a certain amount per hour, but in reality, when I tried the actual conversion, my return is going to be far lower than projected.

So how do you guys view all this? As an aside, I’m not asking anyone to share trade secrets, but if what I’ve described shows that I’m going about this stupidly, please offer me some correction! But in general, how do you calculate the realistic income of these activities?

Part of this is so I can have realistic expectations for my own endeavors. Another part of it is so I can have a better understanding whether other people are simply blowing smoke when they make outrageous claims of how much they earn per hour through loyalty points, because from the limited experience I’ve seen so far, it seems that the process of making the LP/isk conversion actually happen might be a little more time intensive than just earning the LP in the first place…

Piotr_Leusten · February 22, 2019, 7:16pm

Welcome to market pvp…

I track my daily profit/loss, and have a ballpark figure for my daily playing time. So figuring out my long-term ISK/hour is a simple matter of dividing my average daily profit by my average daily playing time. If you’re actually playing the market, I think that’s the only way you can do it – the average over a reasonable period of time (like one month minimum).

Alternatively you can skip the whole market bit and just sell to the buy orders. Makes the calculation a lot cleaner.

Barnabas_Fresante · February 22, 2019, 7:20pm

This makes a lot sense! Thanks for the longer term perspective.

Sadly, though quite understandably, selling to buy orders is much harder to do and get anywhere close to that 1000isk/LP point, though I guess that’s the price you pay for instant payouts. I’ve perused fuzzworks and seen where it’s possible, but that would mean grinding standing with a different corporation. Not sure I’m willing to do that just yet.

Ms_Steak · February 22, 2019, 7:27pm

Look at BPCs of modules like faction damage mods, prop mods, etc. BPC require some extra hoops like purchasing tags and manufacturing, but the profit is much higher even with buy orders. Hotcakes like ammo, cap batteries and other popular “instant buy from LP” stuff - all will have about 1k/lp rate or lower.

Nicolai_Serkanner · February 23, 2019, 9:10am

Yesterday I had less, tomorrow I have more.

Terak_Romaller · February 23, 2019, 4:11pm

People get confused by the price estimates in the inventory and reality. The only value an item has is what someone is willing to pay it for (Free Market 101 - an often overlooked lesson). Basically the buy order price.
The sell order price, if accepted, is the buy price plus a premium for instant fulfilment.

Anyway, back to the original question from @Barnabas_Fresante, what is a good approach to LP conversion: First, understand that the only guaranteed value is against Buy orders. Believing, and mentally spending, the Sell price is the road to madness. Like planning your retirement based on a lottery win rather than your savings.

However, there are reasonable bets - some items have a reasonable turnover; and the difference between buy and sell isn’t too bad. You aren’t going to make a fortune from the instant fulfilment premium, but you will make a sale in a reasonable length of time. And if you need the ISK dumping to a buy order isn’t going to feel terrible.
This is where the “history” tab in the market is useful.

ISK per hour.
It’s not all life in New Eden is about - enjoyment is important. Would you in the real world prefer a job you barely tolerate but that paid huge amount, never giving you time to enjoy it - you work and die with the “satisfaction” of a big number next to a bank account somewhere. We could write “the bank loved him” on your grave. We’ll, the bank might write it - they might miss you…
Or would you prefer a job that pays enough, where you enjoy it and it gives you time to enjoy life and the company of others. “Eve isn’t a game, it’s somewhere you live” isn’t a bad motto.

Mission running: worth bookmarking as you go through each part of a mission then heading back with a salvage ship - the Noctis is brilliant, but a tractor/salvager fitted destroyer is a cheap and effective option. A Level 4 mission can give you more in salvage than the LP and ISK payout - for a little more effort.

Industry - especially at a higher level; T2 including invention all at high volume, is skill intensive and takes research (there are items that are hard to make any profit on). But a little low level industry on commonly used items can produce a slow steady - if not massive - income.

Ultimately, live in New Eden to enjoy yourself, not to try and grind for a largely irrelevant number.

Anderson_Geten · February 23, 2019, 5:25pm

I’ll share you my personal protocole. You should start with the “best offer” only at first, and when you have more data on several agents you can look at “selling to sell values”

Let’s take an example of sisters of eve core probe launcher wich is worth 1300 isk/lp at the moment. it requires 1 core probe launcher, 9M6 isk, 14.4k lp and produces a sister core probe launcher.
I round up all the values down(so I actually have better benefit) for ease of numbers. You should not.

Looking at best offers

You have to define a conversion function : sobo, boso, avg .

SOBO is direct mode : I buy my items from direct Sell Orders, I sell my product to direct Buy Orders. I remove the tax from the product.
core probe launcher is sold in Jita for 11k isk
sister core probe launcher is bought in jita for 28.5M isk
assuming you have 2% tax from caldari navy that means 28.5 * 0.98 > 27.9M
You remove the cost of the lp offer, that is 11k from the core probe launcher and 9M6 from the offer : gain is 27.9-9.6-0.011 >18.3 M .
Then you divide by the LP cost : 18 300 / 14.4 > 1272 isk/LP
Now if you want to exchange more LPs, you need to set your qtty of LP.
Let’s say it’s 100k. 100/14.4 = 16.94 so you want to exchange 17 offers. That requires now 17 core probe launchers and you sell 17 sister core probe launcher.
ATM the price is the same, but if there was less than 17 core probe launchers on the first buy order, that means you would make less benefit, so the isk/LP would be lower.
The sobo is the minimum value of the offer you can have.

BOSO is long term : you PLACE buy orders for items, you place sell orders for products.
You have to add the broker fee to the cost of items.
If you sell the sister core probe launcher in jita for 30.7M then you need to remove eg 5% in broker +tax so the gain is actually 30.7 * 0.95 >29.1M . assuming the probe launcher T1 are free, then it’s a BOSO value of 29100/14.4 >2k isk/lp
Now the issue is that maybe nobody buys this. So you need to factor in the daily quantity sold. if you look at the history of the sister core probe launcher you notice it’s around 500 unit/day, that is 500*14.4 = 7.2 M LP/day in transaction. Since we set our daily LP transaction to 100k, we are far above. If we had set the daily LP to 10M, then we would have needed to factor in that quantity, personally I use the ratio of isk/lp that is for the ratio of L I want (in that case, 2 000 * 7.2/10 )
The BOSO is the maximum isk/h of an offer. You can’t do more than this value (on long term) with given lp/day.

AVG is the average prices over last month. Typically this looks like the estimated value in the game. You use this value as long term orders, so don’t forget the broker fees.
When avg is close (or lower than) the SOBO this means you should buy to sobo. When avg is close to BOSO this means you should buy to BOSO.

Selling to set value

Once you have the offers that are interesting and you want to sell to long-term orders, DONT PLAY THE 0.01 ISK GAME.
You choose an interesting value of isk/lp that is achievable and you put orders at that value. personnally I sell all my orders at 3k isk/lp.
Let’s consider the sister core probe launcher.
Assuming the price of probe launcher T1 is 1M (for easiness) in direct orders.
I need a benefit of 14.4k*3k = 43.2 M isk per sister core probe launcher.
I then add the cost of the item(1M) and the cost of the offer (9.6M isk) so I should get back 43.2+1+9.6 = 53.8M Since I sell to long term I need to add the 5% tax+broker : 53.8/0.95 < 56.7M isk per sister core probe launcher.

So I place 7 SO of sister core probe launcher at 56.7M isk each.
Of course that’s not a good idea because sobo of this offer is 2k . But is it really ?

Agent multipliers index

Once you have the raw isk/LP of an offer, you actually need to assign it to an agent.
For this you need to have an idea of how much LP/h you gain from missions. Because if you gain twice the number of LPs, you actually can sell your LPs for half the isk/LP and still have same profit.

so if eg I go in lanngisi and I assume I can do 100k lp /h , and compare it to another soe agent for which I can do 50k lp/h, and I set the default index is 1 for that other agent, then the index of lanngisi becomes 2 : so I multiply the SOBO and BOSO of the offers by 2 in lanngisi, and I require not 3k isk/lp for offers from lanngisi but only half (1.5k), which is actually lower than the sobo value (was 1.2k before index, so 2.4 k after index), which means I should rather sell my offers at sobo OR set my isk/LP to a greater value.

Of course finding the agents index is up to you (and actually require some experience and data). This may or may not require to look at constellation geography, cherry pick missions, and you may actually factor in the raw isk/h you gain from missions on that agent.

Aves_Asio · February 23, 2019, 6:55pm

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/lpstore/

lol where?

Anderson_Geten · February 23, 2019, 7:06pm

lol why ? It’s an example.

Aves_Asio · February 23, 2019, 7:11pm

Because sisters probe launcher is aprox. 1.4k isk/lp in jita and ammar

Anderson_Geten · February 23, 2019, 7:37pm

you need to read the post completely before you start answering it.

Anyhow I won’t tell you what exactly and where I sell.

Residium_Fall · March 1, 2019, 11:36am

Fuzzworks LP site -> Find best buy orders -> Sell to buy orders.

Lifes too short to haggle over a few million

Anderson_Geten · March 1, 2019, 12:40pm

does not work at all.

Often the orders in steeve site are WAY off. I mean, a 3k isk/lp can be shown as negative isk/lp.

Plus how do you find best orders ? You open all the webpages ? Life too short to do that ■■■■.

Residium_Fall · March 1, 2019, 1:31pm

There’s only three LP stores per faction, endlessly replicated through all the corps within it. The Tech variant with BPCs always have the best Isk/LP bar the occasional short term market changes. Could check SOE and Thukker too if you’re that way inclined, it’ll take you all of five minutes to double check with an Alt/Eve Marketeer. That said they all pay around the same for the best BPC so pick whichever is closest/has two agents in station/whatevers important to you and have at it. It’s really not that complicated.

I mean if you’re seriously considering moving all your crap from agent to agent for that extra 50 isk/LP good luck to you but in that case there’s gonna be some effort involved, you know?

Kezrai_Charzai · March 1, 2019, 1:43pm

I personally don’t fuss over ISK/hr, or even pay much attention to it. I research ‘what activities pay reasonably well’, then I do those activities. My characters are set up to do whatever activities they specialize in.

My ‘earning activity’ characters aren’t my ‘selling activity’ characters. If the activity involves selling drops/items, I contract that stuff over to a trading character. Even a single account can have 3 different characters focussed on 3 different activities.

I also don’t have the time to sit in Jita, .01 ISKing, nor any interest in doing so. If I have to sell to realize my gains, I will look for a lesser used mission hub, or secondary trade hub, where the trading isn’t quite so frantic but things will nevertheless sell. I also don’t rush it… I can earn on one char, contract it over, list it for sale on trading char, and wait weeks for it to sell, if that’s what it takes.

For me it’s more about setting up an ‘income generating stream’, not about cashing in on individual items. Once I have sufficient ISK for my immediate needs, I don’t need to micro-manage the process. I can pile up loot on a char for a month, contract it over, spend the next month updating trades 2-3 times per week while continuing to earn the next batch of loot.

It’s not efficient, and it’s not maximum profit… but on the other hand it lets me get on with playing the game rather than monetizing my inventory efficiently.

Terak_Romaller · March 1, 2019, 2:09pm

As @Kezrai_Charzai says - sweat the optimisation of profit too hard and it stops it being fun.
Accept a slower, steadier income stream rather than instant gratification.
I’ve normally got about a third of my wealth tied up in sell orders - they’ll come my way sometime and in the meantime I’ve got working capital to fund ships and fun things.

Anderson_Geten · March 1, 2019, 2:15pm

Which thukker BPC ?

so why are you trying to find best orders agents if you don’t intend to change agent?

Anderson_Geten · March 1, 2019, 2:19pm

Did you try it before you talk ?

What the fck are you even talking about ?
“instant gratification” ? that’s what you have when you sell to bad offers. You want instant gratification of seeing your wallet increase.

Sorry but I rather farm 1H for 400M than 4 .

The_Larold · March 1, 2019, 2:39pm

Lots of good advice already. I’ll summarize my thoughts, adding and mixing with what’s already been said.

Don’t worry about _ absolute _ ISK / hour, but consider _relative _ ISK / hr.

For reasons you outlined clearly in your post, it’s impossible to clearly and consistently arrive at the “true” hourly rate of an activity. Overhead, market factors, hauling, etc. It’s just not accurately predictable.

So instead, I choose to pay attention over the long haul, make note of generally-accepted hourly rates, and then COMPARE them to each other.

Random examples: Level 4 missions will net you more than solo high-sec mining. Incursions will net you more than Level 4 high-sec missions. (Assuming by L4 missions you mean kill-everything-loot-salvage-repeat)

Just keep walking "up the of hourly rates until you see an activity you are no longer interested in.

Truth be told, the logic of the matter is this: The most profitable ISK / hr activity is purchasing PLEX for real currency, and then selling the PLEX to buy orders. This is because, even at minimum wage in most countries where Eve is played, the amount of time you will spend in real life doing some task to earn $$ will far outpace any specific ISK/hr activity in Eve.

This is the key reason why I personally never worry about absolute ISK / hr.

As others have stated, just look at buy orders to calculate the value of LP items
Do a search for @DeMichael_Crimson 's The Plan. An outstanding document that helps you gain faction standing with all 4 major empire factions, which in turns gets you access to running L4’s for LOTS of different corps.
Do all the right things to maximize your ISK / hr income: Appropriate social skills to V, run in 0.5 systems, pick your faction wisely, work The Plan, consider using Red Frog’s bag-o-loot to insta-cash your L4 loot, consider training to Marauders if your L4 style is a clear-all approach.

I will warn you of this as a career L4 mission runner for the past 9-10 years; it’s not nearly the maximum isk/hr paying activity in Eve. (Although if you do them in a… very special way… the income skyrockets.)

Good luck. Sorry if some of my points weren’t directly on-point to your OP.

Daichi_Yamato · March 1, 2019, 3:06pm

The only way to be realistic about it is to do it many times whilst recording everything (including brokers fees and sales tax) and then divide it by the hours spent on it.

But appreciate the market is always moving. So when it comes to using the market, your result this week will be different to next week. So guesstimations are the best you’re going to get when quoting isk per hour.

As others have said, don’t worry about isk/hour too much. Just make sure you’ve got a good stable income for what you want to do in the game. Some people enjoy squeezing every bit of wealth out of something, but it can lead to quick burnout if you don’t have a passion for it.

It’s usually better to do something fun or easy for 3 hours making half the isk/hour than spend an hour doing something tedious and complex before logging out because you got sick of it.