Mining Profit: Where does it come from?

I marvel at the lack of understand of the Eve mining cost structure. And no your cost of ore mined is not what some one else will pay you.

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Try moon ore mining.

Cost? You mean value?

And yes. Something is only as valuable as someone is willing to pay for it. But I expect you have your magical way of calculating that “minerals I mine are cheaper (free)” or “minerals I mine have more value”.

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Yes the lack of understanding continues…

And no the value of something is not determined by what some one else will pay. You’ve managed to conflate cost, value and price. Hint: the words are spelled different because…they…wait for it… they mean different things!

Each post I’m tempted to explain it to y’all, but it would take too long and I make more isk as things stand. Besides, with great wisdom comes great sorrow and I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.

The value of something is from what you can gain out of it, price is what you can get for selling your item

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I think a lot of people mine because

  1. they can do it semi afk
  2. they can scale it
  3. they can do it in Rorquals
  4. combine 1-3, but probably 1 and 3 should not be combined.

On the other hand 30 mil a day, 30 day a month is 900 mil, probably watching Netflix

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Say high to ganker who doesn’t care about CONCORD.

Of course in large nullsec alliances they probably can actually get away with AFK. One killmail on one of their miners and a bunch of hunters are coming down hard on the perpetrator, which deters most hunters.

Is someone who kills lone ships in nullsec alliance also a “ganker”?

The problem for the single miner are, that they are due to the scaling issue now competing with a large amount of other miners and that drives the prices down.

You could argue the same for PVE content with the amount of ISK being generated, but PVE is harder to scale than mining.

Everytime I’m in that highsec belt, mining Veldspar I argue with myself if my electricity bill is worth mining this stuff honestly :pensive: I could probably safe electricity, buy plex, buy those ores and be more efficient that way which is sad.

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Hi TiberianSun…

If you are undocked in a ship of some kind and you become the victim of an overwhelming surprise attack in EVE, you have been ganked.

A gank is an ambush, pure and simple. Whether it’s for fun, loot, tears – whatever – you have been stealthily and suddenly attacked by someone who wanted to blow up your ship.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Null, Highsec, Lowsec, or Wormhole Space; the only differences relevant to these locations, are your expectations. You have still been ambushed.

That’s my view, anyway.

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Mining is not the most profitable endeavor in EVE. I think it’s an activity many of us measure in “fun/hour” rather than in ISK, but of course we like to be profitable, and mining can bring in quite a bit of money.

In fueling my obsession with spreadsheets, I’ve figured out that minerals are very often worth more per m³ than raw or compressed ore, in a lot of cases. That’s where the money is, in my experience.

From there it becomes a challenge of how quickly and efficiently you can mine. I’ve done as much as half a billion worth of minerals from moon ore in a single Covetor in a week, without fully maxed skills (though I’m close). I was in an alliance with someone who pulled a billion a month in a Venture.

If you’re pulling in more ISK than you spend in a given time period, then you’re ISK positive, or profitable. If you have fun, then you’re profitable with regard to the intangible. If you can find a steady income with mining to fuel the other things you want to do in the game, then you’re profitable.

Getting to those nine-digit numbers per day is largely a matter of skills, ships, fits, and fleets. Team up with an Orca or Porpoise, run an efficient mining barge, maybe do some multiboxing, and you could get to 100m a day–better if you’re in nullsec under the right conditions.

Of course, finding the right ores helps, too, and knowing where to sell your minerals once you’ve had them reprocessed can increase your gains substantially. Keeping on top of your cycles, alignment, boosts, and scanners can all help to make your mining more efficient.

I’ve found drones to also be an often underappreciated aspect of mining. Increasing drone efficiency has increased the amount of ore I can mine in a given time, enough that when I have four drones instead of five, I notice the difference.

I’m pretty sure the only way I’m going to get to 100m per day is to either mine with the intensity of a full-time job, or multibox with an alt. I personally don’t care for multiboxing, though it’s growing on me.

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It baffles me that people consider multiboxing increase in income. Isk per character is the same and isk requirements (if we talk about plexing those character with isk) are scaling accordingly.

You might be making more isk but you also lose more isk to sustain all of those alts.

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Not w/o it’s own risks, even in hi. :roll_eyes:

No, that is the economic definition of “value”.

Whether or not you sell it for isk, trade it for something else, etc.

There is no personal or sentimental value in economics.

Someone clearly does not understand economics.

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There’s some truth, occasionally, in the adage “You have to spend money to make money.” If you can sustain a main and limp an alt or two along to work with it, you can make more ISK than if you just use a main.

I’m not a fan of multiboxing because I have issues between my ears that would detract from the fun for me if I multiboxed, but several of my corpmates are leaps and bounds ahead of me in the amount of ore they’re able to mine.

Yes, those alts cost an initial fee in real-world cash and ISK, but they eventually recover from that loss and make a profit, especially since they’re not necessarily skilling those alts to do a multitude of things beyond what they need them for.

You might spend 10b ISK–to pull a number from thin air–to get a main and a couple alts skilled sufficiently, but eventually you’ll mine and sell more than 10b in ore or minerals if you persist–at which point it becomes an ISK positive endeavor.

Ultimately, the metric that matters is entirely subjective: fun/hour. If it wasn’t fun, it wouldn’t be popular. I get all giggity when my mining modules get over 34 m³/s with boosts; I can imagine what it would be like to effectively have 68 or 102 m³/s. That is fun for my friends who multibox.

I don’t. I make same isk per character. You don’t get more m3/s on a one character by having more characters around it.
It don’t matter if I make 15 mil/h using one character or 150 mil/h using 10 character when I need to put same amount of real life time to earn plex.

And yes. I exclude skill farming as part of income since it’s not a mining

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So I tested your theory and called my neighbor offering him $10 for his house. And he turned me down. I said your house is only worth what someone else will pay for it. I’m willing to pay $10 what’s your problem?

I’m some one. I was willing to pay $10.

Seems that little quip about being worth what someone else will pay doesn’t quite cover the subject very well. Seems like real life is a little more complicated than clichés.

The phrase is manifestly inaccurate plus it conflates price and value.

Someone else is willing to pay more. And you still haven’t determined if he’s willing to sell it.

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The only miners who get ganked are bad miners. And no, null/low/WH is PvP, not ganking.

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By what standard? What are you mining with? Who are you mining with? Are you using an Orca alt and a Covetor alt… or are you using a Badger alt hauling for a Venture alt??

Are you mining for 30 min a day??

Your conclusion that it takes 4 days to mine the resources for a Megathron are only true if you set yourself up for it… even in Highsec.