I’ve been back for 4/5/6 weeks or so and am slowing bring my accounts back to life as I commit to staying in the game for a while.
I have some station traders in a few stations but I want to be sure they are setup correctly as so much has changed in the game.
What are the essentials for a station trader now?
What will help costs? Faction and/or Corp Standing?
Also… a related question… whats with the trading station in Perimter? The Buy orders there seem really high but the sale orders less so (relative to Jita).
Is this a player station with low taxes (again relative to jita)?
I used to do regional trading and HS industry, so I’m not an expert on station trading. But, I think I can answer some of your questions.
Well, aside from capital and making good choices, the biggest things are probably going to be lowering your fees as much as possible and having lots of market slots.
Fees for NPC stations can be lowered by improving faction and corp standing, and by training relevant skills. There are no ways to lower fees for Upwell structures (unless you can broker a deal with the owner), but they typically have fees that are much lower than what you’d pay in NPC stations. And do note that the United Standings Improvement Agency will increase your standings for a fee.
Thanks to large relist fee’s, the .01 isk war is dead. However, you can update you orders more frequently by “chunking.” Making orders of a smaller number of units will minimize your fees when you do update prices to undercut competitors. Thus, having a large number of slots will allow you to create more of these smaller orders.
For specific information about trade skills and how fees are calculated, please see the following link. Trading - EVE University Wiki
Trade activity out of Upwell structures is encouraged by lower fees, but discouraged by increased risk (if the structure is destroyed, you’ll lose your broker fees and either have to move everything out beforehand, or pay an asset safety fee). Thus, people are more likely to buy out of upwell structures, than sell. For example, you can place a buy order with a 1 jump radius in the Tranquility Trading Tower (TTT) in perimeter, and like 85% of your stuff will end up in Jita, 10% will end up in the TTT, and 5% will end up in random other stations. Thus, you get the benefit of lower fees, but don’t have a large increase to risk by putting a large amount of assets in a station that might get destroyed.
Now, just how vulnerable are upwell structures to destruction? Well, that depends.
The fight over perimeter seems to have been concluded with a profit sharing deal by the big 3 nullblocs, but they are also at war right now. So, there is the possibility that the war might spill over into perimeter.
I honestly don’t know what’s the deal with IChooseYou’s structures. I’m sure he has backing of some kind to keep his stuff safe, but major players like this have fallen in the past. For example, Eve Mogul was an independent entrepreneur who provided structure access to a lot of customers. However, Goons felt like his structures were being used by their enemies, so they blapped them.
Other structures put up by smaller entities are even more vulnerable.
Long story short, trading out of upwell structures can be more lucrative than selling out of NPC stations, however, it is imperative that you properly evaluate the risk of doing so, and implement risk management strategies to compensate.
Oh, Plex is a probably popular item to sell out of upwell structures because it is so easy to move. As long as you don’t create massive orders, your orders will sell fast, which minimizes the loss of broker’s fees. And if the structure picks up a hull timer, you can just put all the plex in your plex vault, and move it anywhere with zero risk in the time it takes your travelceptor to get there.
@Barrak when CCP implemented the broker/relist fees for NPC stations, they did so with base standings being used for lowering the fees, not modified standings. So essentially to have the lowest possible broker/relist at 3%, you would need to have max standings for both Faction and Corp that owns the trade hub, so for Caldari it would be Caldari State and Caldari Navy.
@ USIA, we can most certainly help raise the standings for Cal Navy, but due to mechanics, we cannot raise State, but we can give you options to work on those as well.
check out our link above that @Shipwreck_Jones posted, and come see us on Discord if you are interested in getting standings up for trading.
I came back to do some station trading too until I found out they basically destroyed it as a short-term activity in Eve. Not to mention they broke the high-sec connection between the major hubs. If you’re set on doing the station trading thing expect it to be nothing like what it was.
You won’t see standings change while logged in game. We use the skillboard to monitor our progress. And 6 missions, you may only see a 0.015 change. (Just a guess). CCP does have a formula for calculating the standing change, which when your in fleet it’s split in half.
So if you used our services, as long as you see LP and ISK accumulating, you can guarantee standings are increasing, you just won’t see it until you log out and log back in.
Okay, so this is how I do it. I start by creating reasonably sized orders. What I consider reasonable will depend on total order value and how much competition there is. Now, if I can go hours, or even days without being undercut, I’ll just update my existing order. But lets say I update that order, and then get undercut again 10 minutes later. Well, now I’m thinking I want to make a new smaller order, and start updating that. And then, depending on how much people continue to undercut me, I might make an even smaller order, and start updating that one instead. And, of course, if it gets filled, I’ll create another one of equal size.
So, you don’t always need a bunch of orders of each item, but you should have some market slots in reserve so that you can start creating additional orders if needed. Anyway, what you want to do is to get your competition to give up. Make them think that they have better things to do with their time and isk than to compete with you.
iirc, prices are limited to 4 sig figs. Which means that price steps will vary depending on the total price of the item. I just use my scroll wheel to limit the possibilities of errors. For example, if I need to make a small adjustment, I’ll just use the scroll wheel. And if I need to make a new order, or a big price adjustment on an existing order, I’ll enter in the price of the current best order, and then scroll my mouse wheel up or down one step, depending on if I’m buying or selling.
are you talking about triglavians and edencom npcs?
If yes, it is very easy to have positive standings toward both of them, so i don’t see why the hi-sec connectionbetween major hubs would be “broken”
