20% off Omega means another account!

 So right now there's a 20% off Omega time in the NES until 24th December. I was planning on creating another industry account so I can get more slots in null anyway, though I was going to wait until after Christmas. Guess it's time to take advantage!

The Sale means 1 year of Omega is currently 2880 PLEX instead of 3600, which is a pretty good deal. I bought 2880 for up to 6,659,000, which cost me a total of 19,160,602,000 ISK. 

This takes my total for PLEXing my industry accounts up to 58,461,120,000 ISK.

I gave my new character 100mil from my industry profits to buy skills and applied for Pandemic Horde, bought some production skills and added them to jEveAssets and EVEGuru. I should be able to get this guy to doing t2 rig/module production fairly quickly and then fill up the other 2 slots. My main null character is busy training spaceship command skills (I want a Blockade Runner and eventually a Jump Freighter) and trade skills so I can't really free up his skill queue for other characters on that account.

Issues in Ikuchi

 So today I've learned of the perils of doing industry out of public upwell structures. Pretty much since the beginning of my industry journey I've been operating out of a Raitaru in Ikuchi, one jump from Jita. This has the advantages of Raitaru bonuses, so 1% ME on everything essentially, as well as taking advantage of the lower cost index of the system (~6%) and a generous 0% tax from the owner.

This afternoon I logged in and all was well. I set off a few jobs, did a quick run to and from Jita, then logged off.

This evening though when I logged in and checked the industry window it looked like this:

Thinking this was a weird graphical glitch or something I logged out and in, but presented with the same thing. Odd. I noticed my EVE Mail blinking and found I had one telling me my corp jobs were paused. I thought maybe the structure is being reinforced, so I tried to undock and check, and was presented with this:

I promptly cancelled out of this as I don't want to be separated from my assets. I thought it was pretty unlikely that the owner of a public structure has taken against me personally, so I checked the corp for the CEO to ping him a message, maybe he was taking the structures down? being extorted out of business?

After a bit of digging I noticed that the founder of the owning corp left 44 days ago, and transferred ownership to another character (interestingly, a former Horde member). I sent him an EVE Mail asking about the status of the structure though I'm not expecting a response. I wonder if this is a malicious takedown? not entirely sure but it looks suspicious.

I also logged in my Jita trade alt and *gasp* undocked! to go see what was up. I had to D-scan the structure to warp to it as it's stopped showing up on overview, but when I did warp to it I was presented with this:

Now it could just be that the new owned has forgotten to refuel it, but I doubt it. I suspect my days operating out of this structure are over. This presents 2 major questions. The first being what happens to all my stuff? From my research it seems I can stop my jobs, in which case I lose my materials and ISK but keep the BP (ouch) though I only have 4 production runs going currently so this could be worse. If the structure gets taken down everything ends up in asset safety and I have to pay money to get it back.

The second is where do I go next? I could operate out of Jita itself. I'd have to deal with the monstrous ~20% system cost index. 

I could move to the other public raitaru in Ikuchi, but I run the risk of this happening again. 

I could move to a different NPC station - Ikuchi has one with manufacturing but no research or copying. Veisto has one with everything, and a system cost index of ~6% for production and ~7% for research. Could be a real winner that one.

Or I could put up my own private structure. I don't really have the funds for that at the moment but it's an option.

TBH I don't know yet. Being as it's quite late at night I'll probably defer this decision as it has fairly far reaching consequences. Either way I've lost ISK but my blueprints should be safe. This is a very annoying setback.

Throughput struggles with Tech 2

 On my Null character I'm pretty well invested into tech 2 production. What I've been doing is taking the list of seeded rigs/modules from the alliance and bought blueprints for them, some of them anyway. Then I've got a bit of a production line going where I invent/produce Tech 2 items from them. 

These have the advantage of moving selling faster than tech 1 stuff, as people burn through them doing normal PVP/PVE activities, but I've run into a throughput problem.

Small/medium rigs and drones have a production time of a couple of hours at most:

The issue with this is that I can't log on every 2 hours to start up new jobs. For the medium rigs like this I can add a decryptor that tanks the success chance but ups each to 10 runs which helps keep my slots busy, but it's something I'm trying to work a balance out for it. I think I'll probably settle on a system where I do short runs when I know I'll be around again in a few hours and larger items/longer runs at other times.

I also think I need more slots in null, but my existing character is doing a lot of training to do with selling/flying better hauling ships etc. so I think I'll probably start up another account this month to get myself additional slots.

Also I subscribed to EVEGuru, costing me 200mil. This means I can utilise all my characters in there and get more accurate estimates for my null character, as his skills are different to my highsec guy who can't yet do tech2. I'm hoping they come through with the roadmap item to get sell prices from player owned structures, as that will make it infinitely more useful for planning out my null operations.

November Update - Industry

 A big uptick in terms of profit here, and a few changes! I haven't added any new characters this month but I have upskilled and begun tech 2 production, and started making use of the EVEGuru tool (highly recommend by the way). My current totals:

And here is my jEveAssets graph:

My current new worth is 3.045Bn ISK. That is an increase of 2.191Bn or 73mil ISK/day. 

That's a lot better than last month, for the same few characters. You can probably notice a sharp uptick in the graph from the 12th onwards. This is when I started using EVEGuru. It's an 3rd party desktop app that at its simplest will trawl all the items in the game that you give it parameters for (so for me mostly t1 stuff, modules and rigs) and spit out all of the profitability at Jita sell prices in a sortable list. As well as giving you breakdowns on how to build, create shopping lists etc. 

I initially looked at this and took some of the higher profit items, bought BPOs and merrily went to build. This led to a very sudden and sharp increase in my worth as jEveAssets thinks I just turned (e.g.) 100mil of minerals into 200 or 300mil of items. This is great in principle but most of those items are actually artificially inflated so to actually sell them you have to either undercut or chase the sell price down. This has lead to the effect you see in the graph, where the manufactured amount is not increasing much (or at all really) but the sell orders is spiking. I am selling stuff, just not as fast as I'd like.

This is an important lesson in interpreting data like this. What I really need is turnover. An item can be up for sale for 1Bn but it's meaningless if it takes me a month to sell when I can sell an item for 150mil 10 times in the same period.

My nullsec character has skilled into (some ) tech 2 construction. I've started building a few things, drones and rigs mostly. I'm enjoying the process, and the turnover is much better than a lot of the tech1 items I build which is great. There's an awful lot of refining of the process to do however. 

I have hopes for EVEGuru again for this though. They are working on getting pricing data for player owned structures which would be huge for me as my main null market is a Keepstar. Also when I upgrade to a paid version I'll be able to utilise all of my characters so I can properly make use of the production ledger to plan t2 production projects. Currently I'm on the trial version which gets you 1 character in the app, the paid version being 200mil per month. Something I'm definitely going to do especially if the pace of development stays anywhere close to what it is now.

So, how am I doing versus my overall targets?

• Invent a t2 item Success!
• sell a blueprint copy
• sell a researched blueprint original - Success!
• Build my own Upwell structure
• Complete some reactions - One done and another in progress. I might start including these in vertical integration of tech2 production. TBD
• Build a capital
• Build a Super
• Build a Titan
• Earn 1 Trillion

Another item ticked off which is nice.

Last month's targets:

• Earn 1 Billion - Smashed
• Build a T2 rig - done
• Invent a T2 item - done
• Do more reactions - done, sort of

Pretty good versus my targets actually

Targets for next month:

• Earn 3 Billion
• Skill a highsec character into tech2 production
• Add another null character
• Do more reactions

Early steps into tech2 have been fruitful, so I want to expand that. I also need to work out a process for managing it better as the multiple steps make it harder to track expected profits. I'm going to be relying on tooling for this I think. Trying to avoid having to create my own spreadsheets if I can.

November Update - Trading

 This month I have scaled back the amount of time I spend trading, basically doing 1 update/shipment on Mondays and Fridays to catch and then react to weekends where most of my revenue comes. I've done this mainly so I can concentrate on my Industry. However, some investment price moves make this month a record breaker, my current position:

My current net worth is 1.059Tn ISK, an increase of 76.2Bn ISK. That works out at 2.54Bn ISK/day.

That is record breaking! My previous highest month was 56.7Bn, so this is well above that. Also the first time I've managed over 2Bn a day! So how have I managed that whilst keeping my time played low?

First, I've focussed entirely on buying in Jita and selling in Rens, Hek, Dodixie and Amarr, and a little station trading in MJ-. The other characters I have not touched. They add very little to my business at the moment so I don't see it as being worth my time right now. In fact I intend to funnel some of their assets to the main group.

Second, my investments have been good this month. I was able to cash out of capacitor control circuits and power circuits for good margins, and HyperCores have finally shot up a bit. To the point that I've started cashing some of them out that were bought at a very low price. I have no intention of being caught short by a CCP sale a second time! I have put some of that money into other investments, namely Skill Extractors and Large Skill Injectors but I am intending to expand my main group this month as well.

Compared to the last couple of updates I haven't had any significant PLEX outlay either, though I am expecting more down the road so TBC in December.

So looking at last months plans:

Hit 1 Trillion. Again. Tick

Increase the amount invested in my BAU trading rather than investments. Sort of, want to lean into this more though

Move the majority of my stock from Tash-Murkon to Amarr to liquidate and repurpose this character. Tash-Murkon frequently has expiries, and it's just not working out. I need a wholesale rethink here. Failed. I didn't log into that character once. Will do in December though

Targets for this month:

• Move Tash-Murkon's stock and liquidate it
• Make 50Bn operating profit (discounting any extra PLEXing I do to support industry)
• Continue to expand the amount of money invested with my main group of traders

Similar to last month the cadence works well for me, though with Christmas upcoming this month might be a little lower in terms of when I can log on.

Ganked

 So, had my first setback being ganked. I was hauling about 100mil worth of stuff from the industry park to MJ and I wasn't checking intel. Jumped a gate and saw a neutral orthrus sitting waiting for me. Not much I could do but attempt to burn back to gate, which failed:

Even after this setback I'm still 50mil up for the day, so could be worse. Still, will teach me to be more careful in future. I can't wait to get to a point where I'm using jump freighters, then I'll be 100% safe going from structure to structure!

First invention runs

 My Null sec character has finally got to the point where he has the skills to begin t2 invention and production. There are more of these than you'd think, as you can see from this afterburner BPC:

I've created max run copies of 5 different items, and will use those as my "learn by doing" blueprints. These are not strictly the most profitable, but they're small and in good demand and should each be individually profitable, hopefully.

EVE Guru works out the decryptors you should need to get the best result. For these items it's none, but I checked with other items and they do get worked out, I guess the maths just doesn't make sense here:

Invention runs are slightly more time consuming than I thought, so I'm doing a couple of runs of each. Not ideal given the success chance is around 35-37% depending on item but it'll give me a chance to check them later and look to actually build some:

I have, however, run out of lab slots to invent them all, I guess this is why people have copy alts and invention alts! It'll take a bit of working out to get a systems I'm happy with set up for this. But I feel learning by doing is important for me to work out where the kinks are and where I can start to streamline.