Gearing up for manufacturing

So, today after doing my trade run, I finally found some time to do some initial set up for my manufacturing.

I created my new character for this on the 22nd, a week ago, and since then he has been doing nothing but training skills. He currently has Industry IV, training V, Laboratory Operation IV, Science IV, and a bunch of other general skills like warp drive operation.

All in all at the moment he has access to 5 lab slots and 1 manufacturing slot. Not exactly inspiring, but this will improve quite quickly. I'm not skilling in perhaps the optimal way, but I'll get there in the end.

Meanwhile I've done some browsing for what to manufacture. How I did it is pretty ad-hoc. I went to Fuzzwork's blueprint calculator and scrolled through some options.

I've decided that I'm pretty keen on building citadels and related modules, but building citadels requires the "Outpost construction" skill, which I do not yet have. As part of my trading however I've noticed that citadel rigs can be transported from Jita and sold at a good profit. I therefore had a look at those, and found that most can actually be produced and sold in Jita for a profit, at ME 0. This is pretty unexpected, but welcome. At ME 10 most of them pay for the blueprint with a single run! The blueprints are 100mil each, so not too expensive either. A Raitaru for comparison is 4Bn!

I've therefore bought 5 rig blueprints for medium citadels (the most common ones in highsec) and set them to research:

It'll take about a month each for them to hit ME10, so I might find something else to build in the meantime, but these seem like they'll be nice little earners until I get the skills to build outposts, and am willing to front the pretty high startup capital to build them. The good news is most citadels, despite the high start up cost, are profitable to produce even buying the components off the market. If you build your own they're very profitable! I definitely think this is the way to go for me, as I can't really guarantee a log on every day, or even more than once or twice a week!

In terms of accounting for these, I'm recording the NPC price of the BPOs on my spreadsheet. I know a researched blueprint can sell for more, but market conditions can change that, and I can always guarantee NPC sell price for them, so that's how I'm valuing them.

I've never found a blog of anyone building citadels, so I'll try and record my thoughts and processes as I go along, for posterity if nothing else. A new chapter for my money making!

A New Manufacturing Character

Skill training completed:

I wish Aura still said that, such a satisfying sound.

Anyway, yesterday my Hek seller finished Tycoon V, and I consider him now "finished" from a sellers point of view. He has Accounting/Broker Relations V, and all skills that give more orders to V, giving him the maximum of 305 orders to play with (he's only using 80 atm).

This leaves me with the question of what to do with the other 2 character slots on that account. I had thought to create more region traders in the same vein as the Tash-Murkon trader, and if I was purely thinking from a profit point of view that would be the way forwards. However, for along time I've liked the idea of getting back into manufacturing seriously.

My Rens seller has a lot of manufacturing skills, and there was a period of time years ago when that was how I made money with that character. The problem is if he's flying around doing manufacturing related things, he's not in a position to update orders, or fly around collecting items on a trade run. 

Now however, with a free character slot, I can dedicate a character to just manufacturing. I haven't quite decided whether to go T1 or T2, or mix up both. I quite like the idea of building citadels, or other structures. This seems to be a bit of an underserved market outside Jita, and I have the money to take this seriously.

I also haven't decided where to base my efforts. I'm pretty much free to be where I want, so this is a tricky question. I can pretty much rule out Jita as a place to sell my wares, as the competition is too fierce, and profit margins are likely razor thin, if not negative.

Amarr appeals, being a bit less competitive, and I do transport some structure rigs there for sale, which means there is a margin to be made and I can likely still get all my materials at a reasonable price.

What I feel like I'm leaning towards at the moment though is Minmatar space. I know, it has the smallest trade hubs of the 4 races high sec regions, but that's kind of the beauty of it - trade hubS, plural. Rens is 6 jumps from Hek, and where I already have a character with good industry skills. If I pick a system somewhere between the two, I can serve both hub easily, and if I need more lines going I can easily bring my Rens seller across to build some stuff.

I'm probably several days away from getting started seriously, as I need to train a bunch of skills, industry, mass production, laboratory operation etc etc, so i can spend some time scouting out where to set up. I will probably operate out of NPC stations initially whilst I get a feel for things, then plop down my own citadel(s). 

I'm excited to try something new, though it's going to take a lot of prep and thought to do properly - stay tuned!

A day in the life

So this is a blog I've been meaning to do for a while now, what do I do on a day-to-day basis?

This is a routing that has changed numerous times, but I'll give an insight into my current set up. I have 4 accounts:

Account 1:
- PvP "main", in Pandemic Horde, not involved in my trade activities. My first ever character.
- Jita buyer, also manages my long term investments
- Amarr seller

Account 2:
- Rens seller/transporter. Picks up items for the hubs, has the most SP. My second ever character and used to do all things, mining, manufacturing, missions. Still does on occasion
- Dodixie seller
- Pandemic horde seller, like the trade hub sellers, except the items are shipped by a group in horde, not by me

Account 3:
- Perimeter station trader
- Ashab station trader
- Tash-Murkon region trader

Account 4:
- Hek seller, soon to complete Tycoon V and then I'll create other characters to fill out this account

At the moment due to my current living/work situation, I get very little time in the evening for playing games, and none in the morning during the week. At the weekend I get a few hours, enough for at least 1 "Trade Run" usually, though recently I've been playing a little bit of WoW classic, which cuts into my EVE time.

During the week if I get chance I log into my station traders and update the orders, putting up anything I've bought for sale. If I'm feeling really motivated I'll log into one of my trade hub sellers and update their orders. Often Amarr as this is the biggest money maker.

Trade Run

When I say "Trade run" in this blog, this is what I mean:

- Log in my Jita buyer, and Dodixie seller
- Transfer all money apart from about 500 million from Dodixie to Jita Buyer using corp wallet
- On Dodixie, run down my quickbar, making sure I'm the lowest price sell order on items where I have sell orders, where I don't have anything listed I check the price difference between Jita and Dodixie, using the corp chat and both market windows. If the price difference is over 10%, i usually buy 3 of that item
- Once I have been through my entire quickbar, contract the items from Buyer to Dodixie.
- Create courier contract for Rens to ship the items to Dodixie.
- Log out Dodixie, log in Rens
- Repeat steps 2-4
- log out Jita, and in Amarr, whilst flying Rens to Jita in a Crane
- Repeat steps 2-5, except with Rens doing the buying, to be shipped to Amarr
- Log in Hek, repeat steps 2-5
- Once I have all the contracts set up, I set my route with Rens to go Jita -> Amarr -> Dodixie -> Hek -> Rens
- Accept the contracts, and fly to the trade hubs
- Once the packages are delivered, put the new items up for sale, I can do Amarr and Hek whilst I'm flying, then Rens once I arrive, then finally Dodixie, as it's on Account 2 with Rens
- finally, update my spreadsheet.

All told, a full Trade Run as described above takes about 2 hours, so is quite a commitment. Possibly not the most efficient, but as I can't schedule my playtime at the moment it's what I can do.

My favourite ship. I should buy a SKIN at some point

In amongst these, I may also carry out steps 2-5 with my Horde seller, but shipping through an alliance service, or fly around collecting items on my Tash-Murkon trader.

Task-Murkon is a bit different. He's set up in a market citadel in Tash-Murkon Prime, paying 0.1% broker fee, and sets up region-wide buy orders with a healthy margin. These range from t1 drones to faction modules and implants. About once a week I log in, and fly around to every station where I've bought at least 1million ISK worth of stuff, take it back to the citadel and put it up for sale. I often do this whilst Rens is flying around.

I very rarely do all of this on the same day, but this is my current set up. No doubt this will change in the future, and hopefully I can get back to at least updating a few orders every day, as I feel my profits suffer when I don't (you can pretty much track when I stopped being able to do this from my profit).

Hope that's been useful, interesting, or at least given you something to criticise about my set up. I'm always intrigued when I read about other people's methods, and there's not many talking about it these days.

September Update

I've had another very busy month, which has really cut into my playtime. Combined with my new job situation means I can't even get a quick price adjustment in once a day like I used to - and I'm restricted to proper trade runs at the weekend only. Anyway, excuses aside, my current position:

I have 481.3Bn ISK. This is an increase of 21.8Bn. This represents an increase of 703Mil a day. I haven't had anywhere near as much time to play this month, and I think there's been a general dip in activity as people go away on holiday. Still, I was hoping to be up around an average of 30Bn a month, and this falls a long way short of that.

On a better note, my Hek seller is in the process of learning Tychoon V. once he does he'll be "finished" from a skills perspective, and I'm thinking of spinning up a couple of regional traders in the vein of the Tash-Murkon trader with the empty slots.

In the recent spikes in price for recons due to the announced cyno changes, I bought a blueprint of each racial cruiser and created some copies and did some invention. I only got 1 T2 Blueprint from 6 invention runs, and I haven't built it yet, but it helps me get a feel for the invention process. I may expand this in future, not sure.

I have 4 accounts, with 9 characters dedicated to trading:

Jita Buyer

This is a character that sits in Jita and contracts items to my other characters. This character has little training, and mostly buys from sell orders and contracts the items to my other characters. I tend to have this character logged in to act as a real time price comparison whilst checking my other characters orders. This character also manages my long term investments, though that doesn't take much work. I am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 74Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~161.8 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. Takes implants and faction/deadspace modules delivered by my Rens character and sells them in Amarr.

Dodixie Seller

Very similar to the Amarr seller, he sits in Dodixie, takes receipt of items, then set up sell orders. Currently has 94.5 Billion in sell orders. No news with this character.

Rens seller/Hauler

Like the other characters, this character takes items bought in Jita and sells them in Rens. Currently has 93.9 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

My new character. Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. He was in a trade hub citadel, but that was put into hull turning off its market module so I moved to an NPC station like the rest of my selling characters, though this cost me about 1Bn in broker fees. Deals primarily in Rigs, faction modules and implants. I started this character off with 16Bn "seed" money and he's currently got 57.9Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

Amarr station trader

Sits in a player owned Fortizar in Ashab, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a range of 1 Jump to cover Amarr. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 1 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 11.9 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.3% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

Most of my items are bought and sold in the Jita 4-4 station. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 10 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 54.2 Billion. I spent the time to get faction and corp standing up with this character, and this is my attempt to take station trading seriously.

Horde Seller

In a very similar way to the other selling characters, he takes items bought by the Jita Buyer, then contracts the items to "Valhalla Deliveries" (a delivery service for Pandemic Horde) to transport the items to the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. He then sells them there for a profit. He trades primarily T2 modules, drones and scan probes. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 3.4 Bn in sell orders.

I've done very little with this character this month in truth. I need to start it up again.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

A different strategy altogether. This character sits in a player owned Fortizar in Tash-Murkon prime, and set up regional buy orders for modules, implants and drones. When a lot of orders have been filled I fly around and collect it all to sell in Tash-Murkon Prime. I set this character up with 100mil to buy his own skills and get started, after skills he had 70mil to buy items. Currently at 4.3Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably.