Time to Build a Citadel! ... or not

My office has been closed for the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, and likely will be for some time. The result of this is I'm working from home which I don't like doing for long periods but it's hardly the end of the world considering.

The upside of this is the time I would normally spend commuting I can now spend playing games!

I've done a bit of sorting out of my trading the last couple of days, and today I turned to my manufacturing character. my Structure component blueprints finished ME 8 research a while ago, so I finally delivered them today:

Going to ME 9 would take 122 days. I'm not waiting for that. So I set out and spreadsheeted up the totals to build a Raitaru, it takes 1 of each component so it's quite straightforward. Pleased with myself I was ready to set off to buy a Raitaru blueprint and the requisite materials, when I noticed I don't have Outpost Construction trained...

I also don't have anchoring trained, which needs to be at V....

I'm currently training Advanced Broker Relations V on the Hek trader on that account, with 10 days left. Once that's done I can switch to going for outpost construction, which will take another couple of weeks. So I'm actually about 3 weeks away from starting to build my first citadel.

Woops. This is something I could have easily resolved if I'd checked properly months ago. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to be patient. 

Next up, working out exactly what to do with the third character on this account. The plan was to trade skill injectors with slim margins across the trade hubs, but that's not really feasible after the market changes. I'm currently thinking another regional trader, but I may have a lightbulb moment before I put that into action.

Broker Relations D-Day

Today the March update was released, with the new Broker Relations changes dropping. The full patch notes can be found here:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q6z2qy/patch-notes-for-march-2020-release

I've also been working from home today, and managed to use the time I would normally be commuting to finally get a little bit of EVE in. I decided priority number one was to update my sell orders before the patch dropped, allowing me to do this for 100ISK rather than 1-2%. I managed to get 2.5 characters out of 4 done this way, as well as both my station traders. Not too bad. Having the rest to do allowed me to see the new mechanics in action, and make my first mistake very early in the new patch. 

The mistake I made is related to the 4 significant digits rule. I had a sell order for (I think) 149,999,999.98 ISK. There was an order below me on 149,999,999.97 ISK. I did my usual right click -> modify -> use the scroll wheel to bring the cents down, and hit enter. I expected this to put me at 149,900,000 ISK. Instead, it rounded up to 150,000,000 ISK, and charged me about 8 million for to the privilege. Whoops. Although I think that the final window should tell you what it's going to round your order to, rather than doing it afterwards. Bad UI design CCP.

I finally remembered to log in and set "Advanced Broker Relations" to 5 on as many traders as possible as well. I already had it to 5 on a couple of characters, 4 on a couple more, and 0 on everyone else. Could have been more prepared there. 

The formula for working out the relist charge is as follows:

• BR is the character's effective Broker Fee rate at the station/structure (factoring in skills/standing/settings as appropriate)
• RD is the character's Relist Discount rate (factoring in Advanced Broker Relations skill)
• Fee to create a new order at price P (this is unchanged):
• Fee = BR * price
• Fee to modify an existing order, changing price from P1 to P2:
• Fee = max(0, BR (P2 - P1)) + (1 - RD) BR * P2

CCP have given the following examples:

Example #1:

• Character has Broker Rate of 3% (from skills/standings) and has a Relist Discount of 60% (from Advanced Broker Relations skill)
• Character creates a sell order for 2,000,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 60,000 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR * 2,000,000 = 60,000
• Character then drops the price to 1,950,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 23,400 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • 0 + (1-RD) BR 1,950,000 = 23,400
    • (In this case, the delta is negative, so the first part of the fee is 0)
• Character then drops the price again to 1,900,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 22,800 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • 0 + (1-RD) BR 1,900,000 = 22,800
• These two modifications cost them a total of 46,200 ISK

Example #2:

• Character has Broker Fee of 3% (from skills/standings) and has a Relist Discount of 60% (from Advanced Broker Relations skill)
• Character creates a buy order for 2,000,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 60,000 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR * 2,000,000 = 60,000
• Character then raises the price to 2,050,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 26,100 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR (2,050,000 - 2,000,000) + (1-RD) BR * 2,050,000 = 1,500 + 24,600 = 26,100
• Character then raises the price again to 2,100,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 26,700 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR (2,100,000 - 2,050,000) + (1-RD) BR * 2,100,000 = 1,500 + 25,200 = 26,700
• These two modifications cost them a total of 52,800 ISK

I tried to input my own values for a change, but couldn't come up with the same fee CCP is charging. I think it stems from not knowing my "BR", but when I change an order from 58,700,000 to 58,900,000 I get charged 895,500 ISK for the pleasure. That works out at just over 1.5% by the way. When I can work through an example clearly I will on here. 

What I can say from all this is that I don't think station trading is dead. Moving stuff from hub A to B and selling is definitely not dead, I just have to be careful about order updating. I may up my acceptable margins to accommodate a few price adjustments. What I may do is change the plan for my character I was meant to be grinding standings for. The plan was to trade high volume, low margin items like skill injectors within and across hubs. This looks like it'll be even more challenging with these changes, so I may get him into blockade runners and use him to region trade in Lonetrek in a similar way to how I'm doing in Tash-Murkon. We shall see.

Interesting times to be sure, really not sure how this will shake out.

March Update

This has been a month where I've managed very little in game, which is a shame because there's a lot of changes coming to EVE - and especially the market - that deserve writing about and that if I had been clever I could have used for some speculation. This post is not about that though, though I intend to jot down some thoughts and predictions at some point. This is just a monthly update though.

Storms have been ravaging the UK, and as I live in a fairly rural area we've been hit with a few instances of power issues. This was most annoying for storm Ciara, as I had all the time in the world that weekend but couldn't reliably keep my computer on or have reliable internet access. As such I managed a single trade run this month, with the odd bit of station trading. I'm strongly considering re-evaluating doing my own hauling in order to save myself the time. I've had a bit of success with public contracts between the hubs, but I haven't tried any for 10s of Billions yet. Might be worth an experiment. Anyway, rambling excuses out of the way, my current position:

I currently have 615.4Bn ISK. This is 20.1Bn more than last month. ISK per hour at the keyboard this is really good, but as a month to month it's pretty bad, and reflects that I basically didn't play at all this month. On my single trade run I was transporting over 84Bn ISK in a single blockade runner - an extraordinarily risky prospect! Fortunately there were no issues and no-one so much as targetted me.

All this means though that my other plans haven't been touched. I haven't done any rep grinding on my proposed skill-injector trading character, although with the broker relations changes that have been announced I need to rethink my plan for him anyway. My structure parts blueprints have finished researching, but I haven't touched them yet. That's an evening all its own. I'd love to spend more time playing, but we'll see if that happens.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Skill Point Trader

 Still grinding, a long way to go before this guy really gets going. I've completed the Caldari careers missions, and 1 of the 3 sets of Gallente. A long way to go here. This one really underlines how little time I get to play!

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 75Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~154 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 116 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 152 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

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. Currently on 75Bn 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 15.4 Billion. Thinks are starting to move on this character, which is great! Feeling a lot more positive about this.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% 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 66.2 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 6.7Bn.

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 6.4Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. I haven't touched this character at all this month. Another thing to correct. So much to do, so little time!

Manufacturing Character

My latest character, pretty new. Currently has 11 building slot and 10 lab slots. Finished the research of component blueprints to ME8. Time to finally buy a raitaru blueprint and build a citadel! The plan will be to sell the items produced by this character in the 5 trade hubs I sell in.