Finally ready to build

I've finally finished training Outpost Construction on my building character, so I went out and bought a Raitaru blueprint for 4Bn from an NPC. I've created a tab in my spreadsheet that totals up the materials needed to build the components to build a Raitaru, I just put in the material cost and it spits out the total cost of a Riataru (minus job fees):

This shows that a Raitaru will cost me about 480mil in materials. I've bought them in Jita and have set up a public courier contract to have them delivered to Hurjafren for 10million. A bit low perhaps but I've seen contracts picked up for 1% before, so here's hoping. If no-one bites I'll transport it myself (I have an Orca and a Charon lying around). I should be able to sell the finished product in Rens for 650mil, or Jita for 570mil. Pretty healthy profit either way. What I'll probably end up doing is producing runs of them and selling one in each trade hub, replacing them as they sell.

This has also freed up my Sobaseki trader to do some skilling up which he desperately needs. I've had pretty decent success with a few items from Jita, so I'm looking forward to ramping up his items for sale with more orders from training.

This weekend I also managed to get some PvPing in for the first time in a year! I joined a thrasher roam  and got on a couple of kills before being primaried and then a Ferox fleet that turned into a bashing op for some annoying neighbours Astrahus shield timer. It was great to have a bit of a change of pace and I'm hoping to fit a bit more in as the lockdown continues.

https://zkillboard.com/character/1340716799/

Feels great to be finally making good on some plans I've been talking about for 6 months!

Surgical Strike

CCP is coming in thick and fast with major game changing updates! Next up on the 15th April is Surgical Strike, which makes some huge changes to combat across the game.

The first, and most wide ranging, change is to lower the effectiveness of ALL resistance modules by 20%. So for an adaptive invulnerability field II, currently it gives 30% shield resistances, after the change it will give 24%. This is a massive hit to EHP of pretty much every ship in the game (freighters don't use resist modules, but everything else can). This is ostensibly to reduce the survivability of caps and supercaps, but will have a drastic effect on every ship in the game. I'm in favour of of more ships dying, more turnover is better for the economy and my wallet. I just hope this doesn't lead to people being too risk averse since losses will likely be a bit more expensive than previously.

There are changes to super carriers, removing their light fighters and adding another set of heavies whilst reducing the ability of heavies to track smaller ships. Big fan of these changes, more DPS against caps and less against subcaps means they have a proper place as cap killers and are less of a ship of all trades. I've never owned a super and have always fancied having a Nyx to rat in as well as PvP, but I guess I'll just have to use one for PvP when the time comes.

Next is subcap rebalancing. Battleships receive a buff to HP and scan res, which is great, and some T2/3 cruisers get nerfed. I'm not in a great position to comment on the rebalancing, so I'll leave that to people who are better at that sort of thing.

Buff to T2 short range ammo increasing their damage by 15%. This combined with the resistance changes has the potential to be massive. Not for fleet fights, but for ganking. I don't have overly strong opinions on this but I will have to re-asses my Crane fit.

My Crane for highsec hauling is currently fit with the following:

[Crane, Lornor's Crane]
Damage Control II
Inertial Stabilizers II

EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

I've been using this for a long time and it has never been ganked. It currently provides 41,679 EHP. Typical Blockade runner roulette attempts in high-sec consist of 3 Tornados. A Tornado alpha stike hitting perfectly does 14,000 damage roughly. Therefore 3 tornados hitting perfectly do 42,000 damage. The odds of all 3 hitting perfectly is slim so this fit I have can tank most normal gank attempts, and I have on several occasion with one particularly scary attempt getting me to 30% hull.

After the update though a tornado is likely to be able to do 16,100 damage. Meaning I'll have to tank 48,300, with the bonuses from resists reduced. I could (and likely will) spend a billion or so pimping the modules to faction/deadspace variants to get there, and possible invest in some implants as well. I suspect at least initially the gankers will be emboldened to try more often as most people are lazy and will not update fits, and when I'm typically carrying 30-40Bn I don't want to lose it!

From an overall economy perspective I support these changes. More destruction is good for the game and if more abyssal runners are losing ships then there should be more demand for the kind of wares I sell. I only hope that the resultant slight scarcity doesn't push people into being more risk averse on a large scale which would tank demand and then we'd really be in trouble. Really, the health of the economy, and the game, will rely very heavily on how they handle resource distribution. Null blocks need something to fight over. If CCP can redistribute resources in such a way that provokes conflict and triggers wars then great! If Goons can still quite happily stay in Delve and rat and mine to their hearts content then I worry for demand, and if the economy fails, the game probably fails as well. I am glad that CCP are addressing this though, and I'm optimistic about the final stage, resource distribution.

I'm all alone....Trek

For some time now, I've wanted to have a character with really good faction standings with all 4 empires, for the purpose of trading high-value, high-turnover, low-margin items like PLEX and skill injectors. The Broker Relations changed kind of destroyed that idea, with relisting fees being what they are I just don't see it as being worth my while.

So that mean finding something else for my character to do. He doesn't currently have very many skills, in fact he has almost no trade skills at all yet as his limited training was driven towards completing missions to raise standing. He's also sitting behind my manufacturing character in the pecking order who has another 6 days of training to go before I switch.

Regardless, I've decided what I'm going to try. Inspired in part by a player on the Market Discussion forums who is trying to create his own markets outside the trade-hubs in high-sec. Judging by his EVE-Mogul leaderboard standings he's doing rather well. I'm also aware that I have limited time at the computer playing games, even with the lockdown. Being a homeowner is a never ending list of jobs it seems.

So, I had the idea to try and add another selling character to my roster. I don't want to add much if any hauling time, ideally I want something haulable. I also want a region with pretty high market activity. I already operate in all the main hub regions (including The Citadel if you count Perimiter) so the next one down the list in terms of activity is Lonetrek.

Sitting next door to Jita, Lonetrek is a large region of predominately high-sec, with some low-sec systems. Proximity to Jita makes hauling extremely easy, either to do myself, or contract if I buy bulky items. The market is smaller then Perimeter, but still pretty large. The station I have chosen to set up shop in is the "IChooseYou Market and Industry" Citadel in Sobaseki:

This has a Broker fee of 1%, partly mitigating my lack of skilling, and is where most of the PLEX trade for the region happens, so is my best bet for making sales. I'm going to be trading slightly different items to my other sellers due to the limited traffic. I'll be looking at more probe launchers, rigs, learning implants, that sort of thing. I only have 13 trade slots to start with, but that'll kick up soon. I'm hoping this is a low effort way to increase my stagnating returns!

April Update

This has been a very weird month, as I'm sure you can imagine, but I'm going to keep this all strictly game related, aside from the fact that working from home has allowed me to take a little more advantage of what would be my commuting time for EVE. This hasn't actually been all that much yet though as work has been very busy. I've got a bit of time off coming up though and I plan to take a proper break and enjoy myself!

All that aside, my current position:

I currently have 642.5Bn ISK, an increase of 27.4Bn on last month. This is still a dip on my highs of over 1Bn a day, though it's a lot better than last month. It feels like things are starting to settle after the market changes and I can take a little bit of stock.

For my part, I've continued my business of buying items in Jita with at least a 10, ideally 20% profit margin and transporting them to Amarr, Rens, Dodixie and Hek for sale. This still accounts for most of my business and is largely unchanged. The market changes mean that I pay a larger amount of ISK to update my sell orders, so I have to think about whether it is worth adjusting them or not. Since the change I've started letting orders of 1 implant or module go, in the hopes that I get subsequent sales (I tend to sell in piles of 3). After initially being quite cautious about adjusting my orders though I've started to be a bit more aggressive like I used to, I might pay a little more in fees but I'll get the sale faster and can recycle the money. This seems to have worked as my turnover is up this last week. I've trained advanced broker relations to V on all sell characters to mitigate this, and with my margins the costs really aren't that prohibitive. I suspect part of the turnover is due to people being at home more due to lockdowns around the world, so I'd expect more in game activity for the next few months.

The extra training has meant that I haven't been able to sell and extract SP to even out my PLEX cost for account 4, so in a normal month you could add 1.8Bn onto my earned total.

Speaking of PLEX, the price has been slipping recently. I suspect this is largely due to the offer of 50% PLEX + multi-character-training, and the resource scarcity changes meaning some people are not PLEXing their armies of null sec miners. I anticipate an uptick once redistribution changes kick in and people adapt to the new meta. The flip side of this is mineral prices are jumping, which I've not managed to work out hot to take advantage of (I missed the boat to buy a bunch of Tritanium). I should have been more on the ball for this, but oh well.

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

Skill Point Trader

Not sure if this is actually going to be a skill point trader any more. TBC.

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 110Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~159 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 120 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 157 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 71Bn 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 16.8 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 68.7 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 7.4Bn.

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 7.3Bn. 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

I was all ready to go with this character, at long last! and then..I didn't have the skills trained. Currently training Anchoring V then Citadel Construction.