Selling my PLEX and organising my accounts

 So, CCP a while ago said that they were trying to move away from a model of people hoarding PLEX as an investment towards one where people spend it as currency (somewhat ignoring he fact that people save real currency for various reasons). I didn't immediately see anything changing in that department, particularly as it would probably involve them changing their sales model which has proven successful for getting PLEX used and off their balance sheet, an important accounting step.

however, recently CCP has been adding bonus PLEX to their real money store packs, injecting more into the economy. This has caused persistent PLEX price falls in the market:

Normally this would simply present an opportunity, a temporary price to drop where you could pick up cheap PLEX and use them in the next NES sale. But there have been a few real money packs with bonus PLEX and no major NES sales since that announcement of a change of course, so I feel this approach may be what their plan is, at least in the mid term. I had been holding 24,000 PLEX for use in the next big NES sale or for game time, but with the value of that falling and no immediate end in sight I decided to simply sell it all for 5.75mil each. This represented an on paper loss of about 6Bn from where I bought it but it does give me a bit of stability, and when I need to PLEX my industry accounts I can just buy PLEX on the spot. I now have nearly 200Bn ISK sat in wallets (need to make trade runs) so I can use that money to try and refocus on the core fundamentals of my trading business.

Organising my characters

On the Industry side of things, the falling price of salvage due to the new exploration sites has meant I am basically undergoing a sisyphean task of trying to make money faster than the price of my goods falls. Salvage prices will hit an equilibrium at some point, but until then the prices of rigs falls, so my sell orders fall and I lose money. I am still able to produce on paper profits and my Mobile depots are still reliably producing 120-150mil banked profit per day though, so it's not all bad.

I've decided to write down what I'm using each character for, and what I'm aiming for as well. I'm pretty bad at fully utilising all my slots and I'm hoping having a reference sheet will aid me in getting a more focussed operation rather than starting to set something up and then forgetting what I was doing when I next log in.

Early days and very rough, but at least gives an idea of how I'm organising things at the moment. It also clearly flags gaps, i.e. that I need to address the training of my first account as it's a bit directionless at the moment and that I'm doing absolutely no reactions right now, missing out on a potential revenue stream.

Speaking of null, the new exploration sites have pushed the prices down but they have lead to an abundance of supply of salvage in null. Whereas previously I'd have to ship in extra from Jita if I wanted to use more than 3 slots for rigs, costing money and more importantly time, now I can go after rig production really easily right out of staging, which is nice.

change always offers opportunities, you just need to roll with the punches!

July Update - Industry

My industry was a worse month than my trading, if you can believe it. A lot worse. My current ISK values:

And the graph:

My current net worth is 26.7Bn ISK. That's an increase of 700Mil ISK or 22Mil/ISK/day.

That's essentially zero. So what happened?

Well similar to my trading I didn't play that much. Also the move of null staging led to me resetting my null setup completely, and I haven't really got it started back up again. 

Worse though is that I decided to focus on T2 rig production and started setting up my setup around that. Then CCP introduced exploration upgrades for null systems to increase the number and quality of exploration sites, where most salvage comes from. That lead to this:

Which has lead to the rig market looking like this:

So I've been chasing the prices down, which you can see in my net worth graph. I don't know where the floor will end up being with salvage and if CCP will tweak it again. They have been trying to push prices for ships down in order to encourage greater usage so I can't see this being changed any time soon, and we haven't hit the floor yet. As such I think I need to switch to producing other things until this all levels out. I really do have the worst timing.

I will therefore look to switch to either module or ship production, probably modules realistically for the coming month (well and mobile depots). The main plus this month is I've added 2 more characters to my high sec setup who have slotted in easily. I think my high sec setup is fairly easily scalable without much extra work which is really nice. Soon I'll be up to 50 production slots in high sec which should really allow me to push scale if I'm clever about it.

Oh one thing I almost forgot, I also got ganked for the first time with something in the cargo hold in high sec. I had about 100 mobile depots in a blockade runner and was docking at jita when a tornado killed me. I normally go to an insta dock when I have things in the cargo but I got complacent. Cost me about 400mil in ship+cargo, but it would have been a lot worse with rigs in the cargo. A good reminder to be careful in future.

July Update - Trading

 This month hasn't been anywhere near as active as I hoped. Real life was a lot busier than I thought it would be and I've played a lot less. Regardless, here's my current position:

And the full breakdown:

My current net worth is 1.099Tn ISK. That's an increase of 17Bn ISK or 548Mil/ISK/day. 

That's not a great month, all things considered. I've not played a lot and the summer slump is real, but worst is I've not managed to increase my amount in sell orders at all. Something to remedy.

My profits have been depressed this month by a couple of things. One, there was a summer event where you get given Quafe zero for logging in. I've thrown a few billion  at this on the hope that they jump back up in value in a month or two. Typical for my investments though this hasn't happened yet.

More significantly though CCP seem to be taking action to address PLEX hoarding and have been offering 1500 PLEX with existing real money packs. This leads to a increase in PLEX being sold on the market and the price being lowered. As you will know, I recently bought 24,000 PLEX. So this has hit my net worth. My plan is to use this to PLEX my industry accounts and hold on to it on the off chance of a good offer. Because I'm doing this you can pretty much guarantee that there won't be any more good NES sales forthcoming, so you're welcome.

Next month is to stop new investments and focus solely on the day to day. I want to get back up to 50Bn/month, which should be doable given my resources.

Stress, illness, real life and EVE

 When I returned after my holiday I was full of confidence that this was going to be a real "knuckle down and get on" kind of month, where I would play near daily and really push how far I could take my industry. Then real life got in the way.

We are in the process of trying to sell our house, and after a few months of very little happening we received an offer while we were away which we accepted. This kickstarted a whole bunch of admin, selecting and instructing solicitors, filling in forms, trying to find things worth viewing and squeezing in said viewings. My evenings were suddenly full of admin, exciting as the prospect of a move is.

At the same time, I am dealing with a HR situation at work, one that I thought I would wrap up my first day back. Stressful but over and done with was the idea. Then HR caught up with Legal and it became a whole big drawn our process. There has been a lot of uncertainty, and even though it is clarified for me now it means I'm staring down the barrel of several more months of dealing with this. Not ideal.

On top of that I was ill most of last week. In classic fashion the kids had it for about a day and bounced back but it hit me and my wife for about a week. I struggled through work but it really took its toll. Also I'm 80% sure I broke my big toe playing football as well.

How this affects EVE

Why the big real life dump? I hear you ask. Well partly it's cathartic for me to put down what I've been dealing with, manageable though it all is, and partly it's to explain that I've actually played very little EVE since getting back. Indeed when I have had time and the inclination to play games I've mostly been playing a retro football manager save. Less cerebral than trying to work out how to expand my EVE business and come up with better processes.

Tonight though I have a clear run, so I've filled up my slots and taken stock of where I'm at. The high sec business continues to chug along, the process is easy and the profits are good. Null is a bit more complex though. Though I realised through Ansiblex gates I was actually only a few jumps from my old operating ground the Sotiyo I operated out of has been taken down. I have seen on the discord that there is a plan to add more industry structures near E8- but for the moment I think I need to be content to operate out of raitarus. Not a dream situation but one I'll put up with for now.

Also, those characters have kind of trained everything I need them too for now, and they're sort of aimlessly training skills further and getting mining skills up. So I've decided to utilise those accounts better and create new characters to put in my high sec venture. I will initially train them for slots and then beeline for rigs, though initially they'll probably be mobile depot factories. I would like to add more characters for Null but I don't feel like I have a good handle on material acquisition or even a semi permanent operating base, so they'll be better utilised in high for now.

Trading, or how to make the most of the login bonuses

The Solar Fest event is going on right now, so you get rewards on login. Mostly this is SKINR detritus but there are also crates containing quafe zero classic and green apple. These are boosters that give minor bonuses and are reasonably cheap most of the time. This is especially true at the moment:

As you can see the volume is up and the price is at a 52 week low. Green apple usually goes for 15-20mil and is currently sat around 13mil in Jita, and classic usually goes for 40-50mil and is currently 30.

CCP can and will reintroduce these, and the volume isn't enough to sink hundreds of billions into but I'm putting a few billion in buy orders up to snap some up in all 5 high sec trade hubs. If I hold onto these for a month or 2 I should make 30-40%, which would be nice.

Other big industry news is the SCC charge for researching blueprints has been halved. I haven't researched any high level blueprints but I gather the charges are excessive, and bringing these down should only be a good thing for newer industrialists (like me!)

Getting set up, and frustrated

 So. After a bit of chat in the alliance discord and studying maps of the area, I realised that the industry park that was 11 jumps away actually 2 jumps and an ansiblex away from new staging. Given that I used to jump 4 jumps each way this is actually pretty good, though from a risk point of view ansiblex's are more likely to be camped than gates are. The only downside really is that the park contains a bunch of raitarus not a sotiyo, so I need to spread my operation out a bit to make it work.

So I dutifully set up EVEGuru to factor in the new settings, moved my blueprints over, did a run of materials to build a few things, then as I docked in the manufacturing Raitaru I noticed something...

The ansiblex in that system takes me to Z-ENUD, which I used to pass through on my way to the sotiyo I did everything out of. New staging is actually about 5 jumps including ansiblex from where I used to be based! 

Leadership has made it clear that industry parks won't be moving for the time being, though there is the added risk that Goons are more likely to hit 7MC than where I have set up now. I'm enormously frustrated that I could have left my setup literally as it was. I guess this is the issue with not really knowing the space very well as I only undock to do short shuttle runs. I'm going to let my jobs run as they are, but tomorrow I may well move my setup back to the old sotiyo. It should just be blueprints and decryptors, so a single run which is at least easy. I feel a bit stupid for not having realised this tbh, but there we are.

Trying to work out new null logistics

 So today I've restarted my highsec industry properly, utilising all of my slots. I've had to take some write downs on sell orders to follow the market, particularly in Null.

Speaking of null...

I've been trying to work out where best to restart tings in Null after the move of staging to E8-432. I was hoping some industry park would have been put up by now but it seems not to be the case. An Azbel has been put up in the staging system but it only has facilities for manufacturing, so it's of limited use. 

There is an industry park with full rigged sotiyos 2 systems over, but the structures are not held by Horde but a blue corp (renters I think). I've been told in no uncertain terms not to use these structures, or any that are not owned by Horde themselves. This is fine in theory, but the nearest Horde industry park where I can do the full range of activities is 11 jumps away! The politics of this situation are not fun.

I don't particularly fancy moving 11 jumps any time I want to do anything. I'm not even sure that's doable in a single jump freighter jump. Honestly I'm a bit deflated about this altogether. I'm sorely tempted to add new characters to high sec and park Null activity until I can work out the logistics here. Maybe a move to lowsec is the way to avoid the politics of it all? 

In a separate note, the global PLEX market is now live. Instead of having PLEX located in a certain region all orders go into the "global region" so you can buy and sell from everywhere. This is a good change to the game, though it has taken away one of my income streams. 

My null station trade character had transitioned to exclusively trading in PLEX, as in Horde staging you could often flip it profitably, even with higher broker fees than perimeter (there were occasional arbitrage opportunities as well, though more infrequent). When the PLEX market went live they cancelled all existing orders so I'm sat on 9325 PLEX on that character, and at 6,300,000 I can't quite sell them profitably (picked them up for up to 6.1mil), so I'll transfer them to my character that holds my investments and mark them on my sheet accordingly for now.

June Update - Industry

 Similar to my trading, my play here was a little bit patchy. A strong first half of the month though. My current ISK values:

And the graph:

My current net worth is 26Bn ISK. That's an increase of 6.91Bn ISK or 203mil/day.

Another record month. As you can probably see before I went away my net worth was 26.4Bn but I seem to have lost 400mil in net worth without logging in. Maybe this is the price of assets dropping as the moves by the big blocs settle down. Not sure as I haven't actually logged in to my accounts yet.

The month started off very strong, and had I played the whole month I was on track for a 10Bn ISK month but life happens. I have moved one of my high sec characters into making t2 rigs, so now my split is 1 null and 2 high sec chars making t2 rigs, 1 highsec making mobile depots (they're just too reliably profitable) and 1 null sec char who makes random stuff from EVEGuru, and is frankly underutilised. I am training him for t2 rigs as well though.

A big thing is I have 6.2Bn in wallets to reinvest which is great, and I suspect by now a new industry park has been set up near Horde's new staging that I can look at utilising. I'm going to sort out a trade run before that though so I might not get to that today.

I met my target of 6Bn for the month, which I'm thrilled about. With a full month of play ahead of me though I think i can push myself and hit 10Bn profit this month. I might even need to start a couple of new characters to help scale. TBD.