November Update - Industry

 This month was a record breaker, a lot has happened. I'll give the numbers then go into the detail:

And the graph:

My current net worth is 49.6Bn ISK. That's an increase of 11.8Bn ISK, or 393mil/day.

That's massive, and a new record by some margin (previous being about 7Bn), so what happened?

The main thing is that the market changed. When Horde collapsed, the price of salvage started to climb pretty dramatically. Logic Circuits in particular are worth double what they were a month ago and they're used in most of the rigs I build. I already built Medium CCC II rigs regularly, as even when the margins aren't great they still sell incredibly well and reliably, they're very like Mobile Depots in that sense, only higher value and easily transportable in a Crane. Those rigs in particular jumped from selling around 6.5mil each to 15mil each! I threw everything I had into producing them, and you can really see this take off in terms of revenue and profit.

Additionally, I had 2 characters that were null sec based and 2 that were training, so 5 characters building in high sec at the start of the month. I have since moved the null characters to high (selling what I had to my null trader to remove that liability) and brought the 2 trainers online, meaning 9 characters pumping items out in high sec.

Not all these are making CCC rigs, I also mix up with some large versions and some shield rigs as well, to insulate me against market movements. These have also done very well. My CEO character also builds things like mercenary dens and auto-integrity response drones, smart bombs etc. and I have a character doing nothing but building Cranes (I want to train a few more characters into T2 ships as I think they could be a long term way of doing things and keeping my slots busy easier, but I digress) and 1 character faithfully pumping out mobile depots.

Having all of these characters operating out of 1 corp office in a NPC station 4 jumps from Jita has meant that my way of playing actually scales really well. The extra characters just add a few clicks to set off the jobs. All the product collection, transporting and selling is done on my CEO character, so no additional work there. This also means that when I want to add extra characters I can do so in the same place and it shouldn't affect my workload much, which is fantastic for someone time poor such as myself. I have stale characters from my trade venture that I might "recruit" for exactly this purpose but I want to see how salvage/rigs level out first before throwing more characters onto the pile.

Another aspect of all this is my sell orders have dropped dramatically as prices have risen pretty much across the board of what I sell, so a bunch of older orders have sold leading to the massive spike in wallet balance you can see in dark blue on the graph. I have 21Bn ISK in cash while sell orders have dropped to 10Bn for the first time since June. This is great, but that big pile of cash isn't actually making me any money right now, which is bad. 

What it does enable me to do is to try and procure pretty much all of my input materials from buy orders, as having the ISK tied up is not an issue any more. This pushes my profit per item up which is great, though I don't currently always manage to fully stock up before I build so I am buying from sell orders as well. I will have to look at building a "stockpile" sheet to make sure I have enough input materials in stock at any given time and manage buy orders appropriately. EVEGuru has it on their road map but as it's not there currently I may have to build it myself in a spreadsheet. We'll see if my laziness or impatience wins first on that one.

The low sec experiment is on hold for now, I'm doing so well with my current setup that I'm going to ride this gravy train for a bit, and maybe look at low sec again when I start to look at bigger projects like jump freighters or Black Ops battleships. 

Here's hoping for an even better month in December!

November Update - Trading

 Not a bad month this one, though I was hoping for slightly better. The upheaval of Hordes collapse has hit my potential profits, as has hypercores falling back slightly right at the end of the month. My current position:

And the full breakdown:

My net worth is 1.189Tn ISK. That's an increase of 36Bn ISK, or 1.2Bn ISK/day.

All things considered not bad, but as you can see from the breakdown I have 65Bn worth of stuff sat in asset safety, waiting for me to claim it and move it to a trade hub for sale. I haven't full decided where to take it but I'm thinking Dodixie as a good middle ground of price versus volume. I could have taken it out on the 28th, but I didn't head down there yet as I imagine the station and system will be camped heavily as lots of players in the same situation look to get their stuff out. I'll try in a couple of weeks probably once the heat has died down.

Hypercores have levelled out in the high 380s, so I've switched to using the sell value for them. Given how PLEX has fallen to 4.7mil on the buy side though they are not that far from PLEX parity. I think I'll start selling them off soon, particularly as PLEX doesn't seem to be reversing trends any time soon.

Aside from this there isn't a great deal to talk about. My trading is very much in maintenance mode while I focus on scaling my industry operation out (there has been a lot of change and expansion there) but my trading is doing its job of taking me a couple of hours a week to update the 4 hubs, do 1 trade run each, and pay for PLEX for all 7 of my accounts. 

On that, I may even start moving characters that I no longer trade with from this venture to my other one, for no additionaly PLEX cost. Would be a cheap and easy way to expand my operations without opening more accounts. We'll see.

EVE Content I consume

 So I've been meaning to compile this list for a while, but I'm going to list the blogs and youtube channels I consume related to EVE if you're looking for recommendations.

• https://marketsforisk.blogspot.com/ Market blog, the one that inspired me to take on my own regional challenge a decade ago, and still going strong. Written by Croda.
  
• https://evehermit.wordpress.com/ General EVE blog (and some other games such as X4), One I've dipped in and out of for a long time
  
• https://tellicorp.blogspot.com/ EVE Industry blog, relatively new
  
• https://alphatoomegawithregionaltrading.blogspot.com/ New player regional trading challenge blog, still in the early stages
  
• https://alwaysanoob.com/ General EVE blog
  
• https://www.youtube.com/@OZeve CSM and trader the OZ. I am also part of his discord which tends to have a lot of good chat on EVE economy and trading. Provides weekly analysis of the economy. Croda a frequent guest here.
  
• https://declarationsofwar.com/ General EVE Online podcast. I was invited to be a part of episode 299 and got to talk to CCP Okami and CCP Kestrel about the Equinox expansion and aims for the economy, a really cool experience! I haven't listened back  to it though as I hate the sound of my own voice recorded.
  
• https://www.youtube.com/@strange_Net Dedicated EVE industry videos, somewhat inactive now
  
• https://www.youtube.com/@CEOPyrex Economy and industry focused channel, a lot of good guides and insight here, very active.
  
• https://www.youtube.com/@Gamingsincethe70s/videos Industry channel run by Thanak, charting his experience running his own personal industry, as well as a high sec corp and a null sec one! Gives a bit of insight and a peek behind the curtain at corp leadership
  
• https://www.youtube.com/@EVEARDCO/videos A new one, Ardel Corvallon charts his attempt to start a fuel block building empire in high sec, has a close association with Thanak and corp. He's recently invited me to join his "think tank" and provide whatever help and advice I can. Early days but hoping to see this enterprise flourish!
  

When I first started playing EVE there was a plethora of blogs and content related to all things EVE, then it felt like a few years ago there was a bit of a lul as some of the old guard dropped out, but in the last year or so things have picked up and there is an awful lot of great passionate people keen to share their experiences with this great game we all play. Long may it continue! If you have any good recommendations I haven't listed here I'd be keen to hear them.

Escaping R-AG7W

 So, Horde leadership has completely abandoned any attempt at mounting escape from the dying Keepstar, and Goons have relentlessly "hell-camped" the keep, which involves surrounding it with bubbles and caps like so:

The camp is so complete, that there is no way I can escape. I thought I could sneak my blockade runner next door to XU7 to grab my blueprints and escape to lowsec, but under these circumstances that's impossible.

So I only have 1 option, put all of my stuff in asset safety and then I can grab it from a lowsec station in 20 days for a fee of 15% of the value. In this case for my industry character everything comes to about 1Bn, so it'd be about 150mil.

For my other characters though I  will probably be hit with a bill of about 15Bn. Ouch.

I think what bothers me about this is the way that leadership has screwed up so much to the point of making escape impossible. I've done this sort of thing several times over the years and never been caught, with or without caps. I even escaped Catch when it was being beseiged by PL with a Thanatos before citadels, where I had to resort to safe spots and cloaks to get to lowsec. But this time the announcement was so sudden, so public, and there was absolutely no attempt to push goons off the undock that there is nothing I can do. Which annoys me. Your stuff is always at risk in EVE, but there is almost always counterplay. Almost.

Once I've got everything out I really don't think I'll stick with Horde. There doesn't seem to be a plan for the future, nevermind the next few days. There doesn't seem to be an excited successor to Gobbins, or anything to really get behind. This feels like the death of the Alliance in real time. I had grand plans to PANIC my Rorqual somewhere in tether to try and get a window to help a few people escape, but the capitulation has been so total that it's pointless. Which is really sad for an alliance of this size.

Anyway, I'll regroup my assets in lowsec, get my industry guy to highsec and look to the future. A future where I'm no longer in Pandemic Horde in any capacity.

Horde is leaving Horde

 So, Horde is moving again.

Not long after the last announced move to R-AG7W it's been announced that Horde is leaving the coalition it leads altogether and moving out of dronelands to join forces with Init instead. This also comes with a change of leadership. This is all fine and might make sense from a mixing things up and giving members fun things to do point of view. 

For myself though, it's extremely annoying. 

I have 3 characters in Horde at the moment. 

A "PVP main" (Stranathor) who isn't part of either of my money making challenges and who used to do things like pvp and carrier rat.

My Null sec seller, who also acts as my cyno character for Stranathor.

My null industrialist, who has been winding down operations and attempting to sell up.

Normally when these moves happen I simply move myself in my capitals (I have a Thanatos, Revelation and Rorqual) and between those 3 I can carry everything I own to new staging and set up again. Easy.

This time though new staging is cryptic, and multiple jumps from where we live now. This would be fine if I didn't have 64Bn in sell orders up on one character, 8.5Bn on another and just having had 6Bn more stuff imported. 

I was trying to decouple my null industrialist from Horde anyway, but by selling his own stuff. At this point I think the simplest thing to do is to sell my assets to my Horde seller and get him out to high sec with his blueprints.

For the Null seller, I think I'm going to evacuate him and Stranathor to lowsec for now. The shipping services are all shipping stuff to Otsasai, so I think I'll head there while I contemplate my next move. There are plans to offer services to jump assets from there to Jita in the future, which I will likely take advantage of. 

This plan should mean my industry character takes minimal losses from all this, with my trader taking a larger hit. I have done one of these sort of lowsec moves before when I was in and then subsequently leaving Brave a full 10 years ago now. So I know it's not the end of the world but I have a lot more stuff to think about this time.

This does feel like a good time to reconsider my membership of Horde. I've been in the alliance on and off for 10 years now, though it has been quite a while since I actually joined a fleet. I like the access to Null space and the option to use big toys but Horde has always been heavy on the rules for using them. I don't know if I'd stay and see how this all shakes out, go it alone for a bit or even switch sides and see if the grass is greener. For now I think I'll take my time, evac my assets and go from there. By the time I next have the chance to really have a proper play session I might have made a decision. 

October Update - Industry

 This was on track to be a very good month, until political considerations made me take a hit. I forgot to take a screenshot on the 31st so here's the graph:

My net worth at the end of the month was 37.8Bn ISK. That's an increase of 4.4Bn or 146mil/ISK/day.

In order to make it worth the PLEX I need to be at a point where I am earning 4.75Bn/month (the equivalent of 19Bn for a years Omega times 3). I've fallen just short of that this month, even though I was on track to be over 2Bn ahead of that.

That is primarily due to Horde moving staging, so I decided to wind down my operation there, and move all my sell orders to the new staging to try and liquidate them. This is going OK, though I had to take a big write down as some things are selling for less, I had to pay a lot in broker fees and I also came in from the pub after 6 pints on Friday and decided updating my null sell orders was a good idea. To all the people who got rigs for about half price, you're welcome!

I have moved one of my null characters to high and he's happily churning out rigs, which is great. I also have 2 characters that I'm training and I'm planning to put in a low sec sotiyo as an experiment, to see if that's a goer long term. I'm a bit skeptical about that but for the moment they're just training while being inactive. So my account setup is like this:

Account 1:

- CEO character, does my high sec hauling and builds things based on what EVEGuru reckons is most profitable

- Mobile Depot builder, very simple

- T2 rig builder, currently building large CCC II rigs

Account 2:

- null character, currently offloading to leave Horde

- T2 hauler builder, currently building Cranes alongside some mobile depots

- trainee, currently inactive

Account 3:

- T2 rig builder, currently doing large CCC II

- null builder turned high sec, currently build t2 rigs

- trainee, currently inactive

As you can see I'm starting to have a bit of a theme going, which makes things easier as I can setup buy orders for the limited pool of input materials and easily keep track of my slots etc. The more varied it gets the harder it is to keep track of. CCC rigs are great because the demand for them is huge, I rarely have any left for sale when I log back in after a day or 2 which is fantastic.

The downside is that each run of these blueprints is only measured in hours. So if I can only manage to properly sort my industry every few days then I'm having a lot of wasted slot hours. My CEO character is addressing that a bit by branching into things like industrial cores and mercenary dens but this might be something I need to optimise in the near future. An option is pivoting more heavily into deployables/cores and big ships. Things with long slot times. This could be more difficult to get the revenue for out of a high sec NPC facility but it would at least cut down on lost hours. Something to consider.

Plan for this month is to full extract from null, onlining 7 high sec characters properly, and then set up a low sec experiment and see how things go. If it's too difficult or the lead times won't work I'll just commit to high sec fully like SquadB does. It's working for me so far.

I've seen people suggesting in places like discord and reddit that it's basically impossible to make highsec industry work  profitably, I hope if nothing else I'm proving that wrong.

October Update - Trading

 A more successful month this one, though I only managed to update my orders 3 or 4 times the whole month while I concentrated on Industry and had my play time restricted. My current position:

And the full breakdown:

My current net worth is 1.153Tn ISK. That's an increase of 19Bn ISK or 633mil/ISK/day.

That doesn't sound like an increase, but when you factor in that I spent 18.75Bn on a years Omega time for my second industry account it comes to a operating profit of nearly 38Bn. 

As I said earlier, I didn't log in very much to my trading characters. I'm concentrating on improving and expanding my industry setup mostly so my trading is in maintenance mode of roughly 1 trade run per week. My company have also issued a return to office order, meaning I have to commute to London 3 times a week now rather than once a week. This has been very unpopular and has also meant I can't sneak in half an hour here and there at lunch which is a shame.

The main story this month has been HyperCores. Someone (and judging by my transaction history and the market spike I think it is one person) bought out all HyperCores up to 444k, massively spiking the price. People then flooded in to try and liquidate long held stores and the price has fallen back. It has had a few days in the high 380s sell price now, and I suspect that is where it will stay for a while as people try and sell some of their stockpiles for a profit. As the price seems volatile I've listed the Jita Buy price on my investment section, so potentially undervaluing them a bit, but I'd rather do that than overvalue and then face doing write downs which are just depressing. If things stay stable or slowly increase I'll switch to using the Jita Sell like I do with everything else.