Horde staging moving again

 So for the second time this year, Horde staging is moving, as laid out here:

Horde Staging moving

I don't like the title of the thread but the content is true, Horde have announced they are moving to a new staging system, R-AG. This just so happens to be 1 jump from where I've been doing my industry in XU7, so in theory makes my life easier, but as outlined in my last post I'd already taken the decision to wind down my operations, and this really solidifies my decision. 

Not that moving is the end of the world, it's part and parcel of null sec life and I'm not complaining per se, but it adds to the inconvenience of industry in null and I think I just want to simplify at the moment. So the builds that are in progress will be my last. What I will probably do is cancel all my sell orders in E8- and then sell my wares to my null trader, since he's going to be moving over to new staging anyway, and take those funds to my high sec operation.

You could argue that this is cheating a bit and for the "true" experience I should stay and sell those myself or have them shipped to Jita and cash out that way. To that I say, you're right, but I think I'd rather just divest and get back to what I'm enjoying about this whole thing.

On a sort of related note, I watched this video recently:

SquadB Gaming's How to get started in Manufacturing

Where SquadB, an industrial Trillionaire, goes through his setup and offers advice to people getting into industry. I'd thoroughly recommend it to everyone. In it, he explains how he is based out of an NPC station a few jumps from Jita, just like me. He also had bad experiences with player run freeports and losing assets. I find it interesting that he came to the exact same conclusions as me, and I may just end up running a scaling manufacturing outfit like him in high sec out of an NPC station for the safety, security, easy logistics and certainty that nothing is likely to change, other players cannot scam you out of your assets or blow the place up.

The only things making me refrain from that decision permanently are that a low sec sotiyo could offer me reaction slots and the capacity to build capitals. Reactions are a potential good income stream on their own or profit multiplier, and capitals are just a goal of mine long term. 

For now though, I'll sit tight and see what sells over the next few days while I'm away, then move everything to new staging and my industrial character out of null, one way or the other.

Beginning to consolidate

 I've been thinking a lot about my setup the last few days. I've come to the conclusion that null is just not scalable for me right now. So I've decided to start winding that down.

Step 1 of this is to move my second Null industry character out to high sec and quit Horde. This character was criminally underutilised anyway so it should be a net win. He has 10 build and research slots and can already build T2 rigs, so should slot straight into my setup and be a net win easily.

I only had to sell a mining barge in E8- on this character, which I did in situ, then flew all the way to Akonoinen in his kestrel. This was entirely uneventful.

As I had a stock of materials I could immediately put him to work building Medium CCC IIs, which is nice. I also got him copying some blueprints immediately.

The other thing to consider is I've had a "return to office" order from work, which means I'm now commuting to London 3 days a week. This means much less lunch time run updating, and a lot more money spent on commuting. Not happy all round. The upshot of this for EVE is I might need to consider moving to a more 2 day run time for my slots, if possible.

Next step is to start to wind down my other null characters operations, and sell the assets I have/have them shipped out of null so I can slot him in with the rest of my characters. This will take a bit of time and I might even sell my outputs to my null sell character to get him moved quicker. That will have the advantage of having another character that can fly T2 haulers, so I can fly 2 DST loads at a time to/from Jita which will be great.

Then I need to start my low sec experiment. But I should end up with a much simpler, better utilised setup as a whole that can scale better.

All that may have to wait a little though, as tomorrow I'm in London and this weekend I have family down, so I'm probably not going to get to play the game again until middle of next week. Feeling happy about this line of decisions though.

Rounding out my 3 industry accounts

 For a while now my industry set up has been the following (in high sec unless specified):

Account 1:

- personal corp CEO, character who does my hauling in a DST or blockade runner, has the most well rounded industry skills

- Mobile Depot builder

- T2 rig building character

Account 2:

- Null builder/hauler, mostly doing T2 rigs 

- Highsec character, now skilled into building T2 haulers

Account 3:

- Spare null builder, underutilised

- T2 rig building character

Which leaves me with 1 spare slot on account 2 and 3. I Build out of a NPC station in Akonoinen in high sec, with a corp office there allowing for easy inventory management. This is 4 jumps from Jita. I like this set up as the logistics are easy, inventory management is easy, and the system cost index hovers around 4%, which is pretty nice for high sec.

In Null I basically only build on on e character, and build primarily with locally sourced salvage to sell on the local market. This keeps the logistics easy, though the revenue probably isn't as high as I could get in Jita. Inventory management between character though is fiddly, having to trade or contract blueprints, materials and output between characters, and trying to remember everything once I haul it to the raitarus in the industry park I use. I don't like this set up, and I may even pull out of this completely (nearly done so several times).

I've reached a point with my existing character training where I can fill those last 2 character slots, particularly as I am increasingly finding I have 5-6Bn ISK sitting in wallets. My first thought was to simply add 2 more characters to high sec and expand what I'm doing linearly, but I think I'll try something different.

EVEGuru have set up a couple of structures in the low sec system of Auner. That is 25 jumps from my current setup in Akonoinen, and the closest trade hub is Hek. This sounds inconvenient, and it is. But they've struck a deal with a courier service to offer hauling contracts to/from Jita for 25mil up to 1.5Bn collateral or 120mil up to 10Bn. This equates to about 1.6% and 1.2% respectively. They are also offering corp offices for 50mil/month, which is similar to the 35mil I pay in high sec.

The plus side is that it offers building in a sotiyo, with the EVEGuru profit margins estimating significantly more profit per hour, though part of that is the inbuilt speed bonuses of the structure. There is also a reactions structure also owned by them, allowing me to utilise more of my characters for potentially profitable reactions. I will also be able to build capitals down the line, which is a personal goal of mine.

The downsides are major, I won't have full control over my logistics (I'm not sure how long a hauling contract will take to complete) and I don't know if someone is going to destroy the structure. They have a contract with a local low sec entity to protect it, but we'll see how long that lasts in practice. Additionally, I'd have to keep a character in Jita to act as a market buyer/seller. I sort of do this with the CEO character now but he also builds his own stuff.

Bottom line, I'm going to create 2 new characters and give it a try, see how I get on. If it allows me to scale faster and boost my profits with reactions and I don't find the logistics too challenging I might move my entire operation there. If it proves incompatible with the way I play then I'll just up and move to high sec.

September Update - Industry

 A month of two halves this one, much improved second half of the month. My current position:

And the graph:

My current net worth is 33.4Bn ISK. That's an increase of 4.7Bn ISK, or 156mil/day.

That's not a record, but it is an improvement on the last few months. So what changed? 

Primarily, salvage prices have levelled out now that the new null exploration anomalies have hit the happy medium of what people are willing to run them for. Expect some ups and downs but I am no longer chasing rig prices down properly, which is great! You can see this change hit around the middle of the month as my profits suddenly spike.

Tied with that, one of my high sec alts has reached the point where he can invent and build medium and large T2 rigs, so I've just switched him over to that. At the moment it's primarily Medium Capacitor Control Circuit IIs. Why those? Well, they're consistently and healthily profitable, I currently build them for about 4mil each and sell them for about 7 mil. They also have the crucial revenue property that Mobile Depots have, that being I can put up as many as I can build in a day and be reasonably confident that by the time I log in again they'll all be sold. This applies to both high and null sec. 

This means I've moved that char away from depots, so some of the BPOs I have are getting some extra research. Pretty soon I'll be operating entirely from 10/16 BPOs for them, which will be nice. I've also just started up a couple of factory planets creating Guidance Systems feeding into Depots, bringing my input costs down further. It's pretty click intensive to set up but restocking is pretty easy and the new(ish) templates are a godsend, I can duplicate it to other planets really easily. I might just keep this up, it seems just on the right side of worth it for now.

I'm hoping over the next couple of months I can fill out my last 2 character slots on my second and third account, to bring me to 9 industry chars total. Initial thoughts would be to slot them into my highsec operation or use 1 as a test run for a lowsec freeport to check that side of things out...TBD on that one.

Hoping I can get further up the profitability this month, and all being well I should be able to have a record breaker. Fingers crossed!

September Update - Trading

 A steady and relatively uneventful month this one, my current position:

And the full breakdown:

My current net worth is 1.134Tn ISK. That's an increase of 11Bn ISK, or 366mil/ISK/day. On the face of it that's pretty poor but during the month I spent 19.1Bn on a years PLEX for my first industry account so my operating profit for the month was a much healthier 30Bn.

Still nothing spectacular but a steady increase that I hope to build on in October. Though I have had a return to office order that may impact order updating and my playtime more generally, as I expect to get back from London late a few evenings a week which has knock on effects.

On the plus side my expansion of selling in Horde staging has been going well, with sometimes around 70Bn in sell orders and revenue comparable to dodixie, this is definitely worth keeping up with. Also I've managed to increase my sell orders to over 900Bn. The screenshots have been taken before trade runs so I have a lot of ISK in my wallet, but I am creeping towards the trillion in sell order target.

Plan for October is to increase my revenues, particularly in null, and push my sell orders higher towards the 1Tn mark. Probably still a few months away but steadily heading in the right direction.