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.

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.

Broker Relations Changes

I was going to write a blog about how with a combination of storms Ciara and Dennis and real life disruption I've managed my first trade run in 3 weeks today (hauling a terrifying 84Bn ISK in a single cargo!) and that I'm not expecting much from this month as result.

CCP has also announced massive (if possibly temporary) reductions in the amount of resources in asteroid fields and anomalies across the game, which will likely drive the price of everything up.

All of that is interesting, and there is a lot I could say about it, but when I logged on the EVE reddit I saw this bombshell:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q67fqo/broker-relations

This is, with no exaggeration, the biggest changes to the market since I started playing in 2009.

The cliff notes:

- Introducing tick size - a limit on price precision when creating/updating an order. An order's price can only be specified with a maximum precision of 4 significant figures.
- In Upwell structures, the minimum broker fee that can be configured by the structure owner increases from 0% to 1%, adding an ISK sink to these market fees by paying half of this incoming fee to an NPC.
- Increase the ISK fees that are charged when modifying an order. The fee includes a new additional component, the Relist Charge. This is in addition to the regular Broker Charge that covers the increase between old and new order value.
- Change the benefits (and name) of the Margin Trading skill - it becomes the Advanced Broker Relations skill. This will now give a reduction in the Relist Charge. The skill's old ability to create a Want-To-Buy order with only partial ISK escrow is removed, so all WTB orders will require 100% escrow to be paid up front.

I'll take that one at a time.

Tick size

You will now not be able to adjust an order by 0.01ISK, but to 4 significant figures. This means that for Tritanium, you will still be able to adjust by 0.01, but for something costing 1 million you can adjust by a minimum of 1000.

Upwell minimum broker fee

At the moment, if you create your own trade citadel the minimum broker fee is 0%. Most high sec trade hubs are about 0.5%. All of this goes to the citadel owner. After this change the minimum will be 1%, with half of that going to the SSC - an NPC corp, essentially disappearing, providing another ISK sink to the game.

Increase the ISK fees that are charged when modifying an order

Currently, when you modify an order it costs a base of 100ISK, The actual number is so small that I don't know what it is. Someone has done some Maths on Reddit, and worked out that after the change it'll be int he region of 1% to modify an order. For razor thin margin items like PLEX this is massive. Game changing.

Advanced Broker Relations skill

Probably the most controversial change. Margin Trading is going away to be replaced by a skill that gives a reduction in the amount you pay when modifying an order. This just went from a skill you'd only buy if you were station trading to make your ISK go further to a skill you'll want at V on every character that interacts with the market. Looks like my traders aren't finished any more!

Predicted affects

It is extremely difficult to predict how the market will look after this. The aim is to make it difficult for bots to sit there, updating orders by 0.01 every 5 minutes ad infitum. I suspect this effect will be achieved, at least until bot behaviour becomes much more intelligent. Hopefully most will be lazy and their bots will update orders until they're bankrupt! High volume thin margin item flipping will likely look radically different. I suspect people will utilise more smaller orders, rather than placing single large stack orders in future to try and circumvent the relist charge.

For my type of trading, buying from Jita, shipping elsewhere, putting up sell orders and adjusting once or twice a week, things will likely not change much. I'll have to pay more in taxes - sure, but my behaviour won't change much. My station traders I'm less sure.

Overall I'm predicting larger spreads on most items, and probably slightly lower trade activity overall. Hopefully we'll see more ISK leaving the game too. Makes me richer compared to everyone else!

A very interesting time, I'm actually looking forward to this!