Friday, October 06, 2006

Mining = Money

Alright, I got a taste of a mining from my CEO. It paid very well. Thus, I decided to spend some time and skills into preparing myself into the mining profession. My goal is to provide myself with a supply of easy income. However, I do not want to expand too much of my skill training time on this. Mining is barely secondary for my development in Eve.

However, I had found that developing mining skills to use Retriever (2nd level mining ship with 2 strip mining lasers) pays off the time very well. According to my calculations, when I mine Omber, I earn 4.14 million isk per hour. Very nice. Of course, finding Omber to mine is not easy nor safe (there are enemies of my corporation), but my solution to this is my little secret. :)

Monday, September 18, 2006

No Science Without Covert Ops

Science profession is hard to pull off as I have found out. The problem is that most laboratories are taken. And it takes from a week to two weeks to get a spot. I traveled through most regions in Empire space, but all spots are taken. There are some open spots for copying and time research, but only a few.

However, I've been told by experienced players, that in 0.0 security all those spots are open. So, I need to get into 0.0 space. But this is hard as there are lots of assholes who get off from shooting everything that moves.

My answer is Covert Ops. With cloaking I should be able to at least evade those kind of people, and get to those spots from time to time. Now, I need to wait a little bit to acquire skills and money to buy the stuff I need for this.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Considering Science Again

I've been working as a manufacturer so far, some battle missions in my cruiser (Caracal), and a touch of mining lately. However, the profession I started out with was one of a scientist. I've got now super high Intelligence attribute for my time in Eve. However, I did not learn many science skills yet, though I did get Science 5.

The reason I've not delved into science that much was how little a scientist could do in Eve. This is what I have read and heard in Eve community and information resources. However, now that I've played Eve for a bit, I begin to see that even though the role of a scientist is rather limited compared to other roles in the games, it does offer an acceptable choice and variety.

Having worked on my trading skills and manufacturing, I think I can tie up science into my current bunch of skills quite easily and very effectively. I will have the following chain: basic mining -> researching blueprints -> manufacturing from those blueprints. The last two elements should work very well.

The only problem with science that I see is the low availability of research facilities. I will check out low populated regions to see if I can find spots there for my ammo blueprint research.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Freighter Came Through

After waiting for 2 days for completion of my buy order for rare (and not so rare) minerals, I've discovered that my order was fullfilled within 100% within a few minutes by the same player. I'm taking about 2 million worth rare minerals. I jumped on it right away.

I contacted the player, and found that he had a full load of minerals. I don't know how much overall, but he did came in a freighter. After a short deliberation, we've made a trade where I spent 80% of my available cash. Awesome, now I am loaded with minerals for a week.

Except for tritanium, I did not have enough cash left to buy plenty of it. So, instead I'll be living on buy orders. It is a good thing that in my location it is well supplied.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Where Are Miners?

The business has gone into full production. Now I spend about 1-1.5 million isk per day to buy material for future productions. This is the bothersome details come up. At the moment, I simply put up a buy order in the station where I manufacture my products. Tritanum buys very well. I am able to buy about a million a day without problem. However, more rare minerals take time to acquire. The one I want so much is Nocxium. One day I was sold a full order within hours. The next time, however, I waited for 2 day with barely any results at all.

What does this mean? I need to team up with a miners who can reliably produce minerals for me. I would be even willing to pay extra for this stability.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Income and Prices

My first steps were to test out a few ammo to see what and how they sell at different locations. I've found a few popular ammo, and they sell quite well. Location is definitely the key. Some locations are bare, and I set higher prices (at 50% profit), while others have competition, which drives my profits down (to 20%). In either cases, I will make profits. Orders are coming in every few minutes. :)

I've found that hauling minerals for production is annoying. It takes too much of my time. My badger II is not up to the job all the time, and it may take a few jumps before getting all that I need. I've found a solution, however. I place a buy order ahead of time in the station (or solarsystem) where I manufacture. This usually cost slightly more, but removes the need for me to haul it myself.

An interesting event occured as well. The usual range of how much money a customer pays stays within 10K to 60K isk. With this in mind, I was surprised with an order of 550K isk. I had to investigate. Upon contacting the customer, I've found that he was a manufacturer like me as well and that he sells the same product, too. So, why did he buy my stuff in such a large quantity? Apparently he saw my price as very low, and bought it all off at one location to sell for a much higher price later on. He further claimed to have such location not very far off from where he bought my stuff. According to my market research the price I set at the station was not too low, but only slightly lower than the rest. It may be that the orders were canceled or bought out, but it is more likely that he simply found a system nearby of which I am not aware of.

Fun stuff.

Next step is to scale up production of the popular ammo, and cover more territory, so that such cases as above will happen less in the future.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Market Research

I'm not a fighter in Eve, but doing NPC battle missions brings easy and fast money. So, it is a good way to build some starting capital for my future full-blown production and research.

According to my experience, I've found that ammo is constantly needed for players who run these missions. So, I've narrowed down first few choices that I will take a stab at. I will produce 3 types of ammo, and sell at the station that contain battle mission agents. I also noticed that those stations don't sell the ammo locally. And players have to fly elsewhere to buy more ammo.

This is a chance to make money on. However, I need to know what players need. What ammo do they use? In order to answer this, I have started a program: I will pay 50k isk to any player who will give me answers to what ammo they use. This way I plan to acquire market data that will allow me to make good choice of ammo to build and sell.

I would have liked to pay 50k remotely without having to actually be online and talk to players. For example, they could leave a note in my container with their name on there. Once I verify that the information they left is what I asked I would have transfered 50k isk to them.

This would require less work for my future clients and me. However, I have not found a way to achieve this yet.