PureMurder
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Posted - 2010.09.25 17:56:00 -
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Edited by: PureMurder on 25/09/2010 17:59:13
I was thinking of making a post on this subject, because it's an important topic.
Anyways, I was doing reprocessing lately but I can only reprocess in Dodi and Ours, so I've used courier contracts to get my stuff around. I've found that the higher the volume the longer it takes, the higher the collateral, the longer it takes, and if it's not going hub to hub, it takes longer. FWIW this activity seems to pay somewhere between L2 and L3 missions, depending on how selective you are about what you haul and what you buy.
I never tried placing an order along a trade route (i.e. Kassigainen) to see if it was picked up faster than something that wasn't (i.e. Mies). I would hope that it would be, but in practice I don't know. What I do know is that it's hard to get anything off of a remote system at a rate competitive with the public courier contracts (0.5-2%). For placing an order outside of a hub, the volume is the key consideration. It can take over a week (or not get taken) if you require a freighter to move your goods, so break up those contracts into smaller indy-sized contracts!
What further sucks is that you have to be present in-station to restack an item (to make it smaller for faster courier contracting).
As a reprocessor, my main risk is mineral prices while waiting for courier contracts to be delivered. I haven't looked into Red Frog. At this point, I buy from a few locations around a hub, haul to the hub myself in an indy (manually) and then set a courier contract to get it to where I want to reprocess. Basically this is because I hate flying. :)
I'm curious what "base value" is (default collateral price for public courier contracts). How is that determined?
Also, I'd view a public courier contract as filling marginal cargo; i.e. you have a trader going A-B with 80% of his cargo full, and he snags your stuff for the last 20% at a smaller profit than he's hauling his own goods, but it's relatively free for him to do this. I think this is what keeps the price of public contracts low. I think Red Frog makes their living by hauling important cargo with priority (i.e. faster) and so they demand more compensation, as this isn't a marginal operation for them. The value that they offer is security, speed, and professionalism (and a kick-ass website - note: I haven't used them before).
I would appreciate some feedback on this. I think posting on the topic is good because the more people use public courier contracts, the more likely they are to get filled, and having more players buying underpriced goods increases liquidity without costing too much profits for people already reprocessing.
edit: Oh, when doing your own hauling for the processing thing (or I suppose hauling in general), it's best to make a table of how long it will take you to go get something (by number of jumps), the desired isk/hr, the volume of the item you're moving, and it should spit out values of how much isk you need to make per item, based on the volume and desired isk/hr, to make it worth buying that thing. If you get unexpected results, consider that the chart may be indicating multiple trips required. 
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