I've been playing EVE for a while, mostly mining. I have decided to start a new life as an Industrialist. I'm blogging my experience. I'd love some feedback and tips on being a better Industrial player.

www.wulfbrothers.blogspot.com

fly strange

Thanks everyone, for reading! I genuinely appreciate all the comments on what I'm doing so far.

I've taken Economics, so I completely understand the idea of opportunity cost. I understand why I need to value my TIME. However, I still don't understand why people are so against calling minerals "free." !

Heh. I am so going to steal that.

Well since you mine "for the corp" the corp makes isk with "free" minerals. But if you count the minerals free, you are actually generating most of your profits from the mining, and not actually manufacturing, your "manufacturing division" is just adding a bit of value to your "mining divisions" work.

I'm going to keep working on the thought process here. But, when I figure in material cost on materials that I mined, I'm going to continue to use "0." Because it represents a true ISK cost of what I'm making, even if it doesn't represent the time cost.

I've taken Economics, so I completely understand the idea of opportunity cost. I understand why I need to value my TIME. However, I still don't understand why people are so against calling minerals "free." If they don't cost me anything, then, yes I could be shorting myself the price of just selling the minerals, but I also am doing what I want, which is to manufacture products to sell on the market. The minerals, then, are free, in that they don't have an ISK cost attached to them when I mine myself.

It boils down to this: At some point, you have a certain amount of minerals sitting in your station. You could sell those for XXX ISK. You could also manufacture something from it and sell that for YYY ISK. If XXX is more than YYY, you are doing it wrong.

Some guy is moving from thread to thread here, claiming that you are doing everythin right as long as your wallet moves up. He's wrong. If you mine minerals that could be sold for 50mill, but then manufacture something that only sells for 40mill, you are losing money on your manufacturing, even if your wallet just increased by 40mill. In that case, the only sensible thing to do is producing something different that sells for more than the minerals would or just sell the minerals.

You claim to have taken economics and don't get this?

Maybe this is a problem with the anti MIMAF crowd. The issue here is that you are considering the minerals you mine to be free, in terms of what you had to pay. In that aspect yes those minerals were "free" (you did not spend any direct isk to get them). This is excluding your time opportunity cost.

As an aside the time opportunity cost in a game is subject to a lot of pitfalls as well. EVE isn't a job, so to say you missed an opportunity by mining instead of X is hard to gauge if you are playing EVE to have fun rather than just isk/hr.

Anyhow back on topic. The problem the MIMAF crowd has, including you is that you are in fact saying the minerals you mine have no VALUE. And this is patently false. They may be "free" in terms of you not having to spend isk to get them, but they have an innate VALUE, which is based on what you could sell them for on the market. This VALUE should be a part of your cost calculations, regardless of how you acquired those minerals.

And to the anti MIMAF crowd, maybe you should talk more about mineral value than "free". I know its a minor distinction, but it may help explain the difference to people better.

Like i said, way too complicated thinking for a thing that is really really simple.

Interesting thread, you got the spirit to play the game and do something your way. There is nothing wrong with that. As long as you realize you might be losing isk from manufacturing.

You could be earning more just selling the minerals!

Now, I have a question for the group, do you set your prices based on YOUR cost or based on where the market is? I am currently attempting to set my prices where they are both profitable and movable. There is a place where those two lines cross, I'm certain, and I'm trying to hit it. I'm not lowering my prices because I'm not calculating minerals into some of the equations, I'm using the market to dictate my prices (too low and they move quickly, but not much profit; too high and the profit is greater, but they don't move as quickly).

Now, I have a question for the group, do you set your prices based on YOUR cost or based on where the market is? I am currently attempting to set my prices where they are both profitable and movable. There is a place where those two lines cross, I'm certain, and I'm trying to hit it. I'm not lowering my prices because I'm not calculating minerals into some of the equations, I'm using the market to dictate my prices (too low and they move quickly, but not much profit; too high and the profit is greater, but they don't move as quickly).

Interesting thread, you got the spirit to play the game and do something your way. There is nothing wrong with that. As long as you realize you might be losing isk from manufacturing.

You could be earning more just selling the minerals!

I definitely don't fall into the Minerals I Mine Are Free category, because I know they aren't free. They just didn't cost me any ISK to buy. Is there a price I could set on them if I were selling them? Absolutely. But, I never mined them with the intention of selling them. I mined them with the intention of using them. So, no cost directly to me, just potential ISK lost because I could've sold them directly.

It also helps because at some point you will never be able to mine enough to keep up with your production.

IThe 90 Acolytes were all purchased today. Interestingly, someone bought all 90 of them, but actually paid more for the last 22 than he did for the first 68. I'm not sure what exactly happened there, but I'll take the extra 8,714 ISK. I literally did nothing for that money.

Research - I've checked all the lowsec stations in my immediate vicinity that have labs in them (Thank you Ombey). They are all booked solid. This is something I'll have to really start to figure out.

Jump Clone - My standings with Ishukone broke 8.0, meaning I can install my first jump clone with a skill book. I don't know what the whole benefit of jump clones is, but I imagine there's a good reason to work on this! What's the most effective way to use a jump clone for an Industrial player?

ahoy Kiger :) i am quoting some phrases from your latest blog post.



i really look forward to reading comments on this ^^

The way the market works is that the person with the lowest sell order ALWAYS gets the sale.

So say you had 50 acolytes on the market and you were the lowest sell order, at 1000 isk

Also, lets say there was another sell order for 300 acolytes at 1050 isk.

Now I come along and I need 250 acolytes. If I want to save isk, I will click on your order and buy 50, and then click on the next order and buy 200.

If however I'm lazy, I will click on the order that is higher than yours, but had 300 items. I will then buy 250 at 1050 isk. What ACTUALLY happens however, is that the first 50 I purchase are actually yours, at 1050, and the remaining 200 from the order I actually clicked on.

I had the same happen to me once and never got around to finding out what went on there, good to know how that happened. At the time I thought it had something to do with people putting up buy orders for more.

So now I wonder, what happens in that situation if you didn't even check sell orders at all and instead decides to put up a buy order for 250 acolytes at 1100? Would I get 1000 ISK per acolyte, or 1100?

e.g. I hate marketing. I found that it was worth taking a small hit in sales profits by selling to buy orders in order to massively improve my cashflow so I could buy more materials to make more stuff. Essentially I improved my turnover by reducing my profit margin to the point that I improved my overall income. I was able to do that by concentrating on just the marketing stage of the process - trying to include the mining and refining stages in that decision would have made it wildly over-complicated.

Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap?

I definitely don't fall into the Minerals I Mine Are Free category, because I know they aren't free. They just didn't cost me any ISK to buy. Is there a price I could set on them if I were selling them? Absolutely. But, I never mined them with the intention of selling them. I mined them with the intention of using them. So, no cost directly to me, just potential ISK lost because I could've sold them directly.

It is also not dissimilar to the RL practices of corporations such as Tesco(UK based supermarket chain.) who sell produce at a loss to destroy others businesses and cripple their suppliers. In other words MIMAF is not a healthy way of running a business whether in RL or in New Eden.

But, I never mined them with the intention of selling them. I mined them with the intention of using them. So, no cost directly to me, just potential ISK lost because I could've sold them directly.

Like a lot of us, you're not always playing solely for the ISK, and you're enjoying the RP side of the game etc.. That perspective and play style is very healthy and good for long-term success and happiness in this game I think. "Success" as an industrialist can be rather subjective in this respect.

Where things get sticky with this perspective however is when looking for advice on forums, comparing notes, or bragging to others about recent exploits in chat, etc.. In these situations objectivity rules, and we need to describe activities with more detail and accuracy in order for them to be meaningful. This is where the Opportunity Cost must always be accounted for to some reasonable degree of precision (no need to get too crazy tracking costs).

When talking about the profitability of any manufacturing activities with others, you really must account for the cost of materials that went into the product, regardless of how you came by the materials. Whether you mined them yourself with the intention of just having fun out under the virtual stars while watching a movie, or Santa gave them to you, they're cost must be accounted for in some objective fashion when discussing profitability with others.

Very glad you are enjoying EVE and I think your blog is great and helpful to others.

The Planetary Interaction post I promised is UP!

www.wulfbrothers.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading!

PI: I can safely say 'ur doin it rong'.

Of COURSE selling to buy orders is making a loss due to taxes and materials. Either stick it up on sell orders, or make PoS fuel blocks with the stuff.

I've done the maths. I know that, with my PI setup, my BPOs, and buying basic materials and ice products off the market, I can make a profit with PoS fuel blocks, and get a quick sale with little market games.
Even just buying the components for the stuff off sell orders, I get a profit margin.
I don't get what you're doing wrong. Maybe you're just using the wrong system?

Mind you, I got a bunch of help with my fuel block setup. The BPOs were a CCP gift, circumstances in lowsec mean a relatively low tax rate with little risk, and someone in my alliance swapped their researched BPOs for my fresh ones for a decent price.

I am ABSOLUTELY certain that you are right about me doing it wrong. This is one of those things that I'm going to work on in depth at some point in the future, but I haven't taken a lot of time with it right now.

It also highlights one of the aspects of this blog and that is from someone who doesn't know anything to (hopefully) someone who has some good advice on industrial life in the future.

Thanks for the comments! =)

I've taken Economics, so I completely understand the idea of opportunity cost. I understand why I need to value my TIME. However, I still don't understand why people are so against calling minerals "free." If they don't cost me anything, then, yes I could be shorting myself the price of just selling the minerals, but I also am doing what I want, which is to manufacture products to sell on the market. The minerals, then, are free, in that they don't have an ISK cost attached to them when I mine myself.

Happy Friday everyone! There's a new post at:

www.wulfbrothers.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading!

On marketing: They're not buying from the other guy's order because they think you're a jerk; they're doing it because the other guy has more stuff up, and they want to save clicks. At least, that's what I do when buying off sell orders in bulk.

Also, train up trade skills! Tax reduction is a thing.

Depends. Appropriate markup should be what you can profit off of it as opposed to research.

Try this calculation and methodology.

You take the price of the BPO, unresearched, less the price of the researched bpo. You get the markup cost. Now, find out how long it would take you to research the bpo. If you can make a profit on the bpo in that time period that you would have researched it GREATER than the markup cost, then you should buy it. If not, you should research.

Like most new players you don't have a POS
and all the research slots in high sec got like a 25d waitingline.
So you have 25days of production time to make more isk
than the differences of a bpo from market and a research one from contract.