Tuesday 14 July 2015

Eve by the Numbers

So I've been pretty busy in real life over the last week or so that has really restricted my play time on my main.  However, I have been able to address something that was nagging me for a while since I came back to playing - what would I do when I ran out of ISK?

I returned to Eve with the princely sum of 400 million ISK that I cleaned out of my alt corporation, but I'm losing stealth bombers at a rate of 2 a month.  At 45 million or so a pop, it's pretty easy to see that those maths would soon equal a negative balance and I would have to do something to bankroll my current lifestyle.  Originally my plan revolved around the other alt on my main account.  He was trained up to be a spotter/warpin for some highsec ganking I did in a previous life.  Not much use by himself, but he does have a mostly fitted Astero with the obligatory covert ops cloak.  The plan was to contract the Astero over to my main and go and do some exploration to get a pool of ISK together so I could fund myself for another X months before doing it all again.

The downsides to this is that I would be doing data and relic sites again and while I don't really have a problem doing that it's nowhere near as exciting as hunting.  It would also present a pretty high risk in terms of me flying my very last ship - the absolute worst case scenario would be jumping into the Astero and getting killed without getting any loot back to the market.  The idea of exploration in a tech 1 exploration frigate really doesn't appeal.

 The ideal situation would be to just hunt on my main and have a mostly passive income on the alt.  With that I mind, I got to thinking about starting market trading again.  I had previously done regional trading with limited success and I thought why not?  I can move my trade goods in the Astero in relative safety with the covert ops cloak, time wise it's not an issue as I can do the runs in the background while doing other things, same thing with updating my orders, that wouldn't be too much of a time sink.  The pros are that I can make ISK without terribly affecting my playtime on the main, it's ongoing income and it can be one of the easiest ways to make ISK in the game.

So I did it - I invested 120 million ISK from my main to my (now) trading alt and splashed out to activate a second training queue so I could get some trade skills up to reduce the broker fees & sales tax all without compromising my mains level 5 skill training queues. I'm not going to bother trying to grind faction standings, as even though reduced fees would be great, I'm just not interested in grinding level 1 mission, etc.  And so I hit the pavement, doing the loop between Rens->Jita->Amarr, mainly focusing on T3 subsystems at this point for high margins and relatively low volume items.  If I ever find myself trying to carry more than can fit in the Astero's hold (haven't yet) I'll use a courier service - that way I'm limiting my potential losses on the off chance I do get ganked.

And so far it's going well.  From my initial investment of 120 million ISK I'm on track to reach 1 Billion ISK in cash and sell orders hopefully sometime next week:


Hopefully work & real life will settle down a bit over the next week or so and I can get back to my normal adventures.  But it's nice knowing that I can go out and lose a ship without needing to change my play style.  I might even be able to plex my account, which would be nice.  The other intriguing option for further down the track might be to switch from a bomber to something with a bit larger engagement profile, like say a neut Stratios - but the fit I'm thinking of would probably be in the order of 700 million ISK, so having a money making alt would enable that as well.

I'm planning to do a monthly update on my trading along with some spreadsheets.  I like spreadsheets, a lot.  I'll tinker with sheets for hours on end coming up with cool stuff.  Maybe that's why I like spreadsheets in space so much.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, you inspired me to try what you're doing with a bomber, I wrote about it on my blog here: https://imbadateve.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/wormhole-diving/
    However I ditched the bomber and went for a Tengu instead. It's cheaper than the 700m stratios you imply but has a few pros and cons. Con is you refit to scan rather than being able to do it any time. Pro is when you refit you're also interdiction nullified.
    My fit is listed on my blog also: https://imbadateve.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/wormhole-diving-part-ii/

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    1. They say the best imitation is the greatest compliment - that's awesome that my misguided adventures inspired you to try something different. But yeah Procurers can be a bit tough with tank and drones for a bomber to take on, so a T3 obviously has a much greater engagement envelope - nice kills on that Myrmidon and Domi. I'm thinking a stratios for exactly the con you mention, not having to refit & I think with drones it may get more DPS than a covert fitted tengu. What has happened to Ithica??? The suspense is killing me - Thera perhaps?

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