Traders Rejoice, Market Buff
Posted: 2012-03-30 Filed under: market | Tags: buff, deadspace, faction, module, officer, trade Leave a comment
Revised killmails are coming with Inferno.
It looks like CCP took design inspiration from our popular 3rd party killboards, which is nice. Why reinvent the wheel?
At the bottom of the new killmails is information for the total value of the killmail. Currently killboards have to manually store and guesstimate the value of items that are contract only, like officer/faction/deadspace modules.
For my needs, I have been manually updating prices for these non-market items from http://prices.c0rporation.com by importing the XML price list. I’ve also had to edit some numbers are they were not up to date or way overpriced.
Officer/faction/deadspace modules have always been a thorn in my side as far as pricing went.
In order for the new in-game killmail to have a price for these items, CCP decided to add them to the market.
Very exciting news for traders. We’re now going to be able to clearly see price and volume for these high meta items.
From the Devblog:
…
To get this to work properly, we’ve (with help from team Game of Drones) added everything to the market and fixed a few items that didn’t have a price (like Titans), with the price being based on material ingredients.
Confirmation from CCP SoniClover:
Q: Everything on market now?
A: More or less. Basically, everything that exists, is published and has a meta level is on the market now.
link
Tech 2 BPO Returns
Posted: 2012-03-08 Filed under: eveonline, industry, market | Tags: bpo, invention, t2 16 CommentsStirring the Hornet’s Nest
The allure of Tech2 BPOs is high and the history surrounding them is very controversial. If you don’t believe me, perform a search on the forums and you will feast on delicious tears. Industry people have been forum raging about this topic since the introduction and CCP has not dared to make any adjustments to them.
Short refresher for non-industrialists: T2 items are manufactured from an invented blueprint copy that, based on success, comes from a copy of the T1 BPO + datacores + sometimes a decryptor to modify attributes of the end T2 BPC.
Owning a T2 BPO means you can bypass the invention process and manufacture with solely the T2 BPO that has unlimited runs.
Why the bitching? The majority of forum posts about T2 BPOs complain that the individuals who won them during the lottery phase print ISK.
Yes, they were very lucky and didn’t have to put down multiple billions for the BPO. Yes, they had a monopoly on T2 production. Had. The invention system, which was introduced after the lottery system, allows many people to participate in the T2 process. More competition, lower prices.
What’s the allure? For you PVP people, think of a T2 BPOs as a Titan — a giant prize that you can show off, protect, and use to enhance your infamy. When I first started getting into industry in 2008, I thought these were the win button of Eve.
Now the only way to get one is to buy one from another player, which brings me to my research. I want to show everyone that even though they do make money, the return on the investment is very poor in the majority of cases.
The Research
Below is a list of T2 BPOs that have sold on the public Eve Online forums. I used a market program to figure out the yearly profit and divided that by the sold cost to get a return.
Though you may be drawn in by the yearly profit numbers, consider the amount of ISK used to achieve that number.
A few of the BPOs seem to have a reasonable return and might even be a slightly reasonable investment if you can keep it producing 24×7. It looks like some Ammo, Mining Crystals, and Torpedo BPOs will start to turn you a profit beyond the original investment in 2-3 years. I would definitively stay away from the 5+ year items as I think a change to the invention, research, or nerfing of the T2 BPOs will most likely happen soon(tm).
A Loss?
Yes, I have found that a few (maybe 3-4%) of T2 BPOs return a loss. The ability of players to out manufacture with the Invention process sinks the profits below that of a researched T2 BPO. Keep in mind that if you own a T2 BPO, you only produce one item. During the build phase you can’t do anything else with the BPO.
The beauty of the invention framework is that you can be more flexible and can react to changing market conditions. The drawback is that there is an increase in the complexity to produce an item.
Better Methods
If you have piles of cash and want to sit idle in a manufacturing station making sure your T2 BPO is constantly in production, you might want to consider buying some. For the average industry person or corporation, it is a very poor investment.
To compare performance numbers, I am making around 8 B a month turning over 31 B. A T2 BPO, equal to around the same amount of capital, will make you 3.5-7 B a year.
Not a solid investment in my book. Put your money elsewhere.
Rage Against the Machine
I haven’t seen an idea to resolve the imbalance that I have liked yet. More on this later.
It does seem that the market impact isn’t as big as the hype indicates according to CCP Diagoras.
[update] April 4 2012
The Good
93.95% of T2 Gyrostabilizers produced in March 2012 were from invention.
In March 2012, 90.23% of Hulks and 84.17% of Mackinaws produced were from invention.
89.77% of 1400mm II, 82.00% of Tachyon II, 87.34% of 425mm Rail II, 74.23% of Torpedo Launcher II produced in March were from invention.
55.25% of Improved Cloaks and 91.93% of Covert Ops Cloaks were produced via invention in March 2012.
86.81% of 220mm Vulcan Autocannons produced in March were produced through invention.
The Eh
67.85% of Sabres and 65.01% of Wolves produced in March 2012 were the from invention.
72.27% of the 2,005 Falcons produced in March 2012 were produced through invention.
66.13% of Ishtars and 63.53% of Zealots produced in March 2012 were produced via invention.
The Ugly
27.60% of Curses and 22.16% of Pilgrims produced in March 2012 were from invention.
Only 7.07% of Absolutions and 23.62% of Sleipnirs produced in March 2012 were produced through invention.
44.58% of Cerberus and 6.00% of Eagles produced in March 2012 were procuded through invention.
tl;dr
Post lottery, T2 BPOs do make very passive income for a very large price. For the time it takes to get a return on your investment, the capital could better be spent in other areas.
2011 Trading and Industry Report
Posted: 2012-01-13 Filed under: eveonline, industry, market | Tags: market, profit, ships, tech 2, trade 3 CommentsThis post serves as an expansion on the 2011 Trading and Industry Reflection post where I outline some of the high level items that brought success to my efforts in 2011. After some further database work, I created a page that shows items in groups on a more granular level.
Q: How was your list created?
I spent a lot of time looking at items that are consumed for mission runners, PVP, and nullsec fleet doctrines.
Q: I might want to take a stab at creating a report of my own. How did you create this page?
All the items have been manually entered into an array.
... '12773', //Barrage M '191',//Fusion M '193',// EMP M ...
The array is then used in a very non-optimized query to produce volume and profit numbers over the past 365 days.
$eveDate = $this->getEveTimeSql();
$sql = ('SELECT typeID, typeName, sum( profit ) AS totalProfit, sum( quantity ) AS totalVolume
FROM wallet
WHERE DATE( transactionDateTime ) > DATE_SUB( DATE( :eveDate ), INTERVAL 365
DAY )
AND personal = 0
AND transactionType = "sell"
AND typeID = :typeID
GROUP BY typeID
ORDER BY totalProfit DESC');
956 x 2993 report page:
Q: What happened with the Improved Cloaking Device II?
I fat fingered the sell price and was off by a power. Whoops.
Q: Surprises or unexpected trends?
I was completely floored by the amount of Capital Shield Transports that I was able to move in 2011. The new Tier3 BCs did not sell as well as I expected.
Q: Why didn’t you trade xxx or yyy?
There are still a lot of markets that I need to test out.
If you have any more questions, please ask!
Deadspace Shield Hardeners
Posted: 2012-01-08 Filed under: market | Tags: deadspace, machariel, slave, tengu 2 CommentsThrough Newb Eyes has a great post started about the upcoming changes on the test server that will be coming to Tranquility soon as part of the Crucible expansion. Watch that space as new items are deployed to the test server.
Of particular interest to me are the new Deadspace shield hardeners.
TQ vs Upcoming Deadspace Items
I have been holding off on purchasing a bunch of Caldari Navy Invulnerability Field modules for my Tengu and Incursion Machariel as the price differential between the Meta levels is currently too extreme. Expect the price of the Caldari Navy to fall as the new Deadspace ones start to come to market.
In the grander scheme of Eve, this is a small step forward to braining shield Capitals inline with their Armor tanking cousins. Hopefully a Slave variant set with shield bonuses is in the works.
War is Good for Business
Posted: 2012-01-06 Filed under: industry, market | Tags: aaa, catch, cloud ring, ferengi, goons, profit, pure blind, trade 1 CommentRule number 35 in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition states that “war is good for business”.
In the world of Eve, major wars mean that shinies are going to get destroyed. Your Maelstrom going boom drives the economic engine. People, Corporations, and Alliance all need to be resupplied either from local production or hauls from Highsec (due to the current terribleness that is nullsec tech2 production).
The below graph shows my trading activity in differing regions based on the number of transactions per day.
I started recording trading data in November of 2010 and saw an increase in transactions until January 2011 as Evoke and friends were being pushed out of Cloud Ring by the Pure Blind locals.
From February 2011 into July of 2011 the amount of trade conducted in Pure Blind slowly faded as I took up more operations in Cloud Ring supplying Wildly Inappropriate and Goons on the war path into Fountain to remove IT Alliance.
A major shift occurred in July as I was called into Catch to assist AAA defend from the Russian invasion. On August 6, 2011, I saw the largest amount of transactions ever recorded in Catch. This was due to a large push by AAA against the invasion. After the fall of GE-8JV, the heart of Catch for AAA, the majority of people were on a full scale evacuation out of the region. This, combined with my disinterest in Eve at the time, caused my trading activities to fall idle.
In November I came onto the production and trading scene again in Pure Blind to help build up the war effort into Branch and that is where I currently stand. It appears that Vale of the Silent and Tenal are next on the list for invasion so perhaps I will get involved in those campaigns.
k162space 