2012 Trading and Industry Report

Posted: 2012-12-21 | Author: Blake | Filed under: eveonline, industry, market, ships | Tags: archon, charon, chimera, deadspace, faction, ishtar, maelstrom, nidhoggur, obelisk, oracle, procurer, retriever, rokh, sabre, scimitar, talos, thanatos, tornado, vagabond, zealot | 6 Comments

Overview

Another year of growth and transitions into larger projects.

Module, gun, ship construction and trading proceeded as it did the previous year. With reliable income from trading, we expanded our operation into heavy construction by adding a Carrier construction wing to our operation.

From these numbers we can see that our operation is facing more competition as margins were slightly lower than the previous year. To overcome this, we migrated our inventory to higher per-sale profit items. The drastic change in quantity can be explained by dropping Ammo as a common trade item.

This overview shows the benefits of spreading your trade load between high ticket, low volume items and more volume centered low price items.

Quick Numbers

Q1 and Q2 saw renewed vigor into trading as I started to invest more time into logistics and product research.

Q3, July especially, was a record breaking time as I took any liquidity and moved it back into assets. This also marked our shift into high ticket items. Additionally, at this point in the year my trading partner and I had a lot of time to devote to our operation.

September into October is a busy time for me personally. I took a long vacation October and was away from Eve for a few weeks. Everyone needs a break and our performance numbers directly show this.

Highlights

Procurer speculation with the Inferno Patch.

Outsourcing some Highsec logistics with Red Frog Freight during busy periods.

Expanded trading into High Meta items.

Expanded construction and sales into Carrier hulls.

Invested 133 days of training into Racial Cruiser Construction V and Jury Rigging V to enable Tech 3 hull and subsystem production in the coming year.

Invention

Though there are profits in invention, I found the process of gathering materials, inventing a BPC, putting the component parts together to be uninspired; I had no real focus this year with invention. Most of the time I spent in this area was spent making Drones and increasing my stock of -1/-1 Anshar prints for a rainy day.

My two invention characters have 4-4-4 skills. I have found the training return of getting 5-4-4 or even 5-5-5 skills to marginally increase profits. Since the train time to get a Science skill to 5 is around 20 days, I have not felt the need to sink time into polishing off the skills.

I did keep a database record in order to produced the below summary of my invention statistics  The overall success average came out to be 48.2%, which falls in line with any invention guide.

High Meta

With the addition of Faction, Deadspace, and Officer modules to the market, I saw several trading opportunities throughout the year to work with these items. I had little to no interest in using the tedious contract system to trade these items so when they were added to the general market, I rejoiced.

Here is a summary of the performance of items by Meta levels. Faction and Deadspace items traded well and brought consistent high profits.

Escalation Barge Teiricide

With the changes to mining barges in the Escalation patch, my partner and I mainly targeted the Procurer hull as its build requirements changed the most with the patch. We speculated that the new  barges would cost more post-patch so we build a large stock before patch day.

We ended up selling 288 units for a profit of 2.48 B. We put a smaller amount of effort into Retriever hulls and managed to build and sell 44 for a profit of 431 M.

Fear the Sabre

I had limited success with trading other racial Interdictors. The Sabre is the champion of them  all and hopefully we see some further balancing to these hulls in upcoming patches.

Alpha Maelstrom to Rail Rokh

This year we saw the popularity of the Alpha Maelstrom as a viable Nullsec fleet composition fade away in favor of the Rail Rokh. I was slow to react to this change and by the time I got my Rohk BPO researched to an acceptable level, the switch to the new doctrine was already underway.

Rigs and Guns

The core rig types (Trimark, CCC, and Field Extender) continued to be a solid performer. If you sell a ship in an area, you should also sell related rigs to popular fits. Let this be a lesson in item cross-selling for anyone building, stocking, and selling ship hulls.

The core gun types seen below also provided some income over the year.

GoonSwarm Shrugged, I Smiled

During the GoonSwarm Ice Interdiction, I speculated on POS fuel and turned a profit. I made 648 M doing some passive trading in Jita on Oxygen Isotopes. In addition, people started to panic and predict that other Isotopes were going to be affected also. I made some early buys on Nitrogen and then sold them off at the height of their price level.

High Meta

I have focused on and found a number of High Meta items that have proven to be very profitable. I’ve blanked out the names of them because I don’t yet want to disclose the item types at this point in time.

Implants

As expected implants were a high performer.

Standard Modules

High volume modules provide a small source of income as working with these items means you are in a competitive and often saturated market.

The new Drone Damage Amplifier modules sold very well, but I had poor success with the Reactive Armor Hardener.

Batch Ammo

I have continued to have limited success with ammo. I have found the velocity of trading to be very slow which I think is due to the nature of ammo production and consumption.

Since ammo jobs are batch based (meaning that when someone runs a production job they are producing a large bath of ammo rather than a single unit), production has periods of high volume. Additionally when someone buys ammo, that person tends to buy a large stock and slowly work though the pile.

I keep stocking ammo with the intention that it will move, but I always am unimpressed by the numbers.

Tier 3 Battlecruisers

The popularity of the Tier 3 BCs remains high as I was able to make a profit on every racial type of them. Surprisingly the Oracle and Talos have been outselling the Tornado.

HAC Favoritism

The Cerberus has remained a poor performer with no production or trading opportunities arsing this year. The Ishtar remains a strong seller as a preferred AFK mission ship while the Vagabond holds up the PVP end of the HAC spectrum. I fully agree with Kirith Kodachi’s recent comments on the upcoming rebalance initiative that will eventually hit HACs.

Tech 2 Logistics Falling From Grace

With the recent rebalance of Tech 1 logistics, I expect my production and trade of Tech 2 logistics ships to decline. As Jester pointed out, the proficiency of the Tech 1 variant can cheaply replicate the Tech 2 variant.

Future Ventures

Champion CREST API changes and development with the community to enable 3rd party tools to flourish.

Pressure the CSM for industry and mining changes.

Though the Carrier project is new, it is proving to be profitable so we expect the expand the operation. We are going to look into Dreadnought production in addition to carriers.

Build from stockpile of Tech 3 hulls and subsystem BPCs.

Build backlog of invented Anashar BPCs.

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10MN Afterburner II
10MN MicroWarpdrive II
1400mm Gallium Cannon
1400mm Howitzer Artillery II
1400mm Prototype Siege Cannon
150mm Light AutoCannon II
200mm AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
425mm AutoCannon II
425mm Compressed Coil Gun I
425mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon
425mm Railgun II
720mm Howitzer Artillery II
720mm Prototype Siege Cannon
800mm Heavy Prototype Repeating Siege Cannon
800mm Repeating Artillery II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Arazu
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Ballistic Control System II
Basilisk
Blackbird
Broadsword
BZ-5 Neutralizing Spatial Destabilizer ECM
Cap Recharger II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Compulsive Signal Distortion Amplifier I
Conjunctive Magnetometric ECCM Scanning Array I
Conjunctive Radar ECCM Scanning Array I
Co-Processor II
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Curse
Cynosural Field Generator I
Damage Control II
Devoter
Drake
Dual 180mm AutoCannon II
E50 Prototype Energy Vampire
ECM - Ion Field Projector II
ECM - Multispectral Jammer II
ECM - Phase Inverter II
ECM - Spatial Destabilizer II
EM Ward Amplifier II
EM Ward Field II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Enfeebling Phase Inversion ECM I
Eris
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Flycatcher
FZ-3a Disruptive Spatial Destabilizer ECM
'Gloom' I White Noise ECM
Guardian
Gyrostabilizer II
Heat Sink II
Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I
Heavy Electron Blaster II
Heavy Ion Blaster II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Heretic
Huginn
Hurricane
'Hypnos' Ion Field ECM I
Improved Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Sphere Launcher I
Kinetic Deflection Field II
Lachesis
Languid Phase Inversion ECM I
Large Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Large 'Arup' Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Large 'Notos' Explosive Charge I
Large 'Regard' Power Projector
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large Shield Extender II
Large 'Solace' Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Limited 1MN MicroWarpdrive I
Low Frequency Sensor Suppressor I
Maelstrom
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
'Malkuth' Heavy Missile Launcher I
Maller
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Medium 'Arup' Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Medium Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I
Medium Capacitor Booster II
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Energy Discharge Elutriation I
Medium Energy Locus Coordinator I
Medium Energy Neutralizer I
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Ionic Field Projector I
Medium Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Medium Particle Dispersion Projector I
Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Targeting System Subcontroller I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Oneiros
Onyx
Oracle
Phased Muon ECCM Caster I
Phobos
Power Diagnostic System II
Prototype 100MN MicroWarpdrive I
Prototype Armor EM Hardener I
Prototype Armor Explosive Hardener I
Prototype Armor Thermic Hardener I
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Reactor Control Unit II
Remote Sensor Dampener II
Rokh
Sabre
Scimitar
Scorpion
Sensor Booster I
Sensor Booster II
Shadow Serpentis Armor EM Hardener
Shadow Serpentis Armor Kinetic Hardener
Signal Distortion Amplifier II
Small Capacitor Booster II
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I
Small Nosferatu II
Stabber Fleet Issue
Standard Missile Launcher II
Stasis Webifier II
Tachyon Anode Particle Stream I
Tachyon Beam Laser II
Tempest
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Tornado
Tracking Computer II
Tracking Disruptor II
Tracking Enhancer II
Type-D Attenuation Signal Augmentation
'Umbra' White Noise ECM
Warp Disruption Field Generator I
Warp Disruptor II
Warp Scrambler II
Zealot