There are a few things I wanted to post my thoughts on, but hadn't gotten around to doing yet. Saturday ended up being a long and busy day in EVE, so before I write up that blognaught I want to catch up on a few things.
Jita Everywhere
Having a decent amount of skill points in Trade can make life much easier. You can put things up for sale if there aren't any good buy orders around. The question for somebody like me is how to set prices? Do I set them high for maximum profit or low for the highest chance of a quick sale. I've always operated under what I call "Jita Everywhere." This is a method that uses that whore of a Trade Hub, Jita, as a reference for prices when you are anywhere else.
You see I'm one of those people who hates that we have a Jita. I've seen it develop over the years, getting worse and worse. Prices outside Jita have always been kind of sad, and I like to make people happy, so I spread that pricing joy around.
The way it works is that my sell price will always be based off of one of two things, the best Jita sell price or the best Jita buy price, ignoring outliers. When the item is likely to sell without major discounting I use the sell price as a base. When the item is likely to languish for a long time before selling I use the buy price. Those base prices are then adjusted up if the current region's prices are ridiculously high. So maybe it should be called Jita-ish Everywhere... But I digress.
This system has always brought me reasonable sales in a short timeframe. Somebody is always looking for a bargain without having to make the trip to Jita.
Gas Mining
Before I moved in I really had no idea how much gas I would me mining, or even if it would be worth doing at all. The first day in the hole I mined out a site, and luckily the next day I was able to haul it out and put it up for sale during a fuel run. Based on the above-mentioned sales philosophy those items went up around Jita buy prices. Listed on November 2nd, they both sold within 19 days. But that was only 2.5m ISK worth of gas.
Last March, when I was splitting time between Low-Sec and High-Sec, I found a wormhole connected to Yvangier and mined some gas out of it. When listed at reasonable prices they took similarly long to sell for maybe 10-12m ISK. That is why I didn't mine gas again for a while, I was watching to see if it was worth it.
When I did finally decide to mine gas again, I ran into some challenges. But still managed to pull out a full site worth of C84 and C72. That went up for sale yesterday in high-sec, at Jita buy prices. The C84 was gone in a few hours, for 5m ISK. If the C72 follows suit it will bring in 10x that and bring me closer to that T3 cruiser purchase.
Ice Mining in Shattered Wormholes
I spent some time thinking about this and whether or not it was worth it to get setup to mine ice in a shattered wormhole. There wasn't really a good way to quantify it, and then I realized it all boiled down to this: if the opportunity presented itself and I couldn't do it, would that bother me? In this case, yes, it would. So then it was on to deciding which ship made the most sense.
My focus was initially on mining yield. Being able to mine quickly means less time spent and hopefully less risk. But Covetors are expensive and get their yield bonus from using 3 ice lasers on long cycles. The Retriever has a huge ore bay, but still has somewhat longer cycles. The Procurer is built for tank, and only has one high slot for a mining laser. To balance the yield on this ship they bonused it heavily for duration reduction. For me this means that with one laser upgrade II fitted, the cycle time for ice is 1m 18s. Throw in the tank and drone bonuses and the fact that it's the cheapest of the 3 hulls and we have a winner.
For about the cost of a Covetor hull I have a tough mining option that fills its ore hold in 16 minutes. If I get interrupted often, the effect is minimized since cycles are much faster. This is always an issue with ice mining. Long durations complicate things.
Scanning...
There's nothing shiny in the solar system map. The solemn darkness eats away at your soul.
My experience in gas mining is that you should buy the fulleride blueprints and react the gas at your POS. The product it produces is far more valuable to sell on the market.
ReplyDeleteAbout mining in wormholes, my opinion is to use the Covetor. Have a few on hand. Fit it for maximum yield and be a D-scan ninja warrior. The general rule in w-space is that if someone lands on grid with you and is able to lock and scram you, you're as good as dead; especially in a mining barge. No amount of tank will be enough because they will have all the time they need. There will be no Concord to save you, or corp mates if you live solo.
Fit for yield and be happy every time you make it back to your POS with a full load.
If I ever move up to a larger POS I may consider some other options like reactions, but living out of a small I pretty much save the CPU & PG for defenses and only online other stuff when I need it. It's a limiting factor on my operation, but going up a size is only feasible if I start bringing in about double the ISK per month that I am now.
ReplyDeleteAs far as mining barge choices, I'd have to go back and look but I believe the Covetor has a very small Ore bay, like 5000 m3. It can fill that pretty quick but that also means needing to warp back and forth a lot or jetcan it and haul it after. The Procurer actually has a nice balance between its yield and its Ore bay size, which is 12,000 m3. It can fill the bay in 16 minutes and haul it all back. Plus we're talking 20m ISK for the Procurer and 33m ISK for the Covetor.
I think for any person with two or more accounts, the Covetor with a hauler alt makes the most sense. However I've found that when operating with a single account, I have to look at things differently to find the right balance of safety and efficiency