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So.. I was checking out local wormholes when I stumbled onto this:
Surprise…
Yeah, pretty cool. This was deep inside Vale, which leads credibility to those who say that the star is in Jove space. But dang, it looks sweet.
Learning how to Market
I started to try my hand at industry when Crius came out. This was a natural thing for because a.) Crius made things much, much easier to deduce, and b.) Exploration allowed me to find rigs, invention goods, and BPCs that I could sell on the market. Well, everything but the BPCs. Exploration also showed me that I didn’t have to rely on Jump Freighter services for my needs, as low-sec and high-sec WHs popped up reasonably frequently.
Still, I just explored and sold what I found.. except again for the BPCs. When the BPCs started to fill up my containers, I tried to sell them. Of course, you can’t sell BPCs using the normal market (CCP outta fix that..). This meant that I had choice a.) Trash them, or b.) Actually do something with them, like, you know, build things.
I tried option A for a very, very long time. Until I got too bored one day and tried option B. Reactive Armor Hardeners and small ancillary armor repairers. Hardly sold.. until I dropped them on the Amarr market one weekend, where they promptly got sold out. So I built some more, and those promptly sold out in a couple days.. and yes, I sold them at a profit.. or at least I think I did.
Little by little I began to notice little interesting things here and there, like how a 14,000 isk MWD in Dodixie could be sold for 150,000 to 200,000 isk in null, and sell quickly. Or how a 800,000 isk armor plate bought in Jita would not sell in null at anything more than 750,000 isk.
Sadly, I got hooked. I had acquired a nice sum of isk from my exploration, which I still do on a regular basis, but now I worry that because my Accounting Skill isn’t at V, that I won’t be able to make a profit on some Meta 4 modules I brought up. Or I get frustrated that I researched the TE instead of the ME on a particular BPO.. and now I need to start producing.
I now compare the demands of the local market, versus the markets held by our financially superior enemies, verify that certain transport options will be available in a certain time frame, and carefully watch who is buying what I am selling and when. I try to balance the needs of an alliance with the needs of the corp with the needs of the pilots who work with me.
Each day I work to ensure that alliance and corp leaders do not ask more than is reasonable, ensure that our markets have the ships, modules, and ammo they need to fight. And help see that our more elite pilots have the specialized ships they want and are looking for.
Now.. I tend to giggle when my enemies make a tactical error in their market PVP. And strangely enough, there is another rule in Eve.. a more profound rule that I can now realize. It is strangely familiar to the central PVP rule of “don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.” It’s rather simple really, just one word change, but it is as much of a profound truth in Eve as any other..
“Don’t market what you can’t afford to lose.”
2nd Anomaly From the Left 
Contract market was always the place to sell BPCs – and they *would* sell, especially cap ship BPs of any sort. Try there.
And I would give up hope of BPCs or researched BPOs ever selling on the regular market. The regular market functions by being able to offer bulk, standardized product. BPCs and especially researched BPOs are anything but. There’s potential differences in all of these which the regular market is ill-equipped to handle, and so it never surprised me that you couldn’t dump those items for sale there. The contract market deals with it just fine, however, owing to its full flexibility.
And yeah, there’s always a conflict between TE and ME research on BPs. Usually, ME will win out – at least, traditionally, that was always so – because lowering mat costs is king toward releasing profit. When assembly lines are a dime a dozen and their costs low and relatively well-know, those costs are easily absorbed. Out in null, however, where assembly lines and their timed are at a premium, I can certainly understand the impetus to work on TE as well. You will want to make sure you calculate very carefully the ideal TE and ME for any given BP, because there is a point in each where you’re simply wasting time and over-researched those things.
Hey, long time no see! So where are you flying these days? Yeah, oddly enough putting BPCs on contracts is actually a waste of my contracts. I typically have all my contract slots filled with fitted ships, which typically turn around much quicker than Tech 2 BPC contracts. The vast majority of BPCs you get from exploration are pretty worthless and with the advent of Phoebe, even the faction guns and towers are no longer as valuable either. I’ve seen faction drop down to 1/6th the price pre-Phoebe. So Phoebe is still pretty chaotic on the old norm. And Jita is no longer THE trade hub. Its a pretty wierd situation as Amarr, Rens, and Dodixie are starting to rise in prominence. Even the minor hubs of Tash-Murkon, Hek, Orvolle are starting to become important. There are some regular items that are significantly higher in cost than in Dodixie, Rens, and Amarr.. and not just small amounts either. Personally, I’d predict that Amarr will probably match Jita in a few months as far as practical trade goes.
As far as the BPOs now go, the recent changes to them mean that you really can’t over-research them anymore. ME is topped out at 10%, TE at 20%. It’s easy enough for any minor indy guy like me to reach 8 to 9 TE and ME for the vast majority of BPOs. I might not be as competitive as the older indy guys, but I can still make a profit and bring them to market in a reasonable amount of time.
Hey, chat me up in game, or e-mail me later. Let me know what you’ve been up to!
Right now, I’m flying in STO and still running around in Middle Earth – remaining on an extended break from EvE (the burnout is deep in this one, as well you might imagine), but I can’t resist peeking in on friends to see what they’re up to, and to see what the game itself is up to. I’ll have to see if I can dig out your email to catch up a little more thoroughly. Anyway, certainly interesting things from the looks of it …
Historically, the only BPCs we ever really sold were the capship copies – Rev, Moros, Phoenix, Archie, Thanny, and some of the freighters, and those usually accompanied by the cap components to make for the entire package. Also, we sold the occasional T2 freighter BPC. Other T2 BPCs we just never bothered because, having to invent them, we were at a manifest disadvantage to the guys selling copies run off of researched T2 originals. (This, of course, is what also made selling the product off those copies an iffy proposition as well. More often than not we simply stashed to the T2 BPCs until we needed replacements for whatever it was, then just made ’em ourselves if we could do it at “not a loss.”)
It’s very interesting to me to hear about the growth of secondary market hubs … although certainly, that wasn’t unknown back when I was still active. I would be rather shocked if Jita were not always king – if you’re seeing otherwise, I’d very much like to hear about it, why you think that’s happening. I could see it to some extent, I think, for situations particular to given areas – for instance, I could see Amarr being a strong hub for armor- and energy-based module and ship sales; likewise in a similar manner for Rens and Dodi. But on a general basis … most fascinating! Do say more, if you would. (Think I may need to fire up some of my EvE market websites, and see how those are reporting.)
In regard to those outer locations (mission hubs, PVP gateways and so forth), it was always the case that you could tailor your marketing/sales activity accordingly and make very nice profits. Corelin and I explored that at some length particularly in Amarrian mission hubs to decent effect for things like T2 drones, armor hardeners and so forth, and made some tidy little sums in the process. We were able to do that not only for created stuff, but for resales as well (usually moving bulk-purchased stuff out of Jita; because when you have a freighter to move it around, why not?).
I think I’ll have to take a closer look at research as it currently exists, then. Something doesn’t seem quite right about those numbers from what I recall we used to get, on modules certainly. Ships, it very much depended which. ME-wise, the levels of research were dramatically larger as the ship got smaller – it was nothing to research a cruiser BPO to 40-60, and frigates into the 100’s – as were pretty much all mods. BSs as I recall we gave a max of 1 month’s research (iirc, that left it at 20 or so); and PE usually just wasn’t worth researching for more than a month or so on anything smaller than a capital. Capships, now, were the real bear, requiring something like a month and a half per single point of ME (or PE, for that matter). So we usually tried to purchase a capship print that someone had already worked on, and even so we usually had to bake it another several months before it was production-ready. If that’s changed, I think it would be a very big deal indeed.
But I have to say, considering the bill of materials changes they’ve made to just about everything, and the way prices have chanced on the raw mats, it does indeed seem a very different environment from the one I remember. Looking forward to your further comments.
Quick note: Went looking for your email for a bit more extended catching-up, but couldn’t find. If you have mine, please do feel free to kick off; I’ll respond at length. o7