Investment Guide: Quick Hauling

Your options here are pretty simple either you are picking up things and moving them to sell and make a profit or you're picking up someone else's things via courier contract and moving them for a profit. Your wanting to maximizes your profit potential by calculating the size of the cargo by the amount of isk you will earn by the time it will take to move. With this simple formula in mind lets take a look at your hauling options.

History
Before we get too deep it would be best to take a look at the skill changes and ship changes that have taken place the past several years in Eve. Before the skill changes you use to be required to skill up to high levels before you could use the larger industrial haulers that isn't the case any more you can use any industrial of any race as soon as you train the racial skill to level one.

Ship changes have created more variety among the different industrial ships allowing for more specialization. In my next guide I will cover the differences more in depth but for this basic guide we will stick to the smallest cheapest haulers that you are given in your career agent tutorials and the fittings and uses of each.

Skills
Gallente Industrial 3
Evasive Maneuvering 3
Mechanics 3
Jury Rigging 3
Astronautics Rigging 1
Warp Drive Operation 1
Hull Upgrades 2
Shield Upgrades 4
Tactical Shield Manipulation 4

Total time: 8 days, 11 minutes, 28 seconds(time based on no remap); Cost: 789,000

Ship Fit
[Nereus, Hi Sec]

Large Shield Extender II
EM Ward Amplifier II
EM Ward Amplifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II

Local Hull Conversion Nanofiber Structure I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II

Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I

Ship fit source: Nereus - UniWiki

The Nereus will give you a fast little hauler with a little more ehp than the old weaker haulers. Keep in mind don't fly what you can't afford to lose. This includes whatever your hauling in your cargo bay. As a rule of thumb if you haul anything over 100 million isk your going to start attracting unwanted attention.

At max skills you're only looking at about 8000m3 of cargo give or take a few modules. Its not that bad considering how slow freighters travel with the warp speed changes. I will cover specific haulers in the next guide as you follow along the Gallente line of haulers you will find lots of options. Whether you're working towards being an industrialist or looking to getting into hauling full time this is a great place to start.

2014 Goals and Things to Look Forward To

Its that time of year again when we think about what we want to accomplish over the next year. I was reading over my 2013 Goals and thought to myself I just put them together so I would have at least something of a direction to work towards. I not only accomplished all of those things but in short order, something like 4 months. So yeah things I want to try or train in 2014:

Finish training up for level 4 missions in a drone boat.
Train up to fly an Orca.
Train to fly the T2 freighters.
Be able to build T2 freighters.
Maybe set up a cyno alt for using a T2 Freighters out in low sec.
Eventually building capital ships out in low sec, maybe I don't know about this one will see where my attention span leads me and my wallet.
I want to try setting up a POS research farm and building the fuel as well.

We'll see what 2014 holds for Eve and for me and for the blog. Starting up a youtube channel has been in the back of my mind for the last six months too, time permitting of course.

2013 Q4 News and Meta Game effects on In-Game Markets

I was going to include this review of news items in my Q4 market report but there is enough information here that it warranted its own post. The review of some of these out of game happenings is important to the overall market analysis as I am coming to conclude that players actually logged into the game and activity in the game has the greatest effect on the market at large.

Over the past quarter there have been lots of scandals and all around bad press coming from several sources. The first of these is Terms of Service change dropped right at the start of the forth quarter. I don't think it helped that they dropped this right in a slump of what was August and September with their low player numbers. But could they help it? I did a short post about the TOS change and if for nothing else read this entertaining article on the scam that might have brought all these changes about.

After all of that news it couldn't have possibly gotten worse for CCP could it? Yep it did it got a lot worse. The Somer Blink Scorpion incident put another bad taste in everyone's mouth and then the Real Money Trade allegations started bubbling over on to the picture and just made things even worse. Its been said once but I will say it again internet spaceships are serious buizness. Now I can't prove that these news events slowed down the economy in-game but all of these things start to paint a narrative for potential players and old players in the form of potential re-subscribers.

The last bit of bad news for the quarter that has a more real market effect was the Amazon PLEX price mess up. It should be noted that the effects of dumping mass amounts of PLEX on to the market has the effect of curbing a natural supply and demand price increase especially considering this was the month before an expansion was due to drop. See PLEX Intervention.

To round off the Q4 a couple of great things happened. The Rubicon Expansion dropped on Nov. 19 and if there is one thing a trader loves more than anything else it is increased player and market activity with speculation surrounding an expansion.

The last thing to take place during the quarter was the Sister of Eve PLEX for Charity Event. This needs some carefully examination as wealthy players cash out isk for PLEX to donate to the charity this could very well have the same effects as a PLEX Intervention and would also help repair the Amazon PLEX dump that took place two months previous.

No one event during the quarter seems like it would have much effect on in game markets but tied together things begin to paint a picture of player sentiments and directions of large cash injections into and out of the market through PLEX. Or I could just be tin-foil-hatting this all way to far. As a trader keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your news feed because in Eve Online even the meta game can have an effect on your trade volume.

Wow that was way to much meta for the morning see you around.

PLEX For Good charity stream

Watch live video from CCP on www.twitch.tv


Check out the forum post Charity stream schedule and general discussion for the event schedule and other details on how to donate.

Moving Day

I have moved on to greener pastures. I operated in my small home near the Dodixie trade hub going on about a year now. Last week I uprooted everything and started the move. All my useful things are at my new home system. I am situated pretty central  now in comparison to the various trade hubs of Jita 6 jumps out, Amarr 8 jumps out and Dodixie is around 10 jumps out.

I am hoping this will provide me with lower cost supplies from Jita and still give me ready access to the other two trade hub markets which typically offer higher prices for manufactured goods. With the move I am also considering getting a POS set up with a small research farm. Currently I am grinding standings for kicks and grins. I mainly just want to try out the POS system for myself and try a little hands on action as far as those go.

The other thought I have been having is getting into a player corp. I usually don't have a lot of time to play in game so when ever I am on I don't spend to much time looking for people to play with. I am usually out researching my next trade or doing some other random thing that comes up.

As far as my in-game investments go right now I am almost exclusively trading in implants and may start up some production as I get my bearings with my new trade lanes and find stations I want to trade in. Towards the end of the month I hope to have a nice long write up of the Q4 market and other investment jibber jabber.