Before I took a long Eve break, I had started a new industry alt to fill out my last character slot on my account. I was almost done with the three months of training I had planned before I took some time off. I used Eve Prospers Indy Alt Guide which lays out the skill choices you have and when to remap. So now that I am back I recently finished up the last month of training with this character coming online I have doubled my manufacturing capacity. A second indy alt is small potatoes compared to some but three plexes worth of training is a big investment for me.
As far as what I am planning on using that characters manufacturing slots for is a whole other post entirely. The short version is I am planning on building T2 ships. Its good to be back though. I am still continuing my trend of causal industrialist and even more causal eve blogger. I have a few small guides in the works though I will post them over the next couple weeks.
With the SOV revamp(devblog1, devblog2) dropping in mid July you will see a lot of commenters questions and forum posters asking if now is a good time to get back into Eve Online?
The development of Eve Online is a lot like maintaining a large website content changes and updates come from a small group of developers slowly over time in a constant effort of refinement. So consequently there isn’t going to be a sweet spot to get started back in game. If you want to play the game as it stands today get back in. If you don’t enjoy playing the game as it stands don’t. An important point to note it's who you play with that matters not what you play.
Development Cycle
The current release cycle of pushing out updates every six weeks allows for continued development of large features over time. As of July the second tier of the null sec revamp will get started. The total release cycle of null sec revamps will take over a year. The revamp of player owned stations will like wise take a year. So the “sweet spot” of when to get back in game is hard to define.
The Sweet Spot
A game like “World of Warcraft” tends to lend itself more to a sweet spot mentality it's really just a marketing term called an “expansion.” Eve Online has shied away from that model in favor of the constant release cycle. The “expansion” sweet spot days are over, for now, for Eve Online. I’m glad I’m not in CCP's marketing team. The sandbox nature of Eve lends itself more to a constant development life cycle allowing players time to react and absorb changes as they occur over patch cycles.
The Game as it Stands
The entertainment value you gain from playing a video game will be much the same today as it will be tomorrow. Despite any feature release or redesign. If you enjoyed playing Eve Online in the past chances are you will enjoy it today. If you stopped playing for a particular reason chances are that reason is still intact and may not change anytime soon. For example I have observed many people take breaks from Eve because life gets busy. It has nothing to do with any sort of feature released in-game.
Alright this post is starting to get way to meta for me. In conclusion:
Its who you play with not what you play that matters.
Gameplay aside I think the psychological impact of social encounters in the game is what gives MMO's their most lasting impression. If you're asking yourself if you should get back into Eve Online based on some feature change maybe a better question is are your friends, buddies, comrades still in game or planning on getting back in-game?
If your a new player or new to market trading you might be asking yourself why is my market volume slowing down? Is Eve Online dying? What exactly is going on? I offer a few opinions as to why you might be seeing low market volume.
Summer Doldrums
Historically in-game populations trend down in the summer. If we take a look at Eve Offline Stats the player count will decline from June until September then it picks back up once school starts again and winter sets in, in the northern hemisphere. Lower player counts correlate often times with slow market volume. Think of it as a double edge sword less players means less items being destroyed as well as less players purchasing your goods.
SOV Revamp
The SOV revamp has players holding their cards close. It feels like everyone is holding their breath waiting for shit to hit the fan. Player numbers and market volumes will pick up some once this patch hits mid July. Although July is typically still a down trend for player counts as the summer doldrums continues, lots of people are on vacation. Did CCP plan the SOV roll out when player counts are typically low on purpose? The tinfoil hat sure doesn't breath well during the summer.
Burn Amarr
Burn Amarr is icing on the cake. Again several factors to slow market volume. Less players logging in. People tend to just avoid logging in altogether during that weekend. So less movement on the markets. Goods and services aren't being moved around as rapidly it slows the whole market. Expect business to be back to usual next week, still the impact is felt.
Cheap Materials
Another outlier I was thinking about is cheap materials. Producers(that aren't on vacation) are easily over producing as tech 2 materials and to a lesser extent minerals prices slump. Though I am not sure this has as much effect as the previous points. You run some calculations and see how much you could be making on a few items and you have some run away over production on your hands during the summer months.
Eve is still a harsh environment at least when it comes to the market. The tl;dr I was setting up a sell order when I dropped 100 million worth of goods for 8 million. On account of a zero. Even after playing for three years you can always make mistakes. Don’t reset or set up market orders right after you get up in the morning and aren’t quite awake yet. The takeaway always remain diligent in all your financial transactions.
The unforgiving system of Eve Online is what I am still playing for. Hardcore mode is turned on for everyone all the time. June marks three years since I first started playing Eve Online all be it off and on at times. I remember thinking back then how much more people must know than me. Sitting here now after three years there is still so many things I haven’t explored.
The big difference I have found as the years go by is my attitude toward the isk value of different ships and things. When I first started playing I would have gone crazy if I had missed typed a market order and sold a 100 million in goods for a tenth of the price. Today I just shrugged it off and went back to my spreadsheets to calculating next week's gains. Spending billions a week on manufacturing materials pales in comparison to my first month in game saving every last isk for that Retriever(which I destroyed in less than a week in low sec that is another story). Now I buy and sell ships worth hundreds of millions just to play with for the afternoon and soon forget their loss or sell them.
Here's to an afternoons past time for a hour every day.
The Goal:
Tech 1(T1) manufacturing is the basic level of industry in Eve Online. Typically you only need the industry skill at level one, a blueprint original(BPO) or copy(BPC) and the most basic of minerals sourced from the market.
The Plan:
What to build? Time to pull out your
spreadsheets, you need to see how much it will cost you to build based
on material costs vs what you can sell it for. First figure out how much
it will cost you to build the item check out this blueprint calculator or Fuzzysteve's blueprint calculator. Then check item prices at your point of sell either in-game or on Eve Central.
Your next consideration is what
BPO will you use? How to buy a Blueprint Originals(BPO)? Will you buy an already researched BPO from contracts
or buy un-researched BPO from the NPC market and do research
yourself? See my Blueprint Research Guide for more info. Don't forget to take into
consideration BPO costs into your overall investment.
Where to build? Two things to take into consideration here.
1).
Consider availability of materials make sure you can get enough materials it
will do you no good if you buy up all the resources in your system and
have to fly or ship in your resources using shipping services and lose
your margins.
2). Consider the building index of the system or how
many people are doing that activity in system. The build costs will
scale up as more players build things in this system. Areas like large
trade hubs will have higher building indexes as compared to less used
systems further out from major hubs. Go to your star map go to the
industry folder and you can see the various levels of industry
activities in various systems there.
You need to balance the two availability of materials and system building index.
The Skills:
Industry - 4% reduction in manufacturing time per skill level.
Advanced Industry - 3% reduction in all manufacturing & research time per skill level.
Mass Production - Ability to run 1 additional job per skill level.
Advanced Mass Production - Ability to run 1 additional job per skill level. Supply Chain Management - Skill at running manufacturing operations remotely.
The Equipment: Industrial ship to haul your minerals or goods. Blueprint of the item you want to build. Minerals (See cost layout below to find out how much you need.) Station with open manufacturing slots. Note: Even if slots aren't
open you may choose to "Get in Line" if for some reason you can't move
your minerals to a new station.
Total Costs:
I use simple excel functions to create these spread sheets. After I
enter in the mineral amount from the BP in cell B4 for Isogen, I type
=(B4*D1) in D4 cell. This function allows me to change my batch number
and buy exact amounts of minerals. You can use =sum() to add up the
amounts to get a quick grasp of how much things are going to cost. Like I
mentioned before you can use some of the various online tools. When I
started out I wanted a little bit more control than some of these web
applications give you.
Time Required:
Five minutes to buy the materials five minutes to ship the minerals to
your station. 10 seconds to start the manufacturing and five minutes to
finish and haul back to market. So in total 15 minutes every time your
manufacturing job finishes. Again watch the videos below to better
understand how to really invest in manufacturing.
Note: As you build more items per batch you will have to wait for those
items to manufacturer. For example I currently run 10 slots, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week. I renew my BPO cycles one day a week and I am
building enough units per batch for a 7 day cycle time. This practice is
similar to Planetary Interaction cycle times.
