The PC Spotlight 3.13.09: Striking it Rich in EVE Online (Part 3)
Posted by Chris Vicari on 03.13.2009
The self-appointed economist and money maker is back, and it's time for the third and final part to striking it rich in EVE Online.
Hey all and welcome back to another Thursday with the PC Spotlight. This week covers the third and final installment to striking it rich in EVE Online, and then I have to find something else to talk about. Also, I just wanted to let everyone know that there won't be a column next week as I'll be on vacation, and I could definitely use one at this point. In other news, Empire: Total War just came out yesterday on Steam, and if you haven't picked up this excellent game yet, by all means do so because it rocks. Getting back to the guide, this week focuses on the far more difficult and outlandish methods of obtaining a steady paycheck. Because of their difficulty, I find these much more enjoyable activities as opposed to mining and mission running all day, but whatever floats your boat.
Okay, let's go!
Putting Scrooge McDuck to shame
One More Challenging Method of Income
There is just one more challenging method, but this one is a real doozy.
Relevant skills to achieve this task
Industry
Mass Production
Production Efficiency Practically required
Supply Chain Management
Manufacturing is the backbone of EVE Online, and it's something all players try at least once. It can be extremely confusing and time-consuming, and there's plenty of math involved, mostly just trying to figure out all your costs and gauging where the profit is coming from. There are many different forms of manufacturing, you have Tech 1 module and ship production, T2 manufacturing, rigs, and capital ships. Each require different materials, skills, and methods to perform, but this guide focuses on T1 manufacturing because the fundamentals you learn here apply to the others as well.
Before we begin, you have to know that there is a lot of prep work involved. First, make sure you start training the necessary and important skills, as they'll not only save you time, but money as well. If you're serious about breaking into the manufacturing business, it is a near necessity to have Production Efficiency to at least level 4 and even level 5. The materials and money you'll save in the long run are immense. Once you got some of the skills down, it's time to figure out what you want to build. Budding industrialists generally start small by producing ammunition and modules. I recommend avoiding ship manufacturing for now though. While frigate building is alluring for many newcomers because of their low mineral cost, the market is saturated by first-time builders who miscalculate the entire process, and list their prices lower than the manufacturing cost! Remember, do your market research, and avoid building anything you know won't net you much profit. At least 15-20% is a good profit margin to shoot for.
To properly calculate how much money it costs to build something, you must account for mineral price, wastage factors, and initial installation and hourly progression costs. There's a lot of math involved here, but don't let it scare you too much. Luckily, there are a myriad of manufacturing calculators and Excel spreadsheets listed on EVE's official Science and Industry forums. All you have to do is check the stickies and pick one which suits your fancy. They'll certainly make your life a whole lot easier.
Once you've got something picked out that you want to build, and have the proper amount of materials, all you have to do is purchase the appropriate blueprint and you're ready to go. Much like in real life, blueprints are the schematics of an item and are used as a guide to create a module or ship. Thankfully, the game handles most of this process so players don't actually have to piece together anything. Blueprints for T1 modules and ships are purchasable via the market and never run out. If you can't find a particular blueprint in your local market, check those of differing factions. For instance, you won't find a Medium Focused Beam Laser blueprint in Caldari space, but if you travel over to Amarr territory, you'll have no trouble. Depending on the item, blueprints can cost as low as 60k ISK all the way up to hundreds of millions, and it's important to factor in blueprint cost in your manufacturing process. You want to be sure that your profits eventually cover the cost of the blueprint, so you can start making actual money.
At first, the information provided within a blueprint can be confusing, but once you figure out what all this information means, things get much easier. Let me provide a breakdown of what you'll find:
Top Information
Original Blueprint/Blueprint Copy Blueprint Originals or BPOs can be used an infinite number of times and can be purchased off the market. Blueprint Copies or BPCs are copies made by other players and will eventually run out. BPCs cannot be sold on the market, so you have nothing to worry about.
Produces The module/ship the blueprint makes.
General Information
Material Level ME for short, this reduces the wastage of the blueprint as a whole, costing you less money to make the product.
Wastage Factor How much materials are wasted during the manufacturing process. Reduced by ME.
Copy Yes/No Tells you if the blueprint is a copy or an original
Productivity Limit PE for short, this reduces how long it takes to produce an item. While not as important as ME, it plays a big role in how much money you can make.
Licensed Production Runs Remaining Infinite if it's an original, but if it's a copy, it'll have a number listed.
Production Limit The amount of items which can be made in one batch at one time. Modules are generally 300 while ships are much less because they take longer to build.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing Time The base time it takes to make one item
Manufacturing Time (You) How long it actually takes you to build the item. Changes based on the blueprint's PE level and your Industry Skill.
Researching
Similar to the manufacturing information, research times dictate how long it takes to raise a blueprint's ME, PE, or copy time.
To further expand upon material and production efficiency, these two attributes increase profitably. If you can make something cheaper and faster, you earn a lot in the long run. To increase these two attributes, you'll want to consult the Science & Industry button on the left side of the screen. Here, you can look up lists of stations in the region which offer researching services. Finding stations which offer PE research with open slots are pretty common, but trying to find an open ME station is damn near impossible. Because of ME's importance and near-requirement due to the amount of money the attribute can save, many people hog ME slots for weeks and months. In reality, this is all a waste of time as both attributes have diminishing returns. For instance, if you research a blueprint's ME to 200, you may only save a couple hundred of ISK over a blueprint with an ME of 20. For some, it doesn't matter though.
If you're concerned about not finding a slot, or would rather not wait weeks to start researching, don't fret, as there are a couple of avenues available to you. You can buy pre-researched BPO's from players, generally at a large mark-up, purchase heavily-researched BPC copies for cheap, start a POS or join a corporation which has one, and finally, you can join a research alliance to handle research for you, for a fee of course. Once you manage to find a slot, you don't have to go nuts and research it to 5 million. A solid strategy to follow is ammunition should be researched to 20, modules to 10, and ships to at least 5. PE doesn't matter all that much since PE slots are plentiful, so research that attribute to your heart's desire. Sometimes, based on what you're building, the item's market price, and the competition, you may not have to research anything, and simply rely on your production efficiency skill. This generally only works for some ammunition and modules though.
As you can see, most of the difficulty in manufacturing lies with the actual preparation more than anything else. Once you get a hold of a researched blueprint, the required materials, and a station that can manufacture goods, you're now ready to go. Seriously! Advanced Methods of Income
If you fancy things a little more interesting and challenging, these last few you'll find here will certainly whet your appetite. Generally reserved for more experienced players, great riches can be had here if you know what you're doing, but new players are not excluded from these activities either. Take a look and see what you might enjoy.
Relevant skills to achieve this task
All combat related skills
The skills/abilities to find targets
Are you in the mood to wreck a little havoc? Wish to make some money at somebody else's expense? Perhaps pirating is right for you! If you wish to join the ranks of those who kill helpless pilots, pillage their ship, and make off with some precious cargo, you'll feel right at home. Similar to real-life, the activity is not all glamorous. Pirating in EVE Online is something which takes a great deal of patience and skill. You simply can't jump into any system and start blasting away, lest you're ready to face some consequences. Pirating in high-sec space is also a no-go because of Concord protection, and most pirates hang out in low-sec/high-sec border zones or roam in 0.0 space scoping for targets.
Looking for potential targets is the hardest step for every pirate to overcome. Because low-sec and 0.0 are not protected by Concord Police, it's difficult to find singular targets. In low-sec, most are found either at asteroid belts and gates, or NPC complexes and missions. Gate-camping is the easiest method of obtaining targets and occurs at most of the border systems. All one needs is a ship capable of tanking the automated turrets and you can shoot at targets all day. You'll probably need the help of a friend though to help kill and loot your victims.
The biggest potential source of income for pirates though is ransoming. Basically, once you acquire a target and begin winning the fight, you'll restrain from completely destroying the ship and instead open a convo with the victim asking for a particular sum of money. If the victim doesn't pay within a certain timeframe, it's generally best to just blow the ship up and loot the cargo. Ransom amount can depend on many things such as character age, ship type, weapons, and activities they were performing at the time. It's very important that pirates honor ransoms by not killing targets that pay up, simply because people become increasingly reluctant to fork over anything if they think they'll be killed after they do. As players perform hostile acts on other pilots, their security status goes down. Eventually, players may find themselves unable to re-enter high-sec regions in fear of being shot on site by NPC ships. To counter this, players hoping to re-enter the "nicer" regions of space must shoot NPC belt rats to regain lost security standings.
This same information can also apply to PvP and corporation wars, except these two can take place in high-sec and there is no incurred standing loss.
Corp Thieving is an activity that's simple to explain, but difficult to perform. All one really has to do is feign trust and dedication to a corporation long enough to the point when they are given rights and privileges to corp hangars and assets. The obvious difficulty here is getting to that point, as most corps do not hand out privileges willy nilly. It can take months and even years of waiting to pull off a major snag, but once you do, your character is for the most part useless. This is because most serious corps perform background checks for many applicants, asking questions such as "How come you were only in this corporation for a day?" or "We saw a post on the forums where you were fingered for stealing, is this true?" With patience though, things may pay off. Just last month, the largest alliance in EVE, Band of Brothers, experienced this issue and were purposefully dissolved by the corporate spy as a result, because they were given access.
In the life of any EVE pod pilot, is not uncommon for someone to hear "High-sec is safer, not safe." When people say this little nugget of information, they're often referring to suicide ganking, for the simple fact that if you have enough firepower at your disposal, you can take down the most protected ship. Basically, suicide ganking is the fitting off pure damage modules for the purpose of destroying poorly protected ships for their juicy loot. Newer or more lackadasiel players are often the target, because they don't fit their ships properly, carry extremely expensive cargo in a small, easy-to-kill ship, or fly autopilot with a full cargohold. With the recent changes to suicide ganking, CCP has made the frowned-upon activity a little more hazardous. Changes such as increased standing loss for a kill and less insurance for the attacker have made suicide ganking a little rarer these days, but it still certainly does happen.
Another unpopular player activity and this one utilizes the art of deception. Typically done using the in-game contracts system, players purposefully leave a couple zeroes out or add some more to goad players into paying too much or selling for too little. For instance, it is a common scam to create a buy-order contract for a Navy Raven Issue a coveted battleship for 240k instead of 240 million, the usual price. Because the font used by the contract system can confuse the eye, players not paying attention think they saw a 240 million price tag rather than 240k, and sell it. Falsely naming a contract is also another popular method of scamming. Using the same ship as an example, someone sets up a contract sell order claiming they are selling off a Raven Navy Issue. Instead of actually including this ship within the contract, they instead attach a regular Raven, duping players into buying an overpriced and more common ship. You'd be surprised how many players fall for such scams.
And that concludes the final piece of Part 3. I hope this information proved useful to you, and I can't wait to start writing something else for next week's column. Have a nice evening guys and stay safe!
