New research run

Early results from the Crius research trial are surprisingly good, so I'm going to go ahead and stick another run in. Do the math with me:

([90b per run] * [50% average profit]) * ([350ish days per year] / [150 days per run]) = 105 billion per year

Of course, that's based on some hilariously optimistic assumptions: That the 50% will still be the average when the results are in (it won't), that prices will stay where they are (they won't), that it will be possible to sell an average of one blueprint every 2.5 days (iffy), and that putting so many blueprints up for sale won't affect prices.

But even if we assume my eventual income will be only one-third that much, that still comes to almost 3 billion per month. Which is adequate, I guess.

The phoenix blueprint? Because I only have one of them. I didn't bother researching a second, because phoenixes have been shit for almost as long as eve has existed. I only kept the one I had because they might get better eventually. And they did.

Indy contributor: November update

Market industry is like cold war. You won't hear about your successes, nor about losses. There are no explosions, no corpses left behind your defeated competitors, no killmails. The only thing that matters is success, and the size of it. Sometimes it feels discouraging to write articles which probably wont matter to anyone, but deep in my heart I believe overnight success is the result of years of hard work. My profits should be cut to about 2/3 of my potential due to passive gameplay now, but sooner or later I will get back to work and figure out how to improve the system to more than 100 percent of previous efficiency. Read buisness books and apply them in Eve; it works.

LibreOffice Calc: How to import data from a URL

By unpopular request!

So, you want to put stuff from the API or eve-central or whatever into a spreadsheet without copy-pasting. If you use LibreOffice, you'll find there's an option to Insert->Link to External Data. It has a box that says "put URL here" and a thing to select how often you want to update the source. Also, it doesn't work.

Here's what you do:

1. Get the URL you want to use. In this example, we'll pull some compressed ore prices from eve-central using http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?typeid=28388&typeid=28367&typeid=28410&typeid=28422&typeid=28424&typeid=28429&typeid=28432&usesystem=30000142

2. Go to Insert->Sheet From File



3. Paste the URL into the file name thing, and press 'open'



4. When the Text Import window comes up, check 'other' and put '<>' into the field. With XML, this will split the data into cells in such a way that you can use it. Press OK.



5. At the "Insert Sheet" window, don't change anything. Press OK.

6. The data is now in the sheet. It's a bit messy, but you'll be able to pick out the cells you need.



7. Don't do anything else on that sheet. Instead, set cells on another sheet equal to the relevant boxes on the imported sheet.



That's it. Every time you open the file it will reload the data, so your spreadsheet stays up to date.

Back to null

So I got to talking with some guy in lowsec, and long story short I’m now part of The Initiativedot.

I know, I know. But I like the sound of some of what they’ve got going on. Their fleet numbers are relatively small, but they have some nice doctrines and they actually use them. I’ve already gotten on some decent kills.

I'm bad and only got on two carriers before dying, but apparently we killed like eight.

Wardec trial

I didn’t have any luck finding targets with the corp finder. I was looking at 50-100 man corps, and I’d add like half the characters to my watchlist and be lucky if even one was online. Happily, a reader chipped in and gave me a different strategy: Sit off the undock of a mission station and check out the corps of passersby.

Doing this for an hour or so gave me several decent target corporations that always had a few people online, so I declared a couple of wars and did my thing. Scout, locator agent, DPS, no problem, right?

Turns out people don’t like losing ships. I caught one five-month-old character in a battleship, but otherwise both corps just noped the fuck out. The first one, all but one character just stopped logging in. The second also mostly stopped logging in, and when they did they only flew fast warping stuff. Even when my pvp character wasn’t logged in.

Being able to completely shut down a corporation for 50 million a week is plenty amusing, but what I really want is to be rolling in killmails. I don’t think I’m going to get that this way.

Something came up, though. Updates to follow.

In which I do a sanity check run before publishing my capital guide

In the spreadsheeting business, this is what "aww fuck, everything is broken" looks like.

For once, though, it's not my fault -- turns out somebody broke rebalanced megacyte and crokite, I assume out of a desire to be an asshole. And, of course, a few months from now they're going to break everything again when the next capital changes come out. Horay.

Anyhoo, now I have to do a second check run before publishing.

Indy contributor: October update

 

As I play EvE more and more passively, I can see things which were hidden to my eyes before. I always wanted to create a tradehub. I always wanted to contribute to capital industry. I always wanted to push my Battleclinic rank under 7k with a fully skilled pilot, and to have a pilot trio capable of completing any task I choose.

After reaching the tenth golden line, gold itself loses its shine. Victory loses its taste, and with mind not allured by material illusions I can fully concentrate on goals close to my heart.

Hagakure is a great book.

Parasoja's Notes:

I think this is what it looks like when somebody starts winning eve.

Like accelerating a freight train

So I figured I'd start out my 'pvp' thing in the shallow end, do some highsec wardecs. Trouble is, I can't find any damn targets. Figured I'd use corp finder, add some characters to my watch list, and just use locators. It hasn't really worked out -- the only corporation I've been able to find that had anybody online, they were all in lowsec. Figure I'll try a few more, then call that route an unmitigated failure. Anybody have a better idea?

In the meantime I've got an example run in progress for my capital guide. Since I'd like somebody to actually see that when I post it, I've re-submitted eve-fail to evebloggers. Unfortunately, it's not clear that that site is actually active. Guess we'll see.

"Getting back into the game maybe" update

I'm now at a point in RL where I can play eve again. This is a list of things I want to do:

1. Clean up science and industry. My low-effort iskmaking projects over the last few years have gotten me to a point where I can print isk at will, and as a result making money is no longer interesting. If there was a second level to it, like stock and bond markets, I'd be interested in those, but the game doesn't have systems to make them possible.

a. Capital manufacturing: I have a new capital spreadsheet ready to go. I'm planning to do one production run so I can make a guide, then shut down production but not sell my blueprints.

b. Research: About a year ago I started a project to see what sort of profits can be made resarching blueprints post-Crius. The blueprints are all researched, and when they finish selling I can publish the results. If I keep playing eve, this will probably be my long-term income stream.

c. Research labs. I ended up with 452 of these, which I puchased for between 30 and 32 million. I can sell them now for a profit of a few billion, or I can wait for the price to go up. Unfortunately, the price seems to be pegged to reprocessing cost because nobody uses research labs any more. I think I'll hold on to them for now, in hopes that a POS revamp will result in them either being used again or refunded for current manufacturing price.

2. Try and get back into eve.

a. Try ~solo elitepvp~.

b. Maybe try merc work again?

c. Try nullsec bigfites.

d. Maybe turn the isk printers back on and give it away for luls.

Stuff's in progress. I'll let you know how it goes.

Indy contributor: September update

 

Another month. 

I wasn't surprised when I saw price of plex. This is one of reasons why people with intentions of playing more than three years should have some form of passive income. It doesn't look like much per month, but it adds up in the long run. Eve has some diehard long-term fans, and offers infinite possibilities to actually get what you want independent of your gamestyle. I personally play the marketing and stock shares market of whole eve online more than anything else, investing my money into capital blueprints and plex. While far from most wealthy groups, being able to pile up around 150 bil capital and 300 mil sp+ over the span of five years isn't bad.

Parasoja's notes:

I'm not sure what's up with that blank line. There were several of them in the item list. If it happens again next month I'll have to see what's up.

Indy contributor: August update

 

Learning all the time. Last month proved to be profitable due to a single customer -- someone bought my cynosural field generator by setting up a buy order with three more zeroes than usual, and so instead of getting it for 1.5 million ISK he bought it for 1.5 billion. About as lucky for me as winning lottery, but hey -- if you wanna win the lottery you need to buy the ticket, be it keeping 450 orders on the market for 2 years or having capital blueprints increase in market value over time due to patching. The more you learn about business, and the more things you're involved in, the more holes you can see in its systems and the more opportunities come your way.

Parasoja's notes:

My first thought was "Aww crap, it broke and I'm going to have to manually the database again."

Nope.

Indy contributor: July update

To passive income or not to passive income? As the number of players with the ability to generate superb amounts of wealth increases, so does the price of plex due to demand. Without any nerf to 0.0 enviroment - and, to be honest, this is not going to happen any time soon - the price of plex is going to reach 1 billion not go down. Even so, it's a great time to be the one player who enables other players do what they like to do, be it buying stuff on hubs or building super-sized ships.

Indy contributor: June update

 

Hello, my readers. I've seen many players coming and leaving Eve Online over the years, and I can safely say that most players will eventually leave and sell their characters on the bazaar at some point, usually during the span of 2-3 years.

This leads into a general rule which I got from the audiobook "Rich dad, poor dad", which also help if you want to be rich in Eve: Make money at the time of buying, not just at the time of selling. Finding good offers can help you immensely in your growth, just like it helped me in the beginning. Watch contracts, watch market. The further from Jita you look, the better the money you can make.

On a real-life note, I'm taking an online illustration course during the next three months. With my skills I'll fail so hard it will hurt, but that's is okay as long as I don't give up.

Indy contributor: Combined April and May update

Sales went down due to parasites invading my station orders, but I am pretty safe. I have too many orders set up to be beaten by t2 market refillers, so instead of stopping me these people are actually helping me keep my trade hub in shape -- I just don't have 12 hours per month to invest into the game, but they do, and I'm willing to take a back seat and watch the clockwork tick. Money I made on market I invested into research on my capital blueprints, specifically chimearas, thanatoses and one naglfar.

I think it would be wise to give some advice to people who might want to set up their own personal hubs. First and foremost, you need to work really hard -- set up as many different orders for PvP, POS, Sov, Support, and PI items, and so on, as you can. The more you put there, the more customers you get. Second, you need to be persistent. Customers don't come during first day, week, or month, they come over time randomly. You need to wait a certain amount of time before they discover you. Three, you need little bit of luck to draw hard workers who buy large quantities of items

Proximity to PVPers matters a lot. Put your trade hub in a far corner of space and nobody will ever see it. A good location also means good margins, and this past month I was able to increase margins on few items I've had in stock for a while and they're still selling well. Don't work harder, work smarter!

Parasoja's Notes:

Because I'm lazy, that's why.

Also, the list of months is getting long, so I reversed the order. Newer entries are now on top.

Indy contributor: March update

Sales went down due to parasites invading my station orders, but I am pretty safe. I did set up too many to be beaten by t2 market refillers, and now these people, instead of stopping me, are actually helping me keep my trade hub in shape -- I just dont have real life time to invest 12 hours per month into the game right now, but they do and I am willing to take a back seat and watch the clockwork tick. Money I made on market was invested into research of my capital blueprints -- specifically chimearas, thanatoses, and one naglfar.
 
Parasoja's notes:

"Slightly more delayed than normal because a windows update broke virtualbox" edition.

Trade contributor: February update

This last month has been rough, but efficient. Used PUSHX industries for moving a shitload of stuff (excuse my french) left all over space into my trade hub and refilled some orders. Well worth, I say -- they charge less than Black Frog, and got my order delivered just under 1 week, which was exactly what I wanted and needed in these dire times. Little bit of my personal life has been changed, so I might expect to be able to pay less attention to eve in future months, but I will definetly keep these posts up as long as Parasoja agrees. This should fuel my hunger for passive income efficiency :).

Parasoja's Notes:

I also recommend PushX. A rush contract with 5b collateral between amarr and jita will run you 74m, and complete in hours.

Indy contributor: January update

Last month was bad. I lost my anshar to a goon suicide gang (they didnt profit because the drop couldn't pay for the ships doing it). This will accelerate my plans for moving my characters under one account. I also sold two or three 10/20 small ship blueprints for 100mil each.

I will restock my 1-5 m3 items first to get these off my list, and the rest will be left for upcoming months.

I should be making 600 mil from PI per month, 40 mil from research agents, 10mil per research slot (32 slots at the moment) at least and 1.2 - 1.4 b from market, so i am in excess of my target 1.1 bil. Its time to pump some money into market and experimental projects, or maybe just extend subscription for 2 months every month

Parasoja's notes:

Ouch.

Trade tool continued

It's pretty much done. I added friendly HTML output, added pages for trades between each system pair, added a 'ratio' value so I can manually set the quantity-on-market-vs-quantity-to-move relationship on a per-items basis, and added a function so I can set ratios or drop items without having to manually enter the entire database command each time.

Right now the signal-to-noise ratio, especially on the main list, is pretty low. It's populated almost entirely with PI materials, T2 materials, and faction ammo, which are market groups for which The Equation is badly inaccurate for whatever reason. Some of the system-to-system lists are much better, though, and the master list can improve as I drop the bad items.

Still haven't actually used it in a serious way.

My ME10 capital blueprints finished

(the rest are on another character)

Indy contributor: December update

Nothing has changed. Few frigates more on market - those t1 are always a source of passive income. Plan is simple, load a JF with 130 t1 frigates, bring them in and sell them for 130 mil profit over the next half year or year. Other stuff is left just at random. Getting prepared to move characters under one account -- gonna be fun. Imagine 3 characters with a total of about 320 mil sp with all possible sources of passive income on one account.