quarta-feira, 15 de junho de 2016

PVP and Trading – May 2016 Report



PVP Report

This focus into my “Alone PVP” endeavours, using usually 2 tons. I might eventually team up with the occasional friend during my “Alone PVP” roams, but any kills/losses I achieve in a proper fleet are not posted or analysed here.

I’m not even going to lie about my goals as an ”Alone PVPer”. I want to find people, deceive them and kill them. I’m a brawler at heart, so dying is inevitable, but I want to make sure I manage to kill more than I lose. While not trying to be an Isk Efficiency fanatic, I do prefer to use cheaper affordable ships to kill more expensive ones. 

Citadel Patch is here and along with it the Carrier rebalance. Long story short, Skynet 2.0 is here and probably more powerful than its previous incarnation, being a huge candy CCP offered carebears. I was surprised by them the 1st time I faced a couple, being pointed by fighters and dying in less than 9 seconds, the time I needed to activate my MJD… Still, things are how they are, and there is nothing I can do other than adapt (namely run and hide if even one enters D-Scan as I can’t even survive for 10 seconds if a carrier lands 300km away) or wait for CCP to change it...

COMBINATIONS FLOW

Next graph shows how many ships I killed and lost, using my most usual combinations. 


Still addicted to Dual Hull Brutix. Killed 74 ships while losing 18.

Killed a bit less, lost a bit less, but my usual Kill/rate is still mostly there. Just business as usual. I started recording some of my engagements in hopes of creating a “Curses!” episode dedicated the Dual Hull Brutix, but no promises. Usually I only remember to record once the engagement is over…

HOSTILES KILLED

Let’s take a better look on the hostiles I killed. Next graph shows what ships I killed and how many.
 


Most kills were Svipul, Sabre and then Myrmidon, Ferox and Crow

My first impression was “What no Gila or Caracal on top?!” This is probably the 1st month the Gila is not up there… Not sure why really, probably just luck (or lack of it) involved.

Then again, we got the Svipul there on top of my kills, so hardly original. Sabre and Crow are usual suspects, as are mostly used to catch me before a fleet arrives, but the Myrmidon and Ferox are somewhat a surprise. I still firmly believe that T1 Battlecruisers are slowly but surely re-emerging and many people prefer to use them over a HAC.

During this month I killed 49 different ship types, even though mostly only 1 or 2 of each, so people like to bring some variety to the field. 

Following graph shows the Isk value per ship type.


Largest spike is a 700+ million faction fitted Ishtar with Legion links and Implants. Meet Mr. Dual Hull Brutix and thanks for the loot! Then we have the Vagabond, Svipul and Pilgrim. Pilgrim was the real oddity here, but I did managed to kill one faction fitted.

Generally the month of May was a bad one in terms of Isk kills, with no ship type really standing out…

Even though many ship types killed might attest for a good variety on the field, I created some Categories in order to understand better the different ship classes I managed to kill.



My top preys were Combat Battlecruisers… Seriously?! Is this 2009 all over again? Cheap, insurable, sturdy and decent DPS… Sure slow and clumsy, but can’t have it all.

Then we have interceptors and T3 destroyers… Only AFTER we have Faction Cruisers!! What the hell happened here?! This was the 1st month Faction Cruisers got so far down behind other categories… Maybe people are preferring to use a Combat Battlecruiser over a Faction Cruiser too!

How about isk wise, in what categories I’m able to inflict more economic pain?
 

HACs were my top prey isk wise, but even then it’s a small value, only 1.7 billion. I do enjoy killing HACs and I’m glad to see them in my top prey isk wise.

Further down we have Faction Cruisers and Combat Battlecruisers… I’m really curious as to how this will evolve next month.

HOSTILES KILLING ME
Equally important is the notion on what ships are being used to kill me. Solo players always complain about being “blobbed” all the time. Well… I WANT for my foes to try to “blob” me, I WANT to fight outnumbered, I WANT for them to bring their best, so that I can outsmart them and kill them, just before I bail out teasing them!!... or die trying… Of course, once my foes bring too much it’s time to safe up and let them vent in local on how I’m a coward because I’m not throwing myself at their 15/20 men fleets for their leisure. 

1st thing I checked was how large were the fleets that actually killed me, or in other words, how many people are in my losses killmails.

Generally speaking, if I died to a gang of more than 10 people I was probably simply ganked.

If I died to a gang with 5-10 people, I was probably surprised by unexpected backup.

My preferred targets are mostly gangs with less than 5 people, and if I died, it probably means that I made serious mistakes and/or assessed the situation very badly and that there is a lesson to be learned around on how to make better next time.


 Looking at the graph, I was ganked by large fleets 3 times… This is very acceptable!

I died 5 times to gangs with 6-10 people. Also not THAT bad…

I died 10 times to 1-5 man Fleets… These are my intended targets and I seem to find these a lot, so I still believe there are good opportunities to a solo player/small gang out there.

Let’s take a look to the ships that actually managed to kill me.
  

Largest spike are the Sabre and Rifter. The Rifter is easy to explain. I went Pandemic Horde space and died a couple times, so lots of Rifter and even Merlin too, as other T1 frigates.

As for the Sabre, it looks like people just have been throwing those at me more than usual… Probably luck is the main factor here as no Interdictor changes happened

I also died a lot to Caracal and Crow, and that is completely normal… Every fleet had a Caracal, a Crow and a Svipul… Many times also a Sabre.

Vexor Navy Issue also shows up a decent number of times in my death… In fact, this might be due to the geography involved in my roams. I probably messed with people with less isk, so they only had Vexor Navy Issues instead of Gila, as it tends to be the “poor people ratting ship”

There are also many many ships that show up in my Killmails once or twice only. A total of 71 different ship types were used to kill me. I pretty much think this shows that EVE is healthy when it comes to variety and small gang PVP.

Let’s look at the Categories used to kill me


This month it’s T1 frigates (due to flying in Horde space), Faction Cruisers and Interceptors that killed me the most…

Humm…. Looking at this last graph, it looks like Factions Cruisers were still largely used against me, but I was just unable to kill them as much as I did all those previous month. That is most unfortunate.

Ships that completely dominate solo wannabe PVPers, like ECM Cruisers and Logistics, aren’t really used all THAT much. I find that extremely good news for me and other solo guys out there. 

That’s all I remembered to take a look at in a PVP Report. Make sure to undock and go out there!

TRADING REPORT

MARKET PROFITS
So, this month I made 16,5 billion profit. It was a nice recovery from last month (when I made only 6 billion profit). Not only that, it was my 2nd best month ever. Remember that last month was different for 2 important factors:

1 – World War Bee was raging in the North and Hek (my hub) was in the south, so it took a great hit as people all flocked “up North”

2 – I made an experiment to try figure out what was more important for my profits. “Old Stock” or “New Stock”, so I did not bought anything to sell during this month, even though I still updated orders as normal.

Given my low profit hit last month it was nice to see a good recovery! What do I think were the main factors for this recovery?

1 – World War Bee ended, so everyone scattered from the North back to their regular homes (in case they did not found a new one during the war)

2 – CFC lost and got completely shattered. Many people probably came back to the game (or just continued playing) in hopes of living in this free brave new world of opportunities with the last mega-coalition gone… Probably only to realise, sooner or later, that having the space belonging to Sov group A or Sov group B or Sov group C, to be pretty much the same deal…

3 – Citadel Patch hit and along with it, many people are excited with the new middle term between an Outpost and a POS. I’m seeing Medium and Large Citadels all over the place, 3, 4 or even 5 per system. Easy to deploy, safe to undock and wave at hostiles in system, shoots at bad guys (if manned) and perfectly safe to have all crap in. Hell… a well placed citadel near a gate with some bubbles can even originate a whole new “station gate camping” doctrine! Add in a few of the new “balanced” Carriers and you got a “Station-Carrier” gatecamp that can act with pretty much full impunity! A carebear dream came true…

4 – Maybe fanfest also brought in some people back to the game, but can’t really tell.

5 – Recent changes to my spreadsheet, combined with the “multibuy feature” allow me to buy stuff in Jita at an astounding rate, so I buy more items to put up for sale before I get bored and need to go do other stuff. Now only that, my spreadsheet now sorts the items to buy per potential profit, instead of alphabetically. Before, I hardly bought any “True Sansha” items because…. Well… “T” is down there in the alphabet and I would get fed up before getting there… Last letters of the Alphabet, I welcome you and your profits!! Only took me 3 freaking years to implement the “sort by profits” change… Even CCP “fixes” stuff faster… Sigh…

Previously stated I’d be investing in Capital mods and Citadel mods, so how much profit did they made me in this 1st month of existence?

Capital Mods
Extremely disappointing… I hardly sold any of those new capital mods in Hek. The only exception is those stupidly overpowered “new” fighters. The T1 variant is extremely cheap, costing little more than a drone, and they sell a lot and with decent margins so far. T2 fighters are rarely sold, probably due to being high skill intensive as they require LVL 5 skills to be used. Plates, Shield Extenders, Neutralizers, Capacitor Boosters, etc, are rarely sold in Hek for now.

Why? I think these new Capital Mods were designed in mind for Capital on Capital warfare. The thing is, I bet that 95% of all Carriers (I never see any dreads around so can’t say about those) are used to rat, to insta-blap some target at range on a station, or to insta-blap some target near a gate while the Carrier itself is safely hugging a Citadel or aligning out 300km away from a gate. These situations don’t require the Capital mods, but mostly Drone modules for tracking and damage.
 Let’s see how the Capital mods market evolves in the future, but so far I haven’t noticed any big market changes in Hek, other than Fighters.

Citadel Mods
Oh Baby! Those pretty much went as I somewhat expected and it was pretty good. I managed to sell some mods 500% overpriced during this 1st month, and it took a while for competition to undercut me greatly. Even then, many Citadel mods were still at 100% profit in Hek at the end of May. 

In fact, Citadel mods helped me exceed the “2 billion profits made in a single day” barrier. I made 1,9 billion profit in a single day a couple times before, but this 2 billion “achievement” had never been met… That particular Saturday (Saturdays are always the best market day for me) I made around 700 million profit in Citadel mods.

Of course, that milky cow is now kinda over with competitors jumping in and prices getting lower, but is an investment category I’m going to maintain for the future.

Skill Extractors
I also began station trading Skill Extractors in Hek. Why so, if I stated many times that station trading isn’t my thing, nor fast moving items?

1 – So far and for reasons I cannot explain, Skill Extractors have great margins, even considering the new exaggerated broker fees and taxes. In May, each Skill Extractor provided an 11 million profit. Not awful considering their moderate sales. Skill Injectors and Plex end up having less margins, even if they cost 3 or 4 times more.

2 – I don’t mind managing buy orders for only 1 item.

3 – I’m keeping it relaxed… I put 10 buy orders and once fulfilled I sell those 10 items. Once sold I repeat the process with no big expectations.

I made around 275 mil profit during the month, and I suppose it’s not bad considering the huge competition (my orders get undercut in less than 2 minutes) and the  low margins those items tend to have.

Other Stuff
This month I also invested a lot in the market. I usually have 20-30 billion idle in my wallet, just because I’m too lazy to spend it all, but with the latest changes to my Google Docs spreadsheet (described a couple month ago in my blog), combined with the new Multibuy feature, I can buy 100 items in less than 5 minutes! And this already includes some work to avoid buying an overpriced item or scam wannabe. 

Now I’m only keeping 10 billion idle, because you never know when I need to buy more Brutix and ship them to Curse. At the end of May I had around 120 billion in Sell Orders in Hek… I never had so much crap for sale…



MARKET HAULING EXPENSES
All my hauling was done by public contracts, paid 550 million reward for 13 contracts. All contracts are fulfilled in less than 24 hours and this suits me fine. 

PLEX EXPENSES
Paid my 2 accounts with 1 PLEX each, costing me a total 1,9 Billion. Plex is lowering and I hope it lowers even more! 300 million Plex days where are you?! Come back!!

On the other hand I have no idea how many of my customers buy market stuff resorting to PLEX funding… I might be, indirectly, making more profit with expensive PLEX, having more people buying my market stuff with isk obtained via PLEX, rather than saving isk directly from the PLEX I purchase to maintain my accounts. Who knows…


BLUEPRINTS
As soon as Citadel patch hit last month, I spent 13 billion in a Medium Citadel and Citadel Mods Blueprints, as described in a previous post, so I won’t go into big details here.
So, after 1 month, how is the isk flowing? Let’s look at the following table:



 I made 1,7 billion selling BPCs and 1,8 billion selling low tier researched BPOs. After considering all expenses, I kept 2,7 billion, sold 176 contracts for an average of 20 million per contract.

This month I managed to break my BPC sales record, but no surprise here given my 13 billion investment… This is hardly a “victory” right now… I’ll consider this whole Citadel investment a “victory” when I get my investment back! If ever…

Let’s take a more detailed look

Medium Citadel BPO.
Alone this one cost 6 billion. I took it to Curse, in an NPC null station, to be researched and copied. I made 4 copies and researched it to ME/TE 4/8. All the BPCs combined netted me an income of 210 million. Bear in mind that I only put my BPCs for sale after the 5th May, so I lost the “several hundred million for a BPC” train, but it’s not something I was aiming at, as I like to have a more relaxed stance towards my market/blueprints activities. Most BPCs sold actually quite fast, in less than 24hours. In fact, I should have probably dedicated more time creating BPCs and less time researching the BPO…

At the end of the month I took a look at Medium Citadel BPOs for sale on contracts, and got somewhat annoyed… Lots of people are jumping out of this “new trend” and are selling researched BPOs at 5.5 billion, 500 million below cost. Seriously?!... Why was I annoyed? Because If I had waited a month, I could be buying a researched BPO from contracts and saving Isk. Even with the 210 million income I ended up “losing”. Not a big difference sure, but still… At least, now I know better.

Right now Medium Citadels have no competitors (Large Citadels are a somewhat different structure with other goals in mind, not to mention the price), but that is probably bound to end next large expansion. Drilling Platforms have been announced, therefore it’s possible that all those miners out there won’t have the need for a Medium Citadel, as a Medium Drilling Platform might fulfil all their needed roles. Too soon to say as there are no more details available.

Medium Citadel BPCs seems to be going around 25 million at the end of May, and I hope they won’t go further down. This is already less 0.5 % of the BPO original value.

So… In order to pay out the Medium Citadel BPO investment of 6 billion (will be more as It gets more expensive to research it) and if I consider that a Medium Citadel BPC to be worth 25 million for the next few month, and if I take in account that a BPC takes 3 days to be created, I’ll need to sell 240 BPCs that’ll take 720 days to copy!!! So… more than 2 years copying the damn BPO, not taking in account any research. This is a freaking nightmare… Hopefully the BPO will gain some value itself as gets more researched, and hopefully I’ll make a decent Isk profit once I sell the damn BPO, because BPCs alone are probably not going to cut it.

Citadel Mods
Citadel Mods BPCs made me some decent isk, and at the end of May, their price fluctuates between 5 mil and 20 mil, depending on competition.

There seems to be lots of competition in the mining related rigs/services and these BPCs tend to be cheaper than 5 million. Then again, these BPOs are also cheaper so attract more competition.

The only really disappointing investment so far was the “Standup Cloning Center I Blueprint” and “Standup Guided Bomb Launcher I Blueprint”, because thse were the 2nd and 3rd most expensive BPOs I purchased, and I didn’t sold any BPC… Why so? I believe it’s because these are suited for Large and Extra-Large citadels, so they have less clients interested. I might need to ditch these particular BPOs if no BPCs are sold next month.

On a brighter side, I managed to pay out the cost of the these original BPOs:
1 – “Standup Ballistic Control System I Blueprint” as I made 75 million sales and the BPO costs 60 million
2 –  “Standup Variable Spectrum ECM I Blueprint” as I made 357 million and it costs 200 million. Everyone “hates” ECM, but they sure like to put it in their new shiny toys...
These are the only 2 BPOs that are making me a “real profit” after one month, but several other close of covering their cost already… Not too bad I guess.

I already decided that most Citadel BPOs are going to be researched to ME/TE 7/14. Maaaaaaaaaayyybe 8/16… Should be more than enough, as I don’t see 10/20 in those mods being worth researching. Exception is probably the Astrahus citadel that I intend to research a bit further.

Low Tier BPOs
I took a hit this month. Low Tier BPOs have been selling less, as I sold about 1/3 less this month, only making 1,8 billion profit

How do I expect my Blueprint endeavor to evolve next 2 month? I honestly expect it to get worse… This seems counterproductive to be investing so much and to expect things to get worse on the short term but here are my reasons:

1 – I been allocating 20 of my 40 research slots to improve and copy those new Citadel BPOs. BPC prices are going down due to competition in the near future, and I’ll make less Isk, so it only remains to see by how much.

2 – By spending 20 of my 40 research slots into those new Citadel BPOs, I’m researching way way less of my usual low tier BPOs and soon I’ll have less researched BPOs available and thus, less isk coming in.

I currently research around 300 different BPOS… this means that when I finish up a “research cycle” I won’t have much stock lying around, as stuff already probably sold. As an example, I see no advantage in researching 10 “Neutron Blasters” at once they sell very slowly, so I prefer to research one of each gun from all races.

My PVP toons can now research BPOs in Curse but I have no idea what! I do not want to research fast stuff, because I kinda want to “fire and forget”… but also want a good isk/time ratio. Should I buy 20 T1 Cruiser or Battlecruiser hulls, get them to 10/20 and sell them? Should I try out those new Capital Mod BPOs? Or should I just go for the "traditional" Capital BPOs? I’ve been delaying thinking about it for a month…

MISCELANEOUS INVESTMENTS
Did not bought any Capital BPOs in order to resell them…
 
Finally, my Overall Graph




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