Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Considering a foray into EVE, seeking opinions on economy
top5records
Member Posts: 1
in EVE Online
I gave EVE a brief trial about a year ago, but at the time was still playing the dreaded WoW and felt I just didn't have time to properly get into it (seemed like it had a fairly long initial pay-off time, with the "learning" skills etc., if you were planning on sticking around). I've always been really attracted to well made, player-dependent economies, and crafting systems, and EVE seemed like it might have a pretty substantial one.
My worry comes back to the lengthy input times issue...How long will it take me, given that I'll probably want to train the learning skills first, to actually START any sort of economically viable crafting? Furthermore, how much of the economy is actually purely player-supplied? Is manufacturing a necessary enterprise in the EVE world, or just a fun diversion like it is in most MMOs? Finally, how common are manufacturing enterprise as a profit making character build? Is the server just so utterly choked with pirates that you might as well just not bother unless you've got a powerful corp backing you?
I imagine I'll probably give it a shot either way, but if I could get some idea of the time-table/scale I'll be dealing with it would make subscribing far less daunting.
Thanks in advance!
My worry comes back to the lengthy input times issue...How long will it take me, given that I'll probably want to train the learning skills first, to actually START any sort of economically viable crafting? Furthermore, how much of the economy is actually purely player-supplied? Is manufacturing a necessary enterprise in the EVE world, or just a fun diversion like it is in most MMOs? Finally, how common are manufacturing enterprise as a profit making character build? Is the server just so utterly choked with pirates that you might as well just not bother unless you've got a powerful corp backing you?
I imagine I'll probably give it a shot either way, but if I could get some idea of the time-table/scale I'll be dealing with it would make subscribing far less daunting.
Thanks in advance!
Comments
Can you still get out there and make your industrial fortune? Can't say, I hung my eve accounts up about a year ago. Big corps have HUGE clout, and until you have churned over those important industy skills you will find people can sell stuff for less than it costs you to produce.
Last time I dropped by there were plenty of 'pirates' ( gate camping gankers, you know the anti-social kind that takes delight in ruining your day ) and some pirates ( those who will atleast extort you before podding you ).
You would need at some point access of some kind to 0.0 space, I'm guessing by now most of which is policed by alliances. So should you stray in expect to die, either to the aformentioned 'pirate', pirate or an alliance player killing on sight.
The above could be all hopelessy out dated offcourse.
good luck
Economic activity in Eve is more realistic in diversity then in most casual MMO's. There's not just crafting and putting stuff on an npc vendor here. You can specialise within the economy.
As to your question about which part of the total economy is purely player driven. I'd say that'd be about 99% of the economy. The main exceptions are ship insurance, usable NPC trade goods (used in pos management), and skills and t1 bpo's. Most of everything else is player driven, and serves a total of about 170 thousand subscribers on the same 'shard'. This makes it a very viable economy with plenty opportunity for the flexible and social entrepeneur.
I say social because in Eve, you start with hardly any ability to effectivly and efficiently craft stuff yourself. The best way to make your fortune as a newer player is to start with trading goods that you buy low one place and sell high antoher place. Purely based on player demand and your insights into how it changes and moves due to player action influence (and game mechanic changes
).
After that, once you gain some money and most importantly friends, you can climb the social ladder of production and look for particularly good deals within the ranks of your producing friends. If you happen to know the right guy you can maybe get some nice stuff for a low price and be a reseller. Or you can corner a small piece of the market in a particular module and take a chance at creating your own profit margin.
There's plenty of opportunity, even when you don't craft something yourself.
Production in Eve:
The game provides item blueprints and it is up to the player to get the minerals needed, build the items and put them onto the market at an appropriate price. There are two problems though:
1. Everyone can buy every tech 1 blueprint which means that nearly every other t1 producer out there is competition. The T1 item prices are driven by the prices of the minerals (depends on how much the macro miners mined last week). The calculation would be: add up min prices, multiply by 1.1 and you have got your price, the price everyone else uses. You make money either through selling a huge amount of goods or you find a place without competition, which means a risky voyage into unsecure space. The T2 item market is virtually unavailable for you for at least a few months of training and even then it needs quite a lot of starting capital.
2. Skills: As a new player you will have to train basic skills for a few months. From experience I would say you need 1-2 months for learning skills and other basic stuff and then another 1-2 to specialise in your first area (like production).
If you stay in the game for a longer period you definately can become a part of the HUGE industry that exists in Eve.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I would recommend to look for a mining corp. That way you might have access to resources or people who can mine with you. Making the resource and money gathering easier.
OP, the answer the others are dancing around is 6 months to a year not just in training the skills but you also have to learn the market and get other indy skills up as well as learn the ins and outs of the game.
Example: lets say you are going to start by making ammo, easy to get into (buy the BPs) and produce. Also you did not say what lvl you were going to take your learning skills too, so lets say you are rolling an Indy Avatar and only going to take the learning skills to LVL4 for this example. Note: taking the all the learning skills to lvl5 would add an additional 6 to 18 months depending on your atributes.
Ok in order to sell anything you need to first have the item which can be manufactured by you or bought and resold and if you are going to craft them your self then you need to get the raw materials by mining them, recycle drops or buy the mats. For this example lets say that you want to start making iridium charge m which is a hybrid ammo. for each unit you will need :
You can get these by mining and refining or by buying them. If you are going to mine them and refine them then add 3 months training in mining and refining skills. So you are now at 8 months training to effecently aquire the mins.
Once you get the mins you need to buy the BP0:
iridium charge m blueprint: ISK 150,000.00
If you rolled an industry Avatar you should have manufacture to at least lvl4 so you should be able to easly MFG and sell the ammo. How ever as someone else mentioned you are not the only one making this ammo and tring to sell it, this is standard with any MMO. though only the EVE fanbo's call this PVP every other MMO (crafting and trying to out sell others) calls it by the general tearm crafting.
Anyhoo you have two choices. To stay local and try and undersell or to take your product to where the demand is. In both cases you need to train production effency and refine effencicy (both require the subskills trained to lvl5 first) so add 2-3 more months if you want to be competitive locally. so now your up to 10 months of training.
The best thing is to actually take the product to where there is a demand. Thus you need to train to fly an Indy (ship) which is only 15-20 days to get the other pilot skills up first and train the indy. Now if you want to us a transport ship.. well add 4-6 ore months to get all the pilot skills up. Also you will need to use a mining barge to mine effencently so add 5-9 months for that, though finding a good mining corp can cut some time off if they do an even split regardless of what your flying. IE: Using your indy to haul while they mine in barges can get you the ores you need without you having to mine them yourself.
The good part is that at this point you can MFG/Sell anything, well any T1 item. If you want to mfg T2 ammo add 2-3 months, T2 eqipment 3-5 months and t2 ships 4-7 months of additional traing will be required.
There are a lot of other skills you will need to compeat in manufacturing but if you can find a war going on you can supply ammo and ships which will add a few months more.
Now if you can find a good and I mean a good mining/mfg corp that will help you, the time can be cut down alot, you can easly start making a profit in 4-7 months.
If you try and go solo then look at 8-12 months to make a living and 16-24 months to become actually competitive, and thats if you don't et sidetracted.
An so it begins
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.[/CENTER]
Even though you might not be directly creating ships/mods/ammo to sell on the market, supplying ore and minerals is certainly a nice foot in the door.
Agree. My wife is already a very accomplished T1 ship producer and T2 ship reseller.
She's been playing for exactly 2.5 months. She'll have a freighter within the month as well.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Learning skills are NOT required! Get that out of your head. If anyone tells you it is imperative to train learning skills you'll be listening to the wrong people. They help in the long run although have little impact early on when playing EVE. It is good to grab 1-3 levels in the learning skills although anything more then that is going to be a waste for the first 4-6 months of playing EVE. It's better to find your place and work into a nice venture then spend all your time learning skills that's not going to provide any benefit until 16 months later - it's not worth it. Learn the skills required to fly the ships you choose and fit the module you need. That should be your primary "training" goal.
"Crafting" is a misnomer. In EVE Online you have "Manufacturing". There's a HUGE difference. Crafting can be acredtied to manually click and drag&dropping items into pop up windows and finding different items which can be used on the same schematic. EVE's manufacturing is somewhat simpler yet more rewarding. The game is about assets, plain and simple. Using an owned, or borrowed, blueprint you'll queue up the manufacturing time based upon the number of units you wish to produce and how much resources you have availble. There's actually a little more to it, but it's VERY simple in terms of any other MMO crafting. (Think using a schematic in Star Wars Galaxies to make a 1000 unit run of some kick ass item. Very similar to that manufacturing process.)
Almost everything is player maintained at some level. If it's not the actual manufacturing of the item it could also be allowable access to it. The game is about the acquisistion of assets.
Oddly enough, Pirates and Wars will be the industrialist's BEST ally! How do you expect to sell 100,000 units of ammo if no one is shooting anyone? Would someone still need to buy 500k ISK ships that you manufactured if the pirates we're blowing them up? EVE's economy is the best you'll find in ANY game. It surpases everything I've ever seen and is entirely player dynamic - if no one is lossing ships then no one is replacing them. (Once you've got a good operation going, maybe you'll find it more lucrative to hire a Mercenary Corp to engage your largest buyers with the intent to propel their need for your goods)
Time scales; do not concern your self with learning skills - spend time learning the dynamics of the game and how to capitlize upon the aquaitences and friensdhips you build - Always pay your insurance!
p.s. Minning is the most accesible means to acquire resources for manufacuring. I think it's the most dreadful thing to do in EVE while others can't wait to power up their strip miners. I gain my resources to be used with Blueprint Copies (BPCs) from looting the wrecks of ships and refining them.
Learning skills are NOT required! Get that out of your head. If anyone tells you it is imperative to train learning skills you'll be listening to the wrong people. They help in the long run although have little impact early on when playing EVE. It is good to grab 1-3 levels in the learning skills although anything more then that is going to be a waste for the first 4-6 months of playing EVE. It's better to find your place and work into a nice venture then spend all your time learning skills that's not going to provide any benefit until 16 months later - it's not worth it. Learn the skills required to fly the ships you choose and fit the module you need. That should be your primary "training" goal.
"Crafting" is a misnomer. In EVE Online you have "Manufacturing". There's a HUGE difference. Crafting can be acredtied to manually click and drag&dropping items into pop up windows and finding different items which can be used on the same schematic. EVE's manufacturing is somewhat simpler yet more rewarding. The game is about assets, plain and simple. Using an owned, or borrowed, blueprint you'll queue up the manufacturing time based upon the number of units you wish to produce and how much resources you have availble. There's actually a little more to it, but it's VERY simple in terms of any other MMO crafting. (Think using a schematic in Star Wars Galaxies to make a 1000 unit run of some kick ass item. Very similar to that manufacturing process.)
Almost everything is player maintained at some level. If it's not the actual manufacturing of the item it could also be allowable access to it. The game is about the acquisistion of assets.
Oddly enough, Pirates and Wars will be the industrialist's BEST ally! How do you expect to sell 100,000 units of ammo if no one is shooting anyone? Would someone still need to buy 500k ISK ships that you manufactured if the pirates we're blowing them up? EVE's economy is the best you'll find in ANY game. It surpases everything I've ever seen and is entirely player dynamic - if no one is lossing ships then no one is replacing them. (Once you've got a good operation going, maybe you'll find it more lucrative to hire a Mercenary Corp to engage your largest buyers with the intent to propel their need for your goods)
Time scales; do not concern your self with learning skills - spend time learning the dynamics of the game and how to capitlize upon the aquaitences and friensdhips you build - Always pay your insurance!
p.s. Minning is the most accesible means to acquire resources for manufacuring. I think it's the most dreadful thing to do in EVE while others can't wait to power up their strip miners. I gain my resources to be used with Blueprint Copies (BPCs) from looting the wrecks of ships and refining them.
He is kind of right on that.OP, you don't NEED to learn learning skills. However they will reduce your learning time for most skills. You can even intertwined them with your industry skills. Let's say, learn empathy to lvl 2, and then learn industry to lvl 3*.
What most people do is get your five basic skills (each attribute) to lvl 4; By doing this you gain access to the advanced learning skills. raise those to lvl 3 or 4. As you desire.
What I do, for example, is learn skills which are shorter while I'm online. And leave the long skills for when I'm offline. Talking in this terms, you could do learning skills up to lvl 3 and then do 4 while you are offline. Then when you have enough money to buy the adv. learning skills, get them and learn them in between your production and mining skills.
Another thing that you could do is to save your money and buy implants. all you need to wear +1 attribute implants is Science lvl 3 and Cybernetics lvl 1. For implants +2 and +3 you need Cybernetics lvl 3. Another way to get implants is by doing the storyline missions, you get this when you get a higher standing with an NPC corporation.
*This was an example.
well the economy and the manufactoring are purly run by the players in eve online.
The market is growing and the playerbase is getting larger each time.
I do have Manufactoring as one of my main core for my chars ingame. Time fraim for you may be around some months- well
depends what you call competiv market sells.
Phew Phew
Umm Yeaaaaaaaaaaa Im not sure how accurate your times are.. 24 months I doubt it seriously.
I played the trial and got quite a few skills to 5 in that time to get a skill to 5 it only takes like 3 or 4 days.
J. B.
The lenght of time depends on several things but mainly the class of the skill. A lvl1 skill to get from 4 to 5 can take 5-10 days true but a lvl3-5 such as the ones needed for T2 crafting take between 28 days (with learning skills at lvl5) to as long as 48 days per skill. To build a HAC is an investment of skills easly between 4 and 6 months just in the required industry skills. Which is only usefull if some one is supplying you all the mats. Which is why I said that getting into a great corp is necessary, if you are going to solo then you best plan for the long haul.
I also said it is importanty to roll an Industry Avatar, keep in mind that the skill books are not cheep. Some on suggested getting implants, yes that will help a lot but keep in mind that is another week to get cyber to lvl4 for decent implants which BTW is going to cost a fair amount. Personally I would go with a crystal set for an Indy Avatar.
But it takes money to make money the trick is not to get sidetracked. You will need to learn skill to make the isk to pay for well .. everything. But if you plan it out you can get the skill books from your corp in exchange. Ex. I typically give a Sigil and Best as well as amarr indy book to new recruits in exchange for hauling on the sunday corp mines, they also get an equal share. Lots of corps are simular, finding one will cut down on the time to make isk to buy training and keep you from having to train things to try and make isk.
PS there is actaully a skill calc called Evemon somewhere. I dont use ot but is is supposed to be very good. Search the EVE-O forums for where to get it. Also to clarify, reread my post, I say that if you try and solo it will take you an ungodly amount of time vrs the player that has a sugar daddy. I like the post that says his wife has been in 2+ months and only a couple away from having a freighter. What most of tyhe posters glaze over is the cost like the cost of the freighter and the skill book. If these are provided by someone else then there is no need to get sidetracked which is why I said. Find a good corp cause if she were doing it solo, it would take a lot longer.
Also I am not tring to diswade you, nor am I going to try and persade you that it is easy. The simple fact is, EVE is a game that you must invest time in, not hours otr days but months. Yes you can actually go out and start going Pew pew pew after a few horus but if your intrested in the rest EVE has to offer, well think of it as a relationship. You must invest the time in it, EVE is not a one night stand type of game.
An so it begins
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.[/CENTER]