Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Business post: but, but I want tritanium

On the EN24 repost of my mining data analysis, very dumb kind of comments appeared. I wrote "most ores [mined] were highsec ores, with veldspar leading the way. Of course it’s the cheapest, giving another proof that the miners aren’t the brightest minds of New Eden" and they replied along the line "tritanium is the most needed material for production, of course they mine veldspar".

Which is retarded. You, as an individual miner aren't responsible for the well-being of the server. Your interest is to mine the most profitable ore, which is anything but veldspar. Others will mine veldspar. If no one does, the price of tritanium will rise to the point when veldspar will be the most valuable ore. Then you'll mine it!

There is an even dumber version of it: what if the miner is also a manufacturer and he mines veldspar for his own needs? Then he is the infamous "I farmed it for free" moron. The proper action is obviously mining the most valuable ore, selling the surplus and buying veldspar. Since veldspar is cheaper than other ores, this transaction can surely done for profit. But no, the moron wants his "own" veldspar, because it's "free".

Don't be him!

This kill isn't the most valuable, but the fit and the cargo deserve publicity.
Why does someone rat in a missile faction Typhoon instead of a CNR?
This on the other hand is both expensive and hilarious. Those who live in a region use to upgrade Sov systems by hauling the upgrade module in a freighter to it. Hostiles won't fly freighters in your space carrying upgrade modules. So it's obvious that a freighter carrying an upgrade in The Bastion lands is working for The Bastion. Pro tip: "obvious" doesn't replace proper blue standings.

22 comments:

Ael said...

Actually, mining veldspar is better than free. If I need tritanium, it is so much more entertaining to mine veldspar than simply buy tritanium.

As a mildly aware carebear, ISK is essentially meaningless to me. Everything I do makes ISK (or at worst, breaks even). It is no fun to just go and buy a new different ship. Much more entertaining to go and get the materials yourself. If I need to spend time learning skills to manufacture it and its modules even better.

Ex said...

When building carriers, dreads or supers, All ore is taken, not just what is the highest selling or most profitable. We will strip a belt from one side to the other taking everything, We don't care what it gives, just that we need it to build.

We don't sell any of it, at all.

Anonymous said...

You do look at mining in the wrong way though. What you look at is what equal amounts of ore fetch on the market.
What you do not look at is what amounts of ore are mined using a single mining cycle.

I havent mined in a while, but when I did a single cycle of veldspar was the most profitable thing to mine in highsec. Because while a single unit of trit might worth the least, you mined so much in a single cycle that it was still worth 1.5 * more than any other ore.

The calculation is quite simple. Look up how many units of ore fit in an ore hold. Then calculate how many units of minerals are produced when that is refined. then look at how much that will fetch on the open market.

When I was mining (2009 or so) the price of trit was such that only a full hold of rare null sec ores was more profitable than a haul of veldspar.

Anonymous said...

If Veldspar is the most in demand mineral then it makes sense to mine it as it's the highest turnover, sure they'll have to work a lot harder for the ISK but they get the ISK much quicker than if they mined something valuable but not in high demand.

Gevlon said...

Other minerals have buy orders too: instant turnover.

Veldspar is the least value per m3. Each ore mines the same m3 per minute (except mercoxit)

Manserk said...

It is easy to know what ore you need to mine, it change over time so you cannot calculate it by yourself, just use a basic googlesheet to run some numbers. The indicator you want to know is how much isk/m3 you can get.

This is an example of what I use :

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/08/1424159291-capture.png

Leave Veldspar, mine Omber! said...

"Veldspar is the least value per m3"
Hm... prices taken from open buy orders:

1m³ Veldspar = 10 Units = 187.3 ISK/m³
1m³ Omber = 1.667 Units = 149.89 ISK/m³
1m³ Spodumain = 0.0625 Units = 128,17 ISK/m³
1m³ Bistot = 0.0625 Units = 164,69 ISK/m³
1m³ Arkonor = 0.0625 Units = 160.46 ISK/m³

Instead of mining Veldspar I should go for Arkonor, Bistot, Spodumain or Omber as Veldspar is the least valuable ore per m³ as long as 160 ISK > 187 ISK or 128 ISK > 187 ISK or...?

Maybe you were focusing on highsec ores... but Omber is a highsec ore, too.

Hm... somehow your math is wrong, did you consider different m³ per unit?

Anonymous said...

Or, you could, I dunno, use one of the tools out there on the web that are free and update on their own. Pretty sure this one works fine and updates accurately.

http://ore.cerlestes.de/index.html#site:ore

Robert said...

I'll often mine veldspar when I'm doing something else which means I can't actively play, just leaving the character there in the background. Partially it's because the belts run out of other resources I need leaving more veldspar, but partially it's also because when I'm shipping minerals, I always end up having to ship whole freighters of extra tritanium (I manufacture on an enormous scale). Tritanium is a waste of time to haul, so if I can get some passively during a time where I would otherwise not be playing, then it's a net gain.

By the way, different people have different reasons for playing how they do. They aren't invalid just because you can do something that earns more. Sure, everyone should just be doing incursions if all we cared about was isk/hour

Ryanis said...

"There is an even dumber version of it: what if the miner is also a manufacturer and he mines veldspar for his own needs?"
=> Keep in mind that moving Ore/minerals is slow and dangerous (and also quite boring, but if you are mining anyway...).
Thus, it may be more interresting to mine veldspar if you need heavy quantities of them, especially if you're not near a hub.

Anonymous said...

@Manserk

this is mine

http://i.imgur.com/eRDkHUq.png

top section shows mineral price in each region. the regions are changeable with drop downs.

the bottom section shows ores only minable locally limited by the security status selected. so you could look for only >0.7 systems in domain space for example. value shown if for a full ore hold (size editable top left)

Manserk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Huh. Reading the comments, I stand corrected. I was thinking the reason Veldspar had to be so popular is because of the bots.

There ARE tools that tell you, in "isk per hour" that Tritanium is the best ore because of it's density. But those tools ignore the obvious problem.

What kills you is dragging this nearly worthless crap to market. Which... you sort of need to do in order to actually make any isk from it.

This is why every system near Jita is stripped clean pretty much every day.

It's a REALLY badly designed system. In order to mine more than a few jumps from Jita ,you need capitol equipment like Freighters that can get to market fast. (Hint... they can't do that. Because they're freighters. And if you remove the 'time' from the equation by auto piloting, you make yourself gank bait.) Or you do your manufacturing far from the hub and transport the heavy goods... (Same problem.)

The only winning move in this craptastically designed game is not to play.

BillyBob said...

I'd much rather buy GTC from CCP direct. The reseller model does seem rather old fashioned.

A concerned Minmatar said...

We should show this phenomenon to economists that try to model people as rational agents... These guys are actually defending veldspar mining?

Anonymous said...

Except prices for Trit/Veld in nullsec can be on par with other ores. You seem to be looking only at highsec data points.

Not many people run the math on mineral imports, which helps maintain the price delta.

Anonymous said...

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=238011

Typhoon Fleet issue has several advantages over CNR, one is the ability to host a full suite of sentry drones. The other is that has a bonus for cruise and large projectiles. That means you effectively have 8.5 of one and 2.65 of the other. It might take more skill to effectively use vs CNR (typhoon always did) but it has much more damage potential.





Anonymous said...

I won't claim to know the absolute truth but I've been following and participating in forum discussions where nullsec dwellers begged for a reduction in A B C ores and more Veldspar because they need much more Trit to build their capitals than of these so called rare ores. Therefore it has been declared good business to mine veldspar in highsec, compress it and sell to the null blocks.

Gevlon said...

Actually, it was a good business to BUY veldspar in highsec, compress it and sell to the null blocks.

Bitter said...

"Veldspar is the least value per m3."

Both incomplete, and wrong. Omber is the worst, in Heimatar at least, and just looking at raw ore value is as stupid as mining Veld simply because it starts with your favourite letter...

Are you selling the ore? The compressed ore? Refining and selling minerals? If you are building, is it more cost effective and/or efficient to mine the Veld for Trit than to pull only the more expensive stuff and mess around with shipping the excess out and Trit back in? Once you've mined all the better ores, what's the opportunity cost of relocating to another belt (or even system) versus staying put and mining the whole thing out?

There are many reasons why it is a good idea for someone who is going to mine anyway to mine Veldspar *as well*.

And @anonymous:
"It's a REALLY badly designed system. In order to mine more than a few jumps from Jita ,you need capitol equipment like Freighters... Or you do your manufacturing far from the hub and transport the heavy goods..."

Or you stop following the other sheep and sell your stuff somewhere else -- often for more ISK.

There *are* markets other than Jita, you know...

Unknown said...

Cerlestes.de gives me the following, still surprising results:
http://ore.cerlestes.de/index.html#site:ore

Veldspar 1m³ : 248 isk
Pyro 282
Kernite 294

Even Scordite is worth more than Veldspar. And every Eve player who is capable of elementary school maths, calculates in m³ prices...
Veldspar is worthles and it is only mined by idiots who cannot calculate well.
In 0.0 it is differen, when you finished mining the more vluable ores, you continue to mine all the rest dut to crappy respawn mechanics.....

I used to mine a long time ago, when pyro was the most valuable ore in highsec. I mined only pyro, reprocessed it and sold everything not needed to get the mats for my first Obelisk... 14 days of mining with several toons... but way shorters as if I had only mined the trit needed...
As long as miners and some industrialists remain dumb, traders will make shittins of isk in profit...

Bitter said...

99smite said:
"Veldspar is worthles and it is only mined by idiots who cannot calculate well."

ORLY? I must be an idiot then, because I've just been mining it.

But wait -- after mining the "good stuff" I had a choice. I could either reship to lightly tanked Macks, relocate, then belt mine; or carry on and rip the Veld from the safest place to mine in New Eden using max-yield Hulks.

The best I can get from hi-sec lightly-tanked-Mack belt mining in my region is from Scordite -- 18.2m ISK/hour. Mission-space Hulking of Veld is 24.6m

So tell me, Mr Elementary Maths Wiz -- exactly how is 18.2 more than 24.6?

As a rule, Veld is not a good choice of ore to mine. But in EvE, as in life, there are exceptions to every rule, and you'd do well to remember that before generalising people as dumb or idiots -- else the only person who ends up looking stupid is *you*.