a blog of my experiences and observations of making ISK in Eve Online, from the beginning - three separate periods starting each time from zero and new alts (May 2013 - February 2017, started again in March 2019 - September 2019, and now started again in September 2020 onwards)
As ever, i was being careless. I wanted to get to Altrinur from Jita and decided to go the route that took me through Low Sec. I assumed that an empty Interceptor would not be bothered. So i was warping from gate to gate. I of course assumed wrong . . . . . . . . I warped off a gate, landed on the next gate ready to jump through . . . and wham, i am seeing my shields, armour and hull going red in a hurry.
The good news was that i got away with it (just).
Looks like my attackers got nailed by the gate guns as i made my escape.
In the next system i warped off to a safe spot and cloaked up as my shields repaired.
Not sure why i survived - may have something to do with my recent skill training:
Or my attackers may just have not been too accurate.
It is these little events that give me some confidence that i can operate in Low and Null Sec.
Much of the data was relevant to September 2015 unless otherwise stated.
My main takeaway from all this was that the economy is alive and well, players are more active than before and there were some charts that i will use to enhance my business.
The real great news was that going forwards we can expect monthly Economic Reports.
Eve Players
CCP Quant stared with the Peak Concurrent Users (PCU) numbers which are showing a declining trend, as shown below.
Not much was said on this, other than to just put it up there!
Eve Player Activity
Further analysis of what players do when they log in was presented. The good news is that 83% of players make at least one warp.
Of more relevance to this blog the next chart showed that 73% of players use the market, 22% do some mining (higher than i thought), 15% do some industry (also higher than i thought) and 1% do a courier contract (also higher than i thought).
In contrast to the declining PCU numbers, activity in terms of destruction and production is stable which means that destruction and production per PCU is therefore rising. Which means we are all more active than we were before.
That is good news for us Business folk in Eve who hopefully are as busy as ever producing and trading with those players.
Region Focus
CCP Quant then produced some charts that looked at how active each region was within the Eve economy.
In terms of Production, no surprise that The Forge (home of Jita) as the leader followed by the two regions next to The Forge (Lonetrek and The Citadel) - i assume players transporting with produced items into Jita.
No Surprises that The Forge towards the top of the list for Destruction - all those ganks i suppose.
Also, The Forge was leader in Mining.
In all, the major trade hub regions were all up there towards the top of the lists. Domain (home of Amarr) firmly the second behind The Forge (Jita).
No real surprises in any of that though personally i will be looking through them carefully to see where best to relocate my nullsec trading to. My current location of Venal is slow.
On chart i found really interesting was what i will call the Regional Volume Flow Chart, shown below, which shows the volume (in m3) of items leaving a region less the volume entering that region:
The Forge (home of Jita) is neither the biggest volume exporter or importer (i suppose to be expected given players import items to Jita to sell and export items to take elsewhere.
What was interesting to me were the biggest exporting regions and importing regions - nothing comes to mind yet to the reasons but i suspect there are plenty.
ISK Float, Sinks & Faucets
This was interesting.
First interesting point was that there was 870 trillion ISK sitting on active accounts at the start of September 2015. By the end of September 2015 this was 876 trillion. That is plenty of spare ISK lying around.
63 trillion came in mostly via bounties / NPC Commodities (wormhole loot), incursion payments and insurance.
30 trillion left due to spend in the LP store, skillbooks / blueprints to NPCs and then the fees / taxes.
And then 27 trillion left with active accounts closing down.
The net interesting point here was that total ISK sitting in player and corporate wallets is a massive 883 trillion - perhaps, then, no surprise that the price of plex is rising!
Plex Prices
CCP Quant moved quickly over this - but main point of interest was the price of Plex on the Chinese server is 6.8bn ISK vs 1.2bn on our server.
Economic Indices
Not that helpful, to be honest.
As CCP Quant commented, there has been so much change in composition of minerals etc per item that they start to lose their meaning over time.
Much more useful for someone who wanted to look through the history of Eve and see its evolution over time - the effect of the introduction of Invention,
Well, i have been working on travelling safe and fast in Low and Null Sec as i explore the place trying to work out how to make good ISK in there. First off, i tried a Helios. Worked ok but broadly i was getting taken out once every 4 round trips i made. Main issue was not being able to warp off fast enough after a gate jump. I can deal with the bubbles - being cloaked whilst warping is a big plus. Never warping gate to gate gives me plenty of time to sort myself out if i hit a bubble in warp. But, like i said, still vulnerable when warping away from a gate jump, even with almost insta-cloak. Also, warping from gate to planet / customs office and then to gate can be slow when trying to go 26 jumps! My Hellios fit was: [Helios] Inertial Stabilizers II Nanofiber Internal Structure II Nanofiber Internal Structure II 5MN Microwarpdrive II Scan Acquisition Array I Scan Pinpointing Array I Scan Rangefinding Array I Scan Rangefinding Array I Covert Ops Cloaking Device II Expanded Probe Launcher I Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I In a prior post i made about trading in Null Sec i had several bits of advice on what to do. So, next step was to train up my Interceptor Skills and so i now run around in a Taranis. In all, pretty good. Bubbles no problem. Pretty much inta-warp off gates. If i have undock points then undocking is seemingly invulnerable. Very fast travel. Main risk though is landing on a gate with someone fast off the mark with a smart bomb - which is what happened to me the other day. My Taranis fit is: [Taranis] 'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I Inertial Stabilizers II Inertial Stabilizers II 5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive EM Ward Amplifier II Medium Shield Extender II Prototype Cloaking Device I Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I My kill reports (of my alt) nicely list where i have gone down in a one-sided blaze of glory. In the latest one, the killer picked up a nice 75m ISK for their efforts. So, my next step is to train enough skills to be able to put two shield extenders on the Interceptor - i suspect that should do the trick. If that fails, i suspect i will try the Victorious Luxury Yacht.
