Friday, January 16, 2009

What The...?

My seven Ferox invention attempts came out of the lab with lady Luck's sense of humour obviously involved. I had 5 attempts at Nighthawks and 2 attempts at Vultures, and the two success I got were - you guessed it - both Vultures.

So there I was with six runs of Vulture command ships. Next step is to set up the spreadsheet to plug in the numbers and determine profitability.

Let's see...Ferox, Morphite, Ferrogel, Hypersynaptic Fibres, yadda yadda yadda, there! Cost to manufacture, about 155 million. Throw on the approximately 27 million invention cost and you get around 182 million. Seems about right.

I check the market: Ah, I see Nighthawks are going at 185 million so if the Vulture is going for about the same I should make a modest profit... Vulture... 135 million. What the....?

I double checked the numbers and booted over the Eve Central for a quick check. It no mistake: if I built and sold a single Vulture I would lose over 47 million ISK on the sale. Even if I ignored the invention costs I'd still lose 20 million just for buying the parts. Its insane!

I'm not sure what is happening to the Vulture market, if its a case of a slow moving product still going for pre-exploit-scandal prices or if its just too much supply not enough demand or what, but I really wish I had put in for 7 Nighthawk invention tries.

Lesson learned: had I done the homework before doing the invention, I would have known to avoid Vultures. I just assumed that prices would at least reflect manufacturing reality.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:05 pm

    I guess it is due to low demand as well as t2 bpo owners being able to supply that low demand.

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  2. Tisk tisk KK, haven't you realized all my hints?!?!

    I've been beggin ya for a NH since last year, which suggested NH are the way to go ;)

    Ah well, we all make those mistakes, jus gotta keep learning and going!

    BTW my industrilistic side of my carebearing life is also going well, if you count that I waited 2 weeks to get 1 run copies of blueprints and got 3 successes out of 6, but failed to realize that thy were 1 runs. Urg!

    Oh and I got some T2 rig blueprints for practically nothing!

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  3. Thats a bit strange really... the Nighthawk should in theory have less demand as its seen more as a Missioning ship, whereas the Vulture is seen more as a PVP ship since it uses guns and can provide a better tank/more options due to it's extra mid slot. Since the Vulture is much more likely to need to be replaced, you'd think those would have pushed the price up a bit by people wanting more cash for their time when selling them. Perhaps thats the reason as well though - because people dont expect to lose a Nighthawk, they may be willing to pay more for the ship.

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  4. I think if you are selling them in Empire, the NH would have a bigger demand due to the mission ship flyers.

    It is incredible at L5's and blows through any L4.

    But here your "lossing-it-long-term-investment" theory kicks in.

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  5. Anonymous2:45 am

    It's scary that you can put in all that effort, get lucky and then find that the T2 BPO holders can't be making much profit on it.

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  6. Ombey: I think if you take away the invention costs and have a BPO with ME 20+ instead of a BPC with ME -3, and a good source of cheaper materials, 135 million might just make a profit. Might.

    But I suspect its simply lack of demand: the Nighthawk is more prefered for PvP as well as PvE due to its higher DPS potential and the fact that the Vulture is a Rail ship and most Caldari like missiles.

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  7. I taught the wife that lesson this weekend. Run the numbers before you do anything. The issue was to refine or not to refine.

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