A Scientist's Life in Eve

Alchemy – some very quick sums

by on Jul.23, 2012, under Eve online

DISCLAIMER: the below post probably contains some calculation errors and will result in several comments pointing out various things I’ve missed or have just got plain wrong.

EDITED 23/07/2012 as I fail and forgot a basic about Sov fuel mechanics – thanks to Snipereagle1 for pointing out the (what should have been) obvious.

OK, so you hate OTEC and everything it stands for, and you have the ability and gumption to set up one or more POS in a lo-sec / null sec / wormhole system and you decide you’re going to make your own Technetium products to show those nasty OTEC people they can’t have it all their own way.

CCP heard your cries and have written a dev blog about possible upcoming changes to alchemy.

Clearly, this will be a hugely profitable venture for you, and one in the eye for OTEC.

Well - will it?

Let’s run some basic numbers, and I’ll be favourable where possible to make it as attractive as I can.

Tower: Caldari Large Control Tower
Sov held by your alliance: 4 – so 25% discount to fuel
Time period: 1 month = 30 days for simplicity

So first of all we set up two large caldari control towers in null sec where your Alliance holds Sov to give us a 25% discount in fuel costs (could use a faction tower to give a bigger discount, or if we’re not in null sec).  Fuel costs are approximately 400 million ISK per month.

Next we anchor 3x simple reactor’s with silos for doing the reactions at each tower.

We buy things from Jita at current sell prices, which are as follows (rounded a bit for simplicity):

  • Technetium – 130,000 ISK per unit
  • Platinum – 3,000 ISK per unit
  • Cobalt – 3,000 ISK per unit

Tower 1 (Alpha) will be running 2x Platinum Technite reactions
Tower 2 (Beta) will be running 2x Unrefined Platinum Technite reactions

For Alpha, you will need (per month):

  • 144,000 units of Platinum, cost of 432 million ISK
  • 144,000 units of Technetium, cost (an eye watering) 18.72 billion ISK
  • 21,600 fuel blocks, cost of 370 million ISK per month
  • Sub-total: 19.52 billion ISK per month

For Beta, you will need (per month):

  • 144,000 units of Cobalt, cost of 432 million ISK
  • 7,200 units of Platinum, cost of 21.6 million ISK
  • 21,600 fuel blocks, cost of 370 million ISK per month
  • Sub-total: 823 million ISK per month

OK, that ranges from the reasonable to the absurd already.  But maybe the returns will make it worth it?

At Alpha, you will make 288,000 units of Platinum Technite per month, which (if you get the current Jita sell price) will earn you revenue of 18.72 billion ISK – does that look familiar at all?.

At Beta, you will make 1,440 units of Unrefined Platinum Technite, which you will refine (with perfect skills and no taxes etc.) to get 14,400 units of Platinum Technite, i.e. exactly 1/20th of what you get from the pure reaction.  This earns you revenue of 921.6 million ISK

So what about profitability?

  • Alpha: 18.72 billion sales less 19.52 billion costs = 800 million ISK loss (4% loss)
  • Beta: 921.6 million sales less 823 million costs = 98.6 million ISK profit (11% profit)

So, from a profit percentage point of view, things look pretty poor.

However, we’ve got far too caught up in numbers and have missed some obvious points.

  1. You’re OTEC – you simply harvest 2 moons of tech and 2 moons of platinum, adding 1.5 billion ISK per month to your costs but you therefore don’t buy any materials, you are now making 16.7 billion ISK profit per month
  2. OTEC have fixed the price of Technetium and Platinum Technite to make doing it yourself pointless?
  3. You are producing 1/20th of the output
  4. OTEC and other market speculators have the funds to nerf the market for the raw materials, so unless you can mine the moons yourself….
  5. Logistics are not very nice and you’re simply asking for several suicide ganks

So, some very quick figures.  In theory it’s profitable, but in practice it’s not even going to scratch the surface of the control OTEC have over the entire T2 manufacturing chain.

EDIT: This is what I get from basing calculations on information I had at work and not from the live Eve client.  Somebody (I’m looking at you OTEC) has manipulated prices on the market already to the point where it’s not worth doing this.  I’m very disappointed.

CCP – I do really, genuinely, absolutely love the idea, but sadly I just think that you’re trying to use a band aid to seal a 3 metre wide hole in the Hoover damn.  I know it’s only the first step, and I do think it could be a step in the right direction if the numbers are changed.

For now, CCP needs to think either reinforced concrete to completely repair the damage, or more likely several tonnes of plastic explosive to obliterate the damn and do things completely differently.