Question: on the business part of mining

[Cea]

A little background first to these questions: Now a level 6 surveyor, I have only done enmatter mining. Currently using Tik200. Three globals, nothing fancy yet. Dropping probes at 110 m distance, either line or carpet bombing. Not following any loot/skill gain/rebomb theories. I have gotten lots of advice from soc-mates and from EF and try to read everything that I can find. It seems that for now I have managed to keep afloat by trying to auction stuff in smallish stacks for optimum MU. But, it's been too short time to make any real conclusions. This is why I am asking these questions from you, more experienced players, especially those who are profiting or at least staying afloat. I am not begging for your best secrets, just some general hints.

1. Can you stay afloat and keep making a small profit this way, if you only mine enmatter and sell it on the auction? (keep hunting, crafting etc out of this)
2. How much more PED overhead do you need if you start mining ore too? Seems that I can rotate a couple hundred PED on enmat rather long even though some auctions tend to take 5-7 days to sell.
3. How often do you have to adjust your prices? (for example falling solis price atm)
4. Why does everyone seem to run around at PvP areas? is that really that profitable, or are people just doing it for the thrills?
5. Mining seems pretty much to be one-mans-work. Are there some ways of cooperating besides sharing mining tips?
6. When is it worth it to chip out Engy or Drilling, if you don't plan to craft or pvp at all?

Thanks for advice!

 

[Tamn]

1. Can you stay afloat and keep making a small profit this way, if you only mine enmatter and sell it on the auction? (keep hunting, crafting etc out of this)
2. How much more PED overhead do you need if you start mining ore too? Seems that I can rotate a couple hundred PED on enmat rather long even though some auctions tend to take 5-7 days to sell.
3. How often do you have to adjust your prices? (for example falling solis price atm)
4. Why does everyone seem to run around at PvP areas? is that really that profitable, or are people just doing it for the thrills?
5. Mining seems pretty much to be one-mans-work. Are there some ways of cooperating besides sharing mining tips?
6. When is it worth it to chip out Engy or Drilling, if you don't plan to craft or pvp at all?

1. Making profit is def possible with selling enmatter on auctions. Break even is even more likely I would imagine, I managed to do break even/profit with ores and enmatters for several years.

2. It just depends on how much you want to play, you can play with 50 peds, or 5000 peds, time regulates overhead.

3. I have always listed all mining loots at one week long auctions with SB several % lower to compensate for MU loss if it happens, never had much trouble.

4. Pvp can be extremely profitable, as well as fun. (take a look at Himi and Moss)

5. Unless your pvp mining, pretty much one man yes.

6. Chipping those out I'd probably do at like 2-2.5k skillpoints....If I wanted to I guess..

GL

 

[Superhal]

1. Probably not. I haven't done much of the small stack/high mu auctions, I usually do large stack/low mu auction. In my experience, the majority of entmatters are low MU, usually between 4-7%. For nearly all of these, you are better off tt'ing them than even trying to refine them. For example: 100 ped of oil (10k crude refined to 5k oil) will sell for around 104% mu. 5k refining costs 1 ped. The auction fee is ~1 ped. Drilling costs will be around 2 ped. That 100 ped of oil actually cost 104 ped, and you are getting 104 ped back, meaning you made nothing (although if you didn't auction it, you would actually be making -2%. At least auctioning allows you to make back some of the drilling expense.)

2. If you are mainly doing planet mining, ore mining is far more profitable. There are many reasons:
a. ore finds are bigger than ent finds. As a rule of thumb, the smallest find is about 2X the cost of the probe or bomb. That's why you find so many ii and iii's with ents, while the smallest find is usually twice as large with bombs.
b. more ores have higher markups. Very few ores are in the same range as mentioned above, and even then some of them are very rare. Terrudite, for example, is a crap ore fit only to be tt'd, but you probably can't find it under 600m. On the other hand, many common ores have huge markups, like belkar (130%) and even the once-humble megan (110%).
c. Ores have a far higher tt value per unit. Therefore, they are cheaper to extract (less drill decay,) cheaper to refine, and can make large, auctionable stacks sooner.
d. Some of the rare ores have monstrous MU's. Xeremite, for example, is 4 ped per stone, and has a 1200% mu. Any xeremite find, even a single stone, is a minimum of ~42 peds. Himi, azzurdite, and others are similar.
e. Larger (i.e. v vs vi) finds actually scale upwards exponentially. V, for example, is not 20% bigger than IV, but twice as big (3.8 ped vs 2 ped) and probably 3X as big as a III, and nearly 7 times bigger than a II. So, even if you found 10X as many finds with ents as ores, the ore finds have a good chance of having a higher total TT value.

3. Rarely, as I only auction a few things now, the rest goes to resellers.

4. There are some things that can only be found in pvp areas, like himi.

5. I have done team mining where one person does ents, the other ores. Also, I often mine when taking soc mates on tp runs.

6. Imho, not really, but I'm personally against chipping out skills. A 10 ped esi takes about 1.8-2k skills. Engineering is profitable, but you probably don't have much from mining. Drilling skills, on the other hand, are only worth 800-1000%. If you already would sell the 10 ped ESI for 65 ped, is that additional 15 ped worth 2k skills?

Regarding ore mining, i'd say you'd actually need a bigger bankroll for entmatters mainly because of reason 2e above.

 

[Cea]

1. Making profit is def possible with selling enmatter on auctions. Break even is even more likely I would imagine, I managed to do break even/profit with ores and enmatters for several years.

2. It just depends on how much you want to play, you can play with 50 peds, or 5000 peds, time regulates overhead.

3. I have always listed all mining loots at one week long auctions with SB several % lower to compensate for MU loss if it happens, never had much trouble.

4. Pvp can be extremely profitable, as well as fun. (take a look at Himi and Moss)

5. Unless your pvp mining, pretty much one man yes.

6. Chipping those out I'd probably do at like 2-2.5k skillpoints....If I wanted to I guess..

GL

Thanks for the answers! Forgot to say that due to busy RL, it's 2-4 hours per day, give or take. Depends on how much sleep deprivation I can allow...

And, I have heard many saying that it's easiest to have SB=BO and 7 days auction, interesting if you explain this SB tactic a bit more. How many auctions start with someone bidding SB and still reach BO? And, did you mean SB lower than BO?

 

[SKULL]

for now keep doing enmatters only after you gotten some more lvl in surveying and making a small profit
you can start to do ores also but you need to find good spots for ores then also
also when bored with en matter mining consider hunting a bit
many miners forget the defense vs mobs part and then their mining spots are sometimes unavailable


i have maxed the best ore finder and still only focus on ores
ores do cycle peds twice as fast as similar enmatter amps so you need a bigger budget for ores also to ride out the bad streaks

also later much later you will want to make your amps (enmatter or ore) so keep your crafting skills

 

[Tamn]

Thanks for the answers! Forgot to say that due to busy RL, it's 2-4 hours per day, give or take. Depends on how much sleep deprivation I can allow...

And, I have heard many saying that it's easiest to have SB=BO and 7 days auction, interesting if you explain this SB tactic a bit more. How many auctions start with someone bidding SB and still reach BO? And, did you mean SB lower than BO?

I'd say to run ores 2-3 hours a day, 1k pedroll would be a good start.

For my auctions example...

100 ped TT of lyst, I will make BO 104%, SB will be 102%, so as its ending, and has not been sold, it will attract bidders for the low SB.

 

[Cea]

...3. Rarely, as I only auction a few things now, the rest goes to resellers....

Won't this mean you need less effort, but get much worse profits?

 

[Superhal]

Won't this mean you need less effort, but get much worse profits?

Depends on point of view, I suppose. For example, I have 100 ped of melchi crystal. The MU currently is around 105%. I spent around 2 ped in drilling/refining/auction expenses, waited a week to get a 100 ped stack to sell, and auctioned it at 104%. 7 days later, it was returned to me, unsold.

Imho, I basically threw away 2 ped (auction fee, refining cost,) and tied up 100 ped for 2 weeks for the chance to get an additional 2 ped. If I sell it to a reseller for 101% unrefined, I break even on the drilling cost.

I've also had this happen to me with oil and (amazingly) alic as well. On certain materials like lyst or oil, the 103% mu is just a headache I would rather have somebody else deal with.

 

[Cea]

Tbh I have yet to see one melchi to bounce, and that is with decent MU after auctions fees. Personally I am prepared to learn the AH well enough, to avoid having to sell to resellers. It's a matter of playstyle though - what works for you is good for you.

 

[Superhal]

Yes, I've heard the small stack/high mu works well, but I usually fill up my max auction slots with crafted item sales.

 

[lofwyr]

How much more PED overhead do you need if you start mining ore too? Seems that I can rotate a couple hundred PED on enmat rather long even though some auctions tend to take 5-7 days to sell.

generally speaking the answer would be "double" as a bomb costs twice as much as a probe.

i for one want the total of my mining budget to be two weeks worth of mining expenses (meaning if i wouldn't sell anything my peds ran out after two weeks). the budget-size here totally depends on how much bombs/probes you drop and what amps you use (if any).


on the topic of selling the stuff:

i like to save up everything i mine till the end of the week and put it all in one go in auction. one of the reasons (besides the fact that i'm weird) is - the larger the stack you put in auction, the less the fees take off your markup. it may be true that small stacks with a markup far above the market value do sell, but i wouldn't count on it. i like to look at the last 2-3 pages of the material i'd like to sell and settle a tad above the lowest mu on a big stack like mine. for all common stuff i set BO=SB, rarer stuff takes a bit more consideration. this way i sell ~95% of everything i put in.

blah blah ... longer than i intended

have fun
S.

 

[Spinage]

I think what you are doing right now is fine . Keep it up, then when you feel comfortable with ores, go for ores .

Ores will double your turnover, which you only want to do if you are profitting obviously (dont want double turnover at a loss lol).

Same with amps... but they get more complicated as u need to be proffitting enough to cover the amp MU and still be profitting more per drop than unamped with no MU output.

Before using an enmatter amp, do ores+enmatter, as its 3x turnover, but no extra MU input... thats like using a Enmat amp 103 at TT price .

 

[Superhal]

generally speaking the answer would be "double" as a bomb costs twice as much as a probe.

Imho, I think this is the biggest misconception about ore mining. People assume that simply because probes are half the cost, they are somehow more economical than bombs. However, the hit rate is generally identical (100 bombs and 100 probes will both have a 25% hit rate,) but as explained earlier, the tt value will be disproportionately lower even if you use an equal TT value of bombs vs probes (e.g. 200 probes vs 100 bombs) because of the average find size (III vs V).

In my experience, even though I drop twice as often, I lose much faster in ents than in ores.

 

[Spinage]

Imho, I think this is the biggest misconception about ore mining. People assume that simply because probes are half the cost, they are somehow more economical than bombs. However, the hit rate is generally identical (100 bombs and 100 probes will both have a 25% hit rate,) but as explained earlier, the tt value will be disproportionately lower even if you use an equal TT value of bombs vs probes (e.g. 200 probes vs 100 bombs) because of the average find size (III vs V).

In my experience, even though I drop twice as often, I lose much faster in ents than in ores.

You get around the same TT % back from both.

 

[Profit]

Imho, I think this is the biggest misconception about ore mining. People assume that simply because probes are half the cost, they are somehow more economical than bombs. However, the hit rate is generally identical (100 bombs and 100 probes will both have a 25% hit rate,) but as explained earlier, the tt value will be disproportionately lower even if you use an equal TT value of bombs vs probes (e.g. 200 probes vs 100 bombs) because of the average find size (III vs V).

In my experience, even though I drop twice as often, I lose much faster in ents than in ores.

Enmatter is easier to "not lose" on than ore, you just need knowledge.
TT% return is basically equal (adjusted for bad/good periods) and markup is easier to find than in ore.

 

[Cea]

At level 6 prosp still... I think I'll stick to EM unamped mining at least until I unlocked CGA. Based on reading the EF and in-game advice from mates.

 

[Trina Xenophage]

I consider myself as a "Working" miner and not a glory seeker.

My levels are nearly 40 for ore and nearly 31 in prospecting. I never use amps. I tired early in my mining career and decided that amps are only for gamblers and people who are poor at math. Yes you "May" hit a bigger claim but the nrf streeks in between are longer if you amp every bomb say with lower level amps.

I even went to the extreme of only using amps I crafted back when I thought I could raise both skills at the same time and be more effective in a later stage.

I know many that say amps are effective, and the dont get bad nrf streeks and it does not change the claim to bomb ratio but like returns some are more favored then others in different ways. I am not one favored in the large claim department I am how ever in the very steady very stable catagory and prefer that to the many up and down periods others have.

In the end you have to try things and find what does or does not work for your avatar as NO ONE will have the same results even if every thing was a perfect match.