Fun with Goo and er... Spreadsheets

Since it was announced, that the bug with Moon Mining equipment that prevented their use in 0.4 systems was being fixed, I've been working on a scanning and cataloging local 0.4 systems and working on a spreadsheet to help me determine whether or not moon goo extraction is profitable.

Google Docs has been my primary spreadsheet for some time, I still use Excel both at home and work but it's much easier to share via Google Docs than Excel. The ImportXML feature is outstanding too, I know Excel can do it but for portability Google Docs wins every time at the moment.

Variables

Calculations for profitably are quite simple, figure in the running costs of a tower against what you can sell the moon goo for. It's really quite simple but calculating this based on "live" data from EVE Online can be tricky, especially when you have to take into account Sovereignty and the fluctuating price of fuel/goo.

It would also be nice to see the 30 day average amount sold for each moon goo, that way we can see whether we're be selling reasonably fast or it will not be a fast sale. i.e. The more sold per month would indicate faster selling.

Features

I settled on the following features for my first version:

1. Calculate extraction profitability based on different numbers and tower types
2. Allow indication of number of sovereignty based towers to reflect reduced fuel costs in overall calculations
3. Show Profit/Loss for 7, 14 and 28 day periods
4. Show average 30 day volume sold in Jita

Few initial features but some could end up being rather complex to get working, regardless it's a nice challenge and would certainly be a useful tool.

Implementation

I played around with various user interfaces to allow information to be entered and displayed but eventually I settled for a layout that had the different moon goo's listed vertically on the left axis and along the horizontal y axis I had the number of and tower types with the 7/14/28 day profitability result.

User Interface for Moon Goo extraction profitability

I added colour coding for the different moon goo groupings as well as using vertical colouring to indicate non-sovereignty/sovereignty towers. It's quite a simple arrangement but more importantly contrasts and works well.

Functionality

Most of the functionality of the spreadsheet is via the use of ImportXML() to get data from EVE Central and the 30 day volume information from EVE Market Data. Formulas are then used to concatenate data and perform calculations based on a couple of known constants:

• Moon mining is fixed at 100 units per hour, this gives a maximum weekly extraction of 16,800 units
• Use of a tower with the Sovereignty bonus yields a 25% reduction in fuel use 

With these constants we can calculate both moon goo output and fuel usage based on the tower types selected by the user.

Example Mercury Moon Extraction

Let's take a hypothetical system that I'm interested in I want to extract Mercury from a moon using a Large Tower. I input the number 1 into the white cell under AL to indciate I want to use a Large Amarr Tower:

Moon Goo extraction using an single Amarr Large Tower

Well that isn't a good start, using a Large Amarr Tower will result in a loss of 30m ISK per week or 122m over a months use if we just take what we mine and sell in Jita at current prices.

What if we downsize to a Medium Amarr Tower?

Moon Goo extraction using an single Amarr Medium Tower

That's better, now we're showing a weekly profit of 27m using just a single Medium Amarr Tower with current prices. 

All we've done is change the tower we're using so the difference of 10 fuel blocks per hour (30ph vs 40ph) is what has turned our operation from loss to profit.

We're making money now but what if we used a Small Amarr Tower instead?

Moon Goo extraction using an single Amarr Small Tower

Just as I thought, we'll make a lot more money (~50% more) using a Small Amarr Tower instead of a Medium. If I don't want to use Amarr Towers I can change the value to the type of tower I want and see an instant change in the calculations.

One serious thing to consider when selecting the tower is security, using a small tower will result in larger profit but will be more vulnerable to attack as it has lower hit points than larger towers, and more importantly, less fitting for defensive modules such as guns and dissipation arrays.

Once you've determined any tower usage you need to go ahead and purchase/deploy your chosen tower and modules. Unfortunately I do not take that into account in this version, but it is on my wish-list for the future to include "asset costs" to work out how long until profitability for towers.

Future

I would like to add information to the view to show current sell prices for moon goo/fuel blocks in Jita and I plan to allow public access to this in the, hopefully near, future. I'm currently improving the back-end to be a little more open and allow less complex formulas than I currently have. 

What I have works and I've already used it, successfully, to calculate tower deployments in a couple of null sec locations where I'm currently running towers.

I'm also working out the kinks with a version of this that works for Simple Reactions but that one is a little further from actually working.

I'll leave you with this final screenshot, it shows the profitability of running a single Small Amarr Tower on each of the different moon goo's. I think you'll agree that it's quite eye opening in what is/isn't worth the effort of extracting if you're not using it yourself and just want to sell it.

Moon Goo extraction profitability using an single Amarr Small Tower

Moon Mining comes to 0.4

CCP Greyscale has sneaked something into the coming Crius release, and it's a long overdue change:

We changed a >= to a > so the code does what the authoring was always assuming it did. I just fixed the display text for the attributes this afternoon to reflect this, but the code should already be in place.

What this means is that moon mining can now take place in 0.4 systems and lower instead of 0.3 systems and lower as is currently the case. 

Looks like a simple logic change has finally happened, well overdue and I can see a lot of 0.4 systems will be getting an audit of their moons.

Thanks to Serpentine's EVE for the heads up on this change.

The Tower Caper

For the past two months I've been monitoring activity in one of the systems I have towers in trying to find out who may have taken, without my permissions, material inputs/outputs and POS fuel from my towers.

 

I haven't had any luck in finding out but since nothing else had happened until overnight Sunday/Monday of this week. Sometime between going to bed and waking up again (about 9 hours) I found lost all the output (about 36 hours worth) from my towers.

 

 

 

I had mentioned it to a couple of people when it first happened and was recommended to remove access rights to my towers, I did but I reset them when someone else (not alliance) asked for access so they could boost in peace).

 

I've now reported it to my corporation leadership and found out that I wasn't the only one that had suffered a loss. It seems a few people had and even more intriguing was the fact that the people who had POS access was a very small group of no more than six to eight people.

 

I'm not really bothered by the loss, ISK can be replaced and it wasn't a huge amount anyway, but more so I'm bothered by the fact someone whom I count as a friend has done this. If they needed ISK they could have asked, I have very favourable rates for friends and I'll only break legs once...

 

The corp leadership is going to put out a mail about this, not much else that can be done, the list of people who have access is small but there is no evidence or indication of who might have done this.

Streamlining Reactions and Saving Money

I run reactions in towers, this is no secret, I spend nearly 10 billion ISK a month to run them through purchasing inputs/fuel. I make good money and enjoy the work.

 

One thing I make, Photonic Metamaterials, requires Promethium Mercurite to produce. The production of which requires Mercury and Promethium, of which the latter is currently around 50k per unit in Jita. I have the mercury thanks to a moon I'm using but I need to import the Promethium and nearly one third of my monthly costs goes on this one raw material.

 

I've been looking at either dumping the production of Photonic Metamaterials or finding a way to lower my costs. Finding a supplier of raw Promethium is nigh impossible and I don't think any I did find would sell to me under market price, after all it's a cash cow.

 

Checking Prices

 

I can't remember exactly when I noticed the price difference between Promethium and Promethium Mercurite but I really should have noticed sooner. Turns out that the reacted Promethium Mercurite is about one third cheaper than the raw material Promethium and, logistically, is the same volume at 1m3.

 

If you can imagine comic blinking and a blank expression on a face, that's how I was when I realised this. I'm only reacting the Promethium and Mercury to make Promethium Mercurite which I then use in Metamaterial production. What if I just bought the processed Promethium Mercurite instead of the raw material, would this work.

 

Show Me The Money

 

A billion ISK a month is not to be sneezed at, I know people who can make this in an hour trading but that's not for me. Being able to save that billion ISK a month means I'll have more money to invest and it may result in a new venture or expansion of an existing one.

 

So I consulted a couple of knowledgeable people and they confirmed my thinking, if I moved form producing Promethium Mercurite to importing it I'd save at least 30% a month in material costs and this would be increased by selling the mercury I'm mining on the market at around 7,500 ISK per unit (~125m per week)

 

I've just had to do a run to Jita to replenish my materials for these towers and instead of buying a months Promethium I've bought the same amount of Promethium Mercurite. I still have about 20,000 units of Promethium to use up but once I do it'll be switched over to Promethium Mercurite and we'll see if my hypothesis was correct.

Towers make tempting targets

I run nearly a dozen towers spread over a few locations, they produce materials I sell in Jita and for internal consumption in projects. Nothing major and the income is nice if sometimes isn't as much as my projections suggest.

A set of the towers lives in a null sec location that whilst reasonably busy in PvP is quiet for most things and thanks to a friend the region is a lot more secure and 'safe' than it used to be.



However there are new neighbours and they have been investigating the regions moons and decided they wanted one I was using. Unfortunately I had setup no defences on the tower as I did not anticipate any issues because of the security now in the region.

What an idiot I was...

A corp mate and another friend were able to inflict significant loses to the attackers, a couple of T1 ships lost for half a dozen or so Stealth Bombers. A nice trade, especially so as the attackers then shipped up and continued to lose ships and then finally gave up.

Amazing what rebalanced T1 ships can do :)

I logged in the next morning and on receiving an update paid an immediate visit to Jita where I loaded up on POS defence modules.

So far so good, no further repeat attacks although we are waiting.