Managing my logistics

Moving stuff around is one of the most important yet time-consuming activities in EVE Online. I believe the success of any industrial operation relies on the efficiency of how logistics are organized.

I think a logistics system should react quickly to any requirement or change in the field, while simultaneously dealing with all factors surrounding its mission. These factors include cargo size, cargo value, trip length, and ganking risks; everything should be planned ahead of undocking the hauler.

 

 

Here I am sharing my logistics model and how I manage hauling between different locations. Don’t be fooled by the dots moving in one direction (thanks to Claude AI for letting me down during the creation of the infographic); all the connections between stations are actually bidirectional.

The first factor I prioritize is flexibility. Each production station (Capitals and T2) has its own runner, DST (Deep Space Transport), and freighter. This allows me to use the adequate ship for each run depending on the size and importance of the cargo.

The low-sec Sotiyo is served by a hauling service due to the high risk. When launching a capital manufacturing campaign, I import raw materials from Jita or Amarr using this service, which delivers them to the Sotiyo. I then use my own freighter to transport compressed ores and moon materials to the Tatara. After refining, I use the freighter again to move the minerals back to the Sotiyo for manufacturing. It is a big investment for a ship that is only used twice a month, but the gain in efficiency is astronomical. After all, I might use this freighter to manufacture its relevant Jump Freighter.

For the high-sec T2 manufacturing operation, it is quite straightforward. Usually, a DST is enough to feed the station with raw materials for T2 modules runs, but when manufacturing Capitals in high-sec, a freighter becomes a must-have. The runner is used for last minute shopping and for moving final products to Amarr or Jita through the mighty Ahbazon system.

I believe my model is not flawless. It has worked until now, but I need to keep an eye on efficiency, especially if I want to scale my production.

 

Unpopular Opinion: Industrial success can comes from ignoring diversification

Every time you open a forum thread or hop into an industry Discord, you'll hear the same advice delivered with full confidence: diversify your production portfolio. It sounds reasonable, but it wasn't the case for me.

The argument for diversification sounds rational on paper: if one market segment tanks, your other lines carry you. The problem is that EVE's industrial game is not a passive index fund. It's an active, information-dense environment where knowing your market matters more than covering every market.

When you spread across many items, you dilute something precious that doesn't scale the way capital does: your attention…

Managing multiple productions across unfamiliar markets means constant micro-decisions on what's moving, what isn't, whether that margin shift is a trend or just noise. That cognitive load accumulates. EVE industry is already a game of spreadsheets and logistics chains, and when you're operating in markets you don't fully understand, every decision carries more uncertainty and more second-guessing. That's a direct path to decision fatigue, and decision fatigue in a market game lead to a creeping feeling that the whole operation isn't worth the effort. Staying in markets you know doesn't just protect your wallet, it protects your motivation to log in tomorrow.

There's a principle that quietly validates this entire argument: the Pareto Law, the 80/20 rule. In most markets, 80% of your profits will come from roughly 20% of what you produce. The instinct to diversify pushes you in the opposite direction, which is precisely how you dilute the 20% that was already working for you. When I look back at my production history, the pattern is obvious: a handful of modules and ships I knew well were responsible for the bulk of my ISK. The diversification experiment didn't add new entries to that golden list, it just added noise and regret.

If you remember my previous post "Heavy Industry Saves the Day," I mentioned that returning to what I know best  “freighter manufacturing” shifted the entire month's results back into positive territory. Around the same time, I began my T2 mass production venture, and today I run a focused golden list of just six or seven items that I mass produce. I'm now capturing 10% of the market share of one of those T2 modules in Amarr.

Adding a new segment to your business should never come at the expense of established ones. When it comes to expanding, I recommend evaluating new modules against three simple metrics: unit size, unit profit, and daily volume. Healthy values across all three can help you uncover the right items to introduce into your operation without compromising what's already working.

Playing EVE online without playing EVE online

Lately I’ve been spending more time building tools and workflows outside the game, but everything is still directly tied to improving in-game decisions.

I started by creating a spreadsheet powered by Power Query that pulls raw material prices and automatically applies refining calculations. The goal is simple: quickly identify when buying raw materials and selling refined minerals becomes profitable, as this has been one of my main ISK streams. This already paid off — I found a solid opportunity, bought more than 30,000 ice blocks away from Jita, refined them, and captured the margin.

Next, I built a full Tech II manufacturing dataset. Using ravworks.com as the base (currently the most accurate source I’ve found), I edited the site’s JSON file and injected 270 T2 module IDs. This allowed me to generate a list of T2 modules with calculated manufacturing costs and profits. The output is a copyable table that can be pasted directly into Excel, where I add a column for Jita total profits of each item by multiplying item profit by daily volume. This highlights the best-performing items immediately and avoid being fooled by the item profit only. Having everything in one place makes it much easier to scan for production opportunities instead of checking items manually.

I also started experimenting with regional trading. For now, I’m using eve-trading.net to identify spreads, but instead of following the typical approach of selling to buy orders, I’m selling directly to sell orders when the spread makes sense. I’m focusing on raw material trading and avoiding heavy competition with established traders. It’s a quick way to test opportunities and understand the flow between regions. Still early, but it’s helping me understand what regional trading looks like in practice rather than theory.

Overall, this phase is less about flying ships and more about building infrastructure: data pipelines, pricing models, and decision tools. The idea is to reduce guesswork and move toward repeatable, data-driven profits.

March 2026 update

I know I know! I have promised to not post monthly updates, but I find myself doing it, as a comment from Croda made me rethink a little bit about the decision, and also having lot of time at home due to working from home policy because of actual geopolitical situation.

The large-scale manufacturing campaign of the capitals ships was successful in its building phase, manufacturing parts and hulls was smooth and almost without errors, thanks to various industry tools like ravworks.com and eve guru.

 

I can’t say it was successful during the sales phase, as expected these hulls need patience and financial comfort to be sold at the right price, capitals business needs to be supplemented with another isk generation activity, for me it is T2 mass manufacturing.

Regarding the sales, they are above average at 31 billion isk, and they include: 4 Combat capital ships, 3 Freighters, 2321 T2 modules (new record!), 5 large skill injectors, and some PI materials, these sales increased my net worth by 9.4 billion isk (10%), which I can qualify as a good result.

 

Due to isk shortage after the launch of the capital ships phase, I was forced to sell PI and a freighter to buy orders to be able to start T2 manufacturing, at some point I got less than 200 million isk as cash.

From these numbers I can confirm that there is a slow down in capital ships movement, I expected to sell more than this, I still have 17 capital ships and 1 freighter between contracts and stocks, with this much ships still unsold, I will surely stop combat capitals manufacturing, and shift to T2 modules for the whole upcoming month.

I want to point again the high cost of the manufacturing operations this time also, which is raised to the staggering amount of 7.7 billion isk, including copying invention and reactions, it is mainly the cost of completing jobs much faster, but!…as I did a simulation before about the manufacturing location, if I relocate to an 0.14% industry index low sec NPC station, I can lower these 7.7 billion to 4.7 billion, but!...your slots will be busy for a longer time for the same capital productivity result, which will considerably lower the available time for T2 manufacturing later, hence lowering the profits, but!...(that’s a lot of buts!) I can go the middle ground and manufacture the capital components in a low index location and the hull in the fastest one.

So, it is a game of balance between time, location, profit, and effort, only a well designed excel sheet with different scenarios can give an answer.

In the other side the T2 business was doing great, I just stick to my golden list of modules, I noticed that I was unable to supply continuously the markets, I have a problem in my supply chain for T2 modules, I can’t always fill my 30 slots of industry with jobs, sometimes there is a component which is missing, it is really underwhelming, I will find a solution to track materials and manage restocking efficiently, SquadB the youtuber has a free excel sheet for manufacturing and stocks tracking, I will pay visit to it.

The invention slots were very busy during this month, I was mass-inventing BPC for T2 modules continuously, I have invested some skill points to increase success probabilities across my characters, I added some large and capital modules BPO to my library and start initial BPC copying for invention, during the next month I will invent and bundle these T2 capital modules with the available capital ships for better results.

For reactions, I just stopped it completely, I already have a good stock of needed composites, also ARDCO are starting a good reactions business and as usual I am one of their customers, I am thinking about relaying on them for composite reactions and leave my slots for T2 related reactions.

I started acquiring raw materials by using freelance jobs, I am paying a good price and the orders are filled reasonably quick except for kernite ore (low sec ore), by moving these ores to lowsec T2 tatara, having good refining skills and the best reprocessing implant, I can secure minerals at a good price.

Mid March 2026 update

 This is a quick mid-month update on the state of my first capital super-batch.

The first major milestone of the month has been completed: the manufacturing of all the required capital components is now finished, the lesson here was the manufacturing of these new parts called Neurolink Protection Cells, which was an annoying and long process, they took most of the time and management effort.

The assembly of the 21 capital ships started two days ago, which is always a satisfying moment in the production cycle,after a long phase of preparation and component manufacturing, seeing the final hulls finally entering the build queue feels like the factory lines are doing what they are supposed to do.

 

However, reaching this stage also comes with a consequence: my liquid ISK reserves are now extremely low, most of the available capital has been tied up in ongoing production jobs, this is a familiar situation for large industrial cycles, but it still requires careful management.

To create some breathing room, I sold a Bowhead and a batch of PI materials directly to buy orders, it was not the most profitable way to move those assets, but the goal now is liquidity, having some immediate cash available allows me to focus on T2 module manufacturing, as I have two weeks before the end of the month.

Now I feel financially outside my comfort zone. When a lot of value is locked in ongoing manufacturing jobs and unfinished ships, the wallet balance can look thinner than usual. It is a temporary phase, but it does force me to be more careful about how I allocate the remaining ISK.

On the character side, I also made an important change this month. I rearranged the skillpoints across my characters, and they are now all able to manufacture capital ships. I have theoretically the capacity to build 30 capital ships simultaneously, but I still need to increase my cash reserves before reaching that stage. According to my calculations, I need to raise my liquidity by around 15 billion ISK at minimum to reach full production capacity.

Because of the limited liquid ISK available, I decided to pause reactions temporarily. They are a low priority since I already have a good stock of composite reactions, and I prefer to allocate the cash I have toward T2 production. Once liquidity improves again, reactions may return to the production chain.

Building capital ships is the easiest part of the process for me. The planning, component manufacturing, and final assembly are all very structured and predictable tasks. The real challenge begins afterward: selling these ships.

Trading has never been my strongest skill in eve. Managing sell orders, timing the market, and competing with other traders is something I still find not very interesting, moving large hulls efficiently requires patience and good market instincts, and this is clearly an area where I still have room to improve.

For now, the priority is simple: maintain enough liquidity to support invention and T2 manufacturing and prepare for the moment when the new capital ships leave the assembly lines and enter the contracts market.