Corp Profitability Discussion...

[Mangala]

As some of you know I'd like to be able to start selling Cap Ship/Component BPC packs at some stage to keep us in an income of sorts, especially while I am away in South East Asia from January (I can do some stuff with a netbook ), so I have taken to following contracts on these for a while to get an idea of how stuff works. Obviously our profit is limited

Chimera packs (average retail price is 175m for sets on contracts):
(Numbers are based on BPC rather than exact as I really dont want to be making BPC's to perfect numbers, its lots of time consumed)

1 x 1 Run Chimera BPC ME2 PE0 - Owned;
2 x 5 Run Capital Ship Maintainence Bay BPC - Unowned;
2 x 5 Run Capital Shield Emitter BPC - Owned ME100 PE20;
2 x 5 Run Capital Sensor Cluster BPC - Unowned;
1 x 5 Run Capital Propulsion Engine BPC - Unowned;
1 x 5 Run Capital Power Generator BPC - Unowned;
2 x 5 Run Capital Jump Drive BPC - Unowned;
8 x 5 Run Capital Drone Bay BPC - Owned ME100 PE20;
2 x 5 Run Capital Corporate Hangar Bay BPC - Unowned;
2 x 5 Run Capital Construction Parts BPC - Owned ME40 PE20;
2 x 5 Run Capital Computer System BPC - Unowned;
2 x 5 Run Capital Capacitor Battery BPC - Unowned;
1 x 5 Run Capital Armor Plates BPC - Owned ME40 PE20;

My working out is probably off slightly - used a Median of 3.5mill per BPC (Except Carrier which looks like a median of 40mill per BPC) - then if we bought BPCs for what we dont have, then our profit is looking to be 90million isk per pack, maybe higher if we charged more for not giving the EXACT number of runs needed, but a tad more etc...

I havent looked at Orca's yet but will do this coming week.

On the basis I am not sure if its worthwhile - yes its a steady income, but so is the steady income we could raise from just selling copies of what components we do have BPO's for. Yes its a small income compared to moon poo and for all the ideas people have one that probably cannot fund it, but its still an income of sorts that adds to the wallets numbers and for me thats the bottom line, the corp is profitable and fun.

[Mangala]

Im just not sure how best to make us money so to help people out when losing ships in PVP (T1 is an easy insured loss these days - unless you t2 or faction fit!), without us having to resort to towers for moon poo and potential income there - which for me is a last option to try as it sucks despite the possible benefits (see me riding bikes for months ealier this year - Tower spammage early on really did my nut, I eventually came back and was resigned to it though as they were up by then!).

Everyone Im sure has ideas on how to make the corp profitable - from moon poo, to building stuff to spamming L4's and selling characters - and I'd like to hear them if you have them and they aint well out of reach of the corps wallet (While I havent minded spending my isk, I do think it defeats the object of making the corp self reliant ).  

Hell I started a Share Plan, that eventually got royally fucked as the corp bought towers with the isk before I'd fully spent it on BP's (Not a dig at you Hrod - Red was spending the isk on towers right after we raised it while practically pushing you folks into Fountain/EZ), or people stopped playing while holding on to capital BPO's that were bought with raised isk, and I fully intend to dividend this go around too as I said I'd do it this time and for a change we actually have some isk! Again a drain on the wallet away from the reason its there: to benefit you all (I dont need its assistance, all I want is free rigs and ammo to trade into faction ammo!) and where possible make the game less of a chore for you all.

[Mangala]

One thing I'll cover: What do I mean when I say corp profitability:

For me, its being able to

Offer ships of most t1 types to members cheaply or freely;
Offer rigs and ammo for free (we can always market half the rigs we make going forward);
Offer Subsidised T2 fits for ships (t1 or T2 that people have themselves;

And all this after expenses - which include offices, buying bps when/if needed and other costs that crop up going forward.  Basically its to take the "grind" of the game away from you all on an obvious level and keep the fun there instead.  I had just started getting a handle on this (see failed ship programs etc) when you all uprooted and moved to the other end of space and now want to try it again while nothing stands a chance fucking it all in the ass before its solid and going strong, so that the corp wont die while Im on my stupidly long vacation come 2010.

[Warcold]

Here I go...

Concerns:
- Corp dying with Mang gone. Somehow (or obviously??) it seems you are someone who keeps this gang going strong. Ofc there are ppl who are taking quite a bit of the brunt (peo/towers for example), but I am concerned about how stuff goes without you there. It has to be clear who can make what decisions. I know you somehow want us to treat MAADI as OUR corp, but this has not shown in our behaviour somehow.
- Buying BPOs (or part of them) eating up so much money we arent flexible anymore. If we decide to move on (and who will decide on it??) 500M wont be enough, so we need some ISK as backup. Ofc BPOs can be sold again (but who will decide on it??). -> As this Goon fellow wrote: Democracies dont work and as I see it, Mang is (considered) our dictator. One we accept as ruling us, but a dictator after all. We have our says, and Mang listens, but if Mang suggests something, we tend to follow. I know you (Mang) might not like this, but I think this is the way MAADI functions (which is not bad per sé).
- Low KASEI coverage with Mang gone: At the moment, Angakuk (my alt) is one of the most active toons in KASEI research. 2nd: Mang's alts. We need more alts to become active in KASEI if we want a BPC sell program to become a good source of income. (not just with Mang gone, now would be as good a time as ever)
- No mining going on atm: Another source of income would be selling ships/modules. With no mining going on, we wont be able to dip into this ISK pool. Option would be to use our BPCs and minerals acquired on market, but this will lower profitability. Also, agreement has to be reached on our ways of industry. (plus chars need to be able to build, see Mang's other post. Also, Cmaxx (one of our main builders) seems to have dropped in activity).
- KASEI POS needs to stay refueled in Mang's absence. I can sacrifice some of Saf's training time to have Anga be able to ride haulers, but ice-mining is a bridge too far as far as I'm concerned. Possible ISK sink.
- Moon mining is IMHO(!) not the way to go, as Fountain taught us POSes are a pain to maintain (unless peo bears the brunt again, I know I pass on POSes, sorry).

A few possible (incomplete) solutions (mebbe more to come, want to come to a close of this post, as it's late and such)
- Look at what Capital Part BPCs are the most profitable and concentrate on those (full set seems out of our reach atm). We need more KASEI coverage though.
- Look into what our group dynamics is, both in leadership and logistics (and more?). Investigate how we can improve this and minimize damage of Mang being away for 3?, 6?? months.


Also: Look into what tax we need to raise and what corp should do beyond offering a haven for friend- and chat-needy ppl. IMO tax-induced corp->player-funding is a means to lessen distance between high-end and low-end players (high-ends earning (and paying tax) more and less likely to draw money from corp for funding their endeavours). How rich (and generous) do we want our corp to be?
Plus: what about recruitment? Do we want to stay small and close-knit (preferred by me tbh), or larger, more lively and more flexible (concerning options, manner of group dynamics is another matter).



Saf (who is better at pointing out problems than offering solutions)

[Mangala]

I love you even more

Re KASEI - why do you think Im mining nearly every day with at least one of the miners? So it has enough fuel going forward, NPC fuel i'll stock up eventually too.

[Dlarah]

Ice for KASEI is something 2 of my chars can do. I havent done much of it lately, but just like i have been afk mining lots on the past i can switch to "afk" mining ice with one char on my laptop while playing other games if there is a need for it.
I am also rounding up some missing research skills for my KASEI research alt. Hoping to get into research now with her ability to run 6(soon 7) research jobs as i dont need her stationed at Leran for cynos.
As for mining. With more people starting to run lvl 4 missions there is a fair amount of minerals and salvage aviable there if these people reprocess loot and salvage their own missions and sell to corp at a slightly lower than market price. There is also the tax on bounties and rewards. Depending on member activity and interest we could have mining ops now and then just like mission ops.

[Warcold]

My previous post seems a bit negative (and onesided) in retrospect. I think what I was trying to express is that we need to look at:

a) do we want to grow (with new, unfamiliar members) or not?
b) if not: we need to arrange ways of maintaining MAADI and KASEI with Mang gone -> sturdy and clear decissions on who does/decides what. our time in fountain was (in my view) also characterized by everyone having a lot of opinions, whitout clear decisions (or goals) being decided upon (things were done, but not really decided upon. hence my remark that democracy doesnt seem to work, as there didnt seem to be a democratic process.
c) if not: IMHO then we need to have think hard on what we can do with our small playerbase. i.e.: 1) what are the ways of income that can be easily maintained, thus still offering fun to all our players (refueling POSes and hauling stuff through dangerous space isnt one of them as far as i am concerned). 2) what is the estimation of our income and what are the most important AND realistic things to do with that income.

[peo]

If I find a good moon I'll happily do it again.
What sucked it all from me wasn't as much the moons but that it all went to the "alliance" (and that's a term I use loosely) we basically never got ahead. Of course this wouldn't involve GW poses due to the risk of them being killed. I'm looking there for future reference basically.

Both asteroid and ice mining I can help with so we could probably do a few corp runs and get more than enough ice reasonably fast.

I'm going to look around a bit in derelik about asteroid and mineral supply, the problem is that it isn't very profitable to mine veld or so and for the carrier HUGE amounts are needed so not something I'm likely to do by myself but corp ops for it should work fine. Best would probably in that case be to do it in low sec with a rorqual and small tower for safety. (would go up and down as you make the remote camp)

Another option is to search for wormholes and do that.

We should probably focus on making and selling rigs to start with though, we get fair amounts of salvage from missions and we can easily build the rigs after all.

[peo]

Also, right now I think we should try to make a decent name for ourselves rather than focusing too much on corp profitability. It should be profitable enough to help with ammo and stuff like that.
If we can get it more, super, if not ok.
With the changes to sov comming up I think we will have interesting opportunities at that time so until then we should focus more on getting good at everything (pvp, pve and so on) which I think will make it possible for us to join a real alliance without the pos shit and idiots in charge.

As for recruiting, we should try to recruit of course.
I don't know how easy it is though if not in a sov holding alliance, that seemed to be the main thing people in the recruitment was looking for and EZ wouldn't have been considered "sov holders".

[Warcold]

recruitment in itself is not such a big problem I think, NERF got to 50ish members quite fast

[peo]

recruitment in itself is not such a big problem I think, NERF got to 50ish members quite fast

Wasn't a lot of those old friends of sin et al?

[Mangala]

With the changes to sov comming up I think we will have interesting opportunities at that time so until then we should focus more on getting good at everything (pvp, pve and so on) which I think will make it possible for us to join a real alliance without the pos shit and idiots in charge.

Guess who wont be here to take advantage of that fully? I go on the 25th January - and expansions usually hit the last 2 weeks of December :S

[Warcold]

recruitment in itself is not such a big problem I think, NERF got to 50ish members quite fast

Wasn't a lot of those old friends of sin et al?

Some. Think the majority is new folks.

[peo]

With the changes to sov comming up I think we will have interesting opportunities at that time so until then we should focus more on getting good at everything (pvp, pve and so on) which I think will make it possible for us to join a real alliance without the pos shit and idiots in charge.

Guess who wont be here to take advantage of that fully? I go on the 25th January - and expansions usually hit the last 2 weeks of December :S

Read something about it being in November but I have no real idea.
For how long are you gone?

[Mangala]

6 months or so. I'll still appear in game, but on my netbook I cant really undock, just skill change, chat and do contract stuff.


If it is in november, then I at least get to see all the potential fallout from it - and if November is the time, then they ideally should be putting this on SISI just as Fanfest kicks off or just after