Research Service Redux

Hi All,

Completed my first commissions as far providing ME and PE work with a happy customer at the end of it. As luck would have it, I found an additional open moon locally. Another 18 slots have been onlined, so capacity has increased markedly.

I have had the odd approach as far as people joining the corporation for copying and invention purposes. However, what I am having some trouble with working out a way for it to be fair and equitable for both parties. There are a couple of considerations – one of which is a corpmate taking up the available resources that are actually for rent, which drops the corp profits. The second is because of the way things are set up, charging for individual jobs is problematic. Then of course are the all important security considerations. May just have to forgo this for now.

Have also started doing some commission work for another group while a few bigger BPOs are grinding through. And that has meant a refocus on a couple of the alts. I may also pause training on one of my mains to spend a month or two to get a few skills up – most notably advanced lab operation to 4. The intent is that they can do the general work, while I reserve the very high skill levels for invention and the serious BPOs on the mains.

Circling back towards the POS side of things – I may have sorted something out which will mean that a POS is essentially self sustaining as far as fuel costs go – without any work from either me or anyone in my corporation. The additional iskies are a nice to have, but in all honesty the current alliance usage is not covering costs right now. This is partly due to me holding prices down to attract business and partly due to location. Any configuration that involves some pretty heavy defenses also drops profits markedly.

Have located a moon reasonably close to Jita (after surveying over 500 moons over a week or so – ugh), so will likely upgrade the spot and see how it goes. If it works (and it is utilized to close to capacity), then I’ll gradually shift the focus away from our hub and over to the new moon. As a complete aside, does anyone know how long incapacitated mods hang about before they go >poof<?

So, stocktake time on the research. One hell of a lot of work in order to stay in one place – or as I put it to one of my corpmates, a hell of a lot of work that has resulted in not much more than iskies shifting from my wallet into the corp one… albeit in a somewhat indirect fashion 🙂

The research game is definitely a longer one. I’m not likely to see good returns for some time yet, but it’s interesting. Most especially in the figuring out what works and what doesn’t. But if it gives my occasionally overactive brain things to mull over when I’m not online, then all the better 🙂

Travel Safe,

H

P.S Have made some decisions regarding rates. Sliding scale with the longer the timeframe, the more expensive the job. If you are interested, send me a ping in game 😉