Pioneering in W-Space: Part 10

I logged in the other day to find out that the POS had been built and fueled and we had a good connection to a nearby trade hub. My mentor was bringing in the necessary gas and BNI were out in our static ganking freighters or indys as they went by on their way to the trade hub. We gathered at a nearby station and undocked at the same time, ferrying a bunch of gas quickly to the wormhole in one trip, and took it to the POS to get the reactions going. Now the reactions have started.

I'll be the first to admit that it's incredibly difficult to judge where you are with reactions if you don't have access to view it. My limited access is understandable, though, as the set up required has cost hundreds of millions, which has all been paid by my mentor.

We have a spreadsheet shared between us to keep track of certain things, like fuel and reactions and the necessary gasses and their associated costs. One thing I was most surprised about was the high cost per day of running reactions. If you have the capital to start with, I suppose daily cost of running reactions isn't as bad. For someone like me who is relatively new to the game and isn't swimming in ISK, the thought that 24 hours of reaction materials will cost 50 million is quite shocking. Ideally, you run your reactions with a full silo so that you don't have to babysit it daily. For some reactions, that's 200 million. And these aren't the most expensive reactions out there, either.

Now, to add to this, the prices of both the inputs and outputs fluctuate wildly. Profitable reactions one day become unprofitable the next. One of the two reactions that is currently being run is showing as being unprofitable right now. As I am editing this post, it has swung back to being profitable. Whether this is due to the input prices or output prices I am not sure. I do think it would be a good idea to maintain a detailed log of input costs and output revenue to ensure that profits are being made.

There is still much to learn and more things to do. Fuel will pretty soon be something that I need to think about, and I'm going to see if I can manage to manufacture it myself. That should be interesting.