We wanted to have a clear understanding of how much T3 Strategic Cruisers actually costs us to manufacture, what is our profit margin, raw material cost etc so we could set some prices for our corpmembers to gain access to T3 Strategic Cruisers.

It all came down to getting the information you need, and EvEHQ was there to automate the process. I decided to post a quick guide since many of you might need to use it for a similar situation. This is the first guide – of what we hope to be more in the future – send us your feedback on what you’d like to see!

Things you will need : EVEHQ – http://www.evehq.net – the only tool you’ll need

You also need to have an account with Director level access and use their Full API key to gain access to corporation assets. Of course if you have all the assets in question in your personal hangar then you don’t need corp key.

For this example, I am using SI Radio’s Planet Risk Wormhole System and the assets there-in to grab the T3 Proteus Hull BPC and see what’s my profits there. Some information have been classified as need to know and thus omitted from the screenshots. We take security seriously… ahahahahaha… ahem… right… back to EvEHQ

Disclaimer:

It’s critical to note, that this process will take into account the prices of the raw materials and finished goods that exist given the current prices from the region you configure! It will not – and should not imho – include any costs you might have attached to that if you have been buying stuff from the market at different prices than current etc… Also, it does no include the costs for your investment (like POS, Fuel, Labs, Assembly Arrays etc) but it can add the costs of skillbooks needed.

Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Fire Up EVEHQ and configure the market prices tool. You need to go to Menu option Tools –>   Market Prices. The above configuration is what we use to get our quotes from but your mileage might vary. Note that the prices you setup here will drastically alter the profit margins. Since we want to compare prices vs selling the item in the market, I’ve setup the tool to download all prices from The Forge Region (Jita) on the Min Sell Price – that is the price you would pick if you where to directly go and buy this item.

2. You will need to update the prices given the settings you’ve put in step 1. To do that go to the  “Price Snapshot” tab and click the buttons.

3. You will then need to download the API key details. Please note that unless you use a Full Access key that won’t work. You will also need Director level access to see the Corporation owned assets (like POS Towers, anchored structures, Corp Hangars etc). You need to fire up the tool called EVEHQ Prism and from there click the Download API button. It will take a while, but you will be able to get the Assets for your corp needed for the next steps.

Note you can only refresh the Assets List once per  day as per CCP API key limitations.

4. Once you have downloaded the current assets you can click on the “BP Manager” button within EVEHQ Prism. From here you can select the Owner: <your corporation> or yourself depending on when your BPO/BPCs are stationed. Make sure you click on the “Only Show Owned BPs” if you want, and also the “Update BPs from Assets” and “Get BP Info from jobs”

I need to note here that these two buttons require that you populate your assets using step 3. If you skip that step, you will need to manually enter your BPO/BPC details – which can be time consuming if you have lots of BPs. Now the coolest feature is to grab all the BPs from your Assets along with Get BP Info from Jobs. Always use these two together, because CCP does not include info on the Assets API key – whether it’s BPO or BPC. However, since you can see that info from the Jobs API when the BP is installed somewhere, EVEHQ can work around that limitation from CCP and as long as you put your BPs in good use,  you will soon have all the BPs correctly updated in your asset list. Please head here and bump Vessper’s request to get a fully functional BP API key

5. You can browse to find the BP of the item you need using the dropdown boxes above, or just type in some letters of the item in the search box. Let’s see the Proteus Hull. Once I find the item in the results pane, I double-click that and the BP Calculator window appears. Some really cool features here. Firstly, you can select whether you do your Research / Production for that BP at your own POS or not, so that it can add the associated costs in the Bill of Materials. Secondly, you can select the character that will do the Research / Production so that his skills affect the results. Now let’s see the other information boxes in more detail.

6. You can already see (here in green font since we have a profit) the amount in ISK that you make if you produce this BP given the conditions you specified. What it does is that it calculates the prices of the raw materials (what you would get if you set them up as the lowest sell order in Jita based on our configuration in step 1), then adds the correct amount based on the total quantity needed, (including waste products where applicable) compares the total with the price of the finished product (again, the lowest selling price) and gives you the profit from that deduction.

In many cases this can be way off your actual profit. Why? First of all, you might have to buy some of the intermediate materials instead of building them on your own. Also, the prices for some raw materials constantly change in certain markets – like T3 for example, so what today shows a profit of 100Mill tomorrow could show 65Mil and 2 weeks ago could be 35Mill. It’s pretty hectic market so far in T3 so at some point you could see that stabilize.

Let’s look at an alternative way to calculate your profits.

7. Click on the “Use Standard Costing” button. You will see prices change, and you no longer see the raw materials, but only the intermediate ones. That setting does not take into account the prices of the raw materials, but instead the prices of the intermediate components used. In our case, half of the overall profit comes as you can see from the profit of making the intermediate materials.

8. Also note the “Ideal ML” column. That is the ideal Material Level you should research your blueprints of intermediate steps to reduce your waste factor and thus increase your profits. I need to point out that for the T3 BPOs out there CCP does not affect the waste factor on any lvl of ME you reach – so unless they fix this you will always get the same waste no matter how much ME you put  in there :-/

9. One of the coolest features in EVEHQ Prism and the Blueprint Calculator is the ability to quickly see how many runs you can produce, given your current assets. You just go to the “Resources Owned” tab and select in the Asset Selection where your raw materials are and it will tell you how many units of what material you will need to complete the runs.

10. Pay a visit to the EVEHQ Forums and thank Vessper for this great tool and also give him feedback on features you would like to be included in future versions!