Processing scrap metal

19th May 2009 – 5.02 pm

With sell orders running low and no new manufacturing jobs running I take a break from building up my standings with Core Complexion, Inc. to replenish my stocks. This isn't a random series of events though, as I have been training in scrapmetal processing recently. This should let me recycle the many modules I have looted from wrecks left in my Drake's wake in to minerals that I can use for manufacturing, so I have purposely delayed starting new production runs until I was ready to recover the minerals instead of buying from the market. The time is now.

I have a few points I am interested in, the first being how efficient my refining is after all of this training. Although a fraction of a percent of minerals is retained by my current Core Complexion, Inc. mission base, it still nets me a grand amount of minerals that I can put to good use, and which is probably worth more than the modules themselves on market. Heading out to my old Caldari Navy mission base, where I have much better standings, I get a splended 100% efficieny rate, recovering and keeping all of the minerals.

The second point I am keen to find out is how sustainable it could be to feed my standard production runs with refined mission loot. Although I get enough minerals to fill my Badger Mark II's cargo hold a few times the loot is from more than a few level three encounter missions, and I am currently working with a manufacturing agent who don't generally offer regular encounter missions. Even so, I am easily able to start production runs that will restock my popular modules in two or three stations each, with enough minerals left over to produce a good run of heavy missiles. Whilst I am unlikely to produce missiles in any reasonable quantity this way it looks quite feasible to be able to turn junk mission loot modules in to profitable modules.

An additional aspect I was interested in was what quantity of minerals I could expect to recover, given the 100% efficiency I can achieve in at least one station, from any given module. As I have a duff run of modules hanging around I am quite happy to recycle them in to minerals to recover at least my mineral cost and produce something that will sell instead, but I rashly forget to make a note of the mineral quantities I am recovering, to compare against the mineral cost of production. Logic would dictate that a 100% recovery efficiency, so no losses, means that all of the minerals used in making the module are recovered to me, although that assumes there is no waste in the production of the module. Given a high-enough material efficiency this may be a reasonable assumption, but I don't know.

As it stands, I have recovered several loads of minerals from what would have been low-profit items on the market or wasteful to recycle. The minerals are being manufactured in to modules that will be put in to proven lucrative markets, all of which will result in profit for negligible expenditure. If I can make time to take on some encounter missions occasionally it looks like my industrial career will become incredibly profitable.

  1. 2 Responses to “Processing scrap metal”

  2. You would also need a perfectly researched BPO. This is possible for quite some BPOs, like ammo, but it becomes quite unlikely for ships - but you usually don't care much about those last 20 or 30 tritanium units to build a battleship :)

    By Mohenna on May 19, 2009

  3. Yes, that makes sense, thank you.

    By pjharvey on May 19, 2009

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