ISK is a Hell of a Drug

As I wrote back during Fanfest, Odyssey is changing moon components.  The biggest changes are:

• ThuliHaf + ProMerc added to increase R64 utilization
• Racial composites (Amarrium, Caldarium, Gallentium, Matarium) added for more R64 demand
• Capacitors, Microprocessors, and Reactors had their materials changed

I also pointed out that the price for nearly everything T2 was going up.  Though that sheet is pretty much obsolete today.

This means, for every savvy T2 builder, it was time to stockpile.  My least favorite thing to do, as I've written again and again about.  Combine my current 10B buy-in purse with my collaboration with @K162space, and I've backed myself into a bit of a corner. 

When I build, I usually leverage the vast majority of my liquid ISK into each work week.  This leaves me with very little ISK to play with in the middle of my work week.  Though this usually works just fine -- it leaves me with enough ISK to cover my butt play-wise AND leverages the most ISK possible for best returns -- it has left me in a bind for preparing properly for Odyssey.

Plan A: In a Perfect World

There were two critical pre-Odyssey goals to hit, both revolving around the changes to Capacitors, Microprocessors, and Reactors.  Get the components built for both normal production AND the JF project before Odyssey hit.  

Normal production only needs to cover one work week, since my 10-12d cycle time should be long enough for the first "time constant" to play out on the market.  The JF project was more critical.  There's a lot more ISK on the line that's worth saving, especially with the ridiculous build times on JF's.  In this case, it was important to build the remaining components for all planned builds.  This means leveraging +1 JF worth of materials, but should save 10-15% on each of the final builds.  

Plan A revolves around a perfectly executed schedule, planned several weeks in advance.  In this perfect plan, I would have the current work week ending the weekend of the 31st, letting me cash out to start the following work week buy-in on Sunday or Monday, directly before the patch.

In Plan A, I was forfeiting the highest spike of post-Odyssey market swings, but securing a more stable middle ground, saving in the long run.  Also, it worked well in my accounting scheme to pretty much cash in this cycle's profits into stockpiling through the most unstable time.

Plan B: No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy

Spoiler: I wasn't able to execute Plan A.  Half due to delays on my part, half due to the Sunday outage.  So, it was a case of adjusting the plan to try and hit as many of Plan A's goals as possible.  This was achieved by splitting the 10-run frigate builds (6d) to 5-runs (3d).  This helped get ISK in the bank in time.  Unfortunately, the Sunday outage really FUBAR'd that plan.  

Instead of having 10B to pay for both JF and post-Odyssey kit, I was left with ~5B.  So, it was time to call in the some help.  Thanks to a corp mate of my new GENTS home, Koshaku, I was able to get the finances needed to achieve the next-best-thing.

The worst part about ending up behind schedule is coming up against the patch-day limit with only minutes to spare.  Thanks to the ongoing network issues, I was kicked out right as my raw materials reached my factory, leaving me in a frothing rage.  Raw materials do me no good unless I can build before the Odyssey launch!  Thankfully, the servers came back up in time and I was able to put in all the jobs required.  This has left me 2-3d further behind schedule.  In this case I will trade a few days to save potentially several billion (predicting ~4-5B).  

Final Results

I am ending up in a pretty decent position to play the market game this weekend:

• Sleipnir: 10 already delivered to Jita
• Anshar #1: Delivers before weekend
• Hound: 150 of 200 will be available by weekend
• Purifier: 100 of 200 will be available by weekend
• WW12 pre-build: all Capacitors, Microprocessors, Reactors cooking (no overstock)
• JF project: 3x Reactors, 4x Microprocessors, 4x Capacitors (4 BPC's remain to be built)
• Module/Ammo build: not impacted by Odyssey
• -5B debt to repay (+1.5B banked already)

In the grand scheme, this went MUCH better than expected.  I am trading most of my WW11 profit and some banked cash to pay back the generous personal loan.  Also, my production schedule is a bit screwed up, leaving me with starting WW12 probably 3-4d behind the intended schedule.  This is less than optimal, but beats idling my entire ship line while the party plays out without me.  I hope to still come out ahead significantly over the next two weeks.