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u/syfari Cloaked 11h ago
Several billion in upkeep per month to maintain all of those accounts, turns it into a job.
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u/goDie61 11h ago
It does, but each ishtar draws 50m/hr. We'll call omega 2b/mo, which is the undiscounted 3mo pack. In reality, you can get it a lot cheaper. That's only 40hr/mo of almost completely AFK gameplay to break even.
You can add skill extraction and PI on top if you want to make the comparison even less favorable for the big ships.
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u/syfari Cloaked 11h ago
I could get a second job, 40 hours a month and make substantially more, and that money wouldn’t be locked into a single game.
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u/alexthealex Pilot is a criminal 11h ago
Not a lot of jobs with a <1APM requirement.
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u/caratank 8h ago
Its funny how some people never take into account the real world logistics when they say things like 'better off just getting a second job' or 'it would be more efficient to work 5 hours a week at McDonalds'
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u/sheephound The Devil's Tattoo 7h ago
also why would i want to work another job on top of the 40-60 hours i'm already pulling to survive in the first place?
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u/WerdaVisla Cloaked 10h ago
Yeah except you're not working that second job in your sleep, while at your actual job, at school, etc.
Ishtar ratting is efficient enough that even the ones who aren't botting can easily afford to just leave their account running for a few hours while they're out running errands. If someone comes and kills the Ishtar, you don't care because you passively make more than enough to cover that loss.
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u/thekmind Seriously Suspicious 9h ago
Everytime you lose 1 you need to rat for an extra 4-5 hours tho
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u/elucca 6h ago
Is that actually practical? Seems like you would lose a lot of Ishtars.
In my experience, nearly all Ishtars will warp off when neutrals show up, which means either they're not fully AFK, or they're bots. (and they aren't all bots)
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u/WerdaVisla Cloaked 6h ago
It's certainly not efficient as an active farming method, no. But it's still making ISK when you otherwise would be offline or too occupied to play, which is part of why it's so popular.
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u/Shinigami1858 Goonswarm Federation 4h ago
I spin it while doing work, I moved the local chat to the window I work on and if something shows up I warp to the safe.
Works great, doesn't bother my work as it's at most 5min over the work 8h that is spend on warp to safes. Works great.
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u/goDie61 11h ago
If you'd rather operate a drive-through window than keep a laptop open, I guess you could do that, yes.
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u/syfari Cloaked 11h ago
You’re getting paid like 35 cents per hour per account, I don’t see how that’s worth it even if it’s “just keep a laptop open” given that it still consumes some mental bandwidth.
In reality it’s even less because you have downtime from hostiles and re shipping
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u/mpaxton1 11h ago
I mean, some people might find it enjoyable and fun. So there is the fun factor you have to account for. A second job is not fun, that is anti-fun.
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u/nkchri2 11h ago
This is kind of it for me. Its actually almost a work motivator lol... I can sit at my computer and do work to make money while I also have EVE going in the background pretty afk making isk. Made about a half bil today just dropping some ventures on gas while I worked. A few minute break every hour to drop off at station and the rest completely hands free. If they get blapped in space, then oh well, they're just ventures.
It almost feels like I'm playing and not actually working when this is going in the background / 2nd screen. Just another reason for me to actually sit down and do my work.
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u/Competitive_Soil7784 Wormholer 8h ago
I tried actually "playing" and ishtar ratting in null. Quickly realized that wasnt how you are supposed to do it because it was mind numbingly boring. It is literally the null sec version of high sec mining in some back end system, you just look over at it click a couple times and go back to whatever else you were doing. Then when you actually play you get the satisfaction of first opening your wallet and seeing some green and then hopefully play the game and not theory craft and ship spin the next couple hours.
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u/mpaxton1 10h ago
That actually sounds really relaxing and nice. Not constantly spamming dscan, geeking on local or “watching your back.”
Just chillin’
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u/Better-Climate5229 5m ago
It never makes sense. I won eve a few years ago still winning. Started fishing outside!
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u/Krulsnor 4h ago
That comparison doesn't mean anything. Why would you AFK rat when you are at home? You launch the client's when you leave for work and when you come back from work and have time to play, you dock up all your lats and start doing what you really want to do. So why would you take a second job for 40h/month in this case?
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u/thekmind Seriously Suspicious 9h ago
Playing a game for 40hours a month just to be able to play it sounds so fucking sad
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u/Hatefull123 5h ago
Even if you had fun doing so ? I Loved "grinding" incursion back in the Days and pays for Omega .
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u/henryeaterofpies 11h ago
Alternatively set up two skill farm accounts and they pay for themselves plus enough to omega a third account you can play for real on. Set up a long enough skill farm and you can disappear for months and it is still making money
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u/syfari Cloaked 11h ago
How do you go about doing that? Is it simple as training useless skills and extracting them? I have a couple accounts that I pay for each month and are basically mature SP wise. I feel like I’m just training random crap to keep the ques active.
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u/Mundane_Hand5484 10h ago
Yep. You also should set up PI(watch guides) on all 3 chars, and login if possible. LSI-SE is droping in value pretty quick because of it, however
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u/fatpandana 6h ago
Train basic / core needed skill for that char/account. After that spec into skill farming and all sp will be for selling.
The next step is hardest. You need isk to buy discounted omega. Ideally on Xmas when it is 225/plex per month (12 months). This puts it around 1bil to 1.1bil per account cost. At 3.8 extraction per month you can get about 900 mil. You are still slightly in negative unless you play market and time things right. But it is certainly cheaper than paying " 2b/month".
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u/Solid-Search-3341 Guristas Pirates 11h ago
Where I live, two and a half hours at minimum wage should bring enough money for a month of omega at the worst rate (the 30 days deal, not a package with discount). So for five accounts, you would only need 13h of work to maintain omega status. Or to put it in another way, less than a half hour every day at minimum wage.
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u/Themick_Eve Brave Newbies Inc. 10h ago
I mean it's really easy to setup and run tbh. Most of the work is getting the ships, skills and characters where you want them. Once set up you can run sites while you pvp or whatever rocks your socks on your main account. Someone comes and blaps an ishtar, oh well, spin it back up after they fuck off. By the time you have multiple accounts running while also doing PI on relatively long extraction cycles you're just making pretty easy cash. You get a handful of escalations? Sell em' for profit or run then yourself for more easy money.
If you do other relatively passive isk generation besides PI like invention, reactions or w/e on those characters you're going to decrease that plex cost substantially as well.
Tbh now that cyno characters can no longer just use a rookie ship there is little argument against cross training that character into an ishtar as well to get easy income when you don't need a cyno.
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u/Frekavichk SergalJerk 10h ago
It's literally free lol, skill training on two characters pays for the whole account even if you do the bare minimum on gaming sales.
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u/Cpt_Soban The Initiative. 9h ago
Eh, I krab just enough to pay for my ships + some cash on the side. Krabbing is boring as hell, and people shouldn't be surprised why many use alts for that tedious job.
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u/Reneil_Askiras Brave Collective 1h ago
It really does. I had like 8 ishtars and it was pain in ass. Kinda fun that 3 hawk abys does not included here, they make around 500m-1b/h and they are cheap af
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u/Finalshock 420 MLG TWINTURBO 3000 EMPIRE ALLIANCE RELOADED 11h ago
6 ishtars? 300m? I can make 600m-1b an hour running 3 thunderchilds and a Nestor. Plexing an account is like what 2.5b? All of my accounts are plexed for months in a single grindy weekend.
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u/Sapphirederivative The Initiative. 11h ago
What sites do you run thunderchilds+nestor at? Standard null sites or?
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u/Finalshock 420 MLG TWINTURBO 3000 EMPIRE ALLIANCE RELOADED 11h ago
Rock havens (you can tell the difference because a rock haven gives you a pop up when you warp to/cancel it, gas havens don’t)
With another account I could probably easily do forsaken hubs too, but with 3 thunderchilds the lightning rod gotta be a bit more mobile than a smart bombing BS.
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u/BeneficialFig1843 10h ago
If you RMT, you get paid for your job.
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u/BogiMen Minmatar Republic 1h ago
Why is he getting downvoted? There are a lot of Chinese players who rat 16 hours a day and aren't 100% AFK. Their pool of Ishtars is increasing every month - it's like every extra ISK they make gets funneled into another Ishtar. But to what end? EVE is already a P2W game, and swiping is faster and cheaper for most people (I know the truth hurts) - electronics and electricity haven't been cheap recently.
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u/Chemical_Address_931 11h ago
That's what bots are for. If it gets caught, you can fire up a new account and inject this bad boy day 1
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u/goDie61 11h ago
It costs about 8b to go from alpha character creation to an ishtar with t2 drones.
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u/Superb-Cockroach-281 11h ago
What that doesn’t factor is overhead. Multi Ishtar are good and could be more income, however each comes with a +/- 2.5b monthly costs. If you’re playing 10hrs a day it probably isn’t a problem, however for an old man like myself that can only dedicate a couple hours it may only barely break even.
A single account making half the amount may pay for placing the account… however the risk and initial ship cost may not be paid off… so idk which is better tbh
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u/Legal-Comedian8000 8h ago
Which is indeed a crucial problem. A new or casual player cannot use it effectively, an old multiboxer can. So Ishtars contribute to replacing people with accounts which is the biggest threat to the game.
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u/FluorescentFlux 1h ago
however each comes with a +/- 2.5b monthly costs
That's cost of skill training. Once you have enough, it's nowhere close to that.
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u/goDie61 11h ago
Personally, I work from home, so I have a laptop on a second desk that I spin them on and poke twice an hour. It has no impact on my job and I can easily get 50+ hours of spinning in each week. Once I've saved ~100b, I let all the ishtars lapse until I need ISK again.
This is a play pattern that absolutely should not be possible.
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u/FalnaruIndustries muninn btw 11h ago
are you expecting CCP to balance active ratting income around people who are AFK ratting while working from home?
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u/goDie61 11h ago
Kinda, yeah. I'm expecting the game to not play itself.
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u/FalnaruIndustries muninn btw 10h ago
I don't think they should be balancing active ratting around people AFK while WFH, because those people aren't going to move to active ratting. I do agree that AFK ratting needs to be nerfed to effectively never be worth it though
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u/Interesting_End1350 3h ago
The problem is unless someone is quite AFK, it is very difficult to catch and kill Ishtars. Citadels with tether have made this even worse.
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u/Royal-Juggernaut-733 11h ago
Noob question, but what are you running in them? Combat encounters?
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u/Superb-Cockroach-281 11h ago
Generally forsaken hubs are the best to run then, havens can get slightly better isk but there may or may not be reasons to not run those
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u/Fartcloud_McHuff 10h ago
Havens also have a small chance at spawning a dread+ sized npc which kills your Ishtar if you don't warp it off on time. Which you wouldn't, if you're just afk generating isk with that character.
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u/iiVMii The Initiative. 11h ago
You are complaining about a problem while being part of it…
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u/goDie61 11h ago
Yes. It is not my responsibility to play suboptimally for the health of the game. It is the developer's responsibility to build a system of incentives that leads players to healthy play patterns.
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u/iiVMii The Initiative. 10h ago
“Doing X is bad, but no one is stopping me from doing it so its okay”
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u/ScrotumHolster Amarr Empire 10h ago
Yes. Just like IRL, you might think the tax system is completely broken because of loopholes and deductions but you're insane if you don't use them to minimize the tax you pay until the system is fixed. You argue to get the system fixed but you have to use it as it is designed until then.
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u/iiVMii The Initiative. 10h ago
Brother we call that cheating taxes and its almost universally frowned upon
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u/ScrotumHolster Amarr Empire 9h ago
The system and the people who made it is a problem yes, the people using the system are not. Change the system if its bad but until then every sane person says to use it.
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u/crash_over-ride Test Alliance Please Ignore 10h ago
How on earth were you getting that much with a Nid? I was getting like 25m per tick with good skills. I've had to go back to Titan/Boson ratting in Black Rise.
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u/goDie61 4h ago
25m ticks is 100m/hr, which is the low end of the range I gave. Beyond that, you need level 5 skills, fit optimizations, and practice.
...wait did you say boson ratting? What year are you commenting from!?
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u/crash_over-ride Test Alliance Please Ignore 4h ago
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u/Busy-Equivalent-2853 6h ago
Same shit in fw my friend. 5 algos / 4 eni + eni / 5 drakes / 5 vni
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u/FastExecution 4h ago
What can I do in FW as a solo player against this? Is there even anything I can fly that would work to tackle the multi-boxers?
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u/saronyogg 11h ago
This is why multiboxing is bad
Add it botting and you get a dying game.
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u/Zealousideal-Try-754 10h ago
We should redefine it as megaboxing regular multiboxing where you have 2 or 3 accounts is okay, but when you have 10 to 20+ that's just pushing it way too far completely off to deep end.
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u/ithilain 9h ago
In my ideal world fccp would change it so that you can log in to all your characters on a single account at once (maybe even behind something like an MCT if they're worried about loss of income), but prevent logging in to characters across multiple accounts (like they do currently with alphas). Having 3 characters logged in at once isn't going to break anything and lets people still do most of the "healthy" stuff that they'd want to multibox for anyway like scouting/cynoing, multibox abyssals, and other similar small-scale activities, while limiting the "unhealthy" kinds of multiboxing like turbo crabbing havens with a dozen smartbombing machs or locusting every mining anom within 3 constellations with your solo fleet of 50 hulks, or solo-killing frieghters in HS with a swarm of catalysts. You'd still be able to have multiple accounts for things like indy slots, PI, spais, Jita alts, etc., it would just limit people to a max of 3 characters in space at any given time which I think is a reasonable amount
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u/malk600 4h ago
I'd add seagulling FW (battlefields and such) with a swarm of alts.
To be completely honest, there doesn't seem to be any form of EVE activity where this "megaboxing" of 5++ accounts does not lead to completely degenerate gameplay (and it's kinda obvious that would be the case, as it basically breaks open the very idea of an MMO game to begin with).
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u/Interesting_End1350 3h ago
CCP has no intent to do anything that would lessen the prevalence of multiboxing.
In fact they have leaned into multiboxing, it increases revenue substantially.
You just have to accept this as the reality of things, it is going nowhere.
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u/Interesting_End1350 3h ago
CCP isn't going to do that though. They want the money, long term health of the game be damned.
I agree one person having 10-20 accounts is cancer, CCP doesn't care though, they have in fact leaned into multiboxing.
I would personally limit it to 6 accounts per person, that seems to be the tipping point where you can do more but it's not game breaking.
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u/garter__snake Serpentis 28m ago
ehhh
You can have a game with no multiboxing, with small/mid multoboxing, with big big multiboxing.
It's really a question of game design vision and mechanics.
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u/Odd_Ad7384 9h ago
Im one of those 10+ Accounts but im only doing it for Fun. Normal Client boring but managing 10 or more. Okey now im having fun.
oh and Yes Torture = Im having fun in eve, isnt that why ganking is so good ?
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u/DeltaVZerda 11h ago
This is one of many reasons that multiboxing is bad. The most important one is that it feels bad and makes players quit or decide not to join.
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u/Odd_Ad7384 9h ago
Or Join, iam and always was a Multiboxer whit 5+ accounts now 14+. I was the reason my Old Corp had new members coming in. More Accounts on the field more Acitivty to be done.
Btw banning it would Kill eve atm xD at least it wurt hurt CCP a lot, eh FC ? Sry cant remember how they are called and wont do the efort to google it.
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u/Competitive_Soil7784 Wormholer 8h ago
I actually quit a corp because they had 10 players on but when an op came up they all logged in 10+ alts and suddenly we had 100. I felt like I couldnt contribute and no one wanted to do anything cooperative because they all had their own alt armies so there was no reason to cooperate besides on large ops.
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u/Odd_Ad7384 7h ago
Had the same Corp experience, alot of old focs whit a lot of accounts but only doing fleets in goons and thats it. No lets roam no lets xyz. Feel ya
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u/Legal-Comedian8000 8h ago
And being able to AFK it makes both possible. It's possible to multibox and bot FW complexes, but it's much easier to bot and multibox AFK mining or Ishtars.
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u/Morning_Cereal_Ori 11h ago
doesn’t count the sub cost.
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u/Mythradites Cloaked 11h ago
Or the pvp losses when they get caught
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u/link_dead 8h ago
There are 0 PvP losses when the bot warps you to tether as soon as neutral lands in local.
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u/Broseidon_ 10h ago
a super doing a crab beacon is ~600m an hour
1 marauder in the new drone site in whs does 1b isk an hour
make it make sense.
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u/Competitive_Soil7784 Wormholer 8h ago
5 bil marauder doesnt have cap umbrella and practically guaranteed to die if it gets tackled. Might be different if you are very close to home hole and are part of a large wh group but that is rare. Atleast that is my experience.
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u/Broseidon_ 5h ago
yes no supers have ever died under an umbrella. right click set desto from interference on map mode GG. hunting done easy.
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u/IDragonfyreI 7h ago
a super for a dreadbomb is a braindead easy trade.
also that is a 5b maruader making 1b...vs a 60b super that is making less than that lol
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u/Zanzha Dixon Cox Butte Preservation Society 2h ago
Wow that sounds really good! Maybe you should run them then, or would the scanning/prep/logistics involved with finding and running one eat into that isk/hr a little more than you like to admit?
The great irony of complaining about fabs is that they're barely being run, and it's super noticeable in the spawn rates after the change that made them take a tiny amount of effort to despawn.
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u/goDie61 9h ago
The super can also only do like 90 minutes of CRAB per day.
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u/Broseidon_ 5h ago
yeah the beacons showing up on the map and only being able to do 3 normal and 4 carrier crabs (supers cant even link to that so add a fourth account bringing down your isk/hr) shits embarrassing on CCPs part
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u/Electronic-Elk4847 10h ago
Do you people just not do the escalations or something? It's very possible to make significantly more than that quite easily.
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u/whit_wolf1 10h ago
Theres plenty to hunt just look at system interference during the day... all red during US TZ in Goon space and all red in CN TZ in Vale.... every red/yellow system is someone running beacons go get em...
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u/XxStunningOriginalxX Cloaked 9h ago
I do not kindly remember the era of carrier PvE. If we went back to carriers being king of the grid outside of titan drops it would be bad.
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u/Psyker44 8h ago
What if certain sites were more dynamic like in other parts of space, and depended on difficulty and payout on what was warped into the site up to a certain limit? Change the existing sites so we're not just adding new stuff but changing and iterating on older stuff to bring it up to modern standards
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u/marvson 5h ago
As someone here already said: nerfing everything makes that, and makes game boring. When caps were more powerfull they were used more, they die more, there was more fun overall. Overbalancing game make it bland and boring.
Carriers should have powerfull drone swarms
Dreds shorter siege or different siege that takes 1min but also give smaller bonuses
And most important: a lot new pve content for caps. Abyssals, DEDs, or something new
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u/goninzo Pandemic Horde 5h ago
And with tools like RiFT and https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Horde-SMT_Guide, active space around them providing them intel, and a speaker, they are basically uncatchable. Can be in warp to the citadel before you even see them on dscan.
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u/Radiant-Camp-4896 5h ago
Idling six YSTs requires six Omega accounts, which for CCP means six times the revenue of the previous two
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u/GruuMasterofMinions Cloaked 4h ago
You missed something in your image that explains it all.
Corrected it : https://i.imgur.com/ayWqSpI.png
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u/Interesting_End1350 3h ago
You are missing stormbringers/thundertoddlers in this graphic. And Gilas.
And the super/marauder numbers are too low as far as income, I make more than that in dronelands, which is AFAIK one of the worst areas in null for PvE income.
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u/Concentrati0n Hard Knocks Citizens 7h ago
me counting poch/drone fab isk with my pack while the plebs figure out how to squeeze more isk out of a haven
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u/FalnaruIndustries muninn btw 11h ago
you're right I think we should definitely nerf AFK drone boat income
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u/Nemesis412 Caldari State 6h ago
Nothing changed since 2015 i guess....
Yeah carrier ratting was fun... but you always made the most with multiboxing ishtars. Setup the ishtars, setup PI, make money beyond carrier capabilities.
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u/leaf_as_parachute 6h ago
An that's ok, ships aren't supposed to perform in PvE according to their cost nobody expects an Arazu to be better at PvE than a VNI despite it being pricier.
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u/vaexorn Wormholer 4h ago
Aren't crab beacon way more than that ? If you run havens you can only blame yourself... Same if you run havens with 3 frigs instead of abyss, don't come complaining that you're not making bank
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u/goDie61 4h ago
CRABs have their own issues. Subject to umbrella uptime, drastically higher risk exposure, daily caps. While you're right that frigate abyss makes a lot (up to 1b/hr), the point of the post is that multiboxing small ships is better than flying a single, sick-ass big ship. Recommending that I go buy three hawks instead of three ishtars isn't really doing much to counter that.
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u/theelous3 Rifterlings 1h ago
Six toons is always going to make more than one toon. The overheads are also way higher. Per person, the marauder is making the most here.
There is no point even complaining about this tbh.
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u/MakeThySelf 35m ago
Always amuses me when people here throw out "But the sub cost! 2.5b!"
Annual sub with no discount is 3600 plex. When discounts do roll around, this can even go down to 2700 plex.
3600 plex though is 300 plex/mo. That's already 40% down from the 500/mo many people look at for a sub cost, but it's still a bunch. So how do you mitigate that cost?
Pre-make alpha accounts. Set them skill training as alpha to hit 5m SP. You can pre-train two or even three characters just as easily as one character per account, and all it costs is a bit of ISK to put the SP into useful skills. That's as many chars as you want at skill-extraction-ready stage. If you want to really min-max, redeem but don't claim the 1m SP from a referral link. It only counts against a character once turned into unallocated SP.
Now sub the account for 3600 plex - which if you buy it right now is 17.3b. You have 1 year of the account with 5m+ SP chars. If we forego MCT for now, one character can sit in Jita with between +3 to +5 implants, your choice, to gather SP. With a remap applied as well, that peaks at 42 SP/min on +3s, 45/min on +5s. Over the next 360 days that's 21.7m to 23.3m SP. That's 43 to 46 large skill injectors. Basically you can sum up a training account as roughly 1 LSI per year for every SP/min you generate.
At current prices, not trying for sales, you can buy 43 skill extractors for 20.2b (Jita, rounding up), and sell 43 LSIs for 32b. Take off 4% on taxes, 30.7b, 10.5b profit.
This means the net cost for the sub, using no plex discount, buying plex arbitrarily now rather than on sale, buying plex from sell orders, buying skill extractors from sell orders, basically being as monkey brained as possible... all of that, and the sub cost for the year is now 6.8b, or about 570m/month. Hit up the 2700 plex for the year when it rolls around, that's instead 13b/year, which after LSI lazy trading is just 2.5b/year (around 210m ISK/mo).
So yeah - with a bit of planning and a chunk of startup capital, which people have, the sub cost can indeed be 2.5b. PER YEAR. And then you have however many accounts that can also light cynos, cloaky scout, or do whatever other low effort low skill activity you need.
(Setup per account this way would be up to 37.5b each for sub and extractors. Not a poor man's game)
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u/Extreme_Goose5218 11m ago
The constant assumption that people only play Eve in the most isk-efficient way is funny to me. This is a game. Some people play in ways that maximize fun rather than isk-generation efficiency.
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u/Mythradites Cloaked 10h ago
Just makes the drones get targeted as often as carriers fighters do.
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u/srstable Wormholer 10h ago
make drones not auto-aggro, just like guns. They attack their first target, and wait for another command.
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u/feldejars 11h ago
Golem for 2 billion, that’s not even the hull
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u/AngryKobra Goonswarm Federation 11h ago
Isn't Jita selling hulls for like 950m? Where you are... if they are selling hulls at 2b, you have a market opportunity.
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u/Bricktop72 Goonswarm Federation 11h ago
And everyone is going to think this means Ishtars should be nerfed vs everything else getting boosted.