Most of you have seen the video I put up featuring my lovely other half who, hating the fact I spend so much time on this game, still agreed to voice over the video. But I only ever put it together as a quick “here’s what it can do”. It doesn’t exactly tell you everything that you can do so I’m going to be putting up a series of how-tos to help everyone get a handle on the various features of the site and see how they can help you in your day to day operations.

This first blog is going to focus on Material Reports

Background

I wanted to see how much ore i was producing over a period of time and keep track of what I was making. The problem with the spread sheet method was that it takes too long to fill in. Having to record the ore first then what I refined it into. Then manually check up prices to find out values…. All of this takes a long time.

I needed a method that would let me input the ore I had then tell me what it refines into and how much it’s worth without all the hassle and extra admin.

Usage

Select a refine level

If a corporate group has been registered you will have a 3rd option to create a Material Buying program report but more on that later

If a corporate group has been registered you will have a 3rd option to create a Material Buying program report but more on that later Select the character to register the report to (Defaults to the character you registered with on the site)

Select an input method (manual, asset, fleetlog or clipboard)

After submitting the report, it will work out what minerals you’ll end up based on the selected refine rate and also the value of those minerals displayed in a preview screen. You can edit the report or save it from this screen.

Material reports save the current price of the items so if you view the report later on say after another mineral spike/crash it always displays the same price allowing you to keep track of your historical progress.

Reports can be created as stand alone records for your own book keeping or as a method of showing participation on corporate projects (as well as your own projects). in the project view, select the Assigned Resources tab. At the bottom you will see the Material Reports section. Add the material report in the usual method. The only difference between stand alone reports and project reports is that the project reports have a limit on how much you can add, that being worked out from the project material requirements.

If your corp runs programs rewarding members for participation on projects like we used to then this is the perfect method to begin but more on that in the project post I’ll put up soon.

A note on the fleetlog feature, to get the most out of it make sure that you set your characters up with roles (hauler, miner etc) as this feature checks which toons you’ve set to do what. The wizard will first ask you for the type of mining op, the active members in the fleet and (if you selected that particular option) the hauler characters. Doing some clever mathematics it compares waht the haulers hauled and what the miners mined giving (what I hope) is a fairly accurate result of what was mined. At least it did when I wrote it then CCP detracted the lootlog feature so I changed the appearance then they added it back in again and I’ve not gotten back round to tweaking it yet. But be sure that it will be tweaked soon. Soon being calculated by the amount of nag posts I get to fix it lol.

Material Buying Program (MBP)

Most corps these days have some form or corporation purchasing program to buy base materials from members. Nearly all of them use contracts in some fashion or other. W-Space corps or those in deep nullsec many jumps away from a station may have some method set up with corporate hangars and tabs for members. We soon discovered in DRK that the material report feature I’d written could be adapted to help aid this process. Our own program focused on allowing the miners to get out on the field and mine as much as they wanted while corporation handled all the logistics of refining and hauling to trade hubs for a small % of the gross which would go into running the POS towers, ship replacements etc.

Usage

The administrator can set up roles in the Corporation Group administration page. the “Project” role will unlock project management features and access to the corporate MBP control panel under material reports.

Also within the CG page is the ability to configure “Tax” rates. This is how much the corp takes of the refined minerals. Before I go on, let me explain the math behind deductions.

The site first calculates what the ore will refine into based on the refine rate you’ve set in the administration panel or if the material being sold is PI or already refined minerals it ignores this step and moves onto corporate takings. This is calculated quantity is considered the “gross” From this is deducted the corporation’s takings giving the net result which is what the miners “net” pay out will be.

In the Corporation Group administration page are 2 values :

Material Purchase Tax Default Material Refine

The 1st option is how much the corporation takes (eg you might buy materials from members at -10% jita in which case put 10 in this box)

The second is the default refine rate that you have available to you. those of you with high NPC standings may have 0% refine tax in which case put 0%, or if you’re a renter with a fairly ruthless overlord taking 10% or more, you can set these figures in here.

Just remember that the reports that your members see have both these figures on display to them. so if they know you have 0% refine at an NPC station but you set your NPC refine at 5% and still take 10% they’re going to know your fleecing them for an extra 5%. how you do things is entirely up to you, but be warned that I’ve written these features to be fair and open to all parties so please be fair in how you purchase your materials.

So a corporation member wants to sell to corp. you’ve configured your tax and refine rates, everything is set to go.

For the sake of argument lets pretend we’re working from a station. Your members have their ore available in the station to contract to you.

They first input their ore through various means.

the preview page contains the Gross and Net value.

They copy the net value and save the report

After beginning the create contract wizard at the “I will receive” box they paste the value

They submit the contract.

Their report will appear in the Outstanding section under Material reports (only accessible to Admins and Project managers)

On the next wallet API update the site will attempt to match MBP requests to contracts matching the same value and item quantities so you’ll know if things have been done correctly.

In the Outstanding list, contract IDs will be displayed if the site has matched them to reports so if you’re in the IGB simply click that contract ID to open it up and accept it. Then click the green + icon to accept it. The eventual outcome will be to make your life a whole lot easier to pay your miners promptly and efficiently leaving you more time to get on and do other things.

Now if you’re without a handy station, say stuck in some C4 wormhole deep in the bowels of W space you can’t readily create contracts so some of the automated features won’t help out so much here. I will be looking in the future to adding some form of asset corp hangar validation but that’s going to be some point in the future. You can still get your members to create reports which you can manually check against the hangar contents.