I've recently upgraded to advanced weapons and a better dropsuit and I've noticed I wasn't making any significant isk per match. When I checked my wallet it showed I was loosing isk per match. Currently it cost me 30k to fully restock my dropsuit, so if I die 5-6 per match i being to start loosing isk.

So how should I manage my isk? Should I drop to basic weapons and dropsuits to make more isk per match? Doing this, how can I be competitive during battle with basic gear? Is there some sort of optimum combination of modules/weapons/equipment/dropsuit/ that can maximise my isk gained during battle.

In order to keep earning ISK while using higher-tiered gear, you basically have to just stop dying. It sounds like a shitty thing to day, but if you experiment with the cheap/low-end gear until you find a role that suits you well, you can be more effective with advanced/prototype gear.

Having said that, playing with militia gear helps sometimes too. It may not be as glamorous or effective, but you can still help your teammates in a firefight while not spending ISK.

Alternatively, you could just swap out some of the more expensive gear on your suit for cheaper versions of it until you get a decent stockpile of money that you're comfortable spending.

Wait, how much ISK are you making per match? Usually I can easily get around 200k, so I don't see how you would have that issue.

If you have a dropsuit that costs $30k and you die 7 times, you've lost money.

I tend to stock my suits to 50 quantity. And only restock when it gets down to a couple. I also always switch to militia gear towards the end of a match if its a big lead one way or the other. I also run with five different setups, and swap between them all the time in every match. I have a logi, a scout (which I always start with for the mad dash), an assault, and two heavy variations for different situations. (most expensive suit is 150k, cheapest is 20k)

You also earn more ISK if you are using more paid gear, according to ccp anyway. It really seems to be random however. If I use my high end gear I do tend to always make around 250,000 (and upwards of 300,000 depending on well I do, or maybe its how good of gear the whole teams using also?) per match. If I switch out towards the end it usually drops down to around 200,000 per match. And if I use nothing but militia gear its always around 170,000 (which I haven't done in a long time).

I also never seem to be short on ISK. I am turning a profit (if you are looking at it like that). Then again I also tend to switch to militia gear if I am getting slaughter though too.

But this is also a great example of why we should be able to trade within our corp. We should be able to trade, gift and sell. I have so much damn gear from past suit experiments and loot from matches, that I will never, ever use. I also have a quite the stock pile of ISk (yes I am also donating to the corp). It would be nice if I could give these guns and suits I will never use to people who actually do. Or donate a million ISK to someone like mjk1 who could use that to get back up into the black.

@thedigitalistic: Well I assumed "fully restock" meant more than just one suit. But I guess he meant restock his fitting, including weapons and such.

I am just going to roll with militia gear for a while until I stop dying lol, but the problem with that is militia gear has lower meta level therefore you get less sp per match :(

@mjk1: Find a roll that you are good at or a squad needs, and stick to that. It will help you get earn more while dying less. Also try to always squad up, and stick with your guys. You will die a lot less if you are in a group and you are supporting each other. When you run off on your own is when you tend to die more. Do this for a while and your ISK should store up nicely over 10 matches.

Actually - and I have to double-check this when the servers come back online - I think I can transfer Corp funds to members. So, if you send me an EVEmail with the amount you deposited, the time and who to transfer it to, I can move ISK around like that. I'll drop another comment here once I've made sure.

From what I remember from Fanfest this year, the way CCP has it set-up is that you're supposed to be losing ISK when using the higher-end gear. Then, as you wallet dwindles, you switch to lower-end, Militia gear to fatten it back up again. So there's a real ebb and flow to it. As @thedigitalistic mentioned, by simply being better, you avoid wasting your funds.

I guess it becomes a balancing act that's part of the game: "Can you take this battle easily with just Militia gear and, in turn, save more ISK? Will the increase in power from this Prototype gear help turn the tide in this match enough so that you're not losing money?"

I really don't mean to open a whole can of worms here, but now that I've played both games I'm genuinely curious about something.

Part of the reason as I understand, why Aurum was accepted into EVE, is that it's for purely cosmetic items. In fact I've bought Aurum tokens with ISK, which I had to stumble over because surprise, the Aurum menu is missing a "View Market Details" button. >_< They want the $5. Ok, sure.

That's not the case in DUST. The PSN store is offering me all sorts of opportunities to never worry about feeling underpowered. Is that one of the reasons why vets are upset about it? It's another push to supplant ISK with a microtransaction currency?

Maybe the more on-topic question is: will the DUST market mature to a point where it's possible to live on ISK by trading, or is it forever a closed system you can buy your way into? When can I send ISK from my EVE character to my DUST character, considering they are in the same corp? :p

I don't get that impression at all. Actually, I think CCP has done a pretty decent job of avoiding the "pay to win" issue. Guns you can buy with AUR are mid-tier weapons with low-tier requirements, and they still run out of copies if you die. No high-tier blueprints or AUR prototype guns/suits are even offered (so the best gear can only be bought with ISK). Skill point boosters are still kept in check by weekly caps or high requirements.

In short, I absolutely feel like I can survive on ISK without issue, and (with the exception of the $20 merc pack) haven't bought a thing off the AUR store. Don't plan to, don't feel like I need it.

As for sharing ISK across EVE and DUST, CCP's been extremely (almost overly) sensitive to anything that might unbalance the EVE market. I imagine that valve will slowly be turned on over time.

Yeah, what @burningstickman said. I wasted money buying some AUR along side the Vet pack that I bought. So I ended up with a bunch of AUR. Which let me play around with all sorts of gear with a low level character. But as I leveled up my skills, the things I was buying with AUR was replaced by better items bought with my ISK. At first I was under the impression I was going to need to have AUR to buy high level gear to survive. Turns out it was a waste of money. Well, not entirely. I did get to play around with a bunch of stuff. And got to use some mid level gear out of the gates. Which also let me save up my ISK.

The only thing my AUR is good for is to buy boosters to help speed up the SP gain. Other than that, there really is no point in having AUR.

^ What they said.

Now that I've finally unlocked a level 3 dropsuit, I now fully understand how someone might be having trouble with ISK management.

That shit gets rather expensive!

Sorry that it took me a few day, I was just able to get on right now and check. I can confirm that, via the members list under the Corporation tab, there is a Give Money option that will allow a director to transfer funds to a character within the corp from the corp wallet.

So, if you need to send funds to another member or an alt in corp, just donate the exact amount to the corp wallet with a note of the character name you want it transferred to, and send me an in-game EVEmail with a note to move the money, to which character and what date and time you made the deposit so I can verify it.

Hope this helps out.