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Invention worth it without a POS?
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Jakob Anedalle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2012-10-01 20:35:14 UTC
TL;DR: is it worth even training into the science/lab-ops realm without access to a POS?

So, I have an industrial alt that has started the march up from mining to manufacturing. I was planning on going to research and invention next, but our corp is small and I don’t have ready access to a POS. From what I’ve read and heard so far it sounds like doing much skill training into research is pretty pointless unless I have a plan to get to a POS. I already have some Research/Metallurgy/LabOps skill and some BPOs doing ME research in public slots now, but the wait times are testing my patience and if copying and invention are the same then maybe it’s not worth it. I figure I need to either launch into training to get 5s in the various Sciences for invention. I hear the Research Missions aren’t worth that much anymore, so that doesn’t sound like a route that would help bootstrap me more than spending that skill-time on mining skills and ships.


Trying out all the things to do here in Eve - it's quite a checklist. So I made a blog Jakob's Eve Checklist
Stigman Zuwadza
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#2 - 2012-10-01 20:49:34 UTC
Firstly I'd suggest to anyone beginning a venture into invention/manufacturing ...use NPC stations.

You will find a gajillion empty invention slots and the same almost goes for manufacturing slots. Have a good look around, you'll probably even find both invention and manufacturing slots in the same system.

As for Researching (and copying), get yourself a cloaky transport and use NPC stations in lowsec. You can often find stations with a couple of free slots and failing that stack up on a slot with a day or two in the que.

I know everyone talks about POS' when it comes to industrial stuff but you can begin your venture in an NPC corp to avoid wardecs and save yourself the hassle of POS shiz until you've found your groove.

Anyhows, good luck with your venture.

Fly safe. o7

It's broken and it's been broken for a long time and it'll be broken for some time to come.
Jakob Anedalle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2012-10-01 22:23:45 UTC
Thanks Stigman - I guess that means some more ship skills for that cloaky hauler should be on the training list.

Trying out all the things to do here in Eve - it's quite a checklist. So I made a blog Jakob's Eve Checklist
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#4 - 2012-10-01 22:55:44 UTC
BPO are small. A Covert Ops frigate has plenty of cargo (they are designed to carry moon probes, which are very large).

it is nearly impossible to lose a covert cloaked ship in lowsec, unless you are incredibly unlucky (jumping into a 100+ ship gate camp, and you find yourself under gate cloak right on top of a HIC - been there, done that, got lucky and got away), or incredibly stupid (going AFK and auto-piloting through lowsec... don't laugh because people die to this all the time).

A blockade runner is a great ship for industrialists though, as it allows you to quickly move stuff around. I actually recommend even non-industrialists train for one too. Not only are blockade runners fast, and have lots of cargo, but the moment you can take a 2 jump detour through lowsec and save 20 jumps, you'll be happy to have one.

When I was doing research, I headed out to NPC nulsec, specifically Curse. It was a dangerous trip, but a fun one (evading gate camps and major battles on gates), and I only ever lost a couple of very cheap mining crystal BPO.
Kusum Fawn
Perkone
Caldari State
#5 - 2012-10-02 01:37:05 UTC
Basically what every one has said. Figure out what it is you are doing and want to do with NPC station services and then move up to POS labs for copying. there are also services you can use (at your own risk) for copy or ME/PE research.

POS's are great, POS's are wonderful.

They are also a huge pain sometimes. wardec assets that have to be packed or protected, and the big one, fueled and chartered (if in 7.0 - 4.0 space) Faction towers have great fuel use (even better though in sov space) but are fabulously expensive now that they no longer drop.

Now that the barge changes have dropped the ice costs, its much easier to break even or profit with hisec research towers or lowsec moon mining with some research tacked on.

Its not possible to please all the people all the time, but it sure as hell is possible to Displease all the people, most of the time.
Zifrian
The Frog Pond
Ribbit.
#6 - 2012-10-02 01:44:37 UTC
I make all my industry/invention profit without a POS. You just need to figure it out. The one thing I doubt most figure out about POSs though is that they cost isk. They aren't free. Do they include that into their invention costs? I wonder if most people do.

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Astriela
Tax Cheaters
#7 - 2012-10-02 10:23:54 UTC
from personal experience:
- if you are going into invention, consider following:
a) initial investment is quite hefty - you will need BPO(s) - likely more then one and far more important you will need production mats - easily couple hundred mil for serious production job, so adding POS costs on top of that is not that much
b) you can do it without POS, but POS will cut you a lot of small painful annoyances - worthy refueling costs imo
- unless you plan on running half a dozen alts, massive production or something on really big scale you will never need anything larger then small POS and small POS eats about 100m of fuel per month - POS should be making you that much in a week (in perfect world much much quicker)
c) consider hassle of whole invention / manufacturing:
- you will never be able to sell all the T2 blueprints you make with invention for decent profit, so you have to make stuff yourself and sell it
- you will need to produce T2 stuff yourself
- you will need to haul whole lot of ore / minerals / mats all over the place
- you will have to bother with buy / sell orders, both for mats and for products
- invention is very click intensive
- finding free moon in decent location for your POS is much more pain then it sounds
- if you have POS, you can get wardecced, but chances are pretty slim unless you stop on someone's toe; there are some weird folks out there that will dump junk around your POS however (or it is just happening to me :))
- last but not least: higher investment does not necessary mean higher profit - it seems that T2 market is kinda random
Bugsy VanHalen
Society of lost Souls
#8 - 2012-10-02 14:29:12 UTC
Learn the ropes using slots in NPC stations.these generally have long que times. You can often find much shorter ques in backwater low sec stations. If you are willing to take the risk.

You will know when you are ready for your own POS as you get used to the mechanics the que times will become more and more frustrating.

When you do set up a POS, a small caldari in high sec can run 3 labs, more than enough to keep a couple characters worth of slots running. a small tower only needs 7200 blocks of fuel per month, Or 180 runs of a fuel block BPO(40 blocks per run). It is very easy to keep a small POS running, any defenses you anchor can be kept offline until you receive a war dec. My indy corp did not receive a single war dec with a small research POS anchored for over 2 years. high sec POS bashing is just too boring. It is generally only done to clear a moon if none are empty in a desired system.

Do not fear getting into your own POS, a small POS is not a big investment, and thus not a big loss if you do lose it. Do not rush into it though as you will need some experience in running research jobs before your profits will justify the cost of running a POS. With multiple characters using the facilities even a large research POS can pay for itself very quickly.

Personally I only kept my research POS up until I had researched all the BPO's I needed for my current manufacturing plan. Manufacturing slots are much easier to come by in high sec than research slots.
Velicitia
XS Tech
#9 - 2012-10-02 14:50:42 UTC
Kusum Fawn wrote:
Basically what every one has said. Figure out what it is you are doing and want to do with NPC station services and then move up to POS labs for copying. there are also services you can use (at your own risk) for copy or ME/PE research.

POS's are great, POS's are wonderful.

They are also a huge pain sometimes. wardec assets that have to be packed or protected, and the big one, fueled and chartered (if in 7.0 - 4.0 0.7 - 0.5 space) Faction towers have great fuel use (even better though in sov space) but are fabulously expensive now that they no longer drop.

Now that the barge changes have dropped the ice costs, its much easier to break even or profit with hisec research towers or lowsec moon mining with some research tacked on.



Fixed ... you only need charters in hisec (0.5+).


One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia
Jakob Anedalle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#10 - 2012-10-02 16:11:06 UTC
Thanks everyone, I appreciate all of the recommendations. I checked out my local Invention and Copying queues and they indeed are pretty short compared to the ME improvement queues that I'm waiting on now.

The big one that you all mentioned is "figuring out what to do" first, which is indeed a big one. My alt has run off ships from contracted BPCs for profit recently, which was cool but pretty much floored my reserves of self-mined ore. I'm sure everyone is looking for their own niche in the manufacturing line, so I won't ask anyone for recommendations there. I have also read the excellent "Profiting with T1 Manufacturing" thread, which I'm sure you're all familiar with. I was actually thinking of wanting to go big on manufacturing items since I don't play every day, so a multi-day run would be a better fit. I was surprised that a battlecruiser job runs in hours.

Several of you also mentioned the capital expenditure part, which of course gates so much else as well: max outstanding orders, ability to risk region-region trade runs with rare items, ability to go to larger ships and mine lowsec, etc. Those 20M ISK skillbooks make it hard to get the capital levels up. Another aspect of it is that if the alt cannot pay for PLEXing the account I'll probably spend the money to spin her into the same account Jakob is on, which will of course slow or halt training. I'm willing to pay one account ongoing, but not multiple.

Tough decisions there, but that's part of what I'm enjoying about EVE.

Trying out all the things to do here in Eve - it's quite a checklist. So I made a blog Jakob's Eve Checklist
Idris Helion
Doomheim
#11 - 2012-10-02 16:21:08 UTC
Kusum Fawn wrote:
POS's are great, POS's are wonderful.

They are also a huge pain sometimes. wardec assets that have to be packed or protected, and the big one, fueled and chartered (if in 7.0 - 4.0 space) Faction towers have great fuel use (even better though in sov space) but are fabulously expensive now that they no longer drop.


This.

I love having a high sec POS, but they're a logistics headache. Fuel costs can be burdensome (whether you make your own or buy it off the market), and it can be tough to find a good system to anchor in. Still, on balance, I think a POS is very worth it -- and not just for Mobile Labs, either. You can't count on manufacturing or invention slots to be open near where you live -- I live in a remote corner of high sec, and my closest station is always completely subscribed for weeks at a time. Much easier and cheaper to do it in my own assembly arrays. I also don't have to pay taxes or usage fees.

It's also not cheap to start up a POS. You need about a billion ISK to get one off the ground, along with sufficient faction standing to anchor in high sec space. That's a pretty big investment that may take some time to recoup.

Generally speaking, high sec POS's make sense only a certain level of industrial output. If you just need the occasional research slot or manufacturing job done, use NPC stations. If you make your living by researching or manufacturing, you need a POS.
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#12 - 2012-10-02 16:31:02 UTC
POS manufacturing, if you're serious about it, can be worthwhile.

But you have to be pulling in enough isk per hour on your manufacturing to cover your fuel costs.

That's around 3 million a day for a small tower. or 125k an hour. But that's entirely coverable. With a single assembly array. That 0.75 time modifier stacks up. If you're pulling in 100k isk/hr, 4 lines covers you. with an additional 2 lines getting a higher profit. With a massively underpopulated POS

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
Kusum Fawn
Perkone
Caldari State
#13 - 2012-10-03 15:47:58 UTC
Velicitia wrote:


Fixed ... you only need charters in hisec (0.5+).




when did they change the 4.0 space charter needs?

Its not possible to please all the people all the time, but it sure as hell is possible to Displease all the people, most of the time.
Shanara As
Psy Corp Ltd.
#14 - 2012-10-03 17:00:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Shanara As
wow. everytime i read into those indy threads i am just aware of how much I still dont know or just am too lazy to figure out.
the biggest hurdle for me right now to get really into it is the logistics of construction mats. self mining only goes so far.
spreading buy orders over several system and hauling all that stuff to the construction site is just a major hassle.

freigher all by myself ? possible ?

how do you do it ?

reserach on items, calculate needs, set up orders and wait ? then haul and start building ?

edit: and i have a pos (small, caldari) and I think its worth it, just beause its a great feeling in a sandbox game to "set your flag" somewhere. not many games really lets you do that kind of stuff. i love it, even if its costly.

"Gotta spend money to make money" "A fool talks, a wise man listens" "He who doesn´t wanna listen, talks the most"
Kusum Fawn
Perkone
Caldari State
#15 - 2012-10-03 17:11:13 UTC
lots of buy orders, specific locations or areas, large market buys and bunches of shipping, communication with wh or nullsec industralists for shipping and deliveries of materials

lots of things go into sucessful industry.

Its not possible to please all the people all the time, but it sure as hell is possible to Displease all the people, most of the time.
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#16 - 2012-10-03 17:40:14 UTC
If you can't make a profit manufacturing things at jita sell prices for the materials, then look at doing something else. (I'm not saying don't use buy orders. Just that you shouldn't use the buy price as your cost. as you could probably make a profit just selling the materials)

As for getting a freighter, it's handy. But there's always red frog for moving stuff between stations.

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter