Science & Industry

I'm interested in finding out how industrial focused corporations set up their operation.

I don't know much about manufacturing and the other elements that surround it. But from what I've seen, it looks as if there aren't many opportunities nor reasons for industrial characters to network with each other nor patronize one another. Instead, it appears that one high SP manufacturer can do everything they need themselves, besides the mining and generation of other basic materials, and they would not find any practical advantage in splitting their operation with other players. When I've spoken to industrialists in my alliance, they haven't been able to name situations where a younger or less specialized player could profitably help them.

So when I consider that situation, it makes me wonder how industrial corporations are set up. How do they conceive and arrange corp-wide industry? If an indy player's interest was purely in getting the most out of their industrial activities, why would join an indy corporation? And if there are instances of fruitful teamwork to be had(besides mining, P1, etc), where is it? How is the ISK handled, and how is corp-member incentive granted?

In other words, how do you fruitfully run a corp like a corp?

Thanks, all!

The short answer is that you are right. A solo player (potentially with the help of alts) can run any industrial process by themselves. Being in a corporation brings almost no additional benefits and only introduces risks.

The long answer is that there are a few niche markets where this is beneficial. Mostly you're looking at areas where industry is intertwined with another activity: moon mining and reactions (which requires the support of combat fleets), boosters or polymer reactions (which need inputs that are not easily sourced in Jita and easy to obtain from people mining them on the spot), or capital and especially supercapital production which needs sovereignty and a fat logistical backbone. Either way you're not benefiting from teaming up with other industrialists, but with people who can help you out in other areas.

Contrary to what some people here are saying, there are ways that corporation can benefit from combined efforts. One of these is the ability to run considerably more queues for production. Another is the ability to share BPOs. Like in real life manufacturing, the reason for a single company to have fewer larger factories is reduced overheads. BPOs can cost a lot of isk, so 5 people buying 1 each that they may use 20% of the time is 5x the overhead of a group of 5 people buying 1 and splitting it between them.

The other is specialism. Some people enjoy mining, or hauling (or a combination). These people can collect resources and ship product out to markets. Some people enjoy the spreadsheet side of it, the planning, the strategist, and the prediction of market trends. some enjoy the raw marketing, how to squeeze profit out of a product and get the best value for their income. Most of us can do all of these things, but few of us excel at all of them. A corp with a group of people who decide where to buy and sell, and for how much, with a 2nd group of people deciding what should get built and how many not to flood the market, then a 3rd group of people shipping items and bringing in raw product, with all 3 groups using their queues would do far far far better than a guy with a bunch of alts, as they would be able to dedicate their time to their chosen trade, so each piece would be done to perfection, and you could get more overall done. I often run into sheer time barriers where I can't plan, buy/sell, manufacture and haul the volume of items I need to to maximise profit levels, and if I had double my time, I could easily double my profit.

The issues that arise with all this though are trust. BPOs can be locked down, so they can be used, but not taken, built the same cannot be done for materials. In order to use materials from a corp hangar, the player must be able to access the hanger, thus could just take the materials and run.
The permission system in EVE is pretty archaic with no real way of managing people properly. Essentially you either have to decide to trust someone with all of an aspect, or not to trust them at all with it. There's no middle ground. I can;t say "well you can produce goods from this hangar, but you can't take from it", or "you can sell these items, but only from the corp hanger with profits and fees going to the corp, and only within these set % of basevalue margins".

If however you have a group of people you can 100% trust, you could build a good corp as long as you had a well defined structure, well defined roles, dedicated members and a whole lot of capital.

EDIT: And it sounds like what you are missing is a strategic planner. You need someone to decide in advance what items need to be built and how many, with predictions on profitability, then they need to stay ahead of your manufacturers, queuing up workloads, but not too far ahead.

BPO sharing is one, definitely. I have also known small groups of people to do capital or supercapital construction together. Corps are needed for pos stuff, often a single player even with alts cannot fully utilize all the research slots you can get out of a hisec pos, in which case other players use them too and help pay for fuel if they make significant use of it. When you have free research slots, its also not unusual to have other characters do free research or copying on corp BPOs.

Lowsec reaction towers are a fairly scalable business that involves lots of work and startup capital. It wouldn't be unusual to have a partner or multiple partners help with hauling, placing buy orders, moving jump freighters, fueling, etc.

Most t1 production can be done as a solo activity entirely in hisec, and much of the work is simply figuring out what to make. Even with ship production the primary bottleneck is getting a source of cheap minerals, so its not very conducive to collaboration.

I agree with Lucas Kell. Small example: I hate hauling. A dude in my alliance makes POS fuel locally. Trust issues are introduced when a delivery at my POS can't be done by an official contract. He delivers, I pay ISK. I see this no different from the pizza delivery guy, hardly an obstacle in him being paid by someone genuinely happy with the service. Likewise, I sell off raw PI materials and help lower POCO tax in the area. We each have our specializations and benefit from what the other is doing. Jolly co-operation.

There are other ways to make things work. Blueprint copies for example. Alliance- or corp wide contracts. While the mechancs are indeed quite archaic, there are many ways around them. That materials/hanger problem you pointed out? You can still drag items into a hanger to which you have no 'take' or 'query' access, you just can't take anything out anymore. A trusted party eventually sets the job and outputs into a hanger to which only the trusted group has access. Not perfect, but a useable workaround. We use this system for incidental POS fuel manufacture and T1 PVP rigs.

In order for this to work your corp members need to trust this group of manufacturers to put their donated items to good use, and not to abuse their access to hangers and wallets for their own gain. A sound plan thats well communicated works better then just selling things to bump the corp wallet. Bump it for what? Even if the intent is to sell off an end product, the financial gains should reward every contributor in some way. If you can keep transparent about that you'll keep people more motivated to keep the wheels of your operation turning.

I ran a corporation back in the day with a sizeable group of industrial-minded members, and the trick is to involve everyone in a larger vision. Members will outgrow the vision and move on, but younger players will thrive learning how all the pieces fit together. It is possible to mitigate risk by locking down BPOs and limiting access to material stores to just a few members. You can't discount the fact that a lot of players just enjoy the social aspect of group mining, and if you kick back proceeds of the group's success in tangible ways that exceed the ability of any one individual, and if you make it fun, they're not going to go rogue for 80mil an hour if they're having fun for 75.