Science & Industry

Fuel blocks are not a good source of income compared to other industry unless you have a LOT of volume. If you can mass produce a ton of them, then they're okay, otherwise they have low margins.

What if I were to harvest all the mats?

Would you be able to elaborate, i understand first month will be used for setting up my colonies and etc, but would it be profitable after that?

I am extremely new to this game, and am just looking for some guidance. I am thinking about getting another character to setup more colonies, and do all the mining myself.

Any time frames for this strategy would be awesome.

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Resource Harvesting and Manufacturing are very different things. When you are resource harvesting (PI or ice mining) you are trading your time for stuff. Time is sitting in a mining barge mining, or clicking extractors and hauling.

Manufacturing requires you to get a bunch of stuff in a pile, click Go, and wait for it to turn into different stuff. Hopefully the new stuff is worth more than the old stuff.

In general, it takes many people doing resource harvesting (Ice mining and PI) to make enough raw materials to keep one manufacturer busy. In the time you are waiting for your stuff to come out of the oven, you can do a bit of resource harvesting, but you will never get enough. Realize you have to haul your finished goods to market anyway. You might as well haul raw materials the other way and be able to build more.

So most manufacturers eventually give up on harvesting and just buy all their materials from the market. Then they can use their time in game to do other fun things like shooting lasers at other players rather than shooting lasers at ice cubes in a belt.

to add to what others have said here,

no, it's not really that profitable at your stage in Eve life to do this. In case it's not really clear, fuel blocks are one of the things in Eve that require a kind of mixed set of skills, if you do it all yourself, or a lot of outlay, if you want to buy items off the market to make them with.

What I mean is, while your PI Skills would help you get some of the items required to make the fuel blocks, you also need decent mining skills to mine the ice yourself, or decent trade skills and a whole lot more isk, as has been mentioned.

Your best bet is to decide what you want to do immediately and what your final goal is. One bil isk a month is not a reasonable expectation out of the box, but it might be a good eventual, final goal.

I would personally suggest continue with your PI, if you're so inclined, making things that sell well, taking into account the fees you pay (especially POCO tax). Sell the products you're making on the market. Just learning what to make there, how to do it effeciently so you're not loosing a lot of money and where to sell the items in question will teach you a lot about how the Eve market system works. This is important because once you have a better idea how the market works, you'll be able to make more informed decisions as to what you want to make and how to go about it. It gives you better flexibility and helps you set more realistic goals.

If all the math is not for you, then you might not want to get into the manufacturing/trading side quite so much, but stick with the raw materials. Mine ice for sale instead. This can even be an intermediate goal for you, til you can get your own operation up and running.

The question really boils down to what do you enjoy doing and what do you call profit. That is, there are many ways to make money in Eve, but the definition of which is "better" is subjective. It's not just how much you make, but what you enjoy. For instance, I could make more money doing incursions, but I really enjoy manufacturing more. So, for me, that's a "better" source of income. Many people say that missions are better than mining, as well, for similar reasons; not everyone enjoys mining.

Just as a final note, if you do go ice mining, learn how to tank your ship and have a spare. Or join a corp that does ice mining and learn the ropes. Ice is pretty hotly contested and gone pretty quickly. Anyway, just my two isk, good luck with whatever you decide to do!

One other point... Ice changed about a year ago from a static resource to a more dynamic one. However, due to ample warning, people stockpiled ice.

I know for my Indy corp, we are still sitting on about a year's worth of fuel blocks. Others followed a similar route. This impacts prices because the demand is still low. Also, my corp Indy alt corp does PI and mining. So again, less demand because we supply ourselves, so in turn prices are low.

That said, don't abandon your PI... Robotics ans mechanical parts are in demand beyond just fuel blocks. For example, every T2 drone requires at least 1 robotic. So you may find making robotics, mechanical parts, and mining ore can net you the profit you want without going into fuel blocks.

The margins on Fuel Blocks vary from region to region and depending on how many people are working in your area. tbh, imo it isn't worth it to harvest the materials yourself. I buy off the market and make a healthy margin.

About half the materials cost is isotopes. So if you were to bother harvesting, I would recommend ice mining. Or you could make a deal with some ice miners to buy compressed ice and get it shipped to your location.

Go for high ROI items with more intensive labor behind it like drones, ammos, tech 2 modules and rigs. This will allow you to build capital quicker and hit higher volume items allowing quicker turnover. Also dont forget to research where you want to retail and train up your tradings skills to lower taxes and increase order visibility. Once you get a nice bit of capital you can look to focus on easy low margin high volume things such as fuel blocks. Don't forget to look into teams and manufacturing in different systems including using a POS.

The big thing to remember is success for a builder lies between max profit per slot for period of time or real life hours invested to create value over a period of time.