Science & Industry

Do your homework, sit down and punch in the numbers and see. Some stuff is profitable, some isn't.

And, no, T2 BPOs aren't an issue in most cases. The only items where they make up the majority are very low traffic items anyways.

my industrial has essentially every invention/research skill to IV (or V .. for things like Research, Metallurgy, etc) or will soon.

Great...another "hand me the answer plox" thread.

No, invention is NOT profitable. Period

Anybody that says otherwise is an idiot and obviously does not do invention and is probably a holder of T2 BPO who is looking to have his competitors lose isk.

Yes.

Invention itself is very rarely profitable.

What can be profitable (if you do it right) is building T2 items from invented BPCs - thing is you usually need to make those BPCs yourself.

Note of caution - what was profitable yesterday is not always profitable tomorrow.

Never take a competitor's opinion at face value.

The best hint I can offer is to do your research and build a spreadsheet to track ALL of your input costs, account for your expected success rate, and check the competition's prices. Some things are profitable to invent and build, others may be profitable to invent OR build, others aren't worth looking at; and it'll all change over time as input costs, competition, and demand change.

T2 BPOs are rarely the cause when items are not profitable, eg. Command ships are generaly not profitable, but BPOs have nothing to do with it.

but nobody flys gallente, because they suck



oh wait... i'm gallente... ****


:P

OK, here comes the truth, just to troll the other inventors in here:

Invention is profitable if you invent and build the right things.
Don't bother with T2 ships, you will lose money and why people are still producing them and keep selling them below raw mineral value is beyond me.
Stick to the stuff that people frequently use, like ammo and modules. Regarding modules, you should favor those that are commonly used multiple times on a single ship- like weapons or weapon upgrades, just check your market interface and see what sells.
The rest depends on where you plan to sell your stuff. In deep highsec ppl will be more interested in modules for industrial ships or for typical PVE ships (Raven, I'm looking at you!).
Closer to low sec there is always a constant demand for smaller, gankier modules. (like our beloved 150 mm AC II, for example).
Next important thing for you is in order to keep it profitable, you should produce as many commodities needed for the T2 BPC yourself. You can get some via PI, others ("ship components" like nanomechanical microprocessors or graviton pulse generators) you can buy BPOs and research them very quickly to 100% material efficiency.
You still need to buy the moon mining materials like fullerides for example from the markets- it will cost you a fortune, but usually you can make about 50-150% profit regarding that investment.

Hope that helped.

Once you find some stuff you want to build, look at its build times of them. Yes you might get more profit per unit from one item but as said above it might take two days to build, and another might give you less profit per unit but you can build it in ten hours. Also building everything need for manufacture (T1 modules/ships, components, PI stuff) can increase your profit but it can sometimes mean it takes you longer to build said item so your turnover is slower, plus building the parts takes up slots which could mean you cant build as many of the T2 items at once.

Basically I'm trying to say "look at everything from every angle" and there is a lot to be said for simplicity over profit. Though if you are looking to min/max then yeah build everything yourself. Depending on my work schedule depended on whether I built everything or I bought from the market, sometimes I just didn't have the time or the patience.

This is probably about the only truthful statement in this thread.

I always love to point this out in all the "nerf T2 BPO" whine threads.

I dunno what the people in the blueprints channel are on...

I hadn't been playing Eve for the better part of 3 years when I started playing again 3 months ago. My total assets consisted of flet fitted Megathron, a tech 1 fitted mission Raven and around 12 million isk.

I decided to make money in industry and got about a 100mil starting capital from begging around. I focused exclusively on inventing and building from invented BPCs and now, 3 months later, I pay for 2 accounts with plexes, have a faction fitted Tengu that I do lowsec exploration with, a Freighter, both tech II haulers and about 2 billion isk tied up in market orders and components. Granted, about 500-700mil of this comes from grinding some missions and LP rewards, but the VAST majority of it is from just inventing and building stuff.

So ye, inventing is really, really not profitable. At all.