Science & Industry

Nah, there's a time and a place for BPOs. I'm around the 3B ISK mark and I've just started making them, but only for small items with prints <30M to make (150k/hour research fee assumed). I'm still getting enough turnover on my assets that even a cruiser BPO would require millions in profit per cruiser to offer an economic profit. Later, when I'm getting less turnover, that value will decrease by quite a lot.

It's too bad you can't rent BPOs without collateral...

My point is that if you have a lot of capital invested in making a particular item you're stuck making that particular item and you lose flexibility and you also lose working capital. It's true that BPOs do not depreciate, but neither do they appreciate so they have an opportunity cost associated with them equal to your daily turnover% multiplied by the value of the blueprint, per day. At the beginning you'll have a high daily turnover% so BPOs don't make much sense, and researching ME in public slots is suboptimal, to say the least. Increase your assets enough that a small POS is worthwhile due to the enhanced production speed and then you also have access to fast ME, PE and copy slots with no wait (and you'll probably grow fast enough that this happens before you get ME time in a public slot).

Edit: okay, I was way off on the cost of cruiser BPOs. Much more reasonable.

One thing that I feel a lot of people overlook sometimes is the actual demand for the items you make. For example, in a perfect world I could make 8 million isk/hour making Capital Nuclear Reactors, but the fact of the matter is that nobody wants Capital Nuclear Reactors. I'm very picky about what I make, let alone buy a BPO for. Generally, I like to make sure that the prices are fairly stable over a three month period as well as being in constant demand. The drawback to making an item in constant demand however is the fact that generally the more stable items are stable because there are dozens of people making that same item, meaning profit margins are slim.

These are tons of cheap BPO's (<15M isk), quite fast to research, allowing you to make large profits.
However you will have to go looking for them by yourselft, that is the fun part

I am not talking about mods BPO.

When I said <15M, it means from 200k isk to 15M.
Do not focus on the 15M only.

Anyway you are right on one point : researching ME is quite difficult in HS.
However some BPO's can be profitable without any research.

As I said : take the time to find them and do your homework

Here is the list of T1 stuff you can produce with nice profit (you need to check for competition in specific region):

1.Ammo - focus on L laser crystals, all ammo of XL size (sell in hubs) and mining crystals (sell where miners mine a lot)
Smaller ammo miners produce to convert part of their mining supply to dirty cheap ammo so they can sell more minerals overall.
Mining crystal use only nocxium but are very big per unit. So its good to bring or buy locally nocxium and use BPOs/BPCs to manufacture on site near system where miners are.

2.Capital modules (XL guns, XL reps/boosters..)
Go very well and are quite profitable, but each type is good for some period then you should switch to other type when price of the first one drops lower.

3. Drones - fighters, fighter bombers, sentry and EC-XXX.
These drones are used and lost a lot as there is high skill req for T2 version or there is no T2 version like EWAR/fighter drones.

4. POS modules
Don't require ME research on BPO but some PE like 4 or more is nice for faster production.
Use PI mats from market and produce this stuff.

5. POS fuel blocks

6. Mobile warp disruption bubbles

7. Bomb launcher + bombs

Some of the researched BPOs for these things I have extra sets from 0.0 when we disbanded so drop me a mail if you need them.

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I would recommend that people fresh to manufacturing avoid Tech 1 ship production.
There are few issues/details about ship production.

1.Small volume can be produced per day per production line
Battle ships (BS) - 6 per day.
Cruiser (C) - 9 per day.
Frigates (F) - 18 per day.
(x1.25 with researched P.E.)

2.BPO prices -> use BPC to test water
For anything bigger then frigate use researched BPCs (10run researched copies for BS cost 10mil or less so that's <1mil extra to count in per battleship). Only when you have production going for some time and specific ship sells well you should invest in BPO and get it researched.

3.Materials
Biggest problem is material supply. Even for cheapest BS we are talking about 30mil of Tritanium, 7mil of pyerite, 2mil of Mexalon, 500k of isogen, 200k of nocx, 30k of zydrine and 10k of megacyte per day per production line (that is 400000m3) AND that climbs to 3x the amount for the best BS. So check if you can buy that locally without raising prices on the local market to much or you can transport but it will cost you.
On the other side getting materials for frigates is easy (for everyone) and they are sold everywhere for small profit and if you count in mentioned fixed production limit of 22pcs per day per production line there are better ways to use that production line.

4.Manufacturing location <-> sale location
Second problem is production location. Good station with enough minerals in vicinity attracts manufacturers so finding good station with enough free production lines is hard because you still want to be relatively close to sale points. Ships are quite big to transport so best solution would be place with free slots, lots of minerals and lots of buyers... I wish you good luck.

Thank you all for your advice, especially Emma Royd for the hook-up with Isk per Hour tool. To admit I already have ammo bpo's all trained to 100 ME 20 PE.....which is overkill but I have OCD...so please don't yell so loudly . I also do some other smaller things..as well.....well i will take my 2 bill in capital and start the research. Thanks.