EVE New Citizens Q&A

This is less true than it used to be; CCP recently did a bunch of changes which resulted in a huge jump in mineral prices and thus profitability of mining. However, you also mentioned -manufacturing-, which is not the same as mining. If you are intelligent about it and do your homework (read: math), manufacturing is one of the more profitable ventures in EVE.

However, as with everything, I would encourage you to do what you enjoy and not what makes the most ISK/hour.

Why the obsession with isk/hour? The thing is with skills the higher you train your skills for a particular career the more efficient you become with earning isk/hour. However if you get bored try something else. No reason why you have to stay with only one career. But it does take quite a long while to max out skills for any one career, long enough to get bored of that particular career long before your skills max out. So then try out something different you can always fall back and continue where you left off with your old career any time you want.

It seems you are working at two careers at the same time, industry and mining. It can work if you stay with it but odds are you will get bored of both before you get good at either one.

1.) Mining in Empire is the worst possible income in EVE and the most boring one. (And before people start to ***** about it, I tried it)

2.) You do need multiple accounts to net anything near a mission runner. But that also means you have to pay for multiple accounts each month.

3.) Null-sec mining nets you a higher income in ISK/hour then empire, but comes at a price: Prepare to PvP.

4.) ISK is a tool in EVE, like your ships are and your SP. Use it, why do people tend to carebear away to get huge amount of ISK and not doing anything with it. When you have ISK, just jump into any ship of choice and PvP

I think if you enjoy mining for now you should do it.

It is far more profitable to do it with friends because of the boosting etc. Alot less boring to because you can shoot the **** while your picken' at rocks. I've never payed much attention to what my isk per hour is I just make it when ever I can to replace or upgrade my ****.

Dont get too bent out of shape over the tiny details just do what you like in game and you will get more enjoyment out of it.

If you are just starting out, I would consider doing it this way.

Since you are Gallente, train up those drone skills. Drone skills are essential for miners, mission runners, everybody really. That goes double for Gallente.

Mining, making ammo and selling it is a pretty intelligent way to go about it.

Be sure to haul your ammo to a level 4 mission hub and sell the ammo there. Also, while you are there you might as well do the mission there. As a miner, in order to get 'perfect refine', you need to grind standings with a corporation that has a refiner in their station anyways. Security missions raise standings faster than courier missions, so even as a miner you have the best of both worlds.

Assuming you are doing your mining in a frigate, train up to a cruiser and do your mining in that. However, don't neglect your combat skills. The whole economy of EVE revolves around warfare, so even if you never intend to fight it helps to know what modules do to what ships, and what ammo is needed. Also, in high sec anyone can war dec your corporation for any reason. In Null sec they don't need a war dec or a reason. Miners are combat targets in Null sec, so even with no fighting skills it helps to be able to escape quickly.

You can use the same combat ship for mining and running combat missions, or even get one cruiser specifically for combat and one as a dedicated miner.

You can also mine in battlecruisers and battleships, and use them for missions or combat as well.

At this point, you should be well prepared to go into either mining/ manufacturing, or fighting/ mission running, and able to do all adequately.

Mining barges like retrievers and Hulks are mostly for dedicated miners. To use them is quite an investment not only in money, but also skillpoints and training. Also, because of things like Hulkageddon, you could lose your brand new 500 million ISK Hulk that it took a month and a half to train to a PvP 'Ganker' in a cheap destroyer if you don't understand combat and combat mechanics.

In EVE, you can make money doing just about anything, so just figure out what it is you really like to do best and make a career out of that. Really. Pirates can make a profit, so can soldiers.

PvP can be an ISK sink, but you can also make better money with Faction war missions than you can with regular high sec missions or mining. Also, if you join a PvP corporation, they often give you ships, modules and skillbooks for free. The advice and help of experienced players is useful too, and you can establish a network of trusted friends and customers.

Manufacturing makes good money, and so does station trading. You have to research your market though.

EVE gives you three alts. I would suggest training all three. Train one as a miner/ manufacturer, one as a fighter/ mission runner, and one as a hauler/ trader. These skill pairings seem to go together well. You will have to stop one to train the other, but it only takes three days to train a hauler.

Have your miner/ manufacturer make the ammo, contract it to your hauler/ trader, have your hauler/ trader bring it to your fighter/ mission runner. Have your fighter/ missioner contract the loot to your hauler/trader, who sells the loot and brings the useless junk back to your manufacturer to reprocess into minerals.

Keep your hauler/ trader in the NPC corp, so you can still move stuff around if your corporation gets war decced.

In fact, station trading is probably where you can make the most ISK/ hour, and you never have to leave the station. You need a large amount of investment cash to start off with though, and a thorough knowledge of EVE, so don't think you can pay for your plex before your trial runs out like this.

Station trading is about as boring as doing income tax, so it's good to have a PLAN what to do with all that money. Don't think you can sit in a station all day 'buying low and selling high' until you can finally afford to buy an 'Uber' Battleship, or Hulk or Freighter, or even buy an already skilled pilot (from character bazzar) to fly that battleship so that 'no one messes with you'. If you have no experience in combat, you will lose your ship.

Arguably, what makes the most ISK/ hour is scamming. It takes no skills, no equipment, and no money. Just dock up in a trade hub like say Jita, and say something like "Give me 10 million ISK and I will send you double back!" Apparently if you are patient, some people will fall for it.

Isk/hour matters in the context of what you're doing for fun. It's the metric that mathematically connects the various activities in Eve, not something with intrinsic value in itself.

So, basically, what are you using those isk for? If it's just to upgrade your mining ships, buy skills, etc to mine some more, then you don't in any way need to compete with mission-running isk rates. If you're planning to PvP a lot, perhaps you need to worry about it a bit more so you can minimize the time you spend mining versus the time you spend blowing things up.

If you viewed everything in terms of ISK/hour and called everything that doesn't make the maximum possible ISK/hour a waste of time, then a large majority of the players are silly sods wasting our lives away in EVE for not getting tech moons in null and then joining in the market mainpulation to become obscenely rich. That's a one - dimensional way of looking at gameplay, which ignores so many other possible factors when selecting a profession. When you consider what profession you wish to take, consider:

- What you enjoy doing
- How long and how hard are you able (or want to) focus on the game
- How much time investment you want to put in for training skills, reading up, and so forth
- How much do you like flying with a fleet, as opposed to going at it solo
- How well can you afford potential losses in your gameplay
- Your future goals in the game, and how well your profession relates to said goal

...And so much more. I'm not saying that you shouldn't take into account ISK/hour, mind - But do take the time to consider other factors that will affect your enjoyment of gameplay as well.

For instance, you are considering whether or not to have another account to do Orca boosting / hauling for your mining Hulk on your main. You should consider the pros:

- Sharply increased mining yield
- Convenience of having a specialized ship to carry the large amounts of ore you'll be mining
- Being able to train skills on two separate characters at the same time

As well as the cons:

- Hassle of having to manage two (or more) windows at the same time
- Having to pay for two separate accounts
- Long skill training times
- Large initial capital investment to obtain the ship hull, modules, probably additional implants, etc

The opportunity costs, maybe:

- Instead of training for an Orca, you could have trained for another max yield Hulk pilot, and gotten more yield overall from 2 Hulks instead of Hulk + Orca
- Instead of training for another Indy pilot, you could have trained a PvE pilot to do missions for variety
- Instead of training for another carebear pilot, you could have trained a PvP pilot and have some fun shooting at other pilots
- Instead of getting another account in the first place, you keep your focus/capital invested in your main, and have him advance at a faster rate, as well as saving your ISK/money for other things instead.

Same goes for deciding whether or not to take the plunge into null sec. Consider other potentially far more important factors other than just ISK/hour. Is getting into null sec sov wars my goal in the game? Can I handle the risk of always being vulnerable / having a large chunk of my assets at risk, all the time? Will my new corp have other demands of me, like having a requirement to hop into a combat ship and fleet up for fights?

So - It depends. Take two, have a good look at your options, consider factors that could directly affect your profitability (such as risk of loss from operating in dangerous areas), and even those that may not, but could affect whether you find your in - game time fun or a chore (such as having a montly quota of ore to mine/ ISK to contribute / Call To Arms to answer), and then only figure out what's best for you to do.

Also, I personally produced ammo at 10-20% profit margins above mineral sell costs with PE 4, so it bears reminding that general advice isn't as useful as one would think. Which is the beauty of a sandbox. Nothing's set in stone, you model your gameplay to suit whatever unique circumstances you find yourself faced with. Have fun!