Science & Industry

Hello o/.

TL:DR MODE: I'm basicly looking for help/advice in all aspects of the Industrial side of Eve Online. If you would like to discuss things in a more accurate nature, or just have something to say to me, hit me up in game via in game mail or conversation!

I have played this game for an incredibly long time without so much as batting an eyelid towards industry or thinking "Hey, where do all these Ships come from?". I've decided I want to change this. It's all a little bit daunting and quite frankly why would I waste such a good resource as the Eve-O forum goers when they have done this all before and, have, at one point, been in my position.

Story time over, I have some questions that I would love any input/expertise on:

Planetary Interation
- Is it a very viable way of making semi-passive ISK?
- Is it better to be using a tiered method of production? (aka extract and make tier1 on a planet and then combine them at a pure production planet)
- Does cross system PI take too much effort? I'm struggling to make do with the poor selection of systems I have nearby.
- Is there only really a profit worthwhile in the higher tiers of the production or can some raw materials be worth it?

Mining
- I have access to pretty secure Low-Sec and I am incredibly careful and can mine freely and safely here. Should I? I understand that most empire systems probably have a lack of Veldspar. (The Low-Sec I have access to is Jaspet and Hemophite)

Blueprint/Construction
- If its the path I choose to take, is it completely worthwhile using my own POS to have easier access to some free research lines? (as it looks like most of empire is locked out for atl east 10day queues)
- Start small? Should I be looking at cruiser level until I am more competent in turning a productive profit?

Invention
- Is this viable? I understand that it is largely chance based but can someone with Lvl4 skills still turn a profit either selling the T2 BPCs (mainly consisting in ships) and/or producing the T2 Ships?
- Are decryptors (or what ever the modifiers are called) necessary or optional for bigger returns?

Moon Mining
- Is this even worth looking at? I imagine by now any moon worth a scratch has a list of people waiting for it to become free so they can stick their POS on it.

Thank you so much in advance for anyone who contributes.
o/ Lady.

1) PI. The fastest way to get into making ISK via production is Planetary Interaction. You can train the crucial skills to level 4 in 7-10 days. Training level 5 in anything is fairly pointless. Once you get 5 colonies going with one character, you can train both alts on your account to expand your activities. Alts are great for PI because they need hardly any skills but the PI skills themselves, all they really need is a hauler, a bestower will do if you aren't constantly harrassed by PvP. You may even consider only doing PI with alts, leaving your main character free to travel wherever without worrying about visiting your PI colonies periodically.

PI will take some figuring out, it isn't as simple as manufacturing. You have to figure out how to set up the colonies, link the buildings together, experiment and optimize. If you enjoy working things out, you may find this fun, but if you simply want no-effort ISK you may find it annoyingly tedious. I estimate about 50% of players who experiment with PI give it up before figuring out how to make ISK at it. Market analysis is crucial, you need to find items that sell reasonably quickly for decent prices, you can't just make anything the first planet you run across is capable of.

How much PI makes is highly variable, partly depending how much time you spend at it, partly where you do it, and partly depending how well thought out your PI production chain is. I make about 300 million a month on PI with 21 highsec colonies. You can certainly make more in low/nullsec where draw rates are higher. My system is optimized for minimal effort, I spend around 3 hours a week doing PI. Even in highsec I could make probably double that if I was willing to spend the time tweaking my colonies every day.


2) Mining. Steady ISK can be made mining, but it is by no means passive income. Serious mining takes much more skill training than PI. ISK per hour is rather poor, you can make several times as much in PVE such as level 4 missions or nullsec ratting or wormhole Sleeper sites. My estimate is that if you have played eve for an "incredibly long time" and have not yet tried mining, you will probably find it tedious and unlucrative.

One comment I want to make: veldspar may be rare in some empire areas but not all. Veldspar is quite common in Amarr space. I suspect it can be found in Minmatar space as well. However, carebear types who enjoy mining tend to congregate in Caldari and Gallente space, so the mining pickings there are thinner.


3) Manufacturing. The bottleneck in manufacturing tends to be number of manufacturing slots, which varies from 1-11 per character depending on skills. The usual measure for manufacturing profitablilty is ISK per hour per slot, this is passive income in that once the jobs are started you can do something else, even log off, and they keep running. However be aware that manufacturing does take a lot of time identifying high ISK per hour items, gathering raw materials, hauling goods to market, and updating market orders.

Tech 1 manufacturing takes relatively little training, and tends to be the starting point for many starting industrialists. However, for exactly that reason, profit margins are thin. Careful market research can identify some items with good isk per hour rates, but almost all items that make good isk require you buy an expensive blueprint, and you will need to research it before it can be used. As an established player, the high entry cost of purchasing useful blueprints may be less of an obstacle to you than many younger players.

Tech 2 manufacturing, in my opinion, is where the real ISK lies. It does take considerably more skill training than tech 1. If you use invented blueprints, the entry cost is quite low, many useful blueprints for T2 production cost less than 1 million isk, and they need no research. This allows you to respond quickly to market swings. Once you identify an item with good profit margin you can buy BPOs, run copies, invent T2 BPCs, manufacture the goods, and have them on the market in 2-3 days. And when the market swings back you just tuck the BPOs away, no hassle trying to resell them because they cost you hardly anything in the first place. I expect to make 3-4 billion ISK this month in T2 manufacturing. I do, however, spend most of my playtime at it, maybe 20 hours a week.

Tech 3 manufacturing I am pretty ignorant of; I have not experimented with it yet. However, the limited cost analysis I have done suggests it is less profitable than T2, probably due to the limited number of T3 items in the market.


4) Invention. Do not be drawn into the notion you can make money inventing and selling T2 BPCs. It doesn't work that way. Serious T2 producers invent their own T2 BPCs, this is a lot less hassle than trying to get BPCs from another player. However, if you do T2 production you will have to do invention. The bottleneck in invention is lab copy slots, which have long wait times in nearly every station in highsec. For this reason most T2 industrialists operate a POS to run labs to get the copy slots. I have had some success finding unused copy slots in lowsec stations, but lowsec is of course much riskier than highsec.


5) Blueprints. There is money to be made researching BPOs and either reselling them after research or selling copies or both. However, you will find slots for ME research (much more crucial than PE research) hard to find in highsec. If you want to make ISK as a bluprint seller you will probably want a lab POS. You can sometimes find unused ME slots in lowsec stations, but using them is almost insanely risky. The sort of blueprints you would want to research for resale are invariably going to be expensive, much more so than most blueprints you would copy for invention.

PI is a wonderful source of passive income and can help a budding industrialist get some crucial early cashflow to fund larger activities.

While doing PI in high sec is profitable, with the declining prices in PI goods, the 10% taxes will start eating a larger and larger portion of your profits. The real money to be made from PI comes from having access to a low/no tax POCO in low/null/WH space.

Regardless if you do high or low sec PI, do your homework first. Not all PI goods are created equal and some are demanded more than others.