Science & Industry

Build things.

That helps, I've just always been overwhelmed my manufacturing. I'm going to sound completely crazy when I say this (I know I'm in good company though), that the math for it all is actually fun, but the issue has always been pinpointing exactly what I want to manufacture and whether its moving properly in my region, I'd hate to consume all my ores to make something, then it turns out I can't move as much as I manufactured and I lose way more money than I put into it.

I guess you can't make a cake without breaking some eggs ;)

I have to take a risk with my investments eventually if I hope to increase my profits. The system myself and my brother looked into initially was buying rat-parts and building rigs and I'm honestly really considering that still at this point, but I'll be checking out the program and using it to determine a final step for vertical integration for manufacturing.

I like the idea of the rig manufacture we're going to do, its just I'd rather have more direct control over the first and final steps, relying on others for materials I'm not a fan of.

Thanks for the advice, you've been incredibly incredibly helpful.

Also look up Push Industries or Red Frog freight to move stuff to the nearest trade hub if it's going to take you hours to complete it. It may cost you a couple million isk and about a days time before it is ready to sell... But in the time it would of taken you to move all the stuff, you could have mined more isk worth of minerals than the cost of the freighter trip. So this makes it definately worth it!

That'll help too, in the time it'd take me to haul my shipments from where I'm at to a major hub massively cuts into my operations.

Those two corps are well known but... it takes them usually 1-3 days to move the goods and the prices are quite high. Unless the courier job is from nowhere in the universe that noone visits... then you usually are better off using public contracts. Their cheaper and complete a lot faster.

As long as you don't set up the courier run with a collateral worth more than 1b or too huge that a freighter can't move... The goods get moved usually in a day as long as the reward is decent.

PL research slots are fairly easy to come by, but ML research slots are queued up to the point of acute physical pain, even in out-of-the-way-far-from-Jita high-sec systems. That's the reason you need a POS. As far as I know, production slots are easy to come by, so you don't need a permanent POS to produce things, only a POS for as long as it takes you to research your BPOs. And you only really need the POS for ML researc, not PL.

As for purchasing BPOs, I just buy mine in Jita. That's unresearched BPOs, of course. BPOs with research already done on them are bought via Contracts. You can also buy BPCs that way, but one of the ones I found, for Kestrel, had a price tag of about 20k ISK per Kestrel produced, and that seriously eats into the profit margin.

You may also want a big ship so you can move stuff. Industrials peak at 37k or 38k m3, with T2 cargo modules and T1 cargo rigs. Freighters and Orcas can move a lot more, but also costs a lot more to buy. Freighters are good for moving stuff while you're AFK, as long as you don't haul stuff with a total value of more than 1 billion ISK. I don't know what the gank-profit threshold is for a T1 Industrial, or a T2 Transport, although T2 Transports can be given a fairly good AFK tank.

The real trick to production profit, of course, is to figure out where the best profit margins are. I haven't found those myself yet, and even if I had I would not share specifics on here.

My line of thought is that I'll take a hybrid approach to BPOs, and mainly buy ones that my corp can use for defence, e.g. ammo and T1 frigate hulls (maybe modules too - I'm not sure), and so forth, and research those. They'll be neat to have lying around (BPCs in critical systems, for corp mates to use if necessary), and once researched I can see if there's a worthwhile profit margin. Later step up to Destroyers, Cruisers, in the long term BC, maybe even even BS at some point in 2014.

Join a corp that has frequent fleet ops or friendly orca pilots and get bonuses off them to maximize your mining. Also find one that has a decent amount of well researched blueprints that corp members can use.

I suggest you get into a Covertor and join a mining corp that has mining ops (even in high-sec) with boosting and hauling. It would boost your profit significantly and it won't be that boring either.

Also another idea would be to get mining drones and micro manage them and your crystals. But that's just for the boredom because the net yield increase won't be great.