Science & Industry

I have Industry V, not really anything else. I may grow Indy skills further, a bit down the road, but in the meantime I need to increase my SP in different areas to deal with the here-and-now.

But lets say I I'm in a corp, and on good terms with others who can do it all. If I wanted to help their operation, and still get paid, is there realistically any way that I could assist the more experienced guys? Is there a win-win here?

Without Production Efficiency to V you are not going to be that much of a help. There are things that can be manufactured for a profit with P.E. to IV, but that's mostly the lowend stuff that has low ISK/hour, but higher margins. Like certain types of ammo, charges and other consumables.
Not really something the 'big boys' are likely to mess around with, but you might be able to help fill your corp stock of those consumables.

Once you do have PE V, your options are much wider. T1 manufacturing only needs few skills, with less than a month of training you could potentially be building battleships at an efficcient rate for your corp. If that's whatyou want and what the corp needs, we can't know.

Yes and no. Sadly, simple T1 manufacturing as such doesn't offer much in the ways of teamwork. Until you get to capital construction, of course, where everyone can assemble some of the parts necessary to construct the capital in the end.

Teamwork becomes interesting when you stop talking about providing one specific item for the corp and start to think about complete fittings. I am sure that the 'big boys' would be delighted to see the newer guys get into the production of T1 hulls (frigs, cruisers, BCs, whatever your corp likes to whelp en masse ) while they provide the T2 guns and modules. So you do the manufacturing on your own, but piece everything together in the end to get to a team effort.

Just an idea of how that could be set up, of course i have no idea how your corp does things.

If you're a miner you can always mine and sell the ore to the corp mate. that way you don't need to deal with refining, grinding npc corp standings or hauling.

Filling NPC stations with BPO's to be researched doesn't take very much time. Yes there is a wait time for the jobs to start but even with just 1 day training you can setup 4 copy / PE jobs.

Running around doing price checks, meaning going to surrounding regions and getting buy/sell order prices on item(s) so they can sell them. You could also do price checks, buy the items and sell them yourself.

I too tend to outsource my t1 ship construction to other members of my corp. im not exactly what you mean by synergy because for the most part you will be filling a role that one of their alts could be doing. I currently do not feel like gathering minerals even though i do gather t2 materials, so that is something that i would ask a newer corp member to do for me.

Were you in my corp the biggest help you could be is to do the t1 manufacturing that i do not want to waste slots doing.

The only way they'll pay you is if they're feeling charitable, and even then it's unlikely. If your indy guy only has low-end skills, that also means it's far easier to just roll an alt to do the same thing. Not only does this mean they won't have to pay you, but they won't have to rely on someone else to keep their machine running.

The only exception to this might be doing bulk hauling in highsec, but it'd likely involve the same collateral and pay as any standard courier contract.

Another possibility is to flit around (you want a fast ship for this, T1 frigate, eventually an Interceptor) and look for bargain. Manly bargain sales of large amounts of low-price minerals or ores, but also opportunities for selling stuff, i.e. high-price Buy Orders, probably mostly in Regions that don't have market hubs.

As was mentioned earlier, the hard part of Eve industry involves no in game skill at all. The hard part is figuring out what to build, where to sell it, where to buy the cheapest materials, establishing contacts with both upstream and downstream suppliers, making lots of spreadsheets, setting up job logistics such that the chars that actually have the in game skills to install job xyz know what job to install and have the materials required at the desired location ready to go.

If it wasn't for the above, I could make several billion more a month doing industry. "Clicking install" is the easy part, well except for the whole carpal tunnel danger.

All the posts here have been pretty spot on. The amount you can help varies by the relationship you have, the market, the setting, and the product. An industrialist in a t1 market won't tell you what's profitable to build, because he'll be introducing competition, so your helpfulness is mostly *****-work, and chances are you won't get much benefit except experience. Otherwise you could be a miner, but that's not quite what you're looking for. Pricechecks and hauling can be helpful, but are bitchwork. However, if you're willing to sink SP into things that won't be benefiting you immediately, things start looking up. Over the long term, having research and copy slots available can be a real help to someone not wanting to manage another alt, particularly if the business is looking to diversify its blueprint collection. Production Efficiency 5 isn't a long train considering how vital it is, and t1 production can be a solid side business (high margin, low isk/hour/job), especially if your corp makes use of those t1 things, or your corp bases somewhere with a poorly seeded market (or lowsec/nullsec). Making the t1 components of the t2 production is often a sideshow to the t2 producer, and can be done without requiring too much SP. You can also contribute through coordinating a PI network together. Station traders and builders benefit from standings, so while you manage a few t1 production lines, you could also work on your standings or help another industrialists alt get standings through fleeting together while mission grinding. Lastly, I mentioned mining as something auxiliary to pure industry, but many industrialists mine while managing other things. If you do exploration, a hisec gravimetric belt may be preferable to mining in a standard asteroid belt, and may be worth traveling a few jumps.

All in all, find some good people and see what they think. Don't expect to get handed the keys to an isk-printing-machine, and do expect that you'll only be helping here-and-there, not full time. Also, get production efficiency 5 and make a few crude profit calculators and

Find out what the manufacturers in your corp are making. In the following theoretical scenario, some of the planning involves thinking several months out (with skills like Command Center Upgrades 5 taking about 3 weeks of training just by itself).

For example, let's pretend I'm making a lot of Buzzards and Scourge Fury missiles and fuel blocks.

For each of those, I need PI materials: Construction Blocks for the ship, Rocket Fuel for the missiles, bunches of stuff for fuel blocks. Do I have enough planets running? Nope, which one can you help with? Our "strategic" plans call for at least 1k Broadcast Nodes in 2013, how many can you make?

For each of those T2 items, some subcomponents are needed, can I make them all (duh! no), can you make some?

The final T2 items need pretty high skill levels, but the subcomponents usually need minimal skills.