Science & Industry

If you are buying the sub-components to make the ships, yes, very few T2 ships are profitable. But if you have all the component BPO's well researched, and buy the moon materials to build them, then build the ships with that, the profits can be huge.

I have all the component BPO's for the races ships I build, and I can tell you the profits are great, especially with the increased use of HAC's since they were rebalanced. I buy the moon materials, the fullerides, sylramic fibers, nanotransistors, etc. and build the sub components. I have all the sub-component BPOs research to ME 100.

Probably why I came here for advice and not condescension.

If you are only making 1 unit runs, yes perfect ME is very low. If you are making 1000 units at a time the extra ME does have an impact, although it is small.

The difference is much bigger on the Capital BPO's for building jump freighters.( I wish they were used for more than just jump freighters.) When you are burning through millions of units of alloys per ship, that extra ME saves you millions of isk in mats. Still millions is a small percentage when the ships sell for several billion.

The research was done while the BPO's were other wise idle, when I have other wise unused slots in my labs. When I had to keep the labs up for the long research times on the ship BPO's there was no reason not to keep the other slots full. Sure there are probably dozens of ways I could have made better use of those unused slots, but that is all well behind me. I have the component BPO's, I invent the T2 BPC's, I build the ships, I make loads of isk. Without a single T2 BPO.

Really?

I've never seen ME act differently between a thousand runs and one run.

PE does still work with the fractions of a second, but even that's not going to be particularly major.

If the BPO you are using does not have a material stack above 100, then anything lower than 1% waste will have not impact, but in 1000 runs that 100 stack is now 100,000 so that 0.1% saves you an extra 100 units while on a single run you would gain nothing.

If you are buying the sub-components to make the ships, yes, very few T2 ships are profitable. But if you have all the component BPO's well researched, and buy the moon materials to build them, then build the ships with that, the profits can be huge.

I have all the component BPO's for the races ships I build, and I can tell you the profits are great, especially with the increased use of HAC's since they were rebalanced. I buy the moon materials, the fullerides, sylramic fibers, nanotransistors, etc. and build the sub components. I have all the sub-component BPOs research to ME 100. I could make a huge profit just off selling those, but they do not sell near as fast as the finished ships. However producing the sub-components gives me very nice profits on all the T2 ships I build. Buying the T2 sub-components off Jita market, they have about a 50% mark up on them, you will never make good isk building T2 ships that way.

T2 ship manufacturing is complex, if you are doing it right. for each ship you make you should have 2 BPO's of the T1 hull. One well researched to build the T1 hulls from, and one for churning out copies. make only 1 run copies as the decriptors you should be using will not give you multi run copies, even with max run BPC's.

Invent your T2 BPC's yourself, the mark up on these is crazy. And for gods sake, max out your needed research skills. Inventing T2 BPC's with poor skills is like building T1 ships without production efficiency 5, it just cuts into your profits way to much.

Then you need a full set of the T2 sub-component BPO's. The armor plates, reactors, thrusters, micro processors, shield emitters, ect. And research them well. I have all mine to ME 100. It didn't take very long.

You then buy the moon materials and build the sub-components. If you are doing it right, you will find the sub-components are costing you way less than their market value. There is good isk to be made at this stage, and is where I started. Even if you buy the component BPO's one at a time and research them, you can sell the sub-components for a nice profit while you are building up your BPO collection and getting them researched.

Once you have a full set of component BPO's, these components will be used in different numbers for all the T2 ships of that race. So it is not a waste to have them, they will only restrict you buy race, not by the individual ships you will make.

Once you know which T2 ships of your chosen race are the most popular get 2 of the T1 BPO's for those hulls. Get one in the cooker churning out single run BPC's, and the other researching for producing your T1 hulls, unless you plan on buying the T1 hulls, but I recommend building them.

Next step is to get your invention cycles going. Decriptors can be expensive, but if you have good luck with your invention jobs, they can give you a decent boost to the profits of the ships you produce. For frigate and destroyer hulls I find them a waste of isk, but if you plan to build Marauders they are a must.

Just keep building and selling the sub-components until you have a decent stock of T2 ship BPC,s, then you can start stock piling subs and churning out ships. It is at this point you become a T2 ship producer, and will be making very good isk doing it, because you will be doing it right.

If the ships your are making every drop in popularity, and become less profitable to make, you can easily flop back to selling the sub-components while you get the BPO's and invention cycles in place for another hull of the same race. There are always several T2 hulls for each race well worth building. Personally I build Gallente as the subs can also be used for ORE ships (exhummers) giving you more options for what hulls you can produce.

Not quite. Unlike minerals, the bid/ask split for t2 components tends to be very large, and the transaction volume small.

In other words, If you assume you buy anything you buy at ask prices and sell anything you sell to bid prices (a normal pessimistic assumption when running a spreadsheet):

Building components would operate at a loss (because the bids for components are low).
Building ships from components would operate at a loss (because the asks for components are high).
Building ships from raw materials operates at a profit (because you retain the component market bid/ask spread).

If you assume you sell at ask prices, you won't sell significant quantities of components.


If you try to buy your components at or near bid prices, you won't build anything. If you try to buy your components at ask prices, you wont make any ISK.

If you skip that large bid/ask split by manufacturing, you can get the volume you need.

Can't believe that nobody commented on the most wrong part of this post. Something that was stated earlier in the thread even.
It seems that our brains like seeing big numbers, and when you see that 100m profit for building a panther from moon mats up, you think you're doing good. The truth is, if it is not profitable to build with t2 components, it is not profitable to build at all. The reason for this is if you built all the required and profitable t2 mats from moon mats and sold them, skipping the build t2 ship part, you would make more profit in much less time. Same goes for t1 ships. If you could sell the minerals for more than the ship, then don't build the ship. It's that simple.

If you can't make a decent isk/hr when you look at the whole effort, go make something else.

Making a loss during a single step is fine, as long as that loss is swallowed up by the rest of the process.

Obviously, if you can make someone else eat the loss, that's a better idea