Science & Industry

Is there a line in the sand between worthwhile profit and "do something else"? I know some people are the "any profit is good profit" types but I'd rather not spend an hour for a profit of 2,500isk. At the moment I have my eye on something that returns ~25K per hour per line, would something like that be considered "decent" by industrialist standards?

That "line in the sand" depends upon a number of variables. Ultimately, it's your personal preference.

Take Phalanx Rockets for example. I've been building these lately so I have the numbers handy. My cost per run is 165.64 ISK and retail per run is 324.00 ISK. That's a profit of 158.36 or 48.88%. On a 24 hour line I can produce enough to make a 54k profit. Is that a lot? Nope, not when you deal in magnitudes of millions.

But I maintain multiple stores over multiple regions. Multiply that number over several different storefronts and the profits start to rise.

So, that break even point where you throw your hands up and click self-destruct is a personal preference. Mine? 10%... but then I do this for fun. I generally try to avoid the whole ISK/hour argument.

It all depends on your starting funds. If you only have a few million to play with any sort of profit is good, though the higher the better obviously due to being able to invest more, faster into your market/s. If you have a few 10's of millions you can start to run lines 24 hours a day with low cost (and low return) items, but they are a constant income source (mainly T1 ammo...best play to sell is not Jita but the mission hubs...mission runners are lazy bastards :) ).

When you break the 100 mill mark you can start to possibly look into the IPH (Isk Per Hour) numbers and invest your time and isk more efficiently. This will make your funds grow quite alot, however don't expect miricles...they don't exist. If something looks to good to be true..it normally is and you loose ISK.

Your amount is indeed 'low' by most standards, however I assume so is your available funds so don't sweat about it. Give it a few weeks and you will eventually be raking in hte billions.

EDIT: If you use your item your looking at and have 10 lines, thats 250k/hour or roughly 6 mill a day assuming you keep 24 hour production with no breaks.

That is by far the biggest problem I deal with in my industry operations.

I gave up on trying to get everything scheduled for just-in-time manufacturing, and instead have resorted to maintaining stock to act as a buffer between manufacturing cycles. However, this buffer costs me literally billions of ISK to maintain.

Then recently 3 wardecs in the same week, two of which appeared to be a genuine threat to my POS, resulted in me stopping all production and cancelling all research to online defenses and remove labs. With the wars over, I now have tens of billions in manufacturing being held-up by the parts that were interrupted. Yet I still have bills to pay (POS fuel, loan interest payments, PLEX for accounts) and there is nothing ready to sell yet.

Don't underestimate ISK reserves either in case you get stuck in a similar situation, i.e. don't put all your eggs into one basket. Thankfully I keep enough ISK in my wallet to survive when sales are slow or non-existent.

For me its about not driving myself mad. I'm running 40 slots to earn an average of 100m isk per day, which is pretty terrible, but I am buying from sell orders and selling to buy orders, which means I have no 0.01-isking to do. I am willing to accept far lower profits (about 1/3rd, producing the same items the other way around) so that I don't have to update orders and fight that battle. Of course, production is not my only income stream, and variety is another half of not being driven mad.

I don't produce stuff judging from the profit I can get from it. I produce judging by what the corp needs or wants. Anything else than that, depends on orders.