Science & Industry

Hi,

I've been running a small POS for 2 months so you can consider me a beginner still.

Straight from my spreadsheet:
Current cost of small Caldari POS with 3 Mobile Labs and 2 Equipment Arrays: 318 M ISK
Current cost of small Caldari POS with 2 Advanced Labs, 1 Mobile Lab and 1 Equipment Array: 354 M ISK
Monthly fuel cost: 129 M ISK

You also need to find an empty moon in 0.5-0.7 sec system with a station in system (to keep BPOs in station).
When I did a full survey around Jita few months ago there were no free moons closer than 7 jumps in Caldari space (but there were some just farther away). And of course your corp needs high faction standings to anchor POS.
For faction standings I took an alt, first exchanged tags for standings and later did COSMOS missions buying almost every required mission item form contracts. Few missions that involved shooting I did by fleeting with my main in BC. It took one weekend to get above 7.0 standings with Caldari.
This alt set up a corp, anchored a POS and rest of the alts joined.

Money comes from things you cannot do (efficiently) without a POS in high sec:
- manufacturing researched T1 BPOs (also in POS manufacturing is 33% faster),
- inventing T2 BPCs from T1 BPCs you copied in your POS.

I use manufacturing arrays in a POS for T1 production, I also copy/invent in a POS and produce T2 items in a station afterwards.
Profits with T2 are decent but prepare for a lot of clicking, a lot...

And of course your POS is defenceless so try to not be a target:
- don't take last free moon in a system,
- keep BPOs in a station.

Caldari towers provide the most CPU.

The difference between normal and advanced labs is the different types / amounts of slots.
Just check the market to see what each lab provides.

Equipment arrays are used to actually build stuff. I personally don't use them cause the station i'm based out of has plenty of slots and i don't really need the added speed the arrays provide for now.

As for your initial questions.
I research and sell T1 BPOs when my second alt has spare room and that pretty much pays for the fuel of the POS.
So the lab time for copying / invention is virtually free.

I manufacture all my T2 BPCs because why give up the profit when you can just build it in a station

Eve Uni has a nice class on T2 production. It's an old class but it's worth listening to.
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Class_library#Industry
And if you prefer reading
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Tech-2_Production,_First_Steps

Good Luck!

Thank you both for your replies. Just what I was looking for. Now to do some reading :)

1) The current fuel block prices are around 15k per block. A small pos consumes 10 blocks per hour, so you're facing about 108m ISK per 30 days. or 150k isk per hour, which isn't that much, if you use spare CPU to do some manufacturing.

2) It depends on whether you use your pos for pure research or do at least some manufacturing. For pure research you will have to cover the costs somehow, e.g. selling your researched BPOs. There are some that actually seem quite profitable. As for invention, I haven't tried to sell the T2 bpcs I invent, I manufacture them myself at the pos (except for T2 ships, those are better build in a station).

You can use this online tool to play around with different setups and find the one that suits you best. If you plan to keep your pos for a longer period or upgrade to a bigger one, you might also consider getting a faction tower. Those consume less fuel blocks, only thing is they are quite expensive (at least the caldari faction towers, as those have the most cpu, which is what most people go for).

Standings are cached. Flush your cache.

Hey
Try a few helpful tools
http://my-pos.software.informer.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eveiph/