Science & Industry

I am making a move into manufacturing and have a few question.

I bought two BPO's to begin with. The Stabber and Hurricane. These might be rubbish choices to start with. T1 manufacturing seems to have pretty tight margins in high sec.

• Is it a given that I need to have these BPO's to 10% material efficency to make a profit?
• If I resell one of my BPO's (through contract) does it maintain its researched ME so I can up the price to the buyer?
• When inventing, does the ME pass through to the T2 BPC?

Yes they are. Ships in general are a very bad place to start. Low margins, low demand, high costs and everyone and their grandmother thinks building ships is sexy and hence does so.

Inventing from them will probably be worse.
Stabber invents to the Vagabond, which doesn't look like it's in heavy demand based on a quick look at the Jita market.
Hurricane invents to the Slepnir which is probably one of the more profitable command ships, though that's not saying much.

Without decryptors an invented BPC is +2/+4. Decryptors are the only way to change that and they're pretty important when inventing ships, especially the larger ships.

If you really want to build ships, build interceptors. They are always in demand, and always sell at a modest markup. Plus they take longer to make, so you do not need as much ISK per production line hour as for the larger T1 ships.

Don't go near tech 1 hulls unless you have massive, massive capital behind you and have done everything possible to lower your costs (including setting up a production POS in a no station system). If you have a hundred billion ISK behind you, tech 1 battleships can make you money. If you haven't got that sort of capital you cannot compete with the people that have.