Science & Industry

1. yes, but you need to do some homework first.
2. You won't make it ... but you can try. edit -- I'm not saying to avoid null at all costs, but there are caveats there that you'd rather not deal with until later on.
3. well that depends

Skills (these won't change)
Industry 5
Production Efficiency 5
Mass Production 5
Adv. Mass Prod 4
Trade Skills (to get lower taxes, more trade slots, etc)
high standings with someone (e.g. Caldari Navy, since you're talking about Jita) for lower taxes at stations

BPO Way -- 8+ bn ISK
3 billion ISK for the BPOs (mael and abaddon are each about 1.5b, maybe a little less)
140m ISK (give or take) worth of minerals PER SHIP, so we'll say another 1.5-2b or so if you're making 5 of each per week
a freighter (about a bil for the hull, cba to look up skillbook prices, IIRC 500m or so)
about 6 months of research time to get the BPOs to a usable ME (that's 6 months IN RESEARCH -- not 6 months in general, because finding research slots is a ***** ... unless you're running a pos) so, whatever that ends up costing


BPC Way -- 3-4b
~10m ISK for 10-run copies
140m ISK (or so) of minerals per ship, assuming you're doing 5 of each, 1.5-2b
a freighter (about a bil for the hull, plus skillbooks)


Start small, with ammo/frigs/cruisers ... get your feet wet with how things work, THEN go for the bigger ships.

You get bpcs on contracts. I would start with Vel's post above with skills and get some bpcs to start. PE 5 is a must before starting. To find out if it's profitable, you should get a spreadsheet or industry program (mine is in sig, there are others in the sticky).

Sales volumes and supply will dictate a lot of your profit in high sec. Null sec will vary.

Hope that helps.

Read this thread:

Plese explane Ravens to me

Understand that T1 manufacturing, including battleships, has a very low barrier to entry. Also, battleships are the sexy things that everyone wants to manufacture. Therefore, you will have a lot of competition from other manufacturers in high sec. If you are in null sec, you will have a large advantage because you will not be in competition with every other person who feels like dabbling in industry.

Still, I highly recommend starting with building ammunition and modules before jumping into ships.

Note, you can buy pre-researched BPOs in contracts. They will cost you more than the unresearched ones from NPCs, but you will be able to build from them immediately. As Tau said, BPCs are consumables which eat into the profit margins. BPOs are assets which can be sold later and even appreciate if they get researched.


At one time, I was the manufacturer for my alliance's ship replacement program in null sec. You are going to find hauling to be the first decision you will need to make. There are two options:

1) Build the ships in high sec. Use a freighter or manually fly them to low sec. Use a carrier to jump them to the station where you sell them.

2) Use a jump freighter to haul compressed minerals to null sec. Reprocess. Build the ships there, either in the station or at a POS in the same system. This requires a lot more isk to be tied up in raw materials, but you don't need to haul as often because you can fit many ships worth of minerals in each load.

From my experience, I found battlecruisers/battleships to be the cutoff. For frigates and cruisers it was more economical to build them in high sec and carrier them in. For battleships, build them in null sec. Battlecruisers could go either way depending on what else I had going on at the time.

Your milage may vary.

Maybe

Maybe

Indy 5 + PE5, Buncha Isk

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but I advise you to keep your goods out of Jita until your skills are much better. The market players here are cunning, and will undercut, buy out, and generally have greater control over the market. Wet your feet in mission hubs, and try your hand at modules and ammo, where the profit margins aren't quite as cutthroat.

Bigger things can make you more profit. Not as a percentage of isk invested, but in absolute terms.

Take ammo, for example.

Each of the sizes takes the same time to produce, S to L. You can get a 100% return on your investment with S. But that works out at around 10 isk a unit. with L, you can get maybe a 30% return. But that's 30isk.

Pretty much the same applies to everything. Absolute return is more important than raw percentages. Just something to remember.

ROI is generally understood to mean % of initial capital outlay returned on top of the initial capital.

Not all investments are infinitely scale-able. Ammo is highly profitable (in %) because it's not very profitable in absolute terms, and you're limited in the number of manufacturing lines you run. In other words, if you have 30m, would you invest it at 1% and make 300k or invest 50k of it at 15% and the rest at nothing, and make 7500 isk?

I'll echo advice already given start with ammo and work your way up.

Even then you're going to need to own your own researched BPO, and generally it need to be at least ME50 to start making a reasonable return.
For ammo you're probably also going to need to copy the BPO so that you can run multiple production jobs simultaneously to keep up with demand ( but that depends on how you set your price points).
I've found that there's very little margin on either frigates or destroyers ( it's pretty difficult to make more than 150K on a destroyer)
and some cruisers are even worse - basically you need to research your markets, even if its a tame one.
You need to calculate your own costs based upon the BPO/C you're using and the costs of your minerals.
If the manufacturing cost is greater than sell price of the minerals then sell the minerals instead..

For appropriate BP ME levels, look at an ME calculator (< shamelessplug>like the one on my site< /shamelessplug>)

Pretty much, every time you double the ME level, you halve the waste. It's a little bumpier than this, due to waste below half a unit being eliminated. The bigger the initial volume, the more useful the reduction is.