Science & Industry

No guide ... personally I just trained whatever enabled / improved what I wanted to do. When I wanted to invent capital T2 modules, I checked the pre-requisites and put them into queue. I wanted better invention chance ... check the industry window what's needed to train. Also I switched to buy compressed ore instead of minerals, hence I had to train up the skills increasing my refining rate on Veldpar, Plagioclase, etc.

... so, just try / simulate what you want to do and inject what's needed.

True, manufacturing is not passive. You have to buy the materials, haul stuff, setup the jobs, sell results on market. But you can define the frequency, issuing long jobs, and having to do logistics only every week or month, or cycle through every 24/48 hours, like I'm doing. Which means about 1 hour active logistics per day plus market PvP till stuff is sold.

PI can be much closer to passive, because you setup once and then remote control the extractors, and only have to do simple hauling every time your storage gets full.

I don't have any specific training advice - just some general advice: Treat all forms of mining as distinct and separate from production. From a training standpoint, very few of the skills carry over between the two. And from a gameplay standpoint, you can mine or you can build with an alt - but it's hard to do both unless it's your main character that's getting the majority of play time.

That said, it's perfectly reasonable to keep the skills for both on one alt, but you have to decide what your priority is. Becoming a well-skilled miner takes a lot of training time (especially if you're trying to skill up for gas, ice and ore). So does becoming a well-skilled manufacturer. I'd recommend focusing your training on one while building just enough skills to dabble in the other.

And if you're manufacturing, don't forget that you're going to need somebody on your team with good trading skills and also good transport skills.

Boromir,

I understand your frustration. You're looking for a straightforward and comprehensive answer to what seems like should be an easy question. The responses you have received are, in part, a function of the wide-open question you asked and the vast complexity of Eve. As my boss drilled into me, "ask a hazy question, get a hazy answer." Any question that asks "how do I" and includes the word "etcetera" is bound to elicit less utility than the questioner probably wanted.

Though I have not done it, moon mining is generally understood as the most passive income. Though CCP is actively working to remove that passivity beginning later this year, you have a year or more to enjoy that level of passivity. There's enough to learn about how to do moon mining to occupy you for awhile. Perhaps that is a good place to continue your investigation.

By the time you've done that, Zanar's input will be more tangible. Want to build and sell profitable Tengu? You're gonna need to get required skills to L5. And the beat goes on.

When I started Eve two years ago I wanted to do a little bit of everything. I discovered that "a little bit of everything" was "a lot." I went on to discover that even doing one thing well was "a lot."

Tipa is correct that profitable manufacturing can be done in as little as an hour per day...even less, I suppose. You could be building in Jita in a few days. BUT, it took industrialists like me and Tipa a lot of time to determine which items are profitable and when and that is a task that never ends. There is no free lunch when in Eve when it comes to being even being rudimentarily skilled.

The general advice, which comes up so often, is "try lots of things, find those that you enjoy and let those things fund themselves as best they can."

One of the things that attracted me to Eve is the incredibly broad aspects to the game - mining, manufacturing, hauling, pve, pvp, corp mgt, HS, FW, LS, N, WH - and how long it would take to become experience all of them.

To your question, I wouldn't train mining past mining barge efficiency to begin with. There's not enough gain from exhumers for the time commitment. Try manufacturing T1 materials before you spend the vast amount of time required for T2 manufacturing to make sure you like it. Build some T1 ships because that can be satisfying, even if hard to make a profit on, to find out if that's your thing.

Do some station trading, because a lot of manufacturing profit is actually trading profit and you'll learn a lot about what to build.

I have an industry char that I built up to high level of T2 manufacturing skill before finally deciding it was more fun for me to make 100M with PvE or exploration than with my head buried in market analysis and accumulating raw materials -- but it's the opposite for other players.

my simple start to industry, this toon was simply created to mine, at first i just sold ores. as my skills become better i purchased some bpc's, reprocessed and built, first ammo now ships.... i understand some of the things i do as an industry character i dont do perfectly but the biggest thing i do is enjoy myself.. frank mines while i shoot **** on my other monitor, all my ore now goes into building.... eve is what you make of it and if you enjoy it keep doing it... that is what i do anyway

Agreeing with what the others have said... you mentioned PI so please know that (beyond the hauling skill to move the stuff, and pilot skill to not get blown up doing so) it is a separate venture altogether. Train it a little, give it a try and see if you like it.

Ultimately I think you'll find PI is no different from the other "passive" activities: you can indeed let the machines run for maybe 10-14 days and make some ISK, or you can fiddle with them more often and make even more. In the end it's a space job...

And THAT's the big thing I wanted to say. I've had a few careers and for each, just like in life, the learning and the doing and succeeding was indeed very satisfying for quite awhile... until it just became about the doing and the earning. I don't think "it only takes a few hours a week" really answers the bigger concern, we can only log in for a limited amount of time, so when we do so it should hopefully look more like play than work.

Hmm sounds kinda trite but I'll post it anyway. Oh and yes, BPO research is good ISK/play-hour, give that a shot. Good luck!