Science & Industry

Hi

I build T2 ships and modules. I used to buy the BPCs from contracts, then I decided to try inventing and I had some ok luck and got some BPs.

Thing is, I now have hit a bottleneck with research slots to keep my builder supplied the BPs.

How many toons is a good number to use for running invention jobs?

Thanks for the quick answer

let me re-phrase the question slightly.

How many research characters do the average T2 industry characters have?

Depends on the items really. I make smaller stuff and I need more builders than inventors. Some items have long build times and short invention times, some are more even. I havent found the need to have more than one inventor with 10 slots though.

The manufacturing process, by design, features many imbalances. Your question is one of a cascading series of "make vs. buy" decisions that an industrialist must consider in optimizing his production process. T2 production can be as simple as buying the T2 BPC, buying the T1 base item, buying the components and running the manufacturing job. Piece of cake. But those T2 BPCs are expensive. So are those components. Somebody else is making alot of money selling that stuff to you. Maybe you should make some of the stuff yourself.

The goal is to optimize the profits you earn with, as VaMei pointed out, a given amount of time spent. The analysis can quickly become very complex. Let's say it does make sense to invent your own T2 BPCs. O.K., great. How many research alts will it take? Next question: Where do you get the T1 BPCs for invention? Buy them or make your own copies? How many more researchers and BPOs will that take? Similar questions apply to the T1 prototype item if applicable. Same even for datacores and decryptors, for that matter.

Drill down even further. OK, you're making your own T1 and T2 BPCs. Should you run these jobs in an NPC station or should you build a POS? Do you build the POS modules or buy them at market. Further yet: Do you mine, set up PI and manufacture fuel blocks for the POS fuels or do you buy at market?

You can and should drill down into other elements of the production process in the same way. Take components. Should you buy them or make them yourself? If making them, do you buy the advanced materials or do you go out to 0.0, set up stations, extract moon goo and react your own?

The bottlenecks that you encounter will vary depending upon the mix of products that you are building. As Hulk builders, one of our bottlenecks is in acquiring BPCs. We end up buying alot of BPCs from other suppliers because our internal resources - all of or alts - are fully utilized with other aspects of production and we don't want to spend the incremental time managing additional research alts.

Other choices we've made in our production process: We no longer mine or run PI, we buy minerals and POS fuels. We don't extract and react moon goo, we buy advanced materials for component construction. We outsource some of our hauling to courier contracts. We buy datacores and decryptors for invention. Most other elements of the production process are done internally.

It really does boil down to how much time you have available to spend manufacturing. If properly deployed, incremental alts will pay for themselves through incremental profitability. This type of analysis will help you maximize the profits you earn with your efforts.