EVE New Citizens Q&A

All tech 1 BPO can be bought on the market un-researched from NPC. I good place to check where for a specific BPO is BPO Calc. I also like to use Chruker's.

Researched BPO and copies (BPC) can only be traded on contracts.

You should look around the Science & Industry Forum and it's resource sticky of useful threads, especially the old one and its resource sticky.

I really don't recommend ship manufacturing as everybody and their grandmother wants to build ships. It can be difficult to compete. Not a great place to start in industry.

Industry really requires a lot of careful thought, attention to the market, and time spent with spreadsheets, in order to be a success (or even break-even). However, ammo (including scripts), drones, and rigs are often recommended to those that want to give it a try.

The most important thing to know about being an industrialist - is that the most important thing you do - is Trade.

The production cycle is:

Mine -> Refine -> Manufacture -> Transport -> Trade*



*The only one that isn't optional.


DO NOT - decide what you want to make and then go out and try to sell it.

DO - look at the market - see what you can make some good money on - and then MAKE THAT. Of course the problem here is understanding what you're seeing - and that only comes with experience - that - and the market changes ... and you need to recognize when it has. Also - the market isn't just the trading window - it's an area and what people there are buying. Here - general game experience will teach you the kinds of things other players might buy - partially - because they're the kind of things you are buying.




Getting Started - that's no problem.

The reason so many people suggest making ammo and drones and such is that you can use these yourself.

Shuttles are good too. The blue prints are cheap and you can just carry around the blue print and a little trit instead of the shuttle itself if you're moving a small ship - then make one to come back in. You can also recycle the shuttle and just carry the ore back too if you're flying out to pick something up - or leave the shuttle there and sell it.

You're not making these things to make a lot of money though - you're making them to familiarize yourself with the process and by trying to sell them - learning how the market works.


The big thing about being and industrialist/trader - is whether or not you like doing it. There really is a lot of work involved and a lot to learn. if you are having fun doing it - then you'll stay interested and progress. If not ... you'll probably move on to other things.

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Pick your products carefully. Both for initial start up costs and what you can sell at a profit.

If you just want to make yourself a cool ship or 2, watch contracts for good prices on low run BPC's for the ships your interested in.

For something like a Drake you wont' save a lot, but mining as much of it as you can yourself makes it yours.

Some things you must always consider when you start producing stuff, is whether people want it or not. And whether you can get the resources to build it.

Regardless of where you're located, producing ammo is always a solid beginning. Get a few BPOs for basic ammo, and start making some. Just to let you know, Bloodclaw Light Missiles cost about 2 ISK to produce each (that is, in mineral costs and production fees). And most of the time, you can sell them for just about 8 ISK. That's a profit of 300%, give or take a bit, depending on actual prices.

If you're located in a system with easy access to Pyroxeres, you're in luck. Get your hands on a few BPOs for Mining Crystals, if there are lots of miners in your system. Especially Jaspet Mining Crystal I's are worth producing, so you can earn ISK. They cost roughly 95,000 ISK a piece in mineral prices and production fees, and where I am, they sell for about 150,000 ISK, giving me 55,000 ISK for each sold Crystal. The only problem is that the need for Crystals is only this big, and at some point, it won't be profitable to make them anymore for a while.

Once you get a good, solid income, take up exploration, or offer to pay ISK to someone for finding you a Gravimetric Site that you can mine, for the better ores. If you're lucky, you can get access to Zydrine through Jaspet and Hemorphite, which will be worth it, if you're planning on later going on to making big ships. There's nothing wrong with aiming big, but you still need to start small, to get a grasp of the basics.

The production costs I listed are derived from a program my CEO made about 2 months ago, for use exclusively by my corporation, and I haven't gotten the prices updated recently (it's only flaw is it requires manual price-updates), but the mineral prices rarely change that much to make a visible difference. If you need a production-price-check, feel free to send me a mail, and I will run it through the program for free (although donations are always welcome ).

One final note: For the Jaspet Crystals, if you choose to build those, the BPO will be earned back after 20 crystals at most. that's only about 100 minutes of production and some waiting you have to deal with until you can buy another BPO and get more ISK faster

Once you get a solid income, you can afford to buy BPOs for bigger ships and buying bulk-orders of Megacyte and other minerals you can't find yourself. But to begin with, make small stuff, then slowly grow. It's better to slowly go to more and more advanced and valuable modules, ammo and ships, than trying to rush it and never get anything produced.

In one of my corps back when wormholes were introducted and we could build T3s in corp a saying developed.

"Sleepers giveth ... and Sleepers taketh away."

Not much warm fuzzy feeling left after a few weeks of that

The feeling you're looking for - is not one of attachment to your ships - but of a sense of satisfaction that someone (whether or not it's you) is taking something you made, where nothing but parts existed before and using it to do something with.

If they get it blown up - then you may get the satisfaction of making another one for them.

Getting paid is part of the deal but you can make money running missions for snarky NPC's, so there are other ways of making money.

But - if you get that sense of satisfaction from the knowledge that somebody else bought something you made and is out there using it in the game - then that makes being an industrialist fun. If you don't at least initially think that's fun ... you may not want to bother with industry as a career. There are all kinds of ways of making money that don't require anything like the effort it takes to make things in this game.

Once you get yourself all set up and are busily cranking things out - it's not that bad - but that "getting all set up" part can take a good bit of effort, especially mental effort figuring out not just how to make the thing but what to make and where to sell it.



As to getting attached to your ships, whether they're the ones you make or the ones you fly ... that isn't a good idea. They're simply tools to be used to accomplish things - which may end up being destroyed.

You may already have a sense of frustration of at being beaten, if you were in on the loss of a ship. Adding a sense of emotional loss to that ... is a waste of emotion.

You don't want to waste ships, just as you wouldn't want to waste ammo - but caring that you've lost one ... isn't productive.

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Are you trying to make stuff just for fun or to make serious profit? Because the approach would be different if you are actually want to make money manufacturing stuff. If you just want to know how to build something/anything then reading ISK Guide should be enough. To do serious manufacturing you'll have to spend sometime optimizing your method to squeeze every possible isklet.

You'll need the following things (ordered from easy to hard):

Production Efficiency 5 (so you wont waste your materials)
Mass Production 5 and Advanced Mass Production 4 (to have extra manufacturing slots)
Accounting and Broker Relations to 4 (reduces your taxes and fees)
Some trade skills for more orders.
Supply Chain management to lvl2 is nice to have, so you dont have to be physically present at the location you are manufacturing.

That's for the skillpoints
Then you'll have to have some start up capital to purchase initial BPO/BPC and materials. A couple of hundred million should be easy enough to mission/beg/borrow or steal.

Some sort of a transport. An industrial ship might be enough in the beginning, but I quickly found that its too small, so eventually you might want to start using courier services like Red Frog Frieght, or get your own freighter.

Finally (and this is the most difficult part) you are going to have to decide what and where to build. Unfortunately I can't really help you here. You'll have to find a market for your products(Jita or maybe nullsec) then find products where the cost of materials is less than the final product (making or using spreadsheet for this will be a big help). Then find which products have demands which exceeds supply (don't build target painting drones for example). After you do those things, buy the bpos/bpc for the items you found and start turning the wheels of industry. Don't forget to respond to market changes where one of your product becomes unprofitable.

I find that the last part is the most difficult and labour intensive if you want to get into manufacturing.

I hope that what I wrote makes sense and in anyway helpful.