Science & Industry

Absolutely

To make things easier, try using your alt slots for copying, researching and such. Makes it much easier.

Maybe train an alt on a second account first for a bit, then transfer them to your main account. I did that with one of my alts and it's been pretty nice.

It all comes down to what you want to do though but I'm sure you could be successful in the industry game with just one character if you know what you are doing.

Yuppers.

Another poster who did not read the OP.

My take: one can never have enough Industry alts. Even the amount of High Sec PI product needed for descent Fuel Block production requires at least 2 or 3 PI alts. And if you are serious enough about Invention and Manufacturing T2, there is no such thing as too many Research and Copy slots.

He points out how to do it with multiples...and NOT single account. Response still a Phail.

Simply saying "Yes" then outlining something completely different ???????

And you think I mis-read or made a mistake ? God you must be bored this Sunday..............

Yes it is POSSIBLE, if you do not mind the toons sharing training time......but OBVIOUSLY its not that efficient or smart.

Besides, after 8 months of gameplay you should be able to afford one account at least with a PLEX.

Done.

I hide his posts because he seldom adds anything other than trolling comments. Looks like I'm still right

As far as more than one account, it was just a suggestion that you could run a trial or buddy account/etc for a month since training two chars on the same account is frustrating. But if not, my original reply is still true - completely possible to be successful in industry with one account.

The entire point of an MMORPG is to WORK TOGETHER to do things. You should be making friends to work with, not creating more alts. The creation of multiple alts to replace friends in game is what is keeping EVE stagnant and making the game less cooperative.

Find others who are like minded, build some trust, and go from there.

Protip if you are not one to pause training on your main: do whatever it is you currently do for isk, buy assistant characters for your alt slots out of the bazaar. I still do things from one account, although i've recently let go of one of my industrial helpers to make room for a pvp character. My setup went something like this:

1. First character, started as a miner, expanded into mission running and some trading, then went about training for all the advanced research and manufacturing stuff. Made some good isk manufacturing from blueprints out of the LP stores and eventually bought my first helper.

Note for the above: Standings gained here were vital to reduce taxes, allow me to set up a POS, and lots of other good stuff. It helps a heap to have a good mission runner as your backbone.

2. Helper #1: Basic research and manufacture character with a few million sp. Allowed me to use more slots and get my production lines really running for the first time. At this point I more or less quit the mission-runner training on my main and got more heavily into trade skills, picked up some more advanced research/invention skills to boot.

3. Helper #2: Basic research and manufacture character with freighter skills. The trigger for buying this character was volume. I had trouble getting things to market on time using just contracts and really wanted some independence at the same time. Having a hauler really helped me out in this regard and the extra slots of course were never wasted. With this character up and running my operation was running in full swing. I snagged some ice harvesting and PI skills on my main to round out my self-sufficient core operations, assuring that I wouldn't be at the mercy of the market if necessary items spiked.

There were a few imperfections that bugged me not having more than one account, ideally I wanted to boost the standings on my alts and set them all up with research agents and trade hubs of their own, but that was simply not happening on one account and the necessary evil of keeping my main posted most of the time at Jita to sell my wares never dragged on me that much since my POS was not far away.

To give you an idea of how succesful the venture was overall, I started playing in early 2009 and I cleared 110billion in NAV at the end of last year. Not too shabby considering I am a weekend warrior, usually on 2-3 nights a week, and I have paid for my account with PLEX since 2010. I made enough isk that I recently sold my first helper alt and plan to put my main on alt duty, assuming I can find myself a nice pvp character for sale to fill the void.

Good luck with your own ventures, a one-account empire is quite a good feeling. Listening to people talk about the absurd number of accounts they use just makes me laugh. I can't really imagine horsing around with 2 or more EVE windows, but I imagine it makes EVE feel like a job and that was something I set out to avoid at all costs.

Certainly. There are many ways to do this.

I have played this game with three accounts (9 characters) and have cut back to one account (3 characters).

Yes, you can produce more isk with more characters. But, it takes more time, and cost more in game fees.

What part of industry interests you? If manufacturing, then train your main (first) to be able to manufacture whatever you choose to manufacture (I initially chose rigs, before CCP changed the game to make rigs of all sizes). Set up one alt in Jita, to keep track of the market, and to place purchase orders of salvage. Used a second alt as courier. Exchanged isk between the 3 characters as needed. Made a very satisfactory amount of isk, plus the satisfaction of building something from salvage that someone else wanted to buy, for a profit. Use contracts to exchange goods between my characters.

Can easily train alts to lvl 4 PI skills, for reasonable amount of extra isk. I trained one alt to minimum industrial level to fly a bestower, with a cloak, into losec (to take advantage of better PI planets). Just need to go one or two jumps into lowsec. Get ganked every once in a while (cost about 1m isk), but make more than 100m isk per month. There are other ways to do this.

Not too hard to train to hire research agents. Once the basic skills are learned, you get passive income, forever.

As I say, lots of possibilities, depending on how you want to play the game.

P.S. My main is also extensively trained in exploration, so spends time deep in lowsec and nullsec with a Pilgrim, soon to be an Ishtar. All part of the sandbox.

People say this kind of thing all the time and in-part it is true, but most people never fully examine the proposition here. For every account you add there is the monthly fee associated with it, so right there and then you deduct (at today's prices) ~500mil per month from your profits. Now, you might argue, that account with three character slots is going to generate much more than that! Of course it will, but it will take either time (training) or isk (character purchase) to realize that long-term profit you imagined.

After you realize the short-term capital you will be dealing with you then have to take a look at another (imho, more important) factor: your time. How much time do you want to spend making isk? Yes, the process of making ISK scales up rather nicely in some professions (esp. manufacturing and trading), but time is a finite resource and at some point you will find yourself making the following choice:

1. Fully utilize the isk-making potential of all my characters
2. Don't spend that much time on the isk-making characters so I can do something fun (arbitrary assumption that grinding isk is not a goal in and of itself, if that's not the case for you, I guess my post has no application for you).

Lets explore a hypothetical. Say I have one player (A) who runs one account, managing two manufacturing characters and a jack-of-all-trades main. Not unlike my own setup. Say I have another player (B) who runs three accounts with a pvp main and eight alts, some of whom do PI, others that run manufacturing and research jobs, and others that trade the goods, with a hauler thrown in for good measure.

Player A devotes about an hour a day maintaining the operation, he can realize 90% of his possible earnings doing this. He makes 1bilion isk a month. (Hypothetical, round numbers for round numbers' sake)

Player B devotes about an hour a day maintaining his operation, but he can only realize 50% or so of his possible earnings. He makes 3 billion isk per month.

Now, i'm not going to argue that B is making less isk or that in any realistic scenario B would be loosing isk for having more characters, because in all honesty the least amount of work will probably see B break even with A unless there was a huge difference in the efficiency of their operations stilted to A's advantage. The argument I will make; however, is that A is able to make the most of his single subscription without investing much more time. In terms of rote efficiency player A is better off. If he takes time off and scales back his operation, he doesn't end up paying for dead-weight. If he wants to crank up he earning another 10% to the max, he only needs to invest another incremental amount of time.

The point being, there are plenty of situations in this game where having multiple accounts is advantageous, but I believe it is quite misleading to suggest that there nothing to consider except "how much more isk do you want to make?"