Science & Industry

Right, so I've been playing this game for many, many years (Yes, this is an alt, hurr durr). But I'm still pretty much clueless when it comes to Industry and Research. Bear with me here, this could get long.

My first foray into manufacturing had me completely max my skills for T1 production, but the profits were simply too small to justify continuing when Incursions, Complexes and even PvP proved more profitable and consistent. I was mainly producing Battlecruiser hulls that I knew to have a very good margin and turnover in my local area, was there something I was missing (And yes, my blueprints were well researched) ?

Also, does this change substantially with T2 manufacturing? I do have the capacity and capital to purchase and run a BPO collection and research towers, not to mention a Jump Freighter and generally good industry skills, but I'd like to hear from the pros as to whether this is worthwhile before I decide to invest in it. I'm mainly looking to make this my main source of income as I can rarely afford to spend many hours online running sites or managing market orders any more and friends have advised that production can be lucrative, but been generally completely useless on actually explaining what needs to be done.

Thanks in advance to anyone helping this nublet out :3

Seems like running your own tower would involve more than just a few hours of occasional management. You can get your feet wet in T2 production without one. You just have to buy your BPCs you use for invention through contracts, then invent in NPC station. Much lower up front cost.

You can also make a copy alt who will sit in some remote NPC station making the harder BPCs for you.

You can find many T2 items where the margins are anything but razor thin, especially if you spend some time researching locations to sell instead of just dumping all your stuff in a hub station. Volumes vary, obviously, but often you also have less competition than in T1 markets (though what competition you do have can get pretty stiff). T2 manufacturing is more time-consuming and relies on an organized process, though. You can't just have a bunch of minerals, click a blueprint, select a few options and pick up a completed item. There's procuring T1 BPCs for invention (buy them? make them? both?), invention itself, construction parts, materials that you can only reliably get in Jita, skills for invention and construction that go beyond PE 5. IMO the different layers of the process are the fun part of it. When you get it right and if you don't hate the process, you can make really good money with just T2 modules and some ships.

It really helps to have a POS. It also helps getting the figures for ISK/hr for an item to see if it's even worth it (e.g. you might make 10mil profit off of something but is it worth it given that it took you 3 days to get that item together..?). I personally wouldn't start by jumping into T2 production with something like T2 cruisers and battlecruisers or whatnot, start with stuff that sells well for comfortably above manufacturing+invention cost. Stuff that gets blown up often is usually a good place to start looking.

Basically, if you have the capital, get a POS, set up a couple labs, some assembly arrays (the time savings are significant! just dont' use those that have a material multiplier of greater than 1...). Pick a few things to start with at first--idk, whatever has a good market where you are, volume and price wise. Copy BPOs, invent, get materials together, make, sell. Get your hands on a some tools to calculate costs so you know how much something costs to invent and make, don't be afraid of abandoning an item temporarily if competition heats up into an annoying 0.01 ISK war and if you can't spend the time babysitting your orders.

FWIW I use T2 manufacturing as my main source of income and it does the job very well. I also don't have the online time to make reasonable money PvE'ing most of the time, plus I found that I actually enjoy T2 industry more than any PvE grind. Make ISK while you sleep!

Correct, check the official wiki (link above) for invention and you can see the math behind it

higher skills will make invention more likely. you want at the very least 3s in the 3 skills the invention requires, 4s are really a better minimum.

setting up a spreadsheet for t2 manufacturing is a little bit complicated but not too bad.

start with the actual material costs. go to http://zofu.no-ip.de/bpo and search for the BPO you are interested in (remember you cant get a t2 BPO but that will let you see what the base costs are).

look up how waste works with material efficiency (especially with negative MEs), all t2 BPCs will have a negative ME.

Now here is the complicated part...are you going to invent your own BPCs? If so, are you going to use datacores? Are you going to use a T1 item to increase your chances of success?

I can tell you nearly always with a small mod or ammo you WONT want to use a datacore or T1 item. Ships are far more complicated, there may be a profit to using a datacore, and you will have to be careful to find out what is the most profitable. If you make an assumption about what is a good idea there is a really good chance you will sell at a loss.

best idea (IMO)?
buy a t1 BPO for something.
make a ton of copies (all at max runs, thats important during invention)
do ME research on your BPO
make t1 items with that BPO
use those t1 items for making the t2 items
use those copies to invent t2 BPCs
this way you are pretty much maximizing your profits (mostly)

the more things you make yourself along the way the most profit youre going to make. furthermore, if you DONT maximize your profits you might not make any profit at all.

if you have any specific questions message me.