EVE New Citizens Q&A

Edit: The shortage of Heavy Neutron Blaster II is largely over. This guide still works, but you may want to experiment with different modules.

I wrote this for my alliance's forums, as we use an enormous amount of Heavy Neutron Blaster II and we are depleting gamewide supply enough that I wanted to teach people to build them. However, it should also be of use to a newer player looking to get into tech 2 production. This guideline is aimed at producing Heavy Neutron Blaster II but can be modified to other tech 2 products, although skill requirements differ a little.

As a broad guideline, you will want a quarter billion ISK in capital behind you before starting tech 2 module production.

Full disclosure: My alliance has an interest in these modules getting cheaper. Also, while Heavy Neutron Blaster II is quite profitable to make at the time of writing, this may change by the time you are reading this.


Skill requirements:

- Industry 5
- Science 5
- Plasma Physics 3, Quantum Physics 3 and Gallente Encryption Methods 3 (you will use other skills for other modules)
- Power Grid Management 5 (CPU Management 5 for some other modules)
- Laboratory Operation 5, Advanced Laboratory Operation 3 (4/0 is OK to start with)
- Mass Production 5, Advanced Mass Production 3 (4/0 OK to start)
- Scientific Networking 3 (convenience only)
- Supply Chain Management 3 (same as above)
- The skills I advise training to 3 are all worth training to 4, but doing so is a low priority.



The overall process:

Tech 2 production works like this - from a blueprint original (BPO) you make copies. Those copies, plus datacores (purchased from Faction Warfare players) are used to generate limited-use tech 2 blueprint copies (BPCs). These, plus materials bought from people that do Planetary Interaction, materials harvested from nullsec moons, and a tech 1 version of the item you make yourself (or buy), are used to make tech 2 items.

I will assume you let others build all of the intermediate products.


Blueprint Original:
Purchase a BPO of the tech 1 version of the module, either from an NPC sell order or from a player via the contracts system. This BPO does not need to be researched for invention, but it is useful to research it if you build the tech 1 version of the module yourself. For Heavy Neutron Blaster II production, I recommend buying 3 BPOs (they are cheap). Researched one ME 10 PE 16, the others can remain 0/0.

Copying:
This step is twice as fast in a POS, and 9% cheaper (although the cost is trivial).
Find a station with copy slots or a POS with the relevant labs and bring the BPO(s) there. Right click it, select "Use Blueprint" and choose copying. I recommend making 23 run BPCs if you don't have a POS, 46 if you do, as that's a week worth of invention (I personally have hundreds of legacy 300 run ones from prior to the Crius expansion, I don't think these can be made now). Make lots of copies.

Datacores:
You will require various datacores for invention.
Datacore – Quantum Physics
Datacore – Plasma Physics
are used for HNB2s (other items use different ones)

These originally (mostly) come from Factional Warfare LP stores. If your bankroll can afford it, I recommend setting up buy orders for a thousand of each. Smaller amounts are fine.


Decryptor decisions:
Decryptors are single-use items that improve invention attempts. These are an advanced topic I advise you to research yourself once you have the basics down.
Not using a decryptor is OK for Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs.


Invention Jobs:
Press Alt-S to bring up the Science menu, and navigate to the blueprints tab. Next to the BPC you want to invent, select “Invention” (which is one of the five icons). Your datacores and (optionally) decryptors will need to be in the same station or POS hangar as the blueprint copy.
Select the number of times you want to run the job. With my skills, and in a station, Heavy Neutron Blaster II invention jobs take between 7 and 8 hours per run, and I generally run 10-23 at a time.
You will also have the option to select a decryptor. Then start the job. This will reduce the number of runs on the BPC by 1 (per job run) and consume datacores and decryptors. It has only a chance to work (about 40%, possibly modified if you use a decryptor)
Tech 2 BPCs for modules have 10 runs baseline.
You can run a total of 9 invention and/or copying jobs with the suggested skill levels or 5 with the lesser skill levels.


Gathering materials:
The tech 2 BPC you have made via invention will tell you (under Show Info – Bill of Materials tab) what is required to build the tech 2 item. Go to a trade hub and purchase 100 times what is needed for one run (1000 times if you can afford it) and haul it to wherever you intend to produce the tech 2 modules. (Don't haul it yourself, use the contract system to pay someone else to do it for you. You don't want to lose all of your materials to a gank).
One of the items you need is the tech 1 version of the item you are building. You can optionally build this yourself, or buy it.
You will also need to move your tech 2 BPCs to the production location, if you produce and build at different locations.


Run the production job:
This is basically the same interface as invention, except you select the tech 2 BPC not a tech 1 one, and you usually want to do all of the runs at once.
You can run 9 of these build jobs at a time (5 with the lowskills option)


That's my intro to tech 2 production.

Good guide, but what I always wondered (as a non-industry type) is how do you keep track of your expenses to know if you are making money. For instance, you have the cost of running the pos, in addition to the cost of all the materials you have. Are there specific third party tools that are useful for this or is it just a spreadsheet jockey sort of thing?

While it isn't a required skill for invention, you may want to advise getting Advanced Industry to III, as well, since Industry is already above III. It's a 13-hour train on the default remap, and reduces the time requirements for pretty much everything related to industry by 3% per level. Shaving an additional 9% off your times is huge and it's a very small cost (a 250k ISK skillbook and 13 hours' training).

all this forum posting has cost me a few trillion isk then

Glad some people have found this useful.

An indispensable tool from an indispensable site. If you are looking to get into production bookmark this one immediately.
Keep it up, Steve.

I'm still a stupid noob when it comes to production like this, partly because I have better things to do with my time (even if it's just picking my nose) but also there's too many variables at work for me to figure out if it'd be worthwhile or not. I don't think I've ever seen a short, handy, T2 production tutorial on this forum, so good job.

Also, honesty = bonus points.

Likewise, thanks for the concise tutorial!