Science & Industry

I think you'll find that high-sec industry in eve tends to be more of an individual pursuit. People do join industrial corporations and cooperate with other players but the game doesn't reward specialization. What I mean by that is you can be inventing, manufacturing and selling simultaneously - and you don't even need to be logged in. When you are logged in you can be mining or hauling stuff to market while simultaneously managing your research/production lines or your market. The planets that produce the PI for your T2 production only need a few minutes attention each week - and most of that can be done remotely. You can be vertically integrated - great for margins or you can specialize and produce much higher volumes at lower margins. Both options work, you'll need to decide which is the most fun for you. This is, after all, a game - not a business.

You'll also need to decide where you want to be on the efficiency curve. Will you plan your production with spreadsheets and buy orders and sophisticated supply chain management or will you simply buy stuff at the regional hub when you run out.

Don't be so sure this is your "one and only" character. You can have 3 characters on 1 account in Eve and you can train 3 characters to level 4 faster than you can train 1 character to level 5. Three level 4 industrial characters are a lot more useful than 1 level 5 even if you can only log 1 in at a time - though it definitely helps to have corporate hangars so you can share stuff!

Industry is a good choice for a casual character with real life priorities but only if you treat it casually. The market is cyclical - you don't need to micro manage it unless you enjoy that - it will eventually come to you. If you run out of something - it isn't the end of the world, the market will still be there tomorrow.

By all means, join a group of like minded players. There is a corporate recruitment channel in the forums and most corps have a public chat where you can meet their recruiters and learn about their group. If you make a mistake, it takes a couple of seconds to quit the corporation and join a new one.

Last but not least - have fun.

I started building small rigs on the advice of the real life friend who introduced me to the game. Blueprints are cheap and easy to research, all you need to haul your materials and finished goods is the exploration frigate you get free with the career missions. I was actually able to bootstrap my business using the salvage I had collected running missions and enjoyed a cost advantage while small because I could buy small lots at low prices in backwater stations. Use Google to search fits for frigates and destroyers to see what rigs are popular, then check the history tab in the market tool to view the cycle. Load the blueprint in the industry tool for an estimate of cost and selling price to determine profitability. I started with Trimarks, Shield extenders, Polycarbons and Hyperspatials.

If you're not going to create a market ALT, be sure to establish your base in the same region as the hub where you intend to do business - you can manage your buy and sell orders remotely with the proper skill but you cannot see across region boundaries.

You don't need to "play" more than 1 character but each ALT - assuming level 4 skills - will give you 10 more research/invention slots, 10 more production lines and 5 more planets for P2 - which will help margins once you start building T2 product. You can pause your main once he has the required skills and train the ALT at no cost. If you're impatient (like me) you can use Power of 2 promotion to train and then move the character to your main account to avoid ongoing subscription cost. Only need to log them in a few minutes a day to keep their research and production slots full.

Most of the industrialists I know have a personal ALT corp where they do their industry - it resolves the trust issue in a game where joining a corp, gaining trust until you are granted leadership roles and then robbing it blind is a respected profession.

Also bear in mind that industry, like all PVE content in the game, will become boring and repetitive once you get it figured out. Best to let a couple of ALTS run that part of the business and earn the income while you focus your main on more social activity. A corporate leadership/mentoring role is a good choice - player interaction doesn't have to involve exploding spaceships.