Define: small guy as one person who enjoys buying raw materials and adding value (through time-measured labor and/or intellectual effort) and watching one’s net worth grow over time.
If by “compete” one means “earn trillions per month” then, no, a single producer cannot earn trillions per month.
“which by definition….”
On the contrary, it is the only way for the small guy to compete with the big guys. The basic formulation I gave above was and remains (as far as I know) @SJ_Astralana 's unique contribution to the game.
“it more-or-less presumes…”
In fact, it presumes the exact opposite. Here is the “Market Research” report which shows “Profit Factor.” This report does not depend on owning any of the listed blue prints…it looks only at actual market data for a given trade location. Naturally, the most valuable Profit Factors are some of the more expensive BPO’s but there is plenty of true profit to be made from modestly priced BPOS. In practice, this list can change daily and over a short period of time I was able to isolate my starter BPOS (those worth 5M, not 5B) and got started. I reinvested profits along the way. I build only T1
The complete Market Research report contains a thousand items that actually changed hands within the last 24 hours in a familiar trading station
The general notion is expressed here:
The software which does this is still available here (but takes some significant work to get it running and will need significant modifications when the XML API is retired.
You can “compete” but there is no free lunch. If you are willing to use either use real world cash OR real-world time AND demonstrably effective algorithms to determine what to build and when, you can fulfill, well, the definition I give above.
The software which does this is still available here (but takes some significant work to get it running and will need significant modifications when the XML API is retired.
OR just use the notion and the now several google sheets interfaces into the ESI api and build your own. Everything you need can be done with the google sheets listed here and do not require knowledge of programming or ESI
There are healthy profits to be had in T1 manufacturing, even if building in a NPC station.