I began playing Eve Online a few days ago but, as is my norm, my research of its various mechanics and roles started weeks prior.
I have every intention of building a 100% vertically integrated industrial empire - solo. Building a corp may be in my future plans but that just adds to the current complexity.
To me, as a new player, vertical integration looks like this:
Mining and reprocessing ore (space rock, moon, ice, etc.)
Harvesting planetary space stuff with PI
Doing cool science-y things with reactions
Researching, copying, and building things from blueprints.
Selling the end result on the market or making it available to my currently non-existent corporation.
Questions
I have ~2.5M stored SP between the free 1M and a gold starter pack I purchased. Does it make more sense to spread the 2.5M SP across all the skills required for all the above steps (so like level 3 of each skill), or focus more on one or two areas before the rest?
The interwebs suggests it’s a waste of time to start with T1, to jump directly into T2. Do you agree? How about directly into T3?
I believe low/null-sec is required for reactions. Should I find a null-sec corporation from the start or can I make all of this work in high-sec? More than anything I’d rather not set up months of work and then have to move it all.
Notes
I am patient and understand that this is a long-term strategy. My goal with this post is to help get myself off on the best footing to increase my likelihood of success.
I understand market/trade is critical. I will train these skills on an alt that I switch to as needed to get things sold.
I will not be multi-boxing or anything like that, just a singular me.
Mining enough ore to build anything meaningful on a single character is going to be pretty rough.
For PI you can train the other two character slots on your account into decent PI extraction and Mass Reaction alts fairly quickly.
You’ll be competing with folk who have All Skills To V™, so bear that in mind.
I’d suggest finding an industrial corp in 0.0 to join. You’ll be able to buy materials from your corpmates/alliance at favourable terms and do the next stage of processing reactions quite profitably.
Blueprints are another matter altogether. A good Indy corp will have members with fully researched BPOs who can knock out copies for you to use very cheaply. A solid BPO collection is a long term project and ultimately a VERY valuable resource.
You’re in for a long slog going this route. I wish you luck.
Not sure if youre omega, but its best to start off with the basics before going in to specialization, especially if you reqlly plan to do everything yourself. But just 1 character doing everything is going to take a long time.
If youre alone, with 1 character, and you plan on mining everything, then no. You kinda have to start with T1.
T2 and T3 materials are very specialized and they require you to either buy most of the materials from the market, which means your profits will be slim to none, or go to various steps to get those materials yourself, which would require you to spend billions of isk in purchasing and deploying stations among other things.
Yes, it will be eaiser to join a null corp. Dont join a lowsec corp, those wont be too useful to what you want to be.
Market related skills arent that important, especially if youre just starting out. When you start doing tens of billions, hundreds of billions in transactions, then yes, market skills will come in handy. Until then, you have more better skills to train.
As a side note, you dont really need market skills if you plan to stay in nullsec.
You’re going to need access to structures in low/null/WH and therefore safer methods of hauling. Reactions in particular are needed for T2 and T3, which cannot be done in high sec.
T3 invention and construction skills are not a joke. I would be surprised if your SP got you there without compromising your ability elsewhere.
„Vertically integrated“ and T3 means you almost have to be living in a wormhole. And probably have to have excellent combat skills or lots of accounts to farm the relics if you’re so dead set on never buying anything from anyone.
T2 and T3 Are kind of their own end industry end games. Despite the name it is not a „progression“ system where people build T1, then T2, then T3. Most people stay at T2 because there’s just so many items.
Almost all T2 items require, as an input for construction, their T1 item. So you won’t be escaping T1 production by going to T2.
many WH groups have an industrial wing to a greater or lesser extent, those players are still expected to fleet up and fight.
the thought of trying to huff gas on one account, mine the ice and do the PI to build fuel blocks, AND mine the ore so you can do the first run of reactions makes me queasy. let alone running sites to get the salvage for the second stage of the process…
im not sure our intrepid OP realises just how much stuff is needed…
Joining a corp that can provide you with a reactions facility will likely help.
Doing everything from scratch would be a huge amount of time. I think most people who mine/huff/hack/whatever, harvest a portion of what they need and buy/sell to fill in the gaps. If you harvest, you can sell surplus materials and then use the ISK to buy what you are lacking. Otherwise you’re going to be travelling all over between wormholes, lowsec, nullsec, to get what you need.
Vertically integration for the sake of vertical integration is not a good idea, if you are for the profit and not for the pure roleplay. To max your profit, you need to pick what steps contribute the most to the end product in ISK and effort, this can vary per product.
Usually 80% of the whole profit margin is with few steps and parts, so it’s not worth spending 80% of the effort on the last 20%, but just buy on market. And it never will include the resource harvesting part, which is active, as its ISK/h is significantly worse than any other activity you can do in EvE to make money. Reactions, invention, production isn’t really consuming much time, as the jobs run while you can do other things.
People telling you that you need a citadel and need to be in null, are not considering the whole picture. You can be competitive while producing in highsec NPC stations, why? Because of the cost structure of production jobs, which their dominating part being the system index. Which itself is determined by the number of people doing jobs in this system. If you find a system with minimum index, which is easy in vast highsec, this will compensate any bonus you may get in a citadel elsewhere, where the index is high because everybody uses it.
Now to reactions, those can only be done outside highsec, but there are options. I’m using the Tama freeport reactors most of the time. You will pay tax to Snuff, but I don’t mind.
Folks know that reactions are restricted, but invention from artifacts for T3 BPCs are restricted in a different way: they cannot be done in NPC stations even if they are offering invention services.
Word!
Na, that sounds like my early aim to fly a Titan (solo, of course). It is possible, but not clever and only little fun.
How many T1 Battleships have you built yet, produced with ore you mined by yourself? I did, it was some work and I was mighty proud, but I dunno if I want to spend the days to continue doing this in EvE. So I specialized in a niche market, got a well working PI setup which needs not too much maintenance but still some challenging microing effort and earn some billions ISKs now and then to do what I fancy without too many purist ideas.
And I never got into a capital ship yet
Never heard about this kind of restriction, but as I do all the T3 inventions and production in a citadel (for speed, not for cost) I can’t rule it out.
