After a 8 year break I have decided to give EVE another shot. Back in the days I ran a relatively successful manufacturing operation in WSpace/HighSec and the supply chain management / margin optimization aspect drew me back to EVE.
Before reactivating my accounts, I did some math and read up on the changes, and it seems like manufacturing hasn’t changed fundamentally while I was gone.
The one anomaly I encountered doing my research were the prices of advanced components:
I have not found a piece of T2 ship/equipment that could compete with the raw ISK/hour I would get from manufacturing (certain) advanced components. I haven’t calculated the ISK/hour for every T2 ship and piece of equipment in the game, but in general the profit margins from advanced components are significantly better.
This seems odd, considering that the barrier to entry is much lower for advanced components and it’s a lot easier to set up production. This begs the question: Why are there not more people producing advanced components?
I know that Roleplay is a factor. Producing ships and guns is more attractive than manufacturing intermediate products. Consequently more people gravitate towards it, even when they could be making more profit elsewhere. But is this the only factor or am I missing something fundamental?
*Edit: I hope this is not perceived as a whine, I would prefer to build ships and guns, but I don’t mind producing say … Quantum Microprocessors for now. I just want to understand the current market a bit better.