Manufacturing can be very profitable. I buy materials, manufacture and sell the finished items at the same station. The only thing I don’t do there is science stuff as it’s not a lab.
The trick is to focus ruthlessly on what is currently profitable. Don’t try and supply an over supplied market. Have a wide range of stuff you can make to avoid saturating the market.
You need a fair investment in skills and blueprints to start, and a willingness to sit on something for a few months until the profits come your way
Understand your supply chain and what precursor components are worth making, or what to just buy.
Understand what is mean by “opportunity cost”, and avoid losing too much that way.
Yeah, I can’t understand the Adaptive Invulnerability Field II problem - possibly because I’ve not had a good look at it (I think I might have an idea about it). I’ve got a bunch of BPCs sitting there until it comes back to me. It will have been profitable at some point or I wouldn’t have done the invention.