I’ve been away from the game for a long time. Looking to fire up the industry again. Basically is it still viable to manufacture out of npc stations anymore? Or will I have to move all my stuff into one of the new player built stations to make any profit? I run my industry out of high sec, a few jumps from jita, and I mainly make t1 ships and modules.
I’m not planning to join a corporation, Not sure if you need to be in a Corp to get the most out of the new stations. I could easily afford to buy one of the new stations though, but unsure if i’ll make much profit out of using it solo though.
Basically NPC station manufacturing hasn’t changed. You have the NPC tax and no bonuses.
The new structures give bonuses to ME,TE and costs similar to the old POS system. You have to do the math.
For solo owning a structure is hardly profitable, because of fuel costs and wardecs. You can’t take it down, when attacked, you have to defend it or lose it. Defense is only possible with a fleet fight. Your installation may survive longer in an obscure place, but this ups the hauling effort as you can’t contract transport (you can, but nobody will pick a haul to a private unknown Upwell structure, docking access scams are a thing).
I’m a solo manufacturer too, and use public structures around Jita plus private ones I have access agreed on. This works well if you keep an eye on the owner corps. Most of them will lose their stuff sooner or later and you have to move. To not lose the jobs I keep my expensive jobs to 24, max 48h runtime.
Prior to the Crius expansion in 2014, there were limited manufacturing slots in NPC stations. With the expansion there are now an unlimited number of slots but a “system cost index” was added to discourage clustering. The more manufacturing in a given system, the higher the job cost will be. In Perimeter and New Caldari the cost index is over 8%. https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/blueprint/costindex.php
With the Citadel expansion in 2016, brokerage and taxes at NPC markets were increased significantly. Tax is 2% - reducible to 1% with the accounting skill. Brokerage is 3% - reducible to 2.5% with the Broker Relations skill and to 2% with faction and corporate standing.
If you are building T1 product for sale in Jita the margins will be slim and the taxes you pay working in a nearby NPC station will hurt. There are public structures where a lower tax rate plus the material efficiency bonuses can make a big difference for low margin items.
I send 10-15b in courier contracts per week from Jita to a station near a system I build in, then back again (then do the last leg myself). The cost is less than 1.6% of the goods transported.
Security through obscurity is real. Bowling over structures is an ordeal and is not worth the attacker’s time unless they have a serious vendetta, or they want to expel everyone from ‘their’ system, or you set up a Sotiyo.
The lower system index makes up for the 1.6% courier fees, and considerably more.
I have a question for you guys : how do I know how much profit I can make, please ?
Example : I have a fully researched Caracal BPO in an Engineering Complex, how do I know if creating 10 or those ships will bring me some profit ?
Add up the cost of materials plus taxes, then see if that’s lower than market prices. If so, profit! The industry UI makes it easy to look at profits at a glance, can hover and see the input cost / output value pretty easily.
