Since when T2 ship manufacturing become such unprofitable garbage?

[Tau_Cabalander]

Since forever?

Some easily found examples, but I didn’t dig deep, so I’m sure there are earlier ones:

2011-09-18 Building the cool ships

@Tau Cabalander

I really don’t recommend ship manufacturing as everybody and their grandmother wants to build ships. It can be difficult to compete. Not a great place to start in industry.

2013-05-03 Looking for info on the T2 BPO Lottery

@Tau Cabalander

@Steve Ronuken

The markets pretty much don’t exist. If they did, BPOs wouldn’t be enough to supply them, so the price would rise to the point where people could make a profit with invention. That’s just supply and demand for you.

And it’s not like anyone is being forced to make them at a loss. Only people who would are the same kind of people who would make a Drake at a loss. People who don’t do their research first.

@RubyPorto

Only when the quantity demanded is entirely filled by potential BPO production does invention take a hit. And then anyone with any part of a functioning brain simply doesn’t invent those things.

Thank you Steve Ronuken and RubyPorto.

Some additional food for thought. Consider the three groups that were only touched upon above:

Group 1: For some reason, some people feel they have a right to a profit making whatever they want to make. They completely ignore the needs of the market (often driving down prices in the process), then come into this forum and complain that the world doesn’t spin in their preferred direction.

Group 2: Then there is also the “it’s a game crowd”. They’ve posted in this forum that they don’t care about making profits, because they just like building stuff. They are almost like the “Minerals I Mine Are Free” (MIMAF) crowd, except they do know what they are doing, but they just don’t care. They don’t put a value on their time.

Group 3: Lastly there is the MIMAF crowd. I like to think they simply don’t know better, unlike group 2.

Now add the above groups into the mix that Steve Ronuken and RubyPorto mentioned. Start with an item that has such low demand that the few existing T2 BPO meet most of it, then add in manufacturers that sell below a profitable invention cost. There is no room in that market for additional manufacturers seeking to make a profit!

An advantage for the T2 BPO holders? Possibly as they are the only ones earning any ISK, but they have very limited-by-BPO production capability, and quite a large amount of opportunity cost (many billions). I am personally thankful that they help keep prices down on low demand items. I’d sell the T2 BPO and use the ISK to invest in inventing T2 items the market wants to buy a lot of at a respectable profit.

Finally I’ll mention that everybody and their grandmother thinks ship manufacturing is sexy. That’s a lot of competitors which further reduces profit margins, and leads to endless 0.01 ISK battles in trade hubs.

The more you know…