Currently a 30 day MCT is 1.6b isk in game. On my account management page I can buy 30 days MCT at £15.99 or I can buy 500 plex for £16.99 from CCP which I can sell (at the current plex price) for a tad over 1.6b giving me 1 months character training for £15.99 or £16.99 respectively.
Or I can have multiple accounts with one character on them for £9.99 a month (or less if i buy multiple months at a time) essentially allowing MCT for £9.99. So what is the advantage of using all your character slots per account when you…
A: Can train multiple accounts for less than buying an MCT by having 1 character per account over multiple accounts.
B: Can log on all of those accounts at once (as long as they are Omega of course) whereas with characters on the same account you cannot do that.
I know that there is currently an offer on MCT if you buy 3 months Omega, I am talking generally when that offer is not available.
You train up low-skilled alts on the secondary/tertiary slots on an account that is Omega. For a limited time only, a month or three, then done. Basic haulers, industrial cynos, scouts, spies, suicide gankers, structural managers etc.
Eventually the 2nd and 3rd characters on your account are fully trained for the job you want them to do. In my case, these characters do PI, research, manufacturing, etc… all background jobs that do require Omega but only occasional logins.
For the past year or so I’ve only been training them with the skilling sprees and MCT promotions - mostly level 5 science skills at this point.
2nd and 3rd character slots are useful when you only want to do a limited amount of training, don’t need to multibox, but need them to stay Omega. Examples: PI alt, non-war deck-able hauler, T1 Industry, BPO Research, Trade.
Another reason people will go this route is when they don’t want to use real world money to pay for training, and don’t need to multibox. And that’s because, an MPTC is always at least 15 plex cheaper than dropping 500 plex to open a 2nd training queue. And they can frequently be found for much less through the in-game market, depending on what types of specials CCP was running. Example, SP Farm Toons.
A second account is useful when you want to “permanently” train a character, want to pay real money to do it, and/or want to multibox. And that’s because, as you noticed, paying a sub is the cheapest way to go omega and train if you want to pay real money. Examples: capital alt, dual-box PvE toon.
Paying one monthly fee to have 3 omega characters. Sure it’s expensive while training them up, but once trained you get 3 fully functional omega characters for the price of one. Another option is to use many accounts to train up the characters and then do a character transfer to consolidate them later once they are fully trained. I’m planning to do this myself eventually.