I just returned to EVE and while my main fighter account is doing Abyssal content, I want to find something to do with my industry pilot on a separate account.
So this toon has around 100m SP and is highly focused on industry skills.
I has the following skill lines trained to max or near max:
Planet Management (max)
Production (max except drugs)
Resource Processing (max except moon and mass reactions)
Scanning (max)
It can also pilot Caldari Freighter, Jump Freighter and all the miningt stuff like Orca and Rorqual.
I played around a bit with EVE ISK per hour and although mining might be viable in terms of being at least profitable, I would only do it if it is really the last thing that’s possible.
Production seems to be quite inefficient in high sec space when I take the blueprint buy price into account.
But I may be missing a good chunk of how that works (been abscent for years now and missed a lot going on.
So if anyone could give me any advice on what to do with my industry toon (other than selling, giving it to someone else) it would be very much appreciated!
If you like the idea of getting into manufacturing, Consider joining an industry-oriented corp with a large blueprint library to remove the cost of having to buy the BPOs yourself. There are many out there, in various levels of security.
There are a lot of products that can profitably be manufactured in highsec - that’s where the markets are and where most production takes place. In my experience most T2 items are profitable at some point in their cycle. You can improve profitability by including other links in the value chain - harvest your own PI, build your own advanced components, do your own invention, hauling, market orders, etc…
Once you know your cost (including invention, market fees, etc…) and the profit margin you want, you can look for products where the market spends a reasonable percentage of its cycle at or above the price where you would be comfortable selling. Most stuff will spend a portion of their cycle below that price - that’s the nature of commodity markets - but the price will bounce back. If it only went down, it would have hit zero a long time ago!
How making your own things change anything, when you compare prices to market prices?
There is no difference if you produce something or buy it from market. Price is the same. Only difference I can see is avoiding tax. Can someone finally explain this? Because every time I hear this, it sounds like “minerals I mine are free”.
Every material you don’t have to buy improves your margin on the product - given that the selling price is the same either way.
The materials you harvest (and the intermediate materials you make) have value independently but, the best use for those materials is to incorporate them into something even more valuable. if you build something, the expectation is that it will be worth more than the ingredients you used to make it - otherwise, why bother?!
then I need to move it back, so maybe make several trips.
If I mine my own tritanium, what I can get from it :
I need to move it to the hub, so maybe several trips
I need to sell it to SO, then remove taxes
I need to move back without it
so the trip is the same, bu it the first case I add it to the cost of tritanium, in the second case I remove it from the benefit I would make from selling it. Basically you can deduce a volumic cost, that is the cost to move a full freigther, divided by the volume of the freighter.
so first case (I purchase) cost is SO price + volumicĂ—volume.
second case (I produce) cost is BO price Ă—(1-taxes/100) - volumicĂ—volume.
so no, the PRICE of using tritanium for industry, in the second case, is much lower than in the first case. actually it can be <0 but then it means I made a wrong move by mining that tritanium in the first place (OR it means that trit was just a byproduct)
Thank you so much for your answers. It is much appreciated.
I still cannot quite decide on what I want to do regarding industry. Maybe I will indeed enlist to a corporation that will help me getting back into it while I can provide whatever benefit to them.
Or I will start solo mining for a bit in a Hulk/Mack or Orca until I made up my mind
Manufacturing can be quite a good profit on the larger ships.
Even at jita cost for minerals you can easily make a profit.
You can cut the costs by mining it your self or making contacts with miners willing to sell at a discount
Then there is also sell orders at lower than jita price for ore but it can take a few days to build up enough stock to warrant hauling it but it can save you upwards of 15%.
You could also mine high value ores like rakovene which would provide an overflow of high price low volume minerals which you could then sell to get the minerals you struggle to get quantities of.
Then there is drug manufacturing which is profitable if you can mine/source the materials needed.
If you do abysals there is plenty of bpcs and minerals needed to build trig ships. Also a good earner.
Maybe I’m wrong but it works for me. I tend to diversify into 2 or 3 projects to hopefully combat any market shenanigans that may occur.
If you really want to stay in hisec, then what I’ve noticed is that systems adjacent to low sec entry points are often short on “staple goods” that people want for their low/null sec operations.
I’m not going to name any of these locations, because then I’d be inviting competition. A general idea, though would be say: near a mission running place. Like one where you can do level 5 missions, or a concentration of level 4 agents.
Just for the convenience of not having to make a trip to Jita, people will pay a higher price. You just have to figure out what the mission runners are using. (Maybe go to where the mission is and do D-scans to see what kind of ship they like to fly… etc…)
But instead of hauling the items from Jita, it’s probably easier to haul minerals/ore out there, and make it locally.
I’d guess mobile tractor units get at least a few sales. Not sure how many, though. (And it makes a good use for your PI).
You forget the time to haul the hulls. Those things are big and really not worth hauling. So you need to build them in Jita, with its horrendous index, or one of the 7 systems around.
I tell you, because unless very rare exception, all the T1 hulls I build are for T2. When I ignored the hauling cost, they were interesting. When I added the hauling cost, they became “no way”.
You can look at the history in the region, what is sold, then compare the volume to what is sold in Jita, and sort the item by relative Jita volume , then compare the SO ratio.
Don’t build T1/T2 in Jita and the surrounding systems. Only build faction items, for which most of the price comes from the BPC cost and so the ratio of your tax in the total cost of the item is very low .
Not even just because of time issues. Hi Sec ganking is seriously crazy these days. (I actually think some areas of low sec are safer.) I was moving a mackinaw through hi sec a few weeks ago, on autopilot, and somebody ganked it just to get the T2 modules.
Also if a Triglavian invasion happens and you’re not watching for it.
Although I’m very fond of Brave, we have some ancient history (I’m former CO2) that prevents me from going the same route myself.
Again, congrats!
TIP: Consider manufacturing all the items everybody uses, but never gives thought to, like Industrials (especially Epithal for PI), shuttles, cynos, warp disruptor probes, etc., and since you are in Brave: salvagers, salvage drones, mobile tractor units
