Before I took a long Eve break, I had started a new industry alt to fill out my last character slot on my account. I was almost done with the three months of training I had planned before I took some time off. I used Eve Prospers Indy Alt Guide which lays out the skill choices you have and when to remap. So now that I am back I recently finished up the last month of training with this character coming online I have doubled my manufacturing capacity. A second indy alt is small potatoes compared to some but three plexes worth of training is a big investment for me.
As far as what I am planning on using that characters manufacturing slots for is a whole other post entirely. The short version is I am planning on building T2 ships. Its good to be back though. I am still continuing my trend of causal industrialist and even more causal eve blogger. I have a few small guides in the works though I will post them over the next couple weeks.
If your a new player or new to market trading you might be asking yourself why is my market volume slowing down? Is Eve Online dying? What exactly is going on? I offer a few opinions as to why you might be seeing low market volume.
Summer Doldrums
Historically in-game populations trend down in the summer. If we take a look at Eve Offline Stats the player count will decline from June until September then it picks back up once school starts again and winter sets in, in the northern hemisphere. Lower player counts correlate often times with slow market volume. Think of it as a double edge sword less players means less items being destroyed as well as less players purchasing your goods.
SOV Revamp
The SOV revamp has players holding their cards close. It feels like everyone is holding their breath waiting for shit to hit the fan. Player numbers and market volumes will pick up some once this patch hits mid July. Although July is typically still a down trend for player counts as the summer doldrums continues, lots of people are on vacation. Did CCP plan the SOV roll out when player counts are typically low on purpose? The tinfoil hat sure doesn't breath well during the summer.
Burn Amarr
Burn Amarr is icing on the cake. Again several factors to slow market volume. Less players logging in. People tend to just avoid logging in altogether during that weekend. So less movement on the markets. Goods and services aren't being moved around as rapidly it slows the whole market. Expect business to be back to usual next week, still the impact is felt.
Cheap Materials
Another outlier I was thinking about is cheap materials. Producers(that aren't on vacation) are easily over producing as tech 2 materials and to a lesser extent minerals prices slump. Though I am not sure this has as much effect as the previous points. You run some calculations and see how much you could be making on a few items and you have some run away over production on your hands during the summer months.
The Goal:
Tech 1(T1) manufacturing is the basic level of industry in Eve Online. Typically you only need the industry skill at level one, a blueprint original(BPO) or copy(BPC) and the most basic of minerals sourced from the market.
The Plan:
What to build? Time to pull out your
spreadsheets, you need to see how much it will cost you to build based
on material costs vs what you can sell it for. First figure out how much
it will cost you to build the item check out this blueprint calculator or Fuzzysteve's blueprint calculator. Then check item prices at your point of sell either in-game or on Eve Central.
Your next consideration is what
BPO will you use? How to buy a Blueprint Originals(BPO)? Will you buy an already researched BPO from contracts
or buy un-researched BPO from the NPC market and do research
yourself? See my Blueprint Research Guide for more info. Don't forget to take into
consideration BPO costs into your overall investment.
Where to build? Two things to take into consideration here.
1).
Consider availability of materials make sure you can get enough materials it
will do you no good if you buy up all the resources in your system and
have to fly or ship in your resources using shipping services and lose
your margins.
2). Consider the building index of the system or how
many people are doing that activity in system. The build costs will
scale up as more players build things in this system. Areas like large
trade hubs will have higher building indexes as compared to less used
systems further out from major hubs. Go to your star map go to the
industry folder and you can see the various levels of industry
activities in various systems there.
You need to balance the two availability of materials and system building index.
The Skills:
Industry - 4% reduction in manufacturing time per skill level.
Advanced Industry - 3% reduction in all manufacturing & research time per skill level.
Mass Production - Ability to run 1 additional job per skill level.
Advanced Mass Production - Ability to run 1 additional job per skill level. Supply Chain Management - Skill at running manufacturing operations remotely.
The Equipment: Industrial ship to haul your minerals or goods. Blueprint of the item you want to build. Minerals (See cost layout below to find out how much you need.) Station with open manufacturing slots. Note: Even if slots aren't
open you may choose to "Get in Line" if for some reason you can't move
your minerals to a new station.
Total Costs:
I use simple excel functions to create these spread sheets. After I
enter in the mineral amount from the BP in cell B4 for Isogen, I type
=(B4*D1) in D4 cell. This function allows me to change my batch number
and buy exact amounts of minerals. You can use =sum() to add up the
amounts to get a quick grasp of how much things are going to cost. Like I
mentioned before you can use some of the various online tools. When I
started out I wanted a little bit more control than some of these web
applications give you.
Time Required:
Five minutes to buy the materials five minutes to ship the minerals to
your station. 10 seconds to start the manufacturing and five minutes to
finish and haul back to market. So in total 15 minutes every time your
manufacturing job finishes. Again watch the videos below to better
understand how to really invest in manufacturing.
Note: As you build more items per batch you will have to wait for those
items to manufacturer. For example I currently run 10 slots, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week. I renew my BPO cycles one day a week and I am
building enough units per batch for a 7 day cycle time. This practice is
similar to Planetary Interaction cycle times.
The Goal: In Eve Online researching blueprints
allows you to run more efficient production jobs by having higher levels
of Material Efficiency or ME and Time Efficiency or TE. Your manufacturing
jobs will require less minerals and components giving you better margins. Alternatively you could sell the researched blueprints for profit or use them to create blueprint copies. Copies can also be used for Invention.
What is ME and TE?
ME or Material Efficiency reduces a blueprints required materials by 1% per level to a max of 10%.
TE or Time Efficiency reduces blueprint manufacturing time by 2% per level to a max of 20%.
The Skills:
Laboratory Operation - Ability to run 1 additional research job per skill level.
Advanced Laboratory Operation - Ability to run 1 additional research job per skill level.
Research - 5% bonus to blueprint manufacturing time research per skill level.
Advanced Industry - 3% reduction in all manufacturing and research times per skill level.
Metallurgy - 5% Bonus to material efficiency research speed per skill level.
Scientific Networking - Skill at running research operations remotely.
The Equipment:
Blueprint Original or BPO
NPC Research Station or a Player Owned Station (POS) with lab modules.
Optional: Implants
Zainou 'Beancounter' Research
Zainou 'Beancounter' Metallurgy
How to buy a Blueprint Original (BPO)?
You can purchase BPOs form the market from NPC orders with fixed prices. One of the few items in the game you buy from NPCs. These BPOs will be unresearched and have a ME and TE of zero. You can also purchase BPOs from contracts. Other players sell BPOs through contracts and are sometimes already researched. Buying BPOs through contracts is a good way to get around researching your own BPOs and saving time.
Where to run research jobs? Finding a station.
You can find stations to do research in either by using the in game map and looking under the info window of the station or by using dotlan maps.
Consider the building index of the system or how
many people are doing that activity in system. The job costs will
scale up as more players run jobs in the system. Areas like large
trade hubs will have higher building indexes as compared to less populated areas further out from major hubs. Go to your star map, choose the
industry folder and you can see the various levels of industry
activities in various systems there.
Time Required:
Set up and starting a research job takes only a few minutes. The research job time itself will scale up depending on the level of research and the type of blueprint. Tech 1 module blueprints will research to max levels in only a few days. Where as a capital ship blueprints will take months or even years to research perfect ME and TE levels.
The Goal: You have a few million isk laying around. Instead of letting it sit in your wallet why not have it making money for you. The below skills will allow you to start a modest Planetary Interaction(PI) system without breaking the bank or your skill que. But will start paying you back in the long run. PI does have a slow pay back so don't invest if you need the cash on hand soon.
The Skills:
Your industrial ship skill will allow you the cargo space to carry a command center, needed to begin on a planet. A command center takes 1000 m3 of cargo space to carry.
Remote Sensing - gives you the skill to scan planets from the comfort of your home space station. The ability to gather and analyze remote sensing data from satellites in orbit around a planet and produce properly calibrated surveys.
Level 1: allows scans within 1 ly
Level 2: allows scans within 3 ly
Level 3: allows scans within 5 ly
Level 4: allows scans within 7 ly (Roughly 8 to 9 jumps away)
Level 5: allows scans within 9 ly
Interplanetary Consolidation - For each level in this skill, you may install a command center on one additional planet, to a maximum of 6 planets. You can have only one command center per planet. Cannot be trained on Trial Accounts.
Command Center Upgrades - Each level in this skill improves the quality of command facility available to you, in turn allowing for a greater number of connected facilities on that planet. Cannot be trained on Trial Accounts.
The Equipment:
Service Fees:
Variable Launch Fees based on amount of goods being transferred off planet.
Customs Fees in High Sec are 10% for all customs offices. With the Rubicon expansion this will change as you can train a skill that will lower the NPC Custom Fee's to 5%(at level 5) plus player tax if the Customs Office is operated by a player.
Total Costs:
5,631,000 isk (rough estimate) before Customs Fees and Launch Fees. The outline above will give you 3 planets and several command center upgrades to start a modest PI production system.
Time Required:
You can reset production to run for 30 minutes or a week. Depending on your schedule. If you keep your planets close to your home station it will only take a few minutes to fly out to the systems where your planets are to gather your goods.
