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Industry is a catch-all term for all the industrial activities within EVE: mining, manufacturing, researching, invention, reprocessing, and - relevant only to T3 ship construction - reverse engineering.
Industry is vitally important to the EVE economy and activity, as without industrial-minded players building the ships and modules and ammunition required for PvE and PvP combat, combat-minded players could not function. Virtually none of these items are seeded on the market; almost everything in EVE is player-built (you can identify NPC sell orders on the market by their >300 day duration).
This page shows you a general introduction to each aspect of industry. Equations for spreadsheets/programs are at the bottom. For further details on mining, manufacturing, research, invention, and other aspects of industry, see the links at the bottom.
If you don't care about the nitty gritty details and just want to go out and mine your own ore and build your own ships, you just need the following:
Open the industry window, click on the blueprint you want to produce, click on the Manufacturing icon (far left), then click “Start”. Congrats, in a little while the job will be ready for you to deliver and you'll have officially produced something. Probably at a loss.
The Starter Agent mission called “Making Mountains out of Molehills” is a great introduction to basic manufacturing.
The following skills are useful or required for T1 production, and are found in the Production skill category. Most or all of these will be needed for T2/T3 production as well.
Increase number of concurrent jobs:
Allow remote management of jobs:
You can produce items in the following locations:
Note that when creating things in POS and ECs, you may require special rigs or modules to make different kinds of things (ships, modules, etc).
All tech 1 items have BPOs sold in NPC stations in empire. Some BPOs are racial and you have to go to that area of space to get them, just like skillbooks. For example, projectile gun BPOs and projectile ammo BPOs are only available in Minmatar space. Sometimes you can get them elsewhere, but those are BPOs that are being resold by players—often at hilarious markups.
Tech 2 BPOs used to be seeded via a laughably rigged lottery system, but now are no longer being introduced into the game. You can still buy them if you have tens or hundreds of billions lying around.
BPO prices cost more as the item in question gets bigger. Small ammo is cheaper than big ammo is cheaper than modules is cheaper than ships. Frigate module BPOs cost less than battleship module BPOs, and frigate BPOs cost less than BPOs for larger ships.
Most T1 BPOs are cheap, and producing from them is easy. The most expensive ammo modules will run to 1m isk, excepting for torpedo and cruise missiles. Frigate ammo BPOs are cheap and quick to produce and research from. The same goes for small and medium drones. Most simple modules are also 100k or so. Guns can be expensive, battleship stuff is usually expensive.
Many blueprints can be found on this website, with the BPO cost in the bottom left corner. Note that this site has not been updated since May 2015, so make sure to double check pricing in game.
BPCs are usually only available for expensive goods, like ships or T2 products, otherwise people just use the BPO. Max-run (1500 runs) BPCs for battleship ammo and drones are often on the market, because lots of people like producing that stuff for themselves or their corps. Ditto with cruisers, frigates, destroyers, battleships, industrials. All the popular ships have fairly common BPCs up on contracts. There is also a blueprints channel that you can sit in and paste in your request every couple of hours until someone comes along who sells BPCs there are still quite a few people out there who make BPCs to order. Most are on contract in Jita.
As of the Ascension expansion, the maximum refining rate you can get is 87.52% (with max skills, a +4% implant, in a citadel with a T2 refining rig). Material efficiency is only really an issue if you're making ships bigger than battlecruisers. So, if you have a bunch of minerals sitting around, you could sell them for, say, 4mil ISK. Or you could add value in the form of creating a Thorax from those minerals and sell that for 8mil. Who cares about inefficiency with the market bolstering your value like that?
Each level of ME research gives you an additional 1% material savings and each level of TE gives you an additional 2% time savings. For most BPOs, such as ammo, drones, and modules, you will want to max research to 10/20 to maximize your ISK/hour. However, for larger ships, you will want to calculate the ME breakpoints for that item. For example, if you look at the blueprint for the Nidhoggur, you will notice that researching ME1 from ME0 does not actually yield you any material savings, while going up to ME2 saves 1 Drone Bay. You should use a spreadsheet to calculate the total savings for researching a blueprint and figure out what the break-even point is for material savings vs research cost and your time. For many ships, this will be around ME7 or ME8, with TE as high as you're willing to pay for it (however, note that TE often does not reflect a large increase in ISK/hour for large ships that are running for multiple days or more).
The equation for calculating material usage can be found at the bottom of the page.
Or, would it be worthwhile to buy a BPO from an NPC, research it, and sell it in a different region?
You can sell researched BPOs, but not on the market. As a relatively new player, you can't possibly fathom how much time other people have spent researching BPOs—all it takes is time. So that's a tough market. Hang out in the Trade > Blueprints channel (channels button, it's one of the existing ones you select from that list) if that interests you. There's a healthy market in researched ship BPOs and generally they're not that expensive. In fact some BPOs are cheaper researched than from NPCs because people are trying to offload them quickly. If you want a researched module BPO you'll have to ask around and hope you get lucky. Research on everything but ships is pretty quick though.
It's a lot of work for what you get. You can run a casual production business on the side and make a bit, but not much. Most producers do it as their whole job and it takes quite a bit of capital to do. I DO however recommend running a production business on the side that is related to what you do. Run missions? Put up buy orders for mission loot you know is undervalued. Sell ammo that you know is used in missions. Put up sell orders for items you know your agent demands. Put up buy orders for items you know your loyalty point store offers. If you really like to PvP in a ship and you find that it's constantly out of stock or overpriced then build some just for shits.
Not at all. More popular items have bigger profit margins because they tend to run out in the hubs which keeps the price less sticky up (you clear the market every once in a while and you can cheat downward pressure on prices). Build things that are used commonly in missions and PvP. Don't trust the fittings on the eve-o forums, trust the fittings you know are used by you and other TEST people. Your best source of evidence on what to build comes from what you wish was more available on the market.
Ships are often sold nearly at cost in empire, but the popular ones are still the best source of raw profit. You will need Advanced Industry V, good trade skills, and good standings to make it worth building ships to sell in empire. Also consider the System Cost Index when finding a place to build in empire. In TEST space (Vale of the Silent), minerals are fairly easy to come by, either by buying locally from miners, or by importing compressed ore.
It can be good to avoid really cheap modules because with a lot of the popular cheap stuff guys will run massive piles and dump that inventory on the market all at once.
T2 modules are always in high demand. Everybody needs Damage Control IIs, and things like Heat Sink IIs or guns often get purchased in larger stacks than other modules.
Generally stuff that is harder to build has higher margins. That includes items with long build times, items that use a lot of Megacyte/Zydrine relative to other stuff (in part also because people don't realize that by placing buy orders early in the week and babysitting them to keep them competitive you can get much lower cost zyd/mega), and items that use a lot of Isogen because that's usually a bitch to buy.
As far as T2 modules go, your margin depends chiefly on your supply chain. If you have a good source of a particular T2 part, that can boost your profits nicely. If you have perfect invention skills, that also will help. If you can spot a “natural market” and seed it before other people catch on, that can allow you to have much higher prices.
A lot. Buying minerals for full scale battleship production is a full time job, I only recommend it if you can keep an eye on eve while at work. Mineral orders need to be babysat and constantly updated to keep them competitive otherwise they aren't sold to. Sell orders also need a lot of attention sometimes. Building stuff in 0.0 markets or building stuff you know to be neglected by the market in a mission-running hub are easy though. There is a middle ground, but you'll tie up more capital placing orders you don't babysit. For guys like Halliburton it's all about inventory turnover. Build a Raven, sell a Raven, use that ISK to buy minerals, use those minerals to build a Raven. Rinse. Repeat. If you can do that 3 times a week you're making 3 times as much profit as if you only do it 1 time a week, using the exact same amount of capital.
There are still some items you can make in Nullsec for a profit by buying and importing compressed Highsec ore and refining it. You will need very good refine skills for this.
The skills Scientific Networking and Supply Chain Management allow you to remotely start research and production jobs. However, everything for the research or production job must be in the same place. You cannot have a Blueprint in another system and minerals in another and start a production job where the minerals are. The same goes for invention and other research.
The one exception is that you can have a Blueprint in a corp hanger and still be able to remotely start a production job in a POS as long as the minerals are in the POS.
When you install any industrial job - manufacturing or science - you need to pay an installation cost. This installation cost is calculated per system, and is dynamic, being based on how many other people have been using that system for manufacturing over the last 28 days (measured in job-hours, not # of jobs or # of people).
The system cost index is calculated by the number of system-job-hours, divided by total-universe-job-hours, and then square rooted for better numbers. This value (measured as a percentage, generally in the 0.01% to 5% range) is then multiplied by the job base value, which is:
NPC stations have a 10% tax on top of this final value.
You can find out the system cost index for nearby systems by using the Facilities tab of the Industry window. Each activity at a certain facility will have a red bar at the bottom of the icon, indicating relatively how expensive it is to install a job there. Mouseover will show you what can be built there, and a more detailed indication of the system cost index (see image to right).
You can also find system indexes by using this CREST endpoint.
Choosing a system with a low system cost index is important, but it must be weighed against the possible impact of having to move your materials and/or products to market. Picking a very low cost system at some distance from the market hubs may seem attractive at first glance, but your transport costs for that further distance will be increased instead.
Updated Nov 23, 2016.
required = max(runs,ceil(round(runs ∗ baseQuantity ∗ materialModifier, 2))
materialModifier is a product of the ME modifier (1.0 to 0.90 or 0% to 10% reduction) and the facility modifier (1.05 for Rapid Assembly Arrays, 1.0 for NPC Station, 0.98 for most POS arrays etc).
Note that maximum number of runs for a BPC is however many you can complete within 30 days.
productionTime = baseProductionTime * timeModifier * skillModifier * runs
timeModifier is a product of the TE modifier (1.0 to 0.90 or 0% to 10% reduction), the facility modifier (1.0 for NPC Station, 0.75 for most POS arrays etc), related industry skills, and implant modifiers.
Each level of a required science skill reduces the production time by 1% such that:
skillModifier = product([1 - 0.01 * Level(k)])
rate = facilityModifier * (1 + (0.03 * ReprocessingLevel)) * (1 + (0.02 * ReprocessingEfficiencyLevel)) * (1 + (0.02 * OreProcessingSkill)) * implantModifier * (1 - stationTax)
The facilityModifier is 0.5 for most NPC stations, 0.52 for Reprocessing Arrays in Highsec, 0.54 for Reprocessing Arrays in Lowsec/Nullsec, 0.50 to 0.60 in nullsec Outposts, and 0.50 to 60.48 in citadels (requires verification).
rate = facilityModifier * (1 + 0.02 * ScrapMetalProcessingLevel) * (1 - StationTax)
The facilityModifier is 0.5 for most NPC stations and nullsec outposts. There are no anchorable arrays for this.
stationTax = 5.0% - (0.75% * CorporationStanding)
Invention Chance
inventionChance = baseChance * skillModifier * decryptorModifier
skillModifier = 1 + EncryptionLevel/40 + (datacore1Level + datacore2Level)/30
Invention Time
inventionTime = baseInventionTime * facilityModifier * (1 - 0.03 * AdvancedIndustryLevel)
Invention Fees
jobFee = baseJobCost * systemCostIndex * 0.02 * runs
The baseJobCost is that of the output blueprint.
Base Invention Chances
Chance of Success | Blueprints |
---|---|
18% | Freighter |
22% | Battleship, Wrecked Ancient Relic |
26% | Battlecruiser, Cruiser, Mining Barge, Industrial |
30% | Destroyer, Frigate, Malfunctioning Ancient Relic |
34% | Modules, Rigs, Ammunition, Intact Ancient Relic |
100% | Perpetual Motion Unit |
jobFee = baseJobCost * systemCostIndex * runs
The baseJobCost and systemCostIndex can be found on CREST.
baseJobCost = sum([baseQuantity * adjustedPrice])
facilityTax = jobFee * taxRate/100
totalInstallationCost = jobFee + facilityTax
The tax rate for NPC stations is set at 10%. Outpost tax rates can be found in the industry tab.