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Is there an easy way to get into manufacturing?
For example, is there a way to start off selling easily made small items while waiting for ISK to accumulate so I could buy other more lucrative blueprints....
I would like to manufacture and sell ships but am unsure whether this would be viable while competing with the more knowledgable toons
I'll give you the canned response that everyone gives: start with ammo. The BPO's are cheap, it's a fast seller, and it doesn't take a lot of money to get started.
I'd advise against ships. Last time I looked into them, they were not a big money maker. Even wioth max skills, the margins were thin, required a ton of minerals (esp at the BS level) and where a royal pain to get to market. You really need to high volumes to make any cash, and that means billions of m3 and isk of minerals and many many freighter runs of packaged ships just for a 5% return on your capital. I'd rather sell 1m unit of ammo at 5isk profit each than 1 battleship for 5mil isk profit.
I wouldn't even start without Production Efficiency 4, and work towards PE 5 asap if you are serious. These can make or break your profit margin, where as Industry and Mass Production will just increase profits.
It took me a bit of time to get into manufacturing, primarily time, and i even added an account strictly for it. I do everything from ammo/rigs/mods up to supercapitals/titans (with other friends for the larger stuff).
It takes a long time and decent investment to get into ship production, but as you get more experience, ship sales prosper in null-sec space for sure, but then you will need access to that via an alliance/corp.
I do agree with Shadow, you will definitely want to start with Ammo, especially medium projectile and heavy missiles. Those are the 2 most used ammo types in the game. However, you will definitely want to plan it out where you will sell them to make the most profit. Mostly level 4 mission hubs in caldari are great for to sell Drakes and Missile ammo, like wise in a level 4 minmatar area for hurricane sales and medium projectile.
I also recommend having no less then Production Efficiency 5, anything less then that is a waste of materials. Also depending on what you start out with, with PE5 you wont need any researched BPO to make profit.
Thanks for the replies folks,
I'll start with ammo and work my way from there.
I've started an account primarily for manufacturing, so I won't even begin until I have PE5. Will use my other toons to mine and accrue a bit of capital during the training time