I set up an industrialist character with very good, but not maxed out, skills.

In honesty, that's likely to be your problem. In particular, do you have Production Efficiency V?

You are an amazing person for actually considering the opportunity cost of the materials, and not just saying "I mined this myself so it's all profit!"

Fuel blocks are pretty hard to profit on, since so many miners like to mine ice, and so many of miners like to build with what they mine.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the tool on Eve Industrialist ( https://eve-industrialist.com/eve-industrialist/building.eve ) . But this one attempts to answer the question of whether it is profitable to fabricate something, or just sell the materials.

If we assume this is reasonably accurate (or at least gives a sensible indication), you'll see that if you put in "Fuel Block", the profit you'll make over the material value ranges from 2.5% to 4.5%, for the different types and sizes. Increasing the ME/PE increases this, ofcourse, but not by much

So all the manufacturing ultimately increases the value of your commodities by an extremely small margin, and trading in bulk/large quantities won't really change that.

There are many ways to make money...sadly, Fuel Block production does not really seem to be one of them, at the moment.

The problem with that line of thought it is, many things don't scale.

Take Ammo. You can double the money you invest, on many small ammos.

But the quantity you can invest is /tiny/.

5% isn't a bad return. Because when you go large, you generally don't pay attention to the percentage return. You pay attention to how much you make in concrete terms, per hour.

Yes, Production Efficiency is at V.

And yes (to the other poster) I mine my own ice. In fact, I still have a stash of ~12K ice cubes from before Odyssey.

I am set up in three different systems - each with different materials. I clone jump as needed and jump freighter my PI stuff out of lo sec ( you may have seen my recent post "The Real Costs of Lighting a Cyno?". It is a very efficient supply chain that has taken quite a while to set up.

Raw materials : I did notice that jump fuel and cyno fuel sells for a lot - again - a raw material with no extra work involved and no hidden costs.

As for the 4 billion profit - I could see that if I blindly sold blocks and looked at only income from those sales. I analyzed costs in terms of :: (income from block sales) - (income from raw materials if sold) - (maufacturing costs) - (jump freighter costs) . Calculated that way, I barely make 1K per block. So I'd have to sell 1 million blocks to make 1 billion ISK real profit, while I make billions in income from raw materials sales with no extra effort : harvest - refine - take little piggies to market.

I'll double check all manufacturing skills and see if there is anything I missed. But I have a hunch that taking any one skill from IV to V will net minimal gains, like many things in this game. SO unless I can find a cumulative gain somewhere, that is time effective, I'll think I'll just sell raw materials.

Hey guys, thanks for your input !!!

How can you subtract your raw material cost that you got from your own planets? I dont understand your logic. You have increased your profit by 1000isk/ per block. I'm an indy noob 4 sure but it sounds like its subject to market prices and where you got your info. Try actually selling all the materials and see if you actually make more. Than ask yourself which way is more fun? Personally, I enjoy following through with the process. But what do I know, I still struggle to buy a plex, lol

I do it and me and my wallet and my 5 alts make 5 Bill ISK a month doing it.

No need to crunch numbers.

Train skills for POS, Marketing, PI, T2 Transports, Ice Mining, and an Orca Hauler.

Ice Mine with 2 Macks and an Orca

Train all 5 for PI.

Because the Ice Interdiction market affects are only a week or 2 old, I'll have my numbers soon for next month. It's already a lot more ISK though.

It's gonna take you awhile though for sure.

How can you subtract your raw material cost that you got from your own planets? I dont understand your logic. You have increased your profit by 1000isk/ per block. I'm an indy noob 4 sure but it sounds like its subject to market prices and where you got your info. Try actually selling all the materials and see if you actually make more. Than ask yourself which way is more fun? Personally, I enjoy following through with the process. But what do I know, I still struggle to buy a plex, lol

Small POS

Buying fuel
7200 fuel blocks * price of fuel block (15,038 Isk) = 108,273,600

Mining it all
1080 blocks of ICE * Price of ICE Block selling (179,000 ISK) = 193,320,000

So conclusion, DO NOT MAKE YOUR FUEL BLOCKS, sell the ice and buy your fuel and have
85,046,400 in your pocket profit. not to mention freeing up your PI to manufacture profitable items.

OR you can mine less per month to fuel your POS...!!!

That would be 605 pieces of ICE (605 * 179,000 = 108,295,000)

Simple math shows the ICE product nerf needs to be looked at again.

Because materials from your own planets are not free simply because you mined/PI'd them. They have a value associated with them which the OP correctly understands and incorporated into his profit margin determination.

Great to hear that your buying off the market.

So you agree that mining your own ICE to make Fuel Blocks is a loss in profit.


Now, things I did not consider.

Out of the ICE cubes needed to make one Fuel Block you get twice the Heavy Water and about 480 more pieces of ISO than needed. (Rough figures, math off top of head)

So could you possibly come out cheaper or as cheap as the market ?

I will do the math and have results below.