solo industry can be profitable but you have to do your homework and source you materials carefully. Many t2 items will have 25-40% margins depending on how you get materials and where you sell the final product.

actually it doesnt matter how you get your materials, you should always do calculation with jita sell prices.
Everything else is profit from trading not from industry. You could as well sell raw materials/components for same profit or buy cheap stuff in jita and sell somewhere else with markup.

T2 industry is totally fine. My solo (3 character) hisec industry setup was making a healthy profit from T2 crusiers and modules, even just buying and selling in Jita.

As long as you have a wide portfolio and can adapt quickly to market trends, and build in a POS with a half decent system index, you should be able to turn a profit.

Recently I decided to make something new, so I dropped over 2 billion ISK for a decent trial run.

By the time the invention and manufacturing were done, the price had dropped below cost, so I left them on the market, stubbornly refusing to sell below cost.

It took several weeks longer than I would have liked, but every item has now sold at my chosen price.

My market research was a bit off on turn-around, but a good item remains a good-item despite market flux.

Simple fact is i make a tidy profit working from my own corporation and just using stations to build/research etc.

One word: Shuttles. Always in demand, never enough supply where you need it.

Agreed, it goes into the realm of trading, but it can give me an edge to compete with local prices. Some well organized manufacturing corps with access to a POS (for ex. in lowsec) can build stuff cheaper than I can, so it may be enough to level the playing field if I can get cheaper materials.

I keeps bugging me though - hence my question: Do you guys n girls think there's still a chance with the current system for a solo highsec industry venture to be worth the effort - and if so, would you care to share a bit on how you manage it?

Sure you can, but why alone? This game is pure agony for solo gaming. Seriously. Very, very seriously.

Casual means different things to different people. I spend about an hour a day adjusting prices, submitting jobs and hauling stuff to market. Since I only make modules I can haul in a Blockade Runner which speeds things up a lot. I enjoy the gameplay - some people prefer to do other things.

I have found that many items are sold below or at the price of their manufacturing cost. Which means many industrialists are virtually working for free, or selling at loss. I doubt you can make any profit with small scale industrial operation, maybe on select items after spending hours researching the market. But then you can hardly call it casual.

Sure you can, but why alone? This game is pure agony for solo gaming. Seriously. Very, very seriously.

you are not playing solo if you are buying from and selling to other players.

about the whole trading vs industry thing:

it doesn't matter where your profit actually comes from, as long as you KNOW where it comes from.

When I started in industry, I wanted to be vertically integrated - involved in every aspect of the production process. It worked for a while but the time investment required to harvest my own materials grew at the same rate as my business - it wasn't sustainable. I am still self sufficient for P2 and make my advanced components but the other stuff is purchased.

I use the in game industry tool to check profitability. My costs are below "average" so I'll be paying a bit less than the cost shown by the tool and I use the selling price it provides as my floor price. Other than that, I don't pay much attention to the numbers - I'm playing a game, not running a business. At the end of the month, I usually have enough surplus cash to PLEX multiple character training for a couple of accounts and that tells me I'm doing something right!

My industrial operation is concentrated in my own 1 player corporation but my main is in a different player corp and I have a couple of characters in NPC corps so I can continue operations uninterrupted during a war. Solo and social are not mutually exclusive.

Continuing this line of thought, why should we even distinguish between industry and trading profits? Unless you control the whole material chain, there will always be some part of trading involved in industry when you buy materials. Getting materials cheaper than the reference market hub price is a trading profit, but as you said, it does not matter where it comes from if you know from where.

The only reason I would see is to ensure that you do not lose profits by transforming your materials in industry.

Hah, I had not thought about it that way. Even talking about "Market PvP" tends to lose its meaning as there is no direct communication, but it's true regardless.



Continuing this line of thought, why should we even distinguish between industry and trading profits? Unless you control the whole material chain, there will always be some part of trading involved in industry when you buy materials. Getting materials cheaper than the reference market hub price is a trading profit, but as you said, it does not matter where it comes from if you know from where.

The only reason I would see is to ensure that you do not lose profits by transforming your materials in industry.

T2 industry is totally fine. My solo (3 character) hisec industry setup was making a healthy profit from T2 crusiers and modules, even just buying and selling in Jita.

As long as you have a wide portfolio and can adapt quickly to market trends, and build in a POS with a half decent system index, you should be able to turn a profit.

There's no such thing as an item that is sold below cost unless in the very rare case of a liquidation attempt for one reason or another.

I think you're forgetting how to actually calculate cost. Just because tritanium sells for 5.12 isk for example (random number I pulled out of my ass don't take it literally) doesn't mean the cost of an item that inputs ten tritanium costs 51.2 isk each. Tritanium is in all actuality a FREE item if you can mine it yourself - or reprocess other items you loot into it.

If you think an item is being sold "below cost" you're probably either seeing liquidation (if it's just a momentary sell listing) or if it's consistent, they're probably getting the input elsewhere for cheaper than you are.

Yes, yes.. this.

Now, kind Legatus, how much can I pay you to make me a few hundred frigates?

There's no such thing as an item that is sold below cost unless in the very rare case of a liquidation attempt for one reason or another.

I think you're forgetting how to actually calculate cost. Just because tritanium sells for 5.12 isk for example (random number I pulled out of my ass don't take it literally) doesn't mean the cost of an item that inputs ten tritanium costs 51.2 isk each. Tritanium is in all actuality a FREE item if you can mine it yourself - or reprocess other items you loot into it.

If you think an item is being sold "below cost" you're probably either seeing liquidation (if it's just a momentary sell listing) or if it's consistent, they're probably getting the input elsewhere for cheaper than you are.

The cost assosiated with minerals are either the price you pay to get it OR the price you can sell those minerals for.
If you can sell 10 units of tritanium for 51.2isk (numbers from quoted post) or manufacture an item that use 10 tritanium and sell for 51isk, that item is sold below cost! Its irrelevant that you can mine it without using a single isk, the mineral still have a value.