Today I got a question via twitter about my motivation to be an industrialist about good things as indy in a corp and about worst things.
Maybe my point of view could be interesting to others, so I will post my answer here also (with some slightly changes):
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To be honest, my view of manufacturing and trading have changed the last year. But first things first.
I started my eve career like most others.. in highsec..mining.. all that stuff. Our corp had a pos and some of my “older” mates were running some ME/TE jobs. So I started to get some information about all the industrial stuff. One reason was, I really like to create things. Crafting was always a thing for me. And there were so much ways for perfection, which triggered me also. I hadn’t that much ISK at that time.. around 500mil ISK maybe and I talked to some experienced players about how to get more ISK. This was the moment, where I started my trading stuff.
That was the time of great spreadsheets also and I made my first 10 bil really fast. But it was a boring thing (I gave up trading the small stuff today). I invested the new ISK to start my manufacturing career (that was before the great manufacturing changes). And with the help of the corp pos, there were enough possibilities to make money with manufacturing also, but the really big money came after I trained for T2/T3 invention and manufacturing. At that time I had 3 or 4 chars running inventions and manufacturing jobs 23,5 hours a day. The good thing on manufacturing (and invention) is: you don’t have to be that active. Yes, you have to plan your jobs, but besides let RedFrog haul your stuff. The jobs will run without you most of the time.
Yeah there some risks, like wardecs, but you should have friends in case you need help. (more on that later).
Shortly after that, I started to PVPing with my main, and let my alts run the industrial stuff. I’m not that active in highsec anymore and there are times, where the POS is just burning fuel doing nothing ;).
Today, I could build up nearly everything, if i want and can create up to around 10billion a month, if needed, but this would need more time to invest in manufacturing and planning.
As you see, I evolved a bit. Today I run my manufacturing alts to create enough ISK for my PVPing and to support some friends with ships, modules and so on.
Maybe my focus will change a bit after the next expansion.
Maybe I will move my industrial part to low or nullsec to build something new, but maybe I just use the new opportunity to use more ressources to pvp.
To talk about the industrial in corps: it depends. Is it an industrial corp or a pvp corp with an industrial wing? One of the problems with manufacturing is: the more ppl manufacture in your systeme, the less isk will you get, thanks to the index. Another one is: normally you want to optiminze your ISK flow, so many industrialists are lonewolfs and don’t want to build for corp for example.
And with the rights management atm, you have to risk your assets to grant access to other corpmates. so it’s not that easy to be an industrialist in a corp.
An important Thing is: have friends!
One of the things I learned the last years. If you are an industrialist in highsec, there will be wardecs. This is no bad thing. You shouldn’t fear wardecs. Just have friends to help you.. to move stuff, to haul and the most important: to defend your stuff.
To be honest. If a war results in blowing up ships: good for me as industrialist, because I can build them and make my cut.
And it is fun to surprise some lazy wardeccers with a prepared fleet. If you don’t have enough friends.. hire some TRUSTWORTHY mercs.. the worst thing you can do (as lonewolf or as corp) is.. to avoid conflicts, to give up. Go and train your PVP skills.
Yeah, you will loose a lot of ships, yeah there will be times, you are frustrated, but this will help you a lot at that times.
And it is so much fun. You will shoot some awesome ppl. Some awesome ppl will shoot you.. and if you end up in a good talk after it or (what is my favorite) you will have some drinks with them at one of the great player gatherings.. you will have a great time.
