Industrial Long Term Goals

Alex asked in yesterday's comments:

"Grats on your successes in the manufacturing industry. I am a bit curious what your long term goals are with this.

I am also a long time reader and I do not seem to recall many (or any) such plans laid out. It'd be interesting to read about."

Well the answer to that is a rambling post of its own so sit back, grab a beer, and read on.

*Old Man Rambling Turned On*

It all started in September '06. No, check that: it really started in the previous summer when my warhammer friends were talking in the local Games Workshop store about some adventures they were having in this game called Eve Online. I like spaceships, I thought to myself, and I like computers. Maybe there is something in this for me.

So I signed up in September and created Kirith Kodachi, back in the days when new players started with a few thousand skill points and it took a month to get to the heady heights of 800K - 1 million. I knew I wanted a combat pilot right from the start so I trained him in missiles, frigates, cruisers... all good times.

What does this have to do with long term industrial plans, you ask? Well, I'm getting there.

As time passed I figured I wanted to make money in other ways besides 0.0 ratting in Syndicate which was slightly dangerous to an inexperience Carcal pilot (ah, Arcane Vendetta, how we had such good times... remember when I bought Heavy Missile Launchers but didn't have the skills for the missiles themselves? Heh) so I bought a couple small BPOs and decided to try manufacturing for profit. I quickly discovered that many skills were needed to produce effectively and reduce waste and I didn't want to divert Kirith from combat training. So in October Derranna Elkadar was born.

The long term goal evolved over the next month to be this: have Derranna research BPOs and produce items for selling to make the ISK Kirith needs to buy combat ships and fittings so I don't have to rat or mission all the time to afford my shitty PvP abilities. Pretty straight forward, right?

Of course, any experienced industrialist will tell you that making gobs of money off of Tech I BPOs is not very easy as margins are slim and demand is mediocre at best. I eventually moved in ammunition production as I came to realize that the demand and margins were higher there due to them being a perishable item so to speak. But moving a few hundred thousand missile a week didn't make a lot of money as competition was steady.

So I moved on and founded Kodachi Enterprises (KODA) with the goal of running a BPO research business. I did the math, set up the low sec POS, and worked on renting out my research skills and lab slots to those who needed improved BPOs. It was barely profitable and my old computer couldn't hack two accounts so I couldn't scout my loads of fuel into low sec and it became a costly hassle.

However, by this time invention had been released and I decided to investigate what was needed to get into it. I stumbled onto the right combination and was soon producing Invulnerability Field IIs which sold very huge margins and made me relatively rich off of industrial activities for the first time. Those invulnerability fields funded my purchase of Razor Technologies and its high standings for a high sec POS and eventual purchase of a Cloaking Device BPO for cloaking invention. Finally Derranna was making the kind of ISK I needed to support my lifestyle.

And it has continued from there. Now Derranna can build most non-capital Caldari ships (Transports being the exception) and invent most Caldari based items. She can make the money as evidenced by the recent posts about my wallet but she has no more long term industrial goals, so I'm pushing her into combat-utility roles now by training her up in Covert Ops frigs and someday into Recon and Logistics cruisers.

The thought has occurred to me that I should train her up for constructing capital ships, but I haven't felt the need for that yet and she is ready to train the Capital Construction skill today (side note: she is also ready to train Outpost Construction skill! Wow, yay Anchoring V!).

So there you have it. The TL;DR version: my long term industrial goal is to just make money through invention, manufacturing, and selling.