r/evenewbies • u/TVMaster2000 • 20d ago
Buy or Build
I recently got into the manufacturing aspect of EVE and was wondering if building or buying my stuff is better. I like the idea of mining my own resources and building what I need for exploration. All I would really need to buy are blueprints. I don’t know how time vs cost works out but I feel like making all the missals I need would be cheaper than buying them.
2
u/TVMaster2000 20d ago
I think I’m being misunderstood. My question to buy or build was not about selling what I make but using myself instead of buying instead.
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u/BeautifulShot 13d ago
Aye but buying things requires money and if you are selling what you make (you make what sells, not what you need) you make isk. If you only make what you need, you will have wasted precious Skill Points into things that are only being used on occasion (when you need something)
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u/NaturalOk2156 20d ago
I looked into it a bit and it was difficult to make industry pencil out. You might be better off selling the mining output.
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u/LTEDan 20d ago
So, resources in EVE are intentionally spread out, in the sense that you can't stay in one area of space and mine all the resources you need to build everything. Certain T1 items like, yeah, missiles you can make with HS ores, but those are the exception and you almost certainly can't build them cheaper than what they sell on the market for, for reasons I won't get into just yet.
HS has access to different resources than LS, NS, and WH space. And it's generally not possible to bounce beteeen all areas of space to acquire what you need. You can't reliably mine in nullsec without being a part of a nullsec alliance, and once you're part of a nullsec alliance, it's harder to do HS things.
That being said, if you'd like to literally gather everything yourself to build a ship from scratch as a personal challenge, its possible and I think theres already some EVE YouTubers that have done Ironman series like that.
In effect, most industrialists end up becoming market traders with extra steps. It's buy low, sell high with a twist: buy raw materials from the market low, add value by converting the raw materials into useful products, and sell those products for more than the input costs. A middle ground is, say, mine in HS and then buy the materials you can't directly mine to build what you want to build, where the industrial process is still primarily a buy low/sell high market process but where you supplement the buy part with your own directly sourced resources.
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u/GeneralPaladin 20d ago
Depends if you plan to live off manufacturing like i do, you need to do market and product research.
Alot of whats on the market isnt even profitable, the minerals are worth more unless your somewhere like nullsec and dont have a courier service where importing things could be cheaper still.
Im inventing a new run of my flagship module I produce since price is finally stable again and all my stock is sold off. The price of my module allows me to produce it by buying the minerals, the t1 version usually cost less than the minerals to make it but not enough modules are made by other industrilist but the jump to t2 adds alot of value so I can sell it and thanks to gankers they sell rather constantly.
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u/dariusbiggs 19d ago
Is it cost effective? probably not in a time vs money comparison
Is it a new thing to learn that can be fun? sure is, just take your time and focus on T1 parts. T2, drugs, and T3 are a whole new level of insanity.
Some of it can't be done in safe space, so low-sec, wormholes, and null sec may be required with their own risk vs rewards ratios
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u/Bulky_Wind_4356 20d ago
You should build components, but for the most part skip doing reactions. At least til you understand what to do and when to do.
Blueprints you just buy copies for starters. Then get originals for components. Then work from there.
Selling ammo in my opinion sucks. Everyone is doing ammo and it's hard to sell.