Most items in the EVE universe are player built, so manufacturing is a big part of the game. Manufacturing covers a lot of ground, from lab research, to building your goods, to selling them. Let's start off with the basics: the skills any production character really needs to have to be effective.

The most critical skill any production character must have is Production Efficiency . After you've bought it, train it until you reach level 5. Production Efficiency is the single biggest must-have skill to be effective and competitive when producing goods, and unlike many skills, the payoff for reaching level 5 is worth it. An example can best illustrate why this is.

Suppose you and a competitor both have a particular blueprint which is equally well researched (I'll get to research in a bit). You have production efficiency 5 and he doesn't. Let us further suppose that the total inputs listed on the blueprint come to a total value of 1000. You will be able to create the items for the cost of the materials listed on the blueprint, 1000. Your competitor, on the other hand will need 1250 (I'll get into the why of that later on). This may not seem like a lot, but let's take another step on down the road of this example and see what happens when you start selling things.

You look at your goods and decide that a 50% markup on the value of your goods is a decent profit. You price them at 1500 and start selling them. Your poorly trained neighbor now has a bit of a dilemma. He too can try to get 50% profit on his goods, but that means he's going to try to sell the item for 1875. He might get lucky and sell his goods. But then again, he probably won't. He is going to have to suck it up and try to compete with your prices. To do this, he'd have to match your price of 1500. That means he is making a paltry 20% on the value of his goods, not nearly as good of a profit margin as you have.

Other skills are definitely invaluable as well. After PE, number two would be Mass Production . This allows the operation of multiple factories. Simply put, this allows you to produce more goods. Industry is useful, but you'll get a better increase in capacity through mass production. Five levels of industry will increase your overall capacity for building by 33%. Three levels of mass production will increase your capacity by 300%, plus allow you to build at multiple locations. Give Mass Production a higher priority than training industry, even if it is a level two skill, it's still more valuable for the time you put into it than industry.

Then there are the science skills. These are considerably less important than the production skills. Why? Anyone with 1 level of Science can operate a lab. At 20,000 ISK, science is a very inexpensive skill, and, to do research, players only need view access to the blueprints. Make use of the labs. Everyone in your corporation you trust should have science and be researching something - the only real cost is the lab rental fee. The Science skills (science, metallurgy, and research) only currently reduce the time to research. While this is helpful if you have a lot to research or need something researched quickly, the reality is that you gain a lot more by paying 20k and having another player also do research. However, if you do have a character highly trained in the Science skills though, make sure he/she also has Lab Operations. After all, if you've got a bonus, make sure you can use it as widely as possible. Lab Operations is extremely important for small corporations and individuals as well - it multiplies the effectiveness of a limited number of individuals.

Manufacturing Skill Summary

Once you have the skills you need for production, you need to make some decisions on what to produce. In general, there are two reasons people make things:

• To provide items to use (either personally or within the corporation).

• To provide items to sell.

If you have decided to build things to use for yourself or your corporation, you should concentrate on items you know you will use and want more of repeatedly. For an individual, ammo fits this category well. Some equipment and possibly ships may be worth getting if you go through a lot of them. For corporations, any gear that members use on a regular basis is worth having a Blueprint of.

Just keep in mind that that there are many players manufacturing goods, so you need to be smart about how you select what to make to create profit.

When it comes to sales, there is plethora of information available in the market to help you make an informed decision. Hiding in the market screen is historical information on anything and everything you can buy in the market. If you open up the market and drill down and select a single item, you will see the map of the region used in the supply and demand displays. This is what most people use the market for and are familiar with. There's a lot more information though for the discerning player who is planning to build a mercantile empire.

Specifically, this refers to the history tab. If you click on this, you can see how well an item has sold over a period of time. By adjusting the combo boxes on the left, you can view how well an item has sold at the station or throughout the region. You can see how many items have sold each day, the high and low prices, plus the average. While this may seem a bit dry, it's invaluable information for planning what you're going to sell.

Manufacturing Time : This is the amount of time in seconds it takes to build one run of the item.

Mineral Level : The mineral level indicates how many times the blueprint has undergone mineral research.

Wastage Factor : This is a confusing number in many respects. There are really two kinds of waste involved in building things. The first, which can be called incompetence waste, is based on the level of a character's Production Efficiency skill. This value refers to the other, which we can call design waste. The design waste is dependent on the blueprint's levels of mineral efficiency. It adds an additional amount of each type of mineral to the overall cost of building an item with the blueprint. The waste factor, for everything except drones, is figured according to the following formula:

(.1 / (1 + ME) )

Where ME is the number of levels of mineral levels the BP has. For drones, the formula is:

(0.05 / (1 + ME ))

Research Mineral Time : This is the time, in seconds, it takes a player with level 0 Metallurgy to increase the blueprint's Mineral Level by 1. This number is typically 2400 for ammunition and drones, 12000 for equipment, 120000 for frigates, 240000 for industrials and cruisers, and 360000 for battleships.

Research Copy Time : This is the time, in seconds, it takes a player with level 0 Science to create a copy of the blueprint for one half of the blueprint's maximum number of licensed production runs. This number is typically 2400 for ammunition and drones, 12000 for equipment, 120000 for frigates, 240000 for industrials and cruisers, and 360000 for battleships.

Produces : This is the name of the item you will end up with if you plug the blueprint into a factory and manage to build an item.

Copy : This simply states whether the BP is a copy or an original. This is how you tell the difference. If you are buying a blueprint original from someone, be absolutely certain that you check this value on the item's information to be sure it is not a copy.

Research Productivity Time : This is the time, in seconds, it takes a player with level 0 Research to increase the blueprint's Productivity Level by 1. This number is typically 2400 for ammunition and drones, 1200 for equipment, 2400 for drones, 120000 for frigates, 240000 for industrials and cruisers, and 360000 for battleships.

Productivity Level : The productivity level indicates how many times the blueprint has undergone productivity research.

Licensed Production Runs Remaining : When you copy a blueprint you have to decide how many runs the blueprint will be good for. The more runs you set, the longer the blueprint copy takes to make. Each run remaining allows 1 batch of the item to be made in a factory. Typically, ammunition and drones have a maximum of 1500 runs, equipment a limit of 300, frigates can be set with at most 30 runs, industrials and cruisers have a limit of 15, and battleships 10. You may notice that some blueprints have this value set at Infinite (as a result of being copied prior to the patch which implemented this feature). This means what it says: you can use the copied blueprint infinitely without problems.

Production Batch Size : This is how many of the item you get for each run of the item you make in the factory. For ammunition this is 100. For rockets and light missiles, it is 10. For everything else, you get 1 per batch.

Required Ingredient (Per Batch) : This indicates how many units of a particular mineral you need to build one batch of the item. You will have one of these entries for each mineral type required to build the item. This number includes any design waste as a result of low mineral levels on the blueprint, but does not include any incompetence waste as a result of a low Production Efficiency skill. This value is the total of what I call the base ingredients (not shown on the BP) plus the wasted ingredients.

Wasted Ingredient (Per Batch) : The wasted ingredient is just that, the number of units of extra minerals you must use due design waste. You will have one of these entries for each mineral type required to build the item. Ideally, you want this number to be less than 1 for each mineral. This number is derived from the base mineral requirements (not shown on the blueprint) times the Wastage Factor.

Something which is not on the blueprint, but which is a valuable statistic, is the base amounts of each mineral needed to make something, which I refer to as the base minerals. This can be figured out by taking the required ingredient and subtracting the wasted ingredient for each mineral (tip: if you haven't researched any mineral levels yet, the base minerals are ten times the wasted ingredient for most items, and twenty times for drones). The base minerals are the starting point which everything else gets computed from for constructing items. They are also the amounts to start from when determining how much you get for recycling an item.

We're going to walk through the actually factory wizard, to get a good overview of how to make factories work.

The starting point for installing any job in a factory is the Factory Window. The screen capture is a sample of what you might see if you were to click on the factory button at a station. You should note that all the examples here are presented from the viewpoint of a corporation member. If you are an individual operating a factory without the assistance of a corporation, the steps are nearly identical, save that you won't have to choose which hangar to use on various steps.

On the right side of our factory window, you will find a list of all of the factories present on the station. Currently, on stations which sport factories, there are 36 factory slots in total available. Each of the factories will be listed as being in one of the following states: Publicly Available , Rented , Rented to your corporation , or rented to you .

Publicly available factories are available to rent; you click on the 'Rent Slot' to rent them. If you are a member of a corporation with an office at this base and you have the factory manager role, you'll be prompted to decide if you want to use the corporate hangar or not. The next dialog informs you of how much the rental fee is - if you answer no here you don't have a spot to build things, so it is recommend you say yes.

Rented factories are ones which have been rented to either individuals other than yourself or corporations other than yours. You can't identify who has individual slots rented; they all are just listed as "Rented." Slot 7 on the screen capture above fit this category.

Factories showing Rented to your corporation's name have been rented for the usage of your corporation. Some of these slots may show items which have been installed into the slots.

A factory listed as Rented to your character's name are ones rented to you personally. Like the slots rented to your corporation, these may also have items installed into them.

This leads us to installing an item. First, you want to click on a slot. This will highlight it. Once you have done this, you may use the three buttons at the top, depending on the current activity of the selected slot.

The ' Rent Slot ' button is only of use when you have selected a Publicly Available slot. It allows you to rent the slot for your (or your corporation's) use. If you choose to rent this for your corporation, it will be available for use by members of your corporation; otherwise it is only available for your personal use. A dialog such as the one to the right will be displayed, letting you make this decision. You will then be informed of how much the rental is for.

The ' Cancel Rent ' button is only of use if you have selected a slot which you or your corporation has previously rented. It will simply cancel your rental of the lab.

The last button, the ' Install ' button, only works if you have a slot which contains a factory you or your corporation has rented selected. It is the meat of the Factory window as it initiates the factory wizard in a factory slot you or your corporation has previously rented. A word of caution about the factory wizard - the dialog is modal; therefore you can not switch the focus between it and other windows (such as one of the chat channels). All of the factory wizard screens have 4 buttons: Back, OK, Cancel, and Next. Back will take you back to the prior step in the wizard (unless you are on the first step, in which case it does nothing). The OK button is used for the final confirmation; it does nothing on the other steps. The Cancel button works during any step and will abort the lab wizard, closing it. Finally, the Next button will take you to the next step in wizard (unless you are on the last step, in which case nothing occurs).

The Install button will also become an 'Uninstall' button if a job is already installed in the slot by you or a member of your corporation. If you click on the Uninstall button, it will eject the blue print and its ingredients from the factory back to the hangar they came from. However, you will lose one-half of the minerals being used in the current batch, so use this button sparingly.

The Factory Wizard

When you begin the factory wizard via the install button , your first screen will ask you what hangar you wish to select an item to install from. This is the hangar containing the blue print you want to install, and can either be your personal hangar or your corporation hanger.

Click on the double down arrows drop down a list to select the hangar from. You need to have view access to the hangar containing the blueprint you are selecting. When you have selected the hangar you wish to use, a list of all the available blueprints in the hangar will be displayed. Click on the blueprint you wish to install, highlighting it, then click on the next button.

You will next be asked to select a hangar for the mineral inputs to be taken from if you selected a blueprint from your corporation hangar. Click the double down arrow to drop down a list of the hangars, and select the hangar you want to use. Note that you must have access to take items from this hangar. Once you have the hangar selected, click on the next button.

You will now be asked to select a hangar where you want the product to be output to. This will be the hangar your finished goods (the item listed in the 'Produces' entry on the blueprint) end up in. You are not required to have any access permissions for this hangar at all. Once again, select the hangar using the drop down, and click the next button when you are satisfied with your selection.

You will now be asked how many batches you want to make of the item. It is important at this step to understand the distinction between batches and how many items you end up making. A batch is one run of the blueprint. This is not necessarily how many items you will end up with. Some blueprints create more than one item per run (notably ammunition). The 'Production Batch Size' entry on the blueprint will tell you how many items you get per batch. For example, the Phased Plasma M has a Production Batch Size of 100. So if I wanted 2000 rounds of that ammo, I'd want to do 20 batches. To set the number of batches you want to make, you can either enter the value using the keyboard or use the + and - buttons on the right. Once you have the number of batches you wish to make, click on the next button.

The final display will be a summary of what you have specified. This is the last screen and once you click on the ok button, the job will be installed, so take this last moment to confirm that everything is correct. Once you click ok, the job will be installed and the factory wizard will close.

There are two values to consider with factories, the amount of each mineral consumed, and the time per batch. I'll present the simple formulas first, which use the values already figured on the blueprints, then present the full formulas which take into account research on the blueprint (and allow you to check different values for what if cases).

The amount of minerals consumed, per batch is equal to:

(1.25 - 0.05 * Production Efficiency Skill Level) * Required Ingredient

The amount of time it takes to run each batch is equal to:

Manufacture Time * (1 - 0.05 * Industry Skill Level)

The full formulas taking all factors into consideration are:

(1.25 - 0.05 * Production Efficiency Skill Level) * (1 + (Base Waste Factor / (1 + Blueprint Mineral Efficiency Level)) * Base Minerals

( Base Manufacture Time - (5 / (1 + Productivity Level) ) ) * (1 - 0.05 * Industry Skill Level)

The steps involved in operating a lab are similar to that used for factories; however, the exact steps are different enough to warrant its own walkthrough. The best place to start is the Research Facility Window. The screen capture below is an example of what you might see when you open up the research facility window at a station. Note that in the examples that follow, the steps are seen as by a member of a corporation. If you are doing research in a lab you have rented privately, the procedure is nearly identical, save that you won't have to decide which hangar to select items from and send them to.

On the right side of the window is a list of all of the labs which exist at the station. Currently, there are 36 lab slots available at each station. Each of the labs will be in one of the following states: Publicly Available, Rented, Rented to your corporation, or Rented to you. Publicly Available slots are just that, available for rent by anyone. Slots 22-26 on the screen capture show this state. Slots which are listed as Rented, such as 14, 16, and 21, are not currently available for your use, they have been rented by another player or corporation. You can't actually see who other than yourself or your corporation has rented a particular slot, they just show up as Rented. Slots rented to you personally will read Rented to Character Name, where character name is your character's name. In our example, Slot 17 is listed as 'Rented to Dawnstar', which is my character's name, so the slot is available for my personal use. Finally, slots can be rented to your corporation as well, in which case the slot will read Rented to Corporation Name, where Corporation Name is the name of your corporation. The screen capture shows slots 15, 18, 19, 20, and 22 as Rented to Kiroshi Group (which is the name of the corporation I belong to). You may also have noted that some of the slots have items in them currently indicating that they are in use. Slot 18 for example indicates that it is rented to Kiroshi Group and currently has an Omen blueprint in it.

In addition to the lab list on the right, there is also the large pane on the left and the buttons at the top (and of course the close button which closes the window). The pane will list general information about the various slots, including which ones you can view and which you can use. The buttons at the top come into play when you select a particular slot.

First, click on a slot. This will highlight it. Once you have done this, you may use the three buttons, depending on the current activity of the selected slot.

The 'Rent Slot' button is only of use when you have selected a Publicly Available slot. It allows you to rent the slot for your (or your corporation's) use. When you rent a slot, the first thing you may receive is a dialog asking if you wish to rent this slot for use by your corporation. You will only get this dialog if you have factory manager rights and your corporation also has an office at the station. If you choose to rent this for your corporation, it will be available for use by members of your corporation, otherwise it is only available for your personal use. Regardless, you will also receive another dialog informing you of the rental cost for the lab slot. I recommend approving the rental as otherwise you won't be able to use the lab.

The 'Cancel Rent' button is only of use if you have selected a rented slot. It will simply cancel your rental of the lab.

The last button, the 'Install' button, only works if you have a slot which contains a lab you or your corporation has rented selected. It is the meat of the Research Facility window as it initiates the lab wizard in a lab slot you or your corporation has previously rented. One caution about the lab wizard - the dialog is modal, and therefore you can not switch the focus between it and other windows (such as one of the chat channels). All of the lab wizard screens have 4 buttons: Back, OK, Cancel, and Next. Back will take you back to the prior step in the wizard (unless you are on the first step, in which case it does nothing). The OK button is used for the final confirmation; it does nothing on the other steps. The Cancel button works during any step and will abort the lab wizard, closing it. Finally, the Next button will take you to the next step in wizard (unless you are on the last step, in which case nothing occurs).

The Install button will also become an 'Uninstall' button if a job is already installed in the slot by you or a member of your corporation. If you click on the Uninstall button, it will eject the blue print from the factory back to the hangar they came from.

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The lab wizard has several steps you must proceed through to set up a job in a lab. The first of these steps is to decide which type of lab job you wish to perform. You will see a combo box with Manufacture in it and a double arrow on the right side. Clicking on the double arrow will cause a drop down to appear which lists all the potential activities. These possibilities include: Manufacture, Copy, Research mineral efficiency, Research productivity time, Duplicate item, and Reverse engineer. Currently , only Copy, Research mineral efficiency, and Research productivity time are available , the others will let you walk through the wizard, but you will get a failure message at the end.

Research Mineral Efficiency

Researching Mineral Efficiency reduces the design waste of a blueprint. This waste is the value which shows up on your blueprints in the Wastage Factor and Wasted Ingredient entries.

The waste factor, for everything except drones, is figured according to the following formula:

(0.1 / (1 + ME) )

Where ME is the number of levels of mineral levels the BP has. For drones, the formula is:

(0.05 / (1 + ME ))

In our example blueprint, the Merlin uses the former formula, or (0.1 / (1 + 5)), which ends up as .0167 roughly.

The amount of time it takes to do one level of Mineral Efficiency Research is equal to the blueprint's Research Mineral Time * (1 - 0.05 * Metallurgy Skill Level). One tip here, if you have an un-researched blueprint, the number of mineral levels to eliminate all design waste on the blueprint is equal to the single highest Wasted Ingredient on the BP, rounded down (this can also be figured by multiplying the base waste factor -0 .1 or 0.05 by the base mineral needs with the highest value).

Researching Productivity

Researching Productivity is the second activity you can perform. Additional levels of Productivity will reduce your blueprint's manufacturing time. I only recommend doing this for ammunition or if you have some extra lab time which you don't have anything better to do with. Currently, it will at most shave five seconds off your production time. This is significant for ammo, but when you are dealing with the larger ships, it's insignificant.

Productivity levels reduce your manufacturing time by 5 / ( 1 + PL) where PL is your blueprint's productivity levels. The amount of time to perform one level Productivity Research is equal to the Blueprint's Research Productivity Time * (1 - 0.05 * Research Skill Level).

Copy

Copy will create a duplicate of the blueprint you select. Research mineral efficiency will increase the blueprint's mineral efficiency level. Research productivity time will increase the blueprint's productivity level. Once you have selected an activity you wish to perform, you need to click on the next button to move onto the next step in the wizard.

A copy is just like the original with the following restrictions: You can not do further research on a copy and the copy is only good for a limited number of production runs (with the exception of 'pre-patch' copies which are good for an infinite number of runs.

The time to copy a blueprint varies according to the number of licensed production runs you set. The copy time listed on the blueprint is the time to copy off a blueprint for a number of production runs equal to one half of the maximum you can set. So the time works out to be equal to the Blueprint's Research Copy Time * 2 * Number of Licensed Production Runs * (1 - 0.05 * Science Skill Level)/ Maximum Number of Licensed Production Runs.

At this point, you will be prompted to select an item to install. First, click on the double down arrow to select the hangar the blueprint you wish to research is in. In my case, I scroll down to find the Production hangar, which is where we keep our blueprints. Once you have selected the hangar, the blueprints will be displayed (see screen capture below). An important item at this step is that you need to have view access to the hangar the blueprint is in. Select the blueprint you wish to install (this will highlight it) and then click on the next button.

The next screen which appears asks you to select a resource hangar. Currently, it doesn't matter which hangar you select, as none of the currently functional options require any resources. So, go ahead and leave it where it is currently set and click on the next button.

The next screen will only appear if you are making one or more copies of your original blueprint. It will ask you how many runs the copies should be licensed for. You can set this anywhere from 1 to the maximum number of licensed runs. The maximum number of licensed runs will be displayed on the wizard (and the text box will have this number listed by default). I generally make the number of runs the maximum. One comment here, the number of licensed runs you select affects the speed of making the copy. A copy capable of making half the maximum number of runs will take an amount of time equal to the Research Copy Time listed on the blueprint. A copy with the maximum number of runs will take an amount of time equal to twice the listed Research Copy Time. Fewer licensed runs take proportionally less. Once you have set the number of licensed runs to your satisfaction, hit the next button.

The final step is confirming that everything you've set up to this point. You will see a summary of everything. If you are satisfied that everything is correct, hit the OK button to finalize your selections (this is the point of no return where the job actually goes into the factory). If there is a problem with what you've done, either cancel and start over, or use the back button to step back and make the necessary corrections. The Next button doesn't work at all for this step.