Industry

A lot of this information refers to the upcoming industrial patch/expansion, Crius, expected to be released on 22nd July. It may not be relevant for industry on live servers currently.

Industry is a catch-all term for all the industrial activities within EVE: mining, manufacturing, researching, invention, reprocessing, and - relevant only to T3 ship construction - reverse engineering.

Industry is vitally important to the EVE economy and activity, as without industrial-minded players building the ships and modules and ammunition required for PvE and PvP combat, combat-minded players could not function. Virtually none of these items are seeded on the market; almost everything in EVE is player-built (you can identify NPC sell orders on the market by their >300 day duration).

This page shows you a general introduction to each aspect of industry, with an overview of the Industry window: what it shows you, how to understand it and how to start a simple job. For further details on mining, manufacturing, research, invention, teams and other aspects of industry, see the links in the box to the right.

Production

Production refers to everything you can do with a blueprint in the Industry window: manufacturing of items, time efficiency and material efficiency research of blueprints, blueprint copying, invention* and reverse engineering*. Production is a vital part of the EVE Online economy, and can be carried out in any security space, in any station with the appropriate facilities. You can also carry it out at a POS.

Industry window

To start any industry job, click the Industry icon on the Neocom. The industry window will open, listing your owned blueprints in the lower part of the window. Alternatively you can right-click any blueprint (even one you don't own) and select View in Industry.

NOTE: invention does not yet use the Industry window, but is expected to do so in a future patch. It is also not possible to perform on the test server at this time. (?)

NOTE: reverse engineering is part of the Strategic Cruiser (T3) production process. It is not an activity for newcomers to EVE or to industry.

In the Industry window, hovering your mouse over almost any part of the window will pop up a tool-tip with more contextual information.

The tabs at the bottom show you a lot of useful information in four different tabs.

Blueprints Tab

In the blueprints tab you can see your currently owned blueprints, either originals (BPO) or copies (BPC), in your current location. If you are not docked, then it will show you blueprints in all locations. Use the drop-down boxes to view corp blueprints, or blueprints in other locations. Click the column headers to sort by that column. Faded-out blueprints are ones currently being used in a job.

Time Efficiency (TE) and Material Efficiency (ME) columns show you how researched your blueprint is (researched blueprints take fewer materials and less time to build).

Runs Remaining tells you how many times you can use the blueprint in manufacturing (or invention). Original blueprints have an infinite number of runs, whilst copies have a specified number. Once you use up all the runs on a BPC it disappears.

The Activities column tells you what you can do with that blueprint.

Facilities Tab

The Facilities tab gives you an overview of the industrial facilities available to you. If you have one or more corporation owned POSes (as we do in E-UNI) you can also view any POS-based facilities, by setting 'Corp-owned facilities' in the drop-down box. Again the Activities column shows you what activities you can perform there.

The System cost index is a rough indication to how much your job will cost, relatively, to install. The bars are either light blue, dark blue or empty. In this image above, the facilities in the PVH8-0 system are the most expensive regardless of what activity you want to perform (light blue bar filling the whole column). The top facilities, in the S-U8A4 system, vary greatly depending on what activity you want to do. Some activities are very cheap (tiny sliver of light blue on the left end of the bar) whereas some are very expensive (dark blue bar filling the whole column). The facilities in I0AB-R are all of a similar cost, roughly in the middle of the range (light blue bar filling half the column).

Jobs Tab

You can view all of your currently-running jobs in this tab, plus their duration, end time, location, activity and similar useful things. You can also see jobs installed by people in your corporation, so long as they are using corporation-owned facilities. You will need to use this tab to deliver completed jobs back to your hangar.

Teams Tab

The teams tab gives you an overview of any teams that you can employ to assist your jobs. For a lot more details on Teams, see the relevant wiki page.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is, in basic terms, the production of items from materials, using a blueprint. Blueprints can be copies or originals. You must have the blueprint and the materials present in a hangar containing manufacturing facilities (or, in an assembly array at a POS).

The vast majority of items you see for sale on the market are manufactured by players. NPC orders are identifiable by their >300 day duration, and are limited to skillbooks, original blueprints, PI command centres, some structures and certain components. EVE could not function without player manufacturing.

To start a manufacturing job in the Industry window, make sure your blueprint and all materials are in the station hangar, select the blueprint, select the correct activity, and press Start. That's all there is to it. If you want to build multiple items, change the number in the Job Runs box. You must have enough materials for all the runs.

If you do not have enough materials, the icon on whichever material(s) you are short of will be highlighted orange and you will not be able to start the job until you reduce the number of runs or add more materials to the hangar. Remember you can mouseover anything for contextual information.

The skillbook icon below the centre of the window indicates whether you have the skills required to manufacture the item. If you don't have the right skills, it will be highlighted in red and you will not be able to start the job. Mouseover the skillbook icon to find out what skill(s) you need.

Once a job has finished, you need to re-open the Industry window, open the Jobs tab and press Deliver on the finished job, to have the built item(s) and the blueprint (assuming it hasn't used up all its runs) delivered back into your hangar.

Research

Time Efficiency (TE) research reduces the amount of time taken to build the item. The maximum level is 20% (in 10 steps of 2% each).

Material Efficiency (ME) research reduces the amount of materials you need to build the item. The maximum level is 10% (in 10 steps of 1% each).

Both of these research activities are important to running a profitable manufacturing operation; clearly the less time and the fewer materials your builds require, the more profit you can make. Note that each step of ME or TE takes exponentially longer to finish than the previous run. With some large ships, researching to the maximum level may take too long and be too expensive to be worthwhile (example: an Archon carrier takes 311 days to research to maximum ME in standard POS research laboratory).

The exponential nature of this graph is the same for either time or material research, for any blueprint. The specific numbers are for a carrier, researched with maximum skills at a standard POS research laboratory (no implants).

You can only perform research on an original blueprint, not on a copy. In most cases you do not need any materials to perform research; simply select the blueprint, input the number of runs (1 to 10) and press Start. Most manufacturing operations start by either researching BPOs, or buying pre-researched BPCs (which is an entire market in itself).

Copying

Copying a blueprint original produces a number of a blueprint copies with a specific number of runs. For example, in the image below we have chosen a Blackbird BPO, requested 5 runs, and each resulting copy would have 10 runs. The final output would produce 5 BPCs with 10 runs each, from which you could build 50 total Blackbirds. See the section on Copying, on the Research page, for more details.

You cannot research BPCs, so make sure your BPO is researched to the level you require before you copy it.

There are many uses for blueprint copies, including:

• producing things in a POS, whilst your expensive researched BPO resides safely in a station
• producing things in various different places from a single researched BPO
• inventing T2 items - this can only be done from a T1 BPC
• selling to other people for their own manufacturing (buying pre-researched BPCs to run a manufacturing business can still be profitable)

Invention

Invention is the producing of T2 BPCs using T1 BPCs (for example, you can invent a Gyrostabilzer II BPC using a Gyrostabilizer I BPC). For more details check out the wiki page on Invention. Currently it does not use the Industry window, but is accessed by right-clicking the relevant BPC and selecting Invention.

The majority of T2 items on the market are produced through Invention. A few years ago CONCORD auctioned a number of T2 BPOs, but these are no longer available. The few T2 BPOs still owned by capsuleers sometimes exchange hands for vast amounts of ISK.

Reverse Engineering

This is part of the extremely complex process to make Strategic Cruisers (T3 production). It is an activity that can only be carried out at a POS.

Resource Collection

All manufacturing requires materials to be obtained to use in the production process, and there are various sources of raw materials in New Eden that require harvesting, in order to gather these resources.

Mining

Mining is the profession of extracting ore from asteroids; these ores can then be reprocessed into minerals that are the basis of virtually all production in EVE. It is one of the few professions that is immediately available to beginning players and most EVE industrialists started their careers by mining. Mining is perhaps the most economically safe professions in EVE; losing mining ships or being podded is relatively uncommon (although it does happen) and minerals are always in demand. Your greatest threat is often "Can Flippers" - make sure you understand their motives and how to deal with them.

Mining can be done solo, but it is more effective, more lucrative and more fun to do it in a fleet with other corp members. Using haulers to haul the mined ore back to a station, and an Orca providing boosts to improve your mining yield, will provide a much greater ISK per hour than mining alone.

Ice Mining is very similar to mining, but can only be carried out in systems with ice belts. Again you'll need a mining ship with ice harvesters, and the mined ice then needs to the reprocessed. Ice products are used in POS fuel and jump fuel for capital ships, and thus can be very lucrative.

Reprocessing

Reprocessing is the... process... by which mined ore (and almost any item) can be turned into minerals. It is a fairly simple process; right-click the objects you wish to reprocess and select Reprocess. A new Reprocessing window pops up, displaying which items will be reprocessed and the output results. Here you can check which items you are reprocessing, and you should mouseover all the objects in the Inputs side of the window to carefully check you really do want to reprocess everything in this window, because once you actually press the Reprocess button it cannot be reversed. Please don't reprocess your brand new Orca.

Various skills, different POS facilities, and station taxes will affect how much material is returned to you from reprocessing. It may not be profitable for you to reprocess some things if your skills are fairly low (the Reprocess window gives approximate ISK values on inputs and outputs, but it is only an approximation). See the page on Reprocessing for more details.

Reprocessing is the same activity as refining. All references to refining can be read as reprocessing; the terms are interchangeable.

Planetary Interaction

Basic materials can be extracted from the vast majority of planets in New Eden. These raw materials can then be routed through industrial facilities on the planets to manufacture more specialised planetary materials. Planetary materials are used in T2 ship and module manufacture, POS fuel, and many other items.

Planetary Interaction is an excellent source of passive income. You can set up your extractors twice a week, automatically route your minerals, and you only have to fly to the Customs Office once a week to pick up your planetary materials to sell on the market (or use in your own manufacturing). Alternatively you can put in more effort for more ISK, by setting the extractors more often. See the page on Planetary Interaction for further details on how to set up your colonies and what to extract.

Salvaging

Salvaging is finding useful items from wrecks. Any ship wreck in EVE Online can be salvaged (you may need very high skills for some large, advanced wrecks), to retrieve salvage materials. Salvage is then used in the manufacture of rigs. Salvaging other people's wrecks is not technically stealing, although many players will get upset if you go around salvaging wrecks that are 'theirs'.

Ancient salvage is retrieved from wrecks of Sleepers, which live in w-space systems, and is used in T3 production.

Moon Mining

Moons in 0.4 security space and below are a vitally important source of raw materials for all T2 manufacture, and some T1 manufacture. Moon Mining is an activity requiring POSes, and the ability to defend those POSes, and thus is usually done on an alliance level. Attempting a solo moon mining operation will most likely not be profitable.

Moon materials are required for building Advanced Components, which are used in the manufacture of all T2 items. Moon materials can be found in the Reaction Materials section of the market (raw moon materials are 'reacted' together in POS reactor arrays to form advanced materials).

Currently we do not have a good page on Moon Mining on the EVE University wiki, but Evelopedia has a good article here.

Gas Huffing

Gas clouds in w-space and in losec are a source of materials, for T3 production and manufacturing boosters, respectively. The Venture is an excellent gas huffer, although battlecruisers can also be good gas huffers, and you will need to train up Gas Cloud Harvesting to be able to use the harvesting modules.

Gas from wormhole space systems is reacted together with minerals in a polymer reaction as part of the T3 production process. Gas from known space systems is used to produce combat boosters (also known as drugs). Hisec (and some losec) gas is used to produce basic Synth drugs, which provide small bonuses for a short time and can be used anywhere. Nullsec (and most losec) gas is used to produce much harder drugs, with large bonuses (and possible side-effects), and that are illegal in hisec.

Other Material Sources

There are various other sources of materials that may be needed in the research, invention or manufacture of some obscure blueprints.

• exploration of Data or Relic cosmic signatures in k-space can yield datacores and other research materials
• loyalty point stores for some corporations (especially Factional Warfare corps) sell research materials
• you can find some industry materials sold by NPCs on the market (for example, Data Sheets).