Making ISK - Blueprints & Invention

Many may have noticed that in the "Making ISK" articles, blueprints were not mentioned. The reason being is that manufacturing, invention, and blueprint research can fill up whole articles. So without further a due, I'm bringing you this article covering blueprints. In this article I will cover everything dealing with blueprints with a strong focus on optimizing your profit.



Industry Tools

Before we start, there are a few tools you will want to have on hand to make your optimization process much easier.

EVEMon - Use to see what blueprints you can use, and materials needed for manufacturing
EVECost - Great web-based tool allowing you to plan the cost and profit of manufacturing ships and modules. Can also be used for invention preparation.
BPOCalc - A web-based tool to help you find the best ME/PE for any blueprint, and the required amount to achieve a "perfect blueprint".
EVE Industrial Tool - Perfect for checking the cost of manufacturing, what that ship or module sells for, what percentage of profit you make, and what you can invent; with the outcome from decryptors. Highly recommended, but requires Android OS.

Blueprints

Let's first start talking about blueprints. There are various ways to make ISK simply using blueprints. First is research. Players will pay a good amount of ISK for a researched blueprint copies (BPC), and an even large amount for a researched blueprint original (BPO). The amount of Material Efficiency (ME), and Production Efficiency (PE), determines the amount it will sell for. Many players can make a good amount of ISK just by selling BPCs, and BPOs. I'll cover this in more detail later in the article.

The second way is invention. By doing invention you can create Tech 2 BPCs, which players will also buy. Invention is a whole different world of work when trying to make ISK from it, since you will be doing a lot of research to find out what attributes make a good T2 blueprint that players will buy. Default invention BPCs are sometimes picked up, but they really don't bring in as much ISK as you would like, and sometimes keep you from making your money back. This will be discussed in more detail as we move on through the article.

The third way to make money from blueprints is of course manufacturing. Sometimes it pays off to manufacture the ship or module the blueprint is for, instead of selling the blueprint right away. I'll cover how to optimize your profits from these blueprints, and how to make sure it's the best possible solution.


Research

So now that we have an idea of what can be done, let's cover these possibilities in more detail.
To allow research to make ISK, your goal is to make a blueprint that is optimal for the buyer. Generally you want to make a blueprint at it's "perfect" level before selling. Some people will say that you need to cater to the players with lower industry skills, but that is not the group of players you want to work with. Rather the buyer will have skills at 5, or is planning to get them to 5. With that said, they will know what a perfect blueprint ME/PE will be, and will buy these over others with lower research.


Blueprint Levels

We can use BPOCalc to find out what a blueprint's perfect ME/PE is. Simply choose the blueprint you want to research, set the industry levels to 5, and watch as it gives you two charts; one for ME, and one for PE. The last number in each list is the perfect level. A lot of the time you will find that a blueprint may take a lot longer to get to a perfect level, with minimal benefit. With BPOCalc, simply look at the different levels listed, and you can see the amount of ISK it takes in extra materials with a lower ME level. With some blueprints you can simply raise the level to the midpoint if it's only going to save a small amount of ISK to make it perfect. Once again heavy industry players will notice this, and consider your blueprint over others that are randomly researched.


Blueprint Original Trading

Now that you know what levels you need your blueprints, it's time to talk about how to make money with them. First is selling the BPO after completing research. This can work well if you don't have the time to make copies, or want to spend much on a POS. Most industry players want BPOs anyways, and will pay 1000% the cost of a "blank" (0 ME/0 PE) BPO version. If this is what you plan to do, make sure to check the contracts to see what the BPO sells for, if there are a lot already up, and check the sellers for past sales to see if they sell a lot. If there are lots of BPOs up, it will usually tell you that the BPO was once great to sell, and now flooded. We can determine that by checking the prices versus ME/PE levels. If the prices are set to simply beat the price of another BPO, it's probably best to wait until that particular BPO has thinned out. Sellers in that situation will usually stop selling the BPO because of the amount of competitors, but leaving an open market not long after. Generally speaking, doing such can make a substantial amount of ISK.


Blueprint Copy Trading

Like selling BPOs, selling copies can be just as beneficial. The only difference is that you have two different options for selling. One is to sell researched copies for production. The second is to sell non-researched copies (blanks) in sets. Researched copies are great for making ISK, especially for capital sized ships. Usually players will one to build one or two, but not have to worry about researching the BPO for something they only plan to make a couple of; so they buy researched copies instead. The same goes for invention sets. Selling a set of 10 blanks will sell quite easily. Since invention has nothing to do with the copy's ME/PE level, inventors will purchase "blanks" in bulk; avoiding the process of making their own. While this isn't a great source of ISK, it does add up quite easily, and with a POS acting like a Xerox machine for several different types of blueprints you will see the benefits quite quickly.


Blueprint Sets

One other way to make some great ISK with blueprint is to make blueprint sets. Basically what a "set" consists of is a contract filled with blueprint copies of every part for a certain ship. As you start to deal with more complex ships, you will notice that those ships require the manufacturer to build other parts just to build that ship. By offering a set of BPCs covering the ship and those parts allows the buyer to have everything at one time without having to look for other BPCs on contracts. You usually don't see sets very often, and the reason being is that they are high in demand; they sell quite quickly. In doing such, you can get a bit more ISK out of the set since people will pay just to have everything in one contract. Just to give an example, take a look at what it takes to build an Orca, or even a Tech 3 ship with modules. EVEMon, EVECost, and the EVE Industrial Tool will give you ideas of what all is involved.


Invention

For many players this is usually the last thing they ever try to mess with, just because of it's "hit and miss" system. You can easily spend 40 million ISK inventing off of one BPC, and not come out with anything. Luckily the BPC's level has nothing to do with the outcome of the Tech 2 BPC that comes out. Unfortunately there is a lot more involved; this is where the invention tools come into play.  At this time I would recommend making yourself a bit familiar with the EVE Online Industrial Tool's (EOIT) invention system. If you cannot use it, just use EVE-Cost. The only reason I push EOIT, is with it's invention system it factors in the cost of inventing the BPC by calculating the amount of times it will take to successfully produce the blueprint.

Using different decryptors will give you a certain addition/subtraction to the number of runs, ME, PE, and percentage of success on the invention itself. Before you do that though, you need to make sure that the T2 BPC will be profitable. Even if you're just selling the BPC, players will not pay for BPCs that do not allow them an ISK advantage (Most of the time). The default -4ME/-4PE BPCs usually sell for less than what it costs to make them, and only a couple can you actually profit from.

To give you an idea on how the stats effect the BPC, making a T2 battleship with a -4ME/-4PE BPC could cost you more in materials than to buy it from the market. Using a decryptor raising the ME to 0 or +1, will bring it below market cost. Unfortunately with decryptors that add lots of ME, they also reduce the amount of runs you can use that BPC. If you spend 100M inventing a T2 BPC that only has two runs, and you only make 50M profit on each ship, you are only breaking even. Each and every blueprint that has the ability to invent off of will have a different outcome in terms of what decryptor works best. Some BPCs you will find to be more profitable with very low ME, but lots of runs. Some you may find to be better with a few runs, but better ME. It all depends on what it is.

So I'm sure this all sounds confusing enough, and probably not worth it. This is where the invention calculators come in. So with the invention calculators you need to find that "sweet spot", where your invention cost, manufacturing cost, and total amount of runs produce the greatest amount of ISK. My best bit of advice is to play around with a couple different blueprints, and what their outcome would be with different decryptors. Doing that will give you an idea of what to look for, and understand the entire process of invention. While it does have a lot of different variables, it is pretty simple once you understand it.

Summary

So there you go, ways to make ISK with Blueprints. Keep watching as I will be presenting another article covering manufacturing, and Player Owned Systems that tie into this. Enjoy, and fly safe! o7