A New Manufacturing Character

Skill training completed:

I wish Aura still said that, such a satisfying sound.

Anyway, yesterday my Hek seller finished Tycoon V, and I consider him now "finished" from a sellers point of view. He has Accounting/Broker Relations V, and all skills that give more orders to V, giving him the maximum of 305 orders to play with (he's only using 80 atm).

This leaves me with the question of what to do with the other 2 character slots on that account. I had thought to create more region traders in the same vein as the Tash-Murkon trader, and if I was purely thinking from a profit point of view that would be the way forwards. However, for along time I've liked the idea of getting back into manufacturing seriously.

My Rens seller has a lot of manufacturing skills, and there was a period of time years ago when that was how I made money with that character. The problem is if he's flying around doing manufacturing related things, he's not in a position to update orders, or fly around collecting items on a trade run. 

Now however, with a free character slot, I can dedicate a character to just manufacturing. I haven't quite decided whether to go T1 or T2, or mix up both. I quite like the idea of building citadels, or other structures. This seems to be a bit of an underserved market outside Jita, and I have the money to take this seriously.

I also haven't decided where to base my efforts. I'm pretty much free to be where I want, so this is a tricky question. I can pretty much rule out Jita as a place to sell my wares, as the competition is too fierce, and profit margins are likely razor thin, if not negative.

Amarr appeals, being a bit less competitive, and I do transport some structure rigs there for sale, which means there is a margin to be made and I can likely still get all my materials at a reasonable price.

What I feel like I'm leaning towards at the moment though is Minmatar space. I know, it has the smallest trade hubs of the 4 races high sec regions, but that's kind of the beauty of it - trade hubS, plural. Rens is 6 jumps from Hek, and where I already have a character with good industry skills. If I pick a system somewhere between the two, I can serve both hub easily, and if I need more lines going I can easily bring my Rens seller across to build some stuff.

I'm probably several days away from getting started seriously, as I need to train a bunch of skills, industry, mass production, laboratory operation etc etc, so i can spend some time scouting out where to set up. I will probably operate out of NPC stations initially whilst I get a feel for things, then plop down my own citadel(s). 

I'm excited to try something new, though it's going to take a lot of prep and thought to do properly - stay tuned!