A Corp and a second highsec character

 So I'm at a point where my first highsec character is OK skills wise, and is chewing his way through Advanced Broker Relations V. I also seem to be generating a surplus of ISK with what I'm producing, and could use some more slots.

So I've done 2 things. One is to create a corp for my highsec characters. I will use this to transfer money around easily, and I think I can set blueprints to be corp owned and used by my characters. If I can that'd be a huge usability win. TBD on that one.

The second is to create a new character. I've injected mass production and begun production and research in Ikuchi alongside my initial character. This takes my total industry characters to 3. The items I'm producing now sell like hot cakes and so I think I can up my production lines without even changing items and take advantage. It's not the best idea to put so much in one basket but the initial BPO is 1 mil each and each day I'm producing about 2 mil profit per line per day, so even if the margin collapses tomorrow and I have to switch wholesale then I've already paid the BPO costs off many times over. 

I had hoped to get to this point sooner but I've been away for a few days with family. I still have more to look into with this and plenty more to explore to optimise my null character, but it's nice to begin scaling to more production lines.

My first Reaction

 One thing I've never done in EVE is reactions. I knew they are used to turn moon goo into tech 2 stuff, and that they're complicated and not doable in high sec, but that's it. I've heard they can be lucrative though so I've been keen to check them out since starting this challenge.

A few things I've learned since researching them:

• Reactions are done using formulae, which are seeded by NPCs all over the place (for 10, 15 or 20mil depending on the "tier")
• These formulae cannot be researched like blueprints, but are infinite runs
• they mostly have 4 inputs, fuel blocks and 3 other ingredients.

MJ- has a reactions structure in system, but apparently different structures only support certain types of reactions. Therefore I've had to head over to the industry park to find a suitable structure. I'm beginning to understand why it's named that. 

Also, when I was looking for a reaction to run I was struggling to find one that was profitable at all. I eventually worked out that while they are run in low/null/wormholes it seems most people must either buy their mats in bulk or import from Jita, and that's where the market for the outputs is.

I was surprised, as I was hoping to run reactions and sell the outputs in null, but it seems there's almost no market for that. I was also surprised at how little money most reactions make from browsing using Jita prices and a null structure. Either I'm missing something or most people are reacting to do vertically integrated t2 production and not selling the intermediates. I am hoping to use my reaction slots similarly to my manufacturing ones, i.e. put in mats get out items to sell.

I did eventually manage to find something with good margins and had them contracted to null:

which looks something like this in the industry window:

This is only a very small run, but my budget is pretty small at this point. My plan is to run this and then export the results back to Jita to sell. 

I feel there's a lot I don't know here, but it's good to get started at least.

Getting set up in Null

 After a little wait (36 hours) my alt was accepted into Pandemic Horde and I was able to start the setup in null. First things first, set my home station to the nullsec staging (where the market is) and self destructing my pod to teleport out there. 

Next is to set up my Overview etc. so I can travel around safely.

After all that is done I can start looking at the industry. There are more complications to it than in highsec. For one thing, the BPC market is essentially non-existent and limited primarily to capital parts and metenox moon drills. Not something I'm interested in. So I think I'll have to operate from BPOs out here. 

Looking at the maps, there are Azbels/Raitarus with rigs available for anything you can think of, which is nice. I have a couple of choices when it comes to where to set up. There is a basic Azbel for ship building in system, which I use in the industry window to determine profitability, and there are also rigged structures in an "industry park" in another region, in the old home of R10-. I will probably operate out of here long term, it is in another region but with Ansiblex jump gates it's only a couple of jumps so not a big deal logistically. In addition to a greater range of rigged structures this "industry park" also has a lower system cost index by virtue of being ever so slightly inconvenient. 

Initially though I think I'll operate out of MJ while I get things set up.

I looked through a few old favourites to determine profitability. Mobile Depots look more profitable here though the volume is a lot lower. Something to bear in mind. There were a couple of drones and a rig that look good to me as well. So I bought 2 of each BPO, one to use and one to research at the same time. 

I then encountered the other complication with working out here, I have to use a alliance logistics service to transport my items from Jita. In this case it's a few low cost BPOs so the cost is trivial, but I have no guarantee how long it will take to arrive. I guess I'll just have to wait and in the meantime I can buy a Venture and get some mining done and get the lay of the land. Excited to see how this scales versus high  sec!

A second industry account

 So about a month into this new journey I feel I've hit the point where I need more characters. 

My initial character has 10 production slots and 8 research slots which I am mostly utilising, and I have north of 400mil net worth now. I'm starting to see a build up in ISK in my wallet at times so a second character could be usefully utilised, but I don't want to stop skill training on this account. I've been training trade skills including advanced broker relations (the adjusting fees are killing me!) and also improving my piloting and fitting skills to reduce the chance of being ganked going to and from Jita.

Another aspect in this decision is I'd like to start in null and see what that is like. Also my trading is going well this month with me rapidly heading back towards a trillion. 

So I repeated the same process as last time, using a refer a friend link to create a new account and get a free 1 million skillpoints. This time though I skipped the tutorial and career agents and instead headed for Jita and put in an application to Pandemic Horde. Applications can take a couple of days to go through.

I also transferred 50 million from my other industry character to this new one to set himself up and buy starting things he needs. After buying a years Omega time using my trade characters (for slightly over 20Bn, ouch!) I bought a few skills, set up a skill queue and used my 1 mil SP. This got me to 6 manufacturing jobs, 5 science and 5 reactions. In addition to a few other supporting skills. 

I plan to do a few build runs in high sec with this guy while I wait for my app to null to be accepted, at which point I'll jump straight into null and scope out the new world of industry down there!