EVE: Supply Lines & Front Lines
Manufacturing in EVE is endlessly fascinating, not least because there's constant consumption of goods. Everything from the tiniest frigates to the greatest titans gets blown up in the territorial wars between alliances, or in plain old rat hunting. So part of my long-term plan is to find a system in EVE wherein I can do my manufacturing and selling to best effect. The best customers are undoubtedly the PvP types operating in 0.4 space down to 0.0, because they lose ships regularly, and haven't much in the way of local supplies.
The problem for me in filling that gap is that, well, it's bloody dangerous down there. It's possible for me to nip down and sit in a station in a low-sec system, and produce goods there, assuming I'm willing to bring in all my blueprints, get minerals shipped in, and not move from the station unless I'm really friendly with the locals. But shipping stuff in costs, and there's a more than fair possibility that even a shuttle coming in at speed is a tempting target - and losing my blueprints would be bad. With corp support, it might be a possibility, but there's a lot of organisation involved.
The other possibility is to identify some gateway location - 0.5 security, but right on the doorway to low-sec space, and do my work there. I reckon I can't be the first to come up with that idea, though, and mineral costs are likely to be high there as well, I think.
The best of all worlds would be to buy minerals in Jita or someplace, or even strike a deal with a miner, ship them down to my just-barely-high-sec HQ, and produce there. It wouldn't be quite as lucrative as the low-sec base idea, but it would work. With so much shipping involved, though, I reckon the margins would be tight. And if the wars die down in that area, the whole business would have to move to follow.
It's something that's going to need a lot of research and observation before I go about setting up, I think.
Posted by Drew Shiel at December 15, 2008 2:11 PM
