Lately I have been thinking of going into the T2 ship invention business. I have a bunch of points stacked up for datacores. Also have all the skills needed, up to cruisers to build them. So I am all set to go.
Only thing that is holding me back is the entry price, the esoteric ship data interface, which costs about 120mil. It is sort of an investment though. Like a POS you can assume, unless CCP changes the drop rate of the bpc, that you can sell it again for about the same price.
Regardless of that I was wondering if there is actual any ISK to be made. Here are some calculations for a Kitsune, a t2 electronic warfare frig.
Kitsune Calculations
| Part | Aantal | Price | Total |
| Contruction blocks | 23 | 480 | 11,040 |
| Gravimetric Sensor Cluster | 75 | 23,200 | 1,740,000 |
| Graviton Reactor Unit | 30 | 68,000 | 2,040,000 |
| Griffin | 1 | 200,000 | 200,000 |
| Magpulse Thruster | 53 | 29,180 | 1,546,540 |
| Morphite | 15 | 10,000 | 150,000 |
| Quantum Microprocessor | 45 | 11,400 | 513,000 |
| RAM Starship Tech | 4 | 40,000 | 160,000 |
| Scalar Capacitor Unit | 38 | 17,900 | 680,200 |
| Sustained Shield Emitter | 30 | 26,500 | 795,000 |
| Titanitium Diborite Armor Plate | 38 | 7,322 | 278,236 |
| TOTAL | 8,114,016 |
The materials are from a -4 ME bpc which is typical I think for an invented BPC. The Kitsunes go for about 14mil in and around Jita. So on face value that would be 7mil prophit a unit. BUT, the success rate of frig invention is 40%, so let’s say you need about 1mil worth of datacores. For T2 cruisers like Recons and Hacs, this drops down to about 30%, and you need more datacores to invent at all (8 even instead of 2 for frigs).
And ofcourse you need BPCs to invent, running a POS costs money as well, but thats a bit hard to calculate, if you’re lucky you also can make some money by copying your BPOs, and use some for invention on the side
So what am I going to do ? Well for now, I am just going to think about it for a while. It’s also a lot of hassle, once you have a few blueprints to get all the parts together, plus it doesnt seem to be really worth it, for just a few mil profit per unit sold. I haven’t looked / calculated the costs of other T2 ships yet, but I doubt they’re much more profitable than the above example.
Let me know what you think in the comments, and if I overlooked anything :).
Morph T2 HAC Recons and Heavy interdictors currently go for about ~80M to ~90M which granted require the T1 hull but the profit on those hulls has to be huge. As for the kitsune I fly one and I love it, might be a good starting place.
Having done a fair amount of Caldari ship invention I can provide some insight.
The profit margins on T2 frigs is not great, but it is there. You get much better profit margins on T2 cruisers, but correspondingly larger investment in materials.
Also, look into using Decryptors to increase the number of runs. Although some reduce your chances of success, the increase on the number of runs can balance it out and actually give more profit per vessel built.
Finally, a POS is not a necessary component of the enterprise. Search in low sec and quieter empire regions for stations with smaller queues on the copy slots, and get multiple bpos copying at once to spread the results out through the month. If you are going hardcore, a POS will help a lot but take that much more effort to setup and keep running, and the fuel bill eats into profits.
Oh, make sure you have the Frig Construction skill for building Tech II frigs. 🙂
I’ve got to admit, I’ve not looked into t2 ship production to any great deal, but I managed to pull a profit making Hulks from contract bought hulk BPCs and Retriever BPCs – the money wasnt great (about 20 mil or so each one) but theres definately money there.
I’ve not looked at the other ships because I havent invested the time in the frigate/cruiser etc construction skills, but if you can suppliment your datacores with ‘self produced’ ones it can make the barrier for entry a bit easier – buying ready copied T1 hull BPCs is fairly cheap, so the expense of the POS for copying neednt be an issue, and invention slots are available pretty much anywhere.
Basically, with the profits you make from one, you can probably finance another 2 attempts or so, so the money adds up eventually.
If youve got the construction skills needed for tech 2 ships, its always worth a shot, a hundred million spent looking into a new profit making venture is typically money well spent, and you can probably recover that in a matter of weeks if you put your mind to it, even doing things like running missions.