The industry guide unfolds

So, my professional exam is a little over a week away - clearly the best thing to do is to start structuring a production guide, right? :)

Someone posted a comment on something I said on our forums in response to a very broad career path for a producer I posted that suggested there might be a use for a guide along those lines in the guides section of our forums.

Everyone seems to focus on the "you need this skill to do this" bit etc, without focusing on the "if you are looking into getting into production, this is how you might go about it and this is how to get deeper into it..." side of things. It is all well and good to have a list of skills needed to do tech 2 invention but when those skills are going to take you months to train and an astronomical (to a beginning player) amount of isk, you'd be forgiven for sitting there thinking "Well, I'll never achieve that and what's it worth to me when I do?"

The fact is that the production side of EVE isn't all that time intensive. It is very asset intensive and you do need a reasonable number of skills if you intend to get into research and invention. However you basically set a job going, wait for it to complete, collect the good and sell it. Easy, right?

Well, I'd probably argue that if you are going to get into production for profit, you need to research your goods, diversify your offering and be prepared to make 10%-30% on good production deals. Your real isk-maker may well be what you do while you aren't tending production jobs, which could be mission running, mining, trading, ratting... you get the idea.

The production side of EVE is fun to explore. There is something fun about building stuff, producing and marketing goods and doing the research needed to turn a profit. I intend my guide to set out a path to delve into production and highlight the obvious skills and facts along the way.

So, what's the plan?

Well, I was thinking of thinking of production as a career path. Something along the lines of:

• Starting production - personal ammo and those first few steps into production for profit
• Building up a BPO portfolio and production skills, diversifying your options
• Stepping out into research and setting up a research POS
• Getting into Invention

The guide should cover tactics of choosing products, choices you might make, with insets covering details of the skills and information on the anatomy of a blueprint etc.

I want the career path to be the driving force behind the guide and to hang the essential production facts onto it.

Anyway, thoughts and suggestions are welcome - please post comments of anything you'd like covered or what you think of my idea.

I am sure I'll post clippits and more info on my blog. I intend to take my time producing it and will no doubt rope people in to proof-read it. I remember doing something along those lines for Dee Carson when he was writing his mining guide so perhaps I'll see if he would mind returning the favour. (Dee, you have been warned! *grin*)

Until then, EVE University is at war, so good luck to all fighting.

All the best

Fin