Second day edit: I have been duely informed by people that:

• I’m correct
• I’m wrong
• I don’t know what I’m talking about
• I got the order wrong
• I should stay in my lane
• The first paragraph was dickish. (not intended, but…)

So… You should probably just move on without reading.

This is just a minor modest proposal, for how a nullsec group can grow and prosper. Yes, I’ve never been in a nullsec group, but I’ve been watching from the outside, without any real prejudices holding me back. If you think I have nothing to offer, you can just close the tab now, and go about your day, safe in the knowledge that you showed me, and I’ll know my place now.

There’s a few stages to this, some of which have to happen in specific orders, others which can occur out of order (to a degree)

Stage 1:

Pick a capital system. Ideally this will be pretty central for you. A semi reasonable jump train to highsec is worthwhile, but not totally required. Depends how much you hate your logistics people. This could change in the future, but doing so could be quite painful. This will make more sense further down.

Once you have your capital system, you need to anchor at least a Fortizar in it. A Keepstar would be better, but I don’t know what scale you’re operating at. This structure should have A Market module in it. Other structure modules aren’t so important, though I’d suggest defences. Keep your market tax rate sane. Yes, you will get income from this, but you don’t want to make it make more sense to go elsewhere.

Stage 2:

Stock your market. Initially, this will likely be from Jita. This is bad. Jita is the enemy of your logistics chain. If you’re buying something from there, you’re giving ISK to the enemy (namely, someone not in your group)

This one sounds simple until you start getting into all the fiddly bits coming out of the simple premise that the only people you should be giving ISK to, are members of your own group.

You will want to have some subsidiary markets scattered around. These are not for your line members to buy ships and modules from. These are to cut down on the required movement of resources to make stuff. We’ll get to why this is good in a couple of paragraphs.

Stage 3

You’re going to need miners. You probably already have people in Rorquals. If you don’t, you want some. Or mining barges. Or both. Mine anomalies. Mine moons. Provide facilities for them to refine their ore, with a decently low tax rate, and appropriate rigs. Compressin is reasonable, if they’re towards the outside of your space.. You also want to provide them with somewhere to sell the ore or minerals at a fair rate. This can be below Jita, as it’s significantly more convenient for them. Do not scalp them. Taking advantage of your people is a good way to lose them. These can be at the subsidiary markets.

You’re going to need industrialists. Thankfully, you’re probably not going to need a huge number of them. And you can cheat, by teaching your line members to make things for you. Sure, they may not specialize, but if they can get researched blueprints at a low rate, and there are orders for them to sell to, you can effectively outsource bits of your manfacturing to them. You will want manufacturing structures in reasonable locations. This is why you want the subsiduary markets. So a general member doesn’t need to ship things around, to manufacture useful things.

Stage 4

Assuming you’re running a decent monitoring system on your members, you can start to have production goals people can sign up to. “We need 300 of module X”, allows people to sign up to do bits of that. Give corps/people who do useful things kudos, or other benefits. Remember that T2 needs T1 to feed it. And Components. And so on. Outsource from your primary industrialists to your line members. And Reactions are yet another thing that can be spread around. You need to watch for people selling resources outside, but this is a social aspect.

You want to be as self-sufficient as possible. If you have a doctrine, and you whelp a fleet, the appropriate response is to replace it from your stores. If it’s to go to Jita to buy another fleet, you’re playing into the hands of the people you’re fighting against.

Misc notes

The phases should probably be broken up more. But you can see how it all interlocks, and this is close to a stream of consiousness, rather than a properly set out plan.

Running a trade surplus is ok. But it tends to indicate that you can grow yourself more. Don’t give your spare capacity to your enemy.

You’re going to need ISK to make this work. Line members will need to be paid, to stop them selling their shit to your enemies.

You need to be able to have basic monitoring of your members. This means you’re going to be pretty dependent on your IT staff. Welcome to modern business. The basics of what you want to monitor:

• What people are making. (Did Jimbob make a Dread recently?)
• What stockpiles you have
• What’s on your markets. (Is Jimbob selling a Dread on the market?)
• What contracts exist (Is Jimbob selling it by contract instead?)
• What ISK flow is happening. (Did Jimbob suddenly get a windfall?)
• What your line members are mining. (are they refining it elsewhere? Selling in jita?)
• what your mining happens near your structures.

Your enemies are everyone who are not you. This should be obvious.

None of this stuff is rocket science (though the monitoring system will take some effort. As will reporting on it) But all of it isn’t being implemented in too many places.