Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TLDR Add Caldari plant upgrade and Research Facility for other outposts.

Doing this would not only possibly create more diversity in outposts, but also give choice to the people. You added some alchemy reactions which you knew and were fine with that would not be worth it. These upgrades on the other hand can be usefull for some people.

This would also make more outpost specializations more feasable and bonuses not useless. For example Caldari:

Caldari stations can be upgraded for 60% TE reduction on t2 components, but with only -3% ME. Amarr station can have 30% TE reduction but -5% ME. So which one is better?

In caldari station, you'll need 0.4/0.7 jobs, about 57%, which you save on both number of accounts needed and install cost (lower system multiplier). The cost saving is sqrt(0.57)=75.5%, 24.5% reduction.

The average cost per job is 1.65b* so you you can install around 54.4b a month per account. 800m plex increases that cost by 1.47%. On a caldari station that would only be 1.47%*0.57=0.84%. A 0.63% of overall cost reduction.

The other 1.37% to compensate for lower ME reduction would have to come from install cost. As install cost goes down by about 25%, to get 1.37% reduction the install cost in the amarr station would have to be 5.48% to make it worth it. (4.98% if you pay 10% for team, 10% for tax would bring it down to 4.53 ).

There's no outpost that has that multiplier. So it won't be worth it. If a Caldari station can be upgraded with plants which just give ME reduction, no other bonus, players can decide for themselves if they want to invest tens of billions at a station for this.

To not leave behind the other races, they should get research facility upgrades too. Just the TE cost reduction, nothing else(for now atleast). Worth it? Let the players decide.


Development cost wouldn't be very high.
* Used jita sell price for material price

Thank you for your feedback:

About 100b(too lazy to do that math/look it up)? As I said, if someone wants to do that, why not allow him too? At the moment he can't. If you save 3% compared to a pos, just in materials, not counting in plex or lower activity, you only need to install 3.3T worth of goods to get the isk back.

I would like to see how you came to that conclusion. Here's one example that probably won't be cheaper:
- Titan and SC copying, you do that at a .6 pos, I'd rather do it at a .4 station, 50% more copies from the same bpo. If that's a well researched one, ME9 or ME10, it will probably pay back very fast.(Hint: calculate cost to research a new one).

With manufactering, it's a balance between bpo (opportunity) cost, plex cost, material cost and system activity/install cost. And if you manufacter enough and look further ahead than a year, outpost might not be such a bad idea if you have access to one.

A harder choice would be to choose between Amarr -5% ME or Caldari -5% ME(which also depends on what already exists), but that choice doesn't exist.