Science & Industry

In hisec, you can set up a large POS somewhere the manufacturing index isn't too high and you can build whatever's profitable.

In a M/L engineering complex, you can only fit 3 rigs, which means you can only build 3 item categories competitively.

So you either stop building such a variety of things, or you build multiple engineering complexes and spend your life moving materials and components around between the complexes.

Or you can use public complexes which will have awful manufacturing indexes and stop you being competitive.

The only structure that matches the functionality of a large POS is an XL engineering complex, but their kill-mails are too juicy for all but certain well connected groups to seriously consider using.

All in all, I'm not convinced that these engineering complexes are an improvement for many hisec manufacturers. (Clearly they provide interesting improvements in null, low and WH space though).

Unless I'm misunderstanding, there is no combination of rigs that is superior to a hisec research starbase at a competitive cost.

For manufacturing, specialization does offer some improvement.

TBH, given the fuel costs, I have my doubts about the economics even outside of high sec right now. At least for manufacturing of fairly generic items, the volume of industry required to offset the fuel costs (relative to POS) may end up erasing the ME benefit through the system index. I haven't done any math to verify this yet, but it is something I want to look into. Edge cases involving rounding of high value, low quantity items (as with multiple runs of T3 or structures) aside, anyway.

In the long run, the removal of POS would eventually rectify that problem, but in the short-mid term, I have my doubts.

They split the functionality of the design lab so you need 2 service modules to copy and invent. Plus the medium uses more fuel than a large POS. I'll be keeping my small POS until they forcibly remove it from the game!

Or they might be trying to push people out of hisec.

Using these instead of a POS to build in will be a worse experience as you will have to spread your stuff around across multiple structures. Even if you're building in an XL you will not be doing science in the same facility.

Its almost certainly the second one - index multiplier rather than index.

There is the index most people know about, which determines cost of jobs, based on the number and value of jobs in system. And there is the fixed index multiplier (e.g. 0.95) which will be applied to the index for each station (not POS, not EC) with the respective facility in system.

Hence, systems with a large number of NPC stations with facilities get a bonus to the index. But the index value itself scales with the number of chars actually doing stuff in system. There was no change in mechanics in this regard, ECs will just behave the same way as starbases do today.

Unless CCP forces us all to use the new structures, like they did with traders, by making NPC station production generally unprofitable ... otherwise I will be happy continuing using those with less competition, as I don't care much about a couple of percentage ME gain, and the TE is irrelevant for my playstyle.

Not only in HighSec, I just came from the W-Space subforum and someone there did the math and found out a large POS is still cheaper on fuel if you want to do industry in W-Space.

In effect, either CCP lowers the fuel costs drastically, or many people will just ignore them until POS are removed and they're forced to use them.

Well, no, not really right.

For a given location, they're only more costly compared to POS below a certain input threshold, after which the superior ME compensates for the relative fuel increase.

That "consensus" is mostly knee-jerky and completely ignores the ability to use other-people's-structures. A lot of people have been treating fairly manageable problems as if they're insurmountable dealbreakers. It's ridiculous.

In the short term, the ability to Dial-a-'Dex with a POS still gives them a clear advantage. This could be a deterrent to early adoption of ECs, but in the long run is irrelevant, as it will go away.

There are things I could stand to see changed or improved with the current plan. Some thoughts, none of which I think are absolutely mandatory, but all of which would make ECs more attractive to me:

-I think a base fuel cost of 16 for basic manu and lab services would be fine. This would mean 36/hr for a basic manu/research EC, instead of 45.

-I think ME and Time rigs could be consolidated at the medium level for manufacturing. That's still a HUGE number of rigs. Needing to blow 2 rig slots for an optimal T2 component factory, for instance, just seems like too much.

-I think the structure browser is going to need to be a lot more robust to adequately allow people to find an ideal public structure with their desired bonuses. Actually, I'll flat out say that I don't think this one is optional. The existing browser is completely insufficient given the current granularity of EC bonus design.

-I think the delineation between existing research and design labs should be preserved. That is, ME/TE in one research service, copying/invention in the other. This would mean that, combined with consolidating ME/TE at the medium level, one flavor (small ship, medium ship, module, rig, whatever) could be performed, invention -> component -> product, fully bonused in a medium. Currently you can do ALL flavors, bonused, in a POS, so to me, this seems like a more reasonable middle-ground than the current level of granularity.

On the other hand, the current setup likely means a more functional market for intermediate products, such as T2 components, which today are usually vertically integrated, and I do rather like that idea, so I'm sort of ambivalent on that last point, for now.