Science & Industry

Other than minerals, what else? From what I've noticed, it doesn't apply to components like Thermonuclear Trigger Unit s, Robotics etc but applies to salvage. Is this right?

Making a T2 production spreadsheet isn't as straightforward as I thought it would be.

Tech 2 manufacturing

Short answer:
Take a look at the calculator in my sig. The math and db lookups are taken care of there.


Long answer:
In the static data dump, materials for blueprints are stored in 2 places. basic materials and extra materials. ME changes only affect the basic materials.

Waste due to a production efficiency skill less that 5 only apply to:
basic materials
Extra materials that also show up in the basic materials list.

In addition, if an extra material is marked as recyclable, the materials in it's basic material list are removed from the main basic material list, before any waste is applied.

All of that is taken care of for you in the client, so you don't see the base numbers.

It's not as simple as 'just this type of material' unfortunately.

Indeed.

To answer your question - there is no set rule for this. Minerals are usually affected by ME, but not always. Most notable are bombs, where part of the minerals are influenced by ME, while others are not. Similarly, for a lot of tech II items, part of the Morphite is affected by ME-levels, while some is not.

What it all comes down to is that each building part is either a building material or an extra material. Materials are refunded when you reprocess something, extra materials are not. The tech 1 item or ship counterpart required for the vast majority of tech II items are always extra, just like the RAM-tech because you never get them back when reprocessing.

The most convenient way to find out what is extra and what is not is to query the database directly. Lacking that option, the "hard way" is to check each item manually in the online database here http://eve-online.itemdrop.net/eve_db/items/ although I think it's outdated. For example, you can see the building requirements for a Scourge Fury missile (now a Trauma Fury Missile) here:

http://eve-online.itemdrop.net/eve_db/items/blueprint/missile_blueprint/scourge_fury_heavy_missile_blueprint/

You'll notice that the Rocket Fuel lists 80 pieces in the materials table and 4 in the Extra table. ME applies to the 80, but not to the 4. So if you have a ME -4 copy you'll need 80*1,5+4=84 Rocket Fuel.

I believe what the OP is asking is more for tech 2 modules , control towers, gantries,and such, that have no normal mineral requirements. Base materials do not always mean base minerals.

most of the components in tech 2 and capital ship production are base materials and are affected by ME research.
for example materials derived from moon goo needed to make tech 2 components are base materials. I believe the tech 2 modules used in a tech2 ship construction are base materials but the quantities are so low researching them to ME 5 may knock off 1-2 units but anything thing higher will nor add additional benefit.

for example having a waste reduction from 10% to say 0.9% effectively a 9% reduction would reduce the material requirements of a base material from say 100 unit to 91 units. Not bad especially if each of those units costs a few mil like in tech 2 ship production or capital ship production.

But if the base material required thousands or millions of units like in tech 1 ship production even a further 0.1%reduction in waste would save an extra 1000 units per million required, but not a big savings in trit which is usually the biggest unit base material as it only cost about 3.4 isk unit saving about 3400 isk per 0.1% reduction in waste.

If the base material requirement was only 10 then you need 10% reduction or true zero waste which is not possible, just to save one unit. anything requiring 15-20 units would benefit from some ME research with 0.5% waste saving you one unit out of twenty, but no amount of ME research would give you an additional unit of savings. this is where the prefect ME comes from. Perfect ME does not mean zero waste. It means no amount of additional research will save you any additional material as it is always rounded up to the nearest unit.

Even the PI materials used in control tower and gantry production are affected by ME but due to the low number of units required there is very little benefit to extensive ME research. there is a noticeable difference between ME 0 and ME 5 but no difference between ME5 and ME500.

Even if extra materials were affected by ME (which they are not) most would still not change as it is generally 1-2 units (with the exception of T2 ammo and missiles). even with 2 units with ME0 waste being 10% no amount of research would generate the 50% reduction needed to change 2 units to 1 unit. With 10% base waste any material requirement of 10 units or less will not be reduced by any amount of research, as even ME 1000 would leave you with 0.0001% waste giving a reduction of 9.9999% which is still shy of the 10% needed to reduce the 10 units to 9.

Generally the BPO's you use to produce the modules needed for tech 2 ship production have such low material requirements ME research is of very little benefit. Unless you are making Jump freighters which require thousands of units of the same moon goo products. As some of these products are very expensive saving even just a couple extra units, (0.2% down to 0.1% will still save on unit per thousand ) can affect your profits significantly.

Thanks for all the replies everyone, some very useful info in here!

And Steve Ronuken, that's a pretty neat site you have there. Yeah an xml feed would work well for this, I'll have to look into it.