Science & Industry

nt

Not really.
A very distant cousin of it, maybe, so to speak.

"Stuff I get myself is free therefore worthless" plays a certain role for sure (datacores self-harvested, T1 BPCs self-made, T2 components self-manufactured, etc) but that's not the full story, probably not even the main story either, at least not for ships (might be most of the story for smaller items, but not for ships, and certainly not larger ships).

The actual main problem - at least for higher ticket items - is the RANDOM CHANCE factor.
Anybody who's a veteran inventor will tell you, if you're not going to do at least 100 runs, then you'd better just stay out of invention, because random chance is a pain in the posterior.
For modules and small ships, costs per invention try is low and success chances are decently high, so getting hundreds of runs is quite feasible.
However, things drastically change for expensive items like marauders and JFs. The cost for one invention try is high, success chances are low.
Those who repeatedly fail more than usual will soon move on to a different item and just go "eh, this sucks", however the ones that succeed more than usual will have a lower than normal total cost, and they NEED to recoup as much of the investment as fast as possible, while not realizing just how costly the item is SUPPOSED to be to actually produce, only going by market price instead of rigorous calculations.

All in all this means it's ALMOST GUARANTEED to end up with people selling them below ACTUAL average production price (they're still selling them above THEIR production price so far though).



Not that insane at all, really.
Let me give you a RL example.
Not the best one, but should probably give you a good idea.

Say you got shot in the chest repeatedly.
You have a field medic near you, and he patches you up the best he can.
However, he makes one big mistake - he doesn't get all the bullets and bullet fragments out.
Sure, he saved your life, so obviously, you're better off compared to him not having been around and not having patched you up.
Now, after a while, you DO discover that you still have a few bullets or bullet fragments inside you.
The doctor however tells you that the internal wounds have healed nicely and the bullets and fragments still inside you pose no major risk for you. There's obviously still SOME risk, but it's quite small.
You have the alternative to get a new surgery either way, to remove them anyway. But you also get warned that the surgery will be long, complicated and very risky due to the locations the bullets and fragments are in, and due to how your body managed to heal itself around them.

So, what do you do - do you continue on as if nothing happened, and live with a minimal risk of future complications (you might still manage to get that operation if a problem starts developing, so you might be saved either way), OR do you take the much larger risk right now to completely remove a much smaller risk later ?
Most SANE persons will choose to NOT have the operation and just live with it.

In many ways, the lottery was the shooting incident followed by the emergency patch-up, and the T2 BPOs are the leftover bullets, while the patient is the EVE economy.
Yes, it was a mistake to let those fragments in, but getting them out is more likely to do more harm than good now.
It would also be a mistake to add even more fragments.


So, yes, "they are not good" and "removing them is bad" are compatible positions regarding T2 BPOs, as weird as that sounds to you at first.

But that's the thing - those that sell the stuff are NOT losing ISK !!!
The ones losing ISK are those that had bad luck on invention streaks, and they're not selling any product - they have none to sell !
Those undercutting average prices are MAKING a profit based on their limited above-average success so far. Sure, they might later end up with a streak of bad luck and lose ISK eventually, but for now, they are profiting. They might shift to another item or evengive up invention altogether afterwards.
The higher the pricetag of the item, the higher the chance of this happening.


So DON'T compete with him directly.
He has his share of the market cut out, don't go into markets what can't support inventors volume-wise.
NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO INVENT "ITEM X" - GO INVENT WHICHEVER ITEM IS THE MOST PROFITABLE INSTEAD. If you want "item x", use the damn invention profits to buy "item x" from the damn BPO holder !
The BPO owner has absolutely no REASON to undercut you heavily - he wants the best damn price he can get.
Just let him sell his stuff first.
The real competition will come from other inventors anyway.


The items were not GIVEN, they were either EARNED or PURCHASED.
Sure, luck might have played some factor for some of the lottery winners, but most of the good stuff went to people that broke their backs working for it for a long time.

It doesn't endlessly print ISK either. It has a quite limited amount of ISK that can be made from it nowadays, and it is capped by the inventors. BEFORE INVENTION, a T2 cap recharger BPO sold for nearly 200 bil ISK and was making that amount of money back in 5 months. Now, it would only make that amount of money in 300 months (give or take a few years).

And it's not zero effort either. Just because he doesn't have to go through the invention clicking doesn't mean he doesn't have to ship in T2 components, manufacture stuff then ship out the T2 items to the sales location. He might need less effort overall, but saying it's zero effort is an outright lie.

Also, so what if they can undercut you ?
They'd be stupid to undercut you by any significant amount of ISK anyway.
Afterall, they need to recoup the huge initial investment soon, so undercutting you aggressively is not something they're likely to do. They're FAR more likely to keep the inventory at whatever price they KNOW it's worth, and only undercut if prices change too much in their disfavour and the inventory has not sold yet.
Those that aggressively undercut you ARE FREAKING INVENTORS, NOT BPO OWNERS !!!


Not FAR outstrips. Even EVER SO SLIGHTLY outstrips.
Sure, the volume up for grabs might be a small percentage at first, but IN THAT SMALL PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL VOLUME you are simply NOT competing directly with any BPO owner, only with other inventors.


That makes absolutely no sense.
If an inventor COULD undercut a BPO owner, then the BPO owner would have no reason to bother manufacturing from a BPO, instead resorting to invention.
Also, nothing can outstrip invention, since it scales up with whatever demand you throw at it. BPO manufacture however, that it totally capped volume-wise.

STFU about this.

He's either the most brilliant troll or the biggest idiot I've seen in a decade. Either way, this thread is worth posting in. When you see a mountain like that, you damn well climb it.

Still couldn't compete unless I jumped into a covetor and got "free" minerals.

I guess this would be relevant if minerals were a huge portion of T2 items...

...or even a portion that was particularly affected by ME in most T2 items....

...but they're not.

For most T2 items, the mineral cost is a relatively small fraction of the overall production cost, and is mostly or entirely wrapped up in the T1 item, which is unaffected by the ME of the T2 print. So this pretty much has nothing to do with anything.

The minerals I mine are free argument doesn't really go far with me honestly. If they are high volume, traders/reprocessors will buy them up. If they are low demand, someone will just undercut that price until someone hits a price point that people want to buy from. Either way, the market is self-correcting. Sure there are people that do not include the price of datacores or copies in their production but that assumes everyone is doing the same thing. Furthermore, if by not including these costs they do not make a profit, then they won't be in business long enough to matter.

The MIMAF would be an issue if the market system were more like WoW's, but it's not. It's a supply and demand system so a lot of normal economic principles affect the price. In short, I see it as nothing other than a complaint for people not able or are unwilling to diversify their production. Or do their homework. Hell, I've been profiting off the same 3 items for 3 years now.

OK, not sure why I'm going to continue bothering but you still don't seem to understand simple economics 101 and your credibility of a knowledgeable or semi-serious industrialist is completely shot (if it ever existed). Furthermore, this entire thread is your argument - the task is for you to convince everyone else to switch their opinion of the topic. However, simply saying you are right does not make it so and you have yet to get one person to agree with you that did not in the first place.

But not to display my own hypocrisy, I will not only say your argument is flawed but I will show you in a simple way.

Here are three scenarios that show you are not understanding how the T2 market (or markets in general) works. For sake of argument, assume that it takes the same amount of time (1 week) to make 1 unit of X. Assume the profit from invention is 1mil isk and for the T2BPO holder, 5mil isk. These are simple scenarios but mirror the market pretty closely from my experience.

Scenario 1 - Item X is sold in a market with 9 inventors and 1 T2BPO holder. If the market demand is satisfied by selling 10 units per week, all industrialists have the same chance to make a profit. The T2 BPO holder makes 5mil of his sale and the other 9 make 1 mil.

Scenario 2 - Item X demand on the market in scenario 1 is now for 100 units per week. Now the industrialists cannot supply the market with the required demand, so the price increases. Additionally, this draws in more industrialists to supply the market due to the profit incentive. Because there are far more inventors than T2 BPO owners, supply from invention will determine the price point, not T2 BPOs. However, at no point would the T2 BPO owner undercut the invention set price if they are a rational actor. If they did, with high demand the incentive to buy low and sell at the higher price point exists and is exactly what happens. If the T2 BPO owner lowers the price too low, the are only reducing their profit since the movement is high.

Scenario 3 - Item X demand drops to 5 units per week. Now the market is in over supply and the price will drop. Normally this is where the price will drop below the cost to build the item and industrialists will leave the market due to a lack of profit incentive and will likely drop prices of the stock they have on hand to move to another item or market. The T2 BPO holder has a larger cushion to his price margin however, also runs into a point where he may no longer supply the market if the demand is so low.

In the above three scenarios we find the following re-occurring themes:

1. The T2 BPO owner can make more profit than an inventor under my simplified assumptions
2. The market price self-corrects based on supply and demand
3. A T2 BPO owner can find a point where they still have an expensive asset (even if they got it for free it has a substantial value) that does not earn them a profit
4. The presence of a T2 BPO owner for a market item is unknown to other industrialists and this knowledge alone does not affect the price of goods sold when rational actors are involved. See #2.

Now your argument is that the T2 BPO owner can "severely undercut" the inventor. So it sounds to me that your argument is that you can't make a profit, or that you cannot compete. The T2 BPO owner can make more of a profit. This is true but you can make a profit too and you can easily compete with them where items meet or exceed demand.

Does this give enough of a reason to remove T2 BPOs? In my opinion, no. They are not harming the market nor are they hampering invention in any way - they are another way to supply the market with items. If you have a T2 BPO for the same market item I have, my decision to make that same item does not rest on the fact you have a T2 BPO - it rests on whether I can sell the item at a profit and within a time period that fits my business plan. Your ability to undercut me has no bearing on my decision at all because if you were to do this (market pvp) I will just buy you out. Since you are limited by the amount you can produce (I have three characters that can produce items whereas you have 1), there is no way for you to compete with me. So as a rational actor, you will NOT undercut me to a level that endangers your profits, which will be larger than mine.

Leaving T2 BPOs in the game does very little overall, if anything, to the larger market or the future of T2 production through invention. In the end, the only valid argument that you have is that they can make more profit than an inventor. Under my assumptions above, that is true. Does it matter? Not if you know what game you are playing.

Yes, this is probably the only complaint about invention I really agree with. Module invention is a clicky nightmare. Would love to see this improved.