Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It is time to Nerf the line usage costs at All NPC Stations:

TL;DR: Increase line costs by 100 fold, from 333 isk/hr to 33300 isk / hr.

Why?

Currently, the costs are so low that it stifles alternative routes for S&I.

Explanation:

Currently, it costs 1000 isk and 333 isk/hr to run a manufacturing job in highsec. This is insanely cheap, so that other forms of production or research have a very difficult time competing. For example, if I'm building a typical battleship, which takes 5 hours to build (less with skills and research), we are looking at 2500 isk to complete a 1 run job.

Compare this to manufacturing in a POS.
A small POS consumes 10 Fuel blocks an hour, costing 15+k isk each. You would need over 1000 Manufacturing jobs running at the POS to have an operating expense anywhere near the station service costs. This is impossible, not to mention impractical, to achieve.

Why do people use POS's for S&I:

We use POS's in manufacturing only out of necessity and/or convenience.

ME and Copy Slots at highsec stations have pretty crazy queues (30+ days often). If you need to research your BPO's, or create new BPC's regularly (as you do for t2 production), owning a POS is required to maintain a supply of BPC's. Once you have the POS setup for Copying or ME Resarch, it makes sense to utilize the POS for other S&I activities (invention, PE research, and even assembly arrays), as these have some benefits as well as convenience.

Why should we encourage using POS's to do S&I?

POS's ownership comes with many awesome repercussions:

♦ You must be in a corp to have a POS. This means you are vulnerable to wardecs, have to deal with corp theft and awoxing, and all the game content surrounding it.

♦ Operating a POS requires effort. You need standings to anchor one, you need to spend energy fueling it, and this would support one of the often overlooked paradigms of eve: effort vs reward.

♦ Your POS is a vulnerable asset. Putting labs and arrays in space means you have items at risk, potentially something worth fighting over. Your risks should be rewarded! Ultimately, every POS is a conflict driver, and that's a good thing!

What type of Nerf is healthy and balanced?

♦ Increase Highsec S&I Line costs by 100 fold:

Current line costs are 333 isk/hr with a 1000 isk install cost. The increase means you spend 33k isk/hr manufacturing, with a 100k install cost.

This might seem like a lot, but let us put this in perspective:

♦ A typical t1 item takes 600 seconds (standard module) to 90000 seconds (capital module) to build. Your standard t1 item would then cost only 6k isk more. Your standard Capital modules would cost less than 1m isk more to produce. In general, the consumers, to whom the prices are passed onto, won't even notice such price increases.

♦ A typical ship take 6000 seconds (frigates) to 18000 s (Battleships) to build. Again, your frigates will now cost 60k more isk and your BS's will cost 300k more isk. Most of us will hardly notice the difference.

♦ A more complex example might be a T2 item. Lets look at a Heavy Ion Blaster II. At the end of the production chain, the T2 Heavy Ion Blaster will cost you an extra 250k isk to produce. Not negligible, but something not some crazy increase that you might fear from the 100 fold increase in line fees.

Why will this encourage POS usage?

A small POS costs 150-200k isk/hr, and a Large POS costs 600-800k isk/hr to operate. Given the 33k isk/line costs at station, a single player using 10 lines will cover POS fuel costs with the avoided Station line fees. Add the 25% reduction in build times from POS assembly arrays, and it becomes more profitable to build at the POS. These cost savings aren't enough to eliminate Station manufactures by any means, but provide a concrete benefit to moving your production to POSs.

Pros:

♦ POS's become more worthwhile to use for production, helping to even the manufacturing playfield in every sector of the game (Highsec, Nullsec, WH's, & Lowsec).

♦ Increased POS usage will lead to more conflicts. While this is limited, as highsec POS's can be a really PITA to take down when they are properly setup, conflicts will inevitably happen as moon locations become more coveted.

♦ Sizeable new isk sink. A typical manufacturing character using highsec facilities would pay 8m isk a day, if there are 5k such characters, that's over 1 trillion isk leaving the economy each month.

Cons:

♦ You have to pay more for your items. Not enormously more, but enough that poor players may whine.

♦ You need more isk to get into manufacturing. Manufacturing already requires a decent capital investment, and this change will increase that barrier some. My biggest fear is that this hinder's the ability of a new player taking up this profession, but I don't think the increases are that significant.

Please post your thoughts.

Came expecting "line costs are too high".

Left somewhat confused by OP's poor choice of wording.

Anyway, +1 to this. Nerf the attractiveness of NPC lines and promote Outpost/POS lines instead.

As long as this cost happens across all levels of security it's good.
Null Industrial Outposts have a bonus in time on certain items which means higher line costs will make it slightly advantageous to leverage those time bonuses, but not totally destroy the market.

However if this is intended as a just high sec thing, no, & hell no.

5/10 for choice of wording, could be better.

11/10 for idea. Fully supported.

Wouldn't it be preferable to buff POS S&I/manufacturing in tandem with an NPC station line nerf? and a little less on the amount of nerf. !00 times more exspensive? that seems a bit much without gaining anything in return.

Make player assets better than npc assets?

Yes please.

Thank you for the props.

Can you give some wording suggestions, so I can accurately articulate what the thread is about?

Markets will adapt. Same with PI taxes for instance.

But overall, you aren't nerfing S&I slots really, you are buffing POS production, which currently can't really compete IPH wise with NPC stations. I for instance don't use a pos for anything and do fine with T2 production.

If this change went through I'd either move to a POS or just adapt as long as the IPH was good enough to outweigh the hassle of using a POS. But right now, I don't see the point in producing at a POS if you are in highsec.

The only issue I see with this is new industry players, which you mention as well. Today I had a chat with someone in Jita that thought 400k was a lot of isk for an Ammo BPO.

That is an unintended consequence of production. You don't get people interested in industry by requiring them to start out with massive fees they can't afford just to build stuff most of us wouldn't waste our time on.

I'm not trying to make Highsec production more profitable than Nullsec Production.

I'm attempting to make POS production on par or better than NPC station production.

Believe it or not, this is also the first step needed to balance nullsec and highsec industry. Nullsec stations have a very limited number of manufacturing slots, and any serious production needs to be supplemented by POS structures.

Seems like it could take veteran players out of the stations to leave more room for newer players getting into industry, which is something I feel is pretty important. I like this idea.