EVE New Citizens Q&A

Speaking of T2 BPO, I was reading about these things and understand that early in the game, there was some sort of lottery and these were distributed out to players. Since that time, they implemented invention where the rest of us can make limited run versions (though, this costs time and money).

As a new player, I just don't get WHY T2 BPOs are even in the game years later. It seems like a broken mechanic that also acts as a discouragement to newer players (e.g., why join a game where veteran players have a protected advantage?)

I'm probably opening a can of worms (MmMmmM...worms!!) but is one peculiarity that just plain doesn't make sense at all to me to maintain.

Nope, not really after the last expansion, or was it the one before. Anyway right now T2 BPOs aren't "worth" what they were before, some ship T2 BPOs are still good but most are "nerfed".
You have to read the Industrie devblog for more details, i'm not sure but T2 BPOs have a way longer TE than before and you can't pump out stuff like crazy anymore.

The good thing about you Instrudy guys are, traders like me do not care :), it is all about the margin.

There is no advantage, not really, because compared to BPC invention it's terribly slow. On a per job basis it's better but on the whole it it's not even worth noticing and given the hilarious investment (I doubt many/any of the T2 BPO are still owned by the original owner) they're now more a collector's item than anything else.


This whole debate is nothing other than "they have something I can't have, this is not fair because every other MMO I played so far has taught me that I'm special and the saviour or worlds, so I should have it as well or no one should have it". Not unlike the whole high sec carrier or ancient tournament prizes whines.

That's very true, and it's true even if I'm trying to maximise ISK - I reprocess junk because it's not worth the time it would take to sell it, let alone the order slots (and additional think time) I'd need to sell it at anything other than the highest buy offer. Turning it into a few stacks of minerals makes the quantity manageable.

Well, there's a balance somewhere in the middle between the two camps ... I think the biggest problem that the "minerals I mine are free" crowd causes "the rest of us" is that they perceive themselves to be industry / market barons and when you point out they could've done better for their wallets by selling something outright, they just end up with "lalalalala I'm not listening!!!"


case in point, flew with some guy doing the "free minerals" thing, and selling shuttles (or equally low-end item that needed few if any minerals off the market). We got into the discussion about it (he was selling at ~85% mineral value, not counting mfg costs or taxes, IIRC), wherein I'd buy the mins at 90% local hub rate via contract/trade and eat the 10k contract cost (he said no -- if he wanted to sell mins, he'd just do that, or some other silly argument).

So, I find out when he's taking the item(s) to market, watch it for his order to go up, buy it out. Reprocessed the stuff, and inject the mins into my piles.

Few weeks go by, and he's gloating to some newbie in the corp about how awesome his isk-making skills are (and why that newbie should consider mined minerals to be free). I simply thank him for the 15% discount on minerals, and after a few minutes of disbelief on his part, I rattle off about 3 weeks of market transactions, times, amounts, and the buyer name...

Guy raged a bit at that ...

An Example.

My builder has agreements with various mission runners to purchase all the crap they pick up at a substantial discount.

I get cheap mats for my JF building enterprise and they have a sure sale for their stuff without having to waste time and SP building up a trade character or training trade skills on their combat character.

Everybody's happy and no one is being stupid. As I said, there are plenty of reasons to sell cheap.

As I also said in my first post, the thing to do is to take advantage of it. No reason to conjecture as to why they're doing it, just be grateful that they are.

Mr Epeen

Well yes and no. EVE isn't about being equal and fair and while I'll fully agree to a "there shouldn't be a downside to starting late" there's also the "EVE is awesome because there's haves and have nots, and the struggle between them Is what drives EVE".

And it's not grandfathered in, you can buy those BPO if you fork up the isk. that's how 99% of the T2 BPO owners got theirs in the first place; they bought it from someone else at a going rate that would require years, literally, of production to break even based on scarcity prices which don't apply anymore.


And no I don't own, or ever have owned, a T2 BPO :)

You are just wrong. Look at the prices of tech 2 ammunition.

Pre-Crius, one BPO was only a couple million rounds of, say, Void L per year. That was a blip on the radar.

Now, one BPO is 30-40 million rounds of Void L per year, more if the asset is put at risk in a POS. There's believed to have been 24 of that BPO seeded, so if 20 are still active that's 700 million rounds per year. Probably that is more than is consumed gamewide of a niche ammunition like Void L.

The *sole reason* that the prices for certain items have crashed post-Crius is that the corresponding tech 2 BPOs have been buffed from largely irrelevant to market dominance. These prices have fallen while build cost has increased, and while end user demand is roughly constant.

Most items were affected less than T2 ammo and many items had the reverse effect (e.g. the BPOs for tech 2 ships were nerfed hard). But all those modules that went from 2 hours per unit build time to 20 minutes per unit - their BPOs just started mattering again.

Not into the whole market stuff myself so i've no insight into your second question but you might try looking at you "Transaction" tab in your wallet for more specific information on your sale ect.

What I do is buy multiple BPOs. I have one in research and one in production. I rotate them until they are all at the research level needed.

Copies are for invention or sale and nothing else, in my opinion. They also are a waste of build slots. Take a capital cargo bay for example. The max runs you can have is 5 on a copy. But you might need 70 for a freighter. With a BPO you can do as many runs as you can fit into the 30 day limit. So one or two build slots with researched BPOs compared to 14 build slots with copies.

I haven't done much industry since the expansion so keep in mind that all I've said above could have changed completely. Someone will be quick to point it out if I have.

Mr Epeen