EVE New Citizens Q&A

Why would I want to buy a 350 mm Railgun II versus a 350 mm Prototype Gauss Gun?

1. It has absolutely not a single one redeeming quality over the tech I (Gauss) version. So ===>

Why CCP has done that? A tech II worse than a tech I ?

2. It costs more on the market than the Gauss version. So ===>

Why the market has not adjusted itself (through the shrewd traders over there) so that at least the Tech II is cheaper versus Tech I ?

Both (1) and (2) makes absolutely no sense to me. Even if CCP fails on (1) (tech II better at least on a single stat over tech I), then why the traders are not selling the Gauss gun higher than tech II ?

edit: Checking further, the industrial cost for Tech II is higher. At least it can explain point (2). It is sold higher because it costs more or is reprocessed for more.

So you can use T2 ammo?

[Never noticed that item's T2 vs. meta 4 before. Thanks.]

It benefits from the Specialization skill (in this case, Large Railgun Specialization) which adds 2% damage per level of the skill. Hence it can do up to 10% more damage than the meta 4 gun, depending on the pilot's level in that skill.

It can use T II ammo, (Spike and Javelin), which the Meta 4 cannot.

Thanks much all! It's so comforting to now understand the rational.

There are a number of factors that determine the prices of the items that you mention:

T2 guns and launchers (and T2 items in general) : prices are determined by build cost. The price you see on the market is probably around build cost +10% (+/- 5%) for high volume items but the price will be more "spikey" for lower volume items.

Meta 3 / 4 guns and launchers come rat drops, mission drops and anoms/belts drops. So their price is controlled by drop rates and has a floor of the mineral value from reprocessing. Also the price will be affected by demand as many meta 3/4 items are popular for fitting reasons.

Deadspace items have their price determined by drop rates as Tau pointed out, ratting in Gurista space is popular so you may find low prices, but again it depends on drop rates.

Navy items like the CN Rails you mentioned come from the Loyalty point stores and they tend to be expensive as they require Navy Insignias for their purchase, these have their floor set by NPC buy orders and they usually require a prohibitive amount which sets their price high relative to say the corresponding deadspace item.

One item not mentioned so far is Storyline / Cosmos items. They have their price determined by the cost of the components required to build them which come from drops but more usually hacking / relic sites in Cosmos constellations. The build cost of these can be quite high due to the scarcity of the materials required to build them so while they are generally good items to have they tend to be very expensive relative to the other types of items.

Final point: T2 guns and launchers are usually cheaper than meta 3/4 (but drop rates control the price) and they are generally better as they use T2 ammo and get the bonus from the appropriate specialization skill as Elena mentioned above.

There are a fair number of tech 2 modules that are indeed flat out worse than the corresponding meta level 4 module (example: Warp Scrambler II vs Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I; this gap is actually bigger than it looks as tech 2 modules burn out quicker when overheated).

But this is not one of them. The *only* weapons that can use tech 2 ammo or gain the benefits of specialisation skills are tech 2 weapons, which actually makes the tech 2 weapons usually better than faction weapons and not far behind officer weapons.

As an aside, I'd like to see deadspace weapons that can use T2 ammo.